Undead Mage: I Have a Skeleton Clone

Chapter 671 - 449: Equipment Upgrade, Descent of the Demon Dragon, Oath of Tiamat! (Part 2)

"Fang Zhou, give it a name. We’ve raised it for so long, now it’s time for it to properly provide us with experimental materials as repayment."

As a Dragon Sect creature with a powerful bloodline, the newborn Black Gem Young Dragon possessed intelligence comparable to a human child. Therefore, it naturally understood the teasing and malice in Instructor Su Xinyan’s words. It whimpered a few more times, clamping its legs together, covering its crystalline little head with its wings, and snuggling as tightly as it could into Fang Zhou’s embrace.

Fang Zhou gently poked its chin, thoroughly satisfied with both the appearance and abilities of this little female dragon.

Compared to the two passive enhancement abilities of the Death Elf Vigus, the Black Gem Young Dragon’s latter three abilities were primarily actively cast, with effects that balanced enhancement, weakening, and attack—all of which Fang Zhou needed. What caught Fang Zhou’s attention even more was the Dragon Sect’s Spiritual Wisdom skill that Major General Ning Danxin had previously described to him. This was a key skill that only top-tier Spirit Pets like the Dragon Race possessed.

From its literal meaning, it seemed rather simple, merely allowing it to share its wisdom with Fang Zhou and provide a bonus to his research speed. Perhaps for the average Professional, there wasn’t much need for inspiration and research speed; it was just a bonus that was better than nothing. But for a top-tier professional pioneer like Fang Zhou, the boost to inspiration and research speed provided by the Black Gem Young Dragon was crucial. This not only meant saving a vast amount of Soul Power, but it also suggested more numerous and more powerful possibilities for the upcoming Undead Mage Skill Deduction paths.

However, the specific effects would have to be determined through actual deduction. Besides, this Spirit Pet was still in its juvenile phase, so he couldn’t have overly high expectations. Otherwise, wouldn’t he be exploiting child labor?

Sensing Fang Zhou’s thoughts, the Death Elf Vigus, hiding inside him, silently wiped away a tear of bitterness. Heard with the new, forgotten is the old. With this little dragon as my companion, hopefully, Master will exploit me a little less in the future.

Scratching the young dragon’s claw, Fang Zhou suppressed the chaotic thoughts rising in his heart, turned to Instructor Su Xinyan, and said, "Since it’s a Black Gem Dragon, I shall name it Tiamat. I hope it will grow to be like the legendary Dragon God, devouring heavens and earth with awe-inspiring majesty."

This Black Gem Young Dragon was Fang Zhou’s Spirit Pet, so no one had any objection to the mighty name Tiamat.

Fang Zhou lifted Tiamat high and then summoned the Death Elf Vigus. He was about to be very busy for the foreseeable future. He still needed to test how to form a perfect combat cycle with his two Spirit Pets in actual battle to fully leverage the various buffs they provided.

For the next period, Fang Zhou entered the much-anticipated development phase. On one hand, his main body continuously produced Black Iron-tier Artificial Undead. The corpse materials, naturally, came from his gains while training in the Forest of Nature’s spatial fragment. On the other hand, his corpse clone spent day after day exploring the uses of the Corpse Authority. He had already successfully formed a Contract with over 50 Mutated Undead. Of course, due to the relative scarcity of resources, the construction of the Corpse Tomb was proceeding much slower than Fang Zhou had imagined. For now, these corpse guards had not yet been able to break through to the Bronze Tier.

Compared to these steady, step-by-step improvements, what pleased Fang Zhou even more was that, thanks to the help of Tiamat and Vigus, he had gained a deeper understanding of Undead Attribute Energy and a deeper insight into developing Soul Series and Corrosive Poison Series skills.

Of course, the most crucial development involved his corpse clone. After absorbing the Corpse Authority, Fang Zhou was pleasantly surprised to discover that he seemed to have found a way to open a path to his Personal Space. He could form a solid Summoning Contract using the Corpse Tomb space of his corpse clone. This created a chance to store the Artificial Undead he created within the Corpse Hills where his corpse clone resided.

This brilliant idea came from a spark of inspiration provided by the Black Gem Young Dragon, Tiamat. Following this direction for Skill Deduction, Fang Zhou spent a large amount of contribution points and Soul Power to successfully deduce a skill called Summoning Tomb. The skill’s effect was still quite simple for now. It allowed Fang Zhou to use the link between himself and his clone to disband the Artificial Undead he created—with which he had signed a soul contract—to the Corpse Hills. Then, when combat was imminent, he could summon them back.

Currently, this channel could only be used by Fang Zhou himself. However, he could feel that this was the correct path. As long as he found more inspiration and materials, there was a high probability that he could popularize the Summoning Tomb skill among all Undead Mages.

***

Two months passed quickly under such painstaking dual cultivation. With a large amount of Attribute feedback from his corpse clone, Fang Zhou successfully raised his Spirit Attribute to 85 points, smoothly advancing to the Upper Black Iron Tier. He was also the first among all the second-year students at Sea City Military Academy to do so.

In addition to his Attribute growth, Fang Zhou upgraded his entire set of equipment on a large scale. The most important piece was naturally the Undead Magic Ball gifted to him by Instructor Su Xinyan. With the personal guidance of Instructor Huang Qiuyue, Fang Zhou successfully fused the [Soul Guardian Bronze Crown]—a relic from Vladimir, the Naraku Civilization remnant soul he had obtained from the Forest of Nature’s spatial fragment—with the Undead Magic Ball.

Of course, the foundational logic of Cultivation and the direction of Sub-professions like Alchemy and Casting in the Blue Star Civilization were distinctly different from those of the Naraku Civilization. This caused the effect of the Soul Guardian Bronze Crown to undergo strange changes during Fang Zhou’s forging process. Originally, its effect was to protect one’s soul from external shocks. Combined with the power of the Soul-Binding Gem, it had allowed Vladimir’s remnant soul to barely survive the scour of the tides of time for so many years. But after fusing with the Undead Magic Ball, the effects of this relic from a bygone era changed drastically.

[Soul Shattering Magic Ball] (Green, Excellent, Weapon): Exclusive equipment for Undead Mages. It provides a slight enhancement to Summoning Series skill effects and a slight reduction in their costs. Direct Damage, Control, and Debuff Skills cast through this ball gain extra Magic Penetration, making it easier to break through enemy Defense. It also has a chance to inflict the [Soul Shattering] state on an enemy, significantly reducing their Casting success rate.

Besides obtaining a brand-new Soul Shattering Magic Ball, which would be sufficient for him until the Bronze Tier, Fang Zhou also used Negative Energy Ores to upgrade his original 4-piece New Star Mage Set to the new Ember version. Although, due to the mental load and limitations of raw materials, these Ember Mage set pieces were still of White, Ordinary quality. But compared to the previous plain equipment, these new pieces offered significantly more benefits for a negative energy Profession like Fang Zhou’s.

***

At this point, the time for the second-year students’ final exams for the second semester had arrived. For the other Seed Students in the second year, the final exam was no simple matter. They had all undergone a large amount of actual combat training during the year, so their final exam was also conducted in the form of actual combat.

But for Fang Zhou, the final exam that Sea City Military Academy had prepared for its second-year Seed Students, who were generally at the Lower Black Iron Tier, posed no difficulty for him whatsoever. Thus, Instructor Lu Hu simply waved his hand and allowed Fang Zhou to choose and accept actual combat missions freely as a substitute for the final exam.

For military academy students at the Upper Black Iron Tier, aside from sudden emergency missions, Sea City Military Academy offered two types of actual combat missions. One was, of course, the Cave Trials with which Fang Zhou was extremely familiar. The other was the Fierce Beast Mountain Range Hunt that he had long been anticipating.

Weighing the two options, Fang Zhou chose the Fierce Beast Mountain Range without hesitation. After all, he still had the Treasure Map with coordinates given to him by Yue Lingyun’s brother, which pointed to a suspected Naraku Civilization relic. Moreover, he had now fully processed all the loot and gains from the Forest of Nature’s spatial fragment. His original accumulation of Soul Power and contribution points had been entirely expended on the Skill Deductions for both his main body and his clone.

It was time to venture into new territories and begin a new cycle of slaughter and reaping rewards.