Chapter 349: The dignity of the little skeleton in the other dimension (1/2)

Chapter 349: The dignity of the little skeleton in the other dimension

Despite the complete absence of wind, twelve large banner fluttered vigorously in the wind. Baleful aura swirled around, flowing like mercury towards the pit in the middle. Inside the pit, the liquid boiled like fire oil, searing the three evil knights and their mounts and sending smoke billowing into the air.

Han Shuo closed his eyes as he sat, facing three evil knights. His mental strength flowed like an unstoppable river, holding the three evil knights true to their contract. As the mounts of the evil knights were weaker, they gradually lost the strength to continue struggling fruitlessly.

Three enormous bone spurs continued to madly thrust at Han Shuo. A millisecond of relaxation, and the evil knights would ruthlessly exploit the advantage to pierce right through Han Shyo’s head. Han Shuo was fully focused on his task, iron-willed to the end. Inextricable patterns of mental strength weaved into a formless net in the sky, grinding away at the mountain of resistance that was the will of the three evil knights.

The Cemetery of Death wasn’t touched by either the sun or moon, eternally shrouded in faint, dim light. Hence, one could never sense the passage of time. After an indeterminate amount of time, the three bone lances struggling to reach Han Shuo slowly lost their strength. Like the bodies of the evil knights, they listlessly fell back into the pit.

Han Shuo’s whole body looked like it had been carved from stone, not a single sign of life from his cross-legged position. The twelve banners still absorbed ghosts and radiated killing aura that converged on the pit. After what felt like a few days, the bodies of the three evil knights completely dissolved into the liquid, with not a trace left behind.

At long last, Han Shuo moved, a gasp of air escaping his lips as his eyes opened. His voice was haggard with exhaustion, “That was so damn tiring!”. It had only been three evil knights and their mounts, but the process of reforming their bodies had already caused Han Shuo this much trouble. It seemed that Han Shuo’s initial hypotheses were true. It was impossible to use demonic arts to reform every undead creature’s body.

For one, this kind of refining used overly complex and highly precious ingredients. If the countless skeleton warriors and zombie warriors under Han Shuo’s command were to all be refined, even his prodigious savings wouldn’t be enough to support it. Just refining these three evil knights already cost at least a hundred thousand gold. Refining every skeleton warrior and zombie warrior would drive him to bankruptcy and beyond. Even then, he still wouldn’t be done!

Also, refining undead creatures in this manner took too much of his time and energy, with very little benefits to such an enormous undertaking. After all, skeleton warriors and zombie warriors were essentially cannon fodder. Even he rendered them immune to light magic’s corrosive effect, their usage was limited. As such, Han Shuo wasn’t willing to waste mountains of gold on them.

Evil knights were currently the strongest undead creatures that Han Shuo could summon. Even within undead creatures, they were considered high level. They had great utility and flexibility once their fire-breathing steeds could take the field with them. Their monstrous innate strength could be combined with hardy armor to produce a combatant that was tougher than a human knight. Han Shuo had already had to use all of his mental strength to suppress the fierce resistance of three evil knights and their warhorses. While Han Shuo could summon bone demons and old fey zombies, he definitely couldn’t refine three of them at one go. This was because the resistance from the Bone Devils and Old Corpse Demons would definitely be stronger.

Standing up from his cross-legged position, Han Shuo summoned the twelve demon heads from the banners with a thought. Howling, they reluctantly returned into Han Shuo’s body. Since the bodies of the three evil knights were already merged into the pit, Han Shuo didn’t need to suppress the matrix with his magical yuan any longer .

The twelve demon heads had formed when Han Shuo had reached the separate demon stage, using the large baleful aura within the Valley of Sunshine as a catalyst. These twelve demon heads innately contained vicious killing intent, every demon head formed from the last vicious obsession of many hateful souls. It was the best ingredient to refine the “mystical demons” that were one level above the “yin demons”.

Of the three previously refined yin demons, there was currently only usable one left. Han Shuo was convinced that one yin demon was far from adequate to maintain his battlefield advantage. When he’d advanced to the separate demon realm back at the Valley of Sunshine, Han Shuo had deliberately saved the boundless murderous aura, coagulating it into the twelve demon heads. When the ingredients needed to refine mystical demons were gathered, the twelve demon heads would be used as the base ingredient for the mystical demons.

After making sure the area would operate without supervision, Han Shuo headed for the specialized area for refining ‘original demons” and “yin demons”. He first summoned the earth elite zombie, commanding it to modify the layout of the yin demon cave, molding it into a cave suitable for cultivation “mystical demons”. When the modifications were complete, Han Shuo took out the ingredients he needed, and placed them in the centers of the formation eyes around the cave.

Once he had completed all the preparations, Han Shuo dismissed the earth elite zombie and placed twelve drops of his own essence blood into the mystical demon cave. The blood essence began to revolve in mid air within the mystical demon cave. The twelve demon heads emerged from Han Shuo’s body at his command, each swallowing a drop of blood essence. As if at some unknown signal, the cave’s enormous energy began to activate. Han Shuo then summoned a few hundred wraiths and tossed in a few spirits from the Demonslayer Edge to act as fodder for the mystical demon’s evolution.

Han Shuo then dug deep into his magical yuan reserves, pouring the remnants into the mystical demon cave to maintain its normal operations. When the twelve demon heads began to howl and rip at the wraiths and spirits in the matrix, the exhausted Han Shuo returned to the center of the Cemetery of Death.

The two matrices had now resumed normal operations. Han Shuo had not only expended a large amount of mental strength, but also used significant amounts of magical yuan and blood essence. This was even more exhausting than when he’d fought against Kosse at Brettel City. At that time, he had the little skeleton, the earth elite zombie, and the fire elite zombie assisting him. But something like this refining process was something only he could handle. As a result, he was bone deep exhausted.

Sitting on the ground in the Cemetery of Death, Han Shuo pondered for a moment and took out the skeletal staff, meticulously examining the tri-colored skeletal staff. He wanted to make use of this interlude to examine the secrets of the skeletal staff.

Calamity Church’s necromancer archmage Wolf as well as Ancient Lizard King Dagassi had seemed to know traces of the skeletal staff’s origin. This skeletal staff, which had transformed from the Eye of Darkness, was the key to opening the Cemetery of Death. It definitely held many hidden secrets.

Han Shuo hadn’t possessed the skeletal staff for a long time. His understanding of the skeletal staff only went as far as seeing that it enhanced his necromancy magic. If not for the necromancer archmage Wolf using the skeletal staff’s power to rejuvenate his life, Han Shuo would perhaps never have guessed that the skeletal staff could have such an effect.

“Skeleton staff, oh skeletal staff. How many secrets are you hiding!” Han Shuo mumbled to himself as he stroked the three colored skulls.

The exhausted Han Shuo fell unconscious. He semi-consciously felt like he’d been shrouded by the thi-colored light from the skeletal staff, spinning him around. Colorful lights streamed quickly past his body. It felt like he was falling from a great height into an endless abyss.

Just when Han Shuo felt nauseous from the dizzy feeling, he suddenly sensed a familiar smell intrude on his consciousness. This smell seemed to come from an area of the abyss he’d fallen into. Han Shuo’s groggy consciousness latched firmly onto the familiar smell, gradually sinking back into unconsciousness.

There was an infinite black void in the distance. The surroundings seemed to have been forever shrouded in torpid grey, and grey and black cloud constantly rolled over the horizon. The whole area was filed with the smell of death, desolation and wilderness.

Swamps and tree husks that were void of branches and leaves dotted the landscape closer to him. A variety of undead creatures stumbled across the wilderness, aimlessly wandering in the desolate space.

There was no cycle of day and night in this desolate place, nor any sense of time. There was only loneliness and despair, deathly stillness and desolation.

For a moment, Han Shuo thought he was still within the Cemetery of Death. It was too similar to the Cemetery of Death’s everlasting dusk. But when a pack of gargoyles soared over his head, followed by a horde of skeletons and zombies on the ground, Han Shuo was suddenly struck by the very real fact it wasn’t indeed the Cemetery of Death.

He clearly remembered that he hadn’t summoned these low level undead creatures in the Cemetery of Death. Han Shuo suddenly felt like he was in a dream. Only when he followed this line of thought to its end did he realise he didn’t have a body, existing as just pure awareness. However, as soon as Han Shuo thought about his body, his exhausted mental strength slowly filled the area of his consciousness. A identical copy of his body rapidly coalesced into being.

His left hand touched his right, both hands obviously making contact. However, Han Shuo didn’t feel any contact between his skin; everything felt so strange. But he felt a sense of intimacy towards the surroundings. As for what felt intimate, he couldn’t quite place his finger on it.

The dense horde of undead creatures suddenly charged down from a bare mountain. These undead creatures were arranged neatly in order. Right at the front were skeleton warriors and zombie warriors, behind them were skeleton archers and rows of gargoyles. Even further back were two evil knights.

These undead creatures actually numbered three or four thousand. However, the majority of them were skeleton warriors, zombie warriors and ghouls, only a small portion were hate warriors and evil knights. Charging down from the towering mountain, they flocked towards a steep canyon.

Han Shuo’s body and consciousness slowly floated into the canyon. Only when he reached the canyon did Han Shuo realise that the interior of the canyon was similarly flooded with undead creatures. Right down the center of the canyon was a pitched melee of undead creatures. Claws and teeth were used to their fullest potential as they wrestled and tore at each other, incapable of feeling pain and knowing retreat. It was a magnificent yet chilling scene.

When weak undead creatures such as skeleton warriors and zombie were completely destroyed, those low level souls would immediately disperse. But from hate warriors onwards, their souls wouldn’t immediately disperse upon elimination. The undead creatures around them would fight to claim a part of that soul power, devouring it to strengthen themselves.

From the middle of the struggle rose a five meter tall, enormous mummy lord. Wrapped in strips of corroded white cloth which exuded a deathly aura, he slowly rose from deep within the ground of the canyon. This mummy lord seemed to be the leader of the undead creatures within the canyon. When he rose up from deep within the ground, his whole body unleashed an incomparable storm of death.

When the undead creatures charging down from the mountain came into contact with the death storm, they immediately turned into ashes. The strips of cloth around his body danced like weapons, cutting apart any hostile creature unfortunate enough to be caught in its path. Only an evil knight that descended was able to block the attack with his bone spear, driving his fire-breathing warhorse to retreat to the side.

In the hierarchy of undead creatures, mummy lords ranked higher than evil knights. As such, in skirmishes between undead creatures, a difference in level usually meant a foregone conclusion. Unless there were ten evil knights attacking the mummy lord, this battle had no suspense in its outcome.

End of part one of the chapter.

When the mummy lord emerged from the ground, the surrounding undead creatures that had charged down from the bald mountain were ground to dust by the death storm. More than seven hundred undead creatures turned into ashes in moments.