Chapter 5: Cursed Hunt
The air in the Obsidian Maw Gorge didn’t just stink; it clawed at the back of Leon’s throat with a physicality that memories of having a throat couldn’t erase. Ozone, sharp and electric, fought a losing battle against the overwhelming stench of rotting meat and hot, coppery blood. The walls weren't just red rock; they were pulsating, veined with sluggish rivers of molten light that cast a hellish, throbbing glow over everything. Below, a forest of jagged obsidian spikes glistened with oily, dark fluids.
“Reminds me of the server room after the Burrito Incident,” Leon clattered softly to himself. The others just stared. Axl was trying to lick the glowing red vein on the wall. Steve pulled him back.
“The luminescent substrate appears to be molten slag with a temperature exceeding eight hundred degrees,” Steve reported. “Licking is inadvisable.”
“But it’s shiny,” Axl whined, his voice a hollow whistle.
“Focus,” Leon said, his voice a low, grinding echo in the vast chamber. The purple cracks in his bones pulsed faintly in time with the gorge’s light. He could feel the new energy inside him, a coiled, hungry serpent of shadow and corruption. He needed to let it bite. “We’re here for two things. Strong prey. And the right bones.”
His Essence Discernment hummed, a new, subtle layer to his perception. He could taste the air now, sifting through the reek. The stale, chalky taste of old, common bones from some scattered rodent-things. Then, something else—a cold, sharp, almost peppery tang. High quality. Rare.
He pointed a finger, tipped with a wisp of amethyst smoke, towards a narrower split in the gorge wall. “There.”
They moved in silence, or as close to silence as four skeletons could manage. Rocky’s new helmet scraped once, earning a universal glare. The passage opened into a smaller, dead-end cavern. The floor was littered with the remains of large, canine-like creatures, picked clean by something with very careful hands. But it was the shadows at the back that moved.
They detached from the wall, five of them. They were wolves, but wolves spun from solidified gloom and malice. Their fur was a shifting, tenebrous grey, and their eyes burned with a pale, blue-white fire. Their bones, visible through patches in their phantom fur, glowed with a soft, internal sapphire light.
Shadow-Wolves. Perfect.
>> Target Analysis: Shadow-Wolf (Level 11-13). Pack tactics. Weak to sustained light. Bones possess ‘Umbral’ essence. High potency for Boner Eater.
“Axl, left flank distraction. Snick, high ledge, harass. Rocky, you’re with me. Steve… just don’t get disassembled again.”
“Acknowledged,” Steve said, picking up a sharp rock.
The pack leader, a beast with a missing chunk of its shadowy ear, let out a soundless snarl Leon felt in his teeth. They flowed forward, silent as smoke.
Leon met the charge. He didn’t raise his cleaver. He lowered his stance, feet grounding on the bloody stone, and channeled the new energy. Curse Fists.
Purple-black lightning crackled down his radii and ulnae, wreathing his hands in a vicious, spitting halo. It smelled of gangrene and static.
The lead wolf leaped. Leon pivoted, letting the jaws snap shut on air where his neck had been, and drove a curse-imbued punch into its ribcage.
The effect was instant and visceral. The shadow-stuff of its body didn’t just part; it dissolved where his fist touched, withering away like paper in a flame. The glowing sapphire bones beneath blackened at the contact. The wolf yelped, a real, pained sound, and stumbled back, a gaping, corroded hole in its side. Its movements became labored, sluggish. Weakness. Decay.
>> Curse Fists (Lvl 1) effect: Target vitality sapped. Minor status: Weakness applied.
“Oh,” Leon clattered, looking at his smoking fist. “That works.”
Rocky lumbered into another wolf, taking a savage bite on its mineralized forearm for its trouble, and responded by headbutting the creature into an obsidian spike. There was a wet crunch.
Axl was doing a strange, jiggling dance, its bones clattering, which seemed to confuse two of the wolves more than any attack might have. Snick, from above, peppered them with sharp pieces of bone, mostly missing but effectively dividing their attention.
Leon became a whirlwind of focused decay. He wasn't graceful. His style was brutal, efficient programming logic applied to violence. He’d let a wolf commit to a lunge, take the glancing tear on his reinforced femur, and answer with a curse-charged strike to a limb or skull. Each hit didn't just wound; it rotted. The peppery taste of their high-quality bones filled his senses, a delicious promise.
One wolf, cornered, howled silently. Leon stepped in, a memory flashing—a specific, brutal martial arts move he’d seen in an anime, a flurry of slashes. He couldn't do that. Not with his hands. But the pattern was there, in his mind. He clapped his hands together in a sharp, prayer-like sign.
Insane Cleaves activated.
The world narrowed to a series of targets and vectors. The purple energy didn't just coat his hands; it extended into vicious, foot-long blades of solid shadow from his wrists. He moved.
It wasn't a flurry. It was a massacre.
He didn't control the strikes; he unleashed them. His body became a piston of corrupted energy, carving through the shadow-wolf in a three-second burst of violence so intense it left after-images in the pulsing red light. When he stopped, panting mana-dr y (Mana: 20/50), the wolf was just… pieces. Dissolving pieces.
The mental strain hit a second later. A sharp, screaming headache behind his eyesockets, a feeling of claws scraping the inside of his skull. He staggered.
>> Insane Cleaves cooldown initiated. Minor mental fatigue detected.
The last wolf, seeing its pack disintegrate into rot and pieces, turned to flee. Snick dropped from the ceiling directly onto its back, and Axl, finally stopping its dance, kicked it squarely in the hindquarters. It stumbled into Leon’s waiting, curse-wreathed grip. A quick, brutal twist, and the sapphire light in its bones went out.
Silence, except for the hiss of the walls and the wet drip of dissolving shadow-stuff.
“Efficiency rating: 87%,” Steve said, poking a corroded wolf corpse with his rock.
Leon’s focus was already elsewhere. The Boner Eater trait was screaming at him. He knelt by the first wolf he’d killed, the one with the glowing, sapphire ribs. He grasped a bone. It was warm, vibrating with latent power. He didn't need to eat it like a dog. He just needed to consume the essence. He focused, and the bone crumbled in his grip into azure dust that flowed into his joints.
>> Boner Eater progress: 498/500.
>> 500/500.
>> Boner Eater Level Up: 3. Constitution +5. Durability +2. Essence Discernment enhanced. You can now detect subtle magical properties in bones.
The change was immediate. His bones didn't just feel stronger; they felt denser, heavier, as if his skeleton was being forged from something closer to steel. The purple cracks flared bright for a moment, then settled into a deeper, more resonant glow. He stood, a full inch taller, his frame broader.
>> Level Up! 15. Strength +2. Dexterity +1. Mana +10.
Before he could relish it, a new sound echoed through the gorge. Not a snarl. A thick, wet, bubbling gurgle. And footsteps that shook the ground.
Something rounded the bend of the cavern entrance. It was nine feet tall, moss-green, and built like a walking landfill. A troll. Its skin was knotted and warty, and one arm ended in a crude stone club tied with grimy sinew. The most notable feature was the pink, raw-looking flesh regrowing over a massive, recently acquired burn on its chest. The air around it stank of loam and pus.
>> Target Analysis: Cave Troll (Level 18). Extreme regeneration. Weak to fire and acid. High blunt force trauma output.
The troll’s small, deep-set eyes fixed on the dissolving shadow-wolf remains, then on Leon. It let out that bubbling gurgle again, which might have been a laugh.
“Okay,” Leon clattered, his new, denser bones settling into a Hardened Stance. “Change of plans. Regeneration test. Everyone, bludgeoning attacks are useless. Aim for joints, eyes. Wear it down.” He looked at the still-sizzling energy around his fists. “I’ll handle the decay.”
The troll didn't charge. It ambled, confident and slow, raising its stone club. It swung. Not at Leon. At Rocky.
The club hit Rocky’s upraised, mineralized arm with a sound like a bell cracking. Rocky was driven to one knee, a fissure spreading across its stony forearm.
Leon moved. He ducked under a backswing meant for Snick, who was already scrambling away, and drove a Curse Fist into the back of the troll’s knee.
The green flesh sizzled and blackened, the corrosive energy eating a fist-sized hole. The troll roared, stumbling. For a second, Leon saw bone. Then, the flesh around the wound squirmed. Pink, raw tendrils of new muscle and skin writhed like maggots, knitting together at a visible, disgusting rate. The decay was fighting the regeneration, slowing it, but not stopping it.
The troll backhanded him.
The world became a blur of red light and pain. He sailed through the air and crunched against the cavern wall, Health dropping by a chunk. He pushed himself up, his new durability the only thing that kept his spine intact.
The others swarmed. Axl leapt onto the troll’s back and started trying to poke its eyes out with a sharp rock. Steve was hacking ineffectually at its ankle with his own stone. Snick scrambled up its leg and started trying to unscrew one of its warts.
It was chaos. It was barely scratching the surface.
The troll grabbed Axl and flung it across the cavern into a pile of bones. It swatted Snick away like a bug. It ignored Steve completely.
Its eyes, full of stupid, malicious intent, locked back on Leon. It hefted its club.
Leon’s mana had ticked up to 30. Not enough for another full Insane Cleaves. But maybe… he didn't need the full minute.
The troll charged, a living avalanche of regenerative flesh.
Leon stood his ground. He brought his hands together. The prayer sign. The world narrowed again, but this time he fought the insane frenzy, channeling it into a controlled, single-pointed burst.
As the troll raised its club, Leon didn't unleash a whirlwind. He focused the entire mana cost, the entire psychic strain, into one, devastating, forward lunge.
The shadow-blades extended from his wrists, and he became a single, perfect line of destructive intent. He didn't cleave a hundred times. He cleaved through.
He passed right under the troll’s swinging arm and through its torso in a streak of amethyst darkness.
He skidded to a stop ten feet behind it, mana empty, the mental strain spiking into a piercing migraine. He wobbled.
The troll stood for a second, confused. Then a clean, vertical line appeared from its shoulder to its opposite hip. Its upper body slid sideways with a wet, grinding sound and thudded to the floor. The lower half remained standing for another grotesque moment before collapsing.
Regeneration meant nothing to bisection.
The lower half twitched, the raw flesh at the wound trying desperately to knit across a gap that was now two feet wide. It failed. The twitching slowed.
>> Insane Cleaves cooldown initiated. Moderate mental strain detected. Mana exhaustion.
>> Level Up! 16. Strength +2. Constitution +1.
Leon walked over to the twitching upper torso, where the head still gurgled, eyes blinking. He placed a foot on its forehead, the purple cracks in his bone flaring. He looked down at the dying, regenerating thing.
“Not so happy now, are you?” he clattered, his voice cold and flat.
He reached down, through the mess, and found the thick, sturdy spinal column. He grasped it. His enhanced Essence Discernment told him it was poor quality, stringy with regenerative tissue, but it was big. He consumed the essence anyway, feeling a minor trickle of power.
He turned. His squad was reassembling. Axl was pulling itself out of the bone pile, missing a finger. Snick was reattaching its clavicle. Rocky was admiring the new, bigger crack in its arm.
Steve walked over to the still-kneeling troll lower half and experimentally poked it with his rock. “Regeneration has ceased. Hypothesis: Critical mass of bodily separation exceeds renewal capabilities.”
Leon looked at his hands, at the fading purple energy. The headache pulsed behind his eyes, a reminder of the cost. But he also felt stronger. Harder. More real. The troll’s bones hadn't been gourmet, but the fight… the fight had been the point.
He looked at the bisected monster, then at the pulsing, hellish light of the gorge ahead, where deeper, worse things undoubtedly lurked. A morbid chuckle escaped him, the sound like rocks in a tin can.
“Let’s find more,” he said. “I’m just getting warmed up.”
“I’m just getting warmed up.”
The words hung in the sulfurous air, a dry clatter against the troll’s final wet gasp. Leon stood over the bisected remains, the purple energy around his fists sputtering out like a dying candle. The aftermath hit him all at once: a deep, hollow throbbing where his mana should be, and that screaming headache like a spike driven between his temples.
He needed a status check.
He focused inward, pushing past the pain. The ghostly, translucent sheet flickered in his mind’s eye.
Mana: 5/60.
Pathetic. He’d burned through it all on that single, focused Cleave. The troll’s regenerative properties had been the perfect test, but now he was running on empty. He couldn’t afford to be this vulnerable, not here, not with the gorge pulsing around him with unseen threats. He needed a recharge.
The troll’s corpse was already liquefying into a foul-smelling sludge. But his enhanced Essence Discernment prickled, not at the bones, but at a faint, concentrated glow deep within the lump of its half-regenerated heart. He knelt, ignoring the grisly texture, and plunged his hand into the cooling muck. His fingers closed around something smooth, warm, and vibrating—a fist-sized stone that glowed with a dull, verdant light.
>> Item Acquired: Lesser Troll’s Core (D-Grade). A concentrated node of life-force and unaspected mana. Can be consumed to replenish mana reserves. Tastes of wet earth and iron.
He crushed it in his grip. The stone didn’t shatter; it dissolved into a stream of cool, green energy that flowed up his arm and into his core. The hollowness inside him filled. The headache receded to a dull hum.
Mana: 55/60.
A solution. A damn good one. His senses, now hyper-attuned to magical signatures, flared outwards. He detected other, fainter glows nearby—small, pulsing blues and yellows scattered in the crevices of the gorge. Slimes. He’d seen their gelatinous, mindless forms oozing around earlier, ignoring them as worthless.
They weren’t worthless anymore.
He turned to his crew. Axl was trying to fit his missing finger back on backwards. Snick was licking troll gore off its ulna with a contemplative look. Rocky was just staring at the new crack in its arm.
“New priority,” Leon clattered, his voice commanding. “Forget the bones for a minute. I need cores. Mana cores. You see anything glowing inside a monster, you bring it to me. Shiny rocks on the inside. Got it?”
Three skulls swiveled to face him.
“Inside-rocks?” Axl asked, tilting its head.
“Affirmative,” Steve said. “The boss requires internal geode retrieval.”
“Just find them,” Leon said, pinching the bridge of his nasal cavity where a nose would be. “I’m going deeper. Bring everything you find back to the smelter cavern. Don’t eat them.”
With that, he turned and stalked deeper into the pulsing red light of the Obsidian Maw, leaving them to their scavenging. The hunt was back on, but the prey had changed.
The next hours dissolved into a rhythm of brutal, efficient violence. He found the slimes first—blobby, azure things that tried to engulf him. Their cores were tiny, pea-sized things that gave back a trickle of mana, but they were everywhere. He consumed them as he went, a walking battery recharging with every squelching kill.
Then he found the biroceros.
They were mountains of chitin and rage, thundering through narrow stone channels, their twin horns plowing gouges in the rock. Leon didn’t try to match their strength head-on. He let them charge, side-stepping at the last second with his improved Dexterity, and hammered a Curse Fist into the joint of a back leg. The corruption wouldn’t kill it quickly, but it slowed the beast, made it stumble. Then he’d go for the eyes, the soft tissue under the jaw, using his cleaver and cursed hands in a grisly duet.
Mana: 42/60.
Level Up! 17.
The claw bears were faster, ambushing from dark side-tunnels. Their bones were dense, flavorful. He used the environment, luring them onto slick patches of ichor or beneath unstable overhangs of obsidian. One he killed by channeling a full Insane Cleaves burst down its gullet as it bit down on his shoulder. The mental strain was a white-hot knife each time, but the surge of power, the essence flooding his bones, was a drug.
Mana: 10/60. Core consumed. Mana: 58/60.
Level Up! 21.
Boner Eater Level Up: 4. Strength +3, Constitution +2.
He lost track of time, of everything but the next target, the next core, the next rush of grinding essence. The abyss below the spires whispered promises of greater challenges. He descended.
The oni he found in a cavern of frozen black tears, its skin the color of a bruise, its single horn cracked. It wielded a kanabo studded with rusted nails and knew foul, gutter-magic that tried to curdle his very essence. This fight was different. It was a duel. The oni’s spells met his curse energy in crackling discharges of violet and sickly green. He took a hit from the club that dented his reinforced ribcage, but he got inside its guard, his hands glowing with malevolent light, and ripped the horn from its head before consuming its heart-core in front of its dying eyes.
The energy that flooded him was volcanic. His bones sang with new, terrible strength.
Level Up! 28.
Strength +5. Intelligence +2 (from magical essence absorption).
When the abyssal demons came—three of them, all clicking chitin and spindled limbs that spewed black acid—he was ready. He fought not like a monster, but like the programmer he once was, analyzing patterns, exploiting weaknesses. He used their acid to melt the ground beneath their feet. He severed their mana-channels with precise, curse-imbued strikes. He consumed their cores, each one a bolt of pure, stygian lightning to his system.
By the time the last demon dissolved into foul smoke, the gorge around him was a charnel house of his making. His body was a lattice of fine cracks, some old, some new, all pulsing with a deep, sustained amethyst fire. He felt heavy. Real. Dense with purpose and stolen power.
He stood amidst the carnage, the only sound the hiss of cooling demon-fluid. He needed to see. He called his status.
A sheet of blue light, solid and dense with information, materialized before him.
[Name: Leon Skelton – Species: Skeleton Warrior (Uncommon) – Level: 35]
Health: 210/210
Mana: 120/120
Stamina: 89/89
Strength: 78.9 | Dexterity: 45.1 | Constitution: 112.2 | Intelligence: 16 | Wisdom: 9 | Charisma: 1| Durability: 31.5