In the end, Hel reaped quite a decent harvest of terms.
Among them, there were two that caught her particular attention:
[High-Level Disguise (Purple)]: Use illusion and makeup to disguise yourself as another person.
[Expert Thief (Purple)]: Knowledge +50. Greatly enhances your stealth capabilities.
These two terms were basically the bread and butter of every thief. Most of them only had gray or white versions, but the Thieves' Guild leader, Rat, happened to have the green-quality ones.
So, it could be said that these two were the core skills of their entire profession.
Hel was especially interested in the [High-Level Disguise] term.
After all, now that she had become a witch, it was vital that she keep others from discovering her abnormal state. That term was, therefore, indispensable.
As for [Expert Thief], it was nice to have, but not essential.
Perhaps she could use it later to train intelligence agents, but for herself? Useless.
What would a lord need thieving skills for? She'd rather have some real power terms—say, witch-related ones.
Now that Hel had reached the rank of Archmage, she could equip four more terms.
And wasn't it just perfect that she had recently collected four excellent ones from that witch's remains?
Besides, since her own bloodline was that of a witch, there would be no conflict in wearing terms belonging to the Death Witch and the Fishworm Witch.
As for whether two divine cores would conflict—she didn't need to worry.
If they did, she wouldn't even be able to equip them in the first place.
She was already a Death Witch anyway—what harm could another witch title do?
However, the Fishworm Witch's magic affinity enhanced Life Magic, not Death Magic, so her own deathly power didn't increase.
Still, that didn't make the term useless.
Life Magic was incredibly practical.
Even if she was the Death Witch, she wasn't undead—at least, not yet.
And as long as she was alive, she could still get injured, fall ill, or even be poisoned.
Life Magic was perfect for dealing with all those problems.
It could also counteract the physical deterioration caused by death energy's corrosion within her.
That way, she could survive longer and grow stronger—slowly but surely.
After finishing the term collection, Hel did her usual thing: resurrecting all the corpses into skeletons.
However, most of this batch wasn't much to look at; at best, she could fuse them into a few second-tier Skeleton Warriors.
So she stopped after upgrading them into first-tier soldiers—just strong enough for manual labor.
That included the Thieves' Guild leader and his two knight-level subordinates.
But the real highlight this time was the four fourth-tier corpses:
Three warriors and one mage.
From previous experiments with necromantic synthesis, Hel had noticed something interesting.
The type of undead produced by the Necromantic Sigil wasn't random—it depended on the body's condition.
A complete corpse became a Ghoul.
A body stripped of flesh became a Skeleton.
And if only the soul remained, it became a Wraith.
When fusing undead, combining the same type produced a higher-tier evolution—one that Hel could even control the direction of.
For example, a third-tier Skeleton Knight could evolve into a fourth-tier Skeletal Heavy Cavalry.
But a second-tier Skeleton Warrior didn't necessarily have to evolve into a Skeleton Knight.
The result depended on the main corpse's weapon skills.
For instance, the previous batch all used polearms, which was why they turned into Skeletal Lancers.
If she had given them swords instead, they would have become Skeletal Greatswordsmen.
Now, she was out of spear technique terms, so she used two swordsmanship terms instead.
Those went to the two weaklings—Gray Fox and the nameless beastman guard—turning them into Skeletal Greatswordsmen.
She even reforged their equipment, using what remained of the castle's iron stock to forge them full plate armor and long swords.
Under the concealment of the "Aura Suppression" term, they looked no different from ordinary guards.
As for Ambrose Fischer—the knight with those explosive secret arts—using a sword would've been a waste.
So Hel swapped his term for Blade Mastery, and reimplanted the [Burning Soul Secret Art] into him.
The [Burning Blood Secret Art] she left out; skeletons don't have blood to burn.
Without the blood-burning term, his strength naturally dropped.
To compensate, Hel granted him [Half-Dragon Bloodline (Orange)]—she had plenty of those lying around anyway, not particularly valuable.
Might as well use it to craft a powerful hidden card.
The result didn't disappoint:
[Tier 4 – Skeletal Berserker]
Power: 204–285
Not far off from Arven's raw strength.
Hel couldn't imagine how terrifying he'd be once clad in full mithril gear.
Unfortunately, these people were dirt poor.
The two nobles from the capital only had light mithril armor and standard longswords.
The beastmen were even worse—iron blades and copper armor.
Well, at least the beastman guard was the only one that poor.
As for Allen Wolffang, he at least had rare-quality equipment—though his main weapon wasn't a staff, but a magic tome:
The Decayed Codex, which enhanced decay magic—essentially his personal weapon.
So Hel returned his term and took the chance to summon a brand-new magical undead:
[Skeletal Archmage]
Magic Power: 214 (Base 190)
With his full set of mage gear intact, Hel only needed to modify his appearance slightly before equipping him.
The result—his combat power nearly matched that of the Skeletal Berserker.
Compared to the regular Skeletal Lancers, whose combat power barely reached 100, these two were absolute monsters.
If the Lancers were elite troops, then these two were heroes.
Of course, to avoid any unexpected behavior, Hel immediately erased their memories.