Spending My Retirement In A Game

Stahl looked up at Jyuuk a bit confused, and then back down at the rose he was holding in his hand. "What’s a ’Witherless Rose’?" He asked, and Jyuuk swiftly explained with a smile on his face.

"Well, as the name suggests, is a Rose that doesn’t wither as long as you don’t meddle with its essence in any way. It’s an ingredient for a few potions, and most importantly, it’s something amazing for Overgrown Undead, because a flower with so much life that it doesn’t naturally die is something incredible when paired with pure death in the form of Undead." Jyuuk explained, before then grabbing a bag that was rattling the moment he picked it up.

"You can use it for anything you want, but I suggest waiting until you figure out if there’s any way it can benefit you directly." He smiled as he poured the contents of the bag out onto the ground, showing that it just contained numerous bones. "But for now, we will move on to anatomy studies." Jyuuk said with a grin on his face, and Stahl slowly nodded his head as he stared at the bones, which were quite obviously not just from one animal.

"This pile of bones contains the bones of five different monsters. You will not only sort them, but also assemble them into a rudimentary skeleton." Jyuuk explained, before Stahl once more just nodded.

"Alright... And you want me to figure out which of these is what animal? Did you mark them down somewhere as well?" Stahl asked as he began to flip through the pages, but was sorely disappointed when he found utterly nothing.

"Wait, you don’t want me to assemble or sort them without even knowing anything about them, right?" Stahl asked with a wry smile, and Jyuuk simply grinned at him and simply turned around. "Take your time, Stahl."

With a loud sigh, Stahl then looked at the pile of bones and the current time that he had set to be displayed in the corner of his eye. "Alright, it’s about three pm right now... I guess I really need to hurry now to learn all the skills before tonight..." Stahl said as he scratched the back of his neck, before laying the book to the side and first sorting through the bones to see if there were any direct differences in them so that he could sort them.

"Hmm... This one is definitely from the bird, because it’s hollow... I guess I can at least sort these out already then." Stahl muttered to himself before taking a look at all the bones and flipping through the section about birds to see if he could figure out what they came from, before noticing a small peculiarity in the bird’s skull. "The beak is cut down the middle vertically, huh? Let’s see, is there any like that in here?" He asked himself and then continued looking at the pictures and reading the different descriptions.

"...one unique trait of the Desert Crow is the beak that splits up into four individual parts instead of two, as is with every other species of the Crow family. Alright, so it’s a Desert Crow. I guess I’ll assemble them later after I actually sorted through them..." Stahl sighed loudly, before once more taking a look at the bones.

"This one’s bone marrow is deep black, surely that’s also pretty unique." Stahl told himself, slowly realizing that Jyuuk didn’t just give him an impossible task, but one that could be done by at least somewhat paying attention to what you were doing. And so, Stahl swiftly managed to sort through the different bones more quickly than he expected, and then got to the part of ’assembling’ them, for which he needed some help from Jyuuk again.

"You’ve managed to sort through them already, huh? Good job." The Monkey smiled, before squatting down in front of the different piles. "Okay, so what you need to do is simply pour your mana into all of the bones at once, and with the intention of creating a body move them into the shape you want. That’s about it. But you have to have that clear intention in your mind at all times, or else everything is going to collapse." Jyuuk explained, before swiftly continuing to an important part of necromancy.

"At rank 0, you can’t create bodies that act on their own yet. For now you will have to just try to make them move like a ’puppet’. Once you assembled the body, connect your mana in the different places that you need to, and then control everything overall. First do it with one, then a second, then a third and so on, but don’t overdo yourself. It drains a good bit of mana, but with my Plant’s support, you should be fine for a little while." Jyuuk explained, and Stahl swiftly nodded before getting to work again, flipping to the page describing the bone structure of the first of the monster that he would turn into a mock-undead, a Coyote-like creature.

He followed Jyuuk’s instructions, and soon managed to make the bones move like he wanted them to at least to an extent, and then after a bit of practice managed to assemble the skeletal body one bone after another.

Stahl gained the Necromancy in the middle of doing so, which already gave him a good boost to this practice even at Rank 0, and then made the skeleton slowly move around when he finished its body.

"Nice!" Stahl exclaimed with a broad grin as he watched the clunky skeleton-coyote walk around, before trying to ’save’ it for later while assembling the second one by just having it stand-by.

Concentrating on the second undead was quite tough, because he at the same time still needed to heavily concentrate on the skeleton-coyote, but after figuring out some tricks here and there while he was at it, he managed to finish this relatively small task. And so, he had the two skeletons run around at the same time, do different things together, and even stages a small ’fight’, although that just resulted in their ribs interlocking with each other and getting stuck.

Overall, Stahl managed to get up to three skeletons up and running like this at the same time, before his skill finally ranked up to one, allowing him to create actual undead.

And so, after Jyuuk told him it was alright to do so, Stahl did just that and now had five small undead animals accompanying him, although the ’Desert Crow’ skeleton was something rather sad to look at, as it wasn’t actually able to fly anymore.

"Don’t worry, at Rank 3 of Necromancy you’ll get the ability to have your undead level and rank up as well, and a Skeletal Bird will surely get an ability to fly like that." Jyuuk explained, and Stahl slowly nodded his head, although he felt a bit different about it.

"I probably can’t make ’Overgrown Undead’ like you, right?" Stahl asked just to make sure, and Jyuuk swiftly nodded. "Most likely not. You can try, but the only way I’m able to create them is by using my element to make it as if my undead and the plants actually became a single entity over by accelerating their growth and having them fuse. Unless you get a similar ability, or find a way to actually multitask in such a way that you can control the direct movements of the plants while in every place for multiple undead, then it will most likely not work out." He explained, so Stahl just nodded.

"That’s fine, just wanted to make sure. I’ll figure something else out later in my own way, but until then, can we move on to the next skill?" Stahl asked with a smile, and Jyuuk replied with a smile.

"Of course we can. Here, take this." Jyuuk said before grabbing a small marble out of his pocket and handed it over to Stahl, who looked at it a bit confused. "Next, we’re working on ’Soul Arts’." Jyuuk explained, and Stahl immediately nodded his head with excitement.

"Oh, that’s the thing where you overlay your body with different stuff, right?" He asked, before Jyuuk nodded and began to explain.

"Mhm, that’s it. What you’re holding right there is a ’Soul Stone’. The outside is the actual ’Stone’ part and inside of there is the soul. Your grandfather uses them for ’Soul Engineering’, and I use them for ’Soul Arts’. I quite coincidentally found that if you use necromancy on a recently-deceased monster, within ten seconds of its death, instead of having it turn into an undead, it produces a soul stone that keeps the features of monsters. There’s more ways to manipulate how many features you get, but that’s something we can’t do that well right now. What you need to do to acquire ’Soul Arts’ now is to simply pour your mana inside of the stone and try to ’Converse’ with the soul." Jyuuk explained, but Stahl just looked at him with a frown and a wry smile.

"Converse? You want me to talk to this?" He asked, but Jyuuk shook his head with a chuckle. "No, no, not talk, ’Converse’. You need to show it your will through your thoughts in the form of a direct image. That right there is the soul of a simple Deer, meaning a regular animal. Pour your mana inside and think of having large antlers on your head." Jyuuk suggested, and Stahl slowly nodded his head before doing just what he said.

Slowly, his mana seeped through the outer layer of the soul stone with quite a bit of resistance, but when it reached the inside, Stahl concentrated on that one image, himself with two antlers. And as he was doing so, he felt that the soul stone became lighter and lighter in his hand before finally disappearing into nothingness.

"Wait, are soul stones consumables? And did I just mess up?" Stahl asked confused, but Jyuuk shook his head.

"Don’t worry, the soul stones disappear while you’re using Soul Arts. And no, you didn’t mess up." Jyuuk chuckled before pointing at the top of his head, as if trying to tell Jyuuk to try and feel if there was something on top of his own. And truly, he felt his hand move through something! It wasn’t anything strong, more like the ’resistance’ you feel when blowing sharply onto your skin, but there was definitely something there.

"At some point, you should be able to give them an actual physical form so that it’s like your body actually changes. Just like this." Jyuuk explained before grabbing a soul stone, which swiftly disappeared between his fingers as the Monkey grew sharp claws. They were different from the mist-like form that Jyuuk showed before, and Stahl was quite surprised to see that they were basically part of Jyuuk’s body as if he created his character to have them.

"Over time, like with ’Tool Connection’ or ’Weapon Connection’, you will gain familiarity with souls, and the more familiar you are with a specific soul, the stronger the transformation you can undergo. This here is a transformation that I use to be able to climb more easily, because I can bore these claws even into rock. They aren’t all that useful for fighting, though, because the soul of the monster they came from seems to be passifistic." Jyuuk said with a smile, before his claws disappeared and were then replaced by the soul stone he was holding before.

"It constantly drains a bit of mana to keep the transformation up, by the way, so I would suggest figuring out how to get it back into soul-stone shape before you pass out."

"Right..." Stahl said quite nervously, although it might just be that his heart was beating so much out of excitement for learning so many cool skills today. Either way, he didn’t want to end up falling unconscious because of mana-exhaustion, so he swiftly tried to just do the same thing as before, just in reverse.

Stahl immediately poured his mana into his ’antlers’ and then imagined them back in the soul stone shape, and then he was soon holding the small bead in his hands again.

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