Chapter 144: Skeletons

According to The Book of the Dead, the medium required to summon undead creatures of different levels varied greatly. Weak skeletons only needed soul fragments that were scattered across battlefields and lands of the dead, devoid of self-awareness, to be activated, whereas powerful undead creatures required the infusion of strong and complete souls. The most formidable ones even needed the fusion of many powerful souls to be successfully summoned.

For necromancers, aside from powerful materials, the most important task was to find and obtain such powerful souls. Often, to effectively control these undead creatures, they must even split a fragment from their own soul, merge it into that soul flame, and then defeat and purify all the souls, melding them into one to form a powerful energy.

If they failed in this process, the necromancer’s soul could suffer the backlash, resulting in serious injury or even causing their soul to be impacted in return. These souls could also potentially break free from their control, posing serious threats.

The widespread use of undead creatures by the Batiz Kingdom was precisely because they worshipped the God of Death, revered the deceased, and considered becoming an undead creature after death an honor, even among the royal family and priests. This belief allowed necromancers to meld many souls at a very small cost, thereby obtaining powerful undead creatures.

Some undead creatures viewed as guardians could even periodically receive new souls to merge with, continuously restoring and strengthening their powers.

If it weren’t for the fact that the guardians of the temple and the statue of Gad of Death in the temple had consumed most of their soul power over a long period, becoming weak, they might not have been able to escape from that temple at all.

However, these concerns were not currently within Wu Qingsong’s considerations. He was simply following the method described in the torn pages, concentrating his attention on one of the phosphorescent flames. To the ordinary eye, it appeared to drift aimlessly in the air, but after applying the method, Wu Qingsong could feel the panicked and desperate soul imprint attached to it.

He carefully used his mental power to suppress and clear these negative emotions and memory fragments, which were harmful and useless for summoning the undead. This process was slightly complicated, but after a few minutes, Wu Qingsong successfully completed it and obtained a pure soul fragment.

To those around him, however, it looked as if he was just standing there, staring blankly at a phosphorescent flame.

He once again carefully guided the soul fragment, letting it drift towards the corpse. Then, with the help of the magic circle, the soul fragment gradually merged into the body. To Ram and the others, the rotten and blackened skeleton suddenly seemed different. A faint soul fire began to burn within its skull, its dull body suddenly took on an indescribable luster, and it slowly rose from the ground.

“Success,” Ram exclaimed in surprise.

If it were her in the past, seeing such a scene would definitely have caused a strong disgust, as in mainstream consciousness, such acts of animating corpses were considered extremely evil. However, she had now accepted Wu Qingsong’s notion that there is no evil power, only evil wielders of power. Of course, perhaps a more important reason was the blueprint of a magical industry using undead creatures as labor that Wu Qingsong described to her.

“It should be.” Wu Qingsong said. “I told you I’m a genius.”

Ram rolled her eyes at him, while Ling and Xeila had different expressions.

Ling truly believed that Wu Qingsong was brilliant at everything he did, a doubtless genius.

Xeila, on the other hand, was slightly surprised. Summoning skeletons should be the simplest and most fundamental spell in necromancy, and some of her people could still use such magic. However, the vast majority of talented individuals needed one to two months of practice to capture and purify soul fragments, and integrating them into a prepared body would take even longer. This was also why necromancers tended to be feared and loathed. They were always found in the ruins of battlefields, graves, and dark places, or spending long periods with corpses.

She had actually been prepared to see Wu Qingsong fail, but he succeeded just like that.

Wu Qingsong didn’t pay attention to their emotions. He was carefully feeling the difference in himself.

This sensation was strange. He could feel a faint connection between himself and the skeleton in front of him. Although it was nowhere near the feeling of an avatar, he clearly knew that he could control and command its actions.

It was like operating a robot at a technology exhibition in the past, except then he used a complex joystick, and now, he was using a mysterious power originating from his mind.

He began to make the skeleton perform some simple actions–walking, stepping back, bending, waving its arms, and even trying to run. However, this attempt was not successful. The skeleton clumsily crashed into the stone wall, causing the soul fire within it to flicker, almost extinguishing.

With continuous attempts, he gradually began to figure out how to control it.

Most of the time, the skeleton actually continued to follow its instincts from when it was alive, which might also be one of the effects brought by the soul fragment. This spared Wu Qingsong the effort of teaching it how to stand or maintain balance, but more complex behaviors required his mental commands.

For instance, when he asked the skeleton to pick up an iron pickaxe on the ground and start digging a wall, it could mechanically complete this action but wouldn’t recognize its own achievements. If Wu Qingsong didn’t make adjustments, it might just keep standing there, continuously digging in a straight line until the energy in the soul fragment was exhausted, or it was crushed by unprotected rocks falling from the tunnel it had dug.

It really was like an undead robot. One without AI.

This result left Wu Qingsong slightly disappointed. His original hope was to summon a large number of skeletons to replace the beastkin in doing the dangerous and hard work of mining. In that case, as long as a few trustworthy houndmen guarded the only entrance to the mine, iron ore could be produced continuously at almost no cost. Even the production of armor could be done this way since it was all simple repetitive labor that didn’t require much subjective initiative.

Undead creatures didn’t need to eat, sleep, rest, or feel fatigued, and their production efficiency was always constant, making them the perfect machines.

Who could compete with him?

But now it seemed, that while this approach might work, the cost was that he must stay by the skeletons’ side as a supervisor, issuing new commands and adjusting their actions at all times.

Staying all day in a dark and damp mine? That was not the result he wanted.

‘Perhaps the situation with zombies would be a bit better?’ he thought.

If that half-baked necromancer could send zombies to release fragrance to stun the villagers and kidnap them, it would indicate that zombies had independent consciousness and could complete complex tasks.

This slightly improved his mood. Then, he had the skeleton stop its actions and began trying to capture and purify another soul fragment.

Since single-thread operation was no problem, he wanted to try multi-threading.