Leon rested for a full ten minutes.
Only after ten minutes did Leon finally recover from his state of complete exhaustion.
After leaving the side tunnel, Leon didn’t bother checking the damaged Alchemical Golem. Instead, he went straight to the Bone Demon’s corpse. For Leon, the greatest gain from this trip to the Bone Plane was taking out the Bone Demon ahead of schedule. Not only could the Nether Iron Vein be mined a month earlier, but his plan to seize the Death Tome could also proceed ahead of time.
Even though the Soul Fire had been utterly destroyed, standing beside the Bone Demon’s corpse, Leon could still sense an immense power of death radiating from it. After all, this was once an undead creature nearly as strong as a master mage. Even with its Soul Fire snuffed out, the lingering death energy was still astonishing.
Leon had long been prepared for the Bone Demon’s strength, so he never pinned his hopes on his Undead Nemesis ability. He wasn’t Charles the Conqueror, who single-handedly wiped out every undead in the Undead Plane. Leon’s Undead Nemesis skill was only useful against weaker undead; to intimidate a Bone Demon—something on par with a master mage—he’d probably have to conquer the entire Bone Plane first.
Compared to the Undead Nemesis ability, which he still didn’t fully understand, Leon had far more faith in the magic he wielded himself.
“Just as I thought…” Leon crouched beside the Bone Demon’s corpse and quickly found what he was looking for.
What Leon found was none other than the Necrofire Bombs the Bone Demon never parted with.
Don’t underestimate these Necrofire Bombs. The Bone Demon’s combat power rivaled a master mage largely thanks to them. Each bomb was forged from concentrated death energy and had absorbed corpse toxin over countless years, making them as valuable as a Soulbound Relic in Leon’s eyes.
They were single-use consumables, and their destructive power was nearly on par with a full-force strike from a Soulbound Relic. Only a creature like the Alchemical Golem, built entirely from adamantine, could withstand several Necrofire Bombs without collapsing.
If it were Leon himself, forget several bombs—even a single Necrofire Bomb would be more than he could handle.
Leon found a total of twenty-three Necrofire Bombs beside the Bone Demon’s corpse.
After the Bone Demon’s death, these Necrofire Bombs had lost their source of death energy and turned into cold, rough, pitch-black lumps—utterly inconspicuous at first glance. But Leon knew that with just a spark of magic, they could unleash terrifying power.
Satisfied, Leon pocketed all twenty-three Necrofire Bombs. Not stopping there, he also dismantled the Bone Demon’s twin Bone Scythes and attached them to the Alchemical Golem’s arms without a second thought.
Now, the Alchemical Golem—originally modeled after a Caucasus Battle Mage—had lost its former grandeur. Its heavy adamantine armor was dented and battered, making it look almost comical. Worse still, its adamantine skeleton seemed twisted, and its movements were no longer as nimble as before.
Leon couldn’t do much about these damages for now. After all, this was the Bone Plane—teeming with undead, but not a single repair tool in sight. He could only set the Alchemical Golem aside and plan to fix it once he returned to Northend.
After finishing all this, Leon checked once more and confirmed there was nothing else worth scavenging from the Bone Demon’s corpse. Only then did he stoop to pick up the Soulbound Staff and the Sage’s Chapter from the ground…
“What’s going on?” The moment Leon got his hands on the Sage’s Chapter, he sensed something was off.
He realized that a third Limit Spell slot had appeared on the Sage’s Chapter!
Originally, when Leon first obtained the Sage’s Chapter, it had only one Limit Spell slot. Later, after harvesting the souls of over a thousand skeleton warriors in the Bone Plane, the Sage’s Chapter absorbed enough souls to unlock a second slot. Leon had expected the third slot to take much longer to appear, but after slaying the Bone Demon in the cavern—even with its Soul Fire incomplete—the third Limit Spell slot manifested ahead of schedule!
To Leon, this was even more important than the twenty-three Necrofire Bombs.
A Necrofire Bomb might rival a Soulbound Relic’s full-force attack, but the Sage’s Chapter was a transcendent artifact. The third Limit Spell slot would boost Leon’s combat power by a whole tier. Just imagine—if he’d had one more Limit Spell against the Bone Demon, the entire fight would have been twice as easy.
He might not even have needed the Alchemical Golem’s help.
With three Limit Spells at his disposal, Leon was at least fifty percent confident he could destroy the Bone Demon’s Soul Fire.
Once everything was settled, Leon abandoned the Bone Demon’s corpse and led the Alchemical Golem out of the cavern. He knew that the greatest reward from this journey to the Bone Plane wasn’t the master mage, nor the Alchemical Golem, nor even the Necrofire Bombs or the extra Limit Spell slots from the Sage’s Chapter.
The real prize lay where the Bone Demon had once slumbered…
Soon, Leon circled around the Nether Iron Vein and arrived at Demon's Rest.
To the old Leon, Demon's Rest was a true death zone—one misstep and he'd be dead. But now, it had become a genuine treasure trove. Everyone knew the Bone Demon only slept where death energy was thickest, and such places often birthed rare magical materials.
After countless years, the Bone Demon’s death energy had continually seeped into the land. Leon could hardly imagine how much those rare magical materials had grown…
When the Bone Demon burst forth, it left a huge pit in the black wasteland. The soil around it was loose and uneven, but Leon didn’t seem to mind—he almost dove headfirst to the edge of the pit, craning his neck to peer inside, impatient for what lay beneath.
And there, Leon saw a blooming black flower.
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A rare morning update these past few days—so, how about commemorating it with your first vote?