I became a legion lich

Chapter 138

138 Abomination of bones

“Ready to welcome some more brothers?” Athos asked, looking at one of the randomly arranged skulls.

The bone abomination snapped the bones in agreement and Athos began to fuse the skeletons one by one. His body grew in size and power, until it looked like a small hill. When Athos ended, the bone abomination had grown to nearly fifty feet, and its cores looked like a constellation, with several small black cores connected by life force threads to a central core.

“You have enough mass now, let’s change your shape a little.” Athos spoke and cast the bone craftsman into the abomination of bones. The abomination continued to look curiously at Athos, feeling its shape slowly change.

“Hmm... I think this bone looks better this way. Whoops, you’re going to need more legs here to keep your balance. Maybe I can add extra limbs? With so many skulls, it shouldn’t be a problem to control one or two more arms. And where should I put all these skulls? Would it be better to spread them out or leave them all together?” Athos spoke to himself as he removed, reshaped and fused the bones again.

Athos worked happily for hours, only stopping to regenerate his mana every now and then. He felt like a child playing with building blocks, letting his imagination run wild as he built the bone abomination’s body.

“My king, what are you doing?” Astrus approached while he was building one of the Bone Abomination’s arms. Athos had become so engrossed in his work that he ignored the call of his subordinates. They were worried he was going crazy on some crazy project and sent the skeleton closer to make sure he was okay.

General Astrus was currently only wearing an army uniform with a corrupted willow sword strapped to his waist, as his equipment had not yet been corrupted. Athos had prioritized corrupting large-scale spells and his own experiments over army equipment.

In defense of Athos, it would be useless for Athos to corrupt weapons while the skeleton mages were busy taking turns feeding the large-scale spells. He planned to leave it to Treevor to corrupt the weapons, as his yggdrasil arm could also draw corrupted world energy.

“It is not obvious?” Athos asked, finally finishing off the bone abomination’s left arm. Athos was giving a roughly human form to the bone abomination, but still he was still in the midst of work and the creature was a mass of bones with huge arms.

.....

“Have you really managed to merge several skeletons into a single being? Is it possible to do the same with other skeletons?” Astrus asked fearfully. He still didn’t know much about Athos’ personality, but what little he saw of the cruel experiments was enough for him to know just how inhuman Athos was.

“Unfortunately not. Your energy signatures aren’t similar enough for that. It’s really a shame. I’m curious what would happen if I merged someone with more than one layer into a bone abomination, but I’ll have to wait until what i learn to create undead with more than one layer.” Athos spoke with regret.

“Does your majesty need help? The mage skeletons have informed me that they will soon finish feeding the large-scale spells, so they will be free to help you.” Astrus spoke helpfully.

“No, other mages would just get in the way. The only one that could help would be Treevor, as his willow could conjure up a field of the dead and make it easy to turn all those corpses into undead. Tell him to join me as soon as the spells of large scale are ready.” Athos ordered and Astrus nodded before walking away.

Even Athos would be unable to turn so many corpses into undead without residual energy, but the field of the dead would solve that problem. Corpses, even ancient ones, would draw the corrupted world energy, saving Athos a lot of mana.

After saying goodbye to Astrus, Athos continued working diligently on the abomination of bones. It took approximately 4 hours to complete the transformation.

Athos took a few steps back after finishing, admiring his new creation. The abomination of bones was an impressive sight.

Approximately 12 meters tall, 4 meters wide and has a humanoid body. The bones that made up his body weren’t a smooth surface, but were clearly different bones joined together. The general structure of the body looked like a human skeleton, but it was as if the body had been broken into pieces and reassembled by a small child.

The abomination’s head was made up of dozens of human skulls arranged in all directions, ensuring that the abomination had no blind spots. None of the skulls were a real weak point, as they were part of a hive mind. It would take destroying all the skulls to actually destroy the abomination.

He had four arms made of dozens of bones stuck together, an upper pair and a lower pair.

The upper arms came off the shoulders like normal arms, but the lower ones were connected to shoulder blades directly connected to the spine. The upper arms were thick, nearly twice the size of the lower ones, which looked slender in comparison despite being the girth of a human torso.

Athos did his best to make it anatomically correct, but he let his creativity run wild when it came to making the fists. The upper fists were made from femur bones and Athos used his bone crafter spell to make the knuckles flatten like a hammer, making it an excellent blunt weapon.

Athos also created artificial joints between his knuckles, so fists were functional and not just weapons to crush. The lower hilts ended in fingers made from rib bones, which Athos made as sharp as blades.

They looked like curved, jointless claws, each claw having a different size as if they were real fingers. The largest of these was the middle finger, measuring 50 centimeters in length. Although there were no joints on the curved claws, there were joints at the base of the claws, so the claws still had some mobility.

The undead’s torso looked like thick ribs, with a single skull right in the middle. The skull was just a decoy for enemies, who would focus their attacks on it, considering it a weak point. inside the ribcage was the central skeleton that Athos used as the base for the abomination.

Athos didn’t know what would happen if he altered it, as his core became the central core of the abomination, so he left it unchanged, just surrounded by a mass of bone so as not to be seen and pinned against the inner part of the spine.

His spine was made up of over a thousand vertebrae, as well as a set of flexible bone plates for protection. The plates overlapped each other slightly, folding in on themselves whenever the bone abomination leaned forward or backward.

Like skeletons, the bone abomination could bend or lean into seemingly impossible positions, as its joints were made of darkness rather than cartilage.

His legs had bony spikes that jutted out randomly between his thigh and ankle bones. Each tip was a maximum of 5 centimeters long and was serrated and retractable, and could be retracted into small spaces between the leg bones.

Its feet had six claws, five of them forward as toes and a larger one on the heel to keep the giant body balanced.

“Wow. You look amazing.” Athos muttered, lightly touching the abomination’s shin bones.

“Ohhhh...” The bone abomination made a deep sound from all the skulls at once, something Athos interpreted as a happy moan and stroked its head with one of its claws, being careful to use only the flat part.

Athos was surprised by the gesture, but did not complain.

“What the fuck is this?” Treevor asked as he approached, staring in amazement at the bone abomination. He was in his skeleton form, leaving the corrupted willow buried within the inner area of the fortress, recovering after long hours of fueling the large-scale spells.

“Remember I said I had an idea for a weapon after seeing the skeleton mages working together? This guy was what I thought of, only twice as good.” Athos puffed out his chest with pride as he spoke.

What Athos said was only half true. Athos actually came up with the idea to create a chimera out of bones after seeing the skeleton mages working in sync, but he intended to do it with black skeletons, not using the corpses he brought back from Faltra. It was fortunate that the corpses served the purpose, or he would have embarrassed himself in front of his subordinates.

“And what the hell did you do?” Treevor asked taking in the undead’s appearance, before choking in shock when he used death vision. “How did you create this thing? Balance multiple cores in a single body?”

“I merged the skeletons and the cores looked like this on their own. I tried using the black skeletons at first, but the few differences between the energy signatures caused rejection and destroyed the skeletons. I created these skeletons from the corpses using purely my mana and they all carried my energy signature rather than a similar one.” Athos explained.

“I see. The skeletons’ signatures are a mixture of your signature and the residual signature, so it makes sense that they can’t merge.” Treevor nodded in understanding and turned to Athos. “So boss, why did you call me here? It sure wasn’t just to show off a new toy, right?”