There was no battle cry from their side, no moment of hesitation where fear or morale played a part. There was just the wet, sickening sound of thousands of rotting bodies colliding with steel. The vanguard lines buckled instantly. I watched a soldier three feet away drive his spear into a ghoul's chest, only for the creature to walk down the shaft, pulling the wood through its own guts, and bite the man's face off.
It was messy, it was loud. And by the gods, it smelled terrible.
"Hold the line!" I shouted, though my voice was barely audible over the screaming. "Borric, if you vomit on my boots, I am leaving you here!" I’d complained about not having boots the first time I arrived in this world, I loved these pairs.
"I am trying!" the merchant squeaked, ducking behind me as a severed arm flew past his head.
I swung my axe in a wide, horizontal arc. The blade caught three shambling corpses at the waist. It didn't feel like cutting wood or even normal flesh. It felt like chopping through wet clay mixed with gravel. Their torsos slid off their legs with a wet slap, spilling black fluids onto the mud, but their upper halves kept crawling toward us, clawing at my ankles.
Relentless.
"Isolde!" I barked. "Clear the front!"
The Princess didn't flinch, busy destroying a batch to the side. To her credit, the shock from moments ago had hardened into something cold and sharp. Once she was done, she stepped up beside me, her hands glowing with blue mana holding the essence of a mirror.
"Reflect," she whispered.
She didn't cast a solar beam or a fireball. She projected a wall of force that acted like a physical mirror to kinetic energy. The front rank of the undead horde slammed into an invisible barrier and bounced.
The impact was catastrophic for them. Bones shattered under their own momentum, and skulls caved in as if they had run face-first into a castle wall. For a brief second, we had breathing room.
Then a roar of pure, unadulterated joy echoed from the smoke to my left.
"Thorvyn join me already, this one’s so fun!"
I didn't even have to look. Ragna Valteria didn't treat a battlefield as a tragedy, she never did. To her, this was an all-you-can-eat buffet of violence.
While the rest of us were trying to maintain formation, she’d long broken rank and gone against the Salamander. She didn't care about the fodder. She had spotted the prize amidst the chaos. Lurching through the smoke, crushing both friend and foe under its fossilized bulk, was the Sand Salamander.
It was somehow growing even more hideous. Fifteen feet of petrified bone and rotted scales that looked like a museum exhibit gone wrong. It moved with a jerky, menacing gait, snapping its jaws at anything that moved.
It looked hungry, ready for more.
"I’ll join in a bit!" I shouted. "Be careful, that thing is–"
I was talking to the wind. She was occupied again, her club swinging. She laughed as she descended, her club wreathed in the red flames of her bloodline. She slammed the weapon into the creature’s snout with enough force to crack a fortress gate.
CRACK.
It should have shattered the skull. Instead, the Salamander just popped its jaw back into place with a wet, grinding noise that made my own teeth hurt. It blinked its dead, green-fire eyes. It looked annoyed rather than hurt.
"THAT’S IT, KEEP HEALING!" Ragna shouted, flames flickering around her hands as she landed on its back. "AHAHA!"
The Salamander bucked like a wild stallion but Ragna held on, driving her claws into its fossilized scales, but the beast was smarter than it looked. It didn't try to bite her. It rolled.
It threw its immense weight to the side, forcing Ragna to bail out or be crushed. She leaped clear, skidding through the mud.
"Is that all you have?" she taunted.
The Salamander ignored her. It turned its head, swiveling on a thick, rotted neck. It didn't look at the barbarian who had just hit it. The green fire in its sockets locked onto the girl standing behind me.
Isolde.
"Oh, marvelous," I grumbled as I realized what was happening. "It has quest markers."
The makers of these undead, likely the Black Concord, must have programmed their heavy hitters to target the royal bloodline. Tactical and efficient, but deeply inconvenient for me. The Salamander ignored Ragna’s outraged shout and charged. It moved with the terrifying speed of a falling landslide, trampling soldiers into paste along the way.
It was coming straight for us.
"Borric, move!" I shoved the merchant into the mud a dozen metres from here and activated [Leap].
The world blurred. I launched myself over the intervening chaos and landed squarely in the creature's path. My boots sank six inches into the gore-slicked mud. I barely had time to shift my grip on the axe before the undead train hit me.
I triggered [Tempest Strike] and dumped an ounce of ice mana I had into the blade.
CLANG.
It felt like catching a falling boulder. My ribs groaned as they threatened to snap, but the axe bit deep into the creature’s snout. Frost flash-froze the rotting ichor spraying from the wound, which glued my blade to its face for a split second.
The Salamander didn't seem half bothered. It just thrashed, and its tail whipped around in a blind arc.
[Endure] triggered automatically. It stiffened my skin right before the tail slammed into my side like a siege weapon. I was launched sideways. I tumbled through the mud until I slammed back-first into a burning supply cart, shattering the wood.
"Ow," I wheezed, spitting out a glob of blood.
Too tough, I analyzed as I pulled myself out of the wreckage. The scales are fossilized. It is like trying to chop down a stone tower with a hatchet.
"Hey! Over here, you ugly bag of bones!"
Ragna was back. She looked insulted that the monster had ignored her. Her hands were wreathed in crimson fire from [Claws of the Wyrm] as she hooked her fingers into the creature’s flank and tore.
This book's true home is on another platform. Check it out there for the real experience.
It should have melted through. Instead, the fire sputtered and died.
"My fire!" Ragna looked at her hands, genuinely offended. "It ate my fire!"
"It is a Death Aura, you idiot!" I shouted as I dragged myself back into the fray. "It smothers elemental energy! Stop trying to cook it and just hit it!"
"Don't tell me what to do, white haired bastard!" she screamed back, head burning with adrenaline. She switched tactics anyway and drove her knee into the thing's joint with a sickening crunch.
The Salamander stumbled, but it was already winding up for another snap at Isolde. The Princess was standing thirty yards back, pale as a sheet. Borric was grabbing her arm to pull her away, but the merchant had stopped looking at the escape routes. His eyes were glowing gold.
"The neck!" Borric shrieked, his voice cracking. "Princess! The vertebrae are fused, but the third one down is cracked! It is bad merchandise! Hit the defect!"
Isolde blinked. The uncertainty cleared from her eyes and she shifted her stance, her hands weaving a complex sigil.
"[Crown of Echoes]," she whispered.
Three perfect copies of Isolde flickered into existence around the beast. The Salamander possessed all the intelligence of a rock, so it snapped at the nearest one. Its jaws closed on empty air, and teeth clicked together harmlessly.
The real Isolde stepped forward. Her face was set in a grimace of concentration.
Then she used a technique that must be [Reflected Judgment]. She waited for the beast to thrash, caught the kinetic force of its own movement in a pane of shimmering air, and shoved it right back down the creature's throat.
The Salamander’s head snapped back. The force of its own momentum was used against it. It reeled, stunned.
There.
I didn't waste time with a battle cry. I sprinted. I channeled [Storm Call], but I kept it under control for a bit to make the ground slick with cold air. I slid under the creature's flailing claws and came up right beneath its chin.
"Ragna! Drop the hammer!"
I didn't need to check if she was ready. I felt the heat before I saw her.
Ragna launched herself into the air. [Wings of Fury] spread like a mantle of blood-red light. She didn't glide; she plummeted. She brought her club down with a two-handed overhead smash that would have made a giant proud.
"DRAGON'S DESCENT!"
It bothered me a little that she’d copied my [Thunderclap Crash] and named it a different attack, but what was there to do? She struck the frozen knee joint I had weakened earlier. The sound was like a cannon shot.
The fossilized leg didn't just break; it detonated.
The Salamander collapsed. It screeched in a soundless, magically-dampened frequency that made my nose bleed. It was down, but not out. It dragged itself forward, jaws snapping inches from Isolde’s boots.
"The neck!" Borric screamed again, pointing like a man possessed. "The crack in the neck!"
Isolde didn't have a weapon. She made one. She condensed her mirror shield into a jagged shard of solid reflection and drove it downward, jamming it into the gap in the vertebrae Borric had spotted.
The beast seized, paralyzed.
Finish it.
I jumped.
This wasn't a skill. This was gravity and hate. I triggered [Thunderclap Crash] to show Ragna what a real Skill worked like, and at the apex of the leap I converted my mana into pure downward force.
I landed on the back of its skull.
My boots, axe, and body weight hit simultaneously.
SQUELCH.
The fossilized skull caved in like soggy parchment. Brain matter, or whatever black sludge-fueled undead constructs, sprayed outward in a ring. It painted me, Ragna, and a very unfortunate Borric in vile slime. Isolde had casually blocked it with a mirror spell.
[You have slain an Undead Sand Salamander - Level 61!]
[You’ve earned experience points.]
[You’ve leveled up!]
[You’ve reached Level 49.]
[You've gained great experience points! Since you weren't the only fighter, the experience points have been halved.]
[You’ve unlocked the 5th Ascension Quest!]
[Ascension Quest: Help King Asharion II Leave this Plane.]
[Reward: Advancement to 5th Ascension upon completion.]
I slid off the carcass and landed in the mud with a wet thud. My ribs were definitely bruised, and I smelled like the inside of a ghoul's stomach, but I was alive.
I’d reached Level 49, and the Ascension Quest was here. I was hoping I’d get to it from this fight and unlock that [Mantle of Valteria] that Lady Nezehra had mentioned, but it was a pipedream.
But…
Help King Asharion II Leave this Plane? That sounds like… as if his soul is still alive in that undead body, forced to see his body butcher his people. It bothered my principles by realizing that. Whoever turned King Asharion into that was a sick bastard.
"Hey, Thorvyn, don’t zone out!" Ragna panted. She wiped gore out of her eyes with a grin that was entirely too wide. "That was fun exercise, no?"
"You are mentally deficient," I told her, struggling to my feet.
"What does deficient mean?"
Isolde was staring at the corpse. Her hands trembled as the adrenaline crashed. Her mirror shard dissolved into light. "Is it... is it really dead this time?"
"Head is flat," I noted and kicked a piece of skull. "Usually a good sign. Plus I’m sure all of us received the System notification. It has never lied to me so far."
Borric was busy frantically wiping sludge off his velvet doublet. "I know there’s a war all around us, but this silk is imported! Do you know how much dry cleaning costs in a war zone? The margins on this trip are ruined!"
It must be his way of calming himself, because it made no sense to me. "Borric," I said, pointing at the dead monstrosity. "You called the weak point. Good eye."
The merchant froze, then puffed out his chest slightly. "Well. One does learn to spot a lemon when one sees it. That structural integrity was appalling."
I ignored them and turned back to the corpse. The System was buzzing at the edge of my vision, insistent and annoying.
[Osmotic Evolution Activated]
[The dead have nothing left to lose. Take what is yours.]
[Since you’ve only killed one Undead Sand Salamander, it has been selected as your Source for the next 24 hours.]
Time seemed to stutter and slow. The world turned gray. It left only the glowing text hovering over the ruined carcass.
[Which Trait do you want to borrow?]
- Sand Glide [C]
- Fossilized Armor [A]
- Necrotic Resistance [B]
- Crushing Momentum [B]
I skimmed the list. Fossilized Armor was tempting, but I liked being able to bend my knees during a fight. Necrotic Resistance was situational. Sand Glide was, uh, anyways.
But Crushing Momentum...
I looked at the crater my axe had made in the creature's skull. Was it a little similar to the Branch Leader’s Juggernaut Skill? My fighting style wasn't about finesse. It was about hitting things until they stopped moving. So if I could make the hitting part harder just by moving faster...
[Selected: Crushing Momentum]
[Osmotic Evolution (B) - Crushing Momentum.]
[Loading the Trait into your physiology…]
Time snapped back into focus. I felt a sudden heaviness in my limbs. Not fatigue, but density. It felt like my bones had been dipped in lead. I took a step, and my boot dug an inch deeper into the hard-packed earth than it should have.
"Thorvyn?" Isolde asked. She watched me test my weight.
"I am fine," I grunted and rolled my shoulder. It felt like a loaded spring. "Just upgraded."
"We aren't done," Ragna said. Her voice dropped the playful tone. She was looking past us toward the center of the battlefield.
I followed her gaze.
In the distance, a titanic struggle was shaking the earth. Marius Thalasson had conjured a golem of sand the size of a tower, but it was crumbling. The Death Aura radiating from the crater was turning the sand gray and lifeless, which caused the construct to slough off in massive avalanches of dust.
And in the center of it all, moving with the jerky, unnatural speed of a marionette cut loose from its strings, was the Dead King Asharion.
He backhanded Yasafina for what must be the third time, sending her flying through a stone wall like she was made of straw.
The rest of the battlefield was worse. My group was the only one that had fared well. We had to stop the army as soon as we could. "Back in the tribe, we used to have puppet plays,” Ragna said, tightening her grip on her mace club. “The puppets stop when the puppet master dies.”
She licked her lips and looked at the Dead King not with fear, but with the expression of a starving woman looking at a banquet. Isolde wore a different expression though, but I ignored it. This wasn’t the time.
"Let's go say hello to the King."
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