Undead Mage: I Have a Skeleton Clone

Chapter 759 - 491: Bloody Battle in the Workshop, a Feast of New and Old Undead! (Part 2)

Splashing acid was blocked half a meter before Fang Zhou by a suddenly-erected bone wall. Amid the corrosive hiss, the cold laugh of meshing gears echoed from the shadows.

Spinal lock chains thrown by five Hate Samurai penetrated the chests of three Corrupt Hatreds. The hooks at the chains’ ends unfolded into eight-petaled blades, mangling the energy conduits of the Corrupt Cores. Pulled by the retracting chains, the Samurai leaped into the air in a display resembling a mechanical ballet. The Naraku Runes engraved on their breastplates glowed blood-red in the light.

Lin Qingshan’s Giant Shield collided with the first Hate Samurai to land. The impact shattered an overhead mechanical arm, sending a rain of parts down on them. The Flame Dragon Emblem on the shield spewed streams of fire, burning a crimson whirlpool into the Samurai’s faceplate. Molten iron flowed down its skeletal neck and into its chest cavity, causing the Resentful Souls in its power core to shriek.

But more chains coiled in from all directions, the fast-spinning, sawtooth scales on them scraping dense sparks from the Mystic Iron Shield.

"Flame Waterfall Impact!"

Yan Yan plunged his Magic Staff into a crack in the ground. The crimson Array that erupted did not gush forth ordinary flames, but liquid fire mixed with fragments of Magic Crystals.

The chains of two Hate Samurai carbonized and broke under the intense heat, but the third Samurai suddenly severed its own arm. The flying bone shards plowed a gash deep enough to reveal the bone in Lin Qingshan’s left shoulder.

When Jing Fei descended from the sky, the Energy Core he pierced with his dual blades sprayed out purple-black Soul Fire. Amid the viscous liquid, the Assassin revealed a grim smile. "Their Soul Fire is in the third vertebra!"

Meanwhile, Fang Zhou’s Undead Army was caught in a meat grinder.

The rotating bone saws in the chest cavities of the Dragon Bone Soldiers ground the Corpse Warriors’ Bone Blades to powder. Every swipe from these undead, draped in Dragon Scale Armor, created a metal hurricane. A Corrupt Hatred’s iron chain wrapped around the neck of a Dragon Bone Soldier, only to be severed by the bone wings that suddenly unfolded from the soldier’s back.

The Soul Eagle Eye in Fang Zhou’s vision lit up with blue light, compiling the visual information from hundreds of Undead Creatures into a holographic projection in his mind.

"Tiamat, activate Death Aura."

The Black Gem Young Dragon craned its head from Fang Zhou’s side. The moment its dark golden, vertical pupils lit up, a dark blue halo covered the Bone Blades of twenty Corpse Warriors.

Seven Zombie Earth Dragons crashed through the corroded iron gate on the west side first. Before the acid bulging in the nozzles on their spinal spines could be ejected, the array of Corpse Shooters had already drawn their bone bows inlaid with soul crystals.

"Skeleton Armory: Piercing Arrows!"

Undead Runes flowed at Fang Zhou’s fingertips. The shooters’ bones emitted the sound of quenching metal as spiral bone spikes grew from their arrowheads. Seven volleys of arrows pierced the Earth Dragons’ throats the moment they spewed acid. The Resentful Soul Threads coiled around the arrow tails suddenly tightened, blasting the seven corrupted heads into a sky-wide shower of acid rain.

It was at this moment that three Hate Samurai broke through the defense of the Flame Medal Adventurer Group, tearing through the ceiling and leaping down. Their bronze-cast spinal lock chains swept out, slicing three Corrupt Hatreds in half at the waist. The Dusk Shield on Fang Zhou’s Magic Robe barely blocked the flying shrapnel of gears.

The blue light of the Soul Eagle Eye flared in his pupils, instantly locking onto the Naraku Runes on the inside of the Samurai’s breastplate.

"Vigus, Double Casting: Skeleton Prison!"

The Death Elf emerged from the Void, her pale fingertips outlining the runes in sync with Fang Zhou. Thirty-six spiral bone spikes shot up from the ground, pinning two Hate Samurai in mid-air. But the remaining Samurai’s chain suddenly reformed into a gear-toothed saw blade. The vacuum wave created as the blade cut through the air pulverized several Corpse Knights into bone dust.

"Soul Link!"

The Nether River Crystal on the chest of Fang Zhou’s Magic Robe erupted with a ghostly glow, establishing a connection with the nearest Corrupt Hatred. When the Samurai’s saw blade struck his Shield of Death Protection, it was the Summoned Creature thirty meters away that burst into a spray of flesh.

Seizing this opening, Lin Qingshan’s Mystic Iron Giant Shield, wreathed in the Flaming Dragon Fire Stream, slammed into the Samurai’s knee joint. The inscriptions on the shield’s surface lit up with a red glow.

By now, two Dragon Bone Soldiers had been defeated. When the remaining five appeared from the acid mist, the rotating bone saws in their chest cavities were already heated to an orange-red. The Corpse Warriors’ Bone Blades struck the Dragon Scale Armor, sending sparks flying. Fang Zhou immediately waved the Soul Shattering Magic Ball.

"Rotting Aura!"

The dual debuff caused the Dragon Bone Soldiers’ movements to become sluggish as blackish-green poison mist seeped from the gaps in their scales.

"Skeleton Storm!"

Dozens of bone arrows entwined with Death Energy accurately hit their mechanical weak points, and the mournful groan of jamming gears emanated from within the Dragon Bone Soldiers. Yan Yan’s Flame Storm followed closely, melting two of the mechanical undead into molten steel.

But the last three Dragon Bone Soldiers suddenly unfurled their barbed bone wings, spinning rapidly to form a metal hurricane. Fang Zhou waved the Soul Shattering Magic Ball. The gray-black light that burst from it enveloped the entire scene, and the Soul Fire in the eye sockets of the corpse creatures surged.

Three Corrupt Hatreds charged into the metal hurricane and tore open a breach in its center by overloading their Resentful Soul Furnaces and self-detonating. Riding the shockwave from the explosion, three Corpse Knights exploited the gap to begin a Death Charge.

The moment the Bone Spears pierced the gaps in its scales, a harsh grinding of gears echoed from within the Dragon Bone Soldier. The Flame Talisman thrown by Yan Yan drilled into the chest cavity through the wound. Everyone saw two-meter-long tongues of flame erupt from the mechanical undead’s eye sockets, followed by a chain of fiery explosions from all its joints.

The outcome was already decided.

This was clear not only to Fang Zhou and the members of the Flame Medal Adventurer Group, but also to the Skeleton Mage. Far away in his sarcophagus in the main burial chamber, he was acutely aware of it as he monitored the battle in the Carved Golem Workshop through a scrying Array.

"Damn it!"

Deep within the tomb, inside the Ice Coffin, the Skeleton Mage’s ice-crystal-inlaid finger bones suddenly tightened. The Crystal Ball reflected a ground littered with shattered bones. The Hate Samurai and Dragonbone Guards he had painstakingly cultivated were wailing in the flames, and the frontline he had constructed from ice crystals was being torn apart by that Bronze Tier Undead Mage’s undead horde.

"A mere Bronze Tier Undead Mage..."

Dark Blue Soul Fire danced in the Skeleton Mage’s hollow eye sockets. Spiderweb cracks appeared on the surface of the Ice Coffin, which had been frozen for a thousand years. The Eternal Freeze Runes in the main burial chamber brightened one by one, and the Frost Cores inlaid in the twelve ice pillars began to spin into overload.

"My Frost Power is beginning to awaken. I cannot allow these insects to trample on my dignity any longer. Let this body of bone be your tomb!"

When the last Binding Spell shattered, the Blizzard gathering at the tip of the Skeleton Mage’s Magic Staff blasted the entire Ice Coffin apart. A skeletal figure rode the ice away.

* * *

As the Hate Samurai and Dragon Bone Soldiers fell one by one, even the battle-hardened members of the Flame Medal Adventurer Group could not help but relax for a moment.

Just then, the crisp sound of fracturing ice echoed through the Carved Golem Workshop.

Fang Zhou, who was directing the Corpse Warriors to clean up the battlefield, spun around. A warning green light burst from the Soul Shattering Magic Ball in his hand, blasting three Skeleton Guards to powder. Countless Ice Spines grew frantically along the stone walls, and ancient frost runes emerged in the freezing air.

"Get back!"

Yan Yan’s Flame Whip coiled around Lin Qingshan and pulled him back twenty meters. A three-meter-high forest of Ice Spikes sprouted from the ground where they had just been standing.

A void rift tore open in the center of the workshop. The Skeleton Mage, wreathed in a blizzard, stepped out like the embodiment of winter. His bones were carved from ten-thousand-year-old profound ice, and he was draped in a Frost Pattern Robe woven from blizzards. The Eternal Freeze Core embedded in his left eye socket was breathing out a cold mist.

"You have disturbed Eternal Rest." Each of the Skeleton Mage’s syllables carried the crisp chime of colliding ice crystals.

The moment his Magic Staff struck the ground, the remains of thirty fallen undead began to twitch. Frost and snow enveloped the shattered bones, reassembling them into Skeleton War Beasts covered in Ice Armor. A pale blue, cold fire burned within their hollow eye sockets.

"So you’ve finally decided to stop hiding?"

Fang Zhou, however, was already prepared. His Mage Boots traced a ghostly green path across the ice as threads of Soul Link wove a web throughout his undead army.

Five Corrupt Hatreds charged first, but the chains they wielded were frozen solid by the frosty breath of the Ice Armor Skeleton Beasts. The Skeleton Mage waved his Magic Staff lightly, and a shower of Ice Cones rained down from the workshop’s dome, pinning three Corpse Knights within the newly-formed ice forest.

"Vigus, Double Casting: Earth-Surging Poison Spring!"

A ghastly green Earth-Surging Poison Spring erupted from the ground. The melting ice formed a boiling pool of poison.