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Athos could have sworn that the skeletons’ empty eye sockets were wide with amazement at the moment, but he didn’t mind that. Athos was more excited to experiment with the dead than the living, really.

Now that he was sure he could remove any of the bones from the skeletons and relocate them freely, he wouldn’t need to hold anything as long as the skull was kept intact.

The experiment he was most eager to do was to test whether it was possible to add limbs to skeletons or fuse skeletons together, creating chimeras of bone. Having similar energy signatures there shouldn’t be a strong rejection and Athos had tested that it was indeed possible to modify skeletons.

“You two, come closer.” Athos spoke and two skeletons took a step forward, though they shivered like leaves in the wind.

“You, dismount.” The skeleton that Athos pointed out obeyed and fell to the ground in a pile of bones. The cartilages that hold the skeletons’ bones together were made purely of darkness and could be undone with a single thought, however the skeletons would be unable to move until they were restored again.

Athos picked up one of the humeri from the floor and fitted it to the skeleton’s shoulder, before ordering the skeleton to try to flow mana through it. According to their tests, darkness would connect the humerus and that would be enough, but it didn’t work here. The bones still belonged to a different skeleton and just flowing mana was useless.

The skeleton disassembled on the ground also failed to fuse the humerus into the shoulder, so Athos ordered both of them to flow mana at the same time and it finally worked. The skeletons’ mana flowed from the humerus to the skeleton’s shoulder and bone fused seamlessly.

“It worked!” Athos squealed excitedly and picked up all the bones in the arm and reassembled the arm. When he finished, a third arm was protruding from the top of his shoulder, but there was a problem. Despite being merged with a different body, control of the arm was still from the skeleton dismounted on the ground.

.....

Even when Athos ordered the skeleton on the ground to relinquish control, it still didn’t work. The bone was still part of the skeleton dismantled on the ground and was impossible for anyone else to control.

“Perhaps you can coordinate your movements?” Athos asked, still not giving up on the bone chimera idea. The skeletons tried to coordinate with each other, finding it harder than it looked. Despite the black chain forcing his movements into near-perfect sync, the skeleton’s balance had shifted and the extra limb hindered his movements.

It would take a long time for the skeleton to get used to the extra limb without bumping into anything, and fighting like that was out of the question. Also, Athos still had to connect the rest of the bones to the skeleton. If the three-armed skeleton got too far away and out of the other’s line of sight, it would be useless.

“Let’s try to put the rest of the bones in and wait for you to get used to it.” Athos spoke and proceeded to fuse all the bones at random locations on the skeleton. He could focus on functionality later, this was just a test for now.

Athos only managed to fuse half of the bones together before the skeletons began to shake strangely. Using death vision, Athos realized that the black cores were pulsing and sending mana through the bones, trying to repel each other.

What Athos didn’t take into account is that fusing most of the bones would move the core of the bone pile into the chimera’s skeleton. The new core naturally moved to the center of the body sending out pulses of mana to try to attack the pre-existing core while the latter tried to fend off the invader.

The energy signatures were similar to the point that their spells passed freely through each other without doing damage, but there were still enough differences that their cores repelled each other.

“Oh shit.” was all Athos managed to say, before the chimera skeleton fell to the ground in spasms. The mana pulses inside the skeleton’s body, causing cracks wherever it hits.

Athos tried to separate the bones again, but the core had already moved into the skeleton’s body, removing bones now would be useless. The bones of the skeletons began to break and send splinters flying with each crack, before the cores finally touched and exploded in a haze of darkness.

Skeletons guarding outside entered to see what was happening, but Athos ordered them out.

“A failure, huh? I thought because their energy signatures are so similar their cores could coexist or maybe even merge, but it seems that’s impossible. The black skeletons still have remnants of their original energy signature. Maybe it will work if I do use bones from a skeleton after destroying its core?” Athos began to ramble, calling out to two other skeletons.

This time, he crushed the skull of one of them with one punch, killing him on the spot. The skeleton fell to the ground dead and Athos began unceremoniously picking up its bones. The black core fell apart as soon as the skeleton died, its corrupt energy spreading through the bones.

Athos placed a humerus on the skeleton’s shoulder as in the first attempt and the latter flowed mana through the bone which immediately merged with his shoulder. As there was no different energy signature this time, the bone fused smoothly.

The energy in the humerus spread throughout the skeleton’s body before being absorbed into its core, filling it until it was full and slightly overworked.

“If I fuse more bones into you, your core is likely to become saturated and explode. I’ll absorb the energy as you fuse it into your body.” Athos spoke and began to fuse all the bones scattered on the floor into the skeleton’s body, while using the vampiric touch to absorb the energy in the bones.

The bones were successfully fused this time, but it felt like a waste of time and skeletons. The bones’ energy was completely wasted and even though the skeleton’s size had increased, it could hardly fight with all these random bones.

“It’s a waste to continue like this. The cores repel each other and pure energy is wasted at the time of fusion. I need to somehow create undead with equal mana signatures, or any chimera would be useless.” Athos spoke, thinking of ways to overcome this limitation.

He still hasn’t had time to practice necromancy on the corpses he’s brought back from town and the only other experience he’s had with necromancy is when he turns Ricley into an ordinary skeleton. That’s when he remembered something.

When he tested whether he could create undead from corpses with no remaining energy, he created a skeleton that had no will and only obeyed his orders. But what mattered was that there was no residual energy in the corpse and it was entirely made up of its own mana, so its energy signature would match that of Athos.

‘Skeletons, I created one of you from a corpse with no residual energy. Come to my current position in the hospital.’ Athos mentally sent to all the skeletons, uncertain if the skeleton he wanted had survived the battle in the fortress.

Fortunately, the skeleton arrives in less than two minutes, still carrying sandbags from the work it had been given. Athos immediately used death vision and mana flowed through his arm, confirming his suspicion.

“I was right! You have the same energy signature as me and since you don’t have a will or previous experience, you will adapt much more easily to extra limbs.” Athos spoke aloud, his empty eye sockets almost glowing with joy at the solution of his problems.

‘That means I’m finally going to find a use for all those freezing corpses. With so many, I should be able to create bone giants or an entire unit of chimera soldiers.’ Athos thought.

“All of you are dismissed for the time being. Look for General Astrus for further instructions, he is responsible for building defenses around the fortress. And as for you, let’s go to where the corpses are gathered. I’ll raise some brothers for you.” Athos spoke and ran to where the corpses are, the soulless skeleton following behind him.

They arrived at the ice coffin and Athos began to melt the black ice. Some skeletons were using pickaxes to break the ice and separate the corpses that were separated for Treevor. Athos did not interfere with their work, unfreezing a single corpse to confirm his theory.

The corpse he picked up belonged to a young man, but Athos didn’t take a second look at his features and immediately began transforming him into an ordinary skeleton, rather than a black skeleton.

Athos was not willing to expend a spark of his life force every time he created a single corpse. There were nearly two thousand of them here and their loss would be significant to him, at the risk of unraveling his third layer. Athos didn’t know what would happen to a core if it regressed a layer, but he wasn’t willing to test it on himself.

The darkness devoured the entire corpse until only the bones remained, before injecting the vitality back into a spherical shape into the skeleton’s solar plexus. Athos filled the core with his own mana until it was full, but he didn’t use a spark of his own life force.

The black core formed and the skeleton remained unchanged. A few seconds passed while Athos thought he had failed, before the skeleton stirred as if it was having spasms and slowly got to its feet.

“Yo.” Athos waved at him awkwardly. As there was no connection between them, Athos did not know how to react.