Chapter 649: The Screaming Ghost
The massacre descended relentlessly. The level thirty-two Skeletal Archer didn’t even have time to fight back before it was reduced to a pile of shattered bones.
Anderson, Reina, and Leon were practically competing for kills. Over thirty elite skeletal warriors, each around level twenty-eight or twenty-nine, plus more than a dozen—none lower than level twenty-eight—and a single level thirty-two Skeletal Archer, were crushed beneath the trio’s assault. With the elite skeletal warriors wiped out, nearly every second, each Skeletal Archer was hit by a dozen spells.
The battle ended in just five seconds.
Yet neither Anderson nor Leon showed much joy at the swift victory.
Because both of them saw a sign in this battle.
“Leon, don’t you think these undead creatures were lying in ambush here, waiting to attack us?”
Leon nodded, his expression darkening.
“You felt it too?”
In fact, Leon had sensed it from the very beginning. The moment he poked his head out, he was ambushed by a bone arrow. Those elite skeletal soldiers and Skeletal Archers had even set up a formation, as if they were ready to attack at any moment.
Previously, every few steps, Leon would cast an undead detection spell. But this time, after only three hundred meters, before he could cast the next detection, they were suddenly ambushed—right at the limit of the previous spell’s range.
Skeletal Archers are easy enough to handle, but if ambushed by a special Marksman, even a level five Title Archmage could be killed instantly.
When attacked out of nowhere, a mage’s fastest defense is almost instinctive—casting a Mana Shield or Magic Barrier without hesitation. But against a Marksman’s magical arrows, those shields are like paper. Without protection, a full-force strike rivaling a Sword Saint is almost always fatal.
But if this was a deliberate ambush, who was orchestrating it all?
With that question lingering, the group made their way through labyrinthine corridors. At the end, Leon casually unlocked an Alchemical Gate. This time, he was even more cautious—summoning a Stone Golem first to check for danger before letting everyone enter.
“Hmm, there’s a short-range teleportation array here…” Anderson’s voice came from up ahead.
“Let me take a look.” Leon inspected the array. It was intact, but to be safe, he summoned another Stone Golem to test it first.
As the array flashed, the Stone Golem vanished. After ten full seconds, Leon confirmed the connection hadn’t broken—only then did he step into the teleportation array himself.
The light faded, and the group found themselves on a new floor. The space was larger, the corridors wider, and along both sides, every few meters, a quiet oil lamp burned.
From the faintly sweet aroma, Leon instantly recognized it—the lamps were burning Deepsea Merfolk Oil.
Deepsea Merfolk Oil is precious—even in the Nesser Dynasty, it was highly prized. A single drop of pure Deepsea Merfolk Oil can burn for a thousand years. In the royal tombs of Pureblood Elves, the eternal lamps are always fueled by it, while ordinary nobles can only afford regular merfolk oil for their lamps.
Now, the oil left in each lamp along the corridor was running low. Judging by the burn rate, these lamps must have been burning for tens of thousands of years.
After collecting some Deepsea Merfolk Oil, Leon cautioned everyone to be careful.
“Everyone, stay alert. Anyone active on this floor must have been a formal crew member of the USS Dauntless.”
Even in life, being a formal crew member of the Dauntless—no matter how ordinary—meant you were at least as strong as a level five Swordmaster.
Everyone’s expression grew grim. Leon had already warned them—the space here was bizarre, and anyone relying on normal ship layouts would end up dead in the worst way.
On the lower levels, you could still use the schematics to find the fastest route, and every short-range teleportation array had a fixed position.
But on this floor—the upper deck of the Dauntless—the boundary with the lower deck meant the short-range teleportation array was no longer fixed. Instead, it was a movable teleportation gate.
The gate’s position and activation spell changed periodically. There was a pattern, but after so much time had passed, no one could be sure. The best you could do was use the schematics to estimate a general area.
Which meant, on this floor, you’d have to open at least a dozen rooms!
The air grew thick with Necrotic Miasma, and the accuracy of the undead detection spell dropped sharply.
The group’s pace slowed considerably.
In the first room that might hold a teleportation gate, they encountered a level thirty Dark Knight. Like the first mate, he’d been an orc berserker in life. But the gap was too great—he was destroyed in less than a minute.
Aside from finding a low-tier Soulbound Relic—a two-handed greatsword—there was nothing else of value.
In the second possible teleportation room, it was completely empty.
............
After advancing through several rooms, they finally reached the end of the floor. In the tenth possible teleportation room, as the Alchemical Gate was unlocked, a piercing scream exploded in their ears.
Everyone had been on guard for undead, but no one expected what was inside—not skeletons or zombies, but ghost-type undead.
Hubert took the brunt of it—his eyes went vacant in an instant. Anderson screamed, his three faces flickered, and then he turned into smoke, retreating into the Arcane Wheel.
Reina’s expression kept shifting—pain, then fury, then pain again…
Leon’s face went pale, his soul seemed to tremble, and his mind blurred for a moment. The scene before his eyes shifted—he was back at the moment the world ended.
Thunder and fire rained down without end, the sky bled red, and even the heavens seemed to collapse.
Leon stared at the most haunting memory of his life. His expression didn’t change, his feet didn’t move—he cast Mindguard on himself ten times in a row.
He quickly chanted a short spell, and a surge of pure mana erupted into a shockwave that rolled out in every direction.
The simplest, purest mana shockwave shattered the vision before him like a broken mirror.
Suddenly, he was back at the doorway of the room. Hubert stood dazed in front, and Slaughter had fallen to the floor.
A dozen ghosts floated in midair—half-transparent, just eyes and mouths, no limbs at all—blown backward by Leon’s mana shockwave.
And then—a pitch-black tentacle, half a meter thick, ignored the mana shockwave and lashed out from ahead!
Seeing the tentacle, cold sweat broke out all over Leon.
Dense Necrotic Power, a malevolent aura, black smoke billowing, and mana leaking away.
Leon knew immediately—it had to be that monster!
He raised the Doombringer Staff and fired three Flame Spears—each one a three-meter-long, red-hot lance—striking the tentacle at its front, middle, and rear. One spear even pinned the tentacle’s middle to the ground.
Using the brief window, Leon’s face was cold. Without casting a single protective spell, he spat out several rapid incantations. A Spear of Vulcan, five meters tall and covered in runes, exquisitely crafted like a work of art, materialized out of thin air.
The Spear of Vulcan pierced the tentacle from the front, running it clean through!
Golden flames burned, turning the tentacle into a cloud of black smoke.
Before the black smoke could regroup, Leon hurled five Explosive Fireballs, the detonations erupting into a sea of flames.
The black smoke retreated rapidly, slipping into a crack in the corner to escape.
Meanwhile, three Mindguards were cast on Reina, and after a desperate struggle, she finally regained her senses.
A first-level Fireball landed on Hubert, and the burning pain snapped him out of his stupor with a scream—pain worked better for him than Mindguard.
Meanwhile, the Alchemical Golem unleashed a barrage of fire spells, scouring the area.
Smoke poured out of the Arcane Wheel lying on the floor. Anderson reformed his three faces and immediately started cursing viciously.
“Damn it, how could there be a dozen Screamers here? My whole reputation—taken out by Screamers!”
A torrent of fire spells erupted inside the room like a volcanic explosion.
The Screamers were engulfed in flames, shrieking in agony—yet they refused to die, even after all that.
Screamers: high-level ghost-type undead.
This particular Screamer was level thirty-two, completely immune to physical attacks and most magic—only fire spells could hurt it at all.
The best way to destroy a Screamer is with holy magic. Even a simple Holy Light spell can deal massive damage to a Screamer.
Screamers have no real combat power—just one ability: Soul Wail. But it’s absurdly strong. Without a pile of Mindguards ready, a level thirty Screamer can even make a ninth-rank Title Archmage tremble for a second!
A single second—sometimes, that’s all it takes to decide life and death.
Just now, if Leon had already fused the core Meditation Codex, confident and unshakable, even a dozen Screamers wouldn’t have fazed him.
If Leon had been a moment slower and got caught by that tentacle, things would have gotten ugly.
Soul Wail triggers a barrage of illusions and psychic assaults, stirring up negative emotions. And those emotions are exactly what keeps Soul Wail going.