The Ruined Death Knight

Turning his head away from the door, he glanced at the paper that had the details of the church.

"Should be somewhere around here..." Danzel mumbled to himself as he walked to the other side of the statue.

He didn´t walk without reason to the statue in the first place.

"Found it..." He said with a grin on his face.

He instead searched for the hidden trap door leading through the basement level.

Though the part hidden couldn´t be said as the trap door had some holes in it, thus making it obvious at first glance.

Opening the trap door, he saw some downstairs filled with cobweb and generally dirty from the lack of care.

Walking down the stairs, he soon arrived at a big hall that put in better words, was destroyed.

The walls had large holes carved in as if some spikes were thrown while left to right the ground were small craters of explosions. It looked as if a battle had once taken place.

"Hmm, at least the place looks much better than the cave." Danzel nodded to himself.

Compared to the filth that he once touched in the hobgoblin cave, this place was quite good.

Though the house that Gerak bought for him, looked a hundred times better than this church overall, here he had the benefits of having a large amount of space.

Since this hideout didn´t have that much space to begin with, other than carving runes it wasn´t that suitable place to train with his sword.

But what impressed him the most was the mana that flowed through the air.

"Dead mana..." Danzel mumbled to himself as he felt the warm yet comfortable feeling around this body.

Though he had no lungs to speak of and neither he could breathe. If he was asked he would describe this feeling as breathing fresh air.

The place here made him relax and want to stand there to appreciate that special feeling for hours if not days long.

Realeasing this own dead mana out of his body, Danzel quickly noticed something.

"The dead man isn´t even that thigh...is around 50 to 70 worth of MP constantly to the air" Danzel observed with wonder.

That was the average mana that he would use to cast [Curse of Exhaustion].

If the mana were to gather around in one place it will probably be much more, but with its spread through all the hall, it wasn´t that much for my body to be surrounded with.

The only place that looked similar to this place was inside the lake with all the [Non-Undead] stuck down there. But maybe because of being underwater or the dead mana just being not enough, he couldn´t feel the same thing back then.

That alone improved this opinion of this place by a whole lot.

"I wonder how it will feel if there was more dead mana in the area."

Just that faint amount of dead mana was capable to make him feel so comfortable.

What if it was double if not three times the amount of dead mana in the area?

"Sadly, other than the [Undeath Corruption] talent, I have no clue how to permanently place dead mana..." Danzel shook his head slightly dejected.

The time that took [Undeath Corruption] to work was way too longer, be it this granting attribute points or the corruption part itself.

After finishing observing the whole hall, nothing interesting was found except a grumbled wall that had some words in.

Reading through the remaining carved text Danzel just got confused.

"Following the goddess command, life should never be vanquished or fade! The ones who offer themselves for the sacred deed shall be granted the true wish of the graceful goddess!..." Danzel read the text out loud until there was nothing more to read.

"Jeyckop did mention it was a cult being lead by a forbidden magic caster." Putting his finger to his chin, Danzel went into deep thought.

The more he was thinking about the text of the magic caster and the dead mana around him, he couldn´t help but speculate.

`Life should never be vanquished or fade.´ To achieve that wish, it´s the same as saying to become an immortal. Nonetheless, one of the forbidden magic that I am certain of is the school of necromancy.´ He thought as he looked at the dead mana.

`And Necromancy as far as I know heavily relies on the use of dead mana which is the source that keeps the immortal beings such as I, the undead moving.´

Although he had no proof for his speculation, given the available information in hand it was what seemed the most plausible.

A necromancer offering immortality for the service of people, all that under the disguise of a church.

He wasn´t sure what kind of immortality that guy who created this whole place was giving them and he also didn´t care enough to think much about it.

Who knows?

Maybe that guy was legit and granted them immortality or made them one of the undead with the use of necromancy.

He was sure that both those options sounded appealing to others.

Since becoming a undead was in his opinion much better.

Having lived together with the group of mercenaries he also learned how troublesome one mortal body is.

Exhaustion?

What´s that?

Eating?

Too troublesome.

Sleep?

Hmpf, only losers do that!

An undead´s body was much greater than one's of a mortal in this opinion.

Sure, we might hate living things by instinct and lack some unneeded senses, but other than those points there were no consequences of being one.

Though I know some might not have the same opinion as I, I didn´t care much of them being wrong.

Shaking his head from all those useless though, Danzel focused on what was needed to be done.

Thinking more about the backstory of the church didn´t have much of a point other than satisfying his curiosity.

He would rather put this time on more important things than some pointless speculations.

"Status"

[Status]

Name: Rue Danzel

Level: 20

Race: Draugr

Class: [Black Guard Lv. 1]

Sub-Class: [Runesmith of Undeath Lv.10]

Health: 6325/6325

Mana: 1122/1122

Attribute points: 0

Attributes: Strength:145 Agility: 132 Intelligence: 102 Endurance: 114

Talents: [Superior Undead] [Sin of Wrath] [Reinforced Soul] [Superior Unique Concioness] [Rune Vision] [Dead Rune Knowledge] [Undead Carver] [Dead Mana Affinity] [Dead Mana Resilience]

Skills: [Intermendiate Weapon Mastery Lv.1] [Earth Wall Lv.1] [Leap Lv.1] [Silent Steps Lv.1][Undeath Corruption Lv.1] [Dash Lv. 1] [Shield Charge Lv.1] [Gale Mana Blade Lv.3] [Greater Sense Danger Lv.1] [Curse of Exhaustion Lv.1] [Penetrate Lv.1] [Mana Arms Lv.1] [Vanguards Defense Lv.1] [Armor Mana Plating Lv.1]

[Remark: A Undead Black Guard nearing the 3rd-tier, with knowledge of runes and skills, far surpassing that of a Draugr, one would never expect that his powerful Draugr warrior would spend months sitting at home and stealing from others.]

[XP: 555 425]

"Over 500k XP, those two weeks of training really made it worth it." Danzel nodded in satisfaction.

Other than the one day where he spent 7 hours in training, the remaining 13 days he spend a total of 8 hours constantly training through the night until early morning.

The only reason why he didn´t spend this XP already was for the sole reason of being unsure of what he should spend it all.

There was so much that he needed to spend his XP on, that it was slowly starting to putting pressure on him.

The [Rune of Eniv] although rather situational, proofed to be quite handy. Which made the [Uncommon] runes as attractive as their price.

Also, the collection of his Lv.1 skills was slowly starting to annoy them. Like, every time he would open his status to pass some time, they will be like some quiet yet deep-voiced whispers telling him to press the upgrade button.

And at last, they were this own levels that needed to be increased.

Though he wanted to avoid upgrading his new class [Black Guard] anymore, the last time he upgraded his level was a few months ago.

He still couldn´t forget that amazing feeling that came with evolving into a new race.

Lastly, he had the choice to upgrade his subclass and hopefully unlock the next tier of runes which were pound to be as usefull and...expensive.

And among all those things he had to invest XP on, he decide to go for...

None of them!

Though those all things might improve the quality and overall strength. Ultimately they wouldn´t improve his fighting style at all.

And with him acquiring the class [Black Guard], new skills were unlocked for me to purchase!

"Since I am going to buy them anyway in the future, I might as well get them now and learn how to use them that later" Danzel said as he clicked on the [Skills] Button.

[Skills]:

[Cursed Blade]: 20 000 XP

[Deaths Influnce]: 30 000 XP

[Coating Miasma]: 30 000 XP

Staring at the huge XP cost of each of those skills, Danzel felt his mind getting suddenly heavy as if someone hit him hard on his head.

The XP required to learn those were equal to 16 hours of training which for learning a single skill wasn´t much of a big deal.

But if it was worth the mental pain that he will receive for having three other Lv.1 skills waiting to be upgraded.

Danzel wasn´t sure.

But one thing he knew.

Once he got those three skills, he will be much more difficult and deadly to be dealt with.