The party started

The dracolich's vision was completely obscured, and he was even more shocked to realize he couldn't feel his own body anymore. After a few seconds, he forcibly released all the Qi from his meridians, and his survival instinct made his thin, draconic bloodline flare up in an oppressive glow.

Quickly, his vision was restored, and he now found himself above a black forest. However, everything around him was extremely calm and silent. Only the intense miasma and the sky covered by a black dome hinted that he had indeed entered that strange place. He had heard about the battle going on here, yet nothing was happening.

He was the oldest creature on the entire planet, studying the laws of death for countless years. But there, within that environment rich in such laws, he couldn't sense or comprehend anything. He could only rely on his most primal instincts. It was then that his sense of smell detected something.

'Blood... but it holds no trace of life. It's like the blood of a long-dead corpse,' the dracolich thought, intrigued. However, it didn't take long for him to feel a strange familiarity. 'This... yes, it's his blood!'

'I killed his entire continent myself a long time ago... I felt his talent for dark laws and spared him. That way, he could nurture a deep and endless hatred, and I would later reap the rewards by killing him and refining him. A soul resentful to the extreme could help me break through the bottleneck.'

'He never let go of his hatred, and he was close to maturing. How did he die here?' Naturally, the dracolich was talking about the necromancer, who was sacrificed to create this dome of darkness.

Suddenly, a chill ran down the dracolich's spine, causing him to abruptly turn to the side. In front of him, a terrifying creature composed of countless bones appeared, and each step it took made the miasma tremble. The Corpse Guardian that Bruno and Alm created had finally made its appearance.

The dracolich had never seen anything like it, but he felt it posed no danger. It was when the creature turned all its skulls in his direction and hundreds of red runes lit up on its bones. In that second, his scales quivered, and the sense of death looming over him emerged, something he had only felt when the black queen subdued him a few years ago.

His bloodline and Qi exploded in full power without him needing to give any command. He felt like that creature was about to do something. However, it was then that he heard a strange sound. It only lasted for a moment, and he couldn't comprehend it at first. "These are... words... the human language?"

His wings flapped high above, and his instincts quickly identified where the sound was coming from; it was above him, on his back. 

Right there, a skeleton with many runes on its bones could be seen. "Realized too late, pathetic lizard."

*BOOM!*

Suddenly, an explosion of black blood covered the entire black domain. A roar followed, making the earth tremble. It was the dead body of the dracolich crashing to the ground!

From above, floating calmly, was a skeleton draped in a mantle of black runes. In its two skeletal hands, it held a massive pile of pulsating dead flesh.

"It's far from being a dragon's heart, but it'll do the job," Bruno said calmly. Obviously, he was holding the Dracolich's heart!

The Corpse Guardian was quite strong, but it couldn't possibly kill the Dracolich alone. That said, Bruno and Alm didn't have any intention to use it to attack the Dracolich. Instead, they carved high-level runes all over its body. 

However, those runes couldn't achieve even a single percentage of their power. Their only reason to be there was to scare the Dracolich and rob it of its attention. The simple fact that the runes were at such a high level scared the Dracolich to death... Well, he was already dead, but anyway...

The moment that the Dracolich prepared to defend himself against the Corpse Guardian's Runes was also the moment Bruno and Alm stealthily approached his back. Little did the Dracolich know that the threat of death didn't come from the Corpse Guardian but from the seemingly inoffensive skeleton in the shadows.

Suddenly, Bruno remembered something and shouted. "All hail the Divine Skeleton!"

Alm truly felt like dying already. "You actually like this idiotic title, don't you?"

Bruno didn't hide at all. "Yeap!"

It all lasted a few minutes before they felt the approach of something, and quickly, that heart turned into black dust, absorbed by the hundreds of runes on the skeleton's body. Suddenly, they felt a huge fluctuation in another part of the Domain of Darkness. "It's the Knight of Death; he came with his entire army."

Bruno and Alm didn't hesitate as their skeleton's body lit up with several of its runes, causing the miasma of the area to thicken. As a result, even the Death Knight froze for a while, stunned by the sudden change. To achieve that, the runes that lit up on Bruno and Alm's skeleton body were lost.

Alm and Bruno then descended to the fallen giant's body of the Dracolich before the power of death flowed into it. It didn't take long for the body to tremble, and its wings flapped again, rising into the sky like an undead and a puppet.

When the Knight of Death regained his senses, he was met with a wave of pure black fire. He reacted quickly, but his mount wasn't as lucky, immediately turning into charcoal. That was the Dracolich's Fire!

He was stunned, not knowing what was happening, and only heard a roar behind him. His shock deepened when he saw his army being slaughtered by dozens of creatures that appeared to be a fusion of various skeletons. 

Sure enough, the army that Bruno and Alm created entered the field!

The Death Knight's lance was pointed upward, though, ignoring the events behind it. He couldn't afford to be distracted by that now. "Why are you attacking me, dracolich? The black queen sent me to investigate what wa-" Yet, he didn't even have time to finish his words. That's because he saw the Dracolich's Claws coming straight at him from above.

The Knight then exploded with all his power and leaped with his lance into the air. The clash of claw and lance even made the domain barrier tremble, but the claw wasn't strong enough, and the lance advanced, piercing through the Dracolich's body.

The Knight felt relief, but then he realized his blood was rising in his throat. His last sight was looking at his chest and seeing it pierced by something. 'This... a skeletal hand?' were his final thoughts. The Dracolich was the perfect distraction for another hidden and deadly attack from Bruno and Alm's Divine Skeleton. The fact no one knew about their existence was the greatest factor in this trap.

"All hail th-"

"Shut up!" Alm had already lost his patience.

"You are no fun. Are you sure you are truly me?" Bruno couldn't help but ask.

"Oh, believe me," Alm started. "My life's greatest regret is to know I'm you."

"It goes both ways," Bruno retorted back.

Nonetheless, the massacre was swift again, and when they were done with the Death Knight, the Corpse Guardians and their army had already finished off the enemy.

Bruno and Alm floated above as the power of death flowed through their skeletal body like a tsunami. They then directed part of this power to their twenty Corpse Guardians, as well as to their Dracolich and their new Knight of Death.

A few minutes later, several holes emerged from all directions, accompanied by war cries.

The skeleton seemed to grin sinisterly, and they reduced the miasma's intensity in the environment while hiding as the Dracolich ascended high as if searching for something.

"There he is! I don't sense the other Dracolich nor the Empress. The Dracolich won the deadly contest!" shouted a general.

"Watch out for the general mounted on the beast. He must be injured; the Dracolich is looking for him!" replied another.

They advanced quickly, and the King was puzzled to see only a small part of the burned and destroyed forest. Something seemed off, but they were already mounted on the tiger, so there was no turning back.

When the King looked at the Dracolich and saw a large hole in its chest and another in its claw, his doubts dissipated in large part as he shouted, "He's seriously wounded! Attack with everything you've got!"

Alm and Bruno patiently waited until they felt that everyone outside had entered the Dark Domain. Killing users of dark laws was difficult even for specialists. He was a skeleton who could only use his own dark laws, but he still had a significant limit on how much death Qi he could accumulate. That's why he had to come up with various schemes, using the necromancer's knowledge and his own understanding.

After everyone had entered, the domain lit up with the maximum power of the Yin death laws. The miasma multiplied hundreds of times, and all the generals, along with the King, felt death looming over their heads. They weren't idiots. 'It's a trap!' They all thought at the same time.

It didn't take a second before everyone retrieved rudimentary crystals and crushed them. Those were the teleportation crystals!

But shortly after, their minds shattered in terror when they found out that nothing had happened.

"You wanted to escape? The party has only just begun," spoke a sinister voice from above, a voice that felt like the words of a malevolent death god thirsty for blood.