The Ruined Death Knight-Novel

Leaving the huge skull wolve to his sealed fate.

Going towards back to the first floor to check on his undead, he shortly sat down as he realized that they were aimlessly wandering left and right.

"Sigh...now what should I do?" He said as he sat down the stairs.

Bringing all kinds of different weapons out of his storage ring one after the other, Danzel felt somewhat lost.

From short sword to longsword and even maces. Danzel brought every weapon that he had in possession out and lined them neatly in front of him.

Be it the weapons that he still had from when he worked for Hanson not long ago or the human remains of those in the desert.

Danzel had many choices as to what his next weapon would be.

But even among that options, he still chose to try out the few longswords that he still had left.

And when he said few, he only meant that he only had three of them.

And one could barely be called a longsword.

To Danzel it looked somewhat like a bastard's oversized sword.

Alas, that was the first one that he put away.

He much preferred a much longer blade that was on the heavier side that was still able to hold it in one hand. If it weren´t for his shield and instead he had picked [Undead High Blade] as his original class, then wielding a greatsword just like the one that escaped wouldn´t have been that bad of an idea.

But still, he found his current combination of shield and a longsword the best.

Great defense with wide and powerful attacks.

Although such a battle style had its own shortcomings.

Which didn´t?

While with a spear you can kill your opponents in an advantaged reach, once the enemy gets near you, the situation will turn for the worse.

An axe packs great strength after each swing, but other than that it sucks at defending against attacks.

A dagger although fast and flexible to kill your opponent was, lacked the needed range for ahead one combat.

Needless to say, every type and weapon had its own set of advantages and disadvantages.

The point was which of them all will make yourself yours.

For Danzel's case, it was the shield and longsword.

So with the two remaining longswords left, he chose the one that meets his criteria while being the less damaged.

As for why he brought all his other weapons out was something total else.

But before he could use those other weapons for that purpose, he had something much more important thing to do.

Placing the new longsword on his lamps and the sheath beside him, the two pairs of ethereal eyes of his glowed slightly stronger.

"[Rune Vision]"

With his world turning into a gray and soundless one. Danzel stared at the green spots that his blade was showing.

Without any hesitation, his finger let out a small blaze of mana that soon touched the blade and moved it into different shapes without his finger flinching for even a second.

One could tell that Danzel was experienced with that.

In carving runes, controlling your mana and your hand was critical on runesmithing. A slightly wrong input on the mana could be decided where the end product would be a failure or a success.

The quality of the item itself was also an important fact.

As the more damaged it was, the less room one had to draw the rune and the chance of making a mistake by your mana flow increased.

Still, for Danzel who did that tireless though more than two years, he had some true skill.

Even if he wasn't able to carve a perfect rune at the end of the day.

Standing up from the ground, he did some test swings in the air.

After a few swings, he stopped to look at his new sword before shaking his head bitterly.

"I got too used on the other one...and how long this sword will last is also questionable."

Putting the sword back on his sheath, Danzel couldn't help but remember his old blade.

'If only I had Veren, things would have been much easier.'

Although Veren itself was by his core a poorer quality than his current one, he dearly missed the self-repair effect.

"Well, nothing to be done for it I guess..." Shaking his head, he put himself to think of something else.

"Right, now about those..." Staring at the weapons on the ground, he switched his gaze upon his undead.

'You all, gather'

Hearing their lives command, all half skeleton zombies turned towards Danzel and moved to where he was.

'Stand in a line and remove your equipment

As soon as Danzel gave his command, he immediately regret it.

Misunderstanding what he meant, the undead tried to rip off their armor and clothing in a frenzy as if those were a ticking bomb or something.

"Wha-you idiots!"

'Stop!'

Following the command, they stopped as if they were some statues who groaned from time to time.

"Ugh...I should have seen that coming." Danzel groaned out of annoyance.

His commands worked with his will and own intent.

Since he wanted to continue to search the tower, his intent was recognized as him being in a rush.

This is the reason why they reacted as such.

'Stand in a line and raise your hands high, I will do it myself...'

With them following his instruction, Danzel went one by one undressing his undead completely, leaving them standing completely naked.

Even when some of the pale corpses were that of women, Danzel didn't feel anything particular gazed at them.

Just indifferences.

Mere corpses, or rather puppets.

Drawing his longsword out of his sheath, his dead mana danced on the blade.

Without a hint of hesitating, he pushed his sword at one of the zombies through the chest, while making sure he didn't hit any bones at doing that.

Not longeth that 5 minutes, the flesh of the undead decayed to the point where it turned into dust, leaving only some skeleton standing in front of him.

"It worked, huh?" Nodding to himself, he went through the row and did the same thing.

Turning the half skeletons half zombies into a complete skeleton.

Doing that of course affected their status, with losing some strength for agility to gain some.

Usually what Danzel did wouldn't work into a complete zombie.

But since his zombies had their parts of bones exposed, the transmission of the two undead races was as possible.

"Now for the important part..." Danzel mumbled as he pointed in a certain direction.

The direction we're the weapons lay.

'Go and choose a weapon of your choice.' Danzel said as he looked at his skeletons roaming and blankly staring at the weapons.

Worried at first, he was relieved to see the skeletons starting to pick a weapon.

The reason for that experiment of his was of certain old memories of his.

Back when he freshly came out of the cursed lake, he remembered the undead who he named "Fellow" and swung his sword towards the goblins.

As he knew zombies wouldn't wield a weapon, what about skeletons then?

And the answer to that was as expected, they could!

Although they just grabbed them and dragged them to their feet.

He was sure that skeletons were much more of a threat than unarmed zombies.

'Train with your weapons, get used to the.' Danzel transmitted to them.

As he walks upstairs, a sudden thought came to his mind.

'And don't break anything. Especially your weapons'

"Just to be sure..." Danzel whispered to himself, clearly no longer underestimating their stupidity.

Walking upstairs to the second and then third floor, the huge skull wolve lay down dead, clearly trying to move as of how the trail of blood suggested.

What surprised him though we're something else.

"Those two managed to survive? Danzel though.

Starting at the terrible damaged skull wolves' bodies that he took as bodyguards, Danzel let them rest, or rather let them restore their own damaged body by slowly gathering dead mana.

Letting them do their own thing, Danzel walked towards the now dead huge skull wolve.

Opening his status window, he was surprised to see how much it gave him

[You received 110 500 XP]

"it left me quite the fortunate behind his death..."

Raising his palm towards him, Danzel said.

"Now what kind of gentleman would I be if I weren't going to personally thank him for it." 

Dead mana runs through his hand and towards his palm. Firstly fixing his body, mainly the missing leg.

And as second, like in an instant, it shot out and entered the huge beast's dead body.

"Be made to serve~"

Starting off with some of his muscles twisting, the huge skull wolf started to rise awkwardly in front of Danzel, effectively towering.

"Hmm... It's quite big." Danzel said as he send out his first command.

'Bow'

Lowering his head, the huge skull wolve waited patiently at his life's next command.

"Much better..."

As Danzel was starting it down at it, or rather his back, Danzel put up a wry smile.

"I even decided." 

"From here on forth, you will be called skull claw." Danzel declared.

With his claws being like that of a metal and his race's characteristic skull faces the name should be obvious enough as to why he chose it.

Having the big one called 'huge skull wolve' or 'Boss skull wolves and didn't feel quite right to Danzel.

As for why he was grinning so sinister, it was because a certain thought run in his mind.

'Although learning to ride isn't that much of a need, with such great mount ahead in front of me, It surely will be a waste not to learn as of how to ride' Danzel though.

He definitely did not want to ride on top of Skull Claw just so that he could have some fun riding on top of him.