In the darkness of night, Raul walked on the wilderness road with the Alien Skeleton beside him.
Amberser's ancient castle was far from the towns, and tonight, not even starlight was present; Raul could only rely on the ghostly flames in the Alien Skeleton's eyes to find his way.
He walked slowly, but not just because he couldn't see the road clearly—it was also because Raul's heart wavered with hesitation.
He did not want to help the Lich capture living people for experiments, especially those townspeople who had fled their homes. The Lord's sudden tax had already ruined their lives, and as a fellow refugee, Raul understood their plight all too well. How could he possibly bring himself to do it?
But if he didn't, what would become of his sister, Isabel?
As he remained indecisive, the sound of hooves and the flickering light of torches approached from up ahead.
Raul immediately hid at the side of the road. Without getting any closer, he was certain this was the army sent by the Lord to capture people.
Indeed, a Knight clad in leather armor approached with several armed Retinue. Raul could see them clearly in the torchlight—ten men in all, accompanied by hunting dogs.
Raul lay in the grass beside the road, daring not to breathe too heavily. The group consisted of ten individuals, including a mounted Knight. Although the Knight was not in full armor, even unarmored, a Knight was not someone Raul, a mere civilian, could handle; at that moment, all he could do was pray the hounds had not locked onto his scent.
There were many scents on the wilderness, and they might not necessarily detect him.
But contrary to his hopes, the hounds seemed to have zeroed in on Raul's location, turning off the road and heading in his direction, slowly starting to growl.
Raul was well acquainted with the Lord's dogs and knew that they had sensed his presence; they would soon bring their handlers swarming over, and Raul, unarmed, would surely be captured or even killed on the spot.
Wait, he was not entirely unarmed.
Raul gripped the gem-encrusted bone in his hand and pressed the attack gem when the evil hound was about ten meters away.
In the darkness, two green lights flared up. The malevolent hounds, which had been growling deeply, suddenly stopped in their tracks as if they had encountered something horrifying. Before the Hound Master could understand what was lurking in the darkness, the green-glowing entity had already pounced on one of the hounds with astonishing speed.
In the uncertain firelight, an odd-shaped creature that resembled a demon was seen atop one of the hounds, its sickle-like arms fiercely slashing, gutting the hound in the blink of an eye.
The Hound Master had barely opened his mouth to sound the alarm when the creature lunged at him with the speed of the hunting dogs he tended. The Hound Master quickly tried to dodge, but the creature was smarter than a dog. After missing its initial pounce, it charged towards the other people behind him.
The insufficient light of the night, aided only by a few torches, was not enough to clearly make out the creature's movements. Soon, some unfortunate souls were caught by the creature. Its sickles slit from the leg up to the torso, the thin fabric of their clothing no match for the piercing blades. Though small, the creature's strength surpassed that of a human, its blows capable of piercing through ribs.
Moreover, the creature was clever, never lingering in combat, quickly moving from one victim to the next after a few stabs. Once overtaken, it would crawl from the leg upward, using its sharp sickles like ice picks striking an ice surface, leveraging them to climb further up the body.
With such simple and repetitive actions, the damage inflicted on human bodies was immense. Should someone panic and fall to the ground, their demise would be even swifter, for the creature would rapidly find the throat and deliver a fatal slice.
The Knight riding the tall horse tried to chase, but found that his long sword couldn't reach the creature that was even smaller than the hunting dogs.
He hadn't even dismounted when three of his retinue had already died. The torches that fell to the ground quickly went out, making the surroundings even darker.
In the darkness, two green lights, like the gaze of the Grim Reaper, robbed the knight of the courage he needed to dismount and fight, so he rode off on his horse.
But the slaughter continued. The knight could run away, but the two-legged humans couldn't outrun the alien skeletons, whose speed rivaled that of hounds. Humans might panic and run blindly in the dark, but skeletons wouldn't—the sensing of the Soul Fire was utterly unaffected by light.
After a series of screams, the seemingly strong troop was completely routed.
Raul stood up from the bushes, looking at the landscape of corpses before him, his palms trembling.
The alien skeletons, having lost their target, automatically switched to follow mode and slowly walked towards Raul, but this frightened the man so much that he stepped back several paces, almost falling to the ground.
Looking at the alien skeleton soaked in blood in front of him, Raul shivered all over.
Undead were so strong—so what kind of terrifying existence would a Lich that could create such monstrous skeletons be?
What exactly had he provoked?
Raul was filled with regret. He shouldn't have climbed over that damn railing. His sister Isabel had tried to stop him, but he hadn't listened.
It was too late for regrets now. To keep his sister alive, he had to complete the Lich's orders. However, when Raul looked at the bodies on the ground, he had another idea. Weren't the corpses just experimental materials? These lackeys of the Lord could be used too, right? There was no need to find other refugees.
But only six had died so far, still short of the Lich's quota.
Raul looked down at the alien skeleton, now a dark red color, and gritted his teeth, "Isabel, wait for me, I will come back to save you."
In the castle, a young woman called Isabel was concentrating on mixing an Alchemical Potion. Amberser watched her for a while, seeing that she was indeed a bona fide Alchemy Apprentice and wasn't wasting his magical materials, then he relaxed and turned his attention to the images he had just received.
The controller in Raul's hands could not only issue commands to the alien skeletons, but it also had the effect of a Memory Crystal, able to transmit images to Amberser.
This was a live combat exercise—a true test of battle performance—which proved that the alien skeleton was stronger than a normal skeleton in terms of combat power. However, it was a bit lucky to win so cleanly. First, the visibility was low at night, and humans without dark vision were inherently at a disadvantage. Plus, the man on the horse bottled it; otherwise, the force of the horse's hooves after just a few rounds might have been enough to crush the alien skeleton. It might not have had a chance to leap onto the horse.
But no matter what, a win was a win.
"The live test proved that reducing unnecessary bone structures notably diminishes the consumption of soul energy, and fewer joints can achieve better outcomes. Although my alien skeleton doesn't have an ordinary skeleton's ability to evolve, to slowly become a powerful individual like a Skeleton Knight, the evolution of the undead is a very rare miracle anyway. And the key to my creation is its cost-effectiveness.
"You have all seen the entire experimental process. The same intensity of a low-level soul, using much less bone material, resulted in a much more powerful combatant. Given the current inflated prices of magical materials, this kind of alien skeleton should have a very broad market prospect..."
Amberser re-recorded his introduction, then opened the Necromancy Codex and transmitted the video material to the chat group behind the codex.
[Diga Ultraman: Accepting custom orders, excellent prices.]