Why reincarnate as a useless skeleton?

Year 55,680 of the 4th era (year 5,331 of the Imperial Guerrmanic Calendar).

16th of the 7th month- I decided to start writing this diary so that I can organize my thoughts for the duration of my journey.

Yesterday afternoon I received a message from my master that I would soon be sent to a small town in the middle of nowhere to investigate the local flora and fauna, which seemed strange considering that I am not specialized in that particular area.

But, since it was a direct order from the ministry of development, I couldn't refuse. Besides, it wouldn't hurt to get some fresh air and rest from all the hustle and bustle of the capital.

25th of the 7th month- This morning I said goodbye to my friends and family. I don't know how long this "Research Trip" will last, but I'm sure I won't be back in the capital for quite a while.

Lys didn't seem very convinced about this trip. But when I told her it was more of a vacation than real work, she seemed to calm down a bit, but not before making me promise that we would get married once I'm back.

Today I will spend the night in the city of Vaslser. Since the town I'm going to doesn't have a teleport bridge, I'll have to make the rest of the journey by carriage. I think that's it for today.

4th of the 8th month- As with the last nine days, there is not much to say.

The autumn forest scenery is quite pleasant, although I am beginning to miss my bed in the capital.

Just as I thought, fieldwork is not my thing. But it looks like it won't be long before I reach my destination. Then I can finally take a bath and sleep in a decent bed.

5th of the 8th month- My teacher is probably laughing at me right now. "Researching flora and fauna" my ass.

I arrived at my destination at 8:30. At first, it appeared to be a typical walled village in the middle of the forest, whose population was no more than 5,000.

But I found it rather odd that about 50% of the villagers were aura warriors and there were also many elemental mages.

Normally this would not have caught my attention, after all, it was common for villages of this type to have soldiers and mages trained to defend against monster attacks.

But in the ten days of my journey here I was not able to find or see a single monster in the area.

I was greeted by Drake, the village overseer, who turned out to be a wizard of the 7th realm who specialized in fire magic. He invited me into his home and once inside, he explained the situation to me.

It turned out that this "village" is a facade and is actually a development center, funded by the high command of the imperial capital. Which explained why there are so many strong people in this place.

My master was in charge of manufacturing a new type of enchanted armor, which was designed to be mass-produced to increase the combat power of the army's lowest-ranking soldiers.

Unfortunately, my master had more pressing matters to attend to and decided to leave me in charge of the project until further notice.

Once that was cleared up, Supervisor Drake showed me around the subterranean facilities and assigned me where I was to work. I then spent the rest of the day meeting my work assistants and getting up to speed with the project.

12th of the 9th month-It's been a while since the last time. But this is normal, considering the enormous amount of work I have had this last month.

Thanks to the teachings of my master in the area of enchantments, I have been able to continue with the project and I think that in a month we will be able to have the prototype finished.

I am happy that I will soon be able to return home. Lys has certainly been planning our wedding with a lot of enthusiasm.

Unfortunately, as the whole project is a state secret, I am not allowed to use any kind of communication device and I am not allowed to receive or write letters either. I guess I will have to come up with some excuse so I can calm her down once I get home.

27th of the 9th month- Good news and bad news.

The good news is that the prototype was approved and we will soon be able to finish the project. The bad news is that in addition to the armor we had already prepared, I received an order to create two other armor. One designed to resist magical attacks and the other to increase the agility and stealth of the troops.

While I'm quite proud that my work was recognized, I'm not so happy with the fact that I have to extend my stay here. But, there's not much I can do about it.

So, once we finished the main armor, I agreed with my colleagues and we decided to split the projects.

Since I specialize in darkness magic, we decided that I would be in charge of creating the stealth armor. I just hope I can finish this quickly, so much work has me exhausted and I have become very pale from staying underground for so long.

13th of the 11th month- I have not been able to write lately due to the events of the last few weeks. Since "The Southern Cities Alliance" declared war on us, things have been a bit complicated.

Due to the war, we had to speed up the project, so the armor prototypes are already finished and soon we will receive new orders from the army.

I want to return to the capital and see my family as soon as possible.

29th of the 12th month- Many of my colleagues (including Supervisor Drake) have been reassigned to new areas by order of the government. As for me, it looks like I will have to stay here until further notice.

Not much to say, the place feels a bit lonely, but at least I'm allowed to go out for a walk around the outskirts of the village, although it's already started to snow quite a bit and it's very cold, so besides reading a bit, I have nothing to do.

Year 55,681 of the Fourth Era (year 5,332 of the Guerrmanic Imperial Calendar).

15th of the 1st month- I finally got news from the capital! Although I would have liked to go home after being almost five months in this town, it looks like I will have to stay a little longer because of the war.

Since the great kingdoms of Lamruia, Neren and other smaller nations joined the war, the empire has been at a disadvantageous position of having to fight several armies at the same time.

Because of this, I have been assigned to a new project, which is focused on creating elixirs and potions that will improve the efficiency of our troops on the battlefield.

Although I don't specialize in alchemy or potion-making, it seems that the reason I was assigned to this project was because of my knowledge in enchantments and my ability to use darkness magic.

I hope this will be over soon. My family must be very worried. When the war is over I plan to get married as soon as possible and take a long vacation.

26th of the 1st month - What the hell is the emperor thinking, have they all gone crazy?

A little over a week ago, the personnel assigned to the "Eclipse" project arrived. They were led by a wizard from the 9th realm named Baal, which shows how important this project is to the empire.

When I first saw them, they looked shady and suspicious to me. But I thought nothing of it and thought that their behavior was like that because of the war.

The next day, the facilities began to be modified to meet the needs of the new research equipment, including huge cultivation tanks.

Among the personnel assigned to the project were many people who had been sentenced to death or who had committed other crimes, but instead of killing them, it was decided to use them as test subjects in the project.

This didn't seem strange to me either, after all, because of the war we didn't have time to test the elixirs on animals and had to go straight to human testing.

But today I found out what the project was all about and I could hardly hide my horror when I learned the truth.

It turned out that the "researchers" in charge of the project, were not alchemists as I thought, but necromancers belonging to the church of the living corpses and that the real purpose of "Eclipse", was to create soldiers with similar characteristics to the undead to turn them into the ultimate weapons.

Unfortunately, now that I know the truth I can't leave or I'll probably be killed... No, I'll probably be killed once I'm no longer useful to them to hide the truth.

For the moment all I can do is cooperate with them and then I'll see if I can escape from here.

May the gods forgive me for what I am about to do!

7th of the 5th month-It has been almost eight days since my last escape attempt. At this point, I have given up all hope of getting out of town and simply stick to working all day.

This is almost four months since the project began and we have yet to make any significant progress.

The test subjects were first introduced to the cultivation tanks and then subjected to massive amounts of necrotic energy, but in the early stages of starting the process, the subjects began to lose their sanity and hours later ended up becoming ordinary undead.

Although I knew this would happen, my superiors are beginning to lose patience after so many failures.

Baal seems to be calm and has said that in a few days an artifact will arrive that will help us move forward with the investigation.

As for me, my necromancy practices have advanced significantly in the last few days. Baal says that I have a natural talent for necromancy, since, in only three months I have been able to reach rank 2 and soon my elemental domain will reach rank 3.

This growth is even superior to that of my dark magic which has been stagnating at rank 5 for 9 years!

That's all I have to say for today.

14th of the 5th month- The artifact Baal was talking about finally arrived. It turned out that it was an ancient book of necromancy that belonged to Adam.

I honestly almost fainted when I saw it, and I wasn't the only one. The energy emanating from the book was too powerful. Of everyone present, Baal was the only one unaffected by the book's power.

As for me, there's not much to do but work and I haven't surfaced or seen sunlight in months.

I'm still thinking about my family, my friends, and Lys. I don't know if I'll ever be able to see her again.

That's all for today.

24 of the 7th month- It's been almost a week since my last entry, but since writing in this journal helps me a bit, I decided to do it again.

Tomorrow is one year since I left the imperial capital. I don't know how things will be on the surface, but the war has reached a stalemate. Which is good for us.

Finally, the project was successful.

The test subjects who emerged from the cultivation tanks after nearly 28 hours in contact with the necrotic fluid have begun to show certain characteristics.

The need to sleep or eat almost disappeared, their regeneration has also increased to the point of being able to heal serious wounds in a matter of minutes and there was an incredible improvement in all physical aspects, along with an increased capacity of all senses.

But the test subjects have shown a total aversion to sunlight and also have complaints about a constant thirst. Honestly, I think I've helped create a new kind of monster that I shouldn't have.

But none of that matters anymore, may the gods punish me if necessary but I will soon escape from here and leave this cursed continent forever!!

15th of the 8th month-Four days have passed since the troops of the Neren kingdom attacked us and today we finally finished burying those who died in the battle.

Although the necromancers insisted on reviving them, the remaining soldiers chose to bury the fallen according to army tradition.

Baal, as well as the church members and the successful test subjects, left the village after the battle and headed for the capital along with the book of Adam.

Although I wanted to leave as quickly as possible, I stayed to help bury the fallen soldiers. There were currently less than 700 of us left, but we decided to stay together and leave for the city of Vaslser.

Before leaving, Baal left me a few magic items so that I could protect myself. I think it's his way of telling me "I hope you survive".

I honestly don't know what will happen from now on, since the enemy troops reached the village, it means that it won't be long before they reach the Imperial capital.

That's all, we will leave in three days.

18th of the 9th month- Today marks one month since the Imperial capital fell and the continent was covered by a blanket of darkness.

I still can't believe how lucky (or unlucky) we were to be able to return to the facility right after the incident occurred. Thanks to the fact that we are underground, the poisoning caused by exposure to necrotic energy seems to be milder than on the surface.

Currently, the supplies we had been depleted, so we plan to expand the greenhouse. But thanks to the fact that many have decided to try to survive on the surface, our numbers have been reduced quite a bit and now we are less than 500.

Apart from me, there is one other guy left who is a wizard, but he is only a mere apprentice. I honestly don't know how he ended up in this dastardly place. So, since I'm the strongest of the group, I became the "temporary leader".

I will try to write regularly to keep a record in case something happens to us.

Year 55,682 of the Fourth Era (Year 5,333 of the Guerrmanic Imperial Calendar)

1st of the 1st month- Happy New Year! Well, it's been two days since I last wrote but not much has changed!

Another group decided to leave and try their luck on the surface, so there are now less than 300 of us. Here in the "bunker", we are still surviving thanks to the greenhouse, but the "Farmers" are still monopolizing the food, so from time to time I have to intervene.

I feel like I'm a king solving the problems of his mindless subjects.

Honestly, I never realized when we stopped being one group and started being small tribes. "The treasurers", "The gunsmiths", "The loner" That's a lot of names... It's annoying. Maybe I should kill them? No... they are still useful.

For my part, I hardly need to sleep or eat or anything else anymore.

I can hear their voice more and more clearly in my head, resonating like the blows of a hammer ... Bum, bum, bum, bum, bum...

23rd of the 3rd month- This morning I found them all dead, all the tribes.... annihilated.

Perhaps I killed them or it was the necrotic energy. Whatever the case, there is no doubt that I will soon die and join them in the next life.

My body has deteriorated to the point that I almost look like just skin and bones.

It's strange, I see my life passing in front of my eyes and all I can think about is that I would have liked to see my family and Lys again.

It's sad...I'm cold....I think I'll go out of my room for a walk to warm up a bit.