So Douglas makes another decision. He sits down in order to concentrate better and calls up the image of the massive formation. Shoving mana into the thing worked, but only a small portion of the entire formation lit up, he vaguely recalls. Instead of blindly shoving in mana, he now tries to feel where it wants to go, how it flows through the spell.
Seeing the entirety of the spell at once is putting a form of pressure on Douglas’ forehead that scares the shit out of him. He immediately stops trying to focus on the entirety because he feels like his entire existence is about to pop. Like a word erased or a droplet dried, he has oblivion staring him in the face.
Swearing that he will now go through life cautiously - for real this time - Douglas focuses his mind on the centre of the construct - a symbol he recognises at the centre point, a sideways eight. Although Douglas gets a bare hint of meaning when looking at the parts that make up the other spells, this one is blank. Not a single hint comes to him while he studies the spell’s centre.
Mentally shrugging his shoulders, Douglas starts trickling mana into the spell. The sideways eight - Douglas thinks it looks like eyes - lights up immediately. Only a fragment of a single mana point seems to be needed to saturate the symbol with power. Feeling for where the mana wants to go next, it trickles outwards, creeping towards the ring of symbols surrounding the pair of eyes.
Sensing that there is some waste, some mana that is not being used, Douglas starts testing. The symbols start lighting up one by one as Douglas tries to shepherd the mana through his mental picture. He does this with such deliberate and patient slowness that his regeneration manages to keep up with the mana usage. Slowly, he starts gaining some understanding of the cryptic circle of runes.
Douglas is pretty sure that they are supposed to kidnap a ghost. Yeah, that’s totally what those runes mean. They kidnap a ghost by putting it in handcuffs, strapping it in bondage gear, and then spanking it. Douglas is perfectly confident that he has interpreted the meaning of those runes one hundred percent correctly.
Douglas is now also worried why this spell does BDSM things to a ghost…
Douglas is then worried about what BDSM is exactly, and why he has knowledge about that when he seems to lack a rather wide range of normal knowledge…
Moving on, Douglas watches with satisfaction as the runes light up one by one, his complete understanding somehow helping the process along. It’s like his knowledge aids the flow of power, causing each rune he understands to cost less mana to activate.
Next up, the mana flows through the eyes, through the circle of runes, and into the circle surrounding all activated symbols. This circle is made up of small plus signs from which lines flow, entangling all before in a complicated web of lines.
Douglas is pretty sure that this means that he is now supposed to spank the ghost. Maybe he can even use a whip or a paddle - Douglas isn’t sure.
This circle takes quite a bit longer to fill up, so Douglas guides a bit of his mana pool to the circle, speeding up the progress.
Unseen to the concentrating skeleton, a small sphere of teal power has started coalescing above his palm, a few shades brighter than the ball of smoke he made before. Tendrils of power start wafting from his still frame over the course of hours as Douglas patiently deepens his understanding of the spell shape. One such tendril reaches the woman and latches on to the frozen body. The other ones shrink and disappear unnoticed as the single connection grows stronger.
An hour later, the circle around the symbols glows with blue power, saturated by mana. Douglas then sees that certain parts of the second circle have already started glowing. Small nexus points - places where multiple lines converge - are humming with force, flickering to some unseen rhythm. Douglas senses that they are connected to somewhere else, but the feeling of dread he got when trying to see the entire circle prevents him from searching out the connected part.
From then on, Douglas fails to learn anything new. He keeps pouring mana inside the spell while studying the thing, but something seems to be missing. He keeps at it for hours, slowly shoving all the mana he has and generates into the seemingly endless pit that is the overly complex spell.
Although he fails to understand the meaning and intricacies of what is happening, he still observes it. Beyond the ring of lines surrounding the runes are yet more runes. These are a good bit more complicated than the ghost spanking ones, and he fails to glean anything new from them as they fill with mana. These runes are then connected to the nexus points, which seem to be endless mana holes that suck the runes dry.
An odd form of flow seems to be returning from the points, but Douglas fails to see what it does. Then a long while later, the nexus points are filled with power. The mana in them immediately flows outwards, into a headache-inducingly complex ring of symbols. They fill with power and then everything just stops.
The new symbols are about as complex as the entirety of the filled-in spell so far, with all four other circles added on top. They glow and do absolutely nothing. Douglas keeps pouring in mana, keeps supplying the slowly bloating formation with power.
Unseen to him, his head starts to glow. As nothing happens while he continues to send his power into the spell shape, odd things start happening around him. A single rune floats out of his head, shining blue light upon the storage area. Then more symbols emerge from his skull and start rotating around his skeletal frame.
Over the course of many hours, the entire spell formation forms around him in the real world. The moment that the spell hanging in the air is filled to the same extent as the spell in his mind, hell breaks loose. An explosion of mana bursts outwards, parts of it getting a green hint while large volumes stay iridescent blue. Douglas loses any form of consciousness and starts floating, his eyes blazing with magical light and the large symbols around him start spinning like mad.
“Ugh … Give the guys who came up with this tech a raise or something. Anyway, what year is it? Where is the welcoming committee? Is this a new play? That would be nice, actually. It’s been a long time since I was surprised like this. Let’s go and eat at Gorgeo’s after.”
Douglas is confused. He is hearing a rather shrill voice talking at him, but his vision is blocked by a cascading deluge of blue screens.
“Hello? Are you there? Who cares, right? I really want to catch up on a few years of ‘Xathian times, Singularity times’. Have those recordings prepared for me after Gorgeo’s. Then I might feel ready to inspect my holdings, so reserve like an hour with the board. Then I want to go to a spa planet. Is Therassian Five still the best? I want, like, at least ten nano scrubs …”
Douglas’ attention is entirely taken up by the shrill voice, and he can’t really spare to spend any of his attention on the rapidly scrolling wall of blue text in front of him.
“You know what, screw all that. I want to go to the new local capital. That changes every hundred years, yeah? Let’s see if any of my … friends … are thawed or even still alive. This is really interesting, though, waking up in a storage unit. Like you all forgot about me.”
Douglas fumbles around with his single hand. He reaches for his head as he wills the blue boxes to hide for now. Regaining his vision, his sight is blocked by a piece of fabric. Grabbing the item, he removes it and sits up.
“No way. Although, that would be fun, I guess … This must be a scenario, right? They were all the rage like two thousand years ago. They must have made a comeback. Okay, I'm all limber and good to go. Give me a new can of clothes. I don’t want to wear this old thing.”
The goddess is standing next to the casket, looking all bouncy and delicious and perfect and naked. The only detractions of her previous perfect beauty are her eyes that now glow an ominous blue, casting dark shadows around her eyes like large bags. Douglas would have thoughts that dark eyeliner would add to her looks, but this just makes her look tired.
Her body is still the same physical perfection, but as Douglas pulls himself up and upwards on his stubby legs, she is shorter
than him by half a head. He would have thought her statuesquely laying form to be taller than him, not shorter, and the way she is looking and moving comes across as a bit annoying to the skull.
Scratching his helmet in confusion, Douglas ponders what this massive shift in perspective might mean.
“I’m not wearing this can! That old asshat always insists that I take one with me during my naps, but I'm not wearing it! Where are the bare necessities? You do have some skinClearGel, right? That stuff hasn’t changed for a long time. Also, are rings trendy again? Please say no because rings are stupid.”
Yeah, Douglas concludes. This is definitely a case of an impulsive decision coming back to bite him in the ass. Ignoring the yapping woman, Douglas starts walking outside, his single shoulder slumped inside his suit.
He crashes forwards as the woman steps on his trailing pant leg while walking behind him.
“Ah, cute. Stop falling, though. That’s too loud so early. Where is my HyperCaff? You all know I need the stuff, but seriously, give the eggheads that came up with this new tech a raise or a few planets or something. I feel great! Nothing like my previous naps. Although these blue things are super annoying. Get rid of them for me.”
Glaring backward, he wishes that she could at least not walk directly behind him. Following along and understanding her rapid speech still takes the majority of his attention, but it seems to get easier when the deluge of information slows as he starts hearing less and less new words. The hints and tips seem rather quick on the uptake; the previously slow and lethargic guiding bits of meaning now flowing like water.
“Okay, I’ll wear this one, but your pay, oh, and the pay of your entire family is docked for a few hundred years. That will teach you incompetent servants from messing up again. I like this scenario so far, but my capacity for discomfort does have a limit.”
Douglas stops shuffling forwards as he hears an odd hissing sound. He sees her naked form rapidly enveloped in a tight dress skirt and jacket, her long blonde hair coiling upwards in a magical manner as shoes form under her feet. She drops the small cylinder she was just spraying herself with and starts looking around, her mouth shut for the first time.
Her demeanour hasn’t really changed; she still exudes the air of a person who is just so self-absorbed and disinterested in the world around her that it shows through each movement she makes. What has changed is that she no longer looks like a fallen and confused angel, walking around naked. Now she looks like a highly competent but eccentric businesswoman with a physically impossible wardrobe and hairdo.
The silence allows Douglas to think for the first time in a while. He started walking but doesn’t really know where to go next. He wants to check the mass of blue messages but has the feeling that the woman won’t leave him alone.
Then an idea pops into his mind. The monsters from before didn’t leave him alone when he made a lot of ruckus, either. What if he were to introduce the two most distracting elements in his undead life to each other? Then they could play, and he would have blessed silence and time to check his messages.
Happy with his new plan, he starts walking back to the shopping mall.
“So, like, what’s the plan here? Surely those irritating board members want something, but daddy prevents them from doing anything. Is this, like, another attempt to get rid of me? Again? They should have learnt, right? I can only order so many planets glassed without upping my bribes … Maybe a few more billions to GalaxSec will let me do that, though.”
Douglas’ head hurts with the meaning of some of these words. The previously innocent skeleton now has terms like ‘bribe’ and ‘glassed’ shoved into his mind. From context, he realizes that this seemingly perfect woman has ordered at least one planet and all its inhabitants burned to cinders because of an attempt on her life?
Douglas is just starting to doubt the wisdom of casting that spell again when her screeching voice reaches him.
“HISTAFF?! This is not funny! Even if this is fake, this is too much. GET ME OUT OF HERE! These survival scenarios are totally illegal, you know. Even I can’t avoid the fallback if this gets to the public. Oh stars, is that a Complete Recombined? What sick mind came up with this? SERVANT! GET ME OUT OF HE–”
Blessed silence… That’s all Douglas can think off when the screeching woman who was following him into the shopping mall is enveloped by the meat slime. Ignoring the absolutely terrified and struggling woman, Douglas sits on a normal looking bench. He then calls up the blue boxes again.
[ Spell Shaping already lvl 10; level gains deferred ]
[ Meditation lvl 10 ]
[ Meditation has reached lvl 10; Scholar 2/4 ]
[ Mana Control lvl 10 ]
[ Mana Control has reached lvl 10; Scholar 3/4 ]
[ Mana Sense lvl 10 ]
[ Mana Sense has reached lvl 10; Scholar 4/4 ]
[ Scholar class; all relevant skills are max lvl. Please evolve class or pick a second class ]
[ Renovate dead; success ]
[ System boon earned; added working brain to system, +999999999 xp ]
[ Lesser arcane skeleton lvl 8 12800/12800 xp reached ]
[ Lesser arcane skeleton lvl 9 25600/25600 xp reached ]
[ Lesser arcane skeleton lvl 10 51200/51200 xp reached ]
[ 999999999 xp deferred ]
[ Congratulations, you have reached Lesser arcane skeleton max level ]
[ Your skills allow you the following options ]
[ Minor arcane skeleton 0/20 ]
[ Lesser soul skeleton 0/10 ]
[ Lesser skeleton 0/10 ]
[ Lesser revenant 0/10 ]
[ Lesser zombie 0/10 ]
[ Lesser mummy 0/10 ]
[ Lesser death knight 0/10 ]
[ UNKNOWN sVital golem 0/NAN ]
[ UNKNOWN technological homunculus 0/10 ]
[ UNKNOWN UNKNOWN NAN/NAN ]
[ UNKNOWN DEITY of Death 0/999999999 ]
[ UNKNOWN DEITY of Life 0/999999999 ]
This is where Douglas mentally commands the blue screens to pause. He is not done with the messages he has put on hold just yet, but he decides to look this screen over once again, for multiple reasons.
Meaning once again flows into his skull, the words unknown to him explained in a rather swift manner. None of the options appeal to Douglas; the few that do have those ominous and odd ‘UNKNOWN’ words in front of them. Douglas then decides to act quickly.
Some of the information he had gotten pumped into his skull is about the tiers of races. If he has interpreted the data correctly, each race has a tier. This goes from level 1, a simple lesser skeleton like him, to level 10, a godlike being or archdragon. The minor arcane skeleton upgrade consists of a slightly larger bonus to his intelligence and wisdom, nothing special. The third tier, the normal arcane skeleton, is much the same.
Douglas has concluded that the fourth tier is where the big changes are. He is not totally sure how and why, but his gut feeling tells him that he should hurry towards a fourth-tier race pretty quickly.
Mentally pressing the minor arcane skeleton option, Douglas does not even bother with reading the other race descriptions. Then things go black as the skeleton loses consciousness, again.
Chapter Eight – How to Make Friends
[ Minor skeleton lvl 1 100/100 xp reached ]
[ Minor skeleton lvl 2 200/200 xp reached ]
[ Minor skeleton lvl 3 400/400 xp reached ]
[ Minor skeleton lvl 4 800/800 xp reached ]
[ Minor skeleton lvl 5 1600/1600 xp reached ]
[ Minor skeleton lvl 6 3200/3200 xp reached ]
[ Minor skeleton lvl 7 6400/6400 xp reached ]
[ Minor skeleton lvl 8 12800/12800 xp reached ]
[ Minor skeleton lvl 9 25600/25600 xp reached ]
[ Minor skeleton lvl 10 51200/51200 xp reached ]
[ Minor skeleton lvl 11 76800/76800 xp reached ]
[ Minor skeleton lvl 12 128000/128000 xp reached ]
[ Minor skeleton lvl
13 204800/204800 xp reached ]
[ Minor skeleton lvl 14 332800/332800 xp reached ]
[ Minor skeleton lvl 15 537600/537600 xp reached ]
[ Minor skeleton lvl 16 870400/870400 xp reached ]
[ Minor skeleton lvl 17 1408000/1408000 xp reached ]
[ Minor skeleton lvl 18 2278400/2278400 xp reached ]
[ Minor skeleton lvl 19 3686400/3686400 xp reached ]
[ Minor skeleton lvl 20 5964800/5964800 xp reached ]
[ 999999999 xp deferred ]
[ Congratulations, you have reached minor arcane skeleton max level ]
[ Your skills allow you the following options ]
[ Arcane skeleton 0/30 ]
[ Lesser soul skeleton 0/10 ]
[ Lesser skeleton 0/10 ]
[ Lesser revenant 0/10 ]
[ Lesser zombie 0/10 ]
[ Lesser mummy 0/10 ]
[ Lesser death knight 0/10 ]
[ Lesser arcane wraith 0/10 ]
[ Lesser soulbound construct 0/10 ]
[ UNKNOWN sVital golem 0/NAN ]
[ UNKNOWN technological homunculus 0/10 ]
[ UNKNOWN canned clothed mimic 0/10 ]
[ UNKNOWN nano swarm 0/10 ]
[ UNKNOWN UNKNOWN NAN/NAN ]
[ UNKNOWN DEITY of Death 0/999999999 ]
[ UNKNOWN DEITY of Life 0/999999999 ]
Douglas feels like he should blink his eyes or something. Trying it out, he is completely unsure whether or not the flames of his eyes are affected, but his vision remains unchanged. This wall of text is partially familiar to the skull, so he reads through it quickly. If there is one thing that the skeleton is quite sure about, it’s that he better take advantage of this situation.
“AAAAH, CURSE THE WARP GODS! It’s in my mouth. IT’S IN MY MOUTH! I’m going to rip your little he–”
The shrieking stops and blissful silence follows as the woman’s head is pulled back into the large, red slime. How could the skeleton ever have thought her an angel? Maybe in the physical form, yes, but the way she behaves is more like a demon than anything. Wasn’t there a saying that told that the devil would visit in the most beautiful shape one had ever seen? Lost in the clouds of forgotten pasts, Douglas mentally dozes off a bit.
Histaff Page 10
