Wild Era 3, Ch 33: Bone Guard

Kelin kept an eye on the enemy tracks as he walked through the remnant. 

From the marks they’d left behind, he was able to get a decent idea of the abilities they were using. There were at least four people and possibly five from the mana signatures, although three were doing most of the fighting. 

It took him two hours to cross the city and he didn’t hold back Wildfire. 

Everything around him burned.  

A blinding hurricane of fire spread outward, covering buildings with soul energy so intense that the undead exploded when it touched them. Their necrotic energy instantly combusted and turned into smaller infernos that joined the storm. 

Massive shockwaves from each death expanded the range of the spell, destroying even more of the undead. Hundreds of skeletons fell, some of them simply disintegrating in the storm with even their bones burning.

Those were the ones that had been held together by necrotic energy rather than a more physical material.

Level notifications rang in Kelin’s mind.

If nothing else, the dungeon was at least good for experience, which flowed toward him without cease.

Streams of Aura came as well, slamming into his wards and condensing before they poured into his soul.

His experience requirements were continuing to grow with every level, so that each one was significantly harder than the last, but he had the skills to make it work.

He hadn’t reached the most dangerous parts of the dungeon yet, but killing these trash undead would make things easier when he did, so he kept at it.

Wildfire battered at his mind and raged against his mana field, making his meridians feel numb as he fought to keep it under control. His soul ached from the impacts, but it was something he could handle.

For now.

Strands of Wildfire hummed around the rainbow crystal in his soul and as they came close enough, they calmed down and became easier to handle and more responsive to his will.

It was all that remained of his old soul, the condensed Truth of his past life, and there was still some secret of it that he didn’t understand.

The Sovereign had said that a touch of primal chaos and his soul had fused together at the moment of his death, when the Sovereign of Undeath had killed him, and this crystal was the result.

It was a combination of powers that hadn’t existed before: his own, a force of death, and primal chaos, which was the beginning of all things, the original power of the universe before existence began.

Each of his Evolutions was supposed to wear it down slightly and absorb part of it, but it was also a core that let him control Wildfire better than he could have without it.

At least a little bit.

It was like an artifact that gave him a deeper command of the ability, standing in for his old Law in a small way and keeping it from fully breaking out of his control, and also calming it down so it didn’t destroy him.

Except for that bit of protection, it wasn’t augmenting his strength.

Now and then, the crystal absorbed a strand of pure Wildfire, which disappeared into it in a way he couldn’t follow. He couldn’t see where it went and the crystal felt the same afterwards, but he knew it had to be doing something. 

He could only guess that it was being transformed in some way by that bit of primal chaos or helping to slowly melt the crystal.

He studied it as much as possible, but eventually he decided it wasn’t going to give up its secrets, so he turned his full attention back to the dungeon.

As the skeletons around him died, most of their bones were left intact. He helped Gaius to collect as many as possible, storing the cores and other materials away at the same time.

By the time they were closing in on the first Challenge, Gaius had benefited quite a bit. He had gathered large quantities of high-level ore and refined it into runic silverflame, which was now spread throughout his body.

He’d been around ten percent before, but these additions took him to over a third of the way through his Racial Evolution, and if they cleared out the rest of the dungeon before leaving, he would get even further. 

The silverflame ore was refining his appearance, making him look like he was studded with stars. Some runic lines and a more defined sense of mana radiated from him as well.

Silverflame ore was a high-level conductor of mana, so the further along he went in his evolution, the better his ability to channel mana, which meant stronger spell attacks, an easier ability to control earth and stone at a distance, and more.

His durability was soaring upward. 

It was almost a straight upgrade, leaving him about thirty percent stronger than he’d been before.

Kelin kept a close eye on the changes and made sure Gaius didn’t absorb any necrotic energy at the same time, but he saw nothing to worry about. 

The soulbond was protecting the elemental, making it almost impossible for necrotic energy to infect him unless it went through Kelin at the same time. 

The soul chamber was like a shield and Kelin incinerated anything that touched it.

As he closed in on the Challenge, the flames of Wildfire filled the empty windows of the houses, making them seem like burning eye sockets that were glaring with fury, but Kelin ignored it as he let the flames rage.

He’d seen worse things than angry houses.

The Bone elemental essence from all around was continuing to pour into his bones and as it did, he began to hear a voice whispering to him, its words echoing along his inner ear.

The more energy he absorbed, the clearer it became as it was conducted straight to his mind.

It was a soft voice, calm and whispering, like a priest whispering prayers in the darkness of an altar chamber.

“Be enlightened...into the Sanctum of Bones. Merge with the Law. Rise eternal. Unendying. Undying....with Everlasting Bones.”

There was something solemn and profound about it and the words resonated with the force of a Law.

“The world may end, the sky might fall, but your bones will endure forever, beyond the reach of age and dust. Endless, Eternal, Everlasting.... Sacrifice the flesh. Become all bone. A necessary step to eternity....”

The words carried meaning with them, part of the Law of Bones, and as they spread along his bones, the process of absorbing the essence became faster. He could also feel runes being formed along the structure, ones that radiated durability and strength.

When that voice came close to his soul, however, and especially to the rainbow crystal there, it flinched away. Its whispering changed and became louder, more discordant.

“Ashes to bone...flame to ash, bone to ash. Bones burn in the flames of eternity.  Flames destroy. Become one with the Law. Resist the flame. Be immune to the charnel fire. We are Ashless and Unharmed....

“We walk through the flames untouched. An eternity of fire rises around us, leaving us unharmed...pristine. Use the flames to purge the flesh...refine the bone.”

Kelin snorted at the voice as he kept walking, tuning it out.

Perhaps if he’d been weaker or less experienced, he’d have believed it or even thought it was the voice of the Lord of Bones.

He knew better.

These were Law Impressions, like ghosts of people who had merged with the essence of the Law, usually after being killed by it.

Some people thought of them as voices of inspiration, and they could be sometimes if you were careful, but they weren’t well-intentioned.

They were basically chaotic soul energy left behind in the Bone essence, the thoughts of those who had died and become undead, but highly fragmented.

This had probably been a city of living people once, before the Lord of Bones took over, and when they died and became skeletons, their thoughts had fused into the essence of the energy that killed them, but not in a full form. 

Only some thoughts had been picked up, ones that matched the law. The Law of Bones was too limited to hold the impression of a full soul.

It was like filling a runeform with mana. The Law of Bones was the runeform, while the soul energy was the mana. That energy was now part of the law and could only echo the runes that were already there.

It had to obey the framework.

That was why it had some coherence and seemed to make sense, but it was just the echoes of those souls, not the real ones, that were still resonating with the Law.  

It could be dangerous if you listened to it and believed it, since it would try to imbue you with the Law of Bones until you became one of those whispering souls.

Then his skeleton probably would explode out of his body, or his mind would slip until he followed the whispers and tried to incinerate himself to let his bones free.

He kept careful control over his soul and kept the echoes at a distance, but he did study the runes they were forming and how they were resonating with the essence he was absorbing. 

There was some useful meaning there, providing a sort of primer into the Law of Bone.

It wasn’t his Law, but it was a powerful one. 

It was possible to learn some things from it, but he knew better than to listen, especially while he was focused on other things, so he pushed the words out of his mind.

By the time he reached the Challenge, he had killed over two hundred skeletons and gained eight levels, putting him at Level 215. 

Fighting monsters thirty levels higher than him was always good for some gains, even if it was taking longer than it had at the Basic Evolution.

Thanks to the benefits of Wildfire, he’d also gained 84 Aura.

He tossed the free attribute points into Constitution, which took his base Constitution over a thousand. 

It was a good benchmark.

Now it was at 1,013 and effectively 1,772.

He was more durable than any mage he’d ever seen in his past life at the same level and on par with some Legendary Warrior classes, but it was still a far cry from the defenses that Gaius could boast about.

The elemental had around 3,000 in Constitution, although his attributes didn’t work exactly the same way as Kelin’s did. He had natural elemental forces to help, which were similar to multipliers. 

For a human, it would have taken 5,000 or perhaps even more to compare.

Meanwhile, Kelin’s Aura was up to 1,516 and his Intelligence was 2,337. 

Every level in the Second Evolution gave him 30 points to Intelligence, which was twice what he was adding to Constitution. 

It never hurt to have more, since it improved the strength of his magic and his mana pool, but so far the boosts to his Constitution were saving him more in terms of the damage he could shrug off.

He also had a vague feeling that the vitality of his Constitution and the soul strength from his Aura would be critical in the future for understanding resurrection.

He walked through the streets and Wildfire filled the sky above him. It also flowed through the buildings and incinerated the souls of everything hiding inside, but enemies slowly became fewer and farther between. 

The people he was following had cleared everything out.

He forced the Wildfire to condense and used its resistance as a way of refining his will. He drew it down and made it smaller with each step until it was a spiraling current around his body and staff, like prismatic dragons roving around him.

They curled around his arms and down his legs, swept over his shoulders and around his head, and flowed down his back.

It was an incredible amount of soul energy compressed into a small area, so much that even the fabric of space was shuddering.

Eventually, his path through the city led him to a large bone mausoleum that held the Challenge. 

It looked almost like a temple with soaring towers that twisted upward and with walls made up of thousands of interlocking bones.

Faces and runes were carved along the surface of the walls, but they were so small that they were hard to make out from a distance. They faded into obscurity and gave the mausoleum a texture that looked like rough stone.

Outside the building, he could see marks of recent battle and a rough campsite where the other people must have rested. They hadn’t spent long there, perhaps only a few hours, but it was enough to leave an impression of their mana.

There was a small fireplate enchanted to provide heat and a kettle for tea that they’d left, which was odd since most adventurers preferred to keep everything with them.

A faint scent of incense came from the fireplate as well, drifting through the air.

Kelin sniffed at it and his mind blurred slightly. His Poison Resistance flared until he circulated his mana and drove it away.

“Interesting,” he muttered as he walked closer and knelt down beside the fireplate. 

He carefully reached out with a stick he pulled from his storage and prodded at the remains of the incense on top of the fireplate. 

Natural wood was a good insulator in some ways against raw mana, especially necrotic energy, so a common stick was always a useful tool to keep on hand.

He had long ago made it a habit.

The remains of the incense crumbled away, revealing bits of herbs and charcoal that made it up, and the smell intensified. 

There wasn’t much left of it, barely enough to cover the end of the stick, but it tried to make his head spin even more fiercely than before and it looked like a white veil spreading out across his eyesight.

He shook the effect away. Then he used the stick to lift the lid of the teapot.

A haze of dense Bone essence poured into the air, smelling of the same strange herbs as the incense. 

Inside the pot, a pale white tea was simmering, one that was shot through with blue currents of necrotic energy that radiated a sense of lurking death. 

It looked almost like liquefied bone and necrotic crystals, but he had a feeling it was made with melted undead cores and something else.

He shook his head.

Whatever it was, it wasn’t healthy to drink. 

There was enough necrotic energy in the tea to kill a dozen people and turn them into the undead or to slowly poison a hundred with mixed results.

This was probably some part of the ritual the apprentices had known about, something that was critical to the absorption of necrotic energy in the dungeon.

Or in the Challenge, to be more precise, he decided as he glanced up at the mausoleum. He could feel mana signatures inside that matched this tea and incense.

It seemed like that was the group’s target. This was the first place they’d stopped and, like him, they’d made a straight line for it.

“Now what do we have here?” At that same moment, a powerful voice echoed out from the mausoleum’s entrance.

“A spy? Or a dead man?”

A mocking laugh accompanied the words as a lean and dangerous-looking man appeared. He was leaning against the side of the entrance arch and he was watching Kelin with narrowed eyes.

He had black hair cropped short, a smirk on his lips, and was wearing what Kelin recognized as Sarathian clothes, a loosely wrapped sun robe over tight flowing pants and a tunic. 

His clothing was patterned in bronze and white with a few dark swirling patterns on the hem. It hugged his muscles and set off his tanned skin, but there was no mistaking that it was also built for fighting.

Instead of boots, the man had on slippers of some type that Kelin hadn’t seen in Celadon before. He recognized them from the apprentices’ memories as a sign of status in the empire.

Apparently, wearing flimsy footwear showed that you didn’t need to work for a living.

His clothing said he was a man of wealth and status, as well as considerable personal strength.

Kelin calmly set the lid back down on the teapot and then tossed the stick to the side as he looked over at the man.

“You’re only speaking up now?” he asked, unbothered. “You’ve been there the entire time, watching me.”

He’d sensed the guard the moment he walked into the area.

“I suppose you’re the guard the rest of the group left behind while they did more important things,” he added, turning his attention to the mausoleum.

He could feel the energy inside intensifying as the flows of mana and necrotic energy moved around. He would have liked to study it more and see if he could make out the nature of the ritual, but this fellow had spoken up too soon.

“You talk tough for someone barely into the Second Evolution.” The man snorted as he walked forward. “If you want to die, I suppose I can help you out. But first, tell me who sent you. There’s no way someone like you fought your way in here.”

The aura of the Third Evolution radiated from the man even more strongly than it had from the necromancer outside. Kelin didn’t need to analyze him to see it. 

It was also why the guard hadn’t bothered to attack. 

He thought he had everything under control, so he was taking time to play with his prey. He was eyeing Kelin like a small animal he’d seen and there was a twist of cruel humor in his lips. 

“You don’t look like a Sarathian,” the man added, “so you must be part of the outer circle. You idiots are always causing trouble. You couldn’t even deal with some dungeons and a few assassinations. Now you’re showing up uninvited. You should know your place.”

He gave Kelin a long look as he stopped at the edge of the steps leading up to the entrance and a wave of mana swept over him, trying to pry at his secrets.

Kelin’s Soul Shroud blocked the Analyze, as well as the other abilities the man tried to use, revealing nothing but a shadow that was blended into the ambient mana, and that was only because the man could see him for comparison.

Now that Kelin was at the Second Evolution, he had access to more of the functions of Soul Shroud and it was easier to block scrying and hide his information. 

Without direct line of sight, it was like he wasn’t even there. In it, the guard could get a sense of his overall energy, which included a general idea of his level and that he was at the Second Evolution, but not much else.

Not even his name was visible.

“At least you have a halfway decent block on Analyze,” the guard said, before he shook his head. “That’s better than most of you trash can do. I’m almost impressed. 

“So, did you get lured in here on promises of grandeur or tricked on a bet by those idiots watching this place? If you want to stay alive, start talking.”

Kelin stood up, stretching slowly as his hand curled around his staff, which he tapped on the ground by his foot. His expression didn’t change and he was perfectly composed.

Although the guard couldn’t analyze him, he didn’t have the same problem.

Liron Soleas. Boneshadow Monk-Ironbone Breaker. Level 310.

He was an even higher level than the necromancer had been, although not by much. 

Monk classes were one of the rarer melee types, but not uncommon. This man’s build was notable only due to his multiple affinities that focused on Bone, Shadow, and Iron.

That was an interesting combination and something that fit this dungeon a little too well.

From the monk’s soul, Kelin could see the general outline of his abilities, including that he focused on speed, durability, and body refinement.

His body had a dense aura of Bone energy gathered around it, making it clear that his skeleton was even harder than Kelin’s. The resonance of that energy was very similar to Tempered Bones, but from a different source.

A surface level Analyze didn’t show the truth, but Kelin could see it as he looked deeper, to where veins of necrotic energy were woven through his abilities, bones, and soul.

Those veins were absorbing the negative energy around him and converting it into strength in a way that concealed the process, although not from Kelin’s eyes.

All of that necrotic energy was being stored in his bones and soul and there was already an incredible amount of it, easily enough to form a Level 300 undead core.

When this monk died, it wouldn’t be a pretty sight for those around him.

He’d turn into an undead skeletal version of himself with powerful bones and mana. He might even become an Elite and command forces in an undead breakout.

He was a tool of Undeath.

For now, energy was currently supporting his class and making it stronger than normal, which meant his bones were as hard as mana-infused iron and his punches would be like meteors landing.

So that was what this ritual did. 

“Now I see,” Kelin muttered, not bothering to explain what he was talking about. He didn’t know all of it, but he could see the pathways and how it worked.

Then he glanced at the mausoleum entrance behind the monk.

“The rest of you are inside?”

“You’re funny,” the monk said, his eyes narrowing as he turned his head and spit to the side. 

“Don’t worry, you aren’t worth their trouble, and there’s no way I’m letting you in there to sneak your way into the ritual or whatever you’re thinking. I can see the greed when you look at it, but it’s not for you. Those two brats are destined to absorb all the power that’s been building up here. Your path ends here.”

He cracked his knuckles as he walked down the steps and a dangerous aura began to spread out from him, making the air twist as currents of shadow and bone energy blended together. 

Dense bars of power slammed down through the air, making it feel like the entire place was locked down by an iron cage. 

Walls of shadow blocked the entrance to the mausoleum and to the streets leading away from the area.

It wasn’t a domain, but it was a heavy aura of power, one that was rooted in the monk’s affinities and pure strength.

“Just you?” Kelin asked, smiling slightly as his hand tightened on his staff. Wildfire coiled around him, flaring with strength. “You’re not going to be enough. Why don’t you call the rest out to join you?”

“I guess I’ll have to teach you how to speak to your betters,” the monk said as a dark smile stretched across his face. “Whoever sent you will have to deal with the loss. I’m going to enjoy this.”

His hand reached to a pouch on his belt and came back with a rope made of skulls, each of their expressions locked in a rictus of broken teeth and empty sockets. He hung it around his neck like a trophy, his smile growing wider as he stared at Kelin.

The necrotic energy in his soul was well hidden, but the edge of it showed in his eyes. There was a strange insanity in them, like gashes opening onto a realm of death and hatred.

“I’m going to tear your bones out one by one, but I’ll save your skull,” the monk said. “Then you can join my friends here.”

He thumbed the rope of skulls like it was some kind of barbaric luck charm. Then he punched out toward Kelin. 

The move was blindingly fast.

A fist of shadow that was reinforced by iron and bone shot across the distance. It was a pure expression of force and the fingers radiated a mind-chilling darkness, with edges that looked as black as a moonless night.

The entire thing had a massive weight behind it, resonating with some fragment of the Law of Iron, and it had a sense of pressure that felt heavy enough to break through the earth and shatter a mountain.

The monk had combined fragments of three different Laws into his class, giving him a power that was far beyond what the necromancer had shown.

As the fist closed in, Kelin raised his staff. The streams of Wildfire coursing all around his body raged in response and flooded forward to meet the blow.

He’d condensed the soul energy of hundreds of undead into these streams and even after he absorbed the useful part as Aura, it left him with an enormous amount of power. 

That was why he wasn’t that concerned about this monk.

One of the streams of Wildfire shot ahead of the others, its energy condensed so tightly that it felt like a solid bar of soul energy.

Where the monk’s attack was dark and heavy, the Wildfire was brilliant and luminous, and it raged with power.

The two attacks met in the air, exploding with an impact that made the entire area shake. Buildings tore free from the street and cobblestone skulls shattered, turning into dust as a cloud of disintegrated bone filled everything.

The impact carried through to both the monk and Kelin, and each of them stepped back, enduring the backlash.

The monk only stepped back by a foot, but his expression was stunned as he stared across the distance, while Kelin’s body rocked from the impact and he stepped back twice to dissipate the force.

From that impact alone, it looked like the monk was stronger, but what wasn’t as obvious was the strands of rainbow energy now swirling through his aura.

The monk looked down at his hands and at the threads of Wildfire that were coiling around them. He let out a low growl as a wave of darkness poured out of his aura, drowning out the flames.

A normal warrior might have been cautious at that point, but the necrotic energy in his eyes grew brighter and he let out a shout as he leapt across the distance.

His entire body glowed with force and weight. 

It was enough power to shatter a normal city and bury it beneath the earth, and all of it was concentrated on Kelin.