As my consciousness came back, the blackness seeming to get pierced by a spear of light that slowly, and gradually ripped a hole in the abyss of nothingness, I looked about confused. Feeling around I could tell that light was merely coming out of one or two holes in a material that cocooned my body. Letting out a sigh, I grunted pushing through the crystalline material that surrounded my body, as if fell off of me it shattered like glass around me. The scene that spread before me was a sea of death, withered vegetation barely recognizable under their brown and black colors. Sitting there speechless, I suddenly looked to my body feeling hopeful, the feeling of life force surrounding me and feeding into my very core. My mood immediately crashed when I saw my usual bony body.

A change in my body I did note was there seemed to be a black ooze like substance that filled my ribcage now, which had more ribs, and a strange webbing in between them. At the touch if felt exactly like it looked, gelatinous and slightly sticky, searching the rest of my body I found it to be only in my ribcage. What I did find in the search was the appearance of several strange web like structures found throughout my body, no longer needing as much mana to replace the muscles and joints as they seemed to do part of the work for me. The final thing about my body that I learned is that my eye sockets were no longer empty, they seemed filled with crystals that let off a soft blue glow.

Stretching my body a bit, the new threads of webbing throughout my body needed to be bent and worked with unlike magic so that its flexibility and elasticity could increase. A feeling welled up inside of me as I stretched, letting out the obligatory yawn feeling refreshed as I did so before everything came to a sudden stop. “I’m… breathing?”

Tutorial spoke up cheerfully, “Of course, you are partly organic now. After savagely murdering so many plants and vegetation you now need CO2, and sunlight gaining an enlightenment to both necromancy and vegetation.”

“And if I don’t get it?”

“Then your core, and new tendons will wither going back to how you were before your awakening.”

I paused for a moment, “Will I be able to gain these positives back?”

“Your vegetation is a form of necromancy using CO2, and Sunlight as a fuel, so you’ll never truly lose those benefits. You are just empowered by the sun.”

“So I’m superman?” This caused a great pause in Tutorial as it tried to processed information inside my own head. “He was a being who was supercharged by the sun.”

“Then you are SuperSkeleton then. You aren’t a man.”

I felt slightly offended by that, ignoring tutorial now out of a bit of frustration, even if I was a skeleton I was still a guy. Maybe I was still holding onto my old human values but still there was a slight annoyance behind it even if my mini-me isn’t there anymore. Letting out a deep sigh once more I took another look around my surroundings, a large amount of ash seemed to be in the area.

Looking over the ash, and the withered trees I noticed that my two undead brothers seemed to enjoy the ash making a bed out of it, maybe this freshly killed material provided them with comfort. Touching the trees, I pressed my hand through the bark making it crumble under my fingers, what was left was more of the ash and a black crystal. Gripping onto the crystal I could feel an aura similar to myself, it seemed to glow with the power of undeath. Searching the area around here I found ten more of such crystals, along with one solid white that was underneath where I collapsed. All of them seemed unique the last one was filled with a mass of life that I could probably use in my necromancy.

Pocketing everything, I sat down, looking over my log seeing the slaughter that I caused to the plant life around me which seemed to include every blade of grass at this point. Getting annoyed going through it, I instructed Tutorial to make kills a separate tab within the log eliminating the clutter making it easier to find the important stuff. A few lines interested me, I marked them as important just skimming through the pages of information before pulling up a single blue box with the important information.

Important Log ItemsLevel 10 reached core stabilized death no longer occurring in the one year time limit of your summoning. Magic will no longer slowly kill you and you can generate mana within your core like living things.Primary Class: Novice NecromancerRace Changed: Corpse FlowerSkills Gained: Photosynthesis, Spore Pod, Mucus, Sweet SmellClass Skills Gained: Necromantic Arts, Life DrainSkills Evolved: Bone Collector = Reaper's Bounty, Monster Regeneration = Lich's Regeneration (Lesser), Magic Perception = Mage's EyesSkills Combined: Blunt Weapons/Bite + Undead Race = Vampire's Bite, Mana Creation/Magic Crafting = Mage's Workshop, Movement/Mana Reinforcement/Mana Manipulation = Body StabilizationSkill Stabilization: Lich's Regeneration no longer suffers penalties in sunlight due to PhotosynthesisSkeleton Allies have evolved to Skeletal ChampionsCreated a new GraveyardLand is now desecratedDesecration upgraded Graveyard to Unholy LandTitle Gained: Enemy of all PlantsTitle Gained: Dryad KillerPowerful Soul turned into Soul CrystalSoul Crystal suppressing Undead AuraCurse no longer affecting you, scrying now blocked

The last one made me squint a moment at it before I quickly went into action, yelling at the two sleeping skeletons to wake up this instance. Their groggy bodies slowly started to lift up as I stared at them. They seemed to have grown more bones out of nothing now having ribs going down to their hips, now tighter together and connecting to what seemed like a thicker second spine. Their arm bones seemed to be thicker, their hips and legs seemed to go the same though they were still much skinnier compared to something with flesh on it, it started to bridge the distance between the two. Hot coals seemed to shine with intellect as they looked to me, actual small red lights deep within the unnatural shadows of their eye sockets. Quickly shaking my head I prepared to leave.

Being a skeleton has many benefits out in the woods, you don’t starve, you don’t have to pee on trees, and you don’t carry much with you so the difference between preparing to leave and actually leaving was seconds. As we dashed out of the clearing I could hear a whistle behind us as large demon like monkeys, like something you’d see in a strange Wizard of Oz horror film started to scout the unholy land behind us. I guessed that asking tutorial about a few of these things were out of the question while running for my life so my companions and I ducked down trying to make our tracks as least noticeable as possible. Not having gone to Boy Scouts, or the military seemed very detrimental at this point and I cursed my parent’s lack of foresight in the matter.

After my quick getaway, and a few level ups in sneak I felt confident that we weren’t being followed anymore. As I gave a sigh of relief, “I’m glad we got-” My skull gets smacked so hard it spins around once before I stop it, looking up at my companion I immediately understand my mistake.

“If we make it out of-” Another smack as I look confused, “At least that-” Another smack and I just stop talking at this point. Putting back on my jaw seemed like the most important concern at the moment, and my two companions watched guard as I weaved the magic to do so. I’m just glad that both of them aren’t women, a tsundere would be very harmful for my well being, I turned my head to the two skeletons now seriously considering their genders but my extreme lack of knowledge about the skeletal system left me with no answers. Hoping I wouldn’t get into the usual reincarnation trope of a harem, I prayed that they could just stay as they are, genderless.