Clashing blades and blood-chilling roars echoed through the Mists as Jerry jumped from stone island to stone island. The dark water was calm beneath his feet, only revealing the slightest of ripples despite the raging battle, while the group’s members shouted warnings at each other.

  "Careful!" Marcus yelled as he stepped on a shaky stone.

  "Horace!" Laura called out, and an arrow whistled by her ear to meet the monstrosity behind her. A moment later, an axe-wielding skeletal form fell on the monstrosity, tearing it apart.

  A grunt escaped Axehand’s skull as his crimson eye-flames darted left and right, scanning for the next opponent. He and Horace were covering the retreat, taking care of any enemies that dared approach.

  The monstrosities were fine. Each of the two could easily handle them. The real problem was the death knights, who needed both Axehand and Horace to focus on them or they could survive long enough to drag someone down—they were not much weaker than a non-overcharged Axehand.

  The enemies grew wary of casualties after some point. Instead of rushing in one or two at a time and getting butchered, they ran parallel to the group instead. They seemed to be aware of each other’s positions as they wove a net, trying to outrun them by the flanks and surround them. The net tightened.

  This development should have been disastrous, but it was a blessing in disguise. Jerry’s group didn’t care about getting surrounded; they only cared about making it to the damn rock.

  The battle had stopped for now, but creepy roars still came from the left, right, and behind them. Marcus and Laura had legs of lead and throbbing temples. They could barely keep going anymore.

  A single misstep could lead to ruin. A single accident could become a disaster. Twice, they almost fell but someone caught them. The roars were closing in now, from every direction at once except for directly ahead.

  Birb had located the rock. They just had to get there in time.

  They did.

  A lone gray rock stood tall over the dark waters, proudly overlooking the hunt before it. The moment they saw it, everyone was invigorated. Soon, they were only two stone islands away.

  The mist roiled and parted. Several forms surrounded them, death knights and monstrosities alike, and they numbered more than a dozen. Axehand and Horace had already destroyed four death knights, but there were another four present, plus the three from the outer lake squad. There were also nine monstrosities.

  When Jerry and co. had lured a dozen death knights away, they’d thought themselves smart. In truth, Arakataron had only spared that force because he didn’t need it. He had another dozen, as well as the monstrosities, the mist-face warrior, and most importantly, himself.

  The group was surrounded. The death knights howled in triumph and prepared to tear these invaders apart, but they didn’t know they were too late. The rock was already very close.

  "Now, everyone!" Jerry yelled. "Swim to the shore!"

  It was a lie, of course. Everyone jumped into the water and headed for the rock, escaping the sight of the undead.

  The water splashed, and Jerry’s eyes widened from the cold. It wasn’t just temperature, either.

  Even as a necromancer—and, therefore, an undead—such thick concentration of death energy was enough to send chills down his spine and make him feel ill.

  It was like diving into a starless night.

  Distorted sounds reached his ears, signifying that the others had dived as well. Jerry turned around on instinct.

  Surprisingly, he could see. The lake’s surface was pitch-black, but it got brighter when you got past that. Jerry couldn’t tell where the illumination came from, but he was glad for it.

  His eyes witnessed an infinite void. His friends floated in nothingness, and the darkness stretched endlessly below, creating the illusion that this lake had no bottom. A few rocks could be seen in the background, but Jerry didn’t pay too much attention, instead focusing on Marcus and Laura.

  The moment they dove, both went pale. Their eyes widened to the extreme and they started shivering, completely unable to handle the invasive death energy. Jerry channeled his magic, trying to force the energy away from them, but it was like using his hands to push the rain.

  We must hurry, he realized. His own body was getting corroded, too, but slowly. He could endure for some minutes. Marcus and Laura couldn’t.

  Filled with haste, Jerry turned around to look for the proud rock, and he found it—a lone obelisk rising from depths untold. He also found something else, and he spat out a bunch of bubbles in shock.

  There was a creature staring at him. It was gray and at least ten feet tall, while its eyes seemed hollow. Jerry froze in shock before realizing what he was looking at. It was a statue, and it wasn’t alone.

  The many stone islands were the peaks of stone formations reaching all the way from the bottom to the surface of the lake. Their lower segments weren’t visible from above the water, but now that Jerry was submerged, he could see that all those islands weren’t just stone formations. Every single one of them was an intricately carved statue.

  Some resembled humans. Others were also humanoid but with completely wrong proportions—wide bodies, tall faces—or even extra limbs. There were even some that had feathers or gills, resembling species completely alien.

  Each one of these statues was hunched and held its hands high as if supporting the entire sky on its shoulders, with said sky being the stone islands that Jerry and company had been treading on. Each was crafted to a lifelike degree, and each was roughly as tall as two men.

  Jerry was surrounded by stone giants holding up the ground he used to walk on. It was awe-inspiring. He lost himself for a second, as did everyone else, and only returned to reality when a white fish approached his face and gazed at him curiously.

  Crap!

  He quickly looked around, looking for the proud rock that was thankfully right in front of him. This was the only rock not carved into a statue, which was suspicious, but Jerry didn’t have the time to consider mysteries right now. They needed to get inside the treasure room and seal it back up before Marcus and Laura rotted away—hopefully, there would be enough air to breathe.

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  Indeed, the surroundings rocks were shorter than the lone one, and vaguely formed a crown around it.

  Axehand! He sent through their mental link, and the skeleton snapped out of his reverie with a grunt. He knew what he had to do. His axes worked like paddles as he propelled himself forward, and the moment he reached the stone’s lower half, he lightly tapped against it. Then, realizing he couldn’t hear the echo underwater, he gave up and simply smashed an axe into it.

  The impact was dampened by the water, but Axehand flew backwards anyway. He quickly returned to find a head-sized hole in the rock, behind which lay a wide gap. Dark water flooded in already.

  He’d found the hidden room.

  What thick rock, Jerry thought, suddenly feeling hopeful. Archmage or not, nobody’s seeing through it. Arakataron might have actually missed the treasure!

  With quick strikes, Axehand widened the hole enough to pass and squeezed himself through it. Marcus and Laura were right behind him. They dove through the passage with the desperation of drowning, and everyone else followed as quickly as they could. Jerry helped organize the undead, and he was the last to cross.

  The moment he did, he fell a couple feet to the ground and landed on Headless.

  "Oof," he said. "Thanks, big guy."

  Headless made happy sounds as he kneeled on the floor, patting around himself. He was looking for his head, which he’d apparently lost in all the chaos.

  However, the problems weren’t over. Death energy flowed in freely from the gap behind them, dispersing into mist the moment it contacted the room’s stale air. Axehand was already at work. He stuck a stone pedestal into the opening, blocking it partly, and all the undead tore their clothes apart to try and close the gaps. Liquid death energy resembled water, but its flooding power was significantly less.

  The mist thinned, and in a few moments, a poorly made patchwork of clothing covered most of the hole. Tendrils of mist still seeped through the cracks, but Laura’s water appeared and blocked what few gaps remained.

  Everyone watched with bated breaths for a moment, but no new death energy entered.

  "We did it!" Jerry exclaimed, and the rest burst into cheers. “Good job, everyone!"

  The undead exchanged high-fives, smiles, and thumbs-up, while Marcus and Laura hugged themselves, still shivering.

  "Are you okay, guys?"

  "I’ll be fine," Marcus managed to mutter, "just a little cold, that’s all."

  "Mhm." Jerry nodded but spoke no further.

  At the next moment, Marcus realized where he was and spontaneously recovered.

  "Treasure!" he shouted, looking around wildly. Jerry looked the other way, towards the stone wall separating them from the outside. He was interested in this Dorman’s treasure too, but those stone statues… Who made them? Why? Did it happen after the death lake was created, or was it just a spooky coincidence?

  An unintelligible sound coming from Marcus’s throat made Jerry turn around. The treasure hunter finally managed to speak.

  "Where the hell is the treasure!?"

  The stone room they found themselves in was quite simple, and to Marcus’s dismay, quite empty as well. Stone columns supported its low ceiling, while the entire room was circular with a diameter of only thirty feet. The only visible treasures were at the other side of the room, where three items lay on the ground.

  One was a corpse. It was female and dressed in flowing robes, both they and the body perfectly preserved. Her skin was tanned, her long hair blonde, and her face angelic, as if a kind goddess that was only sleeping and could wake up at any moment—but she was very dead, as Jerry’s soul perception indicated. However, what really surprised Jerry wasn’t the corpse’s state, but the two wings jutting out from its back. This was a winged human!

  "Master! I want wings too!" Boney exclaimed, turning to Jerry.

  Jerry shook his head.

  The second item was a tiny brown booklet haphazardly thrown on the floor. This was also well-preserved, but Jerry couldn’t read the title without going closer.

  Finally, the third item was a half-black, half-white pearl which looked like a toy. Besides the interesting coloration, there was nothing special about it. However, the moment Jerry’s eyes landed on the pearl, it arrested the entirety of his attention. His soul churned. His mind slowed down. His heart forgot to beat—thank Desistos he was a necromancer.

  Jerry’s mind told him this was just a pearl. His soul told him it to worship it. He was struck.

  "Master?" Boney shook Jerry out of his reverie. "I said, are you okay?"

  Jerry blinked and shook his head.

  With shaky steps, he ignored Boney and everything else as he paced for the pearl and grabbed it. His world exploded. Colors and notions of indescribable depth flowed through his mind. The stone walls became kaleidoscopes of endless mysteries. Complete ecstasy and the greatest horror overtook him at the same time.

  Jerry had a certain degree of resistance against mental illusions and invasions, but before this pearl, he was like a newborn. In a flash, he witnessed the death of a million people, and he experienced each and every one of them personally; the transformations of the soul, how it grows and shrivels from the vicissitudes of life; a single death stretched over infinite moments, where every tiny change in the body is captured and magnified a thousand times.

  Jerry’s world became a black-and-white spiral of mind-bending magnitude formed from endless tiny specks, each representing an entity on the level of Jerry.

  Of course, Jerry’s mind could not comprehend these images. He could barely count to a hundred. He was frozen as the images flickered before his eyes, and his mind protected him by tuning everything out.

  Suddenly, Jerry recovered, and he was still touching the pearl. Not a moment had passed. Everything was normal, and the pearl was unexpectedly warm to the touch, almost burning, even. Everyone was still talking excitedly behind him.

  However, Jerry drew a cold breath because he suddenly felt transparent. The pearl was looking at him. It had no eyes—it was just a pearl—but it was looking at him. Everything in Jerry was seen through, be it his soul, body, mind, or even the innermost desires and secrets not even he knew.

  He was judged, and he was deemed worthy.

  The pressure disappeared. The pearl cooled back down, and it was now just a pearl. Nobody would have guessed it was the most divine of items.

  Jerry knew what the pearl was. There was only one thing it could be.

  He turned around to find everyone approaching. "Hey guys, guess what," he said, raising the pearl high with a smile. "I found the real Death Prism!"

  Many jaws hit the floor.