He devoured the affinity gems, the low-quality iron, the currency, the glass shard, and a few various seedlings until he felt something different in the gifted bag. Before he consumed it he called out to his fairy.

“Elvinia.” He said, levitating the item with curious mana swirls. “What is this?” The void fairy fluttered over at the item; her brows furrowed with intense concentration momentarily before smiling.

“It is an enchantment.” She said in slight wonder. “I had no idea the priest would give one to a dungeon, usually they require some difficulty to make. You would have to absorb it to find out the enchantment.” Relived it wasn’t harmful he did so. His mind shook slightly as the intricate mana pattern took shape within his mind before disappearing to his knowledge store.

“Purge Undead?” He said questionably before the fairy’s curious gaze.

“So that’s what they want. From what they said about Deadlands and the skeleton that wandered in they probably want a dungeon to start cleaning up the remnants of an undead army”

“I think I can remember an army,” Unbound said hesitantly. “I think they killed me but my memories seem to be even more faded now.”

“That’s part of changing to become a dungeon,” Elvinia said. “Mortal memories can help initially but then they start to clash with an immortals’ instincts. Where one assumes time is finite the other could wait millennia for a perfect time.”

A few days ago, this would have scared Unbound, but memories had left quickly leaving only knowledge in their wake. It felt right that he should live forever, challenging and consuming, nothing could have been closer to what he was meant to do.

It was then the familiar feeling of an intruder entering the dungeon came upon him but before his sight naturally looked over, he wrest control over his instincts for a moment before looking by his own will. It wasn’t good.

The first undead invasion had been weak, partially broken down with weak equipment, these were stronger, complete skeletons with armor. The armor didn’t shine but it wasn’t a good gust of wind from falling apart either.

Thinking of the other skeletal defender he remembered he had never evolved the creature, the battle had lead to the win of the spider and its evolution to a Bone Tearing Spider.

Forcing his thoughts at the invasion force showed four undead. Two complete skeletons with dark grey bones and full armor and one shuffling corpse. Pus and tiny gobbets of flesh fell off the zombies as its lurching gate was jerky and slow.

Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

Its flesh was green and purple and revolting to look at and once the undead entered the first room and a rat died from touching the abomination, Unbound decided he would never use the pattern even when he killed it.

The skeletons felled the creatures attacking them, the defender’s rudimentary minds were unwilling to be close to the zombie. As it cleared the second room the corpse stumbled and fell, a large chunk of rotten flesh fell into ant nest, Unbound felt the small insect lives snuff out. Due to how quickly insects reproduce some were even developing lifeforce.

Absorbing the flesh Unbound learned to things. One he was NEVER using the zombie as a defender and two he learned how to make the necrotic poison.

One skeleton got trapped in a pit. Its armor more complete in fell into the hole, shattering its limbs. It did not die ‘die properly’ Unbound mused but it was unable to get out of the pit. The other two invaders moved on, unknowing of their fellows’ plight or uncaring.

The other two made it to the core room, the spider waiting for them. The pressurized spikes were unable to badly damage the skeleton’s armor, although it was dented badly, and the rockfall trap was missed.

Unbound watched seriously, ready to order the elemental out a moment’s notice upon the boss dying, the skeleton hacked at the spider’s limbs but the sword was angled badly and it glanced off the spider's whip-like limbs. The zombie had its flesh stripped off but gave no notice or care as it shambled forward.

The spiders had a lucky blow that caught the spine of the skeleton and ripped the toughened bone with little difficulty. As the skeleton's head and upper spine was torn from the rest of its body and the skeleton fell still.

But as the boss was focused on destroying one enemy the other shambled close enough and fell upon the main body. Poisonous flesh and chitin met. The flesh beneath the tough chitin started rotting away as the spider screamed and weakly struggled at the zombie.

Unbound gave a mental order to the void elemental and it flew at the wall separating it from the core room. As the boss rotted away fully and the zombie crawled at the core, the dark grey shape burst through the wall, its body shredding anything that touched it.

It slammed into the zombie and the poisoned flesh had no hold over the reverse of reality. The zombie stared dully at the elemental as its body fell apart. Unbound ordered the elemental away and sealed the wall back up.

But when he went to absorb the corpses of the invaders, he realized he could only get the one dead skeleton. The other needed to be finished off to absorb it. However, the zombie’s assortment of flesh was no longer undead but the touch of the void elemental had removed even the mana of the zombie’s pattern.

With that mana no longer present Unbound was unable to absorb the undead. The thought struck him for a moment. His ‘weak’ elemental was that deadly, how deadly would a strong one be?

Moving on from the thought of the powerful creatures, hopefully, in his future, he looked at the pattern for the skeleton. It wasn’t a crumbling skeleton, so he brought up the new entry to his pattern’s knowledge.

Hybrid Skeleton: Weakest H£%$es variant

That was concerning and Elvinia was equally as confused by it. What sort of creature couldn’t be analyzed by the system? And how was it the weakest variant?