Maxwell found himself using the only two resources he had right at that moment, the black smog, which held necrotic power, and the dead grass, which held necromantic potential, as all undead did. The only real question was how to make that work, as grass was not exactly the most well known to be used in wars.

  So he would have to be creative when using it to create an effective undead if he wanted to fight off whatever fairy warriors ended up coming his way to stop him putting more black smog into their woods. "So it would seem I'm blowing my budget on military research, but at least I don't have to worry about healthcare spending." Maxwell said to himself as a little joke before he got to work.

  He first decided to see what control he had over the smog that was constantly flowing out of his eyes. He watched the smog as it covered his little graveyard, covering it and going upward almost hiding him, leaving only the very top of his skull visible. Once he was done taking the smog in, he began to try and manipulate and found he had already got a roadblock in his research.

  As he didn't have any hands to wave to try and manipulate that way. "So I guess try moving it with my mind?" Maxwell said to himself, guessing, and then began to try and manipulate the black smog, manipulating with his mind. It did not work no matter how hard he stared at the smog and thought at it; the smog simply refused to move to his will.

  For a while, he simply lay there, lost in his thoughts, trying to figure out how he could manipulate the smog. When the idea struck him, he began to manipulate his jaw, rising and lowering it as his thoughts wandered. It occurred to him that he had no muscles to manipulate his jaw, so he must be doing it magically, so if he could better understand that manipulation, perhaps he could use it to figure out how to bend the dark smog to his will.

  So he began a new series of tests, focusing on his jaw as he carefully and slowly lowered and rose it again and again, truly feeling out the necromancy being used in the moment. Eventually, after many attempts, he began to feel necromancy magic that connected his jaw to the rest of his skull.

  Using this new feeling for necromantic magic, he began to feel the connection from the tears of smog the building built into his eyes sockets that created the smog to the rest of the smog that filled out his foot in diameter domain. He began to feel the smog in its totality, which caused problems of its own.

  He wanted to use only parts of the black smog in his attempt to turn grass into proper undead. He needed most of where it was to keep the rest of the creatures of the fairy wood at bay, as he figured a lot of those would be more than happy to crush him if his smog wasn't in the way. So this led to new experiments in control as he effectively played with the smog, making it take many different shapes and forms to test and see if he can improve his control.

  As he found he could indeed improve his control of his smog. At first, he could barely make it move in a circle, but as he grew more skilled and his connection to the black smog grew stronger, he could make it take pretty detailed shapes. At one point, he had the black smog from into a dragon's head.

  Which, on second thought, might not have been a good idea considering the fairy's around him might be more likely to act if they thought some dragon made of smog was forming in their midst. But he had to move on to making his undead defenders and not dwell on if he had might have caused the fairy folk to attack him earlier, then he would be ready to defend.

  So now that he was able to form the black smog into different forms, he slowly, using all of his skill, broke off a little cloud from the rest and brought it down to the ground so that he could truly begin working on his undead grass project. First he took a look at the grass itself, as the grass was in several bundles all along the ground with their dead roots still buried into the ground and their leaf blades on top laying down on the ground in death.

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  "So how do you turn regular dead grass into a combat-effective undead?" Maxwell asked himself, thinking on it a moment, and he figured he'd just have to wing it as he went and hope the final product was effective. So the first thing he did was pour part of his small cloud of black smog into one of the dead grass bundles. Then he watched as the grass became undead and immediately tried to grasp at empty air.

  "Yes, that's not going to do anything, especially considering even if it grabs anyone, it can't do anything." Maxwell said and began to manipulate the black smog into it to try and manipulate the dead grass bundles. Which actually worked, so he first had the undead pull itself out of the ground.

  Once the undead grass bundle was standing on its own, Maxwell thought on it a moment, trying to figure out how to make the undead grass a threat, and then remembered something about paper cuts Maxwell had heard about a long time ago when looking at the leaf blades. So with something of a weapon that made the grass dangerous to focus on, he got to work.

  He reshaped the bundle of grassy dead roots to be more like the centipedes he could see outside of his territory. Allowing his undead grass bundle to move easier, he then adjusted the grass on top of the roots, reworking them as well as he could to sharpen them until his undead grass bundle was running around like a centipede with a series of jagged leaf blades that cut as anything it went by.

  To add an interesting effect due to its necrotic nature, the leaf blades had a corrosive nature that left behind a burning cut. He'd seen this effect when he had the creature cut a few rocks he had lying around to test its grass blades sharpness.

  Maxwell immediately had its prototype begin to patrol the border of his territory. Now that Maxwell had created an effective undead from grass, he felt he should create two more as unit diversity had won more than one battle that he could remember. So Maxwell set out to create two other forms of undead by separating the leaf blades from their roots and creating undead from the two separate piles of material.

  Once again, taking some of the smog from his small cloud of black smog, he directed it into the small grass blade pile he had made with the help of his little undead grass centipede. He, just like before, began to shape the blade leaves into the only structure he believed would make them a threat as undead, which was that of a spider.

  So after taking several long leaf blades and having them overlap, he was left with a rather tall undead grass spider. He figured it could use the corrosive cut to pierce anything below, and it demonstrated that when Maxwell had it test its blades on a nearby pebble.

  So now he just had to work on the roots, and for this one he figured he would actually take a more classic approach. He slowly shaped the roots to form hundreds of small hands, then began to burrow deep into the ground. There the undead grass roots would protect him from any underground threats such as worms, and he would have the classic undead hand in his undead kingdom.

  Maxwell began to feel something after having finished figuring out how to manipulate his black smog, then creating his undead grass spider and centipede, then having them patrol his territory, as well as having his undead grass roots lay in ambush underground, effectively signifying the end to his necromantic experiments. Maxwell could feel a change start to happen as a dark glow overcame his small, black, smog-covered kingdom. Maxwell wondered what was about to happen next.