**Chapter 90: Skeletal Undead**
It has appeared.
Soren waited for a full three days and finally saw the emergence of the Shadow Rift.
He turned to look at Vivian behind him. Today, she was wearing a black princess dress and had tied a beautiful bow on her head. Noticing Soren’s gaze, the little girl smiled sweetly and chirped, “Brother, don’t worry!”
“I’ve read a lot of materials about the Shadow Plane; there definitely won’t be any danger. Moreover, Sister Gloria has told me many things about planes and demi-planes, maybe she knows more than you do!”
The Shadow Plane.
One of the planes Soren was most familiar with, even more so than the Material Plane.
It is a transitional plane connecting the Material Plane and other planes. Strictly speaking, it is still a large quasi-material plane, a space world lying between matter and energy. Most of the plane worlds can be reached from the Shadow Plane, so there are many unpredictable dangers here, especially in the edge regions where space overlaps, where one could be sucked into spatial turbulence directly. Therefore, Soren was always very cautious every time he entered the Shadow Plane because there were many dangerous areas and powerful creatures.
The most common was the Shadow Dragon.
There aren’t many dragon species in the Shadow Plane, and the Shadow Dragons are the most numerous.
To be precise, Soren really remembered quite a few locations of Shadow Dragon lairs; however, he knew he couldn’t fight them, even with Vivian by his side, as he remembered they were all above adult age.
The world began to turn into a grayish color.
As Soren’s figure passed through the Shadow Rift, his whole being took on a subtle grayish hue. The Shadow Plane does not reject other colors, but any color here will carry a bit of shadowy gray. This change stems from the structural nature of the entire plane space; unless one uses spells to counteract it, no matter who it is, they cannot resist it. This is one of the plane’s rules. For example, the sky and sun of this Shadow Plane can rain, snow, or hail, but the color will always be a grayish tone. No matter how bright the sunlight is, it can only shine in bright gray.
So many times, it looks like twilight here, a paradise for shadow-like life.
“Be careful.”
Soren glanced back at Vivian, who was curiously examining her surroundings. The little girl seemed to be quite fascinated by this plane, which was entirely different from her original world. She even curiously reached down to pluck the weeds on the ground. The grass and plants were grayish-green, and pulling them out was not much different from the Material Plane. The existence and characteristics of the Shadow Plane hold many unknown secrets, some of which even the gods cannot comprehend. Therefore, there are still many incomprehensible aspects of everything here; for instance, the buildings here might be very similar to those of the Material Plane.
And it is not necessarily the current Material Plane; the Shadow Plane could preserve the architecture of the Material Plane from thousands of years ago.
Projection.
An incomprehensible projection. It directly interferes with matter and replicates it in the Shadow Plane.
This kind of projection cannot be understood by common logic, nor can just anything be projected; so far, no one has been able to comprehend this secret. It seems that many things that can be projected into the Shadow Plane are quite random, but this kind of projection has an energy limitation. For instance, a castle from hundreds of years ago in the Material Plane could possibly be projected into the Shadow Plane, but a Wizard Tower built in the Material Plane would almost certainly not be projected into the Shadow Plane.
Because castles are mostly ordinary buildings, while Wizard Towers are covered in substantial amounts of energy!
After traversing the Shadow Plane so many times, the only thing Soren could gather was this: most of the buildings projected from the Shadow Plane are things that have existed in the Material Plane for a long time. If it’s just a house built this year, it is unlikely to be projected into the Shadow Plane, but if that house has existed for hundreds of years, it may very well be projected into the Shadow Plane. Therefore, there are also many cities and towns in the Shadow Plane; places where these projections appear may be quite ancient and may contain some shadow creatures.
The projected buildings are not much different from those in the Material Plane.
They also gradually weather and disappear over time, so there are very few long-lasting things in the Shadow Plane.
……
Ahead appeared a Wizard Tower.
From a distance, its magnificence could be felt. Unlike the current Wizard Towers, the Wizard Towers from the Arcane Empire period pursued height. Grand Archmages often preferred to build their Wizard Towers high enough to overlook the earth, and the overall structure of the Wizard Tower resembled a lightning rod. Nowadays, Wizard Towers are generally shorter, rarely exceeding three hundred meters in height, so it is quite easy to recognize which era the Wizard Tower belongs to.
“Be careful.”
Soren raised his hand to stop Vivian, who wanted to go over to take a look, and said softly, “There are Twisted Shadows nearby.”
Twisted Shadows.
Half-energy form life forms that appear due to certain reasons and may possess soul characteristics.
In simple terms, many of them are transformed from souls.
“Twisted Shadow [Shadow Life] [Gregarious Species] (Third Tier).”
“Challenge Level 12, Individual Level 14, possessing spell-like abilities.”
“Highest attributes 20 points, lowest attributes 10 points, total attribute value 90-95 points.”
“Specialty: Shadow Characteristics, Half-Energy Body, Soul Shaping.”
“Challenge Difficulty: B+.”
Soren was quite familiar with the abilities of Twisted Shadows but still found them difficult to deal with because these beings do not take physical attacks well. Shadow-like life forms inherently possess over 20% concealment ability, and if they are half-energy forms, they can reduce physical damage by 50%. It is quite troublesome to deal with them with ordinary weapons. Although Soren had the Legendary Curved Blade Icebane, he basically had no one-hit-k*ll ability against Twisted Shadows, especially since these shadow creatures prefer to gregariously group together.
Therefore, their challenge difficulty is rated as B+, making them a very tricky type of enemy!
Suddenly, a weak sound came from somewhere.
Soren quickly stepped forward to shield Vivian’s small body behind him while carefully watching his surroundings. There aren’t many life forms in the Shadow Plane, strictly speaking, there are very few living beings of flesh and bl**d, which means the animals living here are quite scarce. Sometimes it can be so barren that even a Shadow Dragon has to go to the Material Plane to enjoy a good meal. The life forms here are filled with destruction and aggression, belonging to a chaotic, hateful, and murderous composite, and are essentially not much better than the Bottomless Abyss.
Distorted souls may be reborn in the Shadow Plane, which is the origin of many half-energy form shadow life!
There are also a considerable number of undead here.
Creak!
The sound grew louder, and Soren heard the source was coming from beneath the earth ahead.
Beneath the earth?
Rich experience made Soren instantly ready for battle and turned to Vivian, “Be careful! There are undead ahead; they have sensed the living aura on us!”
Undead.
Supernatural monsters.
The most common undead in the Shadow Plane seems to be one type, and it doesn’t appear to be an easy monster to deal with.
— “Skeletal Undead!”
When Soren saw the monster crawling out from what seemed like a grave mound in front of him, his expression gradually became serious. This Skeletal Undead was somewhat different; it stood over two meters tall. Although its bones had twisted and mutated into sharp bone blades, it was still clear that it had once been a large and dangerous creature in life.
This type of undead, with one more step, becomes the ‘Bone Demon’, a near-legendary undead of Challenge Level 12 and Biological Level 20.
Without a Priest.
There’s no way to banish the undead. Soren glanced at Vivian and, after a gentle nod, darted forward.
It seemed he would really need to find a Priest partner in the future.
After all, whether for healing enhancements or banishing undead, the role of a Priest is crucial, being a core member of the iron triangle. But the problem is where Soren could find such a Priest of Third Tier or above; these Priests have a not low status. Just looking at the significant position of the Naga Priestess in coastal areas, one can understand how elevated the rank of a high-level Priest is.
Clang! Clang!
The curved blade in Soren’s hand struck the Skeletal Undead, producing a series of metallic clinks. Undead of this level are no longer simple skeleton frames; they belong to very dangerous supernatural forms of reproduction.
— “Ghoul’s Touch!”
Just as Soren delivered several successive slashes to the Skeletal Undead, a foul odor suddenly wafted around him. The eye sockets of the Skeletal Undead before him also glowed with a dim red light, making Soren vigilant as he stepped back, but he still barely got grazed.
Spell-like Attack!
High-level undead’s innate spell-like ability.
Soren barely had time to react when a series of data appeared before his eyes:
“Under the effect of the spell ‘Ghoul’s Touch’.”
“Triggering mandatory saving throw! … Fortitude saving throw passed! … You are immune to the paralyzing effect attached to this spell attack! …”
Control-type spell.
Soren was immediately frightened and broke into a cold sweat, then swung back a strike at the enemy’s leg bones. Fortunately, due to his high constitution and solid saving throw, he directly immunized against this second-ring spell attack; otherwise, he would have been paralyzed, which would have been quite dangerous. Fortitude saves, Will saves, and Spell saves—various saving abilities are significant, as Wanderers are inherently disadvantaged in saving throws compared to Warriors due to not being as muscular.
“Be careful!”
Vivian’s reaction speed was also very fast. As Soren was hit once by the Skeletal Undead, she quickly began to cast spells. However, the little girl’s talent was truly impressive; she could cast spells swiftly while keeping an eye on her surroundings. As she noticed many Twisted Shadows appearing around, she immediately shouted, “Brother, be careful! There are a lot of Twisted Shadows near you!”
……(To be continued ~^~)
