Chapter 120- The Death Sovereign

Chapter 120: Chapter 120- The Death Sovereign

The ground was still trembling, though the worst of the shaking had finally started to ease.

Leo remained fixed on his notification panel, eyes locked to the stream of text unfolding before him.

Elly projected every notification as the data resolved into a steady stream of output, forming the same kind of large holographic display they’d come to expect from her.

[Ding~]

[Reactivation sequence: 12%... 34%... 67%...]

Leo watched his own panel while the rest of the party kept their eyes on the shared projection. The numbers climbed steadily, and with each new percentage came another shudder, another tremor running through the ground beneath their feet.

Hairline cracks and spider-webbing fractures kept spreading further across the chamber’s floor and walls. From every new fracture, dark purple light flared up through the surrounding blackness, almost like glowing roots stirring awake beneath the stone.

Rook had already dropped into a ready stance, positioned so he could pivot into either offense or defense from any angle, at any moment.

Elona, meanwhile, had begun stepping back toward the corridor, pulling the rest of the teammates along with her, ready to bolt everyone out of the chamber at the first real sign of danger. She kept a massive construct of mana shaped like a hand hovering nearby, prepared to scoop up every single person in the room if it came to that.

Shen, being Shen, hadn’t moved an inch from the wall. Both palms remained pressed flat against the blackstone as his eyes darted rapidly across the formations flickering to life around him.

"All of these formations are activating at once," he said, seemingly unbothered by the shaking and trembling all around him, as though none of it mattered next to what he was watching.

Elly’s holographic form flickered nonstop, clearly struggling to keep up. "Master, the energy output coming from the source has exceeded my entire measurement framework. I can no longer gather reliable data on this phenomenon."

Leo didn’t respond right away, turning her words over in his mind. He stood there almost transfixed, dazed by the sheer scale of what was unfolding in front of him.

His forge sight was operating at its absolute limit, letting him see something no one else in the room could perceive — the structure itself, lighting up seam by seam, section by section, dark purple lines tracing along what looked like joints connecting each individual piece together.

It reminded him, oddly, of watching a construction site — except every bit of the work was being carried out through magic instead of hands and tools.

The shape revealed itself to be enormous. Leo estimated that the portion buried underground extended far deeper than the chamber’s own foundation could account for.

Noticing his silence, Elly called out again. "Master?"

Leo raised a finger to his lips. "Shh. Quiet."

He kept his focus on the well. "It’s almost finished, I think."

Then, from somewhere deep within the mana well, a sound emerged — something that felt like it had just stirred awake after thousands of years of unbroken sleep.

The dark purple light surrounding the well suddenly went completely still, all its flickering ceasing at once. Then it began gathering itself together, condensing into something smaller and denser.

Like a moth drawn helplessly toward flame, every scattered particle of light was pulled toward a single point, compressing tighter and tighter as more and more light fed into it. The point hovered just above the basin, glowing with mounting intensity.

As the compression intensified, a heavy pressure settled over the entire chamber, pressing down on everyone present like a physical weight.

The air itself grew thick, and breathing became noticeably harder for everyone in the room.

Leo found himself thinking back to the lightning guardian’s manifestation — a column of violet-silver light that had exploded into being in a single instant. But this was nothing like that.

He kept watching. This process unfolded far more slowly. And the slower it went, the heavier the atmosphere in the chamber became.

Gradually, dark smoke began releasing from the basin, merging with the compressed point of purple light as the whole mass began unfolding, layer by layer, into the shape of a human figure.

A woman’s silhouette slowly took form directly above the basin, hovering in midair.

She was tall, draped in shadow and what looked like ancient cloth, though the fabric itself seemed to shift and move like living shadow. There was no mistaking the ancient, commanding bearing she carried.

Dark purple light ran beneath her skin like veins, pulsing steadily in time with the well itself.

The woman’s eyes opened. A sharp flash of piercing purple light accompanied it, revealing eyes the same violet-purple as the light around her. Her very first movement was to turn toward the well itself — she teleported down to it in an instant, hands already settling against its rim, fingers tracing from one carved formation to the next, moving with the gentle, familiar touch of someone tending to something precious, almost as though caressing a child.

Shen, still watching the formations closely, froze completely.

"She’s manipulating them right now," he said quietly. "All of them. At the same time."

The chamber had grown visible enough now so everyone could clearly watch the woman work through the formations. Every eye in the room stayed locked on her.

Her fingers moved with the precision of a skilled craftsman inspecting a finished piece, testing each connection carefully to ensure everything still functioned as intended.

Leo studied her hand movements closely. He could tell she wasn’t simply inspecting the formations out of curiosity — she was tending to something this chamber had kept safe and preserved for an incredibly long time.

After a while, her hands finally stilled, and the formations quieted down in turn, their light settling into a calm, steady glow.

The trembling throughout the chamber finally stopped entirely.

With whatever task she’d been attending to now complete, the woman turned to face the group.

Her eyes swept across everyone gathered in the chamber, measuring each of them in turn. When her gaze reached Leo, it lingered there a moment longer than the rest.

She studied him with obvious interest, her eyes tracing him from head to toe. Leo felt, uncomfortably, like he was being seen through entirely — the same unsettling sensation he’d felt once before, under the gaze of the All-Father Odin himself.

Her purple eyes settled first on his hands, then moved up to his golden eyes, and finally landed on the devil’s mark etched into his armor. Her expression flickered into a frown the moment she noticed it.

She stared at the mark for a long moment. When she finally spoke, her voice came out low and unhurried.

"Oh. You carry his work... and you’re also a Forge Holder?"

Leo was caught completely off guard by the question. His jaw tightened as he asked, "You know about the Forge Holders? And whose work are you referring to?"

She didn’t answer him directly. Instead, she straightened her posture and introduced herself properly.

"I am the guardian spirit of the Death Mana Vein, and the Keeper of the Death Sovereign’s Legacy."

Leo understood immediately — she occupied the same role here that the lightning vein’s spirit had occupied in the other vault.

The guardian looked at Leo again. "You already know the Lightning General, don’t you? I can sense traces of his legacy clinging to the people standing here."

"My master, the Death Sovereign, was a woman without equal in her generation. She was born with a natural affinity for death mana — it was simply part of her from birth. She could wield it by the age of three, and by the time she turned five, she was already resurrecting dead animals, even dead people. Because of that, her own parents abandoned her. She struggled through a difficult upbringing and grew into the very Death Sovereign that came to be feared by nearly everyone. Even the Lightning General himself was no match for her in those early days. But in time, the two of them became friends. And..."

She paused, then shook her head slightly. "She called the Lightning General her friend. Called him her storm. And he, in turn, called her his anchor."

Leo and the rest of the party listened closely as the guardian recounted the story.

Two people. Two legacies. One fortress, built to hold them both.

The Lightning General had shaped the lightning legacy on his side, while the Death Sovereign had shaped the death legacy on hers. Together, the two of them had raised this fortress as a shared work.

Elona’s earlier premonition had turned out to be correct. A second inheritance really had been waiting here, and based on everything the guardian had described, it sounded even more powerful than the lightning inheritance they’d already claimed. She was already picturing an enormous guild — an army of lightning users standing alongside trained necromancers. She could barely contain herself at the thought.

Once the guardian finished her story, her eyes settled back on Leo.

"You carry a very high affinity with the undead," she said.

Leo froze again, genuinely unsure how he’d ended up with such an affinity in the first place — even the system’s own notification had told him as much without explaining why.

He turned the question over in his mind, searching for some kind of answer.

Meanwhile, Shen had been staring at the guardian with unusually intense focus. She seemed a little unsettled by the attention at first, but quickly realized he wasn’t actually looking at her — he was studying the patterns woven into her robes.

The exact same formations that had been carved throughout the entire chamber.

"A different civilization," Shen muttered, half-lost in his own thoughts. "A different era, maybe?"

Leo, still distracted, didn’t register what Shen had said.

His mind was still stuck on the affinity question. He turned back to the guardian. "I have high-level Undead affinity?"

The guardian nodded. "Yes. Very high — nearly on par with my master’s, though yours still seems to be dormant, as if it hasn’t fully awakened yet. And it’s not only undead affinity, either. You carry high affinity with several other elements as well... which is strange." She trailed off, muttering the last part mostly to herself.

Her words echoed in Leo’s mind for a while afterward, but he still couldn’t make sense of how he’d come to possess any of this. Maybe I was just born with it, he thought, though the explanation felt thin even to him.

The guardian glanced around at the rest of the group. "Oh — there are actually quite a few people here who carry some degree of affinity toward the undead element as well."

Something seemed to occur to her then, and she turned back toward the well, resting her hands against it once more.

A new set of notifications appeared.

[Ding~]

[Undead Legacy Guardian — Awakening Complete.]

[Death Mana Vein — Fully Activated.]

[Mana Regeneration: +100%.]

[Mana Density: +100%.]

[Death-based skill proficiency gain: 2x.]