Undead Mage: I Have a Skeleton Clone-Chapter 567 - 397: When I Achieve Bronze, I Shall Sit Upon the Throne! (Part 2)

If the skills he acquired from the Human Alliance Skill Library were the materials for devising new skills, then the Skeletons or Zombies he devoured were the racial materials for his own mutation and advancement. Next, he only needed to continue hunting and slaughtering more Mutated Skeleton Warriors or Skeleton Commanders. This would allow him to elevate the essence of his race to a very high level.

At that point, with the help of the attribute panel, breaking through the racial bottleneck to become a Bronze-tier Undead would be a natural progression. With the attribute panel’s assistance, the advancement path for Fang Zhou’s corpse clone had no bottlenecks. This was the biggest difference between him and the Skeleton Lord.

「A full half-hour later.」

Fang Zhou had cleared all the Skeleton Centurions and Skeleton Chiliarchs from the field. Deprived of its core support, the Skeleton Battle Group instantly became fragile and chaotic. Under the command of Olaf, his loyal deputy, Fang Zhou’s Skeleton minions displayed astounding combat power. They surged toward the enemy like a tide, easily penetrating their defensive lines and scattering the once-overbearing Skeleton Army.

Though the entire process was quite lengthy, Fang Zhou and his troops ultimately succeeded in eliminating all threats. After devouring the Corpse Essence and Soul Power of nearly ten thousand Skeleton Warriors, Fang Zhou felt an unprecedented torrent of power surging within him. This power not only brought him a sense of satisfaction and fullness but also a peculiar feeling akin to being well-fed.

Most remarkably, his Agility Attribute finally reached the perfection level of 100 points. This meant he had attained a completely new realm of speed and flexibility, making dodging attacks or launching ambushes much more effortless. All that remained was his Spirit Attribute, which was the most difficult for the Skeleton Race to improve.

As for his reserves of Soul Power, they skyrocketed to nearly 10,000 points. This amount was an unprecedented accumulation for Fang Zhou. Such vast Soul Power not only provided him with a strong reserve but also laid a solid foundation for future evolution. With this ample "start-up capital," Fang Zhou already had a clear plan.

He planned to once again apply Extreme Enhancement to all the Black Iron-level Universal Skills for Combat Professionals that his corpse clone had mastered, turning them into more powerful variants driven by Death Energy. This required a substantial number of contribution points, but Fang Zhou already had a strategy. He could use the Berserker Heroic Spirit Olaf as a pretext, claiming that in the process of cultivating Olaf, he had made undead-specific modifications to combat professional skills. Then, he could re-upload these skills, which had undergone extreme Undead Transformation, to the Human Alliance Skill Library to receive corresponding subsidies and rewards.

After all, Fang Zhou’s talent in the Undead Mage profession required no further validation, and no one would question his capabilities. To be on the safe side, he even considered asking Master Sandro and Instructor Su Xinyan to vouch for him. There shouldn’t be any issues from the Sea City Military Academy’s side.

Of course, aside from the enormous gains in Attributes and Soul Power, Fang Zhou also sensed a mysterious, indescribable link under the illumination of the Blood Moon. This force seemed to originate from a chaotic will and was engaging in subtle communication with him. After contemplating it for a long time, Fang Zhou came up with several hypotheses. However, due to limited information, he couldn’t draw any definite conclusions for the time being.

Fang Zhou kept this mysterious link in mind and turned to his attribute panel. Due to the attribute limits of the Black Iron tier, Fang Zhou couldn’t further enhance the three-dimensional attributes of strength, constitution, and agility. They had already reached the perfection level of 100 points, and no amount of Corpse Essence he absorbed could raise them any higher.

A small portion of the Corpse Essence was meticulously allocated by Fang Zhou to enhance his Spirit Attribute. This was currently his weakest attribute and required more attention and resources to cultivate. The vast majority of the Corpse Essence settled within Fang Zhou’s body, where it would become precious resources for enhancing his combat power and breaking through to new realms.

After accomplishing all this, Fang Zhou returned to the center of the battlefield.

The strongest undead creature in history!

This was the grand goal Fang Zhou had set for his corpse clone. To achieve this goal, he needed not only to enhance his racial Combat Power Coefficient and strengthen his four-dimensional attributes of strength, constitution, agility, and Spirit, but also to acquire a vast amount of Soul Power and a rich array of skills.

To accomplish these goals, Fang Zhou realized he needed to slightly adjust his path of development. Before breaking through the bottleneck to advance to Bronze, he still needed to continue gathering Skeleton minions. This time, however, he decided not to blindly pursue quantity but to focus more on quality.

The Skeleton Centurion he had slain not only possessed a higher level of intelligence but also held memories far surpassing those of ordinary Skeleton Commanders. After absorbing its bones, Fang Zhou gained a substantial amount of important information. This information was crucial for his future development. This included, for instance, the quantity and distribution of Skeletons under the Skeleton Lord’s command, as well as information regarding the Skeleton Lord himself—the ruler of the Bone Hills.

In summary, the number of Skeleton Battle Groups under the Skeleton Lord’s command was considerable. Aside from the eight Skeleton Centurions leading the eight Skeleton Battle Groups, there were even more Mutated Skeletons within the White Bone Castle where the Skeleton Lord resided.

Logically, following the standard evolutionary path of the Skeleton Race, Skeleton Centurions should be the most numerous among the Mutated Skeletons. However, that was not the case. Across the entire Bone Hills, aside from those hiding in unknown corners, the Skeleton Lord commanded only these eight Skeleton Centurions!

The reason was simple: the Skeleton Lord was also harvesting Skeletons.

The eight Skeleton Centurions were the eight vassals enfeoffed by the Skeleton Lord to help it rule the vast core area of the Bone Hills. These eight positions were not fixed but were constantly replaced through fierce competition. Whenever a new Mutated Skeleton Warrior was born in the Bone Hills, it could challenge one of these eight vassals. The victor would replace the loser and become the Skeleton Lord’s new vassal. The loser, in turn, would face the inescapable fate of being devoured by the Skeleton Lord.

This was a brutal rule, but it was also the inevitable path of evolution for the Skeleton Race. Skeleton Centurions were not qualified to devour Mutated Skeleton Warriors. They could only consume the most mediocre and worthless ordinary Skeleton Warriors. Real Mutated Skeleton Warriors were innately talented, possessing intelligence and power far exceeding that of ordinary Skeletons. Only the Skeleton Lord had the right to devour them.

By their very nature, Skeletons were a race that harvested each other. As the ruler of the entire core region of the Bone Hills, the Skeleton Lord naturally stood at the top of this harvesting chain. It disdained to devour Skeletons whose tier was too far below its own, but it would never miss an opportunity to consume Mutated Skeleton Warriors.

This behavior not only enhanced its own strength but also consolidated its ruling position within the Bone Hills. By continuously devouring Mutated Skeleton Warriors, it not only gained immense power but also accumulated rich wisdom and experience. This accumulation made the Skeleton Lord the most formidable existence in the Bone Hills, its status unchallengeable.

No one knew how long the Bone Hills had existed or how many Mutated Skeleton Warriors the Skeleton Lord had devoured. Perhaps from the moment the Skeleton Lord became the ruler of the Bone Hills, this chain of mutual harvesting and devouring had already been established. The Skeleton Lord itself was the biggest beneficiary of this harvesting chain.

Of course, this was the usual situation. Given the countless Skeletons in the Bone Hills, some innately gifted or higher-conscious Mutated Skeletons would inevitably be born. These Mutated Skeleton Warriors might choose not to challenge the eight vassals or join the Skeleton Lord’s ranks. Their other option was to hide away and grow in secret.