Ryan stared in horror at the battle raging against the stone wall, his own bony body shoved forward by the press of skeletons behind him. Despair flooded his hollow chest. Not a single skeleton that had reached that wall had survived.
About seven kilometers back, two skeletons draped in crimson capes stood on a low hillock, watching the hundreds of thousands-strong army in the valley below with unmistakable pride.
"Augustus, that village is putting up more of a fight than expected. Looks like your intel was solid," said the shorter of the two—a skeleton barely 1.5 meters tall, appearing almost like a child's remains. But his pristine red cape marked him as a Strong Bone, a rank above the common Battle Bones. None of the countless skeletons around them dared show the slightest disrespect.
The other crimson-clad skeleton towered over two meters, two complete white horns curving from his skull. His voice carried a simple, almost rustic quality: "Don't get careless, Carol. From what I can sense, there are only magic apprentices in that village. That kind of power isn't enough to protect a Dark Crystal."
The short Strong Bone, Carol, let out a grating cackle. "I wasn't born yesterday, Augustus. Now that we've both advanced, we're prime targets for Bone Hunters. I'm not making a move until I'm sure."
"Then we grind them down. I'm sending forty Battle Bones into the charge." Augustus stared expressionlessly at the wall thousands of meters away. Beneath his red cloak, a faint crimson gleam flickered deep within his hidden ribs.
"Done. I'll match you—forty Battle Bones. We need to be back at camp before dawn anyway." Carol responded instantly. In his empty skull, an answering red light pulsed.
Both Augustus and Carol were Strong Bones. In theory, a Strong Bone could command a hundred Battle Bones—each of whom led a hundred Red Bones, each Red Bone commanding a hundred Gray Bones. A full-strength Strong Bone could field a million Gray Bones. But these two had been fighting continuously for months under a higher-ranked Cavalry Bone, their forces never fully replenished. Each now commanded barely sixty Battle Bones.
As their orders rippled down the chain, sixty Battle Bones, over four thousand Red Bones, and the three hundred thousand Gray Bones under their command surged toward the small village in the valley.
Ryan was caught between that tide and the human wall, facing the trial of death.
Whoosh—
The sound was like a gale wind. Ryan realized the skeleton army behind him had lost all formation. At some point, they had compressed together, becoming a single surging wave of bone. He watched a Red Bone stumble and fall, crushed to powder in an instant under the press of its own kind.
They've lost their minds!
Ryan spun and ran, sprinting desperately toward the stone wall. At this moment, he held no illusions that a pile of frozen bones could stop anything. The horde had gone berserk—if they hit that wall, they'd bring it down, even if they had to shatter themselves to do it.
Ryan fled toward the wall in despair. Fireballs and ice arrows streaked past him from the human defenders, but he only felt the bone wave behind him drawing closer, showing no sign of stopping.
On the wall, human faces showed matching terror. Those who had always dismissed fragile Gray Bones as a joke now stood slack-jawed, staring at the white sea rolling toward them. They were farmers and militiamen, never before facing the true power of the bone horde. The acrid smell of urine filled the air as men wet themselves in fear.
More than twenty magic apprentices stood among the militiamen. Their faces—so confident moments ago as the main defensive force—gradually showed panic. Their chants faltered; the fireballs and ice arrows they launched grew sparse.
Skeletons that had already reached the wall took advantage. Red Bones swung bone weapons, hacking at the stunned militiamen. Several defenders fell, hacked to death before they could react. More skeletons swarmed over the wall. It seemed the stone barrier would fall before the bone wave even arrived.
Ryan suddenly saw a sliver of hope. If he could reach the wall before the wave behind him crushed him, could he escape death?
His slender leg bones pumped desperately. The will to survive drove him faster. He was less than fifty meters from the wall.
Then a middle-aged man in a gold-threaded robe stepped onto the wall. There were no stairs where he appeared; no one saw how he crossed the several-meter height. He didn't chant. He simply waved a hand, and a stream of fist-sized fireballs flew from his sleeve. In an instant, the Red and Gray skeletons that had gained the wall exploded into fragments.
"Teacher!" The twenty-plus magic apprentices saluted, shame flooding their faces. They had insisted they wouldn't need him.
"This is a Gray Bone Wave—a relatively low-level siege tactic." The middle-aged man pointed calmly at the approaching tide. "The standard response is a coordinated chant spell."
The apprentices exchanged confused glances. They were still apprentices; none could perform coordinated chanting.
The man smiled. He drew an exquisite scroll from his robes and unrolled a sheet of parchment. "When you can't cast a coordinated spell, you use a spell scroll. This one—a Three-Layer Fire Wall—is the ideal counter to a Gray Bone Wave."
Joyful smiles broke out among the apprentices.
The middle-aged man began chanting the most basic magic infusion incantation. As power flowed in, three crimson ripples lit up on the parchment. He shifted to spell positioning. The three ripples shot forth, landing in the valley and erupting into fire walls five meters high and a hundred meters wide. The original parchment crumbled to ash and scattered on the wind.
The fire walls slammed down just behind Ryan. In the suffocating heat wave, he twisted his head and watched in horror as the white bone wave crashed against the crimson sea—collapsed—charged again—collapsed again!
Gray and Red Bones hurled themselves ruthlessly at the towering flames. Their bizarre skulls loosed tragic roars—a hideous chorus of rage, despair, and agony. The sound twisted into a strange melody echoing over the valley as countless bones turned to powder beneath it.
"A scroll! Only mages who can't hack it rely on expensive scrolls. That human's just an Apprentice Mage!" Strong Bone Carol's voice crackled with excitement.
Strong Bone Augustus nodded, his own mood igniting. Could the legendary Dark Crystal—said to grant instant advancement to bones—finally be within reach?
On the wall, the middle-aged man watched skeletons hurl themselves at the flames, murmuring to himself: "What am I escorting? Why is it drawing skeletons? Aren't these creatures only interested in things like the Dark Crystal?" Unconsciously, his left hand, hidden within his robe, pressed gently against a bulging secret pocket on his abdomen. From it came a soft, yielding touch.
In the village behind the wall, nervous villagers huddled together, trembling, guessing at the battle's outcome. An old man with a full white beard sat alone in the darkness, drinking wine, a smile on his lips: "The boy's too nervous. Burning a scroll on a Gray Bone Wave like this—he's just telling those two stupid Strong Bones the village is weak."
In the dense forest on a distant mountain peak overlooking the valley, Howard said in surprise: "An Apprentice Mage in this nameless valley? How?"
"Pure coincidence." Ace smiled bitterly and shook his head. "I didn't think the rumor we casually spread would actually bear fruit. This Apprentice Mage is perfect for helping us hunt the Strong Bones—but we've definitely doomed him. After we kill the two Strong Bones, we leave immediately. He must never know we lured the skeletons here."
"Could he actually have the Dark Crystal on him?" Howard widened his beautiful blue eyes in a natural guess.
Ace rolled his eyes. "The Dark Crystal would be guarded by at least a qualified mage. And if the famously cautious Mage Association were transporting it, they'd send a Great Mage."
Howard, completely unbothered by the eye roll, nodded thoughtfully. "Then is this Apprentice Mage on some other top-secret mission?"
"What top-secret mission could an Apprentice Mage have?" Ace scoffed, drawing on his deep familiarity with the Association. "Look at those magic apprentices—he's just taking his students on a field exercise."
Ace, who would one day be known as the Poison-Eyed Hunter, did not know his judgment was wrong—disastrously wrong.
After annihilating tens of thousands of skeletons, two of the three fire walls flickered and died. The middle-aged man on the wall produced another scroll, rebuilding three insurmountable walls of flame in the sea of bone. He repeated the process—five scrolls in total—until the skeletons' ferocious assault was utterly crushed.
Behind Ryan lay scorched earth. Before the stone wall, no living skeletons remained. Only he, a single tiny Gray Bone, stood trembling before the human fortifications.