Short.
The new skeletons stood at about three-quarters of their human counterpart’s height. Their lanky arms almost touched the floor as they stood, contrasting their lumbering clubs and wooden shields.
More bodies. He sought their details from the screen.
<table style="border-style: solid" border="1" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="0">
<tbody>
<tr>
<td style="vertical-align: top" colspan="3">
Construct - Skeleton wanderer(club) (Shielded) | Combatant | Tier - 1
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td style="vertical-align: top" width="33.3333%">
Construct Level: -
</td>
<td style="vertical-align: top" width="33.3333%">
Integrity: 100%
</td>
<td style="vertical-align: top" width="33.3333%">
Type: Undead
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td style="vertical-align: top" colspan="3">
Attributes
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td style="vertical-align: top">
Strength: 2
</td>
<td style="vertical-align: top">
Dexterity: 3
</td>
<td style="vertical-align: top">
Resilience: 4
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td style="vertical-align: top">
Resistance: 4
</td>
<td style="vertical-align: top">
Magic: -
</td>
<td style="vertical-align: top"> </td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td style="vertical-align: top" colspan="3">
Traits / Skills
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td style="vertical-align: top">
Skeletal Body
</td>
<td style="vertical-align: top">
Undead Veil
</td>
<td style="vertical-align: top"> </td>
</tr>
</tbody>
</table>
Goblins. The word elicited images of short, violent creatures. Its status page denoted its lower overall power compared to the human versions.
These will have to do. Proceed. Frail found the paths leading further into the cave.
Under the shade of the endless caverns, a small army of bones lumbered toward their goal.
###
It took a long time before he found it.
Beyond the veil of the darkness and the cavern walls, a pedestal-like object bathed under the sharp gloom of the glowing crystals. Laying before it, a creature unlike any other he had encountered lay in deep slumber. Its taupe-shaded fur quivered as it snored. Attached to its torso, a pair of fur-clad arms and dexterous legs lay limp. Harsh shadows hid its hideous face, and its size warranted extreme caution.
Its snore bellowed.
[Cave Werewolf - Tier 1 - Elite Creature]
Frail stopped. Elite.
He didn’t need to know what tier this creature was to recognize the gulf between their strengths. As alluring as the pedestal appeared—lying so closely he could reach for it—Frail must exercise patience and caution.
His army stood at the ready, their skeletal faces unflinching. Bones don’t fear, Frail knew—he had no gut to feel the pressure from—but his mind foreboded the flimsy odds of his success. Something about this beast felt amiss. Felt… perilous.
Risk. He lowered his gaze to the slumbering beast.
Reward. he looked up to the shimmering pedestal.
Risk… too big.
The skeletons shifted back. He wouldn’t fight unless he had certainty of his success.
###
Slash marks dotted the walls along their path. Frail patrolled the rest of the caverns, dispatched all the grubs he found, and then raised a few more constructs—two human skeletons and a pair of goblins. A few held a shield and a blade, and the other, a long spear.
[100 essences gained!] x 6
[200 essences gained!] x 2
[100 essences gained!] x 2
Once the chorus of pain-filled shrills ended, silence resumed its hold on the cave.
[You have reached your construct limit! You cannot raise more constructs.]
The glimmer of the crystals twinkled. He had done all he could. All the tunnels had been marked. All the nooks had been perused.
His new numbers skewed the odds of victory to his favor. Frail recalled the circular layout of the room and formulated a quick plan with his numbers in mind.
The goblins would distract. The shields would deflect. The spears and bows would lay it to rest.
The cackle of the skeletons agreed.
Dark after dark, the party of ten made their way into the chamber housing the pedestal. The clatter of their hard bones prevented any subtle maneuvers, so he had to start this fight with an arrow to its head.
His skeletons enclosed on the beast.
Arrow. Frail honed onto the the beast’s head. The arrow sang until its head pierced the right side of the slumbering beast’s skull.
In a flash, it recoiled and roared. A deep, hollow cry trembled the bones his entity core sat on. It stood up, unveiling its accurate height—twice the height of an average adult male, limbs tall and agile, the fur on its head splattered with warm, dark blood. Such sight should have lit the fuse of terror in its enemies’ hearts, but…
Skeletons did not fear.
It spared no warning before it blurred from its instantaneous speed. It crashed into the goblins in the front, its claws burned the shade of scarlet, then slashed their raised shields with vigorous swings.
Splinters of wood strewed the very soil they stood upon. In a flash, two goblins lost their main source of defense. Its consecutive attacks took three constructs down. Arrows flung. The spears and the shields advanced. The goblins performed the plan he brainstormed prior.Unauthorized duplication: this narrative has been taken without consent. Report sightings.
They did not hesitate. Did not question. They simply… did.
Distract. The short skeletons discarded their weapons and latched onto its tall limbs. The human wanderers sprinted.
Five bodies restrained its limbs’ range of motion. The beast roared and twisted in attempts to fling the pesky skeletons away, to little avail. Shields piled onto its midriff and pushed. It tumbled from the sudden force, losing grip on the ground.
Deflect. Frail braced his spear and charged alongside the spears.
The beast retaliated. Two lumbering swipes carved their marks on the metallic shields. They lost the luster and brutality they once held. The glow of scarlet lingered as it flailed about, freeing its legs.
The rest… we finish.
Spears rained on its entire body. Its lower abdomen… carved. Its chest… skewered. Its head… ravaged by Frail’s spear. Another roar thundered. The goblins resumed their hold on the quivering beast. The shields jostled and piled on its figure.
Frail gripped his spear tight as his foe struggled against him. More.
Its spear perforated its body. The beast writhed. It wallowed. It fell silent.
A cackle of bones trailed its final breath. They were victorious.
###
[600 essences gained.]
Frail dismissed the message. He kept his hand at arm’s reach. Raise construct…
[No construct schema found that matches the selected corpse. Raise construct failed.]
Per his expectations, raising its construct failed—a confirmation that it only worked on humanoid beings.
He drew his arms away—to the pedestal.
Three goblins perished. The wounded ones retrieved their weapons and stood sentry before the entrance to this room. The humans gathered around the dead beast.
The crystals hummed as Frail reached his goal.
[You found the domain pedestal.]
[Place your entity core?]
Yes… He hissed without a voice.
The crystal in his ribcage shuddered. Blackness took over.
[You have taken over this domain.]
[Domain type mismatch. Current type: Nature. Compatible types: Death.]
[Terraform the domain to your compatible type? This will normally cost you essences. But the system will nullify that cost in the tutorial stage.]
Tutorial. Frail’s silent voice whispered to the darkness. Yes.
[Searching for appropriate tier-1 undead type domain matching your current location…]
[1 Domain found!]
[Forlorn mining shaft.]
[A forgotten place, built by those forgotten by existence. Nobody knows of its original purpose.]
[Terraforming begins…]
The earth shook. Frail couldn’t see what happened, but he heard enough to form a sufficient image of the going-on outside his peripherals.
### Damon ###
“Stop! Do you feel that?” Damon raised his hand, urging the party to halt.
The band of three stopped in their tracks.
“No? Agil? Do you hear anything?”
Agil shook his head.
I’m not being paranoid, am I? Damon winced and took a moment to breathe. It hadn’t been long since they stepped into this cursed land. Integration, the system said, Earth will be a better place, it promised. Nonsense. All they found after was peril and death.
Then it dropped him into the thickness of a dense jungle—the Tutorial. He knew nothing about the geography of this area outside of the boundless, endless walls and fences of nature; the trees looked… real enough, the vegetation, the bushes, the landscapes, the hues, and the colors… All signs pointed toward this being reality.
The suspension of disbelief shattered once monsters appeared.
Goblins, primarily.
Nasty little buggers; their pale-green skin masked their lithe figures within the dense jungle, and their numbers exacerbated their lethality. One goblin posed no threat, but… they were never alone.
They came out of nowhere, led by a chieftain whose name he couldn’t pronounce.
[Tutorial stage 1 — Claim the spoils of four dungeons to proceed.]
I want to go back… He longed to live the same old life again. I’ll take boredom over… this.
“Yo-” Sarah tapped his shoulder. “We must get moving. The goblins-”
“-are on our tails, I know.”
In a flash, their seven-man party was cut down to three after a surprise attack by one nasty goblin patrol numbered slightly north of twenty. Their skirmish began with a starry start; Sarah’s bow and the vanguard dealt with their initial charge well… until the green bubbles appeared, and the fireballs scorched their skins. Death ensued once hope dissipated, and they bounded for retreat.
They had barely gotten to know each other, so it came as no surprise their deaths didn’t rest heavily on his conscience.
But not these two: Agil and Sarah… They were his friends, good friends suffering the monotony of a normal office life.
Grahhh!!
“Shit. They found us?” Agil turned back, readying his bow. “Sarah!”
“Wait-“ Sarah clutched onto her staff, looking alert. “-I don’t think so. They are distracted… by something.“
Far off, hidden beneath the tangle of trees, their pursuers honed in on the source of the tremors beneath the surface. Their green bodies gleamed with sweat, their eyes wide open in delight.
Treasure.
###
When Frail’s vision returned, he saw… everything.
The once dingy, earthy, cavernous paths transformed into a series of long, narrow passages lit by orange lanterns hung from the earthen ceiling. Occasional cart tracks withered on the majority of the paths. Discarded, rusted mining pickaxes and helmets lay beside the walls supported by decayed steel beams.
The smell of rust and dust was everywhere.
Frail’s vision encompassed everything within his domain. Every passage, every small crevice, every nook and cranny, every small critter lay bare in his vision; he saw not just through the lens of the domain but also through the lens of his eyeless constructs.
His thoughts paused when he found the bright entrance to the world outside.
A warm glow of sunlight pierced the darkness of the mining shaft. Lines of thick trees crept into his home; carrying soothing, fresh air alongside the fingers of their shadows.
A passage to outside… and the entrance to his domain.
Protect. The word came to his mind. His skeletons shivered from his will.
[Domain terraformed.]
[You now control the domain: Forlorn Mining shaft.]
[No domain lord found!]
[Your first domain lord will always be free upon finding a new domain.]
[Domain menu enabled!]
[Entity upgrade menu enabled!]
[Tutorial: Domain lords serve as the final line of your defense. They must stay on the domain they are assigned to.]
[You obtained 5 Upgrade slots.]
A series of messages flashed. Entity menu… Domain lord… Entity upgrade: All new terms in his recently awakened mind. Only time would familiarize him with all these features.
One by one.
<table style="border-style: solid" border="1" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="0">
<tbody>
<tr>
<td style="vertical-align: top" colspan="3">
ENTITY STATUS - FRAIL | Class : Undead
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td style="vertical-align: top" width="33.3333%">
Core Integrity: 100%
</td>
<td style="vertical-align: top" width="33.3333%">
Essence: 1750
</td>
<td style="vertical-align: top" width="33.3333%">
Upgrade slots | 5/5
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td style="vertical-align: top" colspan="3">
Entity construct slots | 3/10
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td style="vertical-align: top" colspan="3"> </td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td style="vertical-align: top">
Masteries
</td>
<td style="vertical-align: top">
Traits
</td>
<td style="vertical-align: top">
Skills
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td style="vertical-align: top">
Bone construction - 1
</td>
<td style="vertical-align: top"> </td>
<td style="vertical-align: top">
Raise construct - Undead
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td style="vertical-align: top"> </td>
<td style="vertical-align: top"> </td>
<td style="vertical-align: top">
Essence Drain
</td>
</tr>
</tbody>
</table>