The Ruined Death Knight
chapter-280

Having killed their enemies and successfully saved the miners, all they had to do was to wait for the Dynasty reinforcement to pick up the miners and transported them back.

With their mission being to escort those miners together with the soldiers of the Dynasty, Danzel and Agares were forced to babysit the Dynasty soldiers till they reached safety.

Those few hours were pure misery for Danzel.

Having finally gained a large amount of XP, he couldn´t wait to hole up in his room and start upgrading all his skills. Though he could do it while walking, he feared the severe headache that is bound to beat mentally out of him.

Not only that but the gaze that the paladin was giving him was more than an annoyance. If looks could kill someone, then Danzel would even be obliterated by now.

Though the paladin couldn´t know of him being an undead thanks to the ring that Velkir gave him, he knew that the paladin despised him to his core.

It wasn´t only because he was glaring at him with intense killing intent, but once that man went to heal the miners, the first thing that he noticed was that his undead that was guarding the miners had been exterminated in almost an instant.

Though he finds it a pity for his undead to end up like that, he didn´t go out of his way to complain.

Mostly because the paladin that killed his undead was of the 4th-tier.

So for the rest of their mission, Danzel decided to stay quiet.

Once they arrived at the base of the Dynasty, all that Danzel, Agares, and Shiro had to do were to wait for Velkir to pick them up.

The second party to arrive here is the two dark elve siblings, with Vanessa glaring at her brother Azrael as if he stole her pocket money.

He didn´t know what happend between those two, but guessing based on their looks, Azrael had done something.

As to what it was exactly he wasn´t interested enough to ask.

As for Vanessa, once Shiro came to her, for a moment she forgot completely of the fact that her brother deceiving her.

Azrael of course, as a 4th-tier magic caster, saw through the moments of weakness of his sister and acted accordingly by walking to Danzel to start discussing the performance of the [Cursed Spear of Bloodthirster].

A name that Danzel found a bit too excessive for a spear. Though he didn´t say that to Azrael.

And with everyone discussing among themself, except Agares who was observing his granddaughter conversing with the dark elve.

Several hours passed before Velkir and Sartan appeared to them.

With everyone finishing their own mission, Velkir used his flashy teleportation magic and transported them back to their base.

As soon as Velkir teleported there, he vanished as quickly, saying that he will go experiment together with Azrael.

Danzel briefly went to see Skull Claw, before going back to his room.

Once there, he imminently brought out his status and looked at his total XP once more.

[XP: 8 300 300]

Once he saw the absurd amount of XP Danzel couldn´t help but get excited again and...feel regret.

Bringing out one of the alchemic weapons with the [Rune of Harvest] and reading the description, he sighed.

[Rune of Harvest: Average]: A imperfect version of a rune that was invented by a librarian who noted the purpose of the cursed items inside the said library. Because of his personality, the members of his race and one of the outsiders didn´t put any trust in him and put him to oversee the library's items. Being the only one that took his work seriously and felt imprisoned by the incompetence of his "colleagues". One day though, when invasion struck his nation, he stepped up and annihilated everyone by bringing a disaster that till this day ravenous a world. The outcome of his action resulted in him becoming his true self and overcoming the threshold of mortality. The runes carved by the tool which he uses to reap the living steal their very own [Soul Essence] and give it to the runesmith itself to be transformed into [?#?#?: Experience Points] for the sole purpose to strengthen the runesmith. Those who had their own [Soul Essence] stolen in death are more likely to stay forever in the [?#?#?: Realm of the Dead]. The current efficiency of the rune is 70%.

Danzel sigh of regret came from the fact of the rune being 70% efficient and not actually 100%.

If the rune were 100% instead of 70%, then most likely the 7 000 000 XP that he earned would have been 10 000 000 XP!

Just thinking of what his potential had lost made him extremely sad.

Alas, he decided not to complain as the XP was practically free given to him.

Instead decided to put his focus on more pressing matters.

And those were his skills!

Without putting much thought into it, he went out and upgrade [Gale Mana Blade], [Armor Mana Plating],[Vanguards Defense], and [Greater Sense Danger] into the 3rd-tier, or rather modification phase.

Those options were the most obvious ones as they were still on the 2nd-tier skills and were relatively cheap considering his total XP amount.

All 4 skills represented his fighting skills and out of all of them, [Gale Mana Blade] was his strongest tool against mid-long ranged enemies. He somewhat felt bad letting such skill rot in the 2nd-tier.

`You four can finally receive your promotion and reach a new height´ He thought as several options appeared.

First of all, he decided to choose the, [Dead Mana Affinity] together with [Soul Affinity] for the [Greater Sense Danger] skill to see if the route of those two skills continues to give good skills such as [Mortal Reminder].

The result of the combination was the skill called [Existential Sense Danger].

Not only did it improve slightly the previous effect that it had, but the skill would also warn him from unnatural dangers concerning his very existence, be it his body or soul.

Overall, Danzel was satisfied with it even if the new effect was rather vague to say the less.

Next to his list was the [Vanguards Defense].

When the modification option came, Danzel decided to test the other option instead of the two affinities as he die a moment ago.

And the end result was choosing [Dead Mana Affinity] and [Absorbtion].

[Vanguards Defense] is a skill that let his arm move faster with a shield on his hand and absorbs the kinetic energy of the enemy's blow just to send out a small amount of it back.

For the sake of the skill of having an affinity, Danzel chose the [Dead Mana Affinity] as dead mana affected the material world compared to [Soul Affinity].

He could have chosen the [Overall Improvement] as his second choice, but in the end, he went out and picked [Absorbtion].

What came out of those two combinations was a skill called [Undying Guard], which surprisingly changed the effect quite a bit.

The main effect of improving one's reflex and speed remained, but what changed was the second part of the skill. It now turned that the kinetic that was absorbed into one shield will in turn into dead mana to either heal an undead or recover one mana. The thorn-like effect was completely removed and instead, a new way of healing appeared!

It mentioned that the mana recovery effect was 5 times less effective that the healing effect.

Overall, the skill turned out great.

Since the absorption amount has increased, that also meant that his shield would get less damaged in the long run. And for him who most of the time lacked a shield to pare with his long sword, that skill was a life saver.

"Damn, I should even upgrade my skills much earlier..." Danzel scolded himself for holding himself down on gaining such amazing skills.

But he didn´t regret it.

Most of the time he lacked pure strength that techniques.

He knew that he would never be safe with him being a runesmith.

Though now he was suffering from severe headaches from the newfound knowledge beating itself to his mind, he didn´t regret his choice.

Taking a break for 5 minutes to recover from the pain of the headache, Danzel went out and saw the options for the [Armor Mana Plating].

For it, he also decided to go the same route as before for the same reason.

He chose [Dead Mana Affinity] as it affects the material world more. For his second option, he chose the [Mana Resistance].

The second choice, in particular, found Danzel extremely difficult to choose from as to how many great options they were to pick from.

Be it choosing to make the mana platings [Tougher] or the interesting option of [Barrier] which he was most tempted to choose, Danzel had to compromise with himself and choose the one that made the most sense.

And that was none other than the [Mana Resistance] option.

With mid-long distance being his overall weakness and having already experienced getting shot by spells more than he wanted to admit, Danzel wanted to fix one of his weaknesses with this choice.