A few hours later, Arris had fully scoped out the area surrounding the barracks. There wasn’t really anything he could exploit too heavily to his advantage. There were two exits to the barracks, one which continued straight down a long empty street, and the other which emptied directly onto a larger street, forcing you to turn immediately left or right. The rest of the area was surrounded by large, insurmountable stone walls, unscalable and significantly higher than the surrounding walls.

  In fact, the barracks’ entrances had been placed in such an orientation so that a ranged fighter would need to be down on the street to have a clear shot at any skeleton. There would be no skullduggery involving standing on the roof and blowing skeletons up with spells from relative safety. Arris would need to risk himself to get the skeletons.

  Ultimately, the plan Arris had decided on was rather simple. He was currently standing in the middle of the long street that led away from the barracks, close enough to stare at the congregation of skeletons milling around in and about the barracks, about to put his plan into action.

  Arris raised his arms and began channeling the mana needed for a Condensed Aether Bolt. He’d done some math earlier and had realized he could actually kill these skeletons for far less mana than he was currently expending to kill them.

  Making the assumption that the skeletons were investing into strength or agility for their stats, Arris had come to the conclusion that they really shouldn’t have more than 150 health. His previous Condensed Aether Bolts had been overshooting that amount by some 50 damage. And while that was fine when he was being cautious, now he needed efficiency. If he simply ran out of mana every time he cast Condensed Aether Bolt, he would never be able to clear the barracks.

  A small portion of the time spent planning and scouting Arris had actually spent making calculations, to try and figure out exactly how much mana he needed to put into his spells to have them still deal enough damage to kill skeletons. One of the first things Arris had done was to ask the System for Condensed Aether Bolt’s scalings per skill level. The following window popped up.

  Using that information, Arris had done some calculations, using a rock to scribe numbers down on a stone wall so that he could remember them. After crunching out the numbers, Arris had realized that he dealt roughly 106 damage with his Aether bolt when there was 200 mana pumped into it.

  Though, that was without factoring in resistances. As far as Arris could tell, the skeletons should have the same resistances as him. After he’d asked the System how mixed resistances had worked, a brief window had popped up.

  That was really quite straightforward. Factoring this into his calculations, Arris now knew that his condensed aether bolt should deal about 205 damage to a skeleton when charged with 200 mana. Though, the system had mentioned that his Condensed Aether Bolt did not need a full charge to cast. As the ratio was roughly 1 to 1, Arris knew that he only needed about 150 mana in his Condensed Aether Bolt to take down a skeleton, which would leave him with 90 left over. As he was currently regenerating roughly 1 mana per 10 seconds, that meant that if he drew a battle out for ten minutes, then he could potentially blast 2 skeletons with Condensed Aether Bolts. Alternatively, he could simply use that mana for Dark Blows, which cost considerably less and allowed for much more usage, but wouldn’t necessarily guarantee a kill or even deal more damage.

  Ultimately Arris had decided to simply cast the Condensed Aether Bolt once to get some skeletons’ attention, lure them away from the barracks, and then use Dark Blows to finish the rest of the skeletons. Arris continued channeling mana into his spell matrix until 150 mana had drained out of his pool. Stopping the flow of mana, Arris sighted on one of the skeletons towards the edge of the group before letting his spell loose.

  > You deal Skeleton Drudge 154 Damage! <

  > Skeleton Drudge has died! <

  As soon as his Condensed Aether Bolt hit, the entire barracks of skeletons which had been in view of the single skeleton turned and charged out after Arris. Mentally cursing, he turned and fled down the long street. If the entire barracks continued to follow him, picking off a few at a time would be very difficult.

  Luckily though, when he glanced back after ten seconds of running he noticed that only six skeletons had continued chasing more than a couple hundred feet. The rest were slowing and some already walking back to the barracks. Clacking his teeth together in an attempt to laugh and grin, Arris continued running forwards down the street. His plan seemed to be working. Time to initialize the second phase. His turn was coming up very shortly.

  Another fifty feet and Arris turned off onto a side street. He ran about fifty feet down the street, before stopping. It wasn’t long before the skeletons arrived at the entrance of the street, and without slowing at all, charged in after him. Arris turned and continued running down the street. Another fifty feet and he’d reached another side street. He turned off into it, and immediately ran into the first house he saw, taking the stairway inside up onto the walls of the labyrinth. Looking back down onto the street from the top of the stairway, Arris waited for the skeletons to continue their pursuit.

  This next portion of his plan was critical. If the skeletons had an innate sense of where he was, this plan wouldn’t work at all. Otherwise, they should just run right by, allowing Arris to get behind them.

  It was only another couple seconds before the skeletons came into view. Much to Arris’ relief, instead of turning and following him up onto the labyrinth walls, the skeletons simply ran by down the street. The very second Arris saw the last of the skeletons run by, he ran down the stairway, now falling in behind them. Unfortunately, he wasn’t fast enough to catch up with them, running at more or less their speed, but he’d already anticipated this and had a plan.

  Arris opened his inventory and pulled out a human bone. Once four of the skeletons had rounded the corner, he threw the bone at the last two, hitting the rearmost one in the back, sending it staggering into the one in front.

  > You deal Skeleton Archer 1 damage! <

  After recovering, the two skeletons turned, seeing Arris, but the other four skeletons which had rounded the corner did not come back to their compatriots' aid. Delighted his plan had worked, Arris once again happily clacked his jaws together, and checked the nameplates of the two skeletons.

  < Skeleton Archer | Undead Monster | Level 4 | 100% HP >

  < Skeleton Warrior | Undead Monster | Level 5 | 100% >

  Arris considered the duo with a little more consternation than he had previously. This would be the first level 5 skeleton he’d take in melee combat. This one seemed to have some sort of Warrior class. The Skeleton Drudges were easy fights, but Arris wasn’t so sure about a Warrior. And plus, with that archer providing ranged support, Arris could be in serious trouble.

  Turning, Arris ran back down the street and into the house continuing up the stairway before circling around behind it to ambush the two skeletons, only twenty or so feet behind him. After a couple more seconds, the skeletons came into view, charging up the stairway, totally oblivious to the warrior waiting in ambush right above them.

  Arris leaped off the stairway towards the archer who had been outpaced by the warrior and was now in the back. He empowered his mace with Dark Blow and chopped violently down towards the skeleton’s head. With a resounding crack, the skeleton’s head split open.

  > You deal Skeleton Archer LETHAL damage! <

  > Skeleton Archer has died! <

  Arris attempted to grin but instead just clacked his jaws together. Peeved, but not about to let himself get distracted, Arris settled for an anticipatory twirl of his mace before retreating down the stairs. Currently, the Skeleton Warrior held all the advantages. It was fighting down an incline, meaning it could put more force into his blows, and if Arris lost his balance he’d fall to the bottom and expose himself to an attack. Better to not risk fighting on the stairs at all if he could.

  After the Skeleton Warrior finished its ponderous turn, it glared down the stairs at Arris, who was now awaiting it in the open area of the house. The Skeleton Warrior walked down the stairs, its sword out in a ready position, clearly prepared to fight. Arris could tell just from its body posture that this skeleton would be far more of a challenge than any he’d faced before.

  The two combatants eyed each other for several seconds before the skeleton warrior came in hard and fast. It opened with a low, sweeping blow in the hopes of getting under Arris’ guard and maybe immobilizing him.

  Arris though was no amateur to combat. He dropped his mace low in a parry, successfully blocking the blow of the skeleton, all the while stepping in to deliver a sharp blow to its shoulder before dancing away, just out of range of its counterattack.

  > You deal Skeleton Warrior 29 damage! <

  And so began a long fight. Luckily, it didn’t seem that this Skeleton Warrior was significantly stronger than a Skeleton Drudge. While clearly possessing at least some amount of skill, in the end, it only ever managed to parry two of his ripostes, and only landed a single blow during the entire fight. Though while the fight was none too difficult, it ended up being surprisingly long, a total of two minutes.

  Back when he was still human, if Arris was up again a regular human, an actual match to a single touch rarely lasted more than thirty seconds, only being particularly long if the fighters were being overly cautious or were exceptionally well matched. The reason was simple: people get tired very quickly, and tired people tend to make mistakes. When you make a big enough mistake against a competent enough opponent, you’ll often lose the match because of it. The Skeleton Warrior was the perfect example. If it were a real flesh and blood human, his single blow to the arm could’ve potentially broken and severely damaged it, causing massive pain and likely incapacitating the human. The fight would’ve been over in ten or so seconds, because the skeleton had been over-eager in his initial blow, stepping too close to Arris and leaving his guard too open. Fights to the death lasting any significant amount of time were exceptionally rare.

  Now that the world was operating on an entirely different system though, things had changed. That blow in the first ten seconds which may have incapacitated a combatant before the System initialized instead dealt the skeleton 10% of its health. Instead of ten seconds, the fight took two minutes. Though the end result had been the same as it would’ve been, in one world or the other. Arris had won. After the fight, a screen popped up.

  Arris quickly asked the System for a description of blunt weapon proficiency.

  Arris waved the notification away, and then quickly looted the two corpses, netting another bit of bone dust and a copper coin. He then wandered back through the streets, moving towards the main street which connected to the barracks. And sure enough, there were the four skeletons, slowly trudging back towards the barracks. Arris crept up behind them, and pulling a skeletal hand from his inventory, chucked it at one of the skeletons, which it impacted into with a clatter. The rest of the skeletons turned, fixing their malevolent, red flamed gazes upon Arris.

  He clacked his jaws together, then turned around and ran. This was going to take a while.

  For the next several hours, Arris continued using the same strategy. He’d first begin by baiting a small group of skeletons out of the barracks by hitting one near the edge of the crowd and attracting five to ten skeleton’s attention. Then he’d run off till he got to his stairway just around the corner. He’d run up the stairway, the skeletons would run by, and just as the majority of the skeletons had gone rounded the next bend onto another street, he’d throw a hand bone at one of the rearmost skeleton’s backs attracting one or two skeleton’s attention, causing them to separate from the group. He’d kill those skeletons, go find the other skeletons which would typically be walking back to the barracks, and then repeat the stairway and separation strategy until all the skeletons in the group were dead. Then he’d wait for his mana to regen to full and simply repeat the strategy.

  Fortunately, the strategy took far less time than it would’ve once before. With Arris’ mana regen at 1.14 mana every ten seconds, Arris refilled his entire pool of 240 once every thirty-five minutes. But even so, after a couple hours of using the same strategy over and over and over again, the novelty had worn off. But it wasn’t really like Arris had a better plan or even anything else to do anyway, so he just continued killing skeletons.

  Then, when Arris was working on his fourth group of skeletons, he realized: he was about to level up! Another 6 points in Wisdom would increase his mana regen by a considerable amount. He could speed up the process even more. Eager for the increase in efficiency, Arris drew three skeletons on a single pull so that he’d hit that 100% experience. He was currently at 87.5%. The group he pulled had two Drudges and an Archer. He sent the Archer to a permanent death with a surprise blow after leaping off the staircase. The two Drudges, hardly any sort of challenge, followed soon after. Then, the much-coveted screen appeared.

  Arris pumped a fist in a celebration, about to open his status page to dump his six new wondrous stat points into Wisdom. But it appeared the System wasn’t quite done with him.

  Arris read it over twice, making sure to miss no details, and then closed the notification. Another screen popped up.

  Arris frowned at the status page. The flowery language was great and all, but the descriptions weren’t telling him the most critical information in regards to his choice. This was another trick by the system to try and get people to make an uninformed choice. He hadn’t been told what selecting either class actually did. With a ding, a notification popped up.

  Arris nodded, actually a little surprised the system had given him some sort of reward for noticing such a trite thing and then waved the notification away. He had more important things on his mind right now. He needed to figure out what each class would give him. Arris asked the system, and a pop up appeared.

  So essentially, Arris would get 20 stat points, in either categories improving the body’s capabilities for warrior, or categories improving the body’s mana capabilities in mage. He could actually use those combat stats. But it was the next portion of the two class descriptions which really made Arris’ decision clear. If he went with warrior, it would be an incredible struggle to rank up his magic based subclasses. He didn’t quite know what class progression was, but the loss of 100% was a huge loss. And Arris really wanted to do magic. Magic was safer and felt a million times flashier. Sure, he could handle his mace decently well, but he had loved all of the magic he’d done so far. It was fun. Blasting skeletons to oblivion from fifty feet off was exhilarating. Arris thought, ‘mage’, and another screen popped up.

  Arris rolled his spectral flames of eyes and thought, ‘yes’. With that thought, yet another screen popped up.

  That was actually quite a few choices. Though, as before, all the System had given him were a bunch of empty words. He’d need to inquire to get more information. And Arris did, pulling up descriptions of all of the subclasses presented to him.

  Arris made sure to read over each subclass description a couple times, analyzing each choice as he went. Thaumaturge and Aetheromancer seemed to be two similar types of mage, Thaumaturge focused on drawn-out combat, and Aetheromancer focused on short fights. Of the two, Arris would have to choose Thaumaturge. It would be nice to actually make it through a fight, instead of running out of mana at the beginning. Between Death Knight and Dark Paladin, there wasn’t really much of a choice. Death Knight only had a 133% progression rate, while Dark Paladin’s was 166%. While Death Knight did admittedly sound far cooler, the drop of 33% in progression rate was simply too much to deem the class viable.

  Of course, then again, he wasn’t making an informed decision. He needed to know what progression rate actually did to decide whether it was worth eliminating Death Knight as a choice due to its low progression rate. Arris inquired, and the system responded.

  Huh. That was a little confusing. And Arris didn’t know what class points were. He inquired the system again.

  Arris’ spectral flames of eyes widened. This was hardly a decision. He’d lose access to a bunch of skills if he decided to become a Death Knight? Yeah, no, not for him.

  Ultimately, Arris had narrowed the pool of subclass choices to two. It was either Dark Paladin or Thaumaturge. He actually liked both quite a bit. Dark Paladin seemed rather versatile, and as he was soon to go and face a boss, that extra boost in single combat potential could be very helpful. On the other hand, that extra ten Wisdom from Thaumaturge was a huge boost to his mana regen.

  After this level up, he’d gain 10 Wisdom from his mage class, 10 Wisdom from his Thaumaturge subclass, and 6 Wisdom from his stat points, totaling to 26, plus the 0.03 for his level up. That was a grand total of an addition 0.81 mana regen, almost doubling his current amount. The amount of mana he’d need for a Condensed Aether Bolt would also go down considerably, as his increase in Wisdom and mana pool would increase the damage per two seconds of charge massively. And there was that additional offensive spell, Spirit Shards. Dark Paladin sounded good, but it really couldn’t compare. He thought the word, ‘Thaumaturge,’ making his decision.

  Arris thought, ‘yes,’ and yet another window popped up.

  Wow. There was more. Arris had already spent 15 minutes reading the previous texts and considering his options. Though it seemed he would soon have many more options to consider. He waved the screen away, and yet another notification popped up, continuing the seemingly unending stream of decisions to make.

  Arris quickly opened the various descriptors of each skill. Aether Bolt was essentially just a less efficient version of Condensed Aether Bolt that cost less mana. Spirit Surge was an area of effect damage ability which dealt raw damage and slowed. Spirit Shift was a short range teleportation ability which left a wake of area of effect damage over time damage. Aether Sheen was some sort of ripoff of a mana barrier and could block around 50 damage with Arris’ stats. And spirit blast was a medium ranged, high damage, single target blast which dealt raw damage and shredded resistance. Though, these were only his starting spells. Would he eventually get access to greater spells which he needed to start saving up for? Before Arris started willy-nilly buying things, he needed to check.

  The other spells he’d eventually get from Thaumaturge seemed to be more or less all the same. They were for the most part damage based spells. The speeds, sizes, types of damage, quantities, and types of projectiles varied for every spell. But the general function was the was the same. To deal a massive amount of damage. There were a couple spells to protect the caster, a couple spells to increase mobility, and many spells applied minor debuffs. But for the most part, they were damage spells. He went through to the level 30 spells before he stopped. There wasn’t anything terribly impressive or worth buying. He could reevaluate at level 30.

  The racial skills, however, were of an entirely different type. They were highly varied in function and form. Bone Shards was a spell which summoned a small set of bone darts, which could be propelled at enemies. Bone Shield was the skeleton version of Aether Sheen, except it covered the body like armor, and only blocked physical damage. Soul Stealing seemed to be a version of what the Death Knight could do, and this made Arris even more glad he hadn’t taken that class. He could get its skills from his racial skill store. Consummation was an ability which allowed the user to consume souls of the living to regenerate resources and gain experience. More efficiency could be gained by putting more points in. Unfortunately, It specifically mentioned it didn’t work on undead, and being in an undead dungeon, the skill was currently pointless. Bone Armaments was essentially an enhanced, larger version of Bone Shards. And Bone Reinforcements reduced damage taken and increased damage dealt.

  They were pretty versatile abilities, and Arris would’ve liked to pick up a couple of them. But unfortunately, after he had looked into the shop, he realized there were some other Skills he could purchase that would be massively beneficial to Arris. At level 15, he had the option to buy a skill called, “Mini-Boss”. The skill would quite literally turn him into a mini-boss, guaranteeing him +1 Stat Point a level, +1 Class and Racial point every 5 levels, a random increase in all stats totaling a minimum of 20, and a single free, unique or rare unspecified ability. The total cost was 15, and it was progressional to a ranking of two, needing the same amount of skill points for the next level.

  Provided the fact that he currently had the attribute Immortal which gave him a lifespan of thousands of years, Arris was set to live for a very long time provided he didn't get himself killed in a fight somewhere along the way. And if he was planning in the long term, that increase in a skill point per level would be massive. Who knew the highest levels he could reach. He may cap at 100. He may never cap at all. In any event, upgrading this ability could give him huge bonuses, letting him buy a ton more skills and gain a ton more Wisdom. He needed that upgrade and would save for nothing else.

  Arris ultimately decided to purchase nothing from Racial Skills and purchase Spirit Blast from his Class Skills. He then opened the scalings for his new skill.

  It was a great ability. Paired with his Condensed Aether Bolt, he had a perfect combo. Arris could first Spirit Blast his enemies and then with the increased damage strike them with a Condensed Aether Bolt, dealing a massive amount of damage. Aside from Spirit Blast, he’d also gotten Spirit Shards from gaining the Thaumaturge class. Wanting to check what Spirit Shards did, Arris also opened a window for that.

  Arris really liked this new skill. While it soaked up far too much mana and spirit for its damage ratios to be worth it in straight-up combat, preparing four or more of these things before an actual fight could be a game changer.

  With only one thing left to do, Arris opened his stat page and dumped all his stat points into Wisdom. His stat page read as below.

  Arris had another important question on his mind. When he’d first opened his stat page, he’d noticed that different skills had different colors. He wondered what that was all about. The following window popped up.

  That was rather simple. Arris swiped the screen aside and then… no more popped up. Questions answered, level up dealt with, new class understood, and racial skills examined, Arris was ready to get back to killing skeletons and test out his new powers. First, though, he needed to redo all his calculations.

  After a minute or so of grinding out numbers in his head, Arris had calculated the maximum amount of damage he could deal with his full combo. The number was 469. That was enough damage to one shot himself three times over. There was no way the boss could justifiably have that much health, and even if it did, whatever health was left over after Arris unleashed the full power of his combo should be a very small amount.

  Though, before he got to the boss fight, Arris still needed to finish cleaning up the barracks. There weren’t really a lot of skeletons left, and with his new magical powers, Arris was reasonably sure he could dispatch them reasonably quickly.

  He did some math and realized that he only needed to put around 130 mana into a Condensed Aether Bolt for it to one shot one of the lesser skeletons. This meant that he could theoretically use Condensed Aether Bolt on three consecutive skeletons.

  After baiting out one more group of skeletons, Arris went to the barracks to find them almost completely empty. In total, he’d killed 25 so far. Looking inside he could only see four remaining. Though there may still be a few left within the barracks. Arris would play it safe.

  Arris was pretty much out of mana at this point, as he’d used another Condensed Aether Bolt in his skirmish with the 4 skeletons, and he needed a full bar of mana to be totally prepared. After forty minutes of sitting around, Arris had prepped 4 Spirit Shards and regenerated his mana to full. He was ready to go. He stood up and set off towards the barracks.