《Skeletal Rebirth》Chapter 3. Lantern of Harvest

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At the house that I had found built under a single tree I continued my staring contest with the robed man standing in front of me. Examining the robed man that was holding onto a lantern I couldn't help my curiosity and began to speak. "It seems like I'm meeting quite the number of people today, and in such a dreary place none the less. Allow me to introduce my self, I am Argus-" before I could finish my introduction, the robed man began to distances himself from me and started shouting. "You! You have self awareness! how is that that possible!? All undeads are mindless monsters that attack the living! Even liches with heighten intelligence aren't self aware!" He frantically began waving the lantern in my direction and increasingly became more shocked. "What!? Why can't I link you to the Lantern of Harvest!? You... You must already have a soul trapped in that skeletal body. What a powerful soul it must be! To be able to reanimate a corpse be it's self, I must make it mine." The robed man quickly chanted a short spell which made the lantern glow even brighter, seconds later a big group of undead monsters started crawling out of the ground. Immediately surrounded by the newly raised undead the man ordered them to destroy my body. I reflexively distanced myself from the closest skeleton and drew my sword. "May lightning bare it's fangs, and sunder my foes." Finishing my spell lightning began to form and coiled around my sword, With my weapon enchanted by my Storm Armament, I quickly began dispatching me enemies. Watching me strike down multiple skeletons the robed man began summoning more undead monsters, "Heed the words of your new master, Incinerate those that live with your magic." With the raise of his lantern the pale green glow shined even more intensely and began to raise liches from the ground. Seeing the new enemies I recalled the events that had happened earlier today, "It seems this robed necromancer was the cause of the attack. "Well it's a good thing I've already fought against some liches, I at least know I can take them out with ease." Thinking these thoughts I began to chant another spell, "Birth the lightning that will aid me in battle, Bless the lightning it's truest form, forge the lightning a path to follow in order to seek the ones to destroy." The spell I cast was the same one that destroyed to liches earlier, thinking about how they couldn't keep up with the blades of lightning, I thought it was a good spell to go with. The flickering sparks quickly became deadly blades of lightning and began to seek out the liches, with the liches now occupied I continued to clean up the rest of the skeletal minions with my lightning clad sword. Unable to except defeat the necromancer began running while chanting another spell, this one seemed to sap the lantern of the pale green light, and after the light had gone out a tremor had started to rumble around the house. With a sudden explosion, the area where the house was turned into a huge blast of dust throwing tiny pieces of the rotting house wood into every direction. Two big crimson flames began to flicker into existence, and after the dust had started to settle the giant skeletal monstrosity began screaming its battle cry.

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The giant looks like a normal skeleton with a few exceptions, the most noticeable difference being it's shoulders and arms. Two massive curved horns covered the shoulder joints of the giant, it's forearms were much thinker then the rest of its arms, and inside of its rib-cage was a giant black crystal that pulsed out an ominous energy like that of a heart. I quickly summoned more lightning blades to dispatch the few liches still left, monitoring the giant I swiftly began to dodge it's rampaging arms. The speed of the arms were quick, but because of how heavy they were, the time it took for the giant to recover after an attack was long. Taking advantage of an enemy was one of the most important things to learn in a battle, and with the opportunity staring me in the face, I was gladly ready to take advantage of it. Every time the giant swung its arms, I dodged while creating more blades, and every time the giant needed to recover from it's swing, I would kick of the ground and quickly rush towards it. Sending the blades of lightning to pierce the black crystal in it's chest the giant started become more defensive, obviously the black crystal was its heart and it would try to do anything to protect it. While the giant was distracted, I decided to cast a more destructive spell. I knew that I needed something with enough power to break through its rib-cage and thus began to chant. "Ancient power be drawn to thee, bless the winter winds your might. Let not restraint your frozen grace and grant your foes a cold embrace." The spell activated in a flash and a giant fist encased by a gauntlet of ice was quickly formed, the spell called Fist of the Frost Titan was one of my ancient magic spells which borrowed the might of the now extincted Titans. As the giant fist was hovering beside me, I swiftly made my way up to the chest of the giant skeletal monster. Still struggling with the lightning blades it failed to notice that I was already about to deal a fatal strike. By the time it had noticed me I struck it's chest with the Fist of the Frost Titan which easily broke through it's bones, skeletal enemies had major weakness to blunt attacks and without any guard or protection, the gauntlet went straight through its chest and landed on the black crystal. The impact created many cracks in the crystal heart, and within those cracks, ice had already invaded and began causing the crystal to start breaking slowly. Not wanting to wait for the wedging process to finish, I delivered another devastating blow to the crystal which shattered it into tiny fragments. With one final roar, the giant skeletal monster slowly fell to the ground. The lower half of its body was in the ground while the upper half had fallen over. The crimson hatred in its eye socket had quickly burned along with all of its dark mana. "GAH!" I quickly turned to the direction of the noise only to see that robed necromancer get stabbed by a Skeleton Soldier. "He must have tried to run away when we noticed his giant was killed." With that in mind, I calmly walk over to his body and saw the lantern in his hand, picking it up I began to examine the item the necromancer named Lantern of Harvest. The lantern no longer shined that unnatural pale green light, instead it didn't seem to be shining at all. I continued to look at the lantern till I noticed that were the light would normally be produced was instead, a mana crystal. Remembering what Zerok had told me about the mana crystal, I began to infuse mana into the lantern. Slowly the lantern began to glow again, but instead of the pale green light it had produced earlier, it now had a bright green flame in the middle of it. Curious as to what it was I began to feed it more mana until- "WHO DARES AWAKEN THE GOD OF DEATH VELVAGRYN!" Staring at the once silent lantern, a face that lacked a nose was now attached to the green ball of fire and continued to stare back at me.

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As the green ball of fire and I continued to start at each other, it decided to break the silence again and started to speak to me. "Who are you undead anomaly? Where is this? And why are you so big?" I continued to stare at the flame called Velvagryn then began to answer his questions "Nice to meet you Velvagryn, I am Argus Fellford as you had called me earlier I am undead skeleton. The place we are currently located is a swampland named Graverot Marsh, and to answer your final question well it's simply that I'm not big, you're just small." The flame began looking around as if to confirm what it had just heard. Only seconds passed before the green flame starting yell all sorts of nonsense. "I am Velvagryn! The God of Death, how could some one as majestic as I be reduced to this!? Continuously shouting and mocking me when it had the chance I started to get a little fed up and shook the lantern violently around. "GAH! STOP SHAKING ME AROUND YOU UNCULTURED PLEBEIAN!" As the flame continued to insult me, I continued to rattle it around. "ARGH! STOP! STOP! ALRIGHT YOU WIN JUST STOP FLINGING ALL AROUND!" Satisfied, I stopped moving the lantern and instead place it on a rock, looking at the disoriented flame I spoke. "You call yourself a god of death correct? So why is the so called god of death stuck inside of a lantern?" The flame looks back and starting to speak as well.

"Yes you are correct. I am Velvagryn, The God of Death, and as you have so politely pointed out, the reason as to why I'm stuck in this lantern well, the only thing that comes to mind is that my main body must still be slumbering."

"Main body? Does that mean that the current you is a false body?"

"No. It would seem that the thing I'm currently trapped in, is something of my own creation. The Lantern of Harvest I call it. Has the ability to draw in and collect souls along with life essence."

"So this is an item you created? Then why have you appeared inside of it? Did it happen to consume your soul to?"

"Insolent! you really think I would be taken in by my own invention? You obviously also don't know that Gods like me can't die. The reason as to why I'm here must be because I used apart of my mana to create this lantern. And while my main body is asleep, this mana crystal of mine must have gathered a tremendous amount of mana to actually be able to call forth my conscious."

"I see, so the reason why you're here is basically because I infused this crystal with mana, Well lets not make that mistake again."

"WHAT! Did you just say that you infused my crystal with mana?"

"Yes that's exactly what I did, now could you please stop shouting all the time. I know I don't have ears or a brain but you're still giving me a headache."

"Ah-hmm, apologies. I was just surprised that there was some one, or in your case something, still able to control the flow of mana. You see, with the Gods all in slumber due to the Great War of the Gods, the people aren't able to control or manipulate mana. Well that's how it should normally be but you, you some how can still control mana. Tell me obsidian one, who was the God that blessed you?"

I knew it. Somewhere deep inside, I knew that I wasn't still in my old world. After learning about the how no one could control mana, I knew that something was definitely strange. If what this god says is true, then that means that the people of this world had never been able to control mana freely on their own. With the sudden realization that I was in a new world, a feeling of solitude crept over me. There wasn't a single person here that I knew, and even if hundreds of years have passed and the people I loved had passed, at least in my world I would still be able to go home. With this sense of loneliness I sat down and looked up, Staring at the clouds I pondered about many things.

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