Chapter 1482
Suddenly, the grass beneath Leon's feet began to thrash wildly. Two black vipers burst from the earth, their jaws wide open. Twisting and spinning like a pair of shears, they tore through Leon's defenses and lunged straight for his body.
Leon’s expression shifted slightly, and he spat out a rune. A series of arched shields shot toward the two pitch-black vipers like a sudden downpour. At the same time, Agalon, who floated at Leon’s side, was the first to react. With a sweep of starlight, the vipers struck by the starlight shrieked as if they were truly living creatures, letting out a piercing soul howl.
At that shriek, Leon’s vision went black—his soul was rocked by the scream.
Leon’s body seemed to lose all control, plummeting downward. The two black vipers, their bodies severed by Agalon’s strike, had their upper halves flung away—yet now, they were hurtling straight at Leon.
In that fleeting moment and distance, even Agalon couldn’t intervene in time. As he made his move, two more black vipers erupted from the ground, colliding with the starlight he had just unleashed.
That brief delay was enough—there was no time left. Dean Gandalf and the other two deans wanted to intervene, but it was already too late. The grass across the ground swayed ceaselessly, the result of its contact with the aura of death. Black vipers kept bursting from beneath the earth.
In the midst of crisis, Agalon surged forward with his soul power, unleashing the simplest form of soul impact to try and blast away the viper’s gaping head. On the other side, Dean Gandalf did the same.
But before either soul impact could strike the viper’s head, the two attacks collided with each other…
Dean Gandalf’s face went pale, and Agalon’s soul ripples grew momentarily chaotic…
Just as the serpent’s fanged maw was about to crash into Leon, a thick plume of smoke erupted from the Arcane Wheel at his side. Anderson’s ruined, furious voice came bellowing out first.
"Leon, Leon—oh, damn you, Leon! The Arcane Wheel was almost destroyed, just a hair away! If it weren’t for the great Lord Anderson himself intervening, the Arcane Wheel would be useless by now...
Damn it, what the hell is that?!
Anderson’s face had just coalesced when a serpent’s head—mouth agape, venomous fangs gleaming—lunged toward him. There was no time for preparation; he could only lower the unicorn horn on his forehead and ram it straight into the serpent’s skull.
A crisp clang rang out—the serpent’s head was knocked flying. Anderson’s other two faces materialized, and seeing Leon nearly unconscious, he released dozens of shields in surprise, locking Leon inside a fortress of magical barriers.
At that moment, the tremor in Leon’s soul faded, and he reopened his eyes—his gaze now grave and heavy.
The Wraith Serpent—a venomous creature born in the River of Wraiths on the Undead Plane. Its poison is infamous, and it feeds on countless wraiths. When hunting, a single psychic scream can knock the wraiths senseless, letting the serpent devour them at leisure.
If Leon’s soul hadn’t been far stronger than most mages of his rank, that scream at point-blank range would’ve knocked him out for ten minutes at least. And in ten minutes, you’d be lucky to die only once...
The Blood Lich finally made a move, but Alonzo—face like a thundercloud—spotted him. Alonzo spat out a string of bizarre syllables, and the ground abruptly caved in. Within a hundred meters, the earth sank dozens of meters deep, and there, in the pit’s shadow, the Blood Lich appeared.
The instant the Blood Lich emerged, a monstrous three-eyed face coalesced from the earth, surging upward and snapping at him with savage authority.
The Blood Lich’s corpse-like face twisted into a cold smile. His body drifted, splitting into two afterimages, and he slipped past the giant face’s edge with uncanny agility.
The gust whipped up by the giant face didn’t harm the Blood Lich—instead, it only helped him dodge even faster.
Agalon watched the Blood Lich with icy eyes. With a single syllable, the Undead Plane’s dim sky was suddenly ablaze with endless stars—starlight poured down, condensing into a brilliant pillar that crashed to earth.
The starlight’s speed was terrifying—instantly, it became a column linking sky and earth. Above the Blood Lich’s head, a curved shield shimmered. The starlight grazed the shield and sent the Blood Lich flying, but the beam itself was deflected, just slightly off course.
The pillar of starlight smashed into the giant face erupting from the ground, a collision of cosmic force and earthbound fury.
Alonzo was so furious his nostrils spewed smoke—chasing the Blood Lich while cursing out Agalon at the same time.
"Agalon, you did that on purpose, didn’t you! Damn bastard, I know you did!"
The Blood Lich’s corpse-like face kept its cold smile, drifting like a weightless leaf, dodging again and again—never counterattacking, never fleeing.
Leon’s sense of foreboding only grew stronger. Agalon’s expression grew darker too.
"Alonzo, if you want to get yourself killed in a rage, don’t drag us down with you! Idiot, can’t you see something’s seriously wrong here?"
Too many coincidences—this isn’t just luck. We thought the Blood Lich was controlling things, but no matter how strong his hold, he shouldn’t be able to trap two powerhouses of his level, three at Sky Rank Eight, and one who’s beyond even Sky Rank Seven. Yet here we are, all under his thumb.
[Irrelevant website prompt skipped.]
It’s like there’s a being ten times stronger than us, pulling our strings and toying with us.
If the Blood Lich had that kind of power, he’d have broken through to level fifty ages ago. For a lich—wise as any human mage—standing still would be enough to wipe us all out.
The Blood Lich hovered in the sky, his mocking voice echoing above.
"Since you’re not dead yet, you’ll die here. I don’t care for the undead, nor do I fancy those idiotic undead swarm tactics. But turning you all into undead? That I can live with.
That human—I know you’re holding the Death Tome. Hand it over, and I’ll let you walk out alive. The rest of you, tough luck. You die here and become my slaves…"
As the Blood Lich spoke, Leon’s face darkened. He called on both the Arcane Wheel and his mana array to probe for clues—and found something off.
"We’re trapped in a barrier. That bastard used Lord Alonzo."
Leon’s words made everyone’s face change. Agalon’s eyes filled with swirling stars for a moment, then the cosmic vision faded, leaving his expression grave.
Alonzo’s face, already dark, now looked so black it was about to drip ink.
He’d turned this ten-kilometer stretch into a grassland, using life magic to force away the death aura and swallow it whole. That made things weird—and the Blood Lich seized the chance to set a barrier, trapping everyone inside.
Alonzo began chanting softly. As his spell took hold, something stirred beneath the earth. The green grass turned gray at the roots, the color spreading until the whole plain turned to ash. Even the strange plant with the emerald skull shriveled to dust.
The ground became a sea of bones—broken skulls and shattered skeletons packed so thick you could barely see the earth. It was as if they’d fallen into the Bone Battlefield of the Undead Plane, a pure ocean of remains.
The sky turned gray, the horizon faded to gray, and everywhere you looked, there was nothing but endless seas of bone.
"Bone Battlefield. Stupid undead, do you really think you can kill us all by yourself?"
Alonzo looked absolutely livid—not just because the Blood Lich had used him, but because of the lich’s arrogance.
Bone Battlefield—a special realm of the Undead Plane, created by sacrificing countless undead. Only Undead Lords can forge such a space, usually for ritual combat.
Few Undead Lords bother to make one—it only appears when a challenger seeks to overthrow the lord’s rule.
An Undead Lord builds a Bone Battlefield, and any challenger can enter. If you kill the lord, the battlefield vanishes.
And for the Undead Lord, there’s only one way out—slaughter everyone else inside.
Other than that, there are no rules. If ten thousand undead come in at once and swarm the lord, so be it—as long as someone kills the lord.
It looks disadvantageous for the Undead Lord, but some still do it—after all, once you transcend, you awaken true wisdom.
For undead, the easiest way to advance is to devour Soul Fire. The higher your rank, the less benefit you get from low-level Soul Fire—sometimes none at all. So Undead Lords have to keep waging war to find high-level Soul Fire, but war doesn’t always deliver.
Bone Battlefield is where Undead Lords harvest Soul Fire—and where lesser undead get their shot at rising.