The Ruined Death Knight

As eager as Danzel was to test all his new skills and see how powerful each of them was, not a single opportunity came.

His first thought was to ask Agares for a spar, but he quickly removed that thought from his mind.

The reason for it was simple.

Agares was just too strong.

What he wanted to test were the effects of each skill on a person and not seeing all his skills being blocked.

He wanted to observe how the decay of [Cursed Wounds Blade] was improvend. How the skill [Soul Reaping Wind] would affect one's body and all his other skills.

If he really sparred with Agares, at most he would see how [Undying Guard] and [Armor of Vengeances] work, but not actually the potential of the skill.

It wasn´t like he could ask anyone in the group to let him injure them.

He considered asking the high troll Sartan to be his sandbag, but that thought was quickly dismissed for several reasons.

The most important ones were that he basically didn´t know Sartan well enough and that he wasn´t too sure how he would react to having a part of his [Soul Essence] cut.

After considering his options, Danzel could only sigh internally and wait until the mission would come for him to test his skills.

Unfortunately though, after a day passing, no such news came to Danzel's disappointment.

Without having anything else to do, as usual, he buried himself in work for several days.

Be it trying to improve the [Rune of Harvest] to the [Good] rating, going through the notes of his previous magic lesson with Velkir, or understanding the book of Nersan´rah. Danzel had enough stuff to keep himself busy.

Wherever he got bored with one of those works, he would simply take a break and start with some other work till he also got bored of that so that the endless circle could continue.

In a way, Danzel reached the peak of workaholism.

If he weren´t doing something, he would subconsciously remember the times inside the cave of the cursed lake. The place where he first woke up.

Before he even received his [Undead Warrior] class and the option to gain XP from training was available to him, Danzel had nothing to do 24/7 other that scavenging the trash of goblins and walking aimlessly in the cave to pass his time.

Further outside the world, Danzel was forced to keep himself hidden and work.

As he gained benefits from doing that, he found it quite rewarding and enjoyable, and in a way, with his work being his only pass time, it wasn´t a surprise for his work to become his hobby.

Except for the few times he went out from his room to check on Skull Claw, Danzel for the past weak continued working.

After the third day of having his skills upgraded, Velkir paid him a visit in his room and requested lots of runed contracts from him.

Till this point Danzel was only further refining his own techniques, Danzel didn´t mind following Velkir´s request.

Obviously, Danzel wasn´t a fool to just make the rune contracts for free. He and Velkir made a deal, after all, to be compensated for his work. Though the magic lesson was of incredible value to Danzel, it wasn´t that worth it if one considered the value of such contracts.

For better or worse, they could be used to detect one's lies.

Velkir of course knew the value for the runed contracts too and he was quite lenient in hearing his request.

As for what Danzel's request was, there was only one thing that came to his mind.

And that was a shield that enchants the effects of abilities that use dead mana.

With currently being equipped with several death-natured skills, being equipped with practically a holy shield that was even damaged was quite foolish.

At first, Danzel had requested the premium package of having his shield made of material that enchants death-natured abilities naturally and on top of that having a few enchantments that Velkir could offer.

When Velkir heard his request, he couldn´t help but laugh at the Wight´s shamelessness and rejected the offer.

After a few backs and forths, the deal ended up being with Danzel providing Velkir over 150 rune contracts in return for a high-quality shield for his purposes, but without any of the enchantments, he requested.

Here found the lack of information extremely frustrating.

Danzel knew that both mana crystals and enchantments were extremely expensive, but that was about it.

He didn´t know the actual value of such enchantments or what materials they needed. So if Velkir decided to overexaggerate the value of the enchantments that he request, he wouldn´t be able to know.

Gritting his teeth, Danzel accepted Velkir´s offer with the idea that he would enchant his shield in future their future transaction.

Velkir seemed to hesitate for a brief moment, but in the end, he still accepted.

And for the past two weeks, Danzel's focus lay on carving the [Rune of Uzal] in the piece of paper that Velkir provided for him.

Thanks to already having a few of those runed contracts in his storage ring, he managed to finish them in those two weeks.

...

"Finally finished..." Danzel sighed out loud before leaving his room.

"It will be a while for now before I touch the [Rune of Uzal] again, though I gained some XP by doing this, I fell behind in my other studies." Danzel said as he headed towards Velkir room.

`I wonder for what Velkir needs all those contracts for.´

Walking down the stairs, the first thing that he noticed was an almost silent grunt coming from Velkir's room.

`Is he going through an experiment?´ Danzel wondered.

Entering Velkir's room, the first thing that he took notice of was that Agares and Shiro were also in the room and they were gathered around the table.

More specifically, Shiro was sitting on top of the table and had the top of her exotic clothing removed with a white bandage bound around her chest.

As she was facing the other way, Danzel couldn´t see her face except for her white hair and pale white skin.

But the most notable thing was the dark red veins that spread behind her back.

Based on Agare's bitter look towards his granddaughter, Danzel knew that he came in a bad time and decided to leave and come back later.

But Velkir stopped him in his tracks.

"Danzel, did you come to deliver the items that I asked you to make?"

"...Yes, that´s indeed the case." He answered as he stayed at the door, not sure if he was supposed to leave or not.

"Wait a second." Velkir said before touching the dark red veins in Shiro´s back.

"Agh...!"

Ignoring Shiro´s grunt of pain, Velkir's palm lighten up and surrounded their back of Shiro in blue light.

The more the light was around Shiro´s back, the faster the dark red veins shrunk back until they completely disappeared.

"That should do it for now. Agares, you can dress up Shiro." Velkir said with his cold voice.

With an aggravated face, Agares nodded and took Shiro into his arm before putting her to the ground and dressing her up.

Ignoring those two, Velkir walked towards Danzel.

Seeing that, Danzel brought out the over 150 runed contracts in two boxes.

Taking a look at the boxes, with a wave of his hand, Velkir made the boxes float towards the table where Shiro was sitting before.

"The shield that you requested will take a bit more time to be finished. If everything goes right, it would take me another 2 to 3 weeks for your requested item to finish. I hope you don´t mind."

Danzel in response only shrugged his shoulders.

Even if he were to complain, nothing will change.

"As long it arrives in my hands within a reasonable time, I don´t mind." Danzel said before turning around to go to his room as he had no further business with Velkir.

"You two, tomorrow morning we will have another lesson here in my room, don´t forget it." Velkir said towards the three of them before putting his focus on the runed contracts.

Danzel and Agares simply nodded before heading to their respective rooms.

Taking a quick glance at the duo out of pure curiosity, Danzel noticed something different about Shiro who was carried by Agares.

The first thing that he took notice of was that Shiro herself seemed a few inches taller and her nails had grown for 5cm more.

`It has only been 2 weeks and she grew so much? I guess the fact that mortal children grow faster is true.´ Danzel thought to himself, before dismissing such thoughts from his mind.

He had lots of stuff that needed to be done and much stuff to learn.

***

At the same time in Velkir´s room.

Seeing that the group of three left his room, Velkir took a glance at the runed contracts before putting them in his spatial ring.

"A total of 156 contracts. One too many according to our deal." Velkir mumbled to himself before tapping his staff to the ground.

"[All Seeing Isolation], [False Decoy], [Banshee Whisper], [Mana Cloud], [Illusive Mind Barrier], [Watcher of the Dead]."

In a matter of just 2 seconds, Velkir cast a total of 6 spells to completely isolate his room.

Bringing a communication device out of his storage ring, Velkir gripped it and activated it.

With a small glow escaping from the device, Velkir's mouth behind the ragged bandages opened.

"Enable the array. I am coming" Velkir said in his cold voice.

Waiting for a few seconds, Velkir felt an ethereal connection going through the amulets that he was wearing.

Gripping the amulet in his hands, the ground beneath him gradually became a black liquid, if Danzel saw the black liquid, he would had know that it wasn´t the same as the liquid that the realm of the dead is filled with.

Once the black liquid was 2 meters wide, Velkir´s body started to sink in the liquid before completely disappearing from his room.

The location where Velkir the Lich appeared was inside a particular mansion.

In the room where Velkir came out, a man wearing the clothes of a noble was waiting for him on the couch.

"Welcome, Veleron."

The noble greeting Velkir was one of the many nobles that represented the Dynasty of Ioratal.