Even after a while had passed, the moments drawn long through the perilous labour of carving out cores from each Direwolf... Despite all that, Drake could still feel the gnawing sensation under his skin.
One that reminded him something was watching him closely.
Drake had ignored the feeling the best he could while harvesting the forest of wolves. And when finally done, he stored them in the small sack bag he had taken along.
He strapped it to his side.
'I still can't tell what I'm feeling, and where it's coming from.'
If this feeling of insecurity came from a beast, he was sure it should have attacked by now. If it was a hybrid beast, there weren't many places it could hide from him in.
These thoughts made Drake even more careful of his surroundings.
'It's times like this my last ability would have been useful.' Drake grimaced, scanning his surroundings once more, expecting at least a slight change in the tunnel, or something out of the ordinary. However, nothing had changed.
"Maybe I'm just hallucinating."
For this reason, he chose to continue moving through the dungeon. And he did so, walking towards the mountain of horrid bones.
Getting closer to it, he could better see its frame, and it was like a wall made to barricade the tunnels into two different sections. No way to go around but a sorry climb to its top.
And what lay in wait at the top of the bone wall was a mystery.
Without hesitation, Drake Drakon closed the gap between him and the wall, hands first, then his foot planted into sturdy jagged holdings of the bones that stuck out.
Climbing up the mountain of bones was heinous, and to successfully scale it, Drake Drakon made sure to trail carefully up. Avoiding to his best the wrong holdings, at least to his best knowledge.
Despite how well calculated his moves were, he still made a few slips here and there and almost fell back to the ground but managed to stabilize himself after a short fall down the steep wall.
"Gaarhh!" He groaned as a sharp pain alongside blood erupted from his hands as he struggled to stabilize himself after another fall.
Drake cursed at himself for being so weak physically, yet again continued up the climb.
And eventually, after a long dreary struggle, Drake lifted himself to the top of the mound of bones, rolling to the platform and letting out a frustrated sigh on his back.
'My hands feel like they are on fire!'
Raising his hands to his gaze, he could see his palms red and filled with many new cut marks that leaked out with his blood.
Still nothing fatal.
"Hmmm."
A low grunt came across his ears, catching his attention.
Sitting himself up, Drake landed his sights on the vastness of the bone platform.
Its surface seemed smoother than usual, only having a few jagged pillars sticking out of it. Then there were piles of bones all around, and most importantly, human bodies.
Fresh human bodies. Probably from students that had appeared on the bone ridge in the midst of the wolves and were instantly murdered.
It was a pitiful death. And Drake would have surely faced the same end if he had appeared the same way. He was lucky enough to have fought a battle on just one front.
"Drakon—"
That voice again, Drake thought, turning his head around to find the source of it, but he found nothing.
Rising to his feet in a hurry to get a better view of his surroundings, he took a few steps further to see if whoever called to him was a person who had survived the earlier massacre from the wolves, or someone hiding.
Nonetheless, it didn't add up.
Why call out to him and then keep silent?
Drake paused in his footing, dropping a hand onto the hilt of his blade. "Show yourself."
His words were left to stand awkwardly in the air for what seemed like a minute.
Causing Drake to feel mad or just delusional.
Still, 'The feeling I'm getting, like someone is watching me, keeps getting stronger.'
"Drakon—"
The voice came from behind this time.
Drake wasted no time turning around to get a glimpse at least of whoever called out and—
Out in the open stood something sinister. A being cloaked from head to toe by dark clothing, torn and swaying in the air. Its presence was heavy and choking, and there was something about the two red beams of light peering out of the darkness where its face was supposed to be that made his skin feel as though it was crawling.
"W—what the hell are you?" Drake found it hard to mutter, grabbing his gut out of disdain from a sharp pain that erupted there.
The being grunted, then spoke, "In both lives tell me the value of death... The value of life... And the value of rebirth."
Drake's breathing shuddered and his eyes grew cold, "Who... the hell are you?"
The being nodded, "Icaris."
This was not helping Drake in any way. 'This guy has the same aura as my father and the originals? He might have also been the reason the other students were killed... Could he be the King of this dungeon...?'
Something told Drake his information was not right.
There was only one way to find out.
Straightening his stance the best he could, he hid every form of disdain he felt from the strange being's presence. "Icaris, what do you want from me?"
Icaris groaned, "You called."
"I?"
Drake took his time to think through what the cloaked figure had said, and when he did, he could recall only one probability—
The army request on the interface...
"Necromancy comes at a price," the strange figure stretched out its hand, revealing a dried skinless bone for a palm.
"Every power comes with one, and what is true power without a price to pay for it?" Drake frowned, walking towards Icaris.
"Just like my first life, I have wondered about the similarities between the two. I have also wondered why I was reborn, and if this world would be claimed too by the same plague."
Icaris pulled back his hand and nodded once more. "I see. We will meet again."
With that, the cloaked figure began to disappear into thin air, and within a few seconds he was nothingness.
Leaving Drake to stand alone with his thoughts.
{You have successfully been granted permission from an admin. You can have an army now}
Drake narrowed his eyes at the notification. Right now he had thousands of theories piling up within him, but thanks to the strangeness of his system, he could not jump into any conclusions about any of them.
At least for now.
---
Meanwhile;
The symphony of explosions could be heard all around the tunnels, followed by the noise of rocks collapsing on each other.
Gary grunted in pain, falling to his side out of exhaustion.
"Shit! Shit! Shit!" he cried out, sitting himself up in a hurry as he recalled the battle was far from over.
Raising his gaze, he saw a few other awakened gripping their weapons tightly as they faced off against a horde of dungeon beasts.
Goblins that held weapons made out of flames, on top of large Direwolves, which gave them an advantage both in speed and damage infliction.
And against the team of awakened, who were no more than half their original number, the odds weren't looking good for them.
To worsen the matter even further, in front of the cohort of awakened was a wall of rocks they had created by collapsing the tunnels, and behind them...
Gary turned around to see what looked like a steep wall of bones, and a number of dead wolves on the ground. Which meant even if they were able to scale the steep wall to escape the ruthless Goblins, they could still be encountered by more Direwolves.
Whether they wanted it or not... they would all die here.