Location: Furnace Maw Armory
Core Stability: 30% → 33%
System Pulse: Resonant Ping – Adaptive Armament Path
The tunnel narrowed into ruin.
No runes guided me this time—just instinct. Something beneath the floor hummed faintly as I walked, not like a system directive, but like bone calling to bone.
The resonance led me to a warped corridor sealed in soot and silence.
And then I found it.
The Furnace Maw Armory.
The room was half-collapsed, buried under layers of time and ash. Walls had buckled in places, but the bones—the bones remained.
Shattered blades. Cracked helmets fused with skulls. Racks of femurs bound in silver rings. Fragments of rib-scythes twisted into the floor like thorny roots.
The air was different here.
Warm. Still.
Like the forge fires had just recently died out.
And at the center—against the far wall—stood something more intact than the rest.
A forging pedestal.
It was partially buried in a mound of vertebrae and broken spines, but I could see the soul-well core nestled at its center. Dim glyphs pulsed faintly across its cracked surface.
I stepped forward, clawed hands brushing aside bits of femur and jaw.
The pedestal was dormant—but not dead.
It just needed intent.
【System Alert – Adaptive Arsenal Node Detected】
Access Type: Manual
Compatibility: Bone Rank Δ / Essence Sync Required
Weapon Design Template: Freestyle
Material Source: Organic Only
Initial Directive: Assemble
I looked around.
Not like a scavenger anymore.
Like a designer.
Rib blades, femur shafts, fingerbone spikes—each piece whispered its shape, its history, its failure.
These weren’t just remnants.
They were prototypes.
Blueprints made of regret and decay.
“These weren’t weapons of war.”
“They were extensions of the undead who held them.”
I could feel it now—the pressure behind my eyes. The need to build. To mold power from the bones of the past.
No longer just to kill.
To command.
I knelt at the pedestal, clawed fingertips running over a femur laced with soul residue. I didn’t know what it would become yet.
But I would shape it.
And when I did—
Something would bleed.
The pedestal responded to touch—not with light, but with hunger.
It drank the contact of my claws and pulsed in return, slow and steady, like breath caught in a forge that had forgotten how to burn.
I reached inward—into the Bone Bank—and retrieved what I needed.
【Material Accessed: Alpha Crypt Rat femur (Reinforced, Semi-Intact)】
【Component Added: Rib Shard – Crypt Rat Alpha】
【Supplement Thread Detected: Soul Fiber – Latent (Unstable)}
Assembly Ready – Proceed?
→ [Y]
I began.
Not with elegance.
With instinct.
The Alpha Crypt Rat femur thudded into the pedestal with a satisfying crack. Thicker than my forearm, still coated in memory residue. I shaved the end into a blunt point with a sharpened ulna and embedded the rib shard deep into the tip—angled slightly forward, like a fang halfway between tool and trap.
The soul thread wasn’t visible.
But I could feel it—woven into the marrow, tugging my hands in subtle pulses. It bound the grip tighter than bone alone ever could.
The result?
A spear, roughly my height. Jagged. Uneven. Beautiful in the way a predator’s teeth are beautiful—designed to break more than pierce.
When I lifted it, the weapon didn’t just balance in my hand.
It leaned into me.
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Like it recognized me.
【Weapon Created: Gravepiercer Lv.1】
– Type: Bone Spear
– Passive Trait: Serrated Wound (Bleeds Over Time)
– Modifier: Class-Bound (Tier-0 Core)
– Sync: 73%
– Status: Active
System Note: Weapon partially soul-fused. Bond permanent unless forcibly severed.
Adaptability: High.
It wasn’t just a spear.
It was a promise.
Not a blade.
Not a club.
Not a scavenged shard.
“Something... primal.”
“Precise.”
I took my first step with it.
It didn’t clatter.
It resonated.
I wasn’t just wielding a weapon.
I had built one.
And something in the crypt heard it.
The moment the spear fused to my essence, the crypt shifted.
It wasn’t the floor or the walls.
It was the attention.
Something deeper felt the change.
And it came.
Bone scraped stone—fast. Measured.
No skitter. No panic.
Controlled pursuit.
A shape emerged through the forge’s broken archway.
Tall. Low to the ground. Built from dense, scavenged bones fused by necrotic sinew. Its skull was elongated, fanged, and etched with runes I couldn’t read.
A skeletal hound.
【Entity Identified: Hound-Class Undead – Bone Stalker Lv. 4】
Status: Active
Temperament: Calculating / Predatory
Weak Points: Rear joint clusters, under-jaw vertebrae.
Speed Class: Tier-1
System Advisory: Engage with caution. Suggest controlled environment.
→ Auto-track enabled.
I stepped back. Spear ready. Not raised.
Angled. Waiting.
The hound watched me. It didn’t bark. It didn’t charge.
It tested me.
A slow arc around the forge.
It knew this place. Probably nested in it.
And now I’d interrupted its domain.
It lunged.
But I was already moving.
I pivoted—bone grinding bone—bringing Gravepiercer low to catch the underbelly.
But it twisted mid-air.
Claws scraped the floor, redirecting momentum.
I caught a flick of its glowing eye sockets as it bounded to the side.
Smart.
I adjusted.
This wasn’t a rat. This wasn’t instinct.
This was a tactician with four legs.
I feinted.
Right foot stomp. Spear up. Fake lunge. Pause.
The hound reacted—too early.
It darted left, exposing its hind flank.
【Tactical Instinct Subroutine: Active】
– Predictive Angle Calculated: Left Rear Knee Joint
I lunged.
Not fast—tight.
Speartip caught the gap between its shifting thigh and femur.
Crunch.
The hound screamed—not a howl, but a reverb shriek—pain turned sonic.
It staggered.
Still dangerous.
But slower now.
And I had the angle.
“This wasn’t about strength.”
I stepped in. Shaft rotated. Spear reversed grip mid-swing.
“It was about angles.”
I brought the jagged rib-shard tip down like a gavel into its neck socket.
Once.
Twice.
A crack.
And on the third strike—
Severance.
Its skull rolled across the ash-covered floor.
【Target Eliminated: Bone Stalker Lv. 4】
Essence Absorbed.
Trait Sampled: Reflex Mesh – Fragmented
Bone Material Quality: High
Soul Residue Present.
Integration Suggested: Bone Bank Update Pending.
The air thinned.
Not in fear.
In respect.
The crypt quieted.
I exhaled out of habit.
Then looked down at the hound’s remains.
“You weren’t just a beast.”
“You were trained.”
I crouched beside it.
The bones were etched. Marked. Glyphs carved intentionally—not feral.
Someone made this thing.
Forged it.
Like I forged Gravepiercer.
The Bone Stalker’s skull stopped rolling.
Its socket-fire flickered once.
Then died.
But the soul inside it didn’t vanish.
It coiled.
Waited.
And offered itself.
The Core pulsed.
Not hunger this time.
Recognition.
【Essence Threshold Reached – Predator Class Confirmed】
Processing Rare Kill...
Residual Combat Trait Detected.
Infusion Source: Skeletal Hound – Modified
【Skill Acquired: Blood Bind Lv.1】
Description:
– Allows host to bind a weapon or compatible item via consumed blood essence.
– Bound item can be recalled at will.
– Passive Effect: Weapon Synchronicity +10%
– Special Effect: Soul Channeling Potential (Locked – Tier-1 Required)
Status: Active
The moment the skill embedded, I felt it in my hand.
Gravepiercer vibrated.
Not like metal.
Like bone... humming.
Alive.
The shaft twitched as if it wanted to move on its own, flexing under the tether now wrapping from my palm to the spear's grip.
Not a thread.
A vein.
Bloodless. But binding.
The spear leaned heavier in my arm—but in a familiar way.
Like it belonged there.
Like it knew where it should return to.
I stepped back. Held it out. Released it.
Let it fall.
The sound it made when it hit the ground was unnatural—more like a wet snap than a clang.
Then—
“Come.”
It flew.
Not with speed, but intention—a curve of movement traced by memory, not muscle.
The shaft slapped back into my palm like it had never left.
“A leash for my weapon.”
I grinned, hollow and grim.
“A trick for the living…”
“…A gift for the dead.”
I rolled my wrist, feeling how the weight of the spear shifted with my movement. The bond had altered its balance—not just as a weapon, but as an extension.
No more drops.
No more disarms.
Gravepiercer was mine.
Bound by blood I didn’t have.
【Weapon Sync: Upgraded – 83%】
Modifier Updated: Bloodbound
Recall Range: 12m
Advanced Effect Locked Until: Tier-1 Evolution Achieved
This wasn’t just a weapon now.
It was a signature.
I turned to the Bone Stalker’s corpse. Half-crushed ribs. Still pulsing faintly.
More material. More memory. More potential.
But for the first time since waking in this world...
I didn’t want to consume it yet.
I wanted to use it.
I had a spear.
I had a bind.
I had a name carved in stone.
And now I had range.
Let the crypts send more.
Let the living throw me into their pits.
“Whatever breaks my weapon—
I’ll pull it back through their throat.”
The spear didn’t just sit in my hand anymore.
It hummed.
Low. Bone-deep. A resonance I felt more than heard—vibrating up the shaft, into my arm, then into my spine like it was part of my skeleton now.
I stared at it.
Gravepiercer.
Serrated rib shard at its point. Alpha Crypt Rat femur as its spine. Soul thread still flexing, tightening its grip into the shaft like sinew that remembered war.
The weapon was imperfect.
Uneven.
Rough.
But it was mine.
And it was alive.
A flicker ran through my memory. Not a vision. Not a system prompt.
A whisper of a truth that hadn’t come from this world at all.
“Commanders don’t fight empty-handed.”
Where had I heard it?
Another soldier? A mentor?
Or did I say it—to someone who needed it, once?
I didn’t know.
But it felt true.
And more than that—
It felt earned.
I wasn’t just scavenging anymore.
Not reacting. Not improvising.
I was preparing.
I was constructing the version of myself this world would learn to fear.
I turned slowly in the dim forge light. The room no longer felt like ruin.
It felt like a foundry.
Not of weapons.
Of purpose.
I flexed the spear in my grip. Let it spin once, clean and silent, and come to rest at my side like it belonged there.
Because it did.
“I wasn’t just undead anymore.”
I took one step forward. Then another.
“I was armed.”
I paused at the edge of the broken archway, staring into the dark halls beyond.
Somewhere out there, the Gravehowl still moved. Its rumble echoed faintly, pacing the depths of the crypt.
But I didn’t flinch.
Because this time, I wasn’t afraid of what hunted me.
“I was…”
The words formed slow, sharpened.
“…becoming a hunter.”
The crypt would remember me now.
Not as a mistake.
But as a threat.