Chapter 384: Experimenting with the Dead.
After Danzel forcefully made Shiro drink the blood of the ice trolls while being careful not to drown her in blood in the process, he did notice Shiro's overall status improving and her health recovering.
But her growth didn't seem to stop.
He already let her "drink" 1 liter of blood and he was worried that any more would be worse than good.
All that he could do now was watch how her own body was eating from the inside to fuel the body's growth. And all that blood that she gave her only recovered around 1500 health.
He tried to tell her to cast her healing magic, but with no success.
So he waited while watching her health drop lower and lower.
Though also her attributes were increasing.
The most noticeable change from this growth, was the fact that Shiro was gaining height, her hair was becoming longer with even her nails growing.
"It's as if she is growing older..." Danzel stated as he watched quite helplessly.
As Shiro's vitality was drained to fuel her growth, she was also becoming thinner despite becoming stronger.
And by the time her growth has stopped, she looked like she grew 2-3 years older and her hair almost reached her knees. And albeit she hasn't turned into a mummy or anything of the sort, one could see that she became quite petite.
"Ahhhhh~" Shiro let out a tired moan as her blurry eyes stared at where Danzel and the two kneeling living armors.
Her voice has given out with all the screaming.
And the pain together with the constant tears made her very tired.
She wanted to say something, but she fell unconscious from exhaustion the next moment.
Staring at her, Danzel shook his head.
"You are as lucky as you are a handful, you know?" Danzel shook his head as he stared at her status.
[Status]
Name: Haruki Shiro
Level: 48
Race: Mana Tainted Nagaiki Oni
Class: [All Knowledgeable Magic Caster Lv. 51]
Sub-Class: [Adept Highborn Oni Vessel Lv. 40]
Health: 735/17500
Mana: 18750/ 20680
Attribute points: 63
Attributes: Strength: 145 Agility: 110 Intelligence: 784 Endurance: 349
....
Technically, she would have survived even without giving the ice troll blood, but her health would have gone negative health, which he guessed was less than ideal.
"She should recover better like this." Danzel mumbled as he picked up the sleeping Shiro in a prince's carry and walked towards the door of the house that he was at.
He went and opened the door, entering the empty house with Shiro in his arms.
Looking around, the house had only some basic furniture with only 2 rooms.
One room is the living room combined with the kitchen with the second room being a bed.
Guessing by the size of the bed, the house was probably owned by a couple.
Not that Danzel cared about whoever the owner of the house was.
He gently placed Shiro on the bed while he seated beside her.
"Sigh~let's see..." Danzel mumbled as he brought out an empty runed contract and his magic pen, which was honestly in quite a bad state after years of use.
"Dammit, I should even get myself a new one when I had the chance..." He complained out loud as he started to fill in the details of the contract.
Once he finished, he confirmed that what he wrote was correct and then turned and raised Shiro's hand with his hand.
Raising a finger of his other hand, the enchantment of the armor created the dark sand.
Using his sword enchantment, he shifted the sand before hardening the dark sand.
Resulting in making one of his fingers extremely pointy.
With that finger, he pricked one finger of Shiro, making a drop of blood flow through his finger.
Raising his finger above the runed contract, he let the blood drop fall in the designated spot of the contract.
By also sensing bits of his own mana, he forcefully activated the contract.
"It has been a long time since I used this method..." He mumbled as he rolled the contract multiple times before placing it inside a 10cm glass bottle with a small string attached.
Once the contract was inside, he wrapped the string of the glass bottle like a smile around his neck.
Danzel then brought out Shiro's staff while also being out the remaining fur of the white wolf and a few bones of the haired buffalo.
He then proceeded in wrapping the staff with the white fur and using the bones to tighten the fur in places.
For that, Danzel had to tighten the bones and connect them all so as not to fall apart.
Resulting in the metal staff being transformed into a white fur bone staff.
The moon was shaped together with its small holes with rings also the light crystal matched extremely well with the staff to the point that Danzel was impressed by his own work.
'Damn, this could become a hobby of mine...' Danzel joked internally as he placed the staff beside Shiro's bed.
His new skill was like sculpting, but with bones.
Overall, they didn't provide any kind of protection other than the fur allowing her to touch the metal staff without getting frostbite on her hands.
Standing up from the bed, Danzel closed the door of the bedroom and let her rest while he was out. Going out of the house, he saw Koji and Niyuki still kneeling on the ground.
"Protect this place till I come back..." He commanded in a cold tone before passing them and going out of his way.
He had other things to do than watch her sleeping.
Using his extreme speed while also using [Swift Movements] to make himself faster. And soon enough, he arrived where he found the girl with a tail and the baby.
Though finding neither of the two here.
They already left, huh?" He mumbled as he went to the corner of the village and jumped on top of one of the houses.
He looked around the surroundings in hopes to see if they were still within his sight.
Alas, none was in sight.
'Dammit, I should even have used the [Death Hunt Dagger] on that girl before leaving for Shiro. I even let valuable information leave my grasp.' Danzel cursed internally as he jumped off the building and back to the ground.
He then used [Blood Sense] to search for the remains of the natives of this place [Eyes of the Damned] and only worked on the living.
Walking around the whole village, Danzel started picking the corpses and what remained of them before dragging them all to one place.
That took him a bit more than an hour before he collected all the corpses of those "fox people" and a few ice trolls.
The latter had minimal damage, but their size alone was an annoyance on their own, as he found it quite displeasing raising draugrs that still have flesh.
He used his decaying touch to make all the flesh of all those corpses disappear which took another half an hour. The sight of that was quite gruesome by itself, though it was nothing that bother Danzel.
Once he had only the bones of the corpses, he used [Undead Reconstruction] to repair and make the corpses whole again.
He even experiment with [Bone Shaping] in changing how each of the bones looked.
The first he tried to do was make the overall large by stretching out the bones to make them around his size. After a few experimenting, he only managed to make around 2.10 meters from the taller "fox people" and 2 meters for the others.
Though doing that, made their bones naturally much more fragile as he simply stretched the bones with his magic.
For the tallest 5 of them all coming from 3 men and 2 women, Danzel put them aside and provided in making drastic changes on their bodies.
He decided to use the ice trolls' bones as material for his "bone sculpting" and to include them in his experiments.
In the first one, he used the ribs and make them smaller so to reinforce his backbone to make him the tallest among them even stretching his arms by using the bone of the ribs.
He had to distribute the bone here and there to match the under part with the upper part. He also made his pointy finger slightly curved and pointy like a dagger and also changed his skull a bit.
For the next male corpse, he did nothing more than completely close his eyes sockets and change bit his skull...
He was simply curious about what will happen by doing that and nothing more.
For the next one, he tried to flatten the ribs to make it look like armor while also changing his skull to be bulgier. He wanted to see how the changes will affect his body.
For the 2 female corpses, he simply covered one of their eye sockets.
One of them had their left eye covered while the other had her right eye socket.
The reason for that was to simply see how it will affect them.
He also shaped their skulls to look different than all the others, but he also tried to make the two look similar to each other in the image of twins.
'I will have to upgrade that [Bone Shaping].' Danzel was tough internally as his mana reserves were running low.
Honestly, other than the experiments that he wanted to test, his shaping their skulls was more for the fun of it.
And while he was admiring his work, sudden windows appear in front of him.
[Though your pursuit of learning the secrets of Death Magic and experimenting with the dead, the talent [Lower Class Death Magic] turned into [Intermittent Class Death Magic]]
"That was unexpected...I almost forgot that I had this." Danzel mumbled as he opened his skills and saw some new spells and skill that was added.
"I will take a look at them later." Danzel dismissed the window as his focus was on the many corpses in front of him.
Though he used [Bone Shaping] on all of those, the main reason for bringing all those undead wasn't to create different-looking draugrs or create undead minions for his cause.
Those reasons were secondary at best.
"Let's see how much I can improve..." Danzel said as his finger glowed in dark green light.
The main goal of them was for him to practice his Great Runes on their bones.