After leaving Westport, Kyle didn’t head deep into the wilderness right away.
He followed the route marked on his map and continued south.
As the city walls grew farther behind him, the number of class holders in the area gradually thinned out.
At first, he occasionally passed parties making their way back toward Westport.
After traveling a little farther, however, all that remained around him were wide stretches of wild grass and scattered patches of woodland in the distance.
Several skeleton warriors stayed ahead of Kyle at all times.
They kept some distance between one another as they scouted the surrounding area.
Kyle remained behind them and made no attempt to summon his entire force at once.
This was his first time in the real wilderness.
Until he had a better idea of how strong the monsters here were, there was no reason to rush.
Before long, the skeleton warrior at the front suddenly stopped.
Kyle slowed as well.
The tall grass ahead rustled softly.
A moment later, a short figure emerged.
Green skin.
Barely tall enough to reach an adult’s chest.
Crude armor made from leather and animal bones covered its body, while a spiked club rested in its hands.
The creature had clearly noticed Kyle too.
Its cloudy yellow eyes immediately locked onto him, and a low, unpleasant growl came from its throat.
Kyle kept his distance and used Detection.
[Goblin Patrolman] [Level: 10] Level 10.
Three levels above him.
Perfect.
Kyle didn’t order the other skeleton warriors to help.
Instead, he gave a command to the one standing at the front.
“Attack.” The skeleton warrior immediately charged.
The clattering of its bones rang clearly across the open ground.
The Goblin Patrolman obviously hadn’t expected the battered-looking skeleton to move so quickly.
It let out a sharp cry, gripped its club with both hands, and swung down with all its strength.
Bang!
The spiked club slammed directly into the skeleton warrior’s shoulder.
The impact knocked its upper body slightly to one side.
Before the goblin could celebrate, the skeleton had already steadied itself.
No scream.
No retreat.
Not even the slightest hesitation from pain.
The blue soul flames inside its empty eye sockets continued to burn without a flicker.
Then its battered blade came down.
Slash!
The edge tore through the leather armor covering the goblin’s chest, carving a deep wound across its body.
“Graaaagh!” A shrill scream rang out.
The Goblin Patrolman staggered back two steps.
It stared down at the blood pouring from its chest, then looked up at the skeleton warrior in front of it.
For a moment, it seemed genuinely confused.
That last strike had nearly been made with all its strength.
An ordinary Level 7 class holder would have had a hard time taking such a blow head-on even while wearing armor.
Yet the skeleton had merely been knocked off balance.
Meanwhile, the goblin was the one bleeding.
Its confusion quickly turned into rage.
With another ugly roar, it raised its club and rushed forward.
The skeleton warrior didn’t retreat.
Clang!
Club and blade collided again.
This time, the goblin failed to block the strike completely.
The damaged blade slid past the edge of the club and cut into its shoulder.
Another wound opened.
Blood streamed down its green skin.
The goblin’s movements noticeably slowed.
The skeleton warrior had no such problem.
As long as its body could still move, injuries and exhaustion had almost no effect on its attack rhythm.
Its blade rose again.
A third strike.
Then a fourth.
The Goblin Patrolman went from attacking aggressively to barely managing to defend itself.
When the final strike landed, the club flew from its hands.
Its body collapsed heavily into the grass.
[Successfully killed Level 10 Goblin Patrolman.] [Experience gained.] Kyle didn’t move on immediately.
He walked over to the corpse and checked it.
A real Level 10 monster from the wilderness was indeed different from anything inside the Novice Trial Grounds.
Its strength, aggression, and combat reactions were all noticeably better.
At the very least, that Goblin Patrolman had been strong enough to knock the skeleton warrior off balance in a direct clash.
But that was all.
It was still nowhere near strong enough to pose a serious threat.
Kyle glanced at the skeleton warrior’s shoulder.
After taking several direct hits, only a few faint marks had appeared on the bone.
There weren’t even any obvious cracks.
“That’s enough.” One fight had given Kyle the answer he wanted.
Ordinary Level 10 monsters around the outskirts of Westport weren’t much of a threat to his current skeleton warriors.
There was no reason to keep testing them one at a time.
With a thought, Kyle opened his summoning space.
Dark gray vortices appeared one after another across the wilderness.
Clack.
Clack.
The sound of colliding bones filled the air.
Skeleton warriors stepped through the portals one after another, quickly forming a sizable force around him.
Kyle didn’t let them gather in one place.
“Spread out.” “Keep your distance.” “If you find a monster, attack immediately.” The moment his orders were given, the skeleton warriors scattered in different directions.
It didn’t take long before the previously quiet wilderness came alive with the sounds of battle.
[Successfully killed Level 9 Wasteland Hyena.] [Experience gained.] [Successfully killed Level 10 Goblin Patrolman.] [Experience gained.] [Successfully killed Level 10 Rockscale Lizard.] [Experience gained.] Notifications appeared one after another.
Kyle continued moving slowly along the safer route marked on his map.
Compared to yesterday in the Novice Trial Grounds, he was noticeably more cautious.
His summons still handled the scouting and fighting, but he didn’t allow them to move too far away.
Whenever he passed through woods, rocky slopes, or areas with poor visibility, he deliberately reduced their scouting range.
This wasn’t a trial ground.
The fact that his skeleton warriors could easily kill Level 10 monsters didn’t mean there were only Level 10 monsters nearby.
If something stronger than expected appeared, Kyle needed to know immediately.
Even with those precautions, his progress was still far faster than that of an ordinary class holder.
One skeleton warrior could search in one direction.
Dozens could search simultaneously.
Kyle received another kill notification every few moments.
And as his level continued to rise, he kept adding new skeleton warriors to his force.
The twenty-something summons he had started with soon passed thirty.
Thirty-two.
Thirty-five.
Thirty-eight.
The more skeletons he had, the wider the area they could cover.
Naturally, they found monsters faster as well.
Kyle also hadn’t forgotten the material prices he’d checked at the Exchange.
Whenever they encountered Grayrock Wolves or similar monsters, he ordered the skeleton warriors to avoid damaging the valuable parts of the corpse whenever possible.
After the kill, he personally harvested anything worth taking.
At first, his movements were clumsy.
The academy had taught basic monster-material processing, but reading about it in a textbook was very different from kneeling beside an actual corpse and doing it himself.
After several attempts, he gradually became faster.
The materials inside his storage bag steadily accumulated.
Experience.
Materials.
Gold.
On his first real trip into the wilderness, Kyle was finally experiencing the most common way class holders grew stronger.
Time passed.
His level rose from seven to eight.
Then from eight to nine.
Each new level clearly required more experience than the last.
But the number of skeleton warriors under his command was increasing as well, so his overall leveling speed hadn’t slowed too dramatically.
Eventually, Kyle entered a stretch of wasteland covered in black rocks.
Another notification came from somewhere in the distance.
[Successfully killed Level 11 Rockhorn Beast.] [Experience gained.] The next instant— A far brighter glow than before erupted around Kyle.
Warm energy rushed through his entire body.
Kyle stopped walking.
This level-up felt completely different from the previous ones.
It wasn’t just his body becoming stronger.
Even his mind seemed to expand in an instant.
His Spirit, which had already fallen below half, rapidly recovered.
At the same time, a series of new notifications appeared before him.
[Level increased.] [Current Level: 10.] [Class growth stage has changed.] [Talent effect increased.] [Class skills have advanced.] Kyle’s eyes shifted slightly.
Advanced?
None of his previous level-ups had produced a notification like that.
He immediately opened his class panel.
[Name: Kyle Gray] [Class: Necromancer — Hidden Class] [Level: 10 — 0.00%] [Strength: 100] [Agility: 100] [Spirit: 300] [Constitution: 100] [Summoning Space: 40/100] [Skeleton Warriors: 40] [Talent: Total Amplification — Level 2] [Special Passive: Undead Substitute] [Active Skills: Soul Flame — Level 10, Summon Skeleton Warrior — Level 10] Kyle read through the panel from top to bottom.
The first obvious change was in his basic attributes.
Strength, Agility, and Constitution had all reached one hundred.
But Spirit had increased the most.
Three hundred.
Whenever a class holder reached a new ten-level stage, their primary attributes received a significant increase.
The exact growth naturally depended on the class.
Knights and warriors generally favored Strength and Constitution.
Assassins and rangers relied more heavily on Agility.
For magic-based classes, Spirit was usually the most important.
The Necromancer was unusual, but it was still fundamentally a magic-based class.
So there was nothing strange about most of Kyle’s Level 10 attribute growth going into Spirit.
Three hundred Spirit also meant that the amount of mental energy he could store and control had increased significantly.
For an ordinary mage, that meant more spells.
For Kyle— It meant more skeleton warriors.
But that wasn’t the biggest change brought by Level 10.
Kyle’s gaze settled on his talent.
[Total Amplification — Level 2] He opened the detailed description.
[Total Amplification — Level 2: All class skill effects are amplified twentyfold.] Kyle stared at the number.
Twenty times.
At Level 1, Total Amplification had only provided a tenfold boost.
Now that he’d reached Level 10, the talent itself had advanced as well.
Its effect had doubled.
That meant even if his class skills hadn’t changed at all, their final effects after amplification would still be on a completely different level from before.
But the system hadn’t only mentioned his talent.
There was something else.
His skills had advanced.
Kyle continued reading.
[Soul Flame — Level 10: Condenses soul fire to attack a target, inflicting continuous soul-burning damage.
Power is affected by Spirit and skill level.] Nothing especially different there.
Then his gaze moved to the second skill.
[Summon Skeleton Warrior — Level 10: Consumes Spirit to summon one Bronze-Rank Skeleton Warrior to assist in battle.] Bronze Rank.
For the first time since opening the panel, Kyle’s expression noticeably changed.
Until now, every skeleton warrior he had summoned had been Black-Iron Rank.
Their attributes had continued to increase as he leveled, but their rank itself had never changed.
Now that Summon Skeleton Warrior had reached Level 10— the summon had finally advanced.
Kyle didn’t bother studying the description any longer.
The easiest way to understand the change was to summon one himself.
“Summon Skeleton Warrior.” His Spirit rapidly drained.
Dark gray energy gathered in front of him.
The familiar summoning vortex slowly opened.
A skeletal hand emerged first.
The moment Kyle saw it, he noticed the difference.
His previous skeleton warriors had dull gray bones covered in tiny cracks.
They looked as though they had been buried underground for countless years.
This hand was completely different.
The bone was still grayish white, but a faint blue-green sheen ran across its surface.
There was almost a metallic quality to it.
Then the rest of the skeleton warrior stepped out of the vortex.
Its size hadn’t changed much.
It still had the basic frame of a human skeleton.
But the entire structure was noticeably more complete than before.
The cracks along its shoulders, ribs, and leg bones were almost entirely gone.
Even the joints between the bones looked tighter and more stable.
The battered blade in its hand had changed as well.
Most of the rust was gone.
The blade itself was far more intact.
It was still nowhere near a finely crafted weapon, but at least it no longer looked like it might snap apart at any moment.
If the old Black-Iron Skeleton Warriors looked like they had crawled straight out of a scrap heap— then this one finally looked somewhat like an actual warrior.
Kyle used Detection.
Its information appeared.
[Bronze-Rank Skeleton Warrior] [Level: 10] [Base Strength: 175] [Base Agility: 175] [Base Spirit: 175] [Base Constitution: 175] [Total Amplification Active] [Current Strength: 3,500] [Current Agility: 3,500] [Current Spirit: 3,500] [Current Constitution: 3,500] [Skill: Savage Strike — Level 1] Kyle kept staring at the numbers.
Three thousand five hundred.
Across all four attributes.
No obvious weakness anywhere.
Even though he had already known that Total Amplification would become a twentyfold boost after advancing, seeing the actual result was still ridiculous.
The Bronze-Rank Skeleton Warrior’s base attributes were all 175.
On their own, those numbers were strong, but not completely unreasonable.
The real problem was Total Amplification.
One hundred seventy-five.
Times twenty.
Three thousand five hundred.
A summon with otherwise reasonable attributes had instantly been pushed into an entirely different league.
Kyle glanced at his own stats.
Strength: 100.
Constitution: 100.
Then he looked at the skeleton warrior in front of him.
Three thousand five hundred.
The difference wasn’t small anymore.
And that wasn’t all.
This Bronze-Rank Skeleton Warrior had something the previous ones had never possessed.
A skill.
Kyle opened its details.
[Savage Strike — Level 1: Focuses its strength for a brief moment before delivering a powerful attack, dealing damage equal to 250% of its Strength.] [Cooldown: 5 minutes.] Two hundred and fifty percent.
Kyle looked at the skeleton’s 3,500 Strength, then back at the description of Savage Strike.
Its ordinary attacks were already powerful enough with those attributes.
If it activated the skill— the burst of power behind a single strike would be on another level entirely.
And this was only the first skill a Bronze-Rank Skeleton Warrior had gained.
Would it gain a second skill when its rank increased again?
Maybe even a third?
Kyle didn’t know yet.
But the changes in front of him were already more than enough.
The Black-Iron Skeleton Warriors had always fought in the simplest way possible.
Find the enemy.
Charge.
Swing.
If one strike wasn’t enough, swing again.
No combat techniques.
No magic.
No special abilities that could be activated depending on the situation.
Their greatest advantages had always been their high attributes and absolute obedience to Kyle’s commands.
Now that they had reached Bronze Rank, that weakness was already beginning to disappear.
Kyle looked at the skeleton warrior standing before him.
Blue soul flames burned quietly in its eye sockets.
Its blue-gray bones reflected a faint metallic sheen beneath the sunlight.
The weapon in its hand was still plain, but compared to the battered piece of scrap it had carried yesterday, the difference was obvious.
More importantly— this wasn’t a one-time special summon.
As long as Kyle had enough Spirit, every skeleton warrior he summoned from now on would be Bronze Rank.
His gaze shifted toward his summoning space.
[Summoning Space: 41/100] Forty before.
Now there was one additional Bronze-Rank Skeleton Warrior.
The forty Black-Iron Skeleton Warriors already inside the summoning space hadn’t changed when the skill advanced.
Kyle wasn’t disappointed.
They were still perfectly usable.
And the remaining fifty-nine spaces— could all be filled with new Bronze-Rank Skeleton Warriors.
Fifty-nine of them.
All with 3,500 in every attribute.
All with Savage Strike.
Kyle was silent for several seconds.
Suddenly, all the effort he’d put into figuring out exactly how strong Level 10 monsters were yesterday seemed a little unnecessary.
Of course, that didn’t mean he was about to go looking for Level 20 monsters.
High attributes didn’t mean he could completely ignore level differences.
Different monsters had different abilities.
Skills, attack patterns, numbers, and special effects could all change the outcome of a fight.
Especially out here in the real wilderness.
There was no such thing as being too careful.
Still, one thing was already certain.
From Level 10 onward, the way Kyle fought was going to change again.
He raised one hand.
The Bronze-Rank Skeleton Warrior immediately tightened its grip on its blade.
“Let’s test it.” Kyle looked toward a large black boulder nearby.
“Savage Strike.” The blue flames in the skeleton warrior’s eyes suddenly surged.
It stepped forward.
Its blade came crashing down.
BOOM!
The heavy impact echoed across the wasteland.
Fragments of stone exploded in every direction.
Dust filled the air.
When it finally settled, Kyle looked ahead.
The massive black boulder that had stood there moments ago had been split apart from the center.
A deep slash mark had been carved into the point where the blade struck.
Kyle fell silent for a moment.
Then he looked at the sword in the skeleton warrior’s hand.
It hadn’t broken.
Good.
At least this time, the weapon could finally keep up with its strength.
Kyle looked away.
Notifications from his other skeleton warriors were still arriving from different parts of the wilderness.
There were plenty of monsters left to hunt.
And Kyle had only just reached Level 10.
But from this moment onward— the ones fighting for him were no longer limited to those Black-Iron skeletons that looked as though they might fall apart at any moment.
His first Bronze-Rank Skeleton Warrior had officially arrived.