The Ruined Death Knight-Novel

"Tch, annoying bunch. First those kids and now those dumpasa*ses" Cursing out to the open, Danzel threw the last corpse to the pile that had stacked up on the basement level.

"At least they bought me some stuff that I could use for a while." 

Separating the guy's armors and weapons, Danzel's moods lighten up.

His end profit from all of those was 6 pieces of armor with 13 weapons. 

Adding the 46 500 XP that he got himself, it wasn´t that bad.

"They also served as a test subject so complaining anymore would be ungrateful on their efforts." Danzel said as he pierced one of the courses with Veren.

"[Cursed Blade]"

With the dead mana running through the blade, the man's body started to wither slowly until the black spots started to become dust with only the bones remaining to be seen.

"This is much more potent than the runes themselves..." 

Moving the remaining skeleton to the side, he started to do the same with the other corpses.

Compared to the [Rune of Eniv] that sucked the vitality of one body. The [Cursed Blade] worked differently.

Instead of sucking it out until there is nothing else to drain, the dead mana burned the vitality at his base.

That meant that the cursed that sucked burned all the remaining vitality of the spot will start to burn the remaining necrotic flesh until it became dust.

Even better, this effect would last for a few seconds on one's body after the blade separated with!

Not only would it do more damage to one's body, according to the description. The area where the necrotic flesh has appeared would need more resources to restore to his previous state.

Although the target would bloodless thought that, against a target who can regenerate it was a very useful ability to have.

He even cursed the fact that he didn´t have it in the battle against that Alpha wolf.

Nonetheless, his curse fell into deaf ears.

"Mmm...should I do this?" Danzel looked hesitant at the 11 skeletons in front of him.

Though those guys' bones looked a little slimmer than his, they didn´t have much difference based on their own appearance.

Only he was capable to move and them not.

"Agh! Whatever! That´s for the sake of avoiding trouble!" Raising his feet, Danzel directly stomped at the remaining bones none stopped until the bones turned into small fragments.

After finishing turning the remains into small pieces, Danzel stared for a few seconds at them, feeling rather uncomfortable.

`What if those bones were me...´ Danzel couldn´t help but think so to themself.

"Sigh...what I am thinking." Shaking his head, he put the remains into a cloth and tied it together before placing it inside the ring of storage.

"Now, with the floor cleared from the blood, there should be no evidence from me killing those guys If I replace those weapons with some of the rings inventory. All that remains are the benefits!

Opening his status window, he went into deep thought.

[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: 521 925] 

After standing staring at his own status for quite a while, he decided to put his level increases to the side and to focus more on his own skills for once.

Currently, he made three priorities based on the skills capabilities and usage.

The top priority was the skills that had the most lethality and survivability such as [Armor Mana Plating], [Gale Mana Blade] and [Dash].

Those three were basically the skills that he always could rely on.

The second priority went for the skills that although were good, lacked immediate lethality. There went the [Curse of Exhaustion], [Earth Wall], [Greater Sense Danger] and the recently bought skill [Cursed Blade].

The third and less important priorities were mostly the passive skills or the ones that he rarely had used like [Silent Steps], [Leap] [Penetrate] and [Intermendiate Weapon Mastery].

Although the [Intermendiate Weapon Mastery] most one of his best current skills, by observing the status windows of the mercenaries he realized that most of them weren´t that experienced in their weapons.

Even the few middle-stage 2nd-tier mercenaries were rather poor in that area, thus making this mastery of now be sufficient to go against such people.

"Putting 100k XP to the side for some new runes, the rest should go to the skills."

With some hesitation, he pressed the upgrade button on the skills he thought needed the most.

[Earth Wall level has increased from Lv.1 to Lv. 10]

[Dash level has increased from Lv.1 to Lv.10]

[Vanguards Defense level has increased from Lv.1 to Lv. 5]

[The skill Earth Wall level has reached this maximum level]

[Earth Wall Lv.10 turns into Stone Wall Lv.1]

[The skill Dash level has reached this maximum level]

[Skill Dash reached the modification stage!]

[Choose 2 of the given option for the skill to focus on!]

[Combat]

[Overall improvement]

[Travel]

[Dead Mana Affinity]

[Soul Affinity]

[Burst]

[Mana Burden Reduction]

"Huh?" Suprised, Danzel stared at the new window in front of him with wonder.

He never had seen a window with such information.

It looked similar when he had to choose talents, but also not.

"Alright Danzel, one step at the time..." Trying to keep his mind from getting distracted, he pressed at the words `modification stage´.

Though he knew what the single words meant, what they meant to put together in the status he didn´t know.

[Modification Stage]: Once a skill has been improved for the third time, it enters the stage of modification which allows putting specific aspects to the followed skin to follow on.

"It´s as the second message says...In a way, those options are nothing more than talents of short that will change the whole skill?" Danzel said unsurely.

Though he got the idea behind it, he didn´t know how much that option would affect the skill by itself.

"I can somewhat guess the three options of [Mana Burden Reduction], [Overall improvement] and [Travel]. But for the other ones I have no clue."

[Combat] was vague, it could go from totally changing the skills from a movement skill into an attack, which if that were the case would be awful since this is my core cap closer between the enemies.

[Burst] He could imagine only being able to make one extremely fast step and be done with it. It sounded better than the [Combat] one if actually, that was the case.

But what got this interest the most were the two affinities of soul and dead mana.

He quickly realized where do two options come from.

[Dead Mana Affinity] would probably unlock the [Dead Mana Affinity] option, while the [Soul Affinity] must have come from [Superior Unique Concioness] that he got once he became a Draugr.

"My best guess would be that If I pick one of them, the mana that I would use, but what kind of ability will they become after I choose one of them? If not both" Danzel thought.

Although those questions awaken his curiosity, he wasn´t willing to risk such a core ability to go to waste.

He knew what dead mana could do, or at least a bit of it for him to know that it wasn´t suited for things other than inflicting damage or raising the dead. So he couldn´t imagine how these two would combine together.

Also, since he has never seen a soul-like ability before, it was hard for him to judge how good or bad in the end it would become.

"Ugh, forget it. I got enough skills to test does option around, I better play it safe with this one."

Picking the in his opinion the safest option, he has chosen [Overall improvement] and [Mana Burden Reduction].

[The modification for the Dash skill has been choosen]

[Dash Lv.10 becomes Swift Movements Lv.1]

[Swift Movements]: Though find how to move your mana in your body the most efficient way possible to achieve higher speed, you are capable to move for a long time period much faster than you were before.]