The Ruined Death Knight

Reading the description, Danzel couldn´t help but have slightly suspicious that the skill [Soul of Death Essence] skill be involved in the appearance of the message.

As far as he remembered, the skill said that it made his soul more accustomed to dead mana itself. But it didn´t mention that the soul was fully accustomed to dead mana.

But now probably because of this skill, his soul should be fully accustomed to dead mana and soul affinity. Once the skill manifested, he felt more connected to himself, or rather his own mana.

Considering the sudden increase of the mastery of dead mana affinity and his soul affinity, such a change wasn´t surprising.

His own mana had always had a hint of soul affinity and dead mana in it.

Because of being undead, he could turn his mana more easily into dead mana than other types of mana. That also goes for what he calls "Soul Mana" which came from his soul affinity.

The latter though he couldn´t use as much as the former as it was rather unknown to him. All he knew of how to use this mana was to activate [Mortal Reminder] and [Soul Reaping Wind]. Where he now probably raises an undead by just pouring his dead mana into a corpse.

Though it wouldn´t turn as strong as when he used the spell [Greater Raise Undead], it was still something. He could also do some other stuff, but he considered them more of party tricks than of a genuine spell or technique.

"I can hold a much firmer control now, but I still don´t know how to use it..." Danzel thought as he stared at his skeleton hand that was engulfed with dark green mana.

Shaking his hand, he equipped his gauntlet once more and decided to leave it at that.

"Other than that, I didn´t expect my natural regeneration to decrease by so much... Although now the effect covers my soul too. Also, the last sentence also has another [???] description. Considering the context, it should be a location such as...maybe the realm of the dead? There isn´t much information to say for sure..."

Overall, he was happy with how the skill turned out.

The mana mastery of both his affinity improved tremendously while his health regeneration decreased by a bit where his mana regeneration increased.

He suspected that the [Power Improvement] would at the cost of decreasing a part of the skill, would in turn increase another skill much better.

He concluded that more experimentation was needed to see if he was right.

`In the future, I can test it by buying other useless skills anyway...´ Danzel thought before going to the next skill on his upgrade list.

Which were the [Restore Undying Body]. A spell that repaired the damage of an undead.

It wasn´t like the [Undead Reconstruction] which repaired corpses, but it healed the undead. He recently used the spell to repair his body in the fight between mutants and the masked magic casters.

Though it has done its job by repairing his body, he had to use it multiple times to repair the damage to his body. Essentially using his mana and time that could have been used to use other spells.

And for its modification, he decided to pick [Dead Mana Affinity] and [Overall Improvement].

He could have chosen something else for the former option as it was a Death-type spell, he still chose that combination as usually, the affinity option was similar to the [Overall Improvement] option.

Rather than having fasting casting mediocre heal or a strong heal which required time to cast, he liked to have the best of both sides.

And what came out was a skill named [Necromatic Restoraction].

It essentially improved the casting time of the spell and its chant by the spell's name and also improved the healing together with its range. Additionally, it also recovered a bit of mana on the target, but the amount of the mana restoration wasn´t to the point where one could infinitely restore one mana by this spell.

Of course, this spell could only be used towards the undead.

Danzel was also satisfied with how the skill came out.

He wanted the spell to simply heal and nothing else. That also went for the other two skills, they just needed a simple increase of changing them into something else.

But for the other 3 skills, he wanted to change them to some extent.

For example [Greater Death Blast] wasn´t designed to have much firepower and instead focused on inflicting a decay effect on others.

He liked to use it together with [Soul Reaping Wind] as it would send out a barrage of long ranged attacks. And since it was a spell and [Soul Reaping Wind] was more of a sword technique, he could use both at the same time.

But since the latter was much faster and more deadly than the former, it was left out by its senior [Soul Reaping Wind].

But choosing a second modification for such a spell was extremely hard to decide.

The first modification was [Speed Improvement]. Such an option was essential in order to enable the spell to keep up with its senior.

There were a total of 5 other options if one ignored the 2 affinities.

[Power Improvement]

[Decay Improvement]

[Acidic Improvement]

[Curse]

[Overall Improvement]

...

He is right of written about both [Overall Improvement] and [Power Improvement]. He wanted a specialized spell so the former was a no while the latter could potentially increase the impact force of the spell and decrease everything else for all he knew.

He didn´t want to risk betting on the latter and ruin his spell.

The question now was which of the other 3 to choose.

Decay and acidic were pretty similar yet different.

If the spell hit its target, the former would quickly start once the opponent has its flesh rot just like the [Cursed Wounds Blade] effect, but if he were to improve the acidic part, he would right off melt his opponent's flesh and potentialy damage his enemies sword or armor.

Both had their pro and cons, but in the end, that two modifications didn´t improve the fatal weakness of this spell. This one is that for damage to take place, the spell needed to have physical contact with the spell.

For that reason alone he chose to pick the [Curse] option.

As curses were essentially one of the hardest types of spell to defend against.

Any defense-type spell would be right off ignored in the face of curse spells. The only spell that specilized against curses could defend against them.

"The spell isn´t lethal anyway...it should be much more annoying to face if the spell were to turn into a curse." Danzel said as he chose the two modifications.

[The modification for the Greater Death Blast has been chosen]

[Greater Death Blast Lv.10 becomes Curse of Five Bindings] Lv.1 ]

[Curse of Five Bindings]: Manifest one dead mana into a gathering of miasma to shoot out at one's target. With the miasma holding a terrible curse, once an enemy is hit, they will receive a minor decay effect before the curses latch on the target's body and drain them from their strength for a certain amount of time. Each hit of this spell will reduce the attributes of the target by a total of 1% and increase the decay effect. This effect stacks a total of 5 times and last 10 minutes per stack.

...

"Hmm, a curse that reduced one's strength, huh? Not exactly what I hoped to gain..." Danzel said in disappointment.

In theory, the spell was incredible, but in practice hitting, one enemy with the same spell 5 times in total was extremely difficult. But since it was a curse, it was much easier to hit opponents that didn´t have a response.

​ `Well, you win some, you lose some I guess.´ Danzel shrugged it off and went to the next one.

Next in the line was [Cursed Wounds Blade].

Here the question lay wherever he wanted to increase the healing reduction or the decayed part of the skill.

But after considering it for a bit he decided to go for both affinity options this time around.

Improving the skill alone was tempting, each wound by his blade would become all the more lethal.

Even the slightest scratch could prove to be quite harmful considering the decay.

And since healing wouldn't be as effective, he sure bet it would be a headache for his enemies.

In the end, though he chose the two affinities.

The reason for it was that he wanted his sword to directly inflict damage on one's soul!

If he could now grade the soul-damaging part into the skill and later on focus on improving it, his sword will be on many more levels lethal.

At least that was his hope on this modification.

Soon after the modification was done, the skill [Cursed Wounds Blade] turned into [Siphoning Soul Blade].

Reading the description, Danzel's ethereal eyes lighten up in shock.

[Siphoning Soul Blade]: A curse put into a cruel blade wielded by a cruel master. Each wound inflicted by the cursed blade will place a cursed mark on the wound. The cursed mark will periodically drain one's vitality and soul essence and transfer them to the cursed sword. Once someone's soul essence has been drained fully, the body of the victim will start to collapse. The more the same cursed sword drains one, the more powerful this effect will be. There is a chance that this sword will become cursed and inflict the same effect on others other than its wielder.

"This skill...has terrifying potential." Danzel said with a hint of excitement in his sword.

Drawing his sword and looking at the blade, Danzel shouted internally.

'You will be my first cursed blade!'