He stopped worrying about his future bones for now.
Li Xiuman looked at the Free Stat Points on his panel.
The three stat points from his previous level-up were still unused. Combined with the one point from this level-up, he had a total of four.
Saving two points for emergencies, he dumped all the rest into Spirit.
A Mage dumping points into Spirit could absolutely never go wrong.
Adding to Strength yielded short-term benefits, while adding to Constitution was for saving his life.
However, adding to Spirit offered long-term returns.
Spirit allowed him to go longer without sleeping, giving him a lot of extra time to study and grind monsters.
It also increased his magic power and maximum mana pool.
Coincidentally, he was also an Elementalist, so investing in Spirit was definitely the correct choice.
Li Xiuman's current stats on his three-dimensional panel were as follows:
Strength: 27
Constitution: 38
Spirit: 39
He was an all-around Warrior.
A normal Level 21 Elementalist typically had around 10 Strength, 20 Constitution, and a little over 20 Spirit.
His attributes utterly crushed any class of the same level.
Of course, he wasn't completely invincible yet.
There might be some naturally monstrous existence out there.
Humanoid dragons that could accidentally crush alloy even while holding back their strength certainly existed.
Closing his panel in high spirits, Li Xiuman gripped his skeleton sword and dug out the magic stone from the fire crocodile beneath him.
He also harvested the fire crocodile's six legs.
The panel of this fire crocodile had piqued his interest.
[Flame Devouring Lv.1].
This was the first time Li Xiuman had ever seen this skill.
Other fire crocodiles generally possessed skills like [Fire Resistance] and [Lava Adaptation].
But they never had anything like [Flame Devouring].
Through installing all kinds of skills, Li Xiuman had developed a strange habit of collecting them.
The rarer and more uncommon a skill was, the more Li Xiuman wanted it.
Therefore, upon seeing this fire crocodile's skill, even though the beast had dived into the lava, Li Xiuman had gone to great lengths to track it down and pull it out.
It was all for this single rare skill.
Now, the skill was right before his eyes.
Suppressing his greed, Li Xiuman pulled off his own right leg and began testing the crocodile's legs.
The fire crocodile rate-up banner rerun had begun.
At this moment, Li Xiuman even felt a sudden surge of affection for the six-legged molten fire crocodile species.
These fire crocodiles had worked so hard, evolving in this lonely dungeon for countless years just to grow these six legs.
And all of it was to fulfill his needs, increasing his chances of successfully installing his desired skill.
He held back the deep emotion and tears welling up inside him—though, as a skeleton, he didn't actually have any tears to shed.
The first leg yielded [Crawling].
This was probably the fire crocodile's death grudge: Scumbag skeleton, crawl for me.
No rush. The second leg yielded [Fire Resistance].
The third leg yielded [Flame Devouring].
He got it on his third pull!
His deep blue soul fire flickered gently as a miraculous transformation occurred within his entire skeletal frame.
He tried to conjure a clump of fire, then reached out and grabbed it.
A swallowing sensation traveled up from his bones.
The flame was steadily devoured by his bone, converting into mana that flowed back into his body.
It continued until the entire ball of fire was completely consumed.
Li Xiuman tested his senses; it had converted roughly twenty percent of the mana expended to create the fire.
In other words, this skill could absorb twenty percent of fire energy and convert it into his own mana?
It was an extremely powerful skill.
It essentially functioned as a fire-reduction skill. Paired with [Elemental Resistance], it would further decrease the damage he took from fire magic.
On top of that, there was the low-tier water magic nullification from "Water Spirit's Affection," the earring Ilu had gifted him.
As he stood now, he was practically a walking bane to Elementalists.
“As expected, the rarer the skill, the more powerful it is.”
Li Xiuman looked at his skill bar, delighted to have added yet another rare skill to his collection.
Transforming the short, stubby fire crocodile leg bone into a normal shape using Bone Manipulation, Li Xiuman offered a silent nod of gratitude to the dismembered, mangled remains of the fire crocodile.
Then, he skinned the fire crocodile.
After all, this was the hide of a fire crocodile that possessed [Flame Devouring] in addition to its inherent fire resistance.
This hide could easily be considered the absolute finest of its kind, offering maxed-out fire resistance.
He gave the hide a quick, rudimentary processing before wrapping it crudely around his shoulders and waist.
Then, he tossed Teacher Fire Crocodile's bloody corpse back into the lava it had loved all its life.
Being so incredibly compassionate... I barely seem like a skeleton at all.
Though trapped in the body of a monster, my soul is just so noble and pure.
“Sigh.”
“I suppose I'll never cure myself of this bleeding heart for my enemies.”
Li Xiuman wiped the fire crocodile's blood off on the beast's own hide. He then covered his newly installed leg bone with trousers made from the hide, pulled hide boots over his new foot bones, adjusted his dyed hide cloak, and spoke with a helpless sigh.
This unexpected skill harvest made Li Xiuman even more enthusiastic about using Appraisal to inspect the skill bars of other fire crocodiles, deeply afraid of missing out on another rare skill.
Even though his skill slots were currently full...
He could always stockpile them!
His two bone arms took up two of his skill slots, so he was currently left with only the two slots on his legs.
As for whether he could obtain skills by swapping out bones from other parts of his body...
He had tried removing his ribs before, but it didn't yield any results.
As for his pelvis, since they weren't human, it was incredibly difficult to find a matching size.
After all, unlike the limbs—where each bone had a designated socket that made them easy to swap out and plug in smoothly regardless of species—the pelvis was a different story.
Moreover, even when he went to the trouble of attaching one, he didn't gain any skills.
Li Xiuman hypothesized that most skills were likely activated using the hands and legs.
Therefore, upon death, the power of these skills would instinctively flow into the four limbs.
There was also energy stored in the torso.
Theoretically, if he swapped out his entire torso, he could probably acquire skills too.
But doing that would require removing his head.
Not to mention, the head was where his Spirit resided, so it was bound to contain incredibly dense energy.
However, both his head and torso contained the burning soul fire. They were his critical vitals, things he absolutely could not touch.
He continued searching for ores and fire crocodiles at a leisurely pace.
Fortune did not continue to smile on him. The remaining fire crocodiles only had common, run-of-the-mill skills.
Nor did he find any high-quality ores.
Just like that, he spent another three days on the twenty-second floor before following the massive lava waterfall down to the twenty-third floor.
Firewing Beasts began appearing on this floor.
Maybe they would have some kind of flight skill, which would also let him test whether his Bone Wings could be replaced.
After all, his Bone Wings grew and spread from the ribs on either side of his shoulder blades.
Except when activating the skill, they didn't normally exist on his back.
So, whether they could be swapped out was something Li Xiuman couldn't say for sure. This would be a perfect opportunity to test it.
The Firewing Beast soared leisurely through the air, gazing down at the lava below, completely unaware that it had already been targeted by a skeleton.
“Wing Slash, is it...?”
Every single Firewing Beast possessed the skill [Wing Slash].
Although it was a common skill that Li Xiuman looked down on slightly,
it seemed quite practical, so he decided to settle for it.
He locked onto a male Firewing Beast that was chasing closely behind a female in front of it, eager to catch up and engage in some indescribable activity.
The righteous and kind-hearted skeleton simply could not stand by and watch this.
His "bleeding heart" flared up once more.
Bullying a peer in public, corrupting the youth of the Firewing Beast community, and offending public decency? He absolutely refused to allow it.
Gripping his wand, he flapped his Bone Wings, shot up into the sky, and aimed a sharp thrust right at the Firewing Beast's backside.
As for why he didn't use his skeleton sword?
It was simply because the skeleton sword was part of his own body, and he was afraid of getting it dirty.
Rate on N.U.
