The Ruined Death Knight

Danzel liked the idea so much, that he decided to stay with Shiro and work on those books.

Shiro would do the copying while he would try to make the book frame.

Which was much harder to do than he had anticipated.

First of all, Danzel had no glue of any sort to stick to any wood. Also, he quickly abandoned the idea of making the books out of wood as in his storage ring, he only had a few magic items and weapons. No tools of any sort.

Which forced him to rely on his newly acquired skill, [Bone Shaping] to make the actual books.

And once he started experimenting with this idea, Shiro gazed at him weirdly and faintly disgusted, though he ignored her.

'It's much harder than I had thought to be...' He said internally as his first prototype failed.

He tried to do something similar with Shiro's fox mask that was connected with her hood on those books, though piercing the paper with bones turns out to be a terrible idea.

He saw it coming, but he still wanted to try his luck.

The next prototype he made was the book of 3 pieces.

One piece will hold the papers and the other two that will be the cover of the book.

On the piece that will hold the papers, he went and simply made fine thin lines, barely enough to fit one page. And once inside the thin opening, he would slightly press the thin line to secure the piece of paper.

Though that brought another problem.

And that to turn a page, one had to slightly fold the paper, which would damage the paper over time.

Not the best solution, but Danzel decided to stick with it.

'I just have to make the paper more durable if that's the case.' He thought to himself.

And that's exactly what he did with the help of runes.

While he had only one rune that worked on paper, that just meant that he just had to make another rune that is "carvable". Not the easiest of works, but through his experience as a runesmith, it wasn't impossible.

Since he also just aimed to slightly increase the durability of the paper, the rune itself wouldn't put much of a strain on the material. Albeit paper was already a difficult material to work with and quite fragile for his runes.

Albeit he succeeded in creating such a rune on his first try, the effect of the rune wasn't as great as Danzel wanted. It was good enough.

It would have been better to perfect such a rune, but he didn't want to waste his time on things like that.

And since the rune wasn't that complex, it took him only a few minutes to be done with it.

That's how he spends the day and the one after.

He gave Shiro his worn-out mana pen while he was carving the small runes on each page. It was quite boring work, though Shiro constantly asking questions based on the content of those books made the whole task a bit more lively.

Sometimes he would stop and explain the few things that he understood while other times he would shake his head as he didn't understand completely the content of the book.

Realizing that he knew best of necromancy, Shiro focused her question on this school of magic.

Danzel was at first somewhat hesitant in teaching her necromancy, but now he didn't even care as she saw the content of the necromancy book from Velkir.

In fact, now that she had vague, very vague directions of where to start, it would have been more dangerous not to teach her necromancy.

Of course, even in that case, he wouldn't do it for free.

And when they both finished making copies of the books, Shiro gave him a sour look when he told her that he won't make copies for her.

Though she could only complain and fall asleep as she practically stayed up for two days up.

Danzel decided to let her and left, leaving the two living armors to guard her.

In his hands, Danzel held 5 especially thick books in his hand.

They were so thick, that Danzel was confident that he could smash someone's head with them. The reason for them being so thick was because they contained 3 books worth of content inside them.

It exhausted all his contracts, leaving him with only 10 remainings, but if what he planned really worked, then it was a worthwhile investment.

'If it doesn't goes the way I hope so, worst case scenario...I will remove the Anabast.' Danzel said as he stared at the books.

They were large, but for his size, they were quite fine. And the Anabast were around his size even though they appeared taller when they floated around. But he somewhat found those books quite plain as the bones were quite flat.

Halting his steps, Danzel went to one of the houses and seated on the stair in front of the house.

"Hmm...how should I change it? The books are about magic focused around" He mumbled to himself.

[Elemental Magic of Spell studies] focused on elemental magic

[Studies of necromancy by Revivor Veleron] was of necromancy.

And lastly, [Learning of wicked magic for beginners] contained overall knowledge about magic with a focus on more "wicked magic" and how to use them. It was the only book that went up to the 2nd-tier, but as far as it was the easiest to understand.

All 3 of them were meant to be used for beginners until the 3rd-tier and their journey towards 4th-tier.

Keeping that in mind, Danzel started changing the shape of the front cover to match all those 3 books.

First, he made a skull in the middle of the cover to represent the content of necromancy.

Second, he focused on elemental knowledge.

He simply made on each corner the basics of the elements, water, air, earth, and fire.

Of course, they were many more complex elements existing, but just doing the basic ones was him stretching his artistic sense to the very limit.

Then shaped chains 90 degrees on each corner to represent the last book.

And lastly, behind the skull, he faintly made what looked like a magic circle.

It came quite ominous as it was made out of the bones of the ice trolls and it wasn't overwhelming with details for the cover to look like a mess.

That work alone took him an hour long, but copying it to the 4 other books took only half that time.

And after almost 2 days, Danzel went back to meet all his creations.

Putting the books in his storage ring, Danzel equipped his shield before turning into a mist.

Moving at an extronery pace, it took him mere moments before he arrive where he left this undead.

The Anabast were the first ones to take notice of his presents with the now equipped draugrs being a second late.

"We welcome our creator." The Anabast said in unison.

"We welcome our liege." The Draugr said in unison while going to one of their knees.

Staring at the draugrs, Danzel sent out his command.

'Rise. There is no need to bow to me.' Danzel cold voice was heard by all the undead who followed his orders immediately.

Seeing the draugr's now on their feet, Danzel nodded to himself before giving his next command.

"You are ordered to create a group of 5 in the next 10 minutes. Once done so, spread with your group outside the village and patrol at the edges of my will. If you find any ice trolls, report back, and if not possible fight back."

"If you find the natives of this village...detain them and bring them to me alive. If not that isn't possible either report back to me or kill them if they show any aggression. Now go." Danzel said with his cold voice upon all the Draugrs.

Hearing the command and the will of their liege, it didn't even take them a minute for the Draugrs to create a group and go out of their way to follow his command.

And in a matter of 5 minutes, only the 5 Anabast and their creator, Danzel stood there.

"Now about you all..." Danzel turned to face the Anabast, his ethereal dark green eyes flaring up strongly for a brief second.

"Our will is yours to command..." The tallest ribless Anabast said as all of them were traveling their skulls to him.

"That is only but expected for one of my creations, especially on those to who I gave my own power." Danzel said in his cold voice.

His words alone made the Anabast feel as if some extra weight has been added to their bodies.

From them all, Danzel could feel that 2 of them were completely calm, 2 were panicking internally which were the one-eyed ones and the one that talked to him was a mix of both.

"As I even told you before. I have no need of incompetent servants who draw upon my own strength. For me not to remove you, anchors, chaining you into the mortal plain, he will have to prove yourself."

"..."

"..."

"..."

"..."

"..."

The five of them stayed silent upon hearing those words and Danzel paid attention to how they would respond and what emotion they had now.

The one eyes one panic only turned worse and they gaze at the others searching for an answer.

The one that had his ribs flatted to look like bone armor stared towards him with some kind of resolve.

The tallest one had the most complex emotions of them all. A mix of emotions that rapidly changed. If Danzel had to guess, that guy was working his mind on overdrive to guess what the best answer would be to his words.

'Last one has...curiosity?'

Before he could get a good read of the blind ones' emotional state, it was this Anabast that spoke to him instead of the tallest one.

"What do you require for us to prove our worth towards the creator?" The voice of the blind one has the certain coldness of the undead, but it also signs of calmness.

The other Anabast except the bone armor one looked at him in surprise, not expecting him to talk.

"You..." The tallest among them was about to say something but Danzel beat him to it.

"Proving yourself to me is as simple as it is hard." Danzel said in his cold voice.

Seeing that he was to reveal what they needed to do to stay anchored in this mortal plain, all their attention was focused on Danzel's next words.

"And that is, to grow stronger, strong enough worth sharing my strength with you all."

Those words alone made the blind one and the armored ones feel excited, the tallest one focused with the other two confused.

Deciding to ignore their emotions, Danzel continued.

"More specifically, to become stronger magic casters. I have given you all bodies that have affinities with many elements of magic and I seek to see you all trying to achieve your own Mana Aptitude"

Suddenly out of thin air, 5 books with a bone frames appeared.

Using his mind alone, Danzel created 5 mana arms that held those thick books.

"And for that cause, I am willing to share the knowledge that I have with you all." Danzel said as he made the mana arms fly towards the Anabast to give them their books.

Of course, his words made all of them excited despite their different mindset.

Though his next words made them much more serious,

"Wherever you achieve it or not shall decide your fate. If there is no improvement..." Danzel didn't finish his sentence on purpose.

And the Anabast understood what it meant.

Either rise with him or be left behind

There was no other option.