End of the Magic Era

Chapter 1405: Pale Flames

Unfortunately, there was not so much time to waste. Thinking about that, Lin Yun gave up the idea of looting more essence of the undead.

Exactly at this moment, a level-43 skeleton rider charged at Lin Yun on a skeleton horse. His soul waves entered Lin Yun’s soul fire through the chaotic battlefield.

“Which territory are you from?”

Lin Yun made up a random name. “I’m from the Grieving Cave.”

The skeleton rider burst into fury the moment he heard the name. “A filthy idiot from the Grieving Cave—”

Unfortunately, before the guy finished, Lin Yun had emerged behind his back, and easily broken his head with a white claw. He stomped on the horse’s head, extinguishing its soul fire.

The skeleton rider glared at Lin Yun, and cursed crazily even after his head was cut off.

“Everybody from the Grieving Cave should die…”

Lin Yun thought of something. Since he had turned into an undead creature, was it possible for him to absorb other undead creatures’ soul fires?

The moment the idea occurred to him, Lin Yun simply sucked the skeleton rider’s head instinctively. A blue flame flew out of the guy’s eye sockets, and melted with Lin Yun’s own soul fire.

The soul fire was like fuel that made Lin Yun’s soul fire burn more brilliantly. The skeleton rider’s soul fire was ignited too. All the impurities were burnt out, leaving only the purest soul power burning and joining Lin Yun’s soul fire. Some marks of the law of death were retained too.

After swallowing the soul fire, Lin Yun was utterly shocked. He was even more shocked than when he found that there was indeed a Grieving Cave in the Plane of the Undead.

After transforming into an undead creature, he was able to build up his soul power by swallowing soul fires.

The Chapter of the Dead couldn’t just allow him to pretend to be an undead creature, but offered more benefits. The soul fire he swallowed would be ignited, and only the tiny bit of purest soul power would be melted. Still, the tiny bit was one percent of Lin Yun’s soul power.

Normally, it was more difficult to strengthen one’s soul power than to understand laws.

To increase their soul power, most mages had to understand laws first. When they understood more laws, their soul power would improve accordingly.

However, the greater one’s soul power was, the easier and faster it would be for one to understand laws. It was doubtless that a man with a great soul could learn anything faster.

What was the most difficult for other mages turned out to be the easiest here.

Also, more importantly, there were broken pieces of law. The law of death was part of the law of darkness. The law of darkness that the dark mages worked on was actually just one of the branches of the law of darkness.

Death was born in darkness, and souls were born from death…

The real law of darkness, just like the law of light, was a huge system of laws. The Plane of the Undead, technically speaking, should be called the Plane of Darkness. It was just that there were many more undead creatures in the plane than dark creatures.

Lin Yun could understand part of the law of darkness through his Demiplane. However, the branches of death and souls hadn’t evolved in his Demiplane yet.

At this moment, he only needed to swallow soul fires to accumulate pieces of the law of death, or death marks. No wonder the undead creatures didn’t need to understand laws at all. They only needed to swallow soul fires.

There seemed to be natural pieces of laws in their soul fire. After they swallowed enough soul fires, their own soul fires would automatically evolve thanks to the pieces of laws.

After swallowing the soul fire, a lot of information popped up in Lin Yun’s head. He learned what every undead creature was supposed to know.

After killing the level-30 skeleton and swallowing its soul fire, Lin Yun learned everything.

That was just the convention of the Plane of the Undead. Those undead creatures had been fighting fiercely, sometimes for thousands of years, not exactly because they had nothing better to do, but because it was rewarding.

Every war came with infinite soul fires. Through soul fires, the undead lords were able to accumulate death marks and soul marks, which would make them stronger. All they needed to do was to fight onward with the army of the undead.

However, after spreading out his senses, Lin Yun began to realize why some of the undead lords never leveled up after fighting for thousands years, and would not level up after another thousands of years of fighting.

Those death marks were like pieces of a puzzle. To reach the peak of level 40, they would need to gather all the pieces, which meant not millions, but billions—if not trillions—of death marks.

Whether they could find all the pieces of the puzzle depended on luck. The more they gathered, the more difficult it would be to find the rest. It was possible that they might get stuck at the last puzzle…

Damn it. Luckily, I have a Natural Demiplane.

He could understand all the laws that evolved in his Natural Demiplane. He might be slower than the undead creatures at the beginning, but his speed would gradually pick up.

Calculating the time cost, Lin Yun gave up the idea of collecting more pieces and reaping soul fires. He had caught the attention of other undead creatures after killing the skeleton rider.

Nobody cared about him when he picked the essence of the undead, but they all wanted soul fires…

Lin Yun entered the chaotic battlefield, and concealed all his aura, making himself look like a level-20 ordinary skeleton. After he wandered for a while, none of the Heaven Rank undead creatures could track him down.

Lin Yun moved onward on the chaotic battlefield, and came to the area of zombies and ghouls without him realizing it. After breaking the heads of two ghouls, he resumed his original appearance, except that his face was blue, and he reeked of the aura of death. He became a zombie that was definitely pretty for zombie standards.

His flesh was not rotten, but complete. That was rare even in the Plane of the Undead, but the undead creatures didn’t really care about it. They couldn’t suspect his identity as long as he emitted the pure aura of death.

Even the Heaven Rank undead creatures wouldn’t suspect him, either. After all, while the low-level zombies seemed rather ragged, all zombies in the Heaven Rank were relatively intact. Some special zombies looked very similar to living people.

After he turned into a zombie, and evinced the aura of an extraordinary zombie, he would have advantages in the area that was clearly dominated by ghouls and zombies.

He charged on the battlefield, and soon discovered Emir, who was holding a thick leg bone, and asking the zombies and ghouls in the rear to charge continuously.

Lin Yun could feel Emir’s soul waves when he was standing a dozen kilometers away. His soul waves were spreading in the radius of dozens of kilometers. All the undead creatures within the range could hear his roar.

“Idiots, kill them all! Tear apart those goddamn skeletons. Charge! Charge!”

None of the undead creatures seemed to be vigilant of Lin Yun as a zombie. It was not until Lin Yun was only one kilometer away that Emir noticed him. He turned around and looked at Lin Yun with confusion, as if he found Lin Yun familiar.

“Emir, it seems that your plan didn’t go well. Those wretched guys don’t care about your face at all. Oh. Don’t mind what face means. All in all, on my way here, I saw a lot of crows that were enjoying their food…”

There was fury on Emir’s face. His eyes became bloodshot the moment he heard about crows. It remained unknown how he turned into a ghoul from a gnome. At the very least, he wasn’t like any other gnomes in terms of appearance.

Holding the enormous leg bone, he smashed Lin Yun brutally. Lin Yun raised his arm and resisted Emir’s leg bone. An explosion burst out underneath his feet, and a terrible blast spread out, tearing dozens of poor ghouls into pieces.

Cracks appeared on Lin Yun’s right arm too. His muscles exploded and his bones fractured. However, his body was back to normal after the power of death circulated around his body.

For the undead creatures, the power of death was omnipotent. It could be used in attacks, healing, transplantation, or anything they could think of.

Lin Yun waved his arm, and didn’t feel any pain. He was quite lost for words. Clearly, Emir didn’t recognize him anymore. There was a huge difference between a dark creature and an undead creature.

He activated the Origin Chapter, and enshrouded himself with dark power as a mist. He looked like a shadow. His aura of death was completely eclipsed. Only the aura of darkness could be detected.

It was not until this moment that Emir finally exclaimed in surprise. He casually tossed his leg bone aside, killing a zombie. He then grinned scarily and dashed at Lin Yun.

“Oh, buddy, it’s you. You’ve changed. I can hardly recognize you. How did you turn into an undead creature? You’ve finally become free from the obnoxious dark creatures?”

Lin Yun rolled his eyes. That guy recognized his shadow, but not his appearance. What a classic undead creature…

Removing the aura of darkness, Lin Yun revealed his real appearance.

“I’m not a dark creature to begin with. I was only trying to hide from the vampire that was hunting me. You must know that, don’t you?”

Emir was completely at a loss. He didn’t remember any of that.

“It’s the goddamn vampire we met at the auction. Never mind. Don’t care about the details. Let’s see how you’ve been fighting your war. There are more and more skeletons. There are more crows under their protection too.

“You must keep it up, Emir. Kill the skeletons, swallow their soul fires, and you will be able to claim the territory. If you have your own territory, you can forbid the crows from ever showing up. All the crows that appear here will be killed…”

Emir gazed at Lin Yun, and felt that something wasn’t right, but he was unable to think it through. When he heard about crows, he thought that Lin Yun had a good point.

“Emir, I need the essence of the undead. Right, exactly that. Can you ask your zombies and ghouls to collect it for me? If you give me that, I’ll teach you how to set a fire to burn the crows into ashes.”

All that Emir learned from Lin Yun was that he could learn how to set a fire and burn the crows into ashes with his own hands.

His soul waves spread out on the battlefield like a tsunami, sending out the instruction that all of his subordinates should stop fighting, and start picking up the essence of the undead, which was the only thing that mattered.

The undead creatures didn’t care why Emir gave the instruction. They simply carried out his command. Even the intelligent undead creatures would still dutifully fulfill Emir’s mission.

Very soon, many undead creatures returned with the essence of the undead they picked up. Gradually, hills of essence of the undead arose on the ground. Even more undead creatures were delivering the essence of the undead to Emir.

Lin Yun didn’t swallow the essence of the undead immediately with the Sage Chapter. He put it away for now.

“Emir, see? The essence of the undead is useless to you. Just collect it and save it for me. Do you see the undead creatures over there? Picking isn’t enough. You cannot collect more essence of the undead unless you kill more opponents.

“Ask your army to tear apart the obnoxious skeletons, and send a team of undead creatures to pick up the essence of the undead. That’ll be a lot faster…”

Lin Yun continued tricking Emir. Then, he carved a small alchemy array on Emir’s right hand so that Emir could release flames with it.

Even though the flames transformed from the power of death were pale and not nearly as powerful as a level-3 fire spell, they were flames nonetheless.

Besides, undead creatures couldn’t tell colors. It was good enough as long as they were flames.

Having obtained the ability of releasing flames, Emir couldn’t have enjoyed himself better. He found a hill of crows’ bodies, and set them ablaze with the pale flames. Even though the bodies were burnt in the flames at an astonishingly low speed, Emir was still greatly satisfied.

The slow speed was absolutely fine. The last thing that the undead creatures were short of was time. He simply watched the crows burn to ashes slowly, which made him feel much better.

The alchemy array that imitated magic patterns could only release flames that were as powerful as level-3 flames with the cost of a level-5 undead spell. No alchemists would work on that kind of garbage in Noscent at all.

The cost of a level-5 spell and the power of a level-3 spell. Even the weakest mages wouldn’t be interested in that. Still, few alchemists of Noscent could’ve carved the same mini alchemy array on an undead creature so that a ghoul could release flames like Lin Yun did…

Emir was so thrilled that he was almost crazy. He had always dreamed of tearing apart crows and burning them into ashes. His greatest wish had finally been satisfied. Lin Yun helped him fulfill his dream. He certainly had to reward his buddy.

“Idiots. You idiots. Kill those skeletons, tear them apart, and bring back the essence of the undead. Do you know the essence of the undead? You don’t know? You don’t even know what essence of the undead is? Just go to hell. The next one. Do you know?

“Alright. You all know what the essence of the undead is now. The great buddy and Emir want it…”

After Emir tore apart a dozen undead creatures and even ripped apart a level-41 zombie, even the dumbest undead creatures knew that they had to give a positive answer, even though they didn’t know why Emir wanted the useless essence of the undead creature, which could only be used as fertilizer.

The essence of the undead was the best fertilizer that was gathered in the places where the bones of the undead creatures were buried. All the new undead creatures were born in those places, at least the local ones.

No undead lord would specifically build an incubation field, because the Plane of the Undead was never short of undead creatures. All the incubation fields in the Plane of the Undead were natural ones that used to be battlefields.

When the wars were over, oceans of bodies and bones would be left behind. As time went by, new undead creatures might crawl out.

Although new undead creatures didn’t arise fast, the Plane of the Undead was never short of them. Nobody knew why the cannon fodder of the Plane of the Undead never went extinct even though so many died every day…

Emir, who had just acquired the ability of releasing flames, was already overjoyed. He wasn’t smart to begin with. Even though his flames couldn’t even kill a level-25 skeleton, he was already satisfied. He simply wanted to reward the “buddy” properly.