Chapter Two

First Conquest

It took weeks for Wraith to expand his territory to the first rogue monster, although he had been able to find some new materials to understand in the meantime; obsidian had enabled him to give Ember a small spear, a short sword, a bow and arrows once Ember had been able to explain the concepts to Wraith.

The bow was the most difficult to make since he didn’t have any wood, but he eventually was able to make one out of flexible bone. The lichen he had found had evolved due to the mana that had been leaking from his core and now it glowed a deep purple color in response to changes in the environment; Wraith found that since it was in his territory, he was able to turn the glow on and off. Although this was of limited application, he had used this to give Ember spiraling colors all over his body to increase his intimidation and mystic. The iron he found wasn’t very useful, he couldn’t forge it into usable material for weapons as he still couldn’t understand how that worked and it was too heavy to strengthen Ember’s bones and still allow him to fly.

They had prepared for the first challenge, Ember had scouted the area and told him it was a gigantic Spider Queen and her brood. Ember had practiced with his bow by having Wraith light up random patches of lichen and then Ember fired at them as they steadily grew closer to him, their lights turning off and on like an advancing opponent. Ember practiced hunting the bats with his sword and spear by flying up to their nest where the males would come forward to fight him before being stabbed through the chest, which had the added benefit of giving Wraith tiny boosts to his mana pool. The day finally came to issue the challenge by extending his mana an inch into the Spider Queen's hunting ground.

Are you sure you’re ready for this? he asked for the fifth time.

“For the last time ,yes boss, besides if I die you can just give me a new body,” he said with a bit of irritation.

Unless they decide to come here and destroy my core, you said yourself that my spores wouldn’t do much to them since they are resistant to poison and it will take me a while to move you into your new body, Wraith countered.

“Do you want to stay within this tiny sphere of territory forever? You won’t be able to do much on an adventure if we’re too afraid to fight a rogue monster and her minions,” Ember said egging him on.

Fine, he said grudgingly, but no showing off, like when you tried to do a summersault and skewer that bat it hit you so hard it knocked your skull off.

Ember rubbed his spinal column at the memory, “You fixed that issue, right?” he asked.

Yes, now go fight the Spider Queen, Wraith said pushing his mana into the spider queen’s territory, feeling her natural monster magic resist his.

There was a scuttling sound and from a hole in the ceiling dropped hundreds of spiders the size of his gem. Ember began releasing arrow after arrow, sometimes hitting three spiders at the same time, but they advanced on him like a wave. He dropped his bow and drew his sword, spinning it through the air as he backed up into Wraith’s territory, so he could get a boost to his mana from their deaths. The spores had little effect on them, only making the spiders slow down and occasionally seize up before getting back up and going on the attack.

The spiders overwhelmed Ember, but their tiny fangs were useless against bone and he began thrashing on the ground squishing as many as he could. There was a flurry of movement as the spiders abandoned their attack and they heard the rapid click of claws on stone. Ember looked up to see the Spider Queen, three times his size advancing on him. He jumped to his feet and brandished his sword and spear at her. Now came the real fight, her pincers could snap his bones and her speed and agility made her hard to hit.

She lunged forward, and Ember jumped and slid underneath her, having studied her the few times she had come out to hunt in her territory. He sprang to his feet and jumped into the air, pumping his wings. He wasn’t fast enough. She turned and spat out a net of webbing which flew over him and brought him down to the ground. She stalked forward slowly, sure of her victim’s defeat, but Wraith had added something to Ember’s bones for just this occasion. Obsidian blades sprung from groves in his skeleton frame, shredding the web and he turned and stabbed his spear into one of her clusters of eyes.

The Spider Queen went berserk, thrashing at the spear until Ember darted forward and stabbed his sword up to the hilt in her abdomen, before leaping and rolling away. She shrieked before finally collapsing and her spiders fled, and just like that the resistance to Wraith’s mana was gone and he felt her mana rush into him as he converted it and pushed it back into her old territory slowly expanding it out to the left side.

Wraith began absorbing the body, examining every inch of it as he did so and deactivated Ember’s body as he began to modify it. The spider’s pincers were incorporated into Ember’s skull and the rapid web spinning organ in its abdomen in Ember’s pelvis. The only problem was that the organ and poison glands needed to be alive to work and that meant he would need to eat now and require other parts of an active body like a ghoul. He wouldn’t need certain organs like kidneys, liver or an appendix. Ember only needed a throat and a stomach to eat and a bowel tract to excrete waste. Wraith added two bags of thick skin with muscles to make them expand and contract like a pair of bellows. He filled them with the mushrooms and it increased Ember’s breath weapon to ten feet. The throat stomach and bowel tract were visible through the rib cage, carried in a long bag of skin attached all along the spinal column, the inside of the skin pulsing with a green light.

Wraith turned from his newly acquired territory to the one beside it, a monster territory controlled by a giant rat as big as the Spider Queen. The rat had a nasty row of teeth and had grown by feeding on the waste washing down from an underground stream. It had mutated by some source of magic, making its strength disproportionate to its size. It was able to move boulders, which it did when fishing in the river for a bit of waste or some dead thing that had washed downstream and under a rock.

Have you rested Ember? Wraith asked.

“I feel pretty good now, why do you ask?” Ember said, stretching purely for effect, since his body had no muscles which could become fatigued. “Wait, you don’t plan on challenging another monster now, do you?” Ember asked panicking. “We only defeated the spider queen yesterday!”

You’d better get ready, Wraith said instead of answering Ember, I’ve already issued the challenge and it’s coming this way, I suggest using your bow and staying out of it's range.

Ember muttered some choice phrases under his breath and leaped into the air. The rat ran into the clearing and jumped at Ember, almost reaching him before landing back to earth ten feet below. Ember pulled back his bone bow and let an arrow fly; the rats tail snapped forward and deflected the missile and the rat snarled, leaping onto a stalagmite, climbing up it to get at Ember. Ember continued firing arrows, but his quiver was soon empty. The rat leaped again, and Ember did a barrel roll in the air, drawing his sword and slashing at the rat’s back leg, managing to score a shallow cut. The rat landed on all fours and snapped its yellow teeth in rage.

Use your breath and web and try and incapacitate it, Wraith suggested.

“Try not to distract me, boss, this isn’t as easy as it looks,” Ember said, rolling to the side and avoiding a tail strike which split a rock in two where he had been.

Ember turned and let loose a net of web that pinned the rat to the ground, until the rat flexed and the webs started to snap. Ember fired repeatedly but the rat’s strength allowed it to easily snap the webs and slowly advance forward. Ember gave up and flung his spear, which managed stick in the rat’s eye. The bow wasn’t deep enough to kill but the rat howled in rage. It swung at Ember and this time the tip of its tail caught him in the side, flinging him against a stalagmite. Ember lay slumped, unable to move his broken body as he lifted his head while the rat charged. Ember used his lungs to expel a stream of spores. The rate fell back coughing and snorting, Ember slowly rose to his feet as Wraith managed o repair his bones one by one, he raised his sword, intending to finally finish it. The rat suddenly flinched and rolled over on to its back.

Is it dead? He asked, uncertain as to this new development.

“Nope. Congratulations, Lord Wraith, you just got your first vassal, he just surrendered. You may now enter his territory freely and his natural monster magic won’t oppose you,” Ember said