The cavern felt different now. Not in the way stone feels when air shifts or echoes linger. No, this was deeper. Vel could sense it with his marrow. Every fracture of bone, every joint of his reconstructed body resonated with the pulsing heart that beat within his ribcage. The shaman's organ, half-rotten and black-veined, pumped not blood but mana—crude, unstable, yet alive.
It was intoxicating.
The System's words still hissed in the marrow-fire of his skull:
[Mana Channeling Organ detected.][Chaos Mana unlocked.][Warning: Temporary Core unstable.]
Vel paid little heed to warnings. Power had been a dream, a chain rattled before him and yanked away again and again. Now, the chain was broken.
He lifted one clawed hand. The cavern air seemed to recoil, bending around his palm as he focused. He did not know what he was doing. No human mage had taught him runes or chants. No lich had guided his hand. But instinct whispered, marrow remembered. And the System filled the void with cold authority.
Mana surged.
A black ripple coursed from his core into his hand. Flame sputtered into existence—not red, not orange, but black. At its center was a void, a hollow sphere eating light, and around its edges pale flames licked outward like starving tongues. It hissed, burning not with heat but corruption.
Vel's sockets flared with fascination.
[Spell manifested: Chaos Flame Bullet (Tier 1).]
The words burned across his vision, and with a twitch of his claws, he released it.
The bullet screamed through the cavern, trailing pale fire. It slammed into a cluster of bones piled against the wall, and the world detonated. Stone cracked, flames clung, shadows writhed. What remained of the pile did not smolder—it was gone, eaten away to ash and void.
Vel stood frozen, sockets wide. The power was obscene. Even as a man, wielding sword in disciplined drills, he had never felt such raw annihilation. This was not technique. This was not steel. This was destruction.
The marrow-fire within him whispered: More.
Vel's chest rattled with a soundless laugh. He turned deeper into the caverns.
The first skeletons came quickly. A patrol, risen from some necrotic reservoir, dull fire in their sockets, bone blades clutched in rotted hands. Once, Vel might have cut them down blade to blade, conserving motion, dissecting their clumsy stances. But now—
He raised his claws.
Chains burst from the ground, black and writhing. They were not metal; they were bone fused with shadow, twisting tendrils dripping necrotic ichor. The skeletons froze as the chains lashed upward, binding their limbs, crushing their ribcages.
[Spell manifested: Chaos Bind (Tier 1).]
Vel clenched his fist. The chains snapped tight, crushing bone into dust. Screeches of breaking marrow filled the cavern as the skeletons collapsed in shards.
Notifications blared in his vision.
[EP+2 gained.][AP+1 gained.]
Vel's sockets flickered. He raised his other hand. Another bullet of black flame spun into existence, whirring like a storm. He launched it. The cavern filled with white-pale fire and black void, the explosion collapsing half a wall. Skeletons shattered mid-charge, their bones fusing to molten ash.
Vel walked forward as though through rain. Except this rain was falling fragments of bone, rattling across his shoulders, clattering down his spine.
The marrow-fire pulsed in rhythm with the heart embedded in his chest. Beat by beat, spell by spell. Chaos surged, and Vel answered with slaughter.
The deeper he went, the more they came. Skeletons poured from cracks in the cavern walls, clawing out of pits of necrotic ooze, summoned from shadows. Each wave larger, thicker. But Vel's pace did not falter.
He bound them. He burned them.
Chains erupted from stone, dragging legions to the floor where he crushed them beneath writhing bone. Flame bullets annihilated clusters, detonating like void-born bombs. He discovered new ways to shape them—compressing flame into denser spheres for piercing blasts, or widening them into unstable bursts that erased swathes of enemies at once.
The cavern was no longer stone. It was battlefield.
Black scars burned across the walls. Craters yawned where once had been floor. Ash mixed with bone fragments piled knee-high. Vel strode through it like a reaper, sockets blazing brighter each moment.
The System whispered endlessly in the background, its voice a ceaseless litany:
[EP+2 gained.][AP+1 gained.][EP+2 gained.][AP+1 gained.]
On and on.
Vel stopped counting. Numbers flickered by, irrelevant against the rhythm of slaughter. What mattered was how it felt—the way Chaos Mana surged each time he cast, the way it answered his marrow-fire, the way it gave form to his hatred.
The skeletons never ceased. They came in hundreds, perhaps thousands. But Vel never tired. His bones did not ache, his muscles did not cramp. He was endurance given form, infinite stamina wrapped around infinite rage.
The only limit was the core itself. Each time he cast, he felt the heart strain, veins of black pressing deeper into his ribs. Cracks formed across his chest bones, faint fissures that ached with resonance. The System warned him again:
[Temporary Mana Core integrity: 78%.][Warning: Structural instability detected.]
But Vel did not care. Power was meant to be spent. The heart would rot regardless. Better to burn it bright.
Hours—or perhaps days—bled together. In the timeless dark of the cavern, Vel lost track. He remembered only battle. Chains lashing. Flames detonating. Bone dust clinging to his frame like a mantle of ash.
Until finally, when silence returned, the System changed its tone.
[Assimilation rate increased.][Skeleton bloodline: 92%... 97%... 100%.]
Vel froze. His sockets flared wide.
[Assimilation complete.][Bloodline attained: Skeleton (Base).][Evolution unlocked: Adamantine Skeleton Soldier.]
The cavern fell silent except for the faint crackling of Chaos fire still burning in stone. Vel stood amidst mountains of shattered bone, his sockets narrowed to pinpricks of light.
Adamantine.
The word pulsed like a drumbeat inside him. A new form, a higher state, the completion of what he had become. The chains that once bound him—sealed mana, fragile skeleton marrow, mortal weakness—were gone.
The System whispered again, not cold but almost reverent:
[Evolution available. Proceed?]
Vel lowered his gaze to the broken hilt still tied to his side. The relic of his human self, the last fragment of Vel the man. His sockets dimmed for a moment, memory of flesh flickering like a phantom.
But then the heart within his chest beat louder, black veins glowing. His sockets blazed bright once more.
The time for humanity had passed.
Vel straightened, surrounded by mountains of shattered kin, his claws curling tight as he whispered into the silence with a voice that scraped stone:
"Yes."
The System's chains shattered in his marrow. The cavern shook as the evolution began.
And Vel, once human, once a failed experiment, now stood on the threshold of becoming something far greater.
Not flesh. Not man. Not mere skeleton.
But weapon.
Adamantine.
Chaos given form.