The Ruined Death Knight

Touching the forehead of Skull Claw, a status window appeared.

Looking at it for a few seconds, he nodded to himself as if he confirmed something.

"It is indeed stronger than the other two, but the power that it lost way too much..." Danzel lament for his lacking ability in turning them as far stronger undead.

With how things were off now, the Skull Claw that dominated his other two skull bodyguards had now turned into a slightly better version of them. Barely surpassing the former with 30 stats at each attribute except the intelligence.

If it weren´t for his bigger size and metal-like claws, Danzel would have even forgotten that this thing was 3rd-tier being.

"Even if I were to ride it, I wouldn´t even be able to use my weapon as of how large it is. Maybe it would work if I were to use a spear together with the smaller skull wolves..." Danzel though it stared at Skull Claw, who practically looked like an oversized dog of death.

"At the very least it gave me quite the amount of XP, even the less. Having more undead under my control isn´t that bad." Danzel said to himself as he went past it.

`Follow me.´

Seeing his liege walking towards the next floor, Skull Claw rise his huge body and walked steadily behind his master.

The two bodyguards tried to apply the command too, but their body was too messed up for them to move.

It was a miracle that those two didn´t get annihilated.

Nonetheless, as much as they wanted to follow him, they were shut down by their master of death.

`You two stay here and recover.´

"..."

"..."

Freezing up from his command, they rested their heads on the ground in silence while their liege moved on.

Though those two looked like they wanted to whip at his command.

Danzel knew that this wasn´t the case.

"Created undead have neither will nor intelligence, huh? I guess the Necronomicon was right..." Danzel mumbled as he was taking some glances at the Skull Claw.

At first glance, the undead he created would look much smarter than a random undead coming back from his grave.

But Danzel would disagree.

Those guys were nothing more than puppets of his will.

Taking the latter away, they would be nothing more than stringless puppets.

Compared to "Fellow" and the undead under the cursed lake, they were a clear difference there. 

That was that they had a will...

Or at least looked like they had.

As it was three whole years by now, Danzel couldn´t exactly remember his days back in the cave. Even when his intelligence helped him memorize and calculate.

"They just are puppets..." Danzel said out loud.

Moving to the fourth floor and finding nothing else except some bones and broken tables. The two moved on without much of a delay.

After almost some endless staircases wide enough to fit three of Skull Claw, they arrived at a much tougher door than all the other ones of before, even the gate of the very tower was of less quality.

Fortunately for Danzel, that door that would have been a heck of an annoying task to break was already pushed open, in what Danzel recognized by the use of force.

Pushing the door to make the gab bigger for him and Skull Claw to enter, a much different sight came before him.

 Entering the room, he was as amazed and disappointed when he realized what this room was.

"A library..." Danzel mumbled to himself.

Circled by paravent bookshelves that went till the roof of this floor. 

If he had to bet on something, Danzel would bet on the fact that this room could hold more than a thousand books.

As of the exact number, Danzel couldn´t be sure of it.

As in this library...there were no books.

"So unfortunate...it´s truly unfortunate to see such a thing in front of me." Danzel said with a sad tone as he picked a stack of put-together papers from the ground, which once was a book with a cover.

Once he tried to gently pat the dust away so that he could read the content, the stacks of paper were turned like a wall of stone crumbling away and turning into dust.

"The nature of time can sometimes really be terrifying..." Danzel said, bitterly.

`At least I don´t have to worry about such a thing.´ He thought as he searched to find something that was at least readable.

But even after searching the whole library, there was nothing to find, not even bones like the other floors.

"If my guess is right, I should be almost at the top. There shouldn\'t be that many floors left."

Walking towards another large door similar to the one before, Danzel pushed it open with ease.

Opening the door, instead of there being some staircase to the side as the other floors. The door opponent into a large floor that was purely lightened with blue color from the mana crystal of the side.

The room that took up the whole floor was made out purely of a single staircase that wane through the walls up.

"Who thought of putting so many stairs here? Such a waste of space" Danzel thought as he observed the stairs closely.

Even from the bottom, he could see large holes in the stairs with several cracks clearly to be seen.

Not only that, they were to what looked parts of broken statues in the bottom of where he was and the stairs with different kinds of weapons laying on the ground.

"Will the stairs support Skull Claws weight?

Danzel asked himself.

Staring at the Skull Claw that he signed of decayed in his body, Danzel found it still too big to step on those stairs without breaking them.

" I guess that\'s it..." Danzel said as he pointed at Skull Claw.

\'Stay here and guard the door.\'

Danzel commanded Skull Claw as he went on to scale the staircase.

From time to time, he could see some large holes that had been shaved off the wall so that something twice his size could fit.

At first, he didn\'t think much of it but as he saw several parts of the statue being held in those holes, his best guess was that they were formerly being kept there.

"Did an earthquake happen or who threw those things in front of a damn staircase!" Danzel cursed as he jumped atop a hole.

Continuing moving forwards, he felt a sudden presence in the room.

Or rather, that of multiple ones.

As he moved a bit further up, he saw them.

With eyes glowing in golden light and body seemingly seem made out of poor sand.

Hiding behind the holes of the statues, ghastly figures wearing scarfs to hide their face except their eyes appeared while flying to the air around him.

With such so similar eyes.

"Undead?" Danzel mumbled as he sen see no hate towards them.

"Khaaaa~"

"Khawaah~"

The ghostly undead growled at the one stepping into the tower.

Danzel in comparison just looked at them solemnly.

"If I am right, then those guys are..." Without letting him finish, one of the undead flew forward with his hand right about to reach his chest with a screening howl.

But as it arrived in front of him, the undead felt a sensation that it long ago had forgotten.

Which made his current situation look all the more confusing to it.

His own body that long ago was forced into becoming a spirit of the death, the wraith, once more felt the touch.

Gripping the manifested soul that uses mana as his vessel by his hand, Danzel was unsure of what to do with him.

His capability to touch him in the first place was just because of the runes being there.

Seeing how weak it was, Danzel just tossed it aside while having his dead mana come out of his body.

The wraith who stabilized itself together with the others looked at Danzel for a few more moments before leaving back to what Danzel would consider their hiding spot in the holes.

"To think that they were other undead like me..." Danzel said as he continues going up the stairs.

Be it that he intimidated them or they saw him as a fellow undead, Danzel soon went uninterrupted to the end of those stairs.

Once he stepped on the top, a gash of wind mixed with sand and a small light greeted him in the face.

Seeing what was on the top, he halted.

"What the..."

A giant door of unknown metal tougher than a tree itself that he doubted if he could push forward by himself was in front of him.

And that very door was pushed tougher and beating it while massive marks of scratches deep enough for two arms to fit it were to be seen.

\'What could have possibly have done this?\' Danzel asked himself as he imagined what kind of creature could do such a thing.

While he was thinking of what it could be, his eyes wandered around the middle of the floor.

Kneeling to the ground in a defeat-like position, he notices how many lines were sharply drawn through the ground. One of such lines ends in the direction of that body.

Moving in front of the figure, he saw how pieces of metal were penetrating his heart with a mana crystal staff that managed to block a single attack. 

Though he recognized his clothing as being of high quality, by now after all those years. All that they had become we\'re some dirty rags.

The most surprising part of everything though, was that this seemingly unimportant corpse had dead mana running through their body dead mana.

"That guy should\' even had enough dead mana to become an undead, and yet here there is..." Danzel said as he looked at the door.

"Hmm, let\'s first see what this tower has to offer. Then think of what to do with him..."

Danzel said as he moved towards to broken-up door.

Reaching the last floor of the tower.