The Ruined Death Knight

Seeing how serious her grandfather was, Shiro couldn´t bring herself to go against his plea.

"Alright, Shiro will do as grandpa says." She said while lowering her gaze to the ground.

She knew that her grandpa was asking her to forget about necromancy for her own good based on how serious he was, but that was it.

She did understand what necromancy was capable of as she still remembered the day when she and her grandpa met Danzel.

The memory of the dark knight commanding corpses was still vivid in her mind. Though most of the time she didn´t treat Danzel seriously, she still remembered the bloodlust that he and his undead were letting out.

To her necromancy was indeed scary, but the people she knew that wielded such much weren´t like her grandpa described.

According to her grandfather, Velkir was their savior which saved both her and her grandfather at the bricks of death. He was even willing to help her with her condition while also teaching her magic.

As for Danzel, he took care of the thieves that they planned to take care of.

Nonetheless, she still remembered the delicious fish that he gave her.

To her, Velkir and Danzel were scary but weren´t necessarily bad people as her grandfather described as.

So she was confused by her´s grandfathers words as they contradict what she believed.

Of course, if either Danzel or Velkir would hear her thoughts, then they wouldn´t be able to keep their laughs to themselves.

Shiro without a doubt had an excellent mind and talent for magic, but that doesn´t change the fact that in the end, she was nothing more than a naive child.

It was a limit that was set for every living being that without enough time passing, was impossible to cross.

In fact, she could be considered on the more mature side compared to the children of her village of the same age as hers.

Being forced to leave their homeland, while escaping with her grandfather to the outside world and seeing many people dying by her´s grandfathers sword, she would naturally grow more mature.

But there was a limit.

Agares in turn who heard Shiro´s answer sighed out loud in relief, but from the inside, he was slightly worried for Shiro going on the wrong path.

He could sort of guess what Shiro was thinking about and for that reason alone it worried him from the inside.

Picking her in his arms and hugging her, he said.

"You will understand in the future, Shiro. Till then, please focus on other schools of magic. I bet Velkir would be willing to teach you another school that you haven´t learned, right? Master Velkir." Agares said with the voice of the friendly grandpa next door.

At the same time, his eyes glared at Velkir with a murderous look while the iris of his eyes became sharper and vertical.

Seeing that, Velkir frowned while glaring directly at Agares eyes.

"Tch~she can come the day after tomorrow to have a lesson. Now all of you scram!"

Kicking the three out of his room, Danzel parted way with Agares and Shiro and went towards his room.

***

On the next day...

Tracing his finger on the runes in one of his alchemic swords, Danzel put the sword to the ground while looking at it.

"Hmm, the skill [Rune Removal] does seem to work just fine. I also don´t see any further damage to the sword. Hmm~let's call it a success for now." Danzel mumbled as he put the sword into his storage ring and brought out a list.

"Let's see what I wrote here...I could try combining the poison sticking rune together with the liquid control part of [Rune of Thirst] to achieve that effect. But then again, I still have the [Rune of Harvest] to bring on the [Good] rating to see how much XP I gain. I could also try and learn the spell that Velkir~"

Looking through his to-do list, Danzel wasn´t too sure what to start a project of his to start. He had countless combinations that he had written and many other tasks that he wanted to progress. One of them being of course to achieve the [Good] rating on the [Rune of Harvest].

While he was searching for what to do, on the side of his sight, he saw the time in the [Sun Timer] and sighted to himself.

"Sigh~it seems like I will have to push all those things for later."

Taking his magic pen and writing something on his list, Danzel couldn´t help but look at his worn-out magic pen.

"Though the enchantment of it still works, I guess after 3 years, it is close to breaking." Danzel said as he shook his head.

Putting the few magic items that he had back in his storage ring, he left his room and went outside the stone base.

What he saw outside was Skull Claw laying down to its belly (she no longer has flesh) and staring aimlessly through the distance.

People who would see her will get the impression of the undead being always on high alert and looking at the surroundings. But all that Danzel saw was Skull Claw looking lazily around as if trying to find something to lift her from her boredom.

"Skull Claw! I thought I told you to keep guard!" Danzel yelled seemingly angry, but in truth, he wasn´t.

Skull Claw in turn turned a deaf ear (she doesn´t have ears) to his harsh words and instead rose up and walked towards Danzel with exciting steps to see her liege again.

"Alright, calm down, I didn´t come here to play with you today." Danzel said while rubbing the skull of Skull Claw.

If Danzel had to describe the relationship with Skull Claw, then it would be quite complicated.

In essence, he saw his own undead creation as nothing more than soldiers who will uphold and follow his every command. But Skull Claw wasn´t only the undead who stayed by far the longest to his side, but Skull Claw gained a limited free well of some sort.

Danzel could feel the connection there, with him being the master and Skull Claw being his obedient soldier, but something from her was different from all his other undead.

For Danzel personally, Skull Claw was nothing more than a level below of pet position. Something interesting but not something that he was obsessed with.

Of course, Skull Claw was completely oblivious of her´s liege harsh thoughts and was also unsure of the reason for hers liege visit if it wasn´t for playing.

"Gwuggh?" She turned her head as if asking what he meant.

"Mhm, for now, follow me in the house and we will see if we can make you stronger." Danzel said before turning around and walking towards the house.

Skull Claw who picked up the lines of her liege, she immediately became excited and walked behind Danzel.

She had some difficulties entering the door, but after a few tries of squshing herself in, she managed for the first time when she arrived in the forest to enter the house!

Danzel who watched Skull Claw opening and closing her mouth decided to ignore such behavior before walking down the stairs towards Velkir´s room.

It didn´t even take them a minute for them to arrive at Velkir´s room.

"Master Velkir, I came together with Skull Claw as you even told me." Danzel said before entering Velkir´s room.

The first thing that Danzel noticed was that the table of yesterday had now disappeared and in its place was a huge magic array on the ground.

"Come on in together with you undead, Danzel." Velkir said while he was staring at one book with a tree cover.

Following his instruction, Danzel brought Skull Claw in and walked closed to the magic array on the ground.

*Boug~

Closing his book, Velkir walked towards Danzel.

"It seems that you even noticed the array. Though the correct term would be more of a ritual rather than an array." Velkir said while bringing out his staff and pointing it towards the three holes of the ritual.

"The ritual that we will be using today has the aim to turn an undead into a higher tier undead without the current owner losing its subordinate towards the one who raised the undead."

"In the middle is the place where you undead has to stay, while we two have to stay on the much smaller circles." Velkir said while pointing at the respective circles.

"Usually, the ritual only requires one undead and the master to activate the ritual. But in your case, you aren´t skilled enough to pull the ritual off. At least not yet." Velkir said while standing in his circle.

Hearing Velkir's explanation Danzel looked at his own circle confused.

"If that´s the case, then what´s the point of me being in the circle? Are you simply going to transfer the subordinate after doing all the work?"

"No, for the ritual to work, I will have to use your own mana to improve your´s undead. As using my mana would overwrite who the master is." Velkir said

"Also a warning before we begin, in the case where your mana is inefficient or not enough for your undead to become of a higher tier, then the ritual will be deemed incomplete and the subject that wasn´t able to evolve will perish. If you are fine with such risk, then we can start."

Hearing this, Danzel silently stared at the ritual beneath him.

Bending his knees and touching the ritual with his hand, Danzel brought out the description of the ritual.

"..."

Seeing that there was nothing wrong with the ritual and it wouldn´t bring him harm Danzel was relieved. But what he found in the description made him look at Velkir suspiciously.

The ritual was called [Modified 24: Death Worth Servant Ritual] and the ritual did exactly as Velkir just said, except for letting this part.

[Modified 24: Death Worth Servant Ritual]: ....If the subject isn´t capable of achieving an improvement, its mortal body perishes. The ones who were leading the ritual will be able to see the last moments of how the body of the second party died. The ritual works only if every party is an undead.

Danzel didn´t know why Velkir hid the second part of the ritual and honestly, he wasn´t too interested in knowing as he didn´t remember a single bit of the living version of this body.

Since he knew that he was a natural-born undead, he knew the living version disappeared and now he, Rue Danzel was inhibiting this body as someone else.

With those thoughts in mind, Danzel nodded and looked toward Velkir.

"In the case, it doesn't work, that just means that Skull Claw wouldn't have been able to keep up with me. With my current strength, I have little use for 2nd-tier undead." Danzel said in his cold voice.

Hearing that, Velkir activated the ritual.l

Lighten up in gray light.

Suddenly Danzel's mana was drained out of his body and turned into a dark green mist that circled around Skull Claw and entered its body.

Feeling the sudden change and heat going through its existence.

Skull Claw's eyes lighten up in dark green light and howled.

"Gwaaaagh!!!"