Chapter 55: New Specializations

Cassian stared at the sea of summons before him.

​The sheer volume was enough to make any newly awakened Lord lose their composure: a total of 216,000 summons stood packed within Lord’s Hollow, an army vast enough to blanket the surrounding wasteland, outnumbering even the massive force currently under Chief Morghanna’s command.

​Yet Cassian knew better than to be deceived by raw headcount.

​If he marched this army against the Kragmar Dominion as they were now, they would be slaughtered, completely and utterly.

​First of all, 54,000 of the new summons were dedicated workers possessing zero meaningful combat power.

They would contribute almost nothing on a frontline battlefield, having been summoned primarily to bolster his original labor corps.

​Even now, his original skeleton workers were bustling across Lord’s Hollow, having accumulated massive piles of harvested resources beside the Graveyard Fields: heavy timber, bone fragments, Grave Dust, Deathroot, and various raw ores.

​The immediate problem was that they had nowhere to properly store any of it, which reminded Cassian of another glaring vulnerability: infrastructure.

​Territorial storage vaults, processing facilities, paved roads, crafting workshops, military barracks, and perimeter watchtowers, all of them still needed to be constructed.

​Cassian released a long, slow breath.

​There was simply too much to do, and every single project needed to be completed alongside the current campaign.

​Once the Kragmar Dominion fell, he intended to transition his territory immediately, not to Tier II, but directly to Tier III.

​The ambition would sound completely insane to most veteran Lords, yet Cassian had already calculated every single variable.

The Kragmar Dominion was the final unconquered zone within the regional cluster. Once it fell, every territory required for regional unification would be under his absolute control, fulfilling the primary condition to establish a Tier III Territory.

​Naturally, he would still need to satisfy the physical infrastructure requirements, the Tier II facilities, the Tier III upgrades, the raw material quotas, and the labor pool.

​But those were problems for later. One step at a time.

​Cassian rubbed his forehead. After tomorrow’s war, he was going to spend an entire day lying beneath a shaded tree with a cold drink in hand and absolutely zero responsibilities.

​Unfortunately, tomorrow hadn’t arrived yet. There was still work to do, a lot of work.

​His gaze returned to the massive, silent army standing in formation.

​Quantity was important, but quality remained absolute. The vast majority of these fresh summons possessed only D-Grade Potential.

Against ordinary neutral troops, that might be acceptable; against the battle-hardened hordes of the Kragmar Dominion, it was suicide.

​Even if he threw hundreds of thousands of D-Grade summons at the Orcs, the stronger warriors within the Dominion would carve through them like wheat through a scythe.

​Which meant there was only one viable path forward: strategic fusion.

​Not reckless, max-level fusion, but calculated, strategic fusion, enough synthesis to drastically elevate their baseline quality while retaining sufficient numbers to maintain broad tactical presence.

​A balanced force. A deadly force. An army capable of crushing opponents many times their tier without collapsing.

​The corners of Cassian’s lips curved upward into a sharp grin.

​This was where his true, unfair advantage lay. Other Lords needed decades of painstaking cultivation to build an elite force, whereas he needed only raw material and time.

​And fortunately, he possessed both in abundance.

​Cassian raised his hand toward the sea of skeletal figures.

​"Fusion."

​The Lord Seed blessing activated instantly.

​Rows upon rows of summons stepped forward as death energy erupted violently across Lord’s Hollow.

Thousands of skeletal frames dissolved into blinding streams of white light, and the first wave of mass fusion began.

....

Cassian stared at the fused units standing before him.

​The transformation was immense. The endless sea of summons that had once filled Lord’s Hollow had drastically decreased in sheer numbers, but every remaining unit possessed far greater value than before.

​First were the laborers: a total of 2,000 A-Grade Workers standing in crisp, orderly rows.

​Cassian nodded in quiet satisfaction. Their enhanced capacity to gather resources, process raw materials, construct complex infrastructure, and manage logistical tasks far outweighed what tens of thousands of ordinary workers could ever hope to accomplish.

​Next were the special forces: a total of 2,000 A-Grade Special Troops.

​Cassian left them untouched for the time being. Special units were inherently unique, and he intended to evaluate their combat profiles further before deciding on additional fusions.

​His attention then shifted toward the support legion. This category had produced the most pleasant surprises.

​The first were the Expert Death Chanters. During the fusion process, a portion of the support units had undergone a specialized evolution upon reaching S-Grade Potential, advancing from Normal Support to Expert Support.

​The result was impressive: a total of 592 Expert Death Chanters had been created. Adding the two S-Grade Death Chanters he already possessed brought the subtotal to 594.

​Cassian folded his arms as he contemplated their tactical utility.

​Death Chanters specialized in large-scale area-of-effect buffs and debuffs. Unlike frontline combatants, their ultimate effectiveness wasn’t tied heavily to massive headcount, whether there were five hundred of them or fifty, their primary objective remained the same: commanding and controlling the battlefield.

​Reducing their numbers while exponentially raising their individual grade would only make their broad-range curses far more lethal.

​With that thought, Cassian activated Fusion.

​The 594 Death Chanters merged together, death energy swirling violently around their skeletal forms. When the process concluded, 198 SS-Grade Death Chanters stood in their place. Adding the two original SS-Grade Death Chanters brought the total to an even 200.

​Cassian wasn’t finished. He immediately activated Fusion once more.

​If SS-Grade battlefield controllers were valuable, then SSS-Grade battlefield controllers were priceless.

​Death energy erupted again as the support units fused. When the blinding light faded, 66 SSS-Grade Death Chanters remained, along with two leftover SS-Grade Death Chanters.

​A sharp smile touched Cassian’s lips. Sixty-six elite battlefield controllers capable of empowering allies and crippling entire enemy regiments across massive swathes of land, that alone was a terrifying force.

​His gaze shifted toward the next support specialization: Death Speakers, the Master-Class Support Units.

​Compared to the Death Chanters, their numbers were much smaller. After the initial wave of fusions, Cassian had obtained ten S-Grade Death Speakers. Factoring in his original SS-Grade Death Speaker, he possessed eleven in total.

​The difference between the S-Grade and SS-Grade variants was substantial: an S-Grade Death Speaker could summon twenty-five skeletons, whereas an SS-Grade Death Speaker could manifest a full hundred.

​The choice was obvious.

​Fusion activated once more as the ten S-Grade Death Speakers merged. When the light cleared, Cassian obtained three additional SS-Grade Death Speakers.

Combined with his original unit, he now commanded four SS-Grade Death Speakers, while the remaining lower-tier fragments contributed another twenty-five summonable skeletons, totaling 425 potential skeleton summons.

​Cassian nodded, then pushed the skill further.

​Three of the SS-Grade Death Speakers merged into a higher existence. A moment later, an SSS-Grade Death Speaker stood before him, its soul flames burning with a far deeper, cerulean intensity.

​Cassian immediately inspected its upgraded profile, and the system output exceeded his expectations: the SSS-Grade Death Speaker could summon four hundred skeletons entirely on its own.

​Combined with the remaining SS-Grade Death Speaker and the leftover S-Grade Death Speaker, his total potential summons skyrocketed to 525 Skeletons.

​A satisfied expression crossed Cassian’s face. This was precisely what he needed, support units capable of influencing an entire theater of war, multiplying his army’s baseline efficiency, and spawning fresh frontline fodder on demand.

​Only then did he turn toward the final support specializations standing quietly among the ranks. Unlike the Death Chanters and Death Speakers, these were entirely new additions.

​One group wore dark robes stained with colorful, reactive reagents and carried glass vials filled with bubbling, strange liquids.

The other group wore heavy leather aprons over broad, reinforced skeletal frames built for heavy physical labor.

​Cassian understood their signatures immediately:

​Skeleton Alchemists—and Skeleton Blacksmiths.