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[Liquefied Spleens]

Reading 5 pages each day, already in the page 50 almost getting near the rest

Someone asked what the fuck the gardener's shield do? Or it was explained somewhere? (I haven't saw nowhere explaining, but maybe i read when drowsy and lost info on the way)

It's just a little thing. After the bog unicorn incident, it's been drooled on a little bit. Because Bog unicorns are about as pure and nature-loving as it gets, your shield started getting some grass on it. It brought no negative effects, and didn't do anything neccecarily positive, either. It's mostly just an aesthetic thing.
It's hardly been explained because nobody in the story cared overmuch, and I wanted to see how long it took for people to notice.
Welcome, by the way!

[Liquefied Spleens]

So you're absolutely sure this won't impede your work, right? Atsuko says with honest worry.
It's... Worth the money. You say, as you force your shoulder loose from the latest experiment. It's a hardening, symbiotic slime of sorts, it started out quite a bit lighter and smaller, but as the week went on it steadily started growing. Currently, it feels like your back and left shoulder is covered in rock. It still loosens just a little bit, allowing you to mostly live practically, but it's really rough on you. The only reason it doesn't affect your sleeping habits is because you're a general insomniac to begin with. You learned how to work on relatively little sleep, at least.
Why do you even work as a test subject? You could do any job, and most pay better anyhow!
That's a misconception, actually. The average beauty product or something won't mean much, but the more extreme ones give you enough to live on. It's still better than degrading myself at that café.
Oh come on, people loved you! And you needed to fill in for me just once!
It was still degrading. You say through clenched teeth. You decided against asking why they had a dress for a drider to begin with.
Well, it doesn't matter. We going to get started on this already? We've only got two weeks to make this golem.
Are we going for bone or flesh?
Why not both!?
Those are a lot more difficult? I mean, we get more marks, sure, but we get more than a passing grade if we just come with a simple golem.
Yeah, but why not go for the best!? I know we can do it!
You only barely make it each year. I'm not going to do all the work, you know. Mostly because I physically can't. Mana troubles, remember?
Look, if we both try really hard, we can blow the rest of class straight out of the water! Wouldn't that be amazing? We finish the year by proving we're better than those stuck-up jerks!

The argument goes on for about an hour more, and now you're grumbling to yourself as you're out hunting for animals while she goes through the graveyard for bones. A mixed golem is going to be a pain in the butt to make. At least the meat isn't too hard to get. You've been meaning to get revenge on those monkey's ever since the poop incident, and they can't deal with magical blasts to the soul AND still jump away through the trees. You return after a few hours carrying six dead monkey's over your back and a bit of an evil smile on your face. You throw the monkey's in the vault, which is kept cool and prevents the meat from going bad. These monkey's will need to be skinned and de-boned, not to mention the organs are almost entirely unneeded. The less mass you need to deal with, the better. You're not about to make a three meter tall behemoth.
You check up on Akko, who you find in the middle of the graveyard with a shovel, lying on her back staring at the sky. She's winded, redfaced, and her clothing is a little ripped.
What happened?
I just got done digging for a couple of hours and decided to reshape the bones to get them to where we need them to be. I did them into a ball.
Oh no.
I just spent the last hour trying to catch it and it's currently rolling around the catacombs.
What!? How did it even-It's not a large gods-damned door, how did you get a massive skeleton ball into the catacombs!?
Pďeces at a time. I'm just so tired. I'm so sooo TIRED. It just kept bashing against it and I tried to catch it and it just rolled over me and there's dirt in my mouth and I just don't wanna get in troubleeeeeeee
She seems to be crying a little. It's extremely endearing, so you just sigh and try to think on how yo're going to catch a skeleton ball. Necromancy course students aren't allowed in the catacombs to begin with, considering that's the place for the people that DIDN'T want their bones to be played with. Not to mention the place is absolutely MASSIVE. It's as old as the tower, and it takes in all the dead from the city as well...

Get help from some officials
It's embarrassing, and will likely reflect badly on your future marks, but you can't just leave a ball of skeletons rolling around at high speeds through the catacombs

Grab Akko and delve into the depths.
She started this, and you're going to make sure the both of you can fix this problem.

Get help from some other friends.
Yunikki will be valuable when it comes to dealing with the undead. Of course, there's no guarantee your friends won't report this to somebody, and they may act with extreme prejudice towards the skeleton ball.

Other
Remember that getting those bones back would be the best goal, but stopping the skeleton ball is still the primary objective. And don't forget that your upper body is still quite hampered, leaving your sword skills in the dirt.

Stats

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Level: 9
HP: 25/25 (Encumbered)
Mana: 50/50
Stress: 00/75
Thirst: Sated

Inventory

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Equipment:
Carapaced leather armor

Items:
Sword
Gardener's Shield

Magic, skills and minions

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Magic:
Resurrect vermin: Allows you to resurrect very small creatures such as rats(invests 2 of your max mana) (no mana cost)
Resurrect average beast: Allows you to resurrect creatures such as dogs, cats and other similar-sized creatures.(invests 7 mana) (no mana cost)
Resurrect Humanoid: Allows you to resurrect humanoid creatures. (Invests 10 mana) (Costs 15 mana)
Reshape minion plus!: Allows you to majorly change the appearance of your resurrected minions.
Minion Vision: Allows you to see what a minion sees. The minion must have eyes.
Animate Piece: Allows you to animate just a piece of dead tissue. It requires your constant attention, and cannot act independently. (Drains 1 mana per three seconds)
Graft: Allows you to use dead tissue as a replacement limb. Requires a lot of mana. (2 per second) (average limb takes around 20 seconds to properly graft)
Gather Soul: Allows you to make a soul visible. You could try putting it in a flame of some sort to keep it around. (10 mana)
Soul battery: Allows you to use a soul-infused flame as a small mana-boost. This snuffs it out, however
Undead flashbang: Allows you to blow up a minion for a flash-bang effect. (10 mana)
Stitch: allows you to close a wound and stop bleeding as fast as you can stitch. Costs very little mana, but requires something to stitch with.
Siphoning Cloud: Breathe out a cloud that drains the life from victims and gives it to you. Adds a LOT to intimidation (5 mana)
Smoke Cloud: Breathe out harmless but thick smoke. (2 mana)
Deathbolt: A bolt that hurts the body's connection with it's soul. Causes minor wounds to appear over the body as it attempts to compensate (2 mana)
Doombolt: A more powerful version of the above (5 Mana)

Familiar (has no upkeep)
Tiny Skeletal Dragon

Skills:
Poison Stinger (Stings a bit)
Oral Fixation: Can cast spells spells from the mouth.
Draining Limbs: Can drain blood using pedipalps.
Major experience in blocking and swords.
Climber
Crafty: Bolas
Cooking skill: Excellent
Corpse Cutting: Quite Decent.
Animal handling: inexperienced.
Necromantic knowledge
Soul Sniffer

[RAM]

Well, on the one hand, we have always been a good girl, telling people all about our terrible terrible crimes against civilisation as a whole(Special mention goes to telling the local lord about our fun adventures that we couldn't entirely remember but probably involved eating innocent civilians). On the other hand, we haven't really had a proper examination history before, this could seriously effect our grades if word gets out!

Well, let's think about improvised solutions. It is a giant ball of skeletons that is perpetually rolling around at high speed. If we can break the animating magic it should stop, eventually, things stop rolling if they are not being rolled, right? But given the lack of a "ruin undead" spell that won't work. We have had some success with improving new magic before... Maybe we could try to infiltrate the ball? Get some sort of tamed skeleton to be picked up by the ball and then use our connection with it to override the ball's will and direct it somewhere mostly harmless and tell it to stop... that would probably be little more than an extension of our magic to see through undead eyes and grow soulfire eyes and such. And those spiritflames seems harmless, so even if we do turn it from a perpetually rolling ball of skeletons into a perpetually rolling ball of skeletons that is on fire, it should not be much worse, aside from aesthetics...

Could we set a trap, is there anything that would work as bait? If we could lure it into a pit... Enough webbing could probably gum it up too much to grab onto anything, and make it stick to the floor to boot. It would probably stop after enough of that even if no web can hold it. Still, that sounds like a lot of webbing, but Atsuko probably owes us a meal for this mess regardless, so we might be able to recover after being drained from a webbing spree without breaking our budget... We could try graft, I mean, if it was a limb then we could do whatever with it, right? No, nevermind, graft is the worst spell ever, it is tempting to spend a semester perfecting it just to prove reason, logic, and good taste wrong and go on to discover the majesty of a perfected graft spell! It is gyaranteed to evolve into something better than...

... Flooding the catacombs is not an option.

We don't have a large volume of oil, and there is no guarantee that stopping it form getting a grip on things would stop it from rolling itself. But it would probably make going uphill impossible, but being slippery may make it faster on the level...

Why, exactly, did it end up in the catacombs? Couldn't she just -not- have put it in there in pieces? Meh, doesn't matter now...

I can't see us constructing a decent spear-wall.

Grab Akko and delve into the depths.Okay, okay, we get a skeleton, just the one, and put as much of our own will into it, so that it will be really hard to break our hold on it, maybe. Or perhaps we just blow it up... Just try not to vomit black gunk on anything sacred...(Actually, trying to use flashbang on it might just be our "plan desperate"... Does Atsuko know flashbang and does she still have defacto authority over the ball?) Then we go down, find a nice corridor with a nice alcove that a ball can't get into, fill the thing with as much sticky webbing as possible. Then we send our skeleton into the ball and try to influence it enough to steer it into the webs while encouraging it to dismantle.  Failing that, assume that it wants to crush people and run for the webbing, diving into the alcove to let it sail past into a mess of webs. If the webs don't work, or we just can't find the thing, then we see about getting help. And we ought to try to stick to high ceilings and literally stick to them, our body-plan is not really suited to being rolled over...

Magic projects: Graft stops being an embarrassment to magic everywhere. As it is, even if it can turn a corpse-strewn battlefield into a limb a hundredfold larger than ourselves that can crush a dragon, it still takes too long to cast and doesn't last long enough. And in all likelihood it is just arm for arm replacement...
Flying dragon. We can teach it to make fake wing-flesh out of that fire stuff, right? It could use that to fly, right?

[Liquefied Spleens]

Did you lose authority on the ball?
Y-yeah... I know, i'm TERRIBLE at control. It's just... How do you handle it, controlling all those little guys?
I think it's instinct, for me. I mean, driders are very controlling by nature. I never even needed to think about it.
Lucky... she said, puffing her cheeks a little. Again, cute, but that doesn't excuse the fact that the both of you are currently delving into the catacombs. The place is... massive, to say the least. Dust covers the place, and corpses are everywhere, even inside the walls. The whole place uses bone as material, on top of stone. Many places are left to allow the dried corpses to rest. Some have been reduced to skeletons, others look like raisins, and some are still "fresh" looking. Rotting is a lot more pretty in here than outside, without smells and gases. It looks more as if they're collapsing a little, which is disgusting to the inexperienced. As students of the necromancy course you may have seen the occasional corpse, believe it or not. Of course, finding out where the skeleton ball went isn't too difficult. The tracks are easy to follow in the dust. They start out as bits and pieces, which fits with what Akko explained. It just slammed against the door to let a chunk of itself fly in, until it could reform inside. You suspect it may be trying to grow by taking on skeletons inside the crypt, but it can't grab anything out of the walls. For it is a ball.

As you go deeper into the catacombs, you realize you really underestimated how large the place is. You have reach a massive chamber, with pillars made of bones and rock reaching to the ceiling. You can't even SEE the bottom of this place, and the pillar must be five meters diameter! Nearly a 100 meters of walking stands before you even reach the staircase that goes through the middle of the room to a deeper part of the catacombs. At the bottom of the staircase, you see some other stairs going into different directions. It's like an underground cathedral, all things considered. There are really no proper words for just how huge the place is. The hallway you walk along is punctuated with pillars, which are solid stone instead of bones. The dust is still spread out a little, but it's already quite large. It seems to come together at the staircase, and you must be getting very close at this point. It can't be that large, right? Akko doesn't have the upper body strength to dig up so many!

As you walk down the staircase, you feel the air growing colder and harder to breathe. It's stale and dusty all around, and Akko is sneezing up a storm. The staircase is quite dramatic, however, with bowls to the sides filled with ashes. Most likely it was a lot better lit, but as it stands you're working with a torch. Suddenly, you hear a crash of something absolutely massive right behind you. Your warrior's reflexes kick in, and you react accordingly. You grab Atsuko, who was still in the middle of her surprised jump, and run to the side. You're very glad your leg grew back fine, and clutching Atsuko as tight as you can you let yourself hang at a 90 degree angle as the rumbling goes past. Kagari screams in pure terror as she hangs above a seemingly endless black with only you to hold on to. You look to the side, and can see the skeleton ball rolling further into the catacombs. It was just above the staircase! Sneaky fucker.
PULLMEUP-PULLMEUP-PULLMEUP
You sheepishly return to solid ground beneath you as Atsuko shakes in pure terror.
N-n-NEVER do that a-again. O-OK? I thought I was gonna die.
I'm sorry, but that thing was going to crush us! Or knock us down there. Neither seemed like a fun time.
I-i mean, thank you? B-but god damn it. I damn near wet myself...

Suddenly, you hear a clattering and rumbling come from where it just went. Almost as fast as when it was aided by gravity, the skeletons inside the ball are crawling and pushing themselves forward, BACK UP the stairs. You only barely manage to repeat your earlier maneuver, and Akko screams again before abruptly stopping. You feel a wet spot from where you're holding Akko, meaning that...
Oh my god this is the worst day of my liiiiiife.
Oh, whatever. Just hold on as best you can, alright, I'm going to walk to safety over the walls.
She seems content to crush you with a vice-like grip and sobbing against you. She even hooked her legs over your torso for added grip. You manage the weight just fine, considering she is a very light woman. Not even 50 kilos, if you'd have to guess. You do 50 kilo reps when you work out with Yunikki, so this is hardly a problem. Once you're on one of the staircases to the sides, you both look at the ball rolling (and crawling) back and forth. It's big enough to crush you, that's for sure. You hear a loud thump before it returns, and you fear that this thing will prove very difficult to stop. You can tell your webbing's not going to be strong enough unless you get to make a proper web. The ball doesn't give you enough time for that, not even close! Trying to take it over would also prove impossible, because it just doesn't work like that. You can't take control of another necromancer's things, and "wild" undead are no different. Not to mention, you can't very well resurrect a skeleton of somebody in here! That would be massively disrespectful!
Akko is just crying next to you, her face buried in her hands.

Find a way to stop this out of control skeleton ball. It's about two meters and fifty cm in diameter (8.2 feet), and has a couple grabby hands to crawl with. It will roll back and forth along the same path, and there is a very audible thump before it returns. When it reaches the top of the stairs, it climbs up the wall for a little bit before crashing back down and rolling down. You have around ten seconds every time it passes where you are right now, the bottom of the stairs and an intersection to the rest of the catacombs.

Stats

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Level: 9
HP: 25/25 (Encumbered)
Mana: 50/50
Stress: 00/75
Thirst: Sated

Inventory

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Equipment:
Carapaced leather armor

Items:
Sword
Gardener's Shield

Magic, skills and minions

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Magic:
Resurrect vermin: Allows you to resurrect very small creatures such as rats(invests 2 of your max mana) (no mana cost)
Resurrect average beast: Allows you to resurrect creatures such as dogs, cats and other similar-sized creatures.(invests 7 mana) (no mana cost)
Resurrect Humanoid: Allows you to resurrect humanoid creatures. (Invests 10 mana) (Costs 15 mana)
Reshape minion plus!: Allows you to majorly change the appearance of your resurrected minions.
Minion Vision: Allows you to see what a minion sees. The minion must have eyes.
Animate Piece: Allows you to animate just a piece of dead tissue. It requires your constant attention, and cannot act independently. (Drains 1 mana per three seconds)
Graft: Allows you to use dead tissue as a replacement limb. Requires a lot of mana. (2 per second) (average limb takes around 20 seconds to properly graft)
Gather Soul: Allows you to make a soul visible. You could try putting it in a flame of some sort to keep it around. (10 mana)
Soul battery: Allows you to use a soul-infused flame as a small mana-boost. This snuffs it out, however
Undead flashbang: Allows you to blow up a minion for a flash-bang effect. (10 mana)
Stitch: allows you to close a wound and stop bleeding as fast as you can stitch. Costs very little mana, but requires something to stitch with.
Siphoning Cloud: Breathe out a cloud that drains the life from victims and gives it to you. Adds a LOT to intimidation (5 mana)
Smoke Cloud: Breathe out harmless but thick smoke. (2 mana)
Deathbolt: A bolt that hurts the body's connection with it's soul. Causes minor wounds to appear over the body as it attempts to compensate (2 mana)
Doombolt: A more powerful version of the above (5 Mana)

Familiar (has no upkeep)
Tiny Skeletal Dragon

Skills:
Poison Stinger (Stings a bit)
Oral Fixation: Can cast spells spells from the mouth.
Draining Limbs: Can drain blood using pedipalps.
Major experience in blocking and swords.
Climber
Crafty: Bolas
Cooking skill: Excellent
Corpse Cutting: Quite Decent.
Animal handling: inexperienced.
Necromantic knowledge
Soul Sniffer

[RAM]

Make a huge web on the ceiling and then drop it?

[Liquefied Spleens]

This. Is. Exhausting. You say to yourself as you place more webbing on the wall. You've never done something like this before, and you can only hope it works out as well as you hope. Your web is looking quite thick, and you've probably never made one this big before. Hunger is covering you like a blanket, and serves as a hefty reminder that this webbing has to come from somewhere. Still, losing weight is extremely easy for you, at least, which explains why there are no fat driders. Not that you have a great frame of reference, but there has to be some reason why everybody has such great figures. It's not because you're a mary sue race, right? Gods you hope not. If that were the case you'd have to commit seppuku.
Eventually, you deem the web good enough. Akko is huddled up to the side, staring a hole in the wall as she tries to come to terms that she not only peed herself, but did so in front of her only remaining friend. You don't mind that it happened, of course. These things just happen, and she WAS rightfully terrified. Even you are kind of nervous about the deep chasms of the catacombs, not just because of the very sudden stop at the end of the way down. A very sudden rumbling shakes you out of your train of thought, and the skeletons roll up the stairs again, aided by their existing momentum and grabby hands. It's extremely strange how many skeletons Akko managed to raise, but that's a problem for later. Using your sword, you cut a few essential strands of the web, making it flop down in front of the entryway it has been rolling through. Only a precious few strands are still hanging on to the wall, but perhaps this will be enough.

The ball approaches, and just in case you decide to get some ground beneath your legs, and sit next to Akko as the Boney Ball of Fun rolls into your hard work. At first, it seems like it didn't work at all, it didn't even seem to lose speed as it barreled on through, but then you noticed the webbing seems to be holding! It's down to just two strands attached to the wall, but the ball is held in place by the massive amount of sticky web. You shout in excitement as you run up to the ball alongside Akko.
Right. So do I pull this thing apart, or are you going to manage something?
I, uh. I could try blowing it up. How many humanoids can you manage?
Five total, but at a time I can only do three.
Right... I can manage the other two.
What? There are WAY more than five skeletons in there.
Most of the graveyard's filled up with former necromancers. They've been resurrecting while they were adding to their mass.
That's impossible. Undead don't keep their intelligence, or barely any of it.
I've, uh, been practicing.
You look at her in shock. The silence is telling enough, and she looks like a dog that doesn't know what it did wrong.
That's... Even the teacher can't manage that without DAYS of preparation, and you did FIVE OF THEM on the fly!?
I-I thought it would be easier to get them to go somewhere!
Are you aware that you just made a breakthrough in the science of necromancy?
What?
Because you have so little control in your minions, you actually managed to break a centuries-old barrier! How did you fuck up so hard you succeeded?
Hey, i take offence to that!
I-i'm sorry. This is... I admit, it's absolutely amazing. Can I trust you to pick out the right skeletons?
No problem, hold on.

She holds both her hands to her head. After a short bit of concentration, there is a bright flash before the ball of bones collapses. Finding the correct skeletons was as easy as you could have hoped. They're the only ones that didn't come to pieces entirely. In fact, they're completely intact. You resurrect three of them, and resist the urge to vomit as your low blood sugar AND mana starts to get to you. You're seeing some silvery bugs crawl across your vision, but you'll manage. Atsuko does her best to keep her control in the other two, though she keeps a physical grip on their necks. She walks a bit awkwardly considering her earlier accident, but you manage to get out of the catacombs in short order. It's dark by the time you finally reached the outside. You must have been in there for quite a while...

Considering both you and your exam partner are out of mana and exhausted, you just drop off the skeletons with the collected flesh. You de-animate them to get some mana back, and Atsuko does the same for the sake of preventing another problem. You'll just need to figure out how you're going to create your mixed golem, now...

War Machine
A larger version of the humanoid, with additional perks. This will not only require some originality, but will prove difficult.

Humanoid
The half-way option, but it will grant you very good scores and isn't extremely hard.

Quadruped.
Making a tiger or pig of sorts isn't so glamorous, and that will reflect your score, but considering it's still flesh and bone, you can't get anything below an 80/100 as long as it can move properly

Bone Golem or Flesh Golem
Forget about the mixing! A passing grade is enough, right? Even if it is just barely...

Stats

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Level: 9
HP: 25/25 (Encumbered)
Mana: 05/50
Stress: 00/75
Thirst: Thirsty (you have blood at home, no worries)

Inventory

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Equipment:
Carapaced leather armor

Items:
Sword
Gardener's Shield

Magic, skills and minions

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Magic:
Resurrect vermin: Allows you to resurrect very small creatures such as rats(invests 2 of your max mana) (no mana cost)
Resurrect average beast: Allows you to resurrect creatures such as dogs, cats and other similar-sized creatures.(invests 7 mana) (no mana cost)
Resurrect Humanoid: Allows you to resurrect humanoid creatures. (Invests 10 mana) (Costs 15 mana)
Reshape minion plus!: Allows you to majorly change the appearance of your resurrected minions.
Minion Vision: Allows you to see what a minion sees. The minion must have eyes.
Animate Piece: Allows you to animate just a piece of dead tissue. It requires your constant attention, and cannot act independently. (Drains 1 mana per three seconds)
Graft: Allows you to use dead tissue as a replacement limb. Requires a lot of mana. (2 per second) (average limb takes around 20 seconds to properly graft)
Gather Soul: Allows you to make a soul visible. You could try putting it in a flame of some sort to keep it around. (10 mana)
Soul battery: Allows you to use a soul-infused flame as a small mana-boost. This snuffs it out, however
Undead flashbang: Allows you to blow up a minion for a flash-bang effect. (10 mana)
Stitch: allows you to close a wound and stop bleeding as fast as you can stitch. Costs very little mana, but requires something to stitch with.
Siphoning Cloud: Breathe out a cloud that drains the life from victims and gives it to you. Adds a LOT to intimidation (5 mana)
Smoke Cloud: Breathe out harmless but thick smoke. (2 mana)
Deathbolt: A bolt that hurts the body's connection with it's soul. Causes minor wounds to appear over the body as it attempts to compensate (2 mana)
Doombolt: A more powerful version of the above (5 Mana)

Familiar (has no upkeep)
Tiny Skeletal Dragon

Skills:
Poison Stinger (Stings a bit)
Oral Fixation: Can cast spells spells from the mouth.
Draining Limbs: Can drain blood using pedipalps.
Major experience in blocking and swords.
Climber
Crafty: Bolas
Cooking skill: Excellent
Corpse Cutting: Quite Decent.
Animal handling: inexperienced.
Necromantic knowledge
Soul Sniffer

[RAM]

Well, a War Machine is always nice to have, and we can probably pull it off, though we might have to ask for an extension due to overambition. But given the association between necromancy and megalomania, it is only natural to be overambitious, if you can't get a god maniacal laugh out of a project then surely it wasn't worth doing... Unless it works in reverse, and they are especially nervous about megalomaniacal tendencies in the necromancy course...

Still, no need to cover ground well-trodden, why not make a humanoid, but use some of Atsuko's special skeletons in the mix? Golemification ought to bind them well enough to be controlled, and yet by preserving the necromantic bones it could retain some spellcasting, enough to raise corpses by coming into contact with them! Oh, wait... Undead... Raises undead by biting them... Our last zombie apocalypse cost us an eye and a leg...

[Liquefied Spleens]

So, you know what you're doing, right?
Mostly. It's a variant on grafting that's a bit more complicated, but less mana-intensive. I don't have much more left in me, though.
I still don't fully get what the idea was. So you're going to make a mixed humanoid, but a couple of my skeletons coming out of his shoulders?
Yep. Spellcasters. It's just about the cheapest idea for a war machine I could think of. Not to mention we get to show off the only thing getting you a passing grade.
You don't need to be so rude...
You snort as you put another piece of leg together. You don't know quite how thick it should be, or if it should even have legs to begin with. Although you suspect you need some strong legs to get the whole thing in order. Not to mention you'll basically need absolutely massive torsos to stick two "intelligent" skeletons on it. And that's not going into the arms...

Maybe you should have a proper think on how you're going to build this thing properly. You and Akko already have the general shape down, sure, but you just need some more logistics involved, and they didn't teach you anything about that...
Currently, your war machine is a very tall and wide humanoid with two skeletons coming out of the back, around the shoulders. You should make this more efficient in both size and shape. Consider balance and power required to handle the extra weight.  Perhaps you can place the skeletons in a better place. Also consider the head of the golem,
 if it even has one at all. The skeletons could do all the driving...



I'm sorry about not only the delay, but the total cop-out of an update, but I just couldn't really make something without making it completely obvious filler. Filler that also doesn't really reveal anything of note about the world at large.
It should please you to know that this final exam bit will directly lead to the story getting back on track. My exams (and the study period before it) are finally over, so we can move on to the usual schedule of story quests. There will be multiple paths for Sydney to take, and you're free to start considering where she should go with her studies concluded.
Also of note, if there are any questions about other characters at the moment, feel free to ask. They will not be getting their own stories to finish up whatever happened. For instance, Yunikki failed her paladin training, but managed to be respected among the crusaders either way. How that affects her will be shown through interactions, unless you want a more clear-cut showing of what happened. Do note that there are a few characters that I won't tell anything about because they will be relevant later, but i find it unlikely that you'll even ask about them.

[RAM]

Hrmm, it is a bit top-heavy, and honestly, biped proportions are sort of gross, let's centaur it a little maybe...
Oh, here is a thought, tip the whole thing forwards quadruped style with a hunched back. Then add a protective ribcage coming up around the front, completely obscuring the head, and replace the arms with legs, and maybe give it a third pair of legs around the middle, or even... Let's do that but use all arms instead of all legs. It'd be slower, but be a better climber and be able to grab things that get close along with having a lower profile... Then have one of the spellcasters coming up from the front like a centaur with most of the caster's torso protected by the ribcage, and then the second caster protruding from the raised hunchback so that it looks like some sort of weird centaur with a single elevated rider to act as two ranks, with a protective backwards-ribcage in front making a third rank. With the two "riders" attracting attention, and one of them looking like the actual head, and an extra spine obscuring the head from the front, it would probably be pretty easy to overlook that the mobility portion's head is actually at the base of its front...

P.S.
 Great beings from beyond perception, I beseech thee. May those who lurk in shadow grant us their wisdom!

[DolosusDoleus]

Lurkers? What lurkers? There's no one here but us statues.

[omada]

+1 to The centaur idea, i would suggest a arachnid body (As sydney is used to it she could make the movements more smooth) But a centaur is always glamurous, even when twisted in and undead war-abomination, and i liked the idea that everybody will focus on the spellcasters raising creatures and don't see the hidden head

Make sure the creature listen to our command (or it would stay rising creatures every time he bops into an fried chicken)

It's an centaur that can cast spell and maybe even repair itself

[Liquefied Spleens]

So you wanna turn this into a... spider?
No, it's closer to a centaur. Pretty thick, but we should be able to keep it stable with the six limbs at the bottom.
But why the hands? It'll look all gross...
Akko. It is going to be a three meter tall centaur made of exposed muscle and sinew, using bones as a makeshift armor. I don't think we can make it all that fluffy.
...We could try! Imagine if it had some fur...
The bones would stick out of it like grotesque wounds, the skin would split, it would leave scarring... Trust me, I know my stuff about scars. Speaking of, could you hand me that product over there?
Akko looks up from her spine duty, and looks around your room. Because you had the bigger room, it was deemed best to build it in here... Although you'll have to finish the beast up outside. It won't fit through the door at this rate. You point to the product on the small table next to your hammock. She rubs her hands to clear up at least a little of the filth before grabbing the bottle and throwing it over to you. You raise your shirt and apply the stuff to your back. While the mark won't ever go away properly, you can at least remove some of the extra scarring. The ones that went up to your shoulder, for instance, have finally started fading. Of note should be is that the skull left by Death, while unappealing, at least makes sure your mark doesn't look entirely eldritch. Small favors.

You never really went into detail how you got most of those. Too painful?
Yes. Go back to fitting together vertebrae, please, we're going to need a lot of spine by the end of this.
You're still wondering how you're going to connect it all. You're not exactly an expert on spines, considering your doesn't make any sense. You're an invertebrate for half your body, and your spine just kinda... swaps? Nobody quite knows how it works, even with the performed autopsies of other driders. Still, you know your muscles and hydraulics, at the very least. As much as you would have liked making it work on that, there are two problems with it. First of all, the hands would lack any sort of use. While your spider half is very strong, it doesn't have much in the way of agility. It can't reach up in the slightest, and if it wasn't for the sticky feet you suspect you'd have FAR more trouble getting around. Second, you would need to hollow out the limbs to allow the liquid in there, which would affect the general solidity. You don't have the magic necessary to reach the magic that is present within you and other massive invertebrates. Logistically, there's a clear limit on how large you can be as an invertebrates.

Akko's doing most of the bone-work, ultimately, although you're working on the hands right now. Turns out they're as hard to make as they are to draw. You curse in annoyance as you realize you gave this two ringfingers. Again. While you suspect it doesn't matter THAT much, you still suspect that it'll matter. Or maybe it doesn't?
Who knows. At any rate, progress is steady, but slow. You have about a month left before you need to show off your creation. You and Akko spend about four hours per day just working on it, which is below average, but you just don't have a large manapool. You're one of the few people that never really used magic throughout their life, not to mention you had a very late "awakening". It's actually a very unusual thing to be awakened by another witch, but most of the time magic shows itself around the age of four.
Although, technically, EVERYBODY can do magic. Some just have a better connection than most, and even the most driven student can't compare to a natural. You're a bit of an inbetween on that.
Back to the matter at hand, however, you need some way of increasing the efficiency per day.

Hunt for souls to use as a battery
An animal soul will do nicely, and it will allow you to continue for at least a little while. On the other hand, it requires you to carry a lit lantern into the jungle and keeping a flame lit while you hunt. Not to mention, the hunt itself. It may just be more trouble than it's worth...

Do physical work, and let Akko finish the magical touches;
The flesh and the skeleton is harder to arrange by hand, but it's still possible. If Akko performs the actual mending, you could get a little more done. Of course, it's slow work, and quite frustrating. Not to mention Akko is kind of incompetent in a lot of areas.

Other
Remember that your friends may be available, but how they would particularly help in the creation of a War Machine-type Mixed Golem is kind of a question in and of itself.

[RAM]

Well, souls linger a little, if we could find where the local livestock are butchered... But, then again, someone else probably already had that idea. There don't seem to be many necromancers, but power is power and if it is just lying around for anyone to grab... Not to mention that even if it is otherwise being thrown away, people like to be paid for providing a commodity. Perhaps we could try a sponsorship? Try to get a discount on "hanging around being creepy" fees for telling everyone how we did it in the hopes of future generations of necromancy students paying more? Still, for all we know they have an automatic system that provides them with free lighting...

Hunting is, ugh, it is a nice idea, and we are a natural hunter, webs make things kind of easy and we could use the free grub! Not to mention that it can be good to get back to nature, eating prepared food all the time, it is easy to forget that we even have acid venom. But... Well, time consuming is a problem if we want to supervise this project. And as much as it would be nice to trust in Akko's reliability... Skeleton Ball... and it only takes one disaster to turn an in-progress golem into a mound of stinking flesh and shattered bones... Or a rampaging monster that tries to take control of everyone else's necromancy projects and we are trying to avoid ending the world...

Maybe the hunters would help us? They are not the nicest company but they presumably take payment. Accompanying a team of skilled killers for a killing trip ought to result in more exposure to death than we could accomplish on our own, and just following them shouldn't be that expensive if we can demonstrate the ability to stay quiet, not smell too much, travel quickly, and stay out of trouble. hey might not like us carrying a light, but we can probably shroud it so it doesn't shed, and we can carry some supplies too... Not that we are a torch-bearer/baggage-carrier, just that if you are better than everyone else, then you may as well make use of that! It ought to take a few days at most, might involve the death of something really impressive, and whatever else encountered happens to have an expensive pelt, and will surely not involve some horrible moral quandary with us mysteriously understanding some poor maternal hydra who didn't hear that there was a request posted for hydra eggs until she sees a bunch of hunters raiding her nest...

Well, we could ask the hunters if such a plan has any potential. If getting the souls of an entire goblin village would only take a couple of days, then it is probably worth missing a few lessons, and the hunters are not that bad... In theory... I mean, it is not as though they murder independent magical creatures in their homes for a living... Or are trained to assume that everything with pedipalps and poison is all about the stabbing and stinging and luring hapless travellers into an early death... No doubt most of them are perfectly reasonable, decent people who just happen to have the right skills and backgrounds for the job...

I bet that We would have more magic as Queen, and likely greater ability to force bone to reform at our command. But that would be a bad idea, we really don't want to go around sabotaging everyone else's projects, or turning our project into a plot to conquer the tower... Not that we would need to, our project is obviously the best, but no doubt there is the allure to control everything and be certain. Not to mention, we saved Akko's life, she is forced to work with us for long periods for this project without being suspicious of us, she has lost her friend recently and has endured some embarrassment in our presence. We really don't want to learn how drider hybrids happen and Queen must be itching for cultists... Maybe we should have "the talk" with Atsuko. It is always possible that some people have grown up without ever realising that messing around with being intimate in the biblical sense with indulging in a religious experience with a pretty drider can have serious consequences and should only be done by consenting adults who love us very very much.

We could work on our technique. Perhaps use webbing as scaffolding and glue to hold bones together quickly and without magic. Sticky silk is difficult to work with, and we won't risk hammering the thing with the end of our body furthest from our hands and eyes, but it might be faster to be able to just shove bones into place and have them stay there for review before being magicked together. And who knows, perhaps some silk running through its frame would make it more sturdy...

But yeah, if none of that pans out, then probably best to rely upon Akko for the magical heavy-lifting.

[omada]

Hmmm, wait, i got confused, killing goblin villages? Aren't the hunters just, hunters that get meat for the town?

And sydney already joined them in their hunts, it make her fall asleep easier, we could just talk with them

"hey, I just have an school project and i need a bit of animal souls so i can maintain my study routine, It won't affect the flesh of the prey, the only downside is that i need to walk with this lamp lit to keep it inside, it's okay?"

But we can always try to get some souls from the chicken farm or whatever else is supplying meat. Chance is that someone already does that, but some obvious ideas maybe can pass unnoticed. If there is a livestock, as i record the hunters are the responsible for the bulk of the meat.

[RAM]

Oh, I could have sworn that there was some sort of restrained hostility between us and the hunters at some point because of the magical creature thing. Maybe that was something else...