Chapter 61: Passing days

Karl sat cross-legged in the middle of his room as dense Death Energy slowly spread around him.

He had already been at it for nearly an hour.

The energy expanded until it covered most of the room, then gradually came back under Karl’s control.

He compressed it around himself, forced the scattered energy into a stable range and tried once again to reproduce the structure he had felt inside the Death Stick’s Domain.

For a few seconds, it almost worked but then the entire structure collapsed.

The condensed Death Energy scattered across the room and gradually faded away.

Karl remained sitting for a few seconds before opening his eyes and releasing a long breath.

"System, what the hell is this?"

No response came.

Karl’s irritation only grew.

"Aren’t you supposed to be the Strongest Necromancer System?"

He looked at the empty air in front of him.

"And don’t I have a God-Tier talent? Why the hell can’t I complete a single task?"

The answer finally appeared.

[The Host’s current failure is a result of the Host’s own incompetence.]

[There is nothing the System can do regarding this matter.]

Karl’s mouth twitched.

"Incompetence?"

He almost laughed.

"That’s rich coming from the System that gave me a torn robe as a mission reward and has apparently run out of missions entirely."

The response came immediately.

[The Host has spent the majority of the last fifteen days remaining within Ardent City.]

[The System is under no obligation to continuously provide the Host with free rewards.]

Karl stared at the notification.

"Free rewards?"

The System continued before he could argue.

[Furthermore, the robe previously awarded to the Host once belonged to the Sovereign of Death—]

"Stop this bullshit this instant and stop repeating that same fairytale again and again."

Karl immediately pulled up the robe’s information.

[Unknown Robe]

[Grade: Unranked]

[Tier: Mortal]

He pointed at the panel as though the System could somehow see his finger.

"Look at this."

"A unranked mortal tier robe ."

"It’s barely different from a moth-eaten common coat and tou dare say it’s an artificat of great use."

The System went silent but then a notification appeared.

[It is upgradable.]

Karl stared at it speechlessly, that was apparently the System’s entire defense.

After another moment of silence, it abruptly changed the subject.

[The Host should focus on completing the First Transition.]

[Additional System functions will become available after the First Transition is completed.]

Karl immediately forgot about the robe.

"What functions?"

[Complete the First Transition first.]

"What functions unlock?"

[Complete the First Transition first.]

Karl waited for something more but nothing came.

"...Useless."

The System ignored him, Karl finally gave up and fell backward onto the bed.

Fifteen days had already passed since William left, which meant half of the month they had been given was already gone.

During that time, Karl had tried forming his Personal Death Domain more times than he cared to count.

Different ranges, different concentrations, different methods of circulating Death Energy yet it always ended exactly the same way.

He could spread Death Energy throughout an area and compress it until the concentration became almost oppressive.

After spending so much time using the Death Stick, he could even imitate several characteristics of its Death Domain surprisingly well.

But imitation was all it remained, the World Will had never recognized a single attempt as a Domain belonging to Karl himself.

No matter how stable the structure appeared at first, something was always missing.

Eventually the Death Energy lost cohesion, the entire thing collapsed and Karl was left exactly where he had started.

He had even tried recreating the feeling of standing inside the Golden King Tiger’s Metal Domain.

That hadn’t worked either, Karl raised one hand and opened his status again.

He had checked it far too many times during the last fifteen days, but by now it had practically become habit.

[Karl Reed]

[Level: 99]

[Class: Necromancer]

[Strength: ~30.9k]

[Constitution: ~33.1k]

[Speed: ~32.0k]

[Mana: ~41.0k]

[Divinity: 0.1]

[Skills: Death Severance, Hellfire, Death Legion, Death Detonation, Bone Barrier, Life Link...]

His attention moved toward the final line.

[Undead: 17,892]

Karl looked at the number for a while before sighing, though a small smile still appeared on his face.

Almost eighteen thousand, his Death Legion had finally reached a scale where calling it an army no longer sounded exaggerated.

The problem was that it looked far better as a number than it did as an actual army.

Karl had raised undead from practically everything he encountered over the past few months.

Beasts, skeletons, humanoids and dungeon monsters of dozens of different species had all ended up inside the Legion.

Some were genuinely useful, while others only remained relevant because of their Levels.

And plenty had joined simply because Karl found a corpse and saw no reason to leave it behind.

The Legion was enormous, but there was little consistency to it.

If Karl wanted an actual elite army rather than eighteen thousand random undead, that would eventually have to change.

His experiments with during the last fifteen days had already shown him where to start.

Whenever he wasn’t attempting the Domain or hunting for EXP and Death Energy, Karl had been testing Monarch’s Evolution.

The most useful thing he learned was surprisingly simple.

Undead rank and undead quality were not the same thing.

With enough Death Energy, Karl could keep forcing almost any undead through repeated evolutions.

Even some worthless skeleton pulled from a low-level corpse could theoretically be pushed all the way toward Commander rank if Karl was willing to spend enough.

That did not mean it would suddenly become a good Commander.

Its original foundation remained important.

The quality of the corpse, bones, species, physical structure and whatever soul remnants remained all affected what the undead could eventually become.

Karl had already confirmed it himself.

A weak skeleton forcefully dragged all the way to Commander rank could still obtain the intelligence and fundamental characteristics associated with that rank.

Put it against a genuine Commander evolved from a powerful foundation, however, and the difference became obvious almost immediately.

The rank could be the same but the fight wouldn’t be.

That discovery had completely changed how Karl viewed Monarch’s Evolution.

Pouring enormous amounts of Death Energy into worthless undead just to increase their rank was a terrible trade.

If Karl eventually wanted Commanders and Marshals capable of becoming the real core of his Legion, then he needed to care about the foundation before the evolution even began.

Fortunately, one of those experiments had already completed his first profession-specific Transition requirement.

Karl shifted the panel.

[Accumulate 10,000,000 EXP.]

[Completed.]

[Personally create or evolve one Commander-rank undead.]

[Completed.]

He had deliberately avoided wasting the requirement on some random skeleton.

Instead, Karl selected one of the strongest knight-type undead already inside the Legion.

Its original foundation was considerably better than most of his ordinary summons and repeated evolution had already produced much better results.

Then Karl decided to push the experiment further, talent Integration.

Among the three talents he had extracted in all his time the best was still the S-rank talent Rising Sun.

Karl integrated it directly into the knight and the integration succeeded.

The cost almost made him regret experimenting with it.

The amount of Death Energy required had been vastly higher than Karl expected and the transformation continued consuming energy even after the talent itself had successfully integrated.

Because of that, much of the last fifteen days had turned into a cycle of entering nearby dungeons, killing monsters, rebuilding his Death Energy reserves and feeding everything back into the evolution.

Even now, the process wasn’t finished, Karl opened the progress panel.

[Sun Knight Evolution: 70%]

"Come out."

Death Energy gathered beside the bed before a tall figure emerged from it.

Karl looked over the knight, at this point nothing about its appearance immediately suggested undead.

Smooth white armor covered its entire body, leaving no exposed bone or flesh anywhere beneath it.

Thin blue and golden lines ran between the armor plates while a faint radiance surrounded the figure.

Nothing resembling the usual image of a Necromancer’s summon.

Karl looked at it for a few seconds.

This thing looks more holy than half the priests I’ve seen.

Still, appearance aside, the experiment had already succeeded where it mattered.

The knight had reached Commander rank during the ongoing transformation, immediately satisfying Karl’s first profession-specific Transition condition.

And its attributes were already terrifying, Karl recalled the Sun Knight and returned to the task panel.

Two requirements were finished but theast one remained.

[Form and stabilize a Personal Death Domain.]

Karl’s brief satisfaction vanished.

"Of course."

That single line had been ruining his mood for fifteen straight days.

Karl stared at the requirement for another few seconds before finally closing the panel.

He was already considering whether to start another attempt when Victor’s voice came from downstairs.

"Young Master! Leon! Mira! Dinner is ready!"

Karl glanced toward the door and his stomach grumbled the Domain could wait another half hour.

He stood up, stretched his stiff shoulders and stepped into the hallway.

The door across from him opened almost at the same time.

Leon wandered out lazily, rubbing one eye. His hair was a complete mess and the marks on the side of his face made it obvious what he had actually spent the last few hours doing.

Karl stopped and looked at him.

"Didn’t you say during lunch that you were going to spend the next few hours training?"

Leon rubbed the back of his neck.

"It was training in a way."

Leon continued without the slightest shame.

"There’s no point worrying too much anyway, it’s not like something new is suddenly going to happen after fifteen days of repeating the same things."

Karl sighed.

"The World Will really gave all three of us a run for our money with these Transition tasks."

Something shifted beside them and Mira suddenly appeared with a plop.

Leon immediately jumped away.

"Fuck!"

He turned toward her.

"How many times have I told you not to suddenly appear beside us after turning into that thing?"

Karl looked toward Mira, from the waist up, she appeared completely normal.

Everything below her torso had become a shapeless mass of black and purple shadow.