It was something of a stroke of luck that the monsters on the fourth level of the Skeleton Cavern didn’t spawn too densely, so Ye Tianxie made it to the end of the level with no real scares along the way. Ahead of him, two pitch-black cave mouths suddenly came into view. Both were roughly three men tall, their shapes a neat circle. He studied the one on the right for a few silent moments, then activated the Ring of Life’s recovery effect, downed a Greater Recovery Potion, and once its cooldown ticked down to zero, stepped into the one on the left.
Thud. Thud. Thud. Thud…
It was a long, pitch-dark passage, but in this space saturated with the aura of the undead, there were no bats, no venomous snakes or crawling things — no ordinary life of any kind.
After walking for roughly half a minute, faint white light finally appeared ahead. Ye Tianxie knew that pale glow could only be coming from bleached, ancient bone.
He quietly closed his fist around a City of Stars Town Portal Scroll and eased his footsteps, advancing slowly. The fifth level of the Skeleton Cavern — where the Undead Sovereign made its home. The Guping Town chief had sworn up and down that a freshly-spawned Undead Sovereign wouldn’t be above level twenty, but just in case, he needed to be careful. The moment he laid eyes on it, he’d use his Detection skill on it — if the readout came back within what he could handle, he’d attack without a second thought. But if all that came back was a row of question marks, he’d turn right around and pop the scroll before it ever noticed him. (Note to self: if it did notice him, the scroll wouldn’t work at all. Once in combat, hate-locked by a monster, or otherwise restrained, a Town Portal Scroll is useless.)
He was proud, sure, but he wasn’t the kind of idiot who’d throw his life away chasing a fight he already knew he couldn’t win.
As the light ahead grew nearer, his footsteps grew lighter still, his brow knitting tight.
The passage came to its end, and Ye Tianxie stopped there too, pressing his back to the cold wall and peering out with one eye at the fifth level of the Skeleton Cavern — its deepest point.
Unexpectedly, the fifth level’s chamber was far smaller than the previous four, and utterly empty — none of the guardian undead he’d expected to find standing watch over the Sovereign. Just in the middle, a small ball of gray light about waist-high, swaying faintly, drifting as though stirred by a wind blowing from no particular direction.
Undead Sovereign (Juvenile): Level 15 Lord-tier boss. HP 13,000. Born of an undying breath of death, pure and concentrated beyond measure, gestated over a long incubation and given birth two months ago — an undead creature born in darkness, raised in darkness, wielding the mightiest of undead power, currently in an unawakened juvenile stage. Once matured, it will stand as the supreme sovereign of all undead creatures.
Innate trait — Undead Body: Immune to all death-type damage. Automatically regenerates 650 HP per second while in darkness or a death-aligned environment.
Skill — Scythe of the Undead: Summons a sinful scythe from the death-purgatory, cutting down every enemy in its path without mercy. A straight-line attack with a 10-meter range, base damage 350, instant cast, very high cast frequency.
Curse of the Undead: Disturbs the minds of all nearby enemies with the power of death — 50% chance to inflict 3-5 seconds of confusion. Triggers when its own HP drops below 40%, but casts infrequently.
When the Detection readout came back showing that the Undead Sovereign was in fact only a level 15 Lord-tier boss with just two skills, Ye Tianxie briefly thought the world was a beautiful place, and that Guping Town’s chief truly hadn’t been lying to him after all. But then he got a proper look at the juvenile Sovereign’s innate trait, and very nearly wanted to tear the whole cavern down brick by brick.
In darkness and death… regenerating 650 HP per second, meaning 5% of its max HP restored automatically every single second!
A level 15 Lord-tier boss already hit far harder and tanked far more than an ordinary boss of the same level. At his current attack power, landing a hit above 100 damage would already be something to be proud of. And this thing — supposedly weaker than he’d imagined by who-knew-how-many times, a mere infant Undead Sovereign — was healing 650 a second.
Wasn’t this just outright robbery!
Ye Tianxie ground his teeth, standing rooted to the spot for a long while. And the Sovereign, wrapped in its gray mist, its true form unseen, clearly hadn’t noticed him either — it hadn’t so much as twitched.
Forward, or back.
Forward… if this were out in the open field, he wouldn’t have hesitated for a second to charge right in. But beating this juvenile Sovereign under these conditions would take an attack power well past a thousand to actually put a dent in it. What did he have that could pull that off?
Back? He’d already come all this way, and the thing was only level 15 — at level 10 he’d managed to take down a level-20 Lord boss, so what excuse did he have, at level 14, not to take down this level-15 one? And with a temptation this rare — a genuinely singular hidden quest — how could he stomach just walking away?
Ye Tianxie stood there, agonizing, unmoving for a long while.
So then — lure it out? Absurd, plain and simple. Setting aside whether a juvenile Undead Sovereign would even obligingly follow him out of the fifth level, undead creatures by nature feared the light — even if he somehow managed to drag it to the cave mouth, it would just shrink right back in.
…Wait. Feared the light…
Light?
A flash of brightness sparked through Ye Tianxie’s mind. He yanked something from his pack, and instantly a blinding sphere of light flared up in the darkness, its glow searing white against the black.
For however many years this place had sat steeped in unbroken dark, it was flooded with light for the first time — and a savage roar tore out from ahead of him, the cry of the Sovereign jolted awake by the light it hated and feared. Ye Tianxie hurled the source of that light straight at the Sovereign with his right hand, then charged forward, driving the Hour of Fate hard into the roaring shape wreathed in gray shadow.
The source of the light was a round little orb — the Lamp of Light, still good for three more minutes of glow, that the pigtailed little girl in Windfall Town had given him!
“Ding… Light has a lethal effect on an Undead Sovereign in its early growth stage. As the surrounding environment has shifted to a lit state, the Undead Sovereign’s HP regeneration is disabled, all undead-type magic effects are weakened by 30%, and it loses 5% of its max HP automatically every second.”
Hearing that chime in his ear, Ye Tianxie nearly leapt for joy.
A true Undead Sovereign was ferociously powerful. But by the same token, one that powerful was brutally rare to come by — and a Sovereign still growing was extraordinarily sensitive and fragile. Or rather, every living thing of every kind, in its earliest growth stage, was hopelessly delicate. To this Sovereign, right now, light was something it simply could not endure — it couldn’t survive any real exposure to it, and once the light grew strong enough to drive back the darkness and death here, the effect on it would be fatal.
-650.
-650.
-650.
The shadow in the black mist began thrashing desperately, howling with a rage shot through with despair, at the same time struggling to drag its body away from the Lamp of Light he’d thrown. Massive damage numbers floated up over its head every second, its health bar visibly draining before his eyes. Ye Tianxie, who’d been readying himself to attack, saw the damage numbers piling up and the thing fleeing as though it hadn’t even registered him standing there — and instead of striking, he stopped, muttering to himself, “Isn’t this… kind of embarrassing.”
Yeah, seriously, how embarrassing. He’d only meant for the Lamp of Light to clear away the darkness so this little Sovereign couldn’t heal, or at least heal slower. He hadn’t expected… the effect to be this terrifying.
How was he supposed to feel good about this…
-650, -650, -650…
Wearing an utterly contented expression, Ye Tianxie picked the Lamp of Light back up off the ground and walked, step by step, toward the Sovereign still struggling to put distance between them. As he closed in with the lamp in hand, the light-terrified Sovereign howled even more miserably, backing away, and away again, with Ye Tianxie ambling along behind at an unhurried pace. Chasing a boss around like this — after all his years in virtual games, this was the first time he’d ever experienced it. And the feeling, honestly, beat one-shotting a boss by a mile.
-650, -650, -650…
In not even ten seconds, this level 15 Lord-tier boss’s HP had dropped below half. All the Undead Sovereign could do, past its piercing, despairing cries, was flee as far as it possibly could. Light and life were the mortal enemies and natural predators of darkness and death — a fully-grown Undead Sovereign could withstand a certain amount of light, but to this one, right now, light was an unmitigated catastrophe.
-650, -650…
The desperate Sovereign finally spun around in fury, a ball of gray light gathering in front of it — though with the light in the room, that gray glow was noticeably dimmer than it should have been. In an instant, a pitch-black scythe rose up from the ground, sweeping along the floor straight at Ye Tianxie.
Ye Tianxie shifted his body loosely aside, dodging the incoming Scythe of the Undead with ease, then grinned wickedly, suddenly raising his hand and lobbing the Lamp of Light straight at the Sovereign.
-1, -650.
The Lamp of Light struck the Undead Sovereign dead-on, ticking off a measly 1 point of damage — and a shriek of pure terror from the Sovereign. With the light now right on top of it, the thing could no longer spare a thought for attacking, scrambling desperately away from the light’s source, wanting nothing more than distance. Ye Tianxie kept pace easily, the Hour of Fate hacking into it again and again.
-87, -650, -89, -650, -88, -650…
Next to the HP the Sovereign was hemorrhaging on its own, the damage from Ye Tianxie’s own attacks barely registered at all.
(End of Chapter 101)