Wild Era 3, Ch 32: City of Bones

As Kelin appeared on the other side of the portal, a sprawling world made of bones appeared before him.

There was a city that filled most of it, but that wasn’t the only thing here. Beyond it, mountains and plains made of white bone filled the horizon. 

Even the sky was tinted a pale yellow-white. The energy of the ritual cut through it with violet and white lines, creating an enchantment that was clearly visible in his eyes. 

He could see two major concentrations of mana throughout the city that marked Challenges, but they’d been taken over by the energy here and were now nodes anchoring the ritual. Massive columns of bone essence rose up into the air from them.

The boss’s location was the same.

All of it flowed toward the dungeon portal, creating a river of Bone essence in the air.  

The feeling of the Curse of Violet Bones was here as well, but it was only one of the many dangerous energies present.

He would have to reach the Challenges and break whatever enchantments were there, followed by the same at the boss’s location. The Elites monsters were probably powering the ritual, consciously or not.

He studied the ritual lines for a long moment, noting the concentrations and flow of the mana, and then he looked down at the city that it was linked to.

The city was formed of walls of bones and buildings made from stacked and interlinked bone blocks. They were enormous pieces of bone, large enough to take the place of stone blocks, and the holes were filled with skulls, finger bones, and joints, all of them linked together with barely any gaps.

The streets of the city were paved with what looked like rounded paving stones, but Kelin could tell that it was the top of millions upon millions of skulls placed next to each other.

Off to one side, there was a river of bone-eroding poison that cut down from the mountains and wove through the city, its banks hissing like acid and surging with a white mist that would be deadly to any living being.

There were clouds in the sky of a brighter and wispy white that were condensed from Bone essence. Their aura was vastly stronger than the energy the necromancer had called on. 

That energy was everywhere here like a heavy mist filling the air, like breathing in a cloud of pure Bone element.

It pressed around him and tried to seep into his bones. It was a dangerous pressure, threatening and volatile. It also carried an enormous amount of necrotic energy that was entwined with it.

If a normal human came here, it wouldn’t be long before they died. The energy would strip them down to their bones and dissolve everything else, leaving them as an undead skeleton.

The laws of this place were strong, echoing with higher principles, and even Kelin felt some threat from it. If a regular Second or Third Evolution being came here, they wouldn’t survive for more than a day, but for him there was a notable difference.

His bones were humming in response to the energy all around. Any wisp that reached through his skin sank straight into them and disappeared, leaving only the necrotic half behind.

It made it clear that they were two separate elements.

He could have stopped the process, but after the fight with the necromancer, he had some experience with absorbing Bone energy, so instead he studied what was happening.

The necrotic essence left behind was a threat, one he couldn’t tolerate in his meridians, so he let his soulfire incinerate it. Then he kept a careful eye on the Bone energy as he purified it and let more of it sink into his Tempered Bones.

It disappeared like it was filling a black hole, without any trace of a problem. 

The energy was much stronger than what the necromancer had called on, but it was the same origin. His bones absorbed it like they couldn’t get enough and grew a tiny bit stronger with each passing moment.

He experimented with stopping and restarting, which happened easily, and eventually he decided to let it continue.

He could have blocked the energy out and forced his way through this place by relying on his mana shield, but it would have taken ten times as much power as just purifying it with soulfire. 

The process was benefitting his bones and also making it easier for him to survive here, so that he only needed to fight against the necrotic half of the energy.

At the same time, he had to be careful.

There was a powerful Law of Bones here. Even though he was absorbing it, it might be more dangerous than he could predict.

His confidence stemmed from the fact that Laws were universal concepts, part of the underlying nature of existence, and that the Path was the one who had given him the Tempered Bone trait, not the Lord of Bones. 

Just like negative classes weren’t inherently evil, neither was the trait. Although the Lord of Bones used the same Law, it didn’t mean it was his.

Not even a Sovereign could truly claim that.

That was why Undeath had killed Kelin in his first life. He was eliminating future competition for soul magic.

As long as Kelin kept an eye on this energy and removed the necrotic aspect, he should be able to handle it.

It looked like it would even be beneficial for him. If he stayed here long enough, there was no telling how strong his bones could become.

He looked out at the city, picking out concentrations of mana and searching for more details. Although the mountains and other areas were visible, most of the dungeon was the city itself. It was an enormous place over a hundred miles long and wide.

On the far side, he could see where the city simply ended, like something had sliced the world apart. That was where the dungeon stopped. 

This city was a fragment of some world that had belonged to the Lord of Bones. The original city must have been the size of a continent, all of it fashioned from bone and elements related to bone.

The dungeon portal had let him out on a low mountain just outside of the city and as he looked around he saw traces of footprints and other visitors. 

Half a dozen trails crisscrossed the area nearby. 

There were too many different styles for it to have been just the necromancer and his assistants.

Some of them looked fairly new, although it was hard to tell since the ground here was made of crushed bone dust in place of soil.

It put him on his guard. 

The apprentices hadn’t known about any visitors, at least as far as could tell, and that made him suspicious. 

Perhaps it was the third apprentice who’d let these people in or it was something that the necromancer had been doing in secret. Either way, there was a good chance they might still be inside and that they were from Sarathia. 

They might even be as strong as the necromancer had been.

He would have to keep an eye out, since he doubted they would be happy about him destroying everything here and dismantling the ritual.

He spent a few minutes experimenting with the influx of energy, adjusting his mana shield and soulfire until he found a balance with removing the necrotic energy. It was a small strain that reduced his mana regeneration, but it was tolerable.

His sigil helped with his recovery and with defending against the necrotic energy both. Without it, things would have been more difficult.

Once he was used to things, he altered his mana shield to mimic the signature of the Bone energy here, which made him harder to detect, and then he headed down the mountain.

It was only a hundred feet later that the ground beneath his feet trembled.  

Bone spikes shot upward, heading straight for him. 

There were a dozen of them, each three feet long and an inch wide, like narrow spears as they pierced the ground and flew through the air. 

Beneath the surface, he could sense something hostile and dangerous, some type of bone serpent twisting around as it fired the projectiles toward him.

He analyzed it.

Bonespear Serpent. Undead. Level 235.

It was burrowed twenty feet deep and if he’d had to dig it out, it would have taken some effort. 

“Gaius,” he said, barely glancing at the creature as its spears exploded against his mana shield.

A rumble of annoyance came from the elemental, who was irritated by the earth here since it was made of bone instead of proper things. It made it harder for him, but there was no delay in the response.

A shudder flowed through the ground and two massive hands reached through the bone substrate, grabbing the serpent and twisting in opposite directions.

The serpent exploded into fragments and the ground beneath Kelin’s feet sank by an inch, but he ignored it as he kept walking forward.

A flicker of Wildfire flew from his hand, exploding through the bone serpent’s soul, and as he continued to walk forward, an eruption of prismatic flame rose up behind him.

Gaius had destroyed its body, but he’d burned away its soul.

A small influx of soul energy and Bone essence flowed back to him, as well as wisps of rainbow flame. Wildfire gathered around him, swirling in the air as he continued on to the city.

More serpents and then other things attacked, appearing every few moments.

Most of them were Levels 235 to 240, but that was a range he could handle easily, and the same went for Gaius.

Undead died one after another as he continued to walk. The Wildfire around him also grew stronger, twisting into six-inch currents like prismatic dragons.

As he got closer, he could make out hundreds of skeletal figures moving through the city and the surrounding area. The city was full of movement, with hundreds of skeletons of different types moving through it.

Barely one looked like another. 

He could see dozens of different types of elements and some other Laws that had been merged in various ways with their bones. 

There was everything from metallic alloys to fire and poison, as well as even stranger things, including traces of other laws.

There were Steelbone Skeletons, Mistbone Skeletons, Wrathbone Skeletons...and then other skeletons made from flaming bones, mana-infused bones, petrified bones, runic bones, poisonous bones, paralyzing bones, flexible bones, blade bones, and more, including some golem-like figures made of bones interlocked into the shape of gears and strange technology.

There were also carts made of bone plates rolling through the city on wheels spoked by arm bones and femurs. They were driven by skeletons holding whips made of a long and thin spinal column, which they cracked above the backs of grey skeletal horses. 

It was a strange place, but Kelin didn’t pay much attention to the undead pretending to be living people. Even the horses were over Level 200 and just as deadly as everything else. The skeletons driving the carts were the same.

Dreadbone Stallion. Level 232. 

Bonewhip Coachman. Level 235.

What did catch his interest was some of the mana-infused metal that a few of the passing skeletons had alloyed with their bones. They radiated strong mana signatures and the skeletons that had them showed signs of powerful durability.

Gaius’s interest was piqued and he rumbled with approval as he saw the ores. They were all high-quality, the type of thing he needed to eat to make more runic silverflame ore and complete his racial evolution.

The closest skeletons that fit were the Steelbone Skeletons and some Darkgold Skeletons, both at Level 238. The first type had bones that looked like bright steel, while the second ones were made of bones that had a shadowy golden hue, almost like aged bronze.

If they could collect enough of those ores, it would help to bring Gaius’s evolution closer.

Kelin placed getting them on the top of his list.

They were almost to the gates now and skeletal sentries on the top began to take notice of them, even with his mana shield acting as camouflage.

Whistling bone arrows laced with poison and flames embedded themselves in the earth all around.

Kelin gathered up the streams of Wildfire that he’d built on the way to the city, spinning them around him like a whirlwind as he kept walking forward. 

When he reached the gates, he ignored the attacks falling toward him and raised his staff. Wildfire exploded outward, covering everything in a wave a hundred feet wide, like a massive prismatic blade was sweeping across the gate and walls.

Soul Paralysis was merged with it.

As soon as the spell touched the undead, they froze stock still, their weapons clattering as stray arrows and spears fell from their hands.

Then they began to burn. 

The first came from close by, sending a tower of soul energy into the air above the gate, and more followed. 

Kelin spun his staff in his hands and gathered up the Wildfire in his mana field, intensifying it as he sent it farther out.

Enchantments blazed on the gates, turning into dull white runes of massive power that blunted some of the spell’s impact, but it didn’t stop it. The Wildfire moved past it and continued to burn, steadily growing stronger again.

If the Lord of Bones had been here, he could have easily blocked the spell, but these skeletons were only fragments of his power, like the city itself.

Wildfire blazed in every direction, rising higher until it was like an aurora burning above the city wall.

Minutes later, everything near the gate was dead. 

Skeletons were scattered like kindling for hundreds of feet, and a massive tornado of Wildfire was soaring into the sky. Kelin didn’t try to calm it down, instead he pushed it higher and sent it farther out.

He didn’t want to waste time with this dungeon and neither was he underestimating it. 

Wildfire could burn through negative energies and necrotic souls, so he would take full advantage of it to clear out the trash.

Gaius rose up from the earth and slammed his hands into the city gates, hurling them open, and Kelin walked through.

As he passed by the metal-infused skeletons, their bodies sank into the earth and were absorbed by Gaius, who filtered out the metals that were useful to him and tossed the rest aside.

The elemental also worked to collect the cores and everything else of interest, while Kelin focused on extending the area of his Wildfire.

His mana field was stressed by the effort until it felt like his aura was twisting around sharp wires at the edges, but he poured more mana into it and held on. When done correctly, stressing a mana field was a form of conditioning that helped to strengthen it.

A storm of swirling fire followed him into the city as he walked in deeper. It was red and orange, yellow and blue, purple and rose, all the colors of a soul. 

Streams of wild soul energy crashed against his wards and were refined, turning into golden droplets that fused into his soul and improved his Aura, while the necrotic energy all around him burned away. 

Once it was gone, the Bone essence in the air intensified and flowed more quickly into him. 

His Constitution was already up ten points and he was barely past the gates, but he was keeping a careful eye on it. 

So far it wasn’t causing any problems, but too much at once might result in strange changes or his skeleton trying to rip its way out of his body. 

The main reason it was moving so quickly was that compared to the skeletons around him, his bones were still weak. 

The essence was trying to bring him up to the same level.

He pulled in some of the Wildfire around him, working to keep it at a level he could maintain indefinitely, and continued forward.

Flames swept around him like roving dragons, killing everything in his path as he headed toward the first challenge.

Along the way, he discovered some areas of devastation between the streets that were clearer than the rest, showing where other visitors had passed. 

Marks of battle covered those areas, with bone spears and weapons embedded in the earth and the shattered remains of skeletons were strewn in every direction.

The cores were gone, but some of the undead had bones with metals useful to Gaius and the elemental didn’t hesitate to scoop them up and take what was useful.

Kelin studied the area and assessed the level of mana and the arts that had left the marks. It seemed like it wouldn’t be long until he ran into the ones who’d made them.

Perhaps they were even heading to the same destination.

It was only a question of what they were doing there.