Whispers of a Dead Empire

Chapter 67

Once the pain had faded, I stood up and teleported over to the training area. My domain was still empty, and I saw the adventurers were gone. Good riddance, then. I turned towards some of the target dummies and quickly looked through my skills. So Harrowing Gaze wouldn't be good to use here since it would affect living entities. However, I could still practice the other skills.

First off, I activated Dragon's flesh, and a strange sensation covered my skin. It felt as if it was being stretched out by some unseen machine. The top layer darkened slightly and dried out. Cracks formed across the surface, at regular intervals seeming imitating scales. I ran my fingers across it, and it felt a bit like dried leather, but there were tiny bits of metal that faintly glittered in dying sunlight. I glanced at my medium-clad hand and saw that the skill seemed to blend in with my medium.

Out of a morbid sense of curiosity, I created a new chef's knife and ran it across the palm of my hand. The tip of the knife only scratched the surface of my skin, but nothing more. I didn't really press all that hard. But it was good. At least I had some survivability in a fight. The upside was that this skill wasn't a constant resource drain. Which was odd. I may have to consult with Kharon to figure out what was going on.

I kept the skin on and tested my next skill. I summoned my weapon template and five-long reptilian-like claws extended from my fingertips. The back of my hand took on a gauntlet-like appearance. As if I had stuck my hand into a giant glove. Overall the hand was large and covered in etheric scales. The claws themselves were an easy fifteen centimeters and came to a triangular shape near the top. The thought of these hitting somebody made me shiver slightly. There was no telling how much damage these bad boys would do if I could get my hands on someone. I kept the claws out and spun around. For some reason, all of this felt so right.

I stopped, looked through my skill catalog, and tested out soul flame next. I kept my claws active as I summoned the flame forth. In the center of my palm, a radiant violet flame appeared laced with white flickered into existence. I marveled at the flame, especially since its radiated heat didn't seem to bother my skin. Instead, it gnawed away at me from the inside. A bit like a fire that burned underneath my skin.

I pointed it outwards and sent my soul forth, and the fire shot forward and slammed into the training dummy, though much to my dismay, it didn't leave any visible marking. I guess this was another one of those skills meant for living targets. I dismissed the skill and quickly brought up the next with a quick motion.

My claws shifted as a strange fire spread across their surface. The flames didn't have much of a specific color, other than the noticeable color of ki, mingling with that of my soul. It radiated a strange power that gnawed at my mind. But I ignored that feeling and stepped forward to the practice dummy and took a test swing. The air screamed out as if the claws were rending reality itself and tore through the wood as if it didn't exist. As my claws left the body of the training dummy, small gouts of flame erupted from the air, further consuming my target.

I pulled my hand back and stared at it in wonder. This was so fucking cool! I chuckled as I dismissed the skill and then focused on my next one. Which was cataclysm, though a part of me was slightly worried about the after-effects, but I wouldn't know what they were until I tried it. I took a deep breath and consulted my knowledge on using the skill.

The energy concentrated in my chest like a storm. The surrounding area dimmed as light rushed torward me. Tiny tendrils of lightning split the air around me as the power built up. My soul bar quickly drained, but I stopped it as soon as it reached half. In the blink of an eye, an explosion blinded me as my soul shot outwards in every direction, tearing up the ground and destroying a solid four meters around me in all directions.

A wave of weakness crashed into my body, and I fell to my knees. It wasn't nearly as strong as when I used my soul shout, but it was still pretty powerful. I glanced at my resource bar and saw that it had dipped a little lower than half. I really needed to practice getting this stuff leveled up. At least I have levels now that I can offset my resource costs. I stood up and brushed down my cloak, and brushed back my hair. It was time to get to work on leveling everything while I had the chance before the next batch of adventures got here. I cracked my fingers and mentally prepared myself for what was to come. Gotta get that grind on.

I stumbled into my office, my mind weary and my muscles sore. I pushed myself to my absolute limit, trying to get these skills to a good place. They all increased in one rank overall, which wasn't bad, but I wasn't about to mess with my soul bar right now. That would only lead to a massive headache later, and that wasn't something that I was too keen on dealing with. I already felt like shit as it was, and I wasn't going to push past that point.

I threw myself onto my bed and saw that Alessia had returned and was sitting in the corner reading something. "What is that?" I asked, more out of trying to start a conversation than anything else.

"A book." She replied as she flipped through to another page.

I narrowed my eyes at her and threw a pillow. "No shit. What book is it?"

The pillow went right through her, and she tore her gaze from it and towards me. A flicker of amusement danced through her eyes as she regarded me. "It's a novel one of the adventurers gave me before they left. It's a romance book. The name is twenty shades of black."

I froze when I heard the name, utterly aware of what that book was, even if I hadn't read it. Or at least, I could infer what it was. "Oh, I see; well, have fun with that." I shrugged as I climbed into my bed. I didn't mind her reading that; besides, it's not like I'm her mother, but it makes me feel weird knowing she's reading that kind of stuff.

My head hit the pillow, and I pondered some other things. The first adventurers that came here were unique, to say the least. They seemed ill-equipped to be here and struggled a bit, but I think I would let them bash themselves against my undead for a while longer before I decided to change around the legion. Whatever gave me essence, really.

As that thought crossed my mind, it dawned on me that I hadn't checked my pool or the traits that I have. I've been a little busy with everything. I made a quick gesture, opened up my menu, and looked through everything. Each of those four assassins yields four thousand essence per, which gave me almost sixteen thousand. Total, I had twenty-one thousand and then some change. So I needed four more thousand to hit my cap. From there, I had no idea what to do, so I would get with Kharon on the matter. I dismissed it and glanced at my domain traits.

I bobbed my head as I read them over. Not a bad collection of traits. Everything looked pretty simple and straightforward. The only thing that I needed to do now kept molding my undead to what I wanted them to be. I still felt a little bad at the fact that I was slowly grinding away their memories, but the more I thought about it, the less bothered I was. It was just something that had to be done. I dismissed my screen and stared up at my ceiling. This wasn't so bad. All I had to do was get over some reservations I had. Now it was just a matter of achieving my goal here. But the whispers part was interesting. I haven't noticed anything that seemed off. Perhaps that should be a Kharon question. If I remember of course.

As I was working through some ideas, my mind flittered back to Alessia's evolution. It said she had become sentient, so I was curious about what that meant for me. I reopened my menu and looked through everything to see if I could find more information.

As I read it over, my blood ran cold, and I gazed at Alessia. If she died, I couldn't respawn her. I had to keep her alive, or at least close by. All the others that would perish here, at least I could bring them back. But not Alessia. I frowned, but I didn't voice my concern about it. I had some amount of trust in her to not do something as stupid as to kill herself.