More than three months had passed since Morvain first awakened.
For him, those three months felt like years. During the very first week, Morvain spent every day hiding and fleeing, constantly hunted by all kinds of undead creatures.
Skeleton dogs, skeleton sheep, skeleton cows—there were even skeleton soldiers that would start chasing him down and hacking at him the moment they saw him!
They were the same race! Didn't they understand the simple principle of not killing their own kind? Everyone was a skeleton soldier! Why did skeleton soldiers have to make things difficult for other skeleton soldiers?!
Of course, the battered and miserable Morvain knew exactly why he kept getting beaten.
The reason was simple.
He was too weak.
Yes—simply too weak. In the Realm of the Dead, weakness was the original sin.
These newly revived skeleton soldiers already had very low intelligence. Compared to using their limited brains, they preferred following their instincts.
Morvain's body had bones that had already weathered and yellowed. Even among first-tier skeleton soldiers, he was the weakest of the weak.
If they didn't hack him apart, were they supposed to invite him to dinner instead?
[Name: Morvain]
[Identity: First-Tier Skeleton Soldier (Weakened Version)]
[Ability: One-Ring Necromancy — Bone Regeneration (Consumes soul energy to allow undead creatures' bones to regrow)]
[Strength Evaluation: First-tier skeleton soldiers are trash. And you… you don't even qualify to be called trash.]
This was the full extent of Morvain's strength.
A weakened first-tier body. Yellowed bones that could snap with a simple twist. And Bone Regeneration, a spell that was practically useless in combat.
With strength like that, any freshly revived skeleton soldier could easily pin him down and beat him senseless.
Logically speaking, if Morvain could obtain even a single undead subordinate, he could immediately begin a comeback, using that subordinate to snowball his strength until it grew larger and larger.
Unfortunately, the same rule still applied in the Realm of the Dead.
Weakness was the original sin.
Being this weak, how could any skeleton soldier possibly choose to follow him? The fact that other skeletons didn't simply hack him apart on the spot was already considered good luck.
After repeatedly failing to recruit skeleton soldiers—nearly getting chopped into bone fragments several times, and even almost being killed by a skeleton dog once—Morvain was finally forced to accept reality.
He was a complete loser.
If a normal skeleton soldier had started with such a situation, the game would have already been over. Death and restart.
But Morvain was different.
He wasn't an ordinary skeleton soldier.
Sure, he didn't have a head—but that didn't mean he couldn't think.
If he couldn't beat others, couldn't he at least cling to someone stronger?
After carefully observing and selecting his target, Morvain finally found the perfect candidate after three days.
The very Skeleton Mage he was now following.
Skeleton Mages were practically untouchable within the Sea of Bones. After all, they were always surrounded by large groups of skeletons, making them extremely troublesome to deal with. On top of that, their soul flames were ridiculously weak.
Work so hard to kill all those skeletons just to obtain a pile of first-tier soul flames?
Was that really worth it?
Skeleton Mages weren't first-tier trash, but these creatures known as top-tier third-rank undead actually had soul flames that were barely above the bottom of the third tier.
Killing them for their flame simply wasn't worth the effort.
The strong couldn't beat them, and the weak weren't worth killing.
So in the Sea of Bones, following a Skeleton Mage was actually one of the safest choices.
Morvain had another reason for sticking with him.
This guy could resurrect skeleton soldiers.
With so many subordinates under him, secretly recruiting one or two for himself shouldn't be a big deal, right?
All Morvain needed was a single subordinate.
Just one—and he could immediately take off and stage a comeback!
Morvain's method of infiltrating the Skeleton Mage's squad was actually very simple.
He could have found an opportunity to slip into the skeleton group and blend in, pretending to be one of them.
But doing that would basically be asking to die.
Because a weak skeleton like Morvain would definitely be thrown into the front line as cannon fodder during battle.
At that point, charging forward meant death, and refusing to charge meant death.
He would just die for nothing.
Morvain's method of joining them wasn't sneaky at all.
Instead, he appeared openly beside the Skeleton Mage and recommended himself.
He found an injured skeleton soldier and cast Bone Regeneration, successfully reconnecting its severed left leg.
Yes—reconnecting.
Morvain wasn't like these foolish skeletons. His total soul flame energy was limited. If he foolishly allowed the leg to slowly regrow from scratch, it would work—but he wouldn't be able to heal more than a few in an entire day.
Reattaching bones, however, was completely different.
Find a suitable bone and place it onto the wound, then cast Bone Regeneration, and the two bones would quickly fuse together.
This method greatly reduced the energy consumption.
As for whether the replacement bone actually matched the body…
That had nothing to do with Morvain.
He was responsible for reattaching bones, not providing after-sales service.
Relying on this skeleton-version healing technique, Morvain quickly became the professional bone doctor beside this Skeleton Mage.
And he only treated the elite troops—those mutated first-tier Skeleton Archers and the evolved second-tier Skeleton Guardians.
As for the materials he used to heal these elite skeletons?
Naturally, they were gathered on the spot.
Whenever an elite soldier was injured, he would immediately grab a cannon-fodder skeleton.
Wherever the elite was injured, he would chop off the same bone from the cannon fodder and attach it.
Perfect every time.
Although being a doctor granted him relatively high status, in the eyes of these low-intelligence skeletons, it still wasn't high enough to make him the Skeleton Mage's right-hand man.
What truly allowed him to reach that position was Morvain's intelligence.
Morvain wasn't a genius, nor had he ever studied military tactics.
At best, when faced with normal people, he could only manage the simplest strategy—running away.
But everything depended on who he was being compared with.
Compared to ordinary humans, Morvain was simply an ordinary person.
But compared to these brainless piles of bones—
Morvain was a genuine genius.
A top-tier genius.
A genius who surpassed the intelligence of skeletons.
A simple tactic of luring the enemy deeper… followed by a direct strike to capture the leader.
By sacrificing more than forty cannon-fodder skeletons, Morvain successfully drew away the enemy's main force, killed the opposing third-tier Skeleton Warlord, and offered its soul flame to the Skeleton Mage.
With that achievement, he instantly became one of the Skeleton Mage's trusted subordinates.
During every rest period, Morvain was now able to sit beside the Skeleton Mage.
Previously, the mage had never allowed anyone other than Skeleton Guardians to approach him.
However, even though his position had risen, Morvain's mood did not improve.
In fact, it only grew worse.
Because he discovered that his earlier assumption had been completely wrong.
Following a Skeleton Mage did indeed make things safer.
But it also meant he could never obtain the loyalty of other skeletons.
After all, when there was a real leader present, who would pledge loyalty to someone weaker than that leader?
Not to mention that the thoughts inside skeletons' already small brains were extremely simple.
If you were stronger than them, they submitted.
If you were weaker, they slaughtered you.
There was no such thing as judging the situation.
In fact, these creatures didn't even possess the concept of fear of death.