"The skeleton warrior has finally reached the threshold for advancement!"
For a whole week, Carlos had only slept 4 hours each day, swinging his greatsword thousands of times continuously. His body was now extremely exhausted.
He opened his face mask, let out a light breath, and sat cross-legged on the stone surface to rest.
Beside him stood a pale white skeleton. Compared to when it was first summoned a week ago, the skeleton warrior's bones had grown several sizes thicker.
Especially that pale soul fire burning in its eye sockets was incredibly full, symbolizing that this skeleton warrior was already on the verge of advancement.
It just needed some trigger, maybe the next battle, and it would naturally advance into an elite skeleton warrior.
However, Carlos didn't want it to follow the traditional advancement route, so he stopped.
After resting for a moment, Carlos steadied his mind and commanded the skeleton warrior:
"Now, you're gonna copy my movements exactly. It has to be identical!"
Carlos stood up, holding his greatsword, and began practicing a set of wide, sweeping swordsmanship. The Death Herald energy within his body was stirred by the sword techniques, coating the greatsword with a layer of cold energy that was absolutely chilling.
The skeleton warrior meticulously followed Carlos's orders, learning his moves and swinging the bone blade in its hands.
After Carlos finished demonstrating once, a voice echoed in his mind:
[Successfully created unknown swordsmanship]
"Name it Bone Swordsmanship!"
[Bone Swordsmanship: Sharp sword techniques tailor-made for skeletal soldiers.]
[Special Enhancement: When skeletal beings use sword weapons, damage increased by 1%*level]
[If learned by non-skeletal creatures, enhancement has no effect.]
Besides awakened skills, Psionics could also learn skills on their own, even create skills, like how Carlos re-learned Bone Swordsmanship based on his past life memories.
This technique was something the top Death Heralds from his previous life had created specifically for advancing skeleton warriors, and it was also one of the prerequisites for following the Undead Armored Cavalry advancement route.
Carlos practiced over and over again, while the skeleton warrior went from being clumsy at first to gradually getting the hang of it...
[Skeleton warrior has learned 'Bone Swordsmanship'!]
Hearing the success notification, Carlos stopped. The final condition for special advancement was finally met.
The first stage advancement target of the Undead Armored Cavalry route was called Skeleton Guard.
There were 3 advancement conditions in total:
1).Death Herald's Mental attribute must be at least 1 or higher.
2).Skeleton warrior must meet advancement threshold and learn the special sword technique: Bone Swordsmanship.
3).Sacrifice a white quality or higher special greatsword equipment.
Carlos took out the twelve greatswords he had obtained from the treasury from his storage space, laying them out one by one. Each had identical descriptions.
[Unknown Legion's Rare Greatsword]
[Quality: Blue]
[Sharpness: 25]
[Equipment Requirements: Mental 15, Strength 5]
Then following a special magic circle pattern, he inserted them all into the ground.
Carlos then stood in the center of the magic circle, releasing his internal energy.
The formation was immediately activated, glowing with layers of light.
The twelve greatswords at the nodes all lit up.
At the same time, Carlos concentrated and shouted in a special language:
"Thorns are eternal!"
In an instant, the twelve pitch-black greatswords floated up, the darkness on their blades began to fade, revealing strange purple thorn patterns.
"It worked."
Carlos stepped forward to examine them.
[Purple Thornblade Clan Sword]
[Quality: Light Gold]
[Sharpness: 45]
[Special Enhancements:
(1) Purple Thornblade Swordsmanship level +3
(2) +10% damage when using Purple Thornblade Swordsmanship
(3) Bond: Glory of the Purple Thornblades]
[Equipment Requirements: Mental 30, Purple Thornblade Swordsmanship level 10, Purple Thornblade family bloodline, Strength 20]
This was the true identity of the unknown greatswords: Purple Thornblade Clan Swords.
Equipment from a lost era of humanity: the Age of Swords.
In that Age of Swords, humans took pride in swords, with all kinds of powerful sword techniques emerging constantly. Powerful families would usually forge clan swords as their legacy.
These twelve Purple Thornblade Clan Swords came from the incredibly powerful Purple Thornblade family of that era, with quality reaching light gold.
These were treasures that even high-tier (Mental 30-39), Controllers (Mental 40-49), or even higher Weavers (Mental 50-59) would covet.
(Equipment quality from low to high: white, blue, purple, light gold.)
More importantly was the bond effect:
[Glory of the Purple Thornblades: Clan swords resonate during battle. Each additional sword increases the wielder's Strength and Constitution by 1 point (maximum twelve swords, can be activated once every 24 hours, lasts one hour)]
Simple and brutal. Once all twelve swords resonated in battle, that's an increase of 12 points each to Strength and Constitution, enough to decide the outcome of a battle.
"In the original timeline, after this equipment set flowed out from the Valois family, it spread across the entire continent.
Only one sword was accidentally found by a descendant of the Purple Thornblade family, exposing their true identity. The other eleven disappeared without a trace."
Carlos had obtained them not for his own use—there were too many restrictions. The most suitable use was for sacrifice, to promote skeleton warrior advancement.
In principle, the stronger the sacrificed greatsword equipment, the stronger the resulting Skeleton Guard would be.
And under the mysterious power of advancement transformation, the sword's special enhancements would also be granted to the Skeleton Guard.
"Time to begin."
Carlos put away eleven Purple Thornblade Clan Swords, leaving only one.
Then he began drawing the Skeleton Guard advancement formation. The skeleton warrior was positioned at the left center of the formation, the Purple Thornblade Clan Sword at the right center—these were the two cores of the formation.
Next, Carlos piled the corpses of Black Beetles he had killed over the past few days onto the formation—these served as the formation's catalyst energy.
After arranging everything, Carlos chanted mysterious advancement words:
"&&&&##"
The advancement secret formation lit up accordingly, and the many Black Beetle corpses began to merge, their flesh and blood transforming into pure death energy that rose upward.
Pure white light pillars rose from the two formation cores, constantly rotating and gradually approaching each other, finally converging and fusing into one larger light pillar.
Carlos's mysterious advancement chanting grew faster, with notes resonating in mid-air one after another.
"&&&&&##**"
As the final note was sung, the advancement light pillar at the formation's center blazed to its peak brilliance.
At the moment it reached its limit, it suddenly vanished, transforming into specks of light that disappeared as if they had never existed.
At the same time,
At the core of the advancement formation appeared a sturdy skeleton wielding a greatsword.
On its strong white bones were inscribed mysterious patterns that, upon closer inspection, looked like purple thornblade vines.
The source of these purple thornblade patterns was the greatsword in its right hand.
The purple thornblade patterns were like blood vessels, connecting the greatsword and the skeleton warrior at their very essence.
[Purple Thornblade Skeleton Guard]
[Health: 350 (Constitution×50)]
[Strength: 9]
[Constitution: 7]
[Speed: 3]
[Skills: Purple Thornblade, Purple Thornblade Bone Swordsmanship (1+3) level]
"A full 9 points of Strength! And 7 points of Constitution too!
Its power has increased dozens of times!"