The Ruined Death Knight

Once the Lich came to deliver the news, did Danzel hit that he missed one of his best opportunities to actually finish his mission.

Not only did a vast amount of people die from the magic caster dropping an ice mountain on top of them, but now Velkir himself intervened in the "clean up" of this whole mess.

The deal he had was to not let too many people of the dynasty die here. But with how many died and are currently injured, Velkir took matters into his own hands.

And that is by summoning an army of undead to annihilate the remaining soldiers and magic caster of the arcana kingdom. Robbing Danzel off his opportunity to evolve.

Albeit, he was very much aware that he was at fault.

Also considering the damage that his body and armor had suffered, he gave up on cutting the few that are still alive.

It didn't even take half an hour for the dynasty side to shout out the victory and for the whole crew to regroup on where the previous camp was. Where there was Azrael with Shiro already waiting for them.

When they regrouped, the most noticeable thing was Sartan bringing an amputated, headless body that had large and broken spider legs in the back, twitching from time to time.

Except for Agares getting angry at the High Troll for terrifying his granddaughter, nothing else exceptional happend.

Velkir accepted Sartan's "gift" and let some of his undead carry that, to even Danzel's surprised, still living mutant body.

Other than that, several humans came to ask Velkir to join their conversation, though Velkir blatantly refused.

Watching the faces of the supposed generals of noble blood distort while making threats at the century-old Lich that could annihilate was enough to make Danzel grin to himself.

After the confirmation of annihilating the whole enemy troops, Velkir went ahead with some others of the Dynasty to literally destroy the walls of the bourders.

With the array of the walls manually shut down by Velkir, the wall became nothing more than a block of stone in front of the assault of 3rd-tier and even a 4th-tier magic caster.

As the wall was on the border of the Arcana kingdom, support was bound to come and retake this piece of land. Not only that, but this place was another hotspot for the kingdom of Berum to attack. Making it essentially impossible for the Dynasty to hold this territory on their own.

And it never was planned to take over this piece of land for themself. As it was far too away from their territory and for the previously mentioned reason. It simply wasn't worth it to hold unto the territory.

Though Danzel didn't know what the higher-ups of the Dynasty were planning, he thought that they had some kind of "if I can't have it, neither can you!" kind of mindset.

It was essentially stealing the candy from someone before throwing the exact candy into the mud and leaving it for the ants to eat.

He quickly gave up trying to understand the politics of those mortal beings.

Instead, he let himself consider what he lost and what to do going forward.

And as they had to escort the dynasty army back to their kingdom, he couldn't much of anything else other than stare at his status window.

Sitting alone inside the carriage, with Azrael looking at the skeleton horses in the drives seat and Vanessa sitting on top of the carriage roof.

Looking at his armor, Danzel sighted internally.

"Such a mess..."

Not only did he have to replace his hand and leg armor with a much inferior armor, but the pieces also didn't fit perfectly together. As for the armor that survived, calling a junk by now would be justified.

Not only were several small holes everywhere to be seen, but there was also a big hole through his chest that was currently covered by the dark platting just like all the other holes.

Although the missing armor allowed him to make the dark plattings much thicker than before, in the end, they were essentially inferior to the armor itself. Worst of all, the enchantments themselves were heavily damaged, making one disappear completely even.

The main enchantment that created sand and hardens became much more mana inefficient than before and it took much longer to generate the dark plattings.

Another problem that came out with those damages was that a large amount of space was cut away for his runesmithing.

At first, his chest plate might seem to be just as it was before, but that wasn't the case at all.

Before, he could carve runes in both his armor and dark plattings as if they were 2 totally different pieces. But now the former had much less space to work while the latter stayed the same.

If he had to put a number of the remaining space that could be carved, his true armor would now have 80% of its original 100% while the dark platting didn't increase and stayed at 100% space capacity.

The fact that some runes needed to be recarved didn't bother him. But the fact that he could carve fewer runes into his armor did.

But despite all that, he did receive a few hundred thousand XP, mostly coming from the Sartan rampage.

And taking to account that he had saved for several months of XP, he was quite rich despite the fact he upgraded his skills through time.

After all, he killed over 6000 people through the people, mostly reaching the 2nd-tier with a few 3rd-tier and mutants in the mix. That isn't even counting what Azrael and Agares harvested for him.

His XP storage is a total of 17 708 300.

A new record of his.

The original plan was to hold on to this amount of XP and spend it once he became a [Death Knight]. Then most likely the limits of his body will be lifted, allowing him to upgrade his [Black Guard] main class to the 4th-tier.

Unlocking much better skills and options, while showing the direction that he would need to go with.

Such information could prove to be vital in upgrading his skills into the 4th-tier in case it's like the modification stage that happens in the 3rd-tier.

But after today, Danzel realized how naive he was.

Maybe it was because he reached a level of strength beyond the 3rd-tier and because he only fought seriously with other 3rd-tier beings. Fights that were bound to be won by him.

Close combatants would lose through his superior strength, though most of them had more special skills than Danzel, the few skills that Danzel had were made to kill.

His weakness was still being a magic caster with their long-range attacks.

He faced many 3rd-tier magic casters to know how annoying they were,

The ability to fly into the air and potentially teleport away was the most annoying and effective ability they had. While the former could be death awkardly, the latter needed the magic caster's entire focus to be cast.

Making the Archmage an anomaly in the ways he fought magic casters.

The level of strength was as clear as night and day.

One needed to focus on teleport while the other could cast another 2 spells while preparing his teleportation spell. Also, the power of each spell of the latter could be much trickier. Making even his shield and armor useless.

Leaving him to think of his own weaknesses.

Mobility and long-ranged attacks.

And possibly even defense abilities.

Although he had both of those options in the form of [Swift Movements] and [Soul Reaping Wind], he needed something much faster and more instances.

And for that, he was even willing to spend his saved-up XP a bit earlier than he had actually planned to do.

He was going to upgrade his skills into the 4th-tier.

The candidate for the mobility issue were the most obvious ones, being [High Jump] and [Swift Movements]. Other than those 2 skills, he had none other.

But it was much harder to choose for the latter need as what only fitted the description was [Grasp of the Undying], which was both instances and long ranged.

As no other skill was just like that.

He doubted [Soul Reaping Wind] will fit the requirements based on its nature alone. And that was the same case with all his remaining long-ranged attacks.

[Bleed Verocity] did prove its worth by fighting that mutant with the cleaver and he already planned in upgrading it.

Though to work he needed his enemy to be wounded.

Once the requirement was met to activate the spell, it was pretty useful for guaranteeing damage to his enemy.

He also carefully searched for the skills that he could buy, but he found nothing that met his need.

Leaving him with no other choice but to risk evolving one of his other skills.

And after thinking about it, for the better or the worse.

The best candidate for evolution was the skill [Mortal Reminder].

Worst case scenario the skill becomes not that good, he would have to keep using the [Mortal Reminder] skill even after it evolves.

But in case the skill became what he hoped to become.

The skill will always remind the mortals.

Why they fear.