Abe the Wizard

While Head Commander Bodley had a headache checking the price of his knight’s big sword, Abel took out the orc priest spell book from the seclusion circle. By this point, he had already remembered all the content, but he still preferred the feeling of holding a paper copy.

After spending (wasting) many soul potions on figuring out the original recipe, he decided to skip the part where the “resurrection of skeleton” spell. Instead, he decided to go straight to the “command skeletons” part.

According to what was written, the orc priests had to learn this ever since they began their apprenticeship because of its difficulty to master it. Whoever this book belonged to, he had annotations and notes written all over it. Abel was a smart man, but he figured that these writings would be very instructive for him.

To put things simply, “command skeleton” was a passive skill. For the spell to trigger under the right circumstances, one had to draw the relevant magic runes inside his own brain. It was the same as a wizard’s wizard crystal body. The right pattern had to be ingrained into one’s memory permanently.

Right now, the only passive skill inside Abel’s brain was “warm air.” It was a harmless spell, which was why he was confident enough to store it inside his brain. If he was putting something more dangerous in (which he was going to), he’d have to think a lot more.

“Command skeleton” was a deadly spell. Even if Abel was putting its rune inside his brain, he had to sustain it with death qi. He didn’t like the idea, though. Storing death qi directly inside his head was just too risky. If anything went bad, he would just die instantaneously.

Besides, it’s not like he could force his way to put the rune in. His golden combat qi was strongly resistant to death qi, so even if he did some sort of special surgery on himself, the death qi would just be cleared out automatically. He only mastered the “resurrection of skeletons” because he only had to activate the death qi within the dead bodies he found (and not absorb any of it into his own body).

As thoughts became faster and more complicated, a concrete plan was starting to take shape. He started to realize something. He didn’t have to draw the spell rune inside his own head. If he knew other means, he could draw it somewhere else.

There was a problem, however. For “command skeleton” to function as a passive skill, the spell rune had to be placed inside his own mind. It wouldn’t be a passive skill if it wasn’t. With that being the case, Abel’s focus shifted towards his druid spirit. Since the druid spirit was full of vitality, it would surely be able to suppress any death qi that it came into contact with.

Very well. There was no point in waiting. If Abel wanted to, he could direct his golden combat qi into his druid spirit at any time. That way, if the death qi did turn out to be harmful to the druid spirit, he could simply eliminate it as soon as he found out.

Slowly and steadily, he started drawing the “command skeleton” spell rune inside his own druid spirit. When he was halfway done, a death qi started emerging from the pattern he drew. It was going in two ways. One was towards his physical body, and one was towards his main soul. This was what made orc spells so disgustingly strong. Once someone used it, the death qi would instantly corrupt his whole existence.

Still, Abel had the golden combat qi with him. The death qi was doing nothing to him. In fact, his power of the Will was still drawing inside his druid spirit. He was doing it flawlessly. Ever since the world stone fragment gave him the ability to both capture dynamic motion AND datamize his own visual ability, he was basically a machine that could draw everything perfectly, regardless of the condition he was in.

And there. Precise to the extreme. Despite being the first time he’s drawn it, Abel finished his “command skeleton” spell rune. As soon as a grey light started flashing across it, the druid spirit responded with a vicious attack. In an instant, it wiped away the whole rune with its vitality energy.

As it turned out, the world stone fragment wasn’t perfect. It might’ve given Abel the ability to think at an extremely fast pace, but it lacked the function to help him improve his creativity. Like, the soul potion couldn’t help him to think as fast, but the mental stimulation it created could help him to test out a few of his own ideas.

After gaining the world stone fragment, Abel thought that he wasn’t going to use the soul potion anymore. Actually, he was thinking so fast; he was worried something would go wrong if he tried to push himself any further. That being said, he did make some more “full recovery potions” for himself, so he was much more daring to risk his life than before.

To be safe, he offered one bottle of the “full recovery potion” to his druid spirit. This way, if anything went wrong, he could always use it to guarantee his own safety. After doing so, he took out a soul potion and proceeded to drink it.

And there went that familiar feeling. Abel could tell very quickly. His mind was going to overload much more than ever. Soon, a figure started appearing inside his mind. It was his virtual self, who was going to everything that he wished to inside the simulation. As he imagined the things he could do to draw the spell runes, this figure started working on his own.

It was a failure at first. Then, as he tried to draw differently, he started to fail again.

He tried to make adjustments. He tried to simulate enhancing the death qi. By doing so, the “command skeleton” rune appeared to last longer inside his druid spirit. It seemed like he was on the right track.

Then, slowly and gradually, he started making the death qi a little bit stronger each time. Lastly, the “command skeleton” rune stayed without any trace of disappearing.

That’s when the simulation ended. When Abel woke up, the first thing he felt was how hungry he was. His heart was starting to beat very first. His body was trying to tell him that he was low on energy.

To quench his dying hunger, he took out a ration potion from his portal bracelet. Then, like a river that flowed into the desert, he eliminated his hunger.

Surprisingly enough, he still felt hungry after that. One bottle was supposed to substitute ten days’ worth of food, but it was still not enough to replenish the energy that he had lost. Actually, if his stats weren’t already above average, he might’ve just starved to death back then.

After taking a second ration potion, Abel started to feel that his body was recovering. He was finally back into a better state.

Now, then. He found the solution to keeping the spell rune inside his druid spirit. There was a problem, though. He needed a lot of death qi, but he wasn’t sure where to collect it.

On top of his mind, he thought of his skeleton gemstone. He took one out of his portal bracelet, and he tried to channel the death qi that was inside it. Things didn’t work so well. Since the death qi was already turned into stone, there was really no way for him to control it at his own will.

To give a bit of an insight, the skeleton gemstone was quite similar to a human wizard’s magic gemstone. They could only be used as energy sources for magic circles. Unlike wizards, though, orc priests used skeleton gemstones to power up death qi gathering circles.

After giving it a few tries, Abel gave up on the idea of extracting death qi from his skeleton gemstones. Not only was the idea impossible to implement, even if he did manage to extract the death qi, but its density of it would be nowhere near what he wanted. Besides, there was always the risk that he could trigger an unwanted explosion.

Anyways, it was about night time now. He didn’t feel hungry, but he still went out of his seclusion circle and went into his dining room.