A few hours later, Ed was still constructing the fortifications of the skeleton outpost. The temple of Ed was already handled but per his wishes of making the temple stronger, it had a couple of new features.

For starters, the temple had rooms now. There weren't many rooms, but even two merited the use of the plural.

'It's really starting to mimic the system space...' Following this same train of thought, the rooms were also system rooms. There was a forge room for example and a storage room. The other rooms were.. well empty.

Ed didn't take a page out of the system and locked these rooms, he just kept them empty for the time being.

'I don't think I'll be able to mimic the other temple room functions' Not that he needed to do such a thing.

Anyway, the forge room had a regular forge flame which was expected. The creation of skeleton parts through smithing was what would take place in that room.

'The mixing using the system's forge flame can happen anywhere after all' There was no need to dedicate a room for it. In fact, Ed was hoping that the skeletons wouldn't use any of the rooms for creating new skeletons.

'It's better if they just do it before me' The throne was still present and Ed's body would always sit there awaiting his return. Having the new skeletons born in front of him would carry a lot of significance.

'Well, the new skeletons will be too stupid to notice that' The skeletons that Trench would be able to upgrade would not get a new consciousness since as far as Ed could tell it was impossible to merge consciousnesses in the real. That being the case the skeletons would remain as stupid as they were before the upgrade.

'No wait, there is a chance that they become dumber' If the upgrade requires more mass or greater width and height than this was actually a possible outcome.

Nevertheless, as long as the smarter ones understood it Ed was fine with the notion. As the skeletons became smarter they would be less willing to follow his every order without question.

Under special circumstances, as Ed had learned first hand, the skeletons would even defy his command altogether. Putting a couple of.. safeguards wasn't a bad idea.

'Well, it's just brainwashing' But since the skeletons had no brains Ed actually convinced himself that it couldn't be and this indoctrination was a-okay!

Feeling happy by the lack of moral responsibility, Ed now went over to his next project. The outpost's walls had been reconstructed as a flimsy outer perimeter but they would need to be restrengthened.

This was therefore the perfect opportunity for Ed to showcase his formation skills. But before he could do that, Ed had to restock. He stretched out his arm..

A brown sheen appeared in a matter of a few seconds, it originated from a small crystal shard. Ed was replenishing his earthen crystal supply.

Ed planned to use a formation to reinforce the perimeter wall. This reinforcement would need an ample supply of earthen crystals.

'Hmm.. The skeletons will need to maintain the arrays' Ed didn't think that the arrays would be damaged in the short term but it wasn't impossible in the long term. Ed couldn't guarantee that the walls would never crumble and the arrays wouldn't break alongside them.historical

'I feel so silly' Whenever Ed came to the crypt he would create new outposts, upgrade skeletons, and place new loot but... that had all along been the wrong approach. It was impossible for the skeletons to remain a threat to the humans with this method, there would be a day they were overrun.

Ed believed this day had come, and he didn't know if he should be thankful that it came alongside an earthquake. He still wasn't certain if the earthquake helped the skeletons or not.

[Materialize has leveled up]

After a half hour of crystal making, Ed's earthen supply had definitely been replenished. As an added bonus, his materialize skill leveled up.

'Can never go wrong with that..' Ed thought while contemplating his surroundings. Now that he had the crystals he had to make the respective arrays. He needed to think seriously about how to do this but more than anything Ed needed to plan out where they would go.

'The arrays will be pretty important' The arrays couldn't be in a place where a couple of infiltrating humans could easily tear them apart for example.

'Well, let's just make a couple of test arrays for now' As long as Ed had enough supplies he would always be able to move the arrays around later.

'Hmm.. Let's check on myself in the system space' A lot of time had passed, Ed was curious as to what he had managed to come up with.

After entering the system space, Ed found himself right in the middle of the action. He was in the forge room where he could see his consciousness and the spirit smith churning out metallic skeleton limbs.

'I presume you moved all the finished products into the assembly room' Ed asked his split who nodded before returning to their work.

'I'll go check those out then' From what Ed could observe he had moved onto creating regular anti-skeleton parts. The fixed skeletons should already be waiting for him in the assembly room.

Without further ado, Ed approached the assembly room.

'Hm?' The first thing he noticed upon walking in was an armored skeleton. Iron.

[Iron (Aire Death Knight)]

The suit had a soft green hue suggesting that Iron's armor this time around was imbued with the power of the wind.

'Looks like a trend' Admittedly thought it'd be odd to provide Iron with any other type of armor. All the armor he had been provided up to this point was somehow connected to the wind, if it was different the death knight would need to change their style of swordsmanship.

Other than Iron however, Ed also noticed some skeletons wearing robes.

'Looks like my other self really decked them out with equipment' The robes the skeleton mages were wearing directly correlated to their element. These robes were obviously not made by Ed, they were just procured from his storage room.

'I really have a lot of things just wasting space' It was good to hear that all the equipment was finally being put to good use. That aside, apart from the mages, it would appear that the skeleton Gold also got an upgrade.

'His armor looks shinier' But after a quick assessment Ed could ascertain that there were no other significant changes. Gold just had his armor patched up and cleaned it appeared.

After going through all of his skeletons and verifying that they had been improved on or just fixed up Ed moved onto the new skeletons. That was right, he had made new skeletons.

'I see, I decided to make a few new armament skeletons but..' There was a new type of armament skeleton. A shield skeleton!

The bizarre or rather interesting part was that it had a shield made of tough bone. It was like a human and bulldozer mix.

'How will the skeleton even drag around such a thing?' Ed was certain that it would need a pretty strong consciousness to even move that heavy shield.

'That small defect aside, it's a pretty neat idea' Adding shield knights, or just regular skeletons in this case, was something that should have occurred to him much sooner.

'Even the regular dungeon spawned skeletons have dinky shields' Shields were crucial in battle as they were one of the few physical means of protection. The only other means was natural cover.

Ed hadn't considered this before since he figured mages were enough, but reality that shown that couldn't always be the case. To begin with mages had a limited amount of mana. Depending on the spell the various elemental shields could also take a short while to cast.

In battles, every second counted and having a sturdy shield always at the ready could not go wrong.

Aside from this new type of addition to the armament skeletons, there were a few others carrying rather unique weapons. One for example carried a whip which Ed wouldn't have considered as a very viable weapon were it not for the thick spikes on the whip.

Ed shuddered, he pitied whatever poor human was to become a victim of this skeleton.

'Well, maybe they'll be into it' Ed wasn't going to judge them in that case.

'Anyway, it's time to get them out' The earthen mages could help create more structures in the outpost. Ed was actually hoping they'd be making all the structures from the outpost.

'I'll be busy teaching the non-earthen mage skeletons after all' Luckily, Ed still had his instruction skill. Teaching them to create formations, craft weapons, and create traps and rewards should be further eased by this skill.

'Plus, maybe I can level it up a lot' Ed was looking forward to what it could advance into so he had no complaints.

'Oh right, I should also level up link while I teach them' Once it leveled up he could verify once and for all if he was provided an additional link target. If not.. well, he'd have to go back to the drawing board.

There was no way Ed would give up on linking with Trench, but he would need to re-arrange his current links.

With all of his thoughts in order Ed no longer dallied.. He exited the system space and prepared to summon his new and improved his skeletal legion.