Chương 11: The Cemetery of Fallen Heroes

Ch 11: The Cemetery of Fallen Heroes The staircase to the second floor stretched upward in endless stone steps, each one echoing under my feet. Clack. Clack. Clack. The moment I crossed the threshold, everything changed. A freezing wind cut across my face, cold enough to see my own breath. The bright corridors of the first floor were gone, replaced by an endless graveyard broken headstones leaning at every angle, some sunk entirely into the ground, dead trees twisting toward a crimson sky like skeletal hands.

Thick gray mist rolled between the graves, swallowing anything more than twenty meters out.

"A graveyard?" I murmured. Second Floor: The Cemetery of Fallen Heroes Difficulty: Nightgrave Mission: Find the Heart of Death. Destroy it.

"That's all?" No monsters listed, no maze, no explanation beyond that. The silence itself felt wrong. I activated the Divine God's Eye, and a golden path unspooled ahead of me through the mist.

"Convenient," I said, and followed it. Twenty minutes in, nothing had happened. No enemies. No movement. Just silence.

"Something feels off," I whispered. Crunch. I froze. That sound hadn't come from me. I turned nothing there.

"Probably an animal," I told myself, and kept walking. Crunch. Closer this time. I spun around again, and again found nothing but rows of graves. A cold weight settled at the base of my neck. Someone — or something was following me. I drew my sword.

"Who's there?" Only wind answered. The mist parted, and a figure in rusted armor stood fifty meters off, head bowed, a broken sword hanging from one hand. A heartbeat later it was gone.

"An illusion?" I kept moving, and when the mist cleared again, three figures stood watching me in perfect stillness. The Divine God's Eye read them instantly. No cultivation. No Qi. No heartbeat. They weren't alive. Then every grave around me began shaking at once. Crack. Crack. Crack. Hands burst up through the soil one, then ten, then hundreds rotting soldiers hauling themselves out of the earth, pale blue flame burning in the hollows of their eyes. A voice rolled across the cemetery, ancient and toneless.

"The dead do not welcome the living." Every undead soldier turned toward me at once.

"Well," I said.

"Guess diplomacy's off the table." The battlefield exploded into motion. Unlike the Orcs, these things didn't stay dead cutting one apart only slowed it down.

"They're immortal?" No. The Divine God's Eye caught it a second later — a thin strand of black energy running from each corpse down into the earth.

"That's it. They're being puppeted." Rather than grind through an endless swarm, I turned and ran, the golden trail pulling me deeper into the mist while thousands of undead thundered after me, the ground shaking under their combined weight.

"This is insane." The trail ended at an enormous mausoleum, radiating a darkness unlike anything else in the graveyard. Its stone door groaned open on its own, and inside, someone was waiting. A woman sat on a throne built entirely from bone, white hair pooling around her feet, skin pale as snow, crimson eyes opening slowly to find me.

"A human?" she said. Mini-Boss Identified: Lesser Larva Lich Cultivation: Immortal Realm -> Sixth Leaf"A Lich," I said aloud. She smiled.

"Another challenger. It's been three hundred years." She rose from the throne.

"Will you entertain me before you die?" Dark mana exploded through the tomb. Every candle guttered out at once, and the doors slammed shut behind me with a deafening boom. I tightened my grip. The Divine God's Eye had already flagged something strange her weak point wasn't in her body at all. A faint golden thread ran from her, down beneath the throne itself.

"Your weak point isn't inside you," I said. Her smile widened, delight replacing calm for the first time.

"You can see it? Interesting." She raised a finger, and the shadows at my feet came alive skeletal hands bursting up through the darkness, grabbing my legs.

"Damn it!" Their grip was inhuman. The harder I fought them, the deeper they dragged me down. She descended from the throne unhurried, crimson eyes glittering.

"You're stronger than the last one." A pause.

"Not strong enough." Dozens of black magic circles bloomed around her, gathering mana into razor spears. Death Spears --> a spell simple enough that its danger came entirely from how fast she could cast it. Unauthorized duplication: this tale has been taken without consent. Report sightings. I let the Divine God's Eye flood my vision, and the world slowed.

Every spear, every strand of mana, resolved with total clarity and there, in the third circle from the left, mana was gathering just a fraction slower than the rest.

"Found it."

"Trying to escape? Die." She snapped her fingers, and hundreds of black spears tore through the air. I moved through Moon Step, my body twisting at angles it shouldn't have managed. One spear grazed my shoulder. Another struck stone behind me. The third collided exactly with the flawed circle I'd marked. BOOOOOOM. The chamber shook violently, the Lich herself staggering back in shock.

"Impossible," she muttered, staring at her own shattered formation.

"You redirected my spell on purpose?"

"You've been dead too long," I said.

"Your casting speed's impressive. Your control's sloppy." Her expression hardened, and she vanished.

"Fast—" The Divine God's Eye barely caught the motion before a cold hand closed around my throat from behind.

"You rely too much on those eyes." Dark mana detonated and threw me through three stone pillars. BOOM. Blood filled my mouth, every bone in my back screaming. She was stronger than the Orc Commodore by a wide margin the gap between the Third and Sixth Leaf of the Immortal Realm wasn't something skill alone was going to close. If this kept up, I'd die here. She approached at an unhurried pace.

"You're fascinating. I haven't enjoyed a fight like this in centuries." She stopped a few meters away.

"As a reward I'll let you join my eternal servants." Behind her, thousands of corpses rose at once knights, mages, swordsmen, beasts, an entire army built from the dead. My breathing went ragged. No amount of skill won a fight against an army that size. Unless I didn't need to fight it at all. My eyes went back to the golden thread. It still ran from her, down beneath the throne, deeper than I could see.

"So that's your secret." She caught the direction of my gaze, and for the first time her calm cracked.

"You can actually see it."

"Then I don't need to kill you," I said.

"I only need to destroy your source." Her killing intent detonated the instant the words left my mouth. The temperature dropped further, the whole mausoleum shaking.

"You must die." A massive magic circle spread across the entire chamber, pressure thick enough to choke on. Warning: High-Level Forbidden Magic Detected. Estimated Survival Probability: 0. 7%"Great," I said, laughing bitterly.

"Not exactly encouraging odds." The Divine God's Eye blazed brighter than it had all fight one golden path forming through the darkness, ignoring the Lich, ignoring the undead, running straight beneath the throne.

"So that's the answer." I gripped my sword.

"I'll bet everything on this one strike." Crimson aura ignited around me as the Berserk Legacy caught fire, every remaining drop of mana surging into the blade until it trembled in my hands.

"Dragon Slayer," I said.

"First Verse." A dragon's roar tore through the mausoleum. The Lich's eyes went wide.

"No!" She understood exactly what I was aiming for a heartbeat too late. Every undead soldier lunged at once claws, spells, blades, all of it descending at the same time. I ignored every bit of it. My eyes never left the golden thread.

"I've found your heart." I swung. The dragon's roar shook the chamber as the crimson slash tore through the air like a falling comet, aimed not at the Lich, but at the throne itself.

"No!" Panic broke through her voice for the first time. Every undead abandoned its attack on me and threw itself toward the throne instead. Too slow. BOOOOOOOOOM. The strike hit the stone throne dead-on, cracks spidering out across its surface. The golden thread flickered violently in response.

"One more!" Ignoring the blood pouring from my mouth, I forced my body forward Dragon Slayer's backlash had already torn through what was left of my muscles, every step a fresh wave of pain. The Lich appeared in front of me, composure gone entirely.

"YOU INSIGNIFICANT HUMAN!" Dark mana rolled off her in a wave, thousands of black chains lashing out at once. The Divine God's Eye flared, and time seemed to slow around the tangle of chains. There one narrow gap. I pushed the body past its limit, into Moon Step again. One chain grazed my shoulder. Another sliced across my chest. A third pierced my left arm. Blood scattered across the stone, but I made it through.

The throne stood in front of me now, the golden thread no longer hidden it ran directly into a crystal buried beneath the stone, pulsing like a living heart. Legacy Threshold Met. Dragon Slayer Art — Second Slash: Unlocked.

"So that's your Core," I said. The Lich's scream tore through the tomb.

"STOP!" Every undead soldier lunged at once, weapons falling toward me from every direction. I smiled.

"Too late." I raised the sword with both hands, pouring every remaining drop of mana into the blade as the crimson aura around me flickered and surged.

"Dragon Slayer," I said.

"Second Slash." The blade fell. CRAAAAACK. The crystal shattered. The world seemed to freeze in place. The Lich's body went rigid.

"No..." She stared at her own trembling hands.

"My heart—" Cracks spread through her pale skin, and the dark mana around her vanished completely. One by one, the undead army stopped moving, blue flames guttering out, weapons dropping from lifeless hands until nothing remained but bone. The cemetery went silent. The Lich looked at me one last time, and to my surprise — smiled. Not with hatred. With relief.

"Thank you," she said. I frowned.

"What?" Her body dissolved into silver particles.

"I was finally freed." Those were her last words before she disappeared entirely. Hidden Boss Defeated: Lesser Larva Lich Eliminated Mission Complete Rewards Obtained: - Synchronization +0. 5% (Current: 13. 55%) - Lucky Draw ×1 Warmth surged through me, Qi rolling through my meridians all at once.

"I'm breaking through." I sat cross-legged right there and let Cosmic-Wave take over, drawing the surrounding Qi into me in an endless current one circulation, ten, thirty until the bottleneck holding me at the Third Leaf finally gave. BOOM. A wave of Qi burst from my body, cracking the stone beneath me as the surrounding pressure spiked all at once. Congratulations: Cultivation Increased Level: Mortal Realm — Fourth Leaf I opened my eyes and let myself smile.

"Finally." The timing couldn't have mattered more facing Kalio now, at least the fight wouldn't be entirely one-sided. Still not finished, though. Three days remained, and the third floor was still waiting. I looked at the reward wheel floating in front of me.

"Let's see if luck's still on my side." It spun through the tiers, slower and slower, before finally stopping. Reward Obtained: Nothing. Better luck next time! I sighed.

"So that's where all my luck went." After the pill, maybe I'd had no business expecting a second miracle in the same week. I stood, stretched my aching muscles, and stepped through the gate as it ground open ahead of me. Scorching wind hit me the moment I crossed the threshold.

"Hot?" The cold cemetery vanished behind me, replaced by an endless sea of golden sand stretching to the horizon under three blazing suns, heat warping the air itself. Third Floor: The Desert of Forgotten Kings Something vast moved beneath the dunes in the distance. My grip tightened around my sword.

"Looks like the real challenge starts now."