"Please recommend, please collect, please comment, your support is my motivation!"
...
Upon further reflection, Zhao Lun realized that ever since acquiring his minions, he had hardly engaged in any direct combat himself. Whenever danger arose or there was a fight, he would send his minions in, hiding behind them and waiting for the results.
Was this really the right approach? Zhao Lun couldn't help but ponder.
Although his skeleton minions were an extension of his strength, they were still just that—an extension. After all, he was a skeleton mage, and fighting with magic was what he had always dreamed of. Besides, the Servant spell had its drawbacks. Not only would Zhao Lun take damage whenever one of his skeleton minions died, but the spell only worked on undead below level 5. What would happen when he faced stronger opponents? Eventually, when his skeleton minions lost their effectiveness, he would have to rely on himself anyway.
With this in mind, rather than waiting for chaos to erupt later, Zhao Lun decided to start adjusting himself to the mage's way of fighting right now.
Without hesitation, Zhao Lun gave the order to have the skeleton archers resume digging, while he took over their post.
As he glanced at the excavation progress, Zhao Lun saw that it was already about two-thirds complete. He was certain that in just a few hours, he would finally meet the mysterious presence. The thought of it made him a bit excited.
The wait always felt particularly long, but Zhao Lun was accustomed to patience. He busied himself by continuing his incantations, which kept him from getting too bored. Soon, his first practice target appeared.
"Finally, here it comes... A Great Axe Skeleton?"
Watching the skeleton with a giant axe approach from a distance, Zhao Lun felt a surge of excitement. He prepared the incantation for Stun, eagerly waiting for the Great Axe Skeleton to walk into his trap.
This time, Zhao Lun didn't plan to use Earth Spikes—its power was simply too overwhelming. If he killed the skeleton with a single strike, he wouldn't be able to practice as he intended.
On the other side, the Great Axe Skeleton grew excited when it saw Zhao Lun, swinging its large axe and charging forward.
"Stun!"
The moment the Great Axe Skeleton entered Zhao Lun's 20-meter range, the Stun spell struck, making the poor skeleton's head dip and its bones stagger.
Two seconds later, the skeleton's head cleared just enough for a black energy ball to hit its pelvis. With a sharp crack, the powerful blow shattered its lower half.
Now that the Great Axe Skeleton's mobility was destroyed, did it still have any chance against Zhao Lun? It managed to crawl forward ten meters, but Zhao Lun finished it off with a Magic Missile, crushing it completely.
Zhao Lun won his first battle, feeling quite good. After gauging that he had consumed a bit over 40% of his magic power, he realized that his current level 2 strength was still too weak. The desire to break through to level 3 grew even stronger.
Over the next few hours, Zhao Lun fought numerous skeletons, vastly improving his combat experience. Now, any melee skeleton, as long as it wasn't a level 4, was no match for him—whether he slowly wore it down with level 0 spells or killed it outright with Earth Spikes.
Skeleton archers, however, posed more of a challenge. Their range far exceeded his, and they could shoot arrows from a distance. Zhao Lun had to expend quite a bit of effort to take down two of them—one barely survived, while the other was captured.
The easiest enemies were skeleton mages. Zhao Lun didn't even bother using magic against them. He simply rushed up, punched and kicked them, and they were quickly disposed of, unable to even cast a single spell.
After several hours of fighting, Zhao Lun also identified the kinds of magic he lacked: defensive and supportive spells.
For defensive magic, if Zhao Lun could master it, he wouldn't have to struggle so much against skeleton archers. Even if one managed to close in, he wouldn't be completely helpless.
As for supportive magic, Zhao Lun was hoping for something like Slow or Swamp, spells that weakened the mobility of his targets. These would make dealing with melee skeletons far more manageable, especially since he had to spend time preparing his spells.
"Hey, finally dug it up! What took so long?" Zhao Lun thought, just as a simple message came through from the Greatsword Skeleton.
Zhao Lun immediately stopped what he was doing and rushed over to the Greatsword Skeleton's position.
"You all stay here, and kill any undead that approach!"
After giving his skeleton minions the order, Zhao Lun rushed into the tunnel the Greatsword Skeleton had dug, heading toward the mysterious location.
Although the excavation had taken some time, the tunnel wasn't very deep, only about ten meters. Before long, Zhao Lun reached his destination.
"My god, what is this?" Zhao Lun saw a faint, pale flame, no thicker than a little finger and only two to three centimeters long. It hovered quietly in place, flickering gently without any visible fuel or heat. This made Zhao Lun believe it was not a regular flame, but some kind of unknown entity that merely resembled fire.
Crouching near it, Zhao Lun felt the calling from this entity grow even stronger. The dim white glow cast a cool, comfortable sensation on his bones, prompting him to reach out and touch it.
As soon as Zhao Lun's skeletal hand made contact with the unknown entity, torrents of information flooded into his soul fire in a mysterious manner.
"Tribe…"
"Altar…"
"Territorial Will…"
The flow of information was so fast that Zhao Lun could only catch a few key words. Before he could fully process it, he was overwhelmed by a flood of data.
After about a minute, the torrent of information slowed, and Zhao Lun was finally able to regain his bearings. When he looked back at the mysterious entity, it had vanished without a trace.
"What happened? Is that it?" Zhao Lun scratched his head. Although he had grown accustomed to strange events, the desire to complain still lingered.
Seeing that the mysterious entity had disappeared, Zhao Lun reluctantly turned his attention back to his soul fire, intending to carefully examine what had been left behind.
"What's going on? Are you messing with me? Where did all that information go?"
When he looked more closely, Zhao Lun was left stunned. The information that had flooded in earlier had completely disappeared. How could that be? Had all his effort over the past two days been wasted?
"Wait, what's this? One, two, three, four, five, six, seven… Seven pages? I have one, and then five skeleton minions, so that's six pages. What's the seventh one?" In his frustration, Zhao Lun noticed an extra page, which caused him to calm down slightly. He opened the extra page in his soul fire...