My Undead Legion Kills God's

Andrea gave Damien some privacy as he continued using his Dormant ability to weaken the effects of the runes on the corpse. He remained focused on the skeleton, repeatedly covering it in his black miasma and forcing his power against the strange resistance protecting the runes.

Whatever had been keeping his ability from taking hold was gradually weakening, but it was taking time, so Andrea decided to investigate the unusual flame that was still burning nearby.

She approached the flame cautiously and placed her bare palm over it. Andrea immediately frowned. The sensation was strange; it felt warm against her skin, almost like the pleasant heat of the ground after a sunny day, yet at the same time, there was an intensity to it that reminded her of boiling lava.

It shouldn’t have been possible for something to feel both so comfortable and so dangerously hot at the same time, yet somehow, this flame managed to do exactly that.

She had never seen anything like it. Andrea slowly pulled her hand away and shook her head before reaching for one of the pieces of frozen wood feeding the fire. The wood was as cold as ice, its surface completely frozen, yet a small portion of the strange flame continued burning at the very top of it.

There was no smoke rising from the wood, and despite the air moving through the underground ecosystem, the flame didn’t flicker or seem affected by the wind at all.

"What are you?"

She said it to herself more than anything, staring at the impossible fire with growing curiosity. Then, without warning, her dispelled white armour suddenly resurfaced.

Andrea froze, she hadn’t summoned it.

The armour simply appeared around her body as though something had called it back into existence. This was the first time something like this had happened since she acquired the Vestige, and she didn’t understand why it was happening now. Her attention immediately shifted between the armour and the strange flame, trying to determine what had caused the sudden reaction.

At first, the flame didn’t react at all. It continued burning exactly as it had before, sitting atop the frozen wood without producing smoke or being affected by the surrounding air.

Then it slowly lifted from the wood.

Andrea watched as the flame drifted through the air and moved toward her armour. The moment it reached the white metal, the runes engraved across its surface suddenly flared to life. Light spread across the armour as the flame began to sink into it, and the cracks covering its surface gradually started mending themselves.

Andrea stood completely still as she watched the damage disappear. At that very moment, the Emissary’s voice echoed inside her head.

[Woe to the champion of the fallen... The Blaze flame has burned for a millennia, until this day, it once more reunited with the armour forged by the champion of humanity]

[Vestige Acquired; Blaze Dragon God Spark]

Andrea stood stunned as the rest of the fire still burning around the frozen wood suddenly lifted into the air. The flames gathered together before flying toward her, passing through her armour and fusing directly with her body.

She felt the strange fire disappear deep within her soul.

Andrea stared ahead for a few seconds, seemingly unable to decide what she was supposed to make of what had just happened.

"Hmm, how fancy. Using the breath of a god as camp fire."

She turned back toward Damien, who was still working on the skeleton. By then, the final rune was just beginning to turn dull as he once more triggered his Dormant ability, his miasma spreading across the corpse and forcing the remaining resistance to weaken.

"Rise."

This time, the skeleton didn’t resist much.

Black miasma shot out in all directions as Damien’s power finally took hold. The skeleton’s white surface gradually turned completely black, while the runes engraved into its bones changed from their previous faint glow into a deep purple.

Its fingers twitched.

The skeleton slowly pushed itself upright before sitting up completely, its empty eye sockets turning toward Damien. It stared at him blankly, showing no obvious signs of emotion or understanding.

"Hand it over," Damien said coldly.

The skeleton didn’t immediately obey.

Instead, it looked down at the book still clutched tightly in its hands before looking back at Damien. Then, almost reluctantly, it pulled the book closer to itself.

Damien’s expression darkened.

Andrea remained silent, but she was just as stunned by what she was seeing. The skeleton had resisted Damien’s Dormant ability before it was brought back, but now that it had been raised, its behaviour made even less sense.

It was already an undead, It shouldn’t have been able to think for itself. Yet it had clearly understood Damien’s command and deliberately refused to obey it.

Damien’s patience finally ran out.

He reached forward and simply snatched the book from the skeleton’s hands, the moment his fingers closed around it, the Emissary’s voice chimed inside his head.

[Greed will be your downfall, riches your poison, and power your prison]

[Vestige Acquired; Tome Of Avarice]

Damien watched as the book turned into light particles and slowly melted into his body. The moment it disappeared, he felt its presence settle deep within his soul, creating a strange sensation that he wasn’t quite familiar with. It was difficult to describe, especially because he had never expected to feel anything there in the first place.

He never thought he still had one of those.

The realisation was strange, but Damien was more than capable of living with that knowledge. Whatever he had become, he wasn’t going to waste time dwelling on the fact that some part of him had apparently survived everything that had happened to him.

He lifted his hand and summoned the Tome of Avarice.

The ancient book appeared in his grasp, looking exactly as old as it felt. Two heavy chains were wrapped around it, one attached to either side, almost as though they had been placed there to seal some ancient secret within its pages.

The front cover was pitch black, while the back was pure white. The contrast between them was almost unnatural, giving the ancient tome an appearance that Damien couldn’t help but find peculiar.

He willed the book open, the chains immediately moved on their own.

They loosened from the covers and slid across the surface before coming together, twisting and intertwining until they formed a rose-like knot on each side of the book. Damien watched the strange movement without saying anything, waiting to see what would happen next.

The tome finally opened.

The first page was pristine white, completely untouched by age despite everything else about the book suggesting it had existed for centuries. The second page was the exact opposite, its surface jet black.

Yet the two pages had something in common, they were both blank. Damien stared at them, his expression slowly tightening as he waited for something to appear.

Nothing did, the ancient tome simply remained open in his hands, its first two pages offering him absolutely nothing.

"What’s going on here? The Emissary made it sound so dangerous, and yet there’s nothing in it."

Andrea stepped forward and looked over the open tome. "Perhaps you’re using it wrong."

Damien glanced at her and sighed helplessly. He caressed the surface of the book and tried focusing his mind, directing his attention toward the strange artifact and willing something to happen. He waited, but after a short while, nothing changed.

"This shit isn’t working. Isn’t there some kind of manual we could use?"

Andrea shrugged. "The Emissary doesn’t really do manuals... why don’t you try talking to it?"

Damien found the suggestion awkward. He stared at the book for a while before looking back at Andrea.

"It’s a book. I know I haven’t been here for long, but I’m pretty sure books don’t speak."

"Perhaps it doesn’t have to speak to communicate."

Damien finally gave in. He turned toward the book and decided to test Andrea’s suggestion, although he still wasn’t convinced this would accomplish anything.

"How many women adore me, or better yet, how many women will fall for me?"

Andrea raised a brow but didn’t say anything to interfere. She simply watched him with an increasingly unimpressed expression. The fact that Damien was using an ancient artifact with immense historical value to search for women clearly irritated her, but she decided to let him embarrass himself.

Then the first page of the Tome of Avarice suddenly lit up.

Writing began to manifest across the pristine white surface, the symbols appearing one after another as though an invisible hand was carefully writing directly onto the page. Damien leaned closer and studied them carefully, trying to understand what the book had written.

It didn’t take long for him to realise the problem, he couldn’t understand a single word.

"The writing is in runes. We can’t read it."

Andrea shook her head.

"There’s no such thing as rune writing. Runes are constructs of power, not a language. Think of engineering, except each stroke connects to another and allows energy to condense and flow freely."