Location: Obsidian Furnace Hall
Core Stability: 36%
Weapon Sync: Gravepiercer (Bound – 83%)
System Pulse: High Alert
The first sign was the heat.
Not warmth. Not fire.
Pressure.
It rolled through the crypt like a low, rhythmic pulse—too slow to be natural, too deliberate to be random. A heartbeat. But not from a heart.
From magic.
Dark magic.
The tunnel widened ahead, spilling orange-red light onto the floor like blood poured from a furnace. The stone shifted hue—ashen gray fading to black, then to a molten, glassy shimmer like it had been burned into submission.
The walls weren’t lined with bones anymore.
They were coated in soot.
Melted fragments embedded like trapped screams.
My system flared.
Not a whisper.
A roar.
【Alert: Hostile Necromantic Energy Detected】
Source: External Summoning Glyph – Corrupted
Anchor Type: Interplanar / Unstable
Location: 23 meters ahead
Status: Active
【Mini-Boss Class Detected: Flamebound Thrall Lv. 7】
Classification: Incomplete Binding
Threat Level: Lethal
System Directive: Evade or Evolve
I didn’t move.
Not yet.
The air hummed with magic. Not like the monolith, not like the Bone Bank.
This wasn’t knowledge.
This was aggression given form.
The kind of spell meant to rip through armies and leave nothing breathing—or even not breathing—behind.
“Who summoned this?”
That thought was mine, but it felt foreign.
There shouldn’t be an anchor this deep. Not in a tomb this old.
Unless something—or someone—was reaching through.
My eyes locked on the flicker ahead.
A sigil burned on a broken altar, its circle jagged, incomplete—yet very much alive.
Blue flames bled from its center, twisting upward in an unnatural spiral, licking at the air without consuming it.
And something moved within.
Heavy steps.
Wet heat.
The scent of soul-burn.
The corridor ahead pulsed.
One breath.
Two.
Then the glyph screamed.
And the Thrall took form.
The altar ruptured.
Not explosively. Not all at once.
It peeled—like skin sloughing off something alive beneath it.
Blue fire coiled from the glyph’s center like tendrils unfurling from a broken womb.
And then it stepped out.
A corpse. Humanoid.
But wrong.
Its body was stretched by heat and constantly reforming—raw, blistered muscle sloughing off before being stitched back together by burning mana.
Its skin burned and healed at the same time.
It moved like something that didn't know pain—only the shape of destruction.
Its eyes locked onto me.
They weren’t eyes.
They were coals, smoldering inside black sockets.
Every blink spat embers.
And it smiled.
“It was made of fire and flesh…”
“And it didn’t care what burned.”
【Entity Identified: Flamebound Thrall Lv. 7】
– Class: Incomplete Binding / Fire-Warped Undead
– Passive Aura: Soulheat (Core Destabilization Over Time)
– Warning: Close proximity will degrade structural integrity.
Weaknesses: None detected.
Combat State: Active
The heat hit me before the attack did.
My ribcage flexed unnaturally. The marrow within twisted, as if boiling.
Not pain—there was no nerve to scream.
But my structure… warped.
It raised its arm.
Flesh reknit in an instant, reshaped by fire into a long, molten blade.
It didn’t charge.
It hurled it.
The projectile screamed through the air—liquid flame with intent.
I pivoted, spear in hand.
Gravepiercer caught the edge.
Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.
And screamed.
Bone doesn’t usually make that sound.
But this wasn’t normal bone. Not anymore.
The impact split part of the shaft near the tip.
The rib shard at its end flared—blackened. Cracked.
Ash sprayed from the strike and scorched across my right shoulder.
【Damage Taken: Gravepiercer – Structural Integrity 74%】
Bone Warp Detected – Manual Repair Recommended
Host Sync Unstable – Maintain Distance
It was laughing now—somewhere deep in its throat, a bubbling wheeze like a furnace with a voice.
Another fireblade formed.
I narrowed my stance.
“Alright.”
“Let’s see if fire forgets how to burn.”
The second flame projectile came faster.
Too fast.
I ducked, rolled—bone grinding stone—just in time to avoid the main strike. But the heat still hit me.
A shimmer rolled across my spine. A crack popped in my right tibia.
Even evading was costing me.
“This thing isn’t fighting to kill.”
“It’s fighting to burn everything.”
Gravepiercer shook in my hand.
Still whole—but barely.
The tip was blackened now, jagged beyond function. The spear’s soul-thread pulsed erratically, like it couldn’t decide whether to remain or recoil.
【Warning: Weapon Integrity 63% – Imminent Core Collapse】
I clenched it tighter.
Felt it resisting me.
Not from disloyalty.
From pain.
The Thrall stepped forward.
Its body was steaming, re-knitting in real-time. The heat from its skin alone turned the floor around it into bone sludge.
I couldn’t go toe-to-toe again.
Not with this weapon.
Not here.
I looked up.
To the left wall—cracked, fractured, barely holding under the weight of its own memory.
And behind it?
Stacked bones. Reinforced with rib beams.
A weak point.
A grave waiting to be activated.
“Then burn this.”
I ran—not toward the Thrall, but past it, drawing its attention wide.
I let the spear fall behind me.
Felt the system twitch in protest.
But I didn’t recall it.
“Not this time.”
The Thrall roared, stepped forward—
Snap.
My claw caught the load-bearing beam in the sidewall and yanked.
The wall gave.
The entire frame collapsed with a slow, grinding wail as hundreds of bones cascaded down in a buried avalanche of rot and time.
The Thrall vanished beneath them.
Temporarily.
It wouldn’t hold.
But it was enough.
I darted to the debris pile left from the collapse—old ribs, skull fragments, spines brittle with ash.
My fingers found a curved shard—once part of a Crypt Rat’s jaw.
Thin. Hooked. Hollow.
Good.
Next—a stabilizer.
I drove the tip of the bone into a larger femur split, grinding it flat until it formed a crude hilt.
Then…
【Soul Fragment Injected: Crypt Rat Lv.3 – Minor Sync】
Traits Passed: Twitch Reflex, Pain Recoil
【Improvised Weapon Created: Emberfang (Corrupted Bone Blade)】
– Durability: Low
– Passive Effect: Arcane Flare (20% Burnback on Strike)
– Trait: Soul-Twitch (15% Dodge Boost upon clash)
I didn’t have time to admire it.
The bones behind me moved.
The Thrall rose, fire licking out from between collapsed ribs.
Half its face was gone—melted in its own heat—but it moved as if pain was just wind.
I lunged.
It turned.
Too late.
Emberfang drove forward.
Straight into its exposed ribcage—aimed at the glowing knot of soulfire in its chest.
I struck true.
But I wasn’t fast enough.
Its hand caught my arm mid-lunge.
Tight.
Fleshless fingers gripped with flame-wrapped force.
My bones hissed. Emberfang dug into its core—but stopped.
Half-embedded.
We were locked.
Face to face.
Fire on bone.
“Now we burn together.”
The Thrall’s grip tightened.
Flames coiled up my arm, cracking along my radius like thunder splitting bone.
My shoulder screamed—not with pain, but with raw code.
Then it began to shake.
The Emberfang blade, still lodged in the Thrall’s chest, pulsed once—then twice.
Then the fire changed.
No longer ambient. No longer flickering.
It folded inward.
【Soul Core Instability Detected】
Warning: Binding matrix unraveling
Target: Flamebound Thrall Lv.7
Outcome: Core Breach – 3… 2… 1…
The explosion wasn’t heat.
It was force.
Like an overloaded furnace exhaling centuries of pain in one breath.
Light burst from its chest—soul light, molten red, threaded with black flame. Its ribs shattered, flaring outward like shrapnel. Emberfang disintegrated mid-blade.
I flew backward.
Crashing into a half-buried pillar of fused skulls.
They cracked beneath me, but didn’t catch.
I hit the floor with enough impact to scatter my thoughts.
My system screamed.
【Stability Failure – Right Arm Integrity: 42%】
【Skull Casing Fracture – Partial Sensor Degradation】
Damage Critical.
I couldn’t move.
Not fully.
But I could see it.
Floating above the smoldering pile where the Thrall had once stood.
A perfect, pulsing shard.
The Soul Crystal.
Red like iron fresh from the forge.
Dark veins of corrupted mana spiraled within, moving like blood that didn’t know it had died.
【Item Identified: Rare Soul Crystal – Interplanar Type】
Classification: High-Essence Fragment
Function: Mutation Catalyst / Core Override
Compatibility: Unknown
Risk: High
Reward: Irreversible Mutation Path Unlock
→ [Absorb Y/N]
I dragged myself forward.
One limb at a time.
My left leg twitched—dislocated at the knee.
My spear was gone.
Emberfang was dust.
The last of the flames clung to my jaw like a broken kiss.
But I reached.
I reached with fingers splintered at the knuckles and broken at the wrist.
And I touched it.
→ [Y]
The moment my claw met the crystal’s surface, it shattered—
into me.
The world didn’t go white.
It went red.
A pressure like birthing backward.
My bones convulsed.
My ribcage locked, then expanded—splintering, reshaping, twisting inward to accommodate the new core flaring to life inside me.
【Override: Evolution Threshold Breached】
Essence Sync: 100%
Bone Rank: Ascending…
Trait Class: Adaptive Predator
【Emergency Core Stabilization – Initiating Mutation Sequence…】
Evolving Host Form...
I screamed.
Not out loud.
But inside every line of system code that had made up what I used to be.
The ossuary.
The memory.
The betrayal.
All of it flared through me like heat being reinterpreted as structure.
I wasn’t breaking.
I was becoming.
The screen in my mind fractured.
Reassembled.
And for the first time, I saw my next name waiting beneath the one they gave me.
The system locked me down.
Not metaphorically.
Literally.
My limbs seized. My Core throbbed like a newborn star inside a cracked ribcage. Every fragment of my undead frame screamed—not with pain, but with purpose.
This was not death.
This was mutation.
【Evolution Initiated: Tier Advancement – TIER-1 UNDEAD】
Host Form: BONE WALKER → BONE REAVER
Caution: Forced mutation triggered by Overcharged Essence Core
Structural Failure Risk: Acceptable
Proceeding...
I collapsed.
My spine arched into the stone floor, bone scraping bone as my backplate cracked open from within. Vertebrae twisted, expanded—locking into place with a thunderous snap.
My ribcage shattered, then reknit.
Not as a cage.
As armor.
Thicker.
Jagged.
Layered with bone plating down my flanks like natural mail.
“I’m breaking—”
No.
“I’m being built.”
My arms spasmed outward. Joints popped. Bones elongated into warped extensions with wider reach. New knuckles formed at unnatural angles, claws hardening into barbed talons.
My fingers could now tear iron like meat.
My legs bent wrong.
Then bent right.
Becoming digitigrade—leaner, faster, designed to spring, to pounce, to kill with grace.
Then the worst came.
The skull.
Pressure burst behind my eye sockets.
They didn’t glow anymore.
They burned.
Twin flickers of crimson light exploded in both orbits—steady now, focused, hungry.
Then—
Cracks spidered up my skull.
And from the fracture line, two horns began to sprout.
Twisted. Black. Bone-wrought.
Curved slightly forward like spears grown from my thoughts.
【Class Change Complete: Bone Reaver (Tier-1 Undead)】
- Core Stability: 61%
? Bone Rank: Gamma
? Physical Adaptations:
— Rib Armor (Natural Plate)
— Reaver Talons (Piercing Bonus)
— Skull Horns (Charge Bonus)
Traits Gained:
— Predatory Hunger (Increased Aggression vs. Moving Targets)
— Enhanced Reflexes (Combat Speed +18%)
— Limb Regrowth (Auto-repair over time – passive)
Active Ability Unlocked:
【Blood Rend Lv.1】
— Description: Focuses stored combat essence into a cleaving strike that ignores 30% physical defense and causes bleed.
— Cooldown: 60s
Mutation Path Affinity: 88% – Bone Reaver Confirmed
Passive Integration: Stable
I stood—differently.
Not just upright.
Ready.
Balanced in a way I hadn’t known my body could move. Limbs light but lethal, tailbone extended with a primitive curve for maneuvering.
I flexed.
My claws clicked.
The heat that remained from the Thrall? It didn’t hurt now.
It felt like air.
Like invitation.
I looked to my hand—curved talons where fingers had been.
They twitched, and a crimson flicker trailed behind the movement like smoke.
“Fire tried to break me.”
I stepped forward through the steaming corpse-smear of the Flamebound Thrall.
“I burned back.”
One rat was barely enough… so that's what happened when he evolve. ??
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