Pestilence: Rise Of The Pure Undead

It was all rooted within Loimos’s dead mind, on the spectrum of life, he made no difference, all living were to be equally eradicated, of course, he himself could reasonably pick and choose, ignore vegetation and such, his death force didn’t bother with such things however.

It became apparent that the key to managing a long-distance usage of it was simply for him to kill more and upgrade his death force further, everything would go up everytime he did so.

Simply training would be no good, as an undead, he couldn’t make a mistake in something so repetitive, manipulating energy to achieve a result was rather cut and dry, if he couldn’t manage it now, it meant that it wasn’t possible.

"Show me what else you can do" spoke the metallic skeleton.

It seemed clear that Loimos had access to more than just an invaluable death force, actually, Faraday was rather interested in what sort of skeleton Loimos exactly was, he couldn’t quite pinpoint what species the skeleton he was animating used to belong to.

The build was very much human or human-adjacent, but the lined-up, pointy fangs meant for nothing but ripping and tearing were rather dubious, it didn’t seem like those teeth could have been used to chew or anything.

In fact, they were rather long and unwieldy looking, it was perfect for an undead that had no use for such things but every corpse was once alive.

"Loimos, does your system mention the exact sort of skeleton you are?" Faraday had been spending much of his time teaching and analysing Loimos’s death force, he had yet to question him on his system.

"Putridum Ossa" he responded in death tongue, raising his arm and manifesting rot from his bony palm, keeping his posture as he slowly converted it into bone, made it ooze blood and then turned the whole thing into miasma.

"How well can you control it when it isn’t directly touching you?"

"The miasma and rot are able to be moulded to a lesser degree, the blood and bone are out of my control entirely" he demonstrated as he spoke.

"I see, then let us focus on this and on using death force to reinforce the body, I foresee much more potential within this ability of yours, there are no better ways to learn than to be put into action, Slotriig!" he called a name and what appeared to be nothing more than a wall slid open, a huge figure stepped into the room.

About two and half meter tall, garbed in outrageously heavy, chrome armour and carrying a sword that could be considered oversized even for this size, it wasn’t wide, in fact, it was rather thin considering the length.

"Here is Slotriig, my best soldier and royal guard of his majesty, and here is Loimos, you two shall spar, avoid the head" Faraday made his way to his throne.

Slotriig put his sword down, deeming that it was overkill for now.

"Pleased to meet you" he said, using the pale tongue to converse.

Loimos didn’t reply and instead manifested a large amount of rot within his ribcage as he ran toward Slotriig in an arc.

He was trying something for the purpose of learning as Faraday had put it, but the outcome was fairly obvious from the start, Loimos got kicked up into the air, crashing against a wall and then falling down with a splash as he tried to use blood-filled rot to soften his fall, he was a bit off and ended up with not a single of his ribs intact.

Using rot to nullify the fall wasn’t successful but he had still been able to bend his limbs and body back to force all of the damage to concentrate on his ribs, which were a part that he could around the same even without.

Faraday was perfectly right, by fighting and having to deal with situations on the fly, Loimos’s control and repertoire was deemed to improve much faster than otherwise, in fact, primeval rot was both an ability intrinsic to him, but it was also simultaneously recognised by the system, despite not actually originating from it.

As such, as he grew his own understanding and the ability grew, the system was also feeding his mind with snippets of information, complementing his own.

Slotriig would certainly force him to discover how to use his primeval rot to defend and evade, even though he wasn’t really trying, he was significantly stronger than Loimos was.

He was a skeleton of the same sort as Faraday, thus armed with a strong and resilient body to begin with, his overwhelming base might was all he needed to throw Loimos around for now.

Also, it seemed as though the armour was one at all, it had felt like the thing wasn’t hollow or softer anywhere, the metal skeleton was encased in even more metal, all of it seemingly integral to his form.

The fact that he was considered powerful enough to serve as guard to the undead king could only mean that he was capable of rivalling some of the strongest of the living.

"Slotriig wins the first round" pointing his finger at Loimos, Faraday did something that restored his mushed ribs.

"By the way Loimos, he used to be known as Hero-Slayer Slotriig, expect even more than double that amount of force as you progress" he mentioned casually, it might not sound as impressive as slaying a god, but bonafide heroes weren’t supposed to get slaughtered by a guard.

Slotriig wasn’t one of the undead lords, it was only testament to how powerful the undead force was under the reign of the king.