"I can teach you, sir. After that, it's up to your bones whether Lightning Bolt comes out, and how powerful it is!" the uncle skeleton said, now that he'd come to terms with his fate.
The boorish skeleton added, "I can cast Fireball, but not Lightning Bolt."
Mason nodded. "I get it. You two had different affinities."
In his past life, Mason used supplementary skills to raise his stats and improve his swordsmanship. Those skills were bestowed on him by the Church and its allies, so he instinctively knew how to use them without training. What mattered was applying them in real battles and pushing their output higher.
Learning magic and mana from scratch had never crossed his mind until the day he was betrayed.
"How do I check if I can cast magic?" Mason asked.
"You put one stat point into INT, right?" the uncle skeleton asked, just to confirm.
Mason nodded.
"Yeah, we skeletons have unlimited evolution paths, it seems! Okay, sir. I don't know who you were in your past life or how much you remember, but if you've felt mana even once, you should be able to feel it in your bones. Draw it to your fingertips and let it out. That'll show your affinity!"
Mason stared at his bony palm and flexed his fingers. Just like the old skeleton said, he sensed mana easily and guided it to his fingertips. At first, a chilling darkness seeped from his bones and then shattered into four different concepts he couldn't even begin to understand.
[Your Chaos Mana has been broken.]
He didn't like the sound of that.
Mason focused harder on the leaking mana, trying to hold on to as much as possible, afraid his future in magic would be cut off right here. The chaotic darkness vanished, but it left behind a pale green light that turned into streaks of mana.
[You have grasped one of Chaos Mana's affinities: Decay.]
[You have learned Touch Of Decay (Mythic)]
[Touch Of Decay (Mythic): Anything and anyone will cease to exist upon your touch. The effect of this skill depends on your INT stat and on your target's stats and durability.]
So this is magic… something I grasped on my own.
This was different from receiving a skill from someone else and applying it to himself. Mason couldn't see how it would evolve, or what other skills it might give birth to later. He'd only grasped a single affinity, and he could tell more were waiting to be unlocked.
He tried to draw it up again, but nothing happened. Only Decay answered, and Touch Of Decay activated on its own, giving him no new results.
"This is only basic magic," Mason started, only to see the two skeletons clattering as their bones shook against each other.
Only now did he notice they were trembling.
"S-sir, you have unusual, extraordinary talent! We can't stop shivering in admiration!" the uncle skeleton said.
"I want… to become your underling," the boorish skeleton said.
The uncle skeleton snapped his head toward him, staring in disbelief. You weren't interested in joining my gang!
They felt genuine respect, down to their bones, but they also knew they were ordinary. Mason might be something greater.
"I'm not looking for teammates," Mason said. "And I don't feel like killing you, either."
He turned away.
The uncle skeleton shouted, "No problem! We'll meet again for sure! By then, I'll have a big gang, and I'll introduce you to a few girls! Haha!"
"So… I'm stuck with a horny uncle? I really should crack my skull open…" the boorish skeleton muttered.
—
Once he no longer wanted to kill or use the two skeletons, Mason was reminded of his teammates' betrayal. He ignored them and focused on leveling up. He headed down the dark corridor. Farther in, he saw skulls half-buried in the ground and embedded in the walls, reminding him of the countless catacombs he'd cleared in his past life.
Strange. Where are the skeletons or other monsters?
Then he sensed foreign presences.
Something inside him twisted at the sensation.
A moment later, a party of five adventurers appeared. Behind them trudged a courier girl with a massive backpack, bones jutting out of it as she struggled to keep up. She kept coughing and gasping for breath. The catacomb dust showed her no mercy. She was the last to spot the skeleton.
"…Finally, another one. Why the hell are there so few of them?" a swordsman said.
"Right? Skeletons are supposed to spawn faster than mushrooms in spring."
"We're deep in the dungeon's outskirts. Look, this doesn't even look like catacombs anymore."
To them, Mason looked like easy loot.
But to him, they were more than adventurers. Right then, he had to make a crucial decision.
Do I level up on humans? And that strange feeling… is it thirst for their deaths?
He didn't have time to dwell on it.
The human swordsman stepped forward. "He's got a cute stone sword, so I'll take him. Haha!"