The silence after the slaughter pressed down like a coffin lid.
Vel stood amidst the corpses of the zombie horde, skeletal frame glistening with gore. The dripping of black fluids echoed faintly, each sound like a slow heartbeat in the cavern's gut. He tightened his grip on his battered sword, sockets flaring faintly, though his gaze was not on the bodies littering the stone floor.
It was on the message burning itself into the hollow recess of his mind.
[Assimilation Threshold Reached.][New absorption possible.]
Vel stilled. His jawbone clicked faintly, an unconscious tic mimicking a breath he no longer had.
"…Absorption?" he whispered into the darkness. His voice was hollow, scraping, as though two bones grated together.
A new flood of System notifications etched themselves across his vision, luminous, inexorable:
[Skill absorbed: Zombie Toxin Release.][Assimilation rate recalculated: 14% Skeleton + 18% Zombie → Total 32%.][Bloodline Paths Updated.]
Vel froze. His sockets narrowed. Slowly, with deliberate thought, he spoke into the void:
"Interface. Open."
The darkness inside his mind rippled. Then came structure—lines of pale light, a black screen materializing before him, its symbols written in cold logic and inevitability.
[System Interface]
Name: VelForm: Metal Skeleton (partial evolution)
Skills:– Imperial Swordsmanship (Inherited Instinct)– Basic Mercenary Swordsmanship– Zombie Toxin Release
Chaos Mana: 10 (5 Mana, 5 Death Energy)( Fusion of both mana and death energy is Chaos mana)Status: SEALED – No mana-channelling organ present. Spells unusable until suitable organ is imbued.
Evolution Points (EP): 6Absorption Points (AP): 1(Absorption Points increase the efficiency and amount of foreign essence assimilated.)
Assimilation Rate: 32%
Bloodline Progression:– Skeleton Assimilation: 14% → Next evolution: Adamantine Skeleton Soldier (100%)– Zombie Assimilation: 18% → Next evolution: Lesser Zombie (100%)
Vel's sockets flared with pale fire. His skeletal claws flexed against the interface as though he could tear it apart and consume it.
"Skeleton… and Zombie," he whispered. His voice echoed low, reverent and horrified in equal measure. "Two paths of rot and bone, two lines of corruption. And I…" His jawbone tilted upward, sockets burning brighter. "…I am walking both."
He looked down at the corpses around him. The stench of rot still clung to the air, sickly sweet, overwhelming. Yet in his new body, the smell stirred nothing but recognition. His sockets flared hotter as he felt the phantom sensation in his marrow—if it could be called marrow—that something inside him was changing.
Zombie Toxin Release.
The words alone carried weight. Vel raised his skeletal hand, fingers curling. Something black shimmered faintly between the cracks of his bones. A mist, faint but foul, like the exhalation of a grave. His sockets widened. The "skill" was not metaphor. It was reality. He could feel the toxin seeping from him, a subtle aura of necrosis, a poison that did not belong to any living man.
A memory intruded unbidden—his human days, drinking with mercenaries, laughing in taverns, swinging steel beneath the sun. His chest clenched with hollow ache. That man was gone. In his place stood a thing that could breathe plague.
He closed his hand, extinguishing the faint wisp of toxin.
"…No," Vel murmured. "Not gone. Evolved."
His gaze returned to the interface. Assimilation. Bloodline. His sockets burned brighter as he stared at the numbers.
32%.
He understood now. Each kill fed him. Each absorption rewrote his being. Piece by piece, flesh, bone, soul—all were being overwritten by something greater, something more monstrous. Skeleton and Zombie bloodlines gnawed at him, dragging him toward forms that were no longer human.
"Adamantine Skeleton Soldier… Lesser Zombie…" Vel rasped, jaw grinding faintly. "Two futures. Two curses. But both… are mine to claim."
His sockets flared with eerie hunger.
The cavern was silent but for the drip of rot. Vel stepped forward, dragging his sword behind him, the steel ringing dully across the stone. The interface still hovered before his mind's eye, glowing like a god's scripture.
He studied it again, whispering the words:
"Chaos Mana. Sealed."
Mana. The word clawed at him with longing. He remembered the old mercenaries, the mages he'd seen on battlefields, hurling fire and lightning, tearing squads apart with a single spell. And now, he, Vel, possessed ten points of mana. Not normal mana, but something fouler—half normal, half death. Chaos.
Yet sealed.
"…No channeling organ." He looked down at his hollow ribcage, the black spaces where once his lungs and heart had beaten. "A body without flesh cannot wield mana. Then I will build one. Piece by piece. With bloodlines and bones."
The idea burned in his sockets. He was incomplete, but incompletion was not failure. It was potential.
Vel reached down and touched a corpse. The flesh was cold, rubbery, oozing black ichor. He pressed his skeletal hand to its ruined chest and focused. His sockets flared as the System pulsed.
[Would you like to Absorb this specimen?][Cost: 1 Absorption Point.]
Vel hesitated. He only had one. His sockets narrowed. Slowly, he pulled his hand away.
"No… not yet." His voice was a hiss. "Use it when the prey is worthy. To grow, I must choose carefully."
He looked around. Dozens of corpses. Hundreds of EP he could harvest in the future. And yet, it was not enough. His sockets burned. He needed more. Always more.
The System had shown him the truth: power came not from surviving, but from consuming.
Vel clenched his skeletal hand into a fist. The metallic knuckles cracked against themselves, sparks of faint black mist leaking from the joints.
"I am no man," he whispered, a grim certainty. "No knight. No mercenary. I am a weapon that devours the world. And this body is only the beginning."
The cavern seemed to whisper back, the blackness shifting with unseen echoes.
Vel sheathed his battered sword against his skeletal hip, standing tall, sockets blazing like twin lanterns in the abyss.
The interface burned in his vision one last time:
VelAssimilation: 32%Bloodlines: Skeleton / ZombieNext Evolution: Unlocked at 100%
Vel laughed. The sound was not human, not mirthful. It was the grinding of stone, the rattle of bones, a sound that echoed into the cavern like the mockery of a god.
"…Yes," he whispered between hollow chuckles. "Assimilation. Absorption. I will take every corpse, every fragment of power. And I will become something this world cannot even name."
His sockets burned hotter still, pale Emerald flames in the sockets.
The hunt would never end.