CHAPTER 214: OLD BONES AND THE ABYSS

The air inside Caius’s newly reinforced underground training chambers was thick with the heavy, metallic scent of spatial runes. Ancient basalt walls, newly carved with kinetic-dampening arrays, absorbed the faint vibration of footsteps as the old dark elf entered.

Caius stood in the center of the vast stone arena, his gauntlets resting casually at his sides. He turned his gaze toward his former teacher.

"Old Bones," Caius said smoothly, his voice carrying an effortless authority. "I want to test your progress in your arts."

Old Bones stopped a few paces away. A heavy sigh escaped the old dark elf’s lips. Years ago, he had been the one beating discipline, posture, and shadow-stepping into a young, headstrong Caius. Now, he was the one being summoned for an evaluation. But there was no resentment in his heart, only an inescapable truth. Caius was no longer his student. He was his sovereign lord.

Old Bones had been cultivating furiously. The stubborn bottleneck that had plagued his dark elf physique for decades had finally shattered, forced open by the concentrated obsidian energy beads Caius had bestowed upon him. Combined with countless hours spent meditating beneath the shimmering canopy of the World Tree and dipping directly into the pitch-black mana pool beside its roots, his progress had been explosive. His skin possessed a healthier, darker sheen, and his mana pathways ran deeper than ever before. After his breakthrough, Caius had smugly tried to rename him "New Bones," but the old master had stubbornly refused, holding fast to his moniker.

Setting his stance, Old Bones channeled his newly refined energy. Dark violet mana, tinted with the heavy stillness of the World Tree's pool, erupted around his limbs like a mantle of shadow. He raised his hands, bracing his body as his pupils narrowed.

"Will I attack, or you, my lord?" Old Bones asked, his voice tight with focus.

Caius’s Eye of the Loom glinted with a sharp, amused light. "No. I want you to fight my new creation."

Old Bones blinked, his mana wavering slightly. "A new puppet?"

He expected one of the massive, heavy-armored orc constructs like Krag'gath or Borgath to step out from the side doors. Instead, Caius casually flicked two fingers upward.

The ambient light in the training chamber died instantly. Space groaned as a colossal, black spatial door, framed in swirling void threads and pitch-black obsidian energy, tore itself open directly behind Caius.

The moment the rift opened, a freezing, predatory aura spilled into the room, so heavy it physically cracked the stone flooring beneath Old Bones' boots.

Through the black spatial door stepped a sleek, humanoid nightmare. Four vertical eye slits stacked in a faceless obsidian mask burned with deep violet mana. Bladed dreadlocks of woven obsidian thread rustled softly against its shoulders, and behind its back, a double-edged spatial blade tail dripped with corrosive shadow-venom.

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Old Bones’ breath hitched. His eyes widened, every instinct forged over a century of survival screaming at him to flee.

"Wait, wait, I am not ready!" Old Bones blurted, involuntarily taking three sharp steps backward, his hands held up defensively.

Before he could regain his footing, the shadows behind the first construct squirmed. A second black spatial door cracked open, and a second Vel'xul Stalker stepped seamlessly into the light, stepping in absolute lockstep with the first.

A pair of faceless, four-eyed abyssal horrors now stood side-by-side, their eight stacked vertical eye slits turning simultaneously to lock onto the old dark elf.

Old Bones gulped loudly, a cold drop of sweat rolling down his dark cheek.

An icy wave of pure dread washed over him. He had sparred with Caius's reinforced orc puppets, but these constructs were an entirely different species of terror. They didn't just radiate physical strength, they emanated an unnatural, spatial quiet, killing machines engineered solely to erase life from the shadows.

"My lord..." Old Bones swallowed hard, his throat dry as he gestured wildly at the silent pair of shadow warriors. "Where did you get these things? I have not seen such creatures in all my yondering years!"

Caius looked at the pair, then turned his gaze back to his trembling teacher, a cold, dark smile touching his lips.

"At the Dark Abyss," Caius replied flatly. He tilted his head slightly, his eyes glinting with mischief. "Do you want a new pet?"

Old Bones froze, looking from the four-eyed abyssal horrors back to Caius, his voice squeaking in absolute disbelief. "Pet?"

Caius walked slowly past the two motionless stalkers, resting a hand lightly on the shoulder of Unit I.

"They were four-eyed Abyssal stalkers, wild, quadrupedal beasts running on pure predatory instinct when I harvested them. But a raw beast carcass is inefficient. So, I re-architected them from the bone up."

Caius ran a gauntleted finger down the construct’s arm, detailing the dark craftwork with cold precision. "I used my Arachne Thread Art to dissolve their animalistic skeletons, reshaping their frames into sleek humanoid matrices. I lissomly wove Obsidian Lattice sinews into their muscle fibers for explosive kinetic speed and compressed their obsidian claws to shear through enchanted heavy armor. For their heads, I stripped away their snouts and mouths, forging faceless masks with a four-eye combat matrix that grants them absolute 360-degree spatial awareness."

Old Bones listened, his lower jaw slowly dropping as Caius continued the terrifying breakdown.

"I kept their double-edged poison tails, but engineered a dormant evolution matrix so they can sprout up to nine tails as their cores cultivate," Caius continued casually. "Their hair is woven obsidian thread that double as toxic ranged quills. Most importantly, I isolated their native beast cores, mapped custom human meridians into their bodies, and crafted artificial essence beads embedded straight into their crown points. Through those beads, I hold an unbroken thread link for absolute tethered puppet control and shared spatial perception."

Silence stretched across the basalt chamber.

Old Bones stood frozen, his mouth hanging open in sheer, unadulterated shock. His mind reeled as he stared at his former student, processing the horrifying level of anatomical re-engineering, spatial weaving, and soul-art mastery required to pull off such a feat.

He took wild abyssal monstrosities, Old Bones thought, his heart hammering against his ribs, dissolved their very biology, and re-bound them into custom-engineered, humanoid killing machines, he didn't just animate dead flesh, he redefined their species.

Old Bones looked from the cold, glowing eye slits of the two Vel'xul Stalkers back to Caius’s calm, smiling face. A shudder ran down his spine.

By the ancient ancestors... Old Bones thought to himself, trembling as he raised his hands back into a defensive stance. I don't know who is the true monster, the beast or the creator!