“There are…were gods?” Merlin says it but he clearly does not quite grasp the word ‘gods‘, this is one of the things I noticed when I explained that I am from another universe, Merlin simply does not have the necessary background information to truly understand it. I told him I came from another universe, but he barely understands what a single universe is, so his reaction was kind of like telling someone I come from another country, he just accepted it with no problem.

Merlin is kind of a nerd too, he didn’t care much about the other universe, he was much more interested in magic, in fact we have been thinking of ways to mitigate his {Necrotic Purity} skill, or rather how to let him cast other elements while still having the bonus from it, he cannot absorb the mana from heart of frost without negating the bonuses from {Necrotic Purity} his manipulations must be outside his body, which also means he does not have a reserve of frost mana.

“Yes, long long ago, they are gone. What happened to them is unknown, some say they left, or they were killed, some say this is a test. In their place they left angels, who do mostly the same things they did.”

The crab attack arrives, smashing into my frontline, and failing horribly, their charge either stopped dead, literally, or being counter-charged by my hammers. My mages all focus and the energy of undeath seeps into them, turning them into zombies extremely fast. I can actually feel the aura of the crab dungeon, probably blocking me from using {Analyze}, and I am sure that it would try to reclaim its corpses, even without the quest doing so for it , so I came up with this simple idea. The energy is dense enough that the crabs actually become undead before they can fully die, well most of them do.

My drone skulls are all flying high and sending me info, I won the arms race there, my skulls are just too fast for the shrimps to tag them, unless they blot out the skies in water. There is another floating skull, though it is on the ground, it is the Floating Ring of Skulls.

Kaiman and his boneshapers, along with a few others that can, go around and mend any skeleton that got hurt. And then we march on.

“The god of my people died way before that, which is why our land is marked with death.” I prod Merlin to ask something that has been on my mind.

“How were your people able to live there? The amount of necrotic energy should make living very difficult. ” I can see Merlin start to wonder about that himself as he finishes the phrase.

“Mostly through Counteracting Elements, do you know what that is?” I explain a bit to Merlin, ‘Counteracting Elements’ is basically turning a certain elemental interaction on its head. One simple example of that is that water extinguishes fire, but fire could also evaporate water.

I ask Merlin what he thinks is going on there, Lesson Time!

Merlin stares at a tree, his crystal smooth face cracks and changes slightly, gaining what appears to be a slit visor. His beams combine and come out as one, his death ray passes through a tree and cuts it in half.

“Death overcomes life, ending it. If it’s counteracted then life would become stronger through resisting death?” Irax nods.

“Yes, although Seltila’s very soil is full of necrotic energy, to the point that burying the dead will surely cause them to rise again, the plants have evolved and found a way to create life out of death. Seltila has the most diverse amount of fruits and vegetables that are life-attuned in the world. Many travel from afar to our ‘cursed land’ to enjoy them fresh.” Irax speaks with some mirth in his tone, he seems to take some pride in it, I prod Merlin to ask more about it.

“Are there death-attuned plants?”

“Yes, the most common is the Shadewood, they are much like your ebonwood, they use light to make their shadow powers stronger, eventually they gain a type of tree spirit, made of shadows, and then it evolves into an animalistic shade.”

“The trees create undead?” Merlin asks, clearly very surprised, he’s really getting the hang of speaking, his tone is starting to sound perfect, well until he starts testing tones and voices.

“It takes a while, but yes they do, their shades can even go to become branch wraiths or similar beings, a mixture of nature and death.”

“Is that why your people don’t fear the undead?”

“Mostly, since we are little we are taught that for an ecosystem to be its healthiest it needs a balance of life and death. Undeath is mostly seen as still being part of this cycle, since there are many beings in Seltila that eat undead.”

“The shadewood might be another reason, in most other places shades are shades of sapient beings, distorted by hatred, so they are very destructive towards most communities, but the shades made by the shadewood are mostly animals. Plus it takes almost a century for a shadewood to actually create a shade. And shadewood is also very valued, pretty much all of its parts can be sold”

“Even the shades?”

“Yes, there are many [Shade Trainers], since the shades behave like animals, many animal training classes can get this class, or even evolve into it.”

“How can they evolve their classes?”

“As I said, most of it happens through the System, it gives quests for you to evolve them. Truthfully there are many ways to evolve your class, you could use a [Teacher] or a [Master] many of them have special skills to specifically teach other people.”

“There are places in the world that have such powerful teachers that they can gate and impede your Leveling until you properly learn a skill, they could even make you level immediately upon learning it too.”

My army starts to move a little slower, we are now deeper in the territory, and the ground is becoming increasingly muddy.

“Our shades are mostly transported to Shol, they really like the animal shadows, in fact there are even [Shade Necrofarmers] and other classes like that. ”’

“Shol is the other continent with undead?”

“No, the continent is called Eloris Cronmei, mostly called Cronmei. It is separated into three kingdoms, Shol, Eloris and Poslath. All three use undead in many capacities.” Irax looks up, a crab is falling in his direction. He raises his hand to stop Merlin, who was about to beam it to death.

An axe appears in his hand, shortly, before he throws it and dismembers the large claw from the crustacean. The crab, now disbalanced, falls flat on the ground. As Merlin plunges his hand into the wound and transforms the crab into an undead, Irax seems to pocket the crab pincer as his axe returns on its own.

This is not the only jumping crab attacking us, in fact it is raining crabs of all kinds. They aren’t doing much. Sure they are falling on top of the skeletons, but they are not falling fast or hard enough to kill them in one shot and with such thick necrotic energy even if they did my skeletons would take a while to disperse and truly die.

Stinger and her martial skeletons actually jump and try to attack the crabs mid air, or rather she does that, with an awesome flying knee, the rest mostly fumble through it. They are not quite as good as her yet.

I can see that this is only the opening salvo, a large force is coming towards me, and I spot a few special crabs among them.