Resolved

Paul calmly chewed on the meat that he tore off Mazinga's body as he looked around him. He had been in a constant state of alertness for more than 24 hours, and while his body wasn't tired, his mind definitely was.

There wasn't much to suggest any possible dangers around him, so for now he just zoned out and enjoyed his meal. The corpse wasn't as large as a tiger's though, and Paul quickly cleaned it of all its meat.

After finishing his meal, Paul finally thought back to what happened before, when his body was being disintegrated by Mazinga's Light class magic. He then thought back to the first card he drew.

It seemed like everyone else was right, and that he had actually transformed into an undead, possibly due to drawing the Grim Reaper card. To think he thought that everything was because of his status as a player, that misunderstanding almost cost him his life!

If he were to lose this game because of such a stupid reason, that would be far too pathetic!

As for his second card, it seemed to give him some form of defensive capability?

Now that he had command over mana of his own, he was able to use his spiritual sense to probe his own inner soul. With that, he looked into his inner soul and found the illusory figure of just the second card he drew, the first one with the Grim Reaper was nowhere to be found.

As his spiritual sense touched on the card, he could feel the same warm feeling from before. With a single thought, he realised that he could drew out energy from the card. He guided this stream of energy out to his hand, and what he saw completely surprised him.

As more energy converged at his hand, it was as though a mini sun was being formed at his hand. This was the exact same feeling that he got from what Mazinga did before; the ball of light was the exact same attack of Light class magic that Mazinga used!

No matter if it was reasonable or not, it seemed that that this second card of his truly gave him control of Light magic even though he was an undead!

Was he wrong? Was he not an undead after all?

Paul doubted it. After all, his body had clearly been affected by the light magic attack until this second card of his was activated.

Paul carefully tried to touch his own body with the ball of light in his hand, but he could feel that the protective layer from the card still surrounded every cell of his, completely preventing his body from being affected by the Light magic.

A satisfied smile spread across Paul's face as he saw that. It seemed that this combination of cards that he drew actually gave him a ridiculous advantage, completely removing the racial weakness of all undead!

Next he turned his attention to the necklace hanging on his neck. Hither called it the Necrolace before, and had used it to detect and absorb death energy, even stealing the death energy that Paul should have been able to absorb from the dead soldiers.

Channelling a bit of mana into it, he could feel a large reserve of death energy within. But aside from that, he still had no idea how to draw upon this death energy, nor did he know how to use it for any other function.

This was natural as well. After all, even Wizard Mirror spent almost a full year studying the Artifact and still only managed to uncover one or two ways to use the Necrolace. It also had to be considering that they were much more experienced than Paul in the field of magic!

However, one advantage that Paul held over Wizard Mirror was that he had a natural affinity towards death energy. Since the Necrolace was an Artifact that was designed to manipulate death energy as well, this gave him a head start in learning to utilise the Artifact.

Paul now needed to decide on his next step. First things first, he would need to find a base of operations since he just lost his previous one.

Now that he knew he was an undead, trying to find a human settlement to live in would be too optimistic. He was fortunate that the previous village coincidentally had a prophecy that allowed for a misunderstanding to occur. But it was unlikely that such a thing could happen again.

Did he really have to live alone from now then?

He could definitely build a simple house given enough time, but he had no idea how to smelt metal for weapons! In fact, he didn't even have metal to smelt!

He sat there thinking for a while, then looked around at his surroundings. An idea struck him, but he would have to try to find out if it were possible to execute that plan.

Paul patted the dust off his pants before walking over to a skeleton nearby. Gently placing his hand on the skull of the skeleton, Paul closed his eyes in concentration.

Hither had previously mentioned that his body seemed like a container for a large amount of death energy, which was what gave away his identity as an undead. Now Paul wanted to channel some death energy into the skeleton, hoping that the skeleton could act as a container for the death energy.

If it could, he might be able to raise the dead!

He was in no way familiar with the channelling of death energy, so all he could do was stand there and slowly try to figure out how to do this.

What he was familiar with, however, was the absorbing of death energy that was emitted by the dead. So all he had to do was reconstruct the process backwards.

It sounded simple in theory, but that was not the case at all in practice. He had to call upon the death energy that had been absorbed into every single cell of his body, combine them into a stream and emit it out of his body into the skeleton.

But he was patient, not losing his temper as he continued to try.

Suddenly, he felt a something being emitted from the Necrolace instead. His eyebrows instantly tilted downwards in a deep frown. He was trying to concentrate on his task right now, why did the Necrolace decide to act up at this juncture?

Paul initially tried to ignore the Necrolace, but he soon started to realise what was going on. The Necrolace had actually resonated with his thoughts, and the death energy within had started to stir. What he felt was actually the Necrolace acting according to his will, emitting death energy which passed through his body and into the skeleton!

In the first place, the Necrolace was an Artifact that was made for manipulation of death energy, and Paul had managed to activate it for that exact usage.

Paul was exhilarated! Who would have thought that this Necrolace would actually be of such help?

But if he was excited by that, what happened next would have caused his heart to beat a thousand times faster, if his heart did beat at all in the first place.

The skeletal frame before him twitched awkwardly, slowly standing up from the ground where it had been lying for ages. Who knew how it managed to move without the existence of any muscles, but this was not the first incredible thing that Paul had seen since coming to this world anyway.

The skeleton stopped moving after standing up, simply facing Paul blankly.

However, a telepathic connection was established between Paul and the skeleton even before the skeleton first started moving. The connection might be weak, but Paul knew instantly that the skeleton was simply awaiting orders from its master, from himself!

With a mere thought, the skeleton walked away, sat down, stood up, and then walked back to him.

"Sit down!" Paul ordered loudly, but the skeleton did not move.

So it would only heed his telepathic commands, and not his words.

Paul started with a few other experiments, all this while carefully observing the death energy within the skeleton. He was wondering if the skeleton would only move temporarily until the death energy depleted, but the death energy within the skeleton never depleted.

Next, he had to see if he could refill the death energy in the Necrolace.

He wasn't too worried about this portion though, since he had already seen Hither use the Necrolace to absorb the death energy emitted by the dead soldiers. What he needed to do was to learn how to do that as well, but he was in no hurry to do so.

Once again, he looked around him. The area was covered with sand and dust, deprived of any signs of life. This suggested that few people, if any at all, would ever visit this location.

This place was a location hidden away from civilisation, making it perfect as the new location of his base of operations! All he needed now was proper development of the area, as well as underlings to help him with the useless chores while he continued gaining power!

Paul closed his eyes once again, this time concentrating his spiritual sense on the Necrolace. With a mere thought, death energy spread out to all corners of the valley, sinking into the corpses and carcasses that were half buried all over the place.

Rise up! Rise up and come to me!

Paul commanded in his mind, his order absolute and authoritative.

One by one, figures rose up from the ground, shaking the small rocks and sand off of them. There were pure skeletons, and there were those that still had bits of flesh hanging; there were corpses of humans, and there were carcasses of beasts, but one thing was in common. All of them simultaneously turned and started advancing towards Paul, surrounding him in a circle.

Paul leapt up onto a large rock to elevate himself, casting his gaze down upon the numerous undead that stood before him.

All of them existed solely because of him! All of them heeded and obeyed his every word!

He was their master! He was their king! He was their god!

Wizard Mirror wanted him dead? The villagers wanted him dead? Mazinga wanted him dead?

Look at who was standing here right now!

Look at who were the ones who ended up dead!

This wasn't the end of it! Far from it! This was just the beginning!

If those humans did not wish to accept him into their society, then he would just build a kingdom of his own. In fact, he would build one that far surpassed any of the human empires, one that would force all humans to stay away in fear!

What an awesome feeling this was, this was the perfect game for him!

Paul made his resolution right there. Since there hadn't been a clear objective until now, this shall be his objective in the game! To stand at the very top of this world!

But first, he had to have a decent looking base. Looking around, this was just a desolate ground with no materials whatsoever. And that cliff wall separating them from the forest above was daunting to say the least.

There was too much to do.

He had to properly explore the area for security and resources. Who knew if they were actually near to some human civilisation? That would greatly compromise their territorial claims. Now when they had just started out, it would be foolish to make enemies out of others this soon.

He had to create a proper path up the cliff walls to ensure that they would have access to the top. Otherwise if they were to be attacked from above, won't they just end up as sitting ducks? Even without that, they would still need to gather wood from the forest for construction. Paul also wanted access to the animals in the forests for hunting.

It was fortunate that none of his subordinates needed food for sustenance; otherwise it would have been a nightmare to provide them with meals. Even though Paul did not need food either, he still enjoyed the feeling of eating, especially since his tongue was still intact.

On his command, all his subordinates spread out across the area and got to work. Paul was a genius engineer, and a simple blueprint slowly appeared in his mind. It was fortunate that they were telepathically connected too, so Paul did not have to physically explain anything.

With that, all that was left was for those tireless undead under him to work day and night without rest from now on, all towards the goal of building the strongest kingdom this world would ever see!