Tybalt’s eyes were almost blinded by the sheer number and brightness of the notifications that lit up his vision within the confines of the small, dark room.

  The necromancer wondered just what sorts of new creatures he had created—he figured, now that he thought about it, that Heimar was probably one of them—but he imagined he would get to inspect them at his leisure in person that night.

  Maybe I’ll go through their statuses before I make the trip, just so I know what I’m working with, but for now, let’s look at what all these levels did under the surface…

  He dismissed the notifications, opened his status and gaped at the numbers on display.

  My strength has surged since the last time I checked this. In just a little over a week, I’ve almost tripled what I had back when Mariella and I climbed that cliffside together. His mind jumped backward in time to that day, how she had felt in his arms—until he shook his head and made himself focus. He had another woman in his arms at this very moment. My physical strength might have reached parity with Mariella’s now. He grinned. In just a week. As soon as this pain in my abdomen goes away, I want to spar with her again.

  He pushed mana into his ring, drew out one of his last two remaining health elixirs—and then his smile faded.

  No, that would be a really stupid waste of resources when I’m already almost fully healed. He put the health elixir back where he’d gotten it from. Maybe I could just ask her to arm wrestle. I really want to know if I’m stronger now. Unless I really misunderstand her, I bet Mariella would love to find out, too.

  That was an activity for later, perhaps.

  He dismissed his status and pulled his notifications back up.

  So, counting the ones I hadn’t used, I have three skill selections now. One for defiant necromancer, two for pestilence mage.

  He pulled his skill options up.

  So, skills I don’t select don’t seem to go away. At least not immediately. And… I didn’t put this together before, but the way the lists of skills for the two classes are mingled, does this mean I could use a skill selection for one class to grab a skill associated with the other?

  Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.

  Tybalt wouldn’t put it past the system, which showed all sorts of favoritism toward those who were already powerful, to show favoritism like that to dual classers like himself as well.

  Time to look at the options.

  Corruption: Infuse a targeted organism, place, or object with your unholy aura to permanently alter and distort its condition according to your will. Caster can select specific attributes of the target to corrupt. Consumes mana and stamina.

  That sounds like the system responding to my experiments on Graven with exactly what I wanted at the time. I wonder how far away I was from unlocking it on my own. How far away am I now? My understanding of my own energy is getting better all the time. Would I be capable of using it on someone who’s at my same level of power or only on people much weaker than me? And what does it mean by selecting specific attributes of the target to corrupt…?

  There were many questions that Tybalt would only find answers to through experimentation. For now, he resolved that he wouldn’t choose Corruption. The system seemed to him to be hinting, in its way, that he had almost had it before. He just needed to find new experimental subjects.

  Those lucky miners who fought off my virus. Or maybe the last two surviving soldiers, if I can’t come up with some worse fate for them.

  Injection Touch: Directly infect a target with a pestilence you have crafted using a touch. Requires physical contact between your flesh and the target’s flesh. Consumes mana.

  Potentially devastating now that I have my undeath virus, but not necessarily useful to me right now. If it would let me infect people who were too far away to touch, that would be a lot more helpful. If someone is close enough for me to reach them physically, they’re already in danger.

  Mystic Blast: Create balls of your condensed aura to damage targets. Properties of the attack depend on the nature of the caster’s aura and intent. Consumes mana.

  I’ll fucking figure it out on my own at this point.

  Osteomancy: Divine information about past, present, or future through bones infused with your aura. The bones channel the spirits of the departed to obtain their hidden knowledge. Clarity and accuracy of information divined depends on how you select and prepare the bones used and the quality of spirits present. Consumes mana.

  Still not particularly valuable when I have a seer in my bed.

  Parasite Cultivation: Gather parasitic life forms to yourself, storing them in or around your body and sustaining them on a diet of your mana until you are ready to use them. With focused effort, you can imbue the parasites with customized traits of your choosing or concentrate their potency. Consumes mana.

  That is interesting. It sounds very useful. But I’m guessing unless I find a really helpful parasite, I won’t find myself wishing I had this skill. Maybe something to come back to later.

  Pestilence Cultivation: Create or acquire pestilences, storing them in or around your body and sustaining them on a diet of your mana until you are ready to use them. With focused effort, you can imbue the pestilences with customized traits of your choosing or concentrate their potency. Consumes mana.

  Just a more generally applicable version of Parasite Cultivation. This is at least better for my purposes. I might be able to create a stronger version of my undeath virus if I’m understanding how this works correctly.

  Ratcatcher: Using your aura as a lure, gather small, pestilence-spreading species of animals to yourself. Temporarily tames them, though the control weakens as time passes without further investment of mana into the specimen. Consumes mana.

  A fucking beast taming skill?! Even if it’s temporary, that… that is not the kind of thing I should be eligible for, by any normal standard, since I’m not a beast tamer subclass. I always think of my defiant necromancer class as powerful, but pestilence mages are just as ridiculous. I have to have this.

  Rot Touch: Apply concentrated undeath mana as an offensive weapon, forcefully injecting it into the body and destroying flesh in proximity to your aura. Consumes mana.

  This is a more efficient version of what I ended up doing to Graven. He had destroyed one of the Private’s internal organs when it turned out to be impossible to turn him straight from human into undead. It would be awfully useful if I had a close quarters fight I was about to walk into. Too bad I didn’t have this a week ago, so I could have just rotted Volusia’s throat out… I should use my human test subjects and see if I can figure this out without using a skill selection on it.

  Targeted Attribute: Without consuming any additional resources, you may augment any pestilence or parasite you craft with the attribute of only infecting or having certain effects on a specific target or subset of targets, from an individual to a species, race, bloodline, age group, sex, height, weight, or those who enter or remain within a specific region, among other options.

  And I thought that Ratcatcher skill was nuts. This skill solves one of the biggest problems I’ve been avoiding thinking about. When I created my undeath virus, I knew I wanted to unleash it on the Kingdom. But if I did, it would probably kill a lot of innocent children. I was willing to accept that, sometimes people die in war, but… The image of Mariella’s face sprang to mind until he shook his head, annoyed at himself, and dismissed it. Anyway, it’s one of the best utility skills I’ve ever been offered. It might not increase the overall potency of my powers, but it frees me up to create deadlier viruses and not worry about killing the wrong person.

  Undead Repair: Infuse undead things with your unholy aura to improve their condition, fixing damage or defects and potentially replacing lost parts, among other applications. Consumes mana.

  I would bet any amount of gold that I’ll figure this out on my own. My Generate Undead skill is about creating undead. How hard could repairing them possibly be?

  Undead Storage: Generate seals composed of mystic runes and concentrated unholy energy in order to store the undead where you can access them in the future. The caster can store undead, remove them from storage, and place them back into storage again freely as long as the selected undead are under the caster’s control and located within touch range. The caster can place these seals in any solid location he chooses, including on both inanimate objects and organic tissue. Breaking the physical seal will instantly release the undead stored within and disperse all stored energy. Consumes mana.

  Sounds like I’d never be alone again. I’d always have access to some undead. The main issue is that if I have a monster in storage, it’s not out there fighting other living things and leveling up. But I could just keep them in the seals when they’re not training. The other issue with choosing this would be, it’s reliant on mystic runes. I already found a couple of them written in the notes for Unholy Forces. If these runes are available somewhere in the notes, too, then I could figure this skill out on my own.

  Undying Attribute: Without consuming any additional resources, you may augment any pestilence or parasite you craft or acquire with the attribute of gradually turning infected entities into undead.

  That’s clearly a reaction from the system to me creating the undeath virus. I think the effects of this are slightly different and probably better, though. If I’m understanding correctly, it improved the pestilence I created. My virus turned people’s cells into engines for casting Generate Undead on their own bodies. With this Undying Attribute, the virus would itself turn the person undead. Maybe that would eliminate the high failure rate of the undeath virus. I doubt this is something I could easily figure out on my own, just like I can feel, conceptually, that the Targeted Attribute is something I would have trouble unlocking on my own. Because this Undying Attribute is fundamentally different from something any naturally occurring virus could normally do.

  Unholy Consecration: Using unholy aura and invoking the power of Death God Mudo, consecrate people, places, or things to the God of Death. This permits the caster to designate new clergy of Death God Mudo, turn areas into unholy ground, and create unholy artifacts. Consumes mana in proportion to the desired effect and size of the area or object affected.

  This skill wins. Tybalt had seen mention of “unholy ground” in Unholy Forces. It was an area of amplified power for the undead that would also weaken the power of those aligned with other gods and enhance the efficacy of necromantic magic.

  Unholy artifacts could include a necromantic counterpart to objects like the holy sword that Tybalt had received in the Tower of Death.

  It would put him on an even footing with other high priests of different gods.

  Overall, Unholy Consecration was by far the biggest force multiplier he could possibly ask for. Creating clergy was good, too, of course. In the long term, that might be the most valuable aspect of Unholy Consecration. But in the short term, the other aspects of the skill were the most exciting.

  Tybalt noticed that in the skill list, Unholy Consecration had an asterisk beside it. He focused on it, and a message popped up.

  *This skill is unique to you and cannot be taught to anyone.

  The necromancer’s eyes widened.

  Doesn’t that imply that all of my other skills are things I could teach? His mind jumped back to how Mariella had explained skills. They were largely just formulations of things that his mana could do already. He had been able to spark fires with mana before he ever had a class. Maybe a regular person could learn necromancy, if he had a really good teacher. The student might not get a class from the system, but if I had little junior necromancers following me around, battlefields could provide a much richer yield of servants than I could awaken on my own.

  Zoonosis Attribute: Without consuming any additional resources, you may augment any pestilence or parasite you craft or acquire with the attribute of being transmissible between humans and animals, back and forth.

  Interesting. Something like a required secondary skill to make the best use of Ratcatcher, I guess.

  A voice cut into his thoughts.

  “Master, we’ve brought you the first batch of dead,” Baldwin sent. “We’re right outside the hut.”