Mo Fan murmured quietly to himself, a complicated feeling settling in his chest.
In the bloody battle of Linshui Village, if it weren't for Summon No. 003, he'd probably be a dried-out corpse right now.
He knew the theory. As a Necromancer, the coldly optimal strategy—the one with the highest Return on Investment—was to discard these Tier-1 skeletons like old trash.
Use the freed-up Load to directly summon fresh, full-status Tier-2 skeletons from the new beast corpses he'd hunted. Clean slate. Maximum efficiency.
But something about that sat wrong with him.
He looked at the pale ghost-flames dancing in Unit 003's beast-bone eye sockets, and a strong, wordless instinct rose in him.
These were the initial skeletons that had been with him from the very beginning.
The ones that had fought through life-and-death battles at his side, again and again.
Keeping them—upgrading them—would absolutely pay dividends down the line that he couldn't even calculate yet.
Brothers rise together.
Mo Fan decided to trust the instinct.
Of course, for now, the generational upgrade work was limited to Unit 003.
The beast bones he'd harvested tonight were all from monsters—a natural fit for 003, which had always been a beast-type frame.
Unit 001, Mo Yan, was a different matter. Mo Fan wanted to keep it in a pure humanoid form.
He deeply knew that only a humanoid skeletal frame would allow Mo Yan to eventually unlock the full combat potential of a "Sword Cultivator."
Forcibly grafting beast claws or beast legs onto it would only destroy its balance entirely.
"Material selection complete. Let's get to work."
Mo Fan pulled Unit 003 out of the [ Necrotic Realm ] and had it lie prone in the center of the spacious basement.
He looked at the dazzling array of premium Tier-2 bones laid out before him—each one faintly luminous, radiating a quiet spiritual glow...
And his eyes sharpened with the focus of a top-tier surgeon.
He sorted the bones by type, running through countless optimal assembly configurations in his mind simultaneously.
"Start with the spine."
Mo Fan drew out the [ Blind Fish Spine ]—supple, dense, faintly gleaming.
Without hesitation, he ruthlessly stripped out Unit 003's original Shadow Leopard spine—cracked through, deteriorated beyond salvage...
And replaced it with this deep-water beast bone, as hard as iron and as flexible as a cable.
Structural resilience and flexibility. That's the foundation of survival.
"Now the offensive end."
His gaze moved across the pile of loot.
He made an extremely bold call: he passed over the standard tiger and leopard claws entirely...
And instead pulled out four of the Stygian Poison Centipede's sharpest limb segments—naturally serrated, curved like scythes, each one a weapon in its own right!
[ Scythe-like Arthropod Legs ].
Under the forceful binding and grinding of his Necromantic Mana, all four terrifying venomous bladed limbs were grafted seamlessly onto Unit 003's four primary force-bearing joints.
A blinding weave of grayish-blue Mana flared and pulsed— Then faded.
"Phew—"
Mo Fan exhaled and wiped the sweat from his forehead.
Unit 003's overall leopard silhouette hadn't changed dramatically.
But with the excess, redundant bone stripped away, the entire shell had become leaner, more streamlined—every line of it purposeful.
The stark white bone surface itself had taken on a deep, cold sheen, like black jade, dense and unyielding.
Speed, hardness, and killing power. All of it had surged to a terrifyingly massive new level under the enhancement of top-tier Tier-2 bones.
Hum!
As Unit 003 formally crossed the threshold into Tier-2, Mo Fan felt a slight pressure settle into his mindscape...
His Soul Load correspondingly ticking upward.
He checked the System panel reflexively.
And nearly choked.
It actually only increased the Load by 10 points?!
A wave of pure, wild joy filled Mo Fan's heart.
Could this be the hidden dividend of performing an "Ascension" based on an original low-tier skeleton?!
One must know, if he directly used the intact corpse of a Tier-2 beast to summon a brand-new Tier-2 skeleton right now, the starting cost would be 40 points of Load!
Yet this "upgrading" method that retained the core soul-fire actually managed to save nearly half of the computing power!
Since I still have so much Load headroom left...
Mo Fan's expression shifted. Slowly, bit by bit, his eyes went a little fanatical.
He cracked his knuckles and turned to look at the storage bag—specifically at the premium material he'd been holding onto and refusing to throw away.
It was time to push forward the plan he'd been sitting on.
That grand, ambitious, and even somewhat perverted scheme of his.
"The System previously prompted: Minimum Requirement for Multi-Limb Coordination: 100."
"I'm LV. 14 now. With all the accumulated miscellaneous bonuses, my Soul Strength cleared the 100-point threshold a long time ago. Doesn't this mean..."
"That right now, I can legally create?!"
Hands trembling with barely-contained excitement, Mo Fan dismantled the peak Tier-1 Bat King skeleton he'd been saving.
He kept only what he needed: the two enormous wing bones, wide-spanned, with faint translucent periosteum still stretched between the joints.
"Get on there!"
Activating [ Death Vision ], Mo Fan's eyes went bloodshot. Gray death-qi erupted from his hands in a blazing column.
He pressed the massive bat wings against Unit 003's streamlined shoulder blades—viciously, brutally, without hesitation!
Ding!
A cascade of alternating red and blue System notifications frantically exploded across his retina:
[ Heterogeneous limb grafting behavior detected... ]
[ Host Soul Strength confirmed sufficient... ]
[ Multi-Limb Coordination Operation Authority: UNLOCKED! ]
[ External high-tier component detected: Thunder Wings. Load requirement: 20. ]
[ Current remaining Load: sufficient. Confirm installation? ]
"YES! CONFIRM! CONFIRM IT RIGHT NOW!"
Mo Fan roared the command in his mind like a maddened wild dog.
BOOM——!
The moment his confirmation registered, the entire basement detonated in a blinding, chaotic eruption of death-qi.
The deeply unpleasant, tooth-aching sound of bone growing, interlocking, and fusing rang out violently through the light.
Several breaths passed.
The light dispersed. The churning death-qi receded like a tide pulling back from shore.
A brand-new, terrifying undead creation stood quietly before Mo Fan.
Its streamlined leopard body—dark bone gleaming with that deep black-jade luster...
It crouched slightly low, its four scythe-like arthropod legs gripping deeply into the stone floor like the scythes of the grim reaper.
And on its back—
SWISH——!
A pair of massive bone wings unfurled violently, accompanied by a heavy, muffled crack of displaced air!
The proportions of its figure were extremely perfect.
There was no sense of mismatched parts, no visual dissonance; instead, it radiated the ultimate aesthetic of dark heavy metal—brutal and complete.
Hiss—
Mo Fan stared at this flying scythe-bone leopard, completely forgetting to breathe.
This is the ultimate mount I've been dreaming of! This is a man's ultimate romance!
Hum!
At the same time, a dull, leaden ache—as if someone had stuffed a block of lead into it—pulsed from deep within his brain. Mo Fan glanced at his panel.
His Soul Load had been squeezed to the absolute, full-capacity red line at this moment.
He looked back at the majestic, awe-inspiring white bone flying leopard standing before him in all its terrifying glory.
He threw his head back and laughed extremely arrogantly.
"Who the fuck cares about Load limits anymore!"
"Being strong is a version thing. Being cool is forever!"
"Let's go, 003! We're going for a joyride!"