HUMMM——!!!
With the forging command confirmed, a vast surge of profound death energy erupted from beneath the bone throne, swallowing the longsword and bone material entirely like black flame made solid.
Under the relentless tempering and decomposition of that death energy, the mottled, antique cold iron longsword slowly began to change.
The Gray Mist Bone Material was refined into the purest grayish-white bone, which crawled and spread along the metal ridge of the blade like a living thing.
Fine bone patterns gradually meshed perfectly with the frigid cold iron body, fusing into one.
Far from disrupting the sword's original balance, they built a structure that was more stable and more lethally sharp!
At the same time, the special death power contained deep within the Gray Mist Bone Material began flowing slowly along the sword's new internal channels, guided by Mo Fan's will.
Unlike before, when he'd passively accepted whatever properties the materials happened to carry...
This time Mo Fan used the throne's authority to actively compress and solidify that power in the direction that best suited Mo Yan.
After a round of precise adjustment, a stable, deep-set attribute pattern finally took shape at the junction between hilt and blade ridge!
Then Mo Fan formally bound this reborn longsword to the newly established Netherbone Sword Guard blueprint.
CHING——!
As the last wisp of death energy drew fully into the blade's edge, a crisp, cold sword cry rang out through the hall.
In the void, the System's settlement notification surfaced:
[ Necro Forging complete! ]
[ Equipment Name: Netherbone Sword ]
[ Equipment Type: Exclusive Undead Armament (Weapon) ]
[ Original Core: Cold Iron Longsword ]
[ Activated Attribute: Death Energy Conduction (Replaceable) ]
[ Attribute Effect: Greatly increases the transmission efficiency and stability of death sword-qi; reduces death energy dissipation during swings. ]
[ Set: Netherbone Sword Guard (1/5) ]
[ Current Set Effect: Not activated (requires at least 2 same-origin set components equipped) ]
Looking at the new sword hovering in midair, Mo Fan's eyes filled with open admiration.
The Netherbone Sword now presented a richly textured dark gray throughout, the cold iron's frigidity and the gray bone's grim menace interwoven in perfect harmony, rows of fine bone patterns running down the blade ridge.
Just looking at it made the air feel colder.
"Let's see how it handles."
Mo Fan waved a hand, tossing the Netherbone Sword back down to Mo Yan below the throne.
Mo Yan raised an arm and caught the hilt cleanly.
The instant his skeletal palm closed around the Netherbone Sword, the ghostly blue soul flame in his sockets gave a violent pulse.
Then Mo Yan's wrist flicked with perfect ease, carving a sharp flourish through the air.
Hum!
As Mo Yan swung the blade, the previously dull grayish-white bone patterns across the Netherbone Sword's surface lit up in sequence from base to tip with a faint, eerie glow!
The gray death energy that had once drifted restlessly around the blade's edge, leaking outward, seemed in that moment to have found a riverbed to channel it.
It raced along those bone-pattern veins and finally condensed seamlessly at the very edge of the blade, forming a gray cutting aura several times more concentrated than before!
To test its practical power, Mo Fan deliberately picked a slab of hardened bone plating from the pile of spoils and tossed it into the center of the hall.
Mo Yan, given his order, didn't pause for an instant. His form flickered, closing in on the bone plate, and the Netherbone Sword came slashing down at an angle!
Shhk!
An exceptionally condensed streak of gray sword light flashed and was gone.
CRACK!
With a sharp snap, a fracture opened across the surface of that thick colossus bone plating—armor even ordinary Foundation Establishment artifacts struggled to penetrate—deep enough to see through, its edges perfectly smooth!
And what delighted Mo Fan even more was that with [ Death Vision ] LV.3, he could clearly see that during that swing, the death sword-qi clinging to the blade had suffered almost no excess scattering or waste whatsoever!
If, in the past, Mo Yan sent out ten parts of death energy and four of them naturally bled off into the air—
Now, with Death Energy Conduction backing it, that power was practically locked onto the blade's edge.
Not only did the armor-breaking power of a single strike improve noticeably, Mo Yan's death energy consumption in prolonged fights dropped substantially!
"Good stuff! This is genuinely good stuff!"
Mo Fan couldn't help clapping in admiration, the grin impossible to suppress.
"Looks like this [ Forge ] function really isn't just for show!"
He glanced again at that line of small text at the bottom of the equipment panel:
[ Netherbone Sword Guard: 1/5 ]
Mo Fan rubbed his chin, the fervor in his eyes growing stronger and stronger.
Forging just the first weapon and activating a single piece attribute had already produced such a visible improvement in Mo Yan's baseline output.
Once materials were abundant later and he filled in the remaining arm guards, cuirass, and the rest one by one...
Truly activating the Netherbone Sword Guard set effect... just how far would Mo Yan's combat power climb?
And that wasn't all!
After this successful forging, Mo Fan's thinking had opened up completely.
Going forward, Mo Yan would have his own Netherbone Sword Guard set.
Unit 004, currently being nurtured outside, could easily have a heavy bulwark set custom-built around its monstrous defensive properties, specializing in frontal pressure absorption, possibly even damage reflection if he found suitable materials.
Unit 003 could go the route of extreme speed, armor penetration, and aerial assassination.
As for WTF, who held the Pale Bone Scepter—that scepter had an unactivated attribute slot to begin with, and it too could be reforged and upgraded through the throne later!
So this is what a real undead legion armament system looks like...
Mo Fan leaned back against the throne, looking at Mo Yan standing with his sword sheathed in the hall, then out at 004, 003, and WTF each at their posts outside...
And a surge of ambition rose in his chest.
But excitement aside—once Mo Fan's gaze had swept over each of these old companions, a faint, inexplicable regret gradually welled up in him.
He had the space now. He had the expansion loop.
Logistics and quality had both taken a qualitative leap.
But...
This legion still seemed to have one core problem that had never genuinely been solved since he broke through to Tier-3.
Quantity.
From a single lonely skeleton at the bottom of Abandoned Sword Cliff, to now possessing four trusted core lieutenants—Mo Yan, 003, 004, and WTF.
Each of them, pulled out individually, was incalculably stronger than they'd once been, strong enough to fight above their weight class against powerful foes.
But even counting his other undead, his legion was still a far cry from the true "Undead Scourge" Mo Fan envisioned—the kind that blotted out heaven and earth, one man as an entire army.
Especially after that battle in the fog just now, surrounded by over two hundred Gray Mist Bone Soldiers, Mo Fan felt the "insufficient troop count" problem with particular sharpness.
His Soul Strength was now up to 500 points, while his total CPU Load stood at a mere 151.
Over three hundred points of massive processing power were just idling there, collecting dust!
"Tch..."
Mo Fan scratched his head, a bit vexed, and sighed at the empty hall.
"The equipment system keeps getting fancier and fancier, but no matter how I turn it over, how do I still only have these few guys under me..."
Inside the Azure Cloud Sect, he couldn't exactly go on a mass slaughter of high-tier demon beasts to expand the legion.
And the Gray Mist Bone Soldiers he'd killed during the expansion were no help either.
Their soul flames had already been destroyed, leaving behind materials rather than intact undead he could recruit.
Sitting on a mountain of processing power with no minions to recruit was, frankly, a pain in the ass.
At that thought, Mo Fan shook his head helplessly and prepared to close the throne interface and head back to the real world to rest.
However.
In the very instant his consciousness was about to withdraw—
[ Recruit ].
That gray icon on the far right—the one he'd subconsciously overlooked from start to finish—appeared in his field of vision.
"Hold on—"
Mo Fan smacked himself on the forehead, his expression turning spectacular.
"How did I forget about that?!"
Back then, he had tried opening this function.
Unfortunately, no matter how he reached out to it, all he got back was dead silence.
Clearly, at the time, he hadn't qualified to open it.
But now the first expansion was complete, and the [ Necrotic Realm's ] area had grown to three thousand square meters.
Even [ Nurture ] and [ Forge ], equally unusable before, had gradually revealed their true purposes.
So what about this last function, the one that had never shown a flicker of response?
At that thought, Mo Fan's gaze shifted slightly.
He tried extending a thread of consciousness toward that dim option once more.
Hum...
The next moment.
The previously unresponsive word [ Recruit ] actually flickered, ever so faintly.
And then.
A line of System text that had never appeared before slowly surfaced in his vision.
[ Checking recruitment conditions... ]