As soon as the door closed behind me I began analysing my new spells. It took some time to find out what each of them did. First was what I came to call the ‘ice shard’. This spell gathers water from the air and the surroundings. The water is then frozen solid and shot towards a target with high speed. This was spell the spectres use to attack.

The next was the ‘air shield’. It isn’t really a shield, but I didn’t want to waste time thinking about the name and just went with something that seemed fitting. What it actually does is to protect an area by causing an intense wind to blow against anything that crosses its boundaries too fast.

Thinking about it, I concluded that this spell wouldn’t be very useful to me. It’s of limited use against small objects with much force behind them. And of course it can’t protect against attacks from within the field, such as my explosions. But that wasn’t why I had a problem with it.

The real problem was the mana consumption. While the upkeep of the air shield required a constant supply of mana, it wasn’t so much as to seriously reduce my regeneration. The airwave on the other hand was quite pricy if I wanted it to have any meaningful effect.

After all, most of my body is made of metal and the rest is protected by that strange barrier. Being hit with a bit more or less force wouldn’t make a difference. Instead I would rather use my mana to attack the enemy.

After this slight disappointment came the spell that initially caused me to set my eyes on killing a spectre: ‘sound manipulation’. The ability to speak turned out to only be a by-product of its original function, which is to create and change sounds by manipulating airwaves.

The spell itself was actually quite easy to understand. The hard part was to use it correctly, at least if I wanted to create anything a human would be able to understand. I realised this after a few failed attempts at forming words. This would undoubtedly require a lot of practice, more than I would be able to invest in the near future.

With growing resignation, I continued by analysing the fourth spell. It turned out to be the one spectres use to fly. After a bit of testing I decided that I wouldn’t be able to use it continuously unless I was willing to completely negate my mana regeneration.

This made me wonder just how much mana spectres had to be able to fly, sustain an air shield and shoot ice shards all at the same time. It also led me to think about why my own mana hadn’t risen much after absorbing the spectres crystal. While there was an increase, the change was incomparable to what the spectre must have had.

There was also the fact that the crystals of skeletons didn’t have any noticeable effect on my mana. There were simply too many things about myself and the ways I work I didn’t know. No matter how much I hated it, I was helpless in front of the secrets of my own existence. All I could do was to hope that I would be able to work it all out at some point in the future. Maybe I would find a clue if I studied about undead or golems. Maybe I would find someone who knew what I was.

But until such opportunities opened up my best bet was to observe how my body reacts to different situations and draw my own conclusions. No point in losing my mind about something I can’t change anyway, right? Just make one step at a time and eventually you’re bound arrive somewhere.

By the time I had concluded my thoughts, the last spell was already processed. Doing two things at the same time actually wasn’t that hard, because in my hideout I could focus all of my attention inwards without having to worry about anyone interfering.

The last spell was a type of telekinesis, although not a very sophisticated one. This was probably the reason for why it was analysed so fast. Its effect was like giving the target a push, including the part of simultaneously shoving oneself in the opposite direction.

I could come up with a few uses for it without much effort, so at least this spell would certainly be helpful. Thinking about it, the spectres might have used this spell to improve their manoeuvrability. There were plenty of occasions where I saw them having a suddenly change in momentum. I could probably do something similar, just without the flying.

The next step of my plan was to test out my new arsenal in combat situations. Just when I was about to leave I remembered to check on the stone tablet. Annoyed by myself for almost forgetting something so important I touched it and received the number 408. Content with the large growth the spectres crystal had brought me I finally set out.

While traversing the cleared zone I began looking through the spectres memories and used them to expand my map of the castle. Unluckily this spectre had only been created after the necromancers victory. I had hoped it might provide me with precious information about the outside world, but I wasn’t too disheartened by it. I would just have to continue hunting spectres until I got lucky.

At this point my thoughts were cut short by a group of skeletons almost bumping into me when they walked around a corner. I had hardly any time to react before they began charging at me. I quickly used the ‘Push’ spell against the wall behind the skeletons to instantly gain momentum and barely managed to avoid them crashing into me. Changing from slow movement into one direction directly to fast movement into the opposite one made it hard to correctly move my legs in time, but I somehow managed not to fall over.

After regaining my balance, I continued running until the gap between me and the undead had grown to a few metres. There I slowed down a bit to match their speed and began attacking them with ‘ice shard’ while keeping a consistent distance. I kept shooting them down one after another, always aiming for the skull. Of course I didn’t have the experience to aim perfectly and even if I could predict the skeletons movements to some extent, the obstacles on the ground always ended up hindering them and messed up my calculations.

It wasn’t until I managed to drag them into a zone with fewer hindrances that my hit rate improved, but after that it went pretty much perfect. In most cases it took only a few direct hits until they collapsed. I had to stop shooting a few times because my mana ran out, but after fifteen minutes of constant running I was victorious. All 23 of the skeletons had fallen apart.

The ‘ice shard’ had finally given me a way to fight the groups of skeletons roaming the castle. It hadn’t been possible with ‘explosion’ because the noise would undoubtedly attract spectres, but ‘ice shard’ hardly made any sounds until the moment of impact.

I had also figured out that my mana allowed me to cast 26 ice shards in quick succession. By comparing this number with future results I might be able to discern how much my mana is increased by absorbing a spectres crystal. I quickly collected the crystals of the slain undead and returned to searching targets for my tests.

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So why wasn't there a chapter last week? There are multiple reasons. Tests at school, sickness, problems with formulating what I want to convey, etc. Sorry you had to wait this long.