I. The Wall of Living Stone
The Whispering Fungal Forest ended abruptly, giving way to a cleared "Kill Zone" of scorched earth that stretched for three hundred meters. Beyond that barren strip rose the imposing black-stone walls of Fort Aethelgard.
Absolutum stood just inside the treeline, a silent sentinel of white bone hiding the density of a beast and the spring of a predator.
[ENVIRONMENT DETECTED: Civilized Zone (Human/Mixed).] [THREAT ANALYSIS: High. Presence of "Light Aura" practitioners detected. Necrotic signatures are actively hunted.] [CURRENT STATUS: "Monster". Kill-on-Sight.]
Absolutum watched the gate. Armored guards checked caravans. Mages held crystal lenses up to travelers, scanning for corruption.
To enter as he was—a naked, mismatched skeleton—was suicide. Even with his martial perfection, a city had armies.
Logic: To hunt the apex predators, I need bait. To get bait, I need coin. To get coin, I need civilization.
He looked down at his legs. The Normalization Protocol was active. To the eye, they were standard Elven bones. This was crucial. If he still possessed the massive bulk of the Porcupine leg or the dog-leg shape of the Deer, he would never fit into standard equipment.
Requirement: A second skin.
II. The Dead Courier
Fate, or perhaps the brutal nature of this realm, provided the solution 200 meters to the east.
A skirmish had occurred hours ago. A solitary rider—a courier by the look of the leather satchel—had been ambushed by Goblin scavengers. The Goblins had taken the horse and the food, but they had left the "inedible" parts.
Absolutum approached the corpse. It was a human male, heavily clad in a traveler's cloak and a set of worn, leather-and-chainmail armor.
[TARGET: Equipment Scavenge.] [ITEM: Reinforced Leather Boots.] [ITEM: Chainmail Hauberk.] [ITEM: Heavy Woolen Cloak (Hooded).] [ITEM: Iron Full-Helm (Visored).]
Absolutum began the grisly work of stripping the body.
He pulled on the leather boots. Test. He pushed his left foot into the boot. The Shadow Spring tendons, coiled tight within the bone, accepted the confinement. The boot fit perfectly. He pushed his right foot in. The Anchor Tibia, super-compressed by the System, slid in with a heavy thud. The boot didn't tear.
Normalization confirmed. Compatibility with humanoid gear: 100%.
He donned the chainmail. It rattled against his ribs—a hollow sound. He wrapped the heavy cloak around himself, pulling the hood low. Finally, he placed the iron helm over his skull.
He was no longer a skeleton. He was a humanoid shape, draped in shadow and steel.
III. The Voice of the Dead
He approached the West Gate. The line was short.
A bored guard in plate armor tapped a spear against the ground. "Name and business?"
Absolutum stood there. He had no tongue. He had no lungs to push air through vocal cords.
[SYSTEM ALERT: Vocal Synthesis Module missing. Social interaction compromised.] [ALTERNATIVE: Bone Resonance.]
The System highlighted his own cervical vertebrae. By vibrating the bone plates against each other at high frequency, he could produce a sound. It wouldn't be a human voice. It would be a grinding, tectonic whisper.
Absolutum focused. He vibrated his neck bones.
"...Mercenary..."
The sound was awful. It sounded like two tombstones grinding together in a crypt. It was dry, raspy, and devoid of breath.
The guard flinched, taking a step back. "By the Light, what happened to your voice, traveler?"
Absolutum didn't speak again. He simply pointed to his throat, mimicking a crushing injury.
The guard grimaced in sympathy. "Throat crushed? Nasty business. Alright, keep your helm on, don't want to scare the children."
The guard waved a crystal wand over Absolutum's chest.
[ALERT: Scanning Beam Detected. Light Affinity.] [COUNTERMEASURE: Marrow Suppression.]
Absolutum willed his toxic violet marrow to go dormant. He pulled the Aura deep into the core of his bones, leaving the surface cold and inert. The crystal glowed a dull grey. Neutral.
"Clear," the guard grunted. "Welcome to Aethelgard. Don't cause trouble, scratchy."
IV. The Bounty Board
Entering the city was an assault on senses he didn't have. He felt the vibration of thousands of footsteps and smelled the roasting meat of street vendors. He walked through the crowd with the Iron-Spring Stance, his steps unnatural in their silence.
He found the posting board outside the Mercenary Guild. It was covered in parchment bounties.
Wanted: Goblin Ears (5 Copper) - Too low. Wanted: Iron-Hide Bear Gallbladder (5 Silver) - Possible. Good ribcage material. Wanted: The Skull of the Cavern Drake (10 Gold) - Suicide.
Then, he saw the primary notice.
[URGENT: The Crypts of St. Kael have been breached. Something is eating the ancestral bones. Mercenaries required to purge the lower levels.]
Absolutum stared at the parchment.
Something is eating the bones.
That meant two things:
There was a rival predator down there consuming calcium. There were Ancestral Bones—bones of ancient, powerful heroes—lying unguarded in the dark.
V. The Vulture's Logic
Absolutum reached for the notice, but his hand hovered. The Martial Archives flooded his mind with a tactical simulation.
[SCENARIO SIMULATION: Boss Encounter.] [ENEMY: "Bone Eater" (Class Unknown, likely Acid/Crushing specialized).] [HOST STATUS: Leg Assembly (Tier 2). Arm Assembly (Tier 1). Torso Assembly (Tier 0 - Critical Weakness).]
The simulation was brutal. One hit to his chest would shatter his Elven ribcage. His regeneration would be too slow to save his core.
[CONCLUSION: Host is statistically incapable of defeating the "Bone Eater". Survival probability: 12%.]
He withdrew his hand. He was not a hero. He was an evolutionary machine. He could not face the boss.
However...
He looked at the frantic activity around the Guild. Mercenaries were gearing up. Wagons were being loaded with supplies for the "Front Line" at the Crypt entrance.
Where there is war, there is waste.
The Crypts were breached. That meant dozens of lesser skeletons were being disturbed. It meant mercenaries were dying in the tunnels. It meant a battlefield littered with high-grade materials that no one else could use.
I do not need to kill the King yet. I need to eat his servants.
He could enter the Battle Zone—the upper levels and the perimeter—ostensibly to help, but in reality to harvest. He could scavenge the reinforced ribs of fallen knights or the dense vertebrae of lesser crypt guardians. He could build a chest capable of surviving the depths.
[STRATEGY UPDATE: Operation "Vulture".] [OBJECTIVE 1: Enter the Crypt Perimeter.] [OBJECTIVE 2: Scavenge "Reinforced Ribcage" materials from the Battle Zone.] [OBJECTIVE 3: Retreat before engaging the Apex Threat.]
Absolutum ripped the parchment off the board. Not as a challenge to the beast below, but as a ticket to the buffet above.
"...Accept..." he ground out, turning toward the city armory.
VI. The Field of Broken Toys
The entrance to the Crypts of St. Kael was less a holy site and more a meat grinder. The heavy stone doors had been blasted open, and a perimeter of wooden barricades held back the tide of lesser undead leaking from the dark.
Absolutum stood at the edge of the fray, his visor down. The air smelled of ozone, rot, and fresh blood.
Mercenaries clashed with animated skeletons—mindless drones reanimated by the leakage of necrotic mana. To Absolutum, it was pathetic. The skeletons moved with jerky, puppet-like spasms. They had no Martial Archives, no flow.
But the ground... the ground was paved with opportunity.
Bodies lay scattered in the mud. Human sellswords, Goblin raiders, and the occasional heavy infantryman.
[SCANNING FIELD...] [TARGET: Human (Archer). Bone Density: 12%. Status: Useless.] [TARGET: Goblin (Scavenger). Bone Density: 8%. Status: Garbage.] [TARGET: Human (Mage). Bone Density: 10%. Status: Reject.]
Absolutum walked through the chaos, casually side-stepping a stray arrow. He wasn't looking for the enemy; he was shopping.
Then, the System pinged. A sharp, high-pitched tone resonated in his skull.
[ALERT: SUITABLE SPECIMEN DETECTED.] [DISTANCE: 12 Meters (East).] [TARGET: Dwarven Ironbreaker (Deceased).] [COMPONENT MATCH: Thoracic Cage (Ribs/Sternum).] [GRADE: High-Density. Earth-Aura Infused.]
VII. The Shadow Surgery
Absolutum shifted his gaze. Slumped against a broken wagon wheel was a Dwarf. He was clad in heavy plate, but his helmet had been sheared off, revealing a skull caved in by a massive blunt impact. He had died recently, likely in the first wave of the breach.
Dwarves were not just sturdy; their bones were naturally infused with trace minerals from their underground diet and Earth-Aura cultivation. Their ribs were essentially organic steel cages.
Absolutum moved. He didn't run; he slid through the shadows using the Shadow Spring in his left leg, arriving at the corpse unnoticed.
He knelt, his heavy cloak billowing to form a tent over the body, shielding his actions from the other mercenaries.
Dissection Protocol.
His mandible-fingers made short work of the Dwarf's leather undershirt. He exposed the chest. It was broad, barrel-shaped, and thick.
[COMPARISON:] [HOST RIBCAGE (ELVEN): Tensile Strength 200MPa. Brittle.] [TARGET RIBCAGE (DWARF): Tensile Strength 850MPa. Shock Absorbent.]
Absolutum didn't hesitate. He placed his hands on the Dwarf's chest.
"...Harvest..."
He didn't strip the bone out manually—that would take too long. He used the Plasticity Induction. He pressed his hands against the Dwarf's sternum and pulsed his Marrow Aura.
The Dwarf's ribcage glowed green. The connective tissue dissolved. The ribs detached from the spine with a series of wet clicks.
Absolutum opened his own chainmail. He reached into his own chest cavity, gripping his fragile Elven ribs. With a grim, silent shudder, he snapped them off, pulling the white, chalky bones out and dropping them into the mud.
He was now a spine with limbs, his core exposed.
He lifted the heavy Dwarven ribcage. It was too wide, too barrel-chested.
[INTEGRATION: RESIZING.]
He pressed the Dwarven bones against his spine. The System roared. The thick, heavy ribs hissed as they were compressed, the curvature altering to fit the taller, leaner Elven frame. They locked into his vertebrae with the sound of a vault door closing.
[INTEGRATION COMPLETE.] [NEW COMPONENT: The Iron-Barrel Cage (Dwarven Variant).] [STATUS: Core Defense increased by 400%. Torso can now withstand the torque of high-velocity martial techniques.]
Absolutum stood up, closing his chainmail. He felt heavy in the chest, grounded. He took a deep breath—or the skeletal equivalent. His frame no longer felt like it would shatter if he twisted too hard.
He looked down at the dark Crypt entrance.
Now, I can fight