No loot.
Kael nudged the Bone Warden's scattered remains with his boot. Broken armor plates. A greatsword too heavy for any human to wield. Shattered bones that would never rise again.
But no glowing drops. No satisfying ding of items hitting his inventory.
"Twenty years of bad luck, and it followed me across dimensions." He sighed. "Figures."
In Glory, killing a Bone Warden guaranteed at least a Minor Health Potion. Sometimes rare crafting materials. Once in a blue moon, an equipment drop worth actual money.
Here? Nothing.
He'd killed over thirty skeletons and one elite. Total loot: zero.
This isn't a game anymore. No respawns. No item drops. Every wound matters.
The realization settled into his bones like cold water. He'd have to fight smarter. Conserve resources. Treat every battle like it could be his last—because it very well might be.
Kael bent down and grabbed the Warden's skull. It was massive—nearly twice the size of a human head, with that distinctive elongated cranium and reinforced bone ridges. The crimson soul-fire had faded, leaving empty sockets that stared at nothing.
Heavy. Solid. Undeniable proof.
He wrapped it in a torn piece of cloth and secured it to his belt. In a world without screenshots or kill logs, physical evidence was the only currency that mattered.
The streets of Sharl Town were silent as graves.
Kael walked past rows of southern Aelindor-style houses—whitewashed walls, terracotta roofs, flower boxes that had once held geraniums. The architecture should have triggered nostalgia. He'd spent months in towns just like this during the early game, grinding quests and learning the lore.
Instead, all he smelled was blood.
Bodies lay where they'd fallen. A baker slumped against his shop door, flour still dusting his apron. A young couple holding hands, their final embrace frozen in death. An old man who'd made it halfway to the town square before something caught him from behind.
Kael's jaw tightened.
In the game, these were just props. Background decoration. Numbers on a casualty report.
Now they had faces. Expressions. Stories cut short.
His gaze caught on a woman near the fountain. She lay on her side, arms wrapped around empty air. A few meters away, a mud-stained cloth tiger—a child's toy—sat abandoned in a puddle.
He stopped walking.
The pose told the whole story. She'd been holding someone. A child, probably. And then—
Kael closed his eyes.
I'm not a priest. I can't pray for their souls. I can't bring them back.
His hand found his sword hilt. Squeezed until his knuckles went white.
But I can make sure this doesn't happen again.
The undead didn't raid for gold or supplies. They came for one thing: bodies. Fresh corpses to raise as soldiers. Quality specimens to transform into elite units. Every person who died here would become a weapon against the living.
Unless someone stopped it.
Kael gathered what dry wood he could find. It took nearly an hour to build a proper pyre—long enough to burn hot, positioned to catch the wind. He dragged the bodies one by one, arranging them with as much dignity as haste allowed.
When the flames finally caught, he stood back and watched the smoke rise.
No prayers. No ceremony. Just fire and silence.
Rest easy. You won't serve them.
He turned his back on Sharl Town and started walking north.
The road to Rosenburg was worse than he remembered.
Recent rain had turned the packed earth into a muddy nightmare. Every step squelched. His boots—already garbage-tier militia issue—were caked with brown sludge within minutes.
Vorn Province. The southernmost territory of the Aelindor Kingdom. In theory, it was the first line of defense against Shivan incursions. In practice, it was a neglected backwater ruled by an incompetent duke.
Duke Vorn III. Players had nicknamed him "Duke Doormat." A man so obsessed with art and culture that he'd let his military rot. Taxes went to galleries instead of garrisons. Soldiers deserted because they couldn't afford food.
In the original timeline, his weakness had cost the kingdom everything. When the Second Mandragora War began, Vorn Province collapsed in days. The undead swept through like a scythe through wheat, and the Duke fled north with his paintings while his people burned.
One problem at a time. Rosenburg first. Then I'll deal with that useless noble.
Kael's eyes swept the road ahead, cataloging details out of habit. Wagon ruts from refugee carts. Footprints of various sizes—families fleeing north. Discarded belongings too heavy to carry.
Then he saw something that made him stop.
A different set of tracks. Dozens of them, running parallel to the road.
Footprints with an unusual gait—stride length larger than a child's, but impression depth lighter than an adult's. Perfectly uniform spacing. No variation in pace or direction.
Skeleton warriors. Marching in formation.
And mixed among them, a different pattern. Drag marks. Long, continuous grooves in the mud, like someone had been pulling a heavy robe behind them.
Corpse Mage.
Kael crouched, studying the tracks more closely. The drag marks were consistent—no stumbling, no course corrections. A low-tier Corpse Mage, then. The kind that needed to stand still to cast, whose robes dragged when they walked.
Higher-tier necromancers floated. They didn't leave tracks at all.
His mind assembled the picture. A scouting party. Twenty-ish skeletons led by a single Corpse Mage. Moving toward Rosenburg.
Scouts don't need casters. Unless...
Unless the commander wanted eyes that could report back. Corpse Mages maintained a psychic link with their summoner. Kill the mage, and the skeletons collapsed—but not before the master received a final burst of information.
This wasn't random raiding. This was reconnaissance.
Someone was planning something big.
Kael rose and quickened his pace. The tracks were fresh—maybe two hours old. If he pushed hard, he could catch them before they reached the city.
He found them fifteen minutes later.
A shallow valley between two hills. Perfect ambush terrain—which was exactly why the undead had chosen to march through it. No living commander would risk getting caught in a kill zone. But skeletons didn't fear death, and Corpse Mages didn't fear much of anything.
Kael lay flat on the ridge, hidden in the shadow of a gnarled oak. Below, the patrol moved in eerie silence. Twenty-three skeleton warriors in a loose formation, rusted swords and shields held ready. At their center, a hunched figure in rotting black robes shuffled forward, a bone-white staff clutched in withered hands.
The Corpse Mage.
Its soul-fire burned brighter than the skeletons'—a sickly yellow-green instead of pale blue. That was the mark of a converted human. Someone who'd chosen undeath, or had it forced upon them.
Corpse Mages are former living casters. They retain some intelligence, some cunning. But they're still bound to their master's will.
Kael studied the formation. The skeletons moved in a protective ring around the mage. Standard doctrine. Kill the caster, and the whole group collapsed.
The problem was getting to it.
Twenty-three enemies. Even trash-tier skeletons could overwhelm him through sheer numbers. And if the Corpse Mage got a spell off—
No. I know how they fight. I know their weaknesses.
He'd spent years studying undead tactics. Raiding Shivan outposts. Interrogating captured necromancers. Building the intelligence database that players had relied on for the entire war.
Corpse Mages had a tell. When casting, they instinctively protected their staff—specifically, the small phylactery mounted at its tip. That was where their soul was anchored. Destroy it, and the mage died instantly.
The protection reflex meant their spells always curved slightly toward their dominant hand. Right-handed mages fired left. Left-handed mages fired right.
This one held its staff in the right hand.
Dodge right. Close distance. One shot to the phylactery.
Simple in theory. Suicidal in practice—for anyone who didn't know exactly what they were doing.
Kael smiled grimly.
Good thing I'm not just anyone.
He waited until the patrol reached the valley floor. Then he moved.
No battle cry. No warning. Just a blur of motion as Kael launched himself down the slope.
The skeletons reacted instantly—or as instantly as mindless undead could. Heads swiveled. Swords rose. The formation began to contract around the mage.
Too slow.
Kael hit the first rank like a battering ram. His sword didn't slash—it deflected, knocking aside the nearest blades with precise, economical strikes. Steel rang against steel as he created a gap in the line.
"Move!"
He shouldered through, using momentum to carry him past grasping bone fingers. A sword scraped his shoulder—Loss of 3 HP, barely a scratch. Another caught his thigh—5 HP. Acceptable.
The Corpse Mage's eyes flared. Its jaw dropped open, and guttural syllables spilled out—the beginnings of a spell.
A bone spear materialized in the air, white and gleaming, aimed directly at Kael's face.
He didn't look at it.
Right-handed. Fires left.
At the last possible instant, Kael threw himself right. The spear screamed past his cheek, close enough to ruffle his hair, and shattered against the hillside behind him.
The mage's eyes widened. Shock. Confusion.
How did he—
Kael was already inside its guard.
No fancy techniques. No special skills. Just a straight thrust, aimed not at the mage's body, but at the tiny bone cage mounted atop its staff.
The phylactery.
His blade punched through.
CRACK.
The Corpse Mage's mouth opened in a silent scream. Its soul-fire blazed brilliant green—then exploded outward in a shower of sparks.
The effect was immediate.
Every skeleton in the valley froze. The blue flames in their eye sockets guttered, flickered, died. Twenty-three undead warriors collapsed simultaneously, their bones clattering to the ground like puppets with cut strings.
One rusted sword, still falling, bounced off Kael's shoulder.
[-1 HP]
He barely noticed.
[Corpse Mage slain. +500 XP][Skeleton Warrior x23 slain. +138 XP]
Kael stood in the sudden silence, breathing hard. His arms ached. His legs burned. But he was alive, and they weren't.
Still got it.
He knelt beside the Corpse Mage's remains and began searching. The robes were worthless—rotted through and reeking of decay. The staff was broken, its phylactery shattered beyond repair.
But as he turned the staff over, something caught his eye.
A marking. Burned into the bone just below the grip.
A skull wrapped in chains.
Kael's blood ran cold.
He knew that symbol. Every player knew it—or would know it, in about ten years.
The Imperial Select.
The Lich Emperor's personal army. Elite units answering directly to the throne of the Shivan Empire. In the original timeline, they hadn't been formed until the middle of the Second Mandragora War, when the Emperor finally consolidated power over the squabbling lich lords.
But here it was. On a low-tier Corpse Mage. In a backwater scouting party.
The timeline is wrong.
The Emperor wasn't waiting. He was already moving, already building his forces, already preparing for a war that wasn't supposed to happen for another decade.
Kael stared at the marking, his mind racing.
If the Imperial Select existed now, that meant the political situation in the Shivan Empire was completely different from what players had assumed. The lich lords weren't independent warlords anymore. They were being brought to heel.
And that meant the invasion of Aelindor wasn't a border skirmish.
It was the opening move of a continental war.
He shoved the staff into his pack and started running.
Rosenburg was still an hour away. He had to warn them.
Before it was too late.