Leon wasn’t in a hurry to respond to the Nightmare Leotail. He stared at the blood-red Reaper’s Scythe for a long time. The power to sever a soul directly from the body wasn’t something the Reaper’s Scythe should possess.
A creature’s soul is a complete whole. For humans, it resides in the head; for undead, it’s the Soul Fire burning within their skulls. It’s not some phantom overlapping with the body.
Any injury to the soul, no matter how slight, quickly becomes catastrophic. If a soul is severed, death is inevitable—except for a handful of the most powerful beings. For everyone else, a split soul means certain death.
The Nightmare Leotail may be unusual, but when it comes to souls, it’s no exception. Leon sensed it clearly: when the Reaper’s Scythe struck, the soul fragment that was cut away didn’t leave a serious wound. It was as if a piece of the soul—or a power—was simply stripped away.
After severing the Nightmare Leotail's tail, it became nothing but a useless burden, as if it had never had a tail at all. Yet its soul suffered only a fleeting pain, not any lasting damage.
It’s complicated. Even Leon wasn’t sure what was going on, but one thing was certain—the Reaper’s Scythe shouldn’t have that kind of power.
That phantom from earlier reminded Leon of the legendary First Skeleton King—not the one from Undead Plane myths, but a god-demon from ancient lore.
The Lord of Death—that’s the image: a ragged cloak, hood pulled low, eyes swirling with death vortexes that could swallow souls, feet larger than any normal skeleton, almost like a bigfoot skeleton, and always clutching the Reaper’s Scythe.
But the Lord of Death was long gone, completely and utterly dead. His weapon, the Reaper’s Scythe, was shattered and scattered across the Undead Plane. The fragments, shaped by the plane’s rules, slowly gave birth to new Reaper’s Scythes. The first skeleton to wield one and be recognized by it became the First Skeleton King.