Chapter 14: Ancient Dragon Battlefield

The sound of bones shattering rang out one after another.

The seventy-odd vicious jackals never even got the chance to close in and bite.

The sheer force of the cavalry charge smashed them apart, sending chunks of flesh and bone flying through the air.

[Your army has slain Bone-Spined Wasteland Jackals Lv.4 — 2-Star ×78.]

[EXP +56,000]

[Gold +390]

The undead warhorses didn’t slow down in the slightest.

They simply trampled straight over the pile of corpses and continued forward.

As they raced across the wasteland, a dark-gold glimmer suddenly appeared at the edge of John’s vision.

A pale-blue detection panel automatically unfolded.

[Surface Resource Deposit Discovered: Rich Gold Deposit]

[Type: Surface Deposit — One-Time]

[Quality: Rich Gold]

[Reserves: 1,200/1,200 units]

[Maximum Miners: 50]

[Standard Mining Efficiency: 1 unit/person/hour]

[Trait: The deposit will be permanently depleted after all resources have been extracted. Non-renewable.]

[Guarding Force: None]

John casually exerted his authority.

[10,000× Acceleration activated!]

[Surface Extraction Complete.]

[Gold +1,200]

The exposed golden sand instantly dissolved into streams of golden light and poured into his resource counter.

The dark-gold sheen covering the deposit rapidly faded.

The cavalry continued onward.

From time to time, several Dark Knights would lose their mounts or be torn apart while charging through nests occupied by higher-tier elite monsters.

John only had to move a finger.

A few dozen Gold would be deducted—

and 10,000× Acceleration would activate instantly.

Within fractions of a second, the fallen Dark Knights would crawl back out of the dirt, remount their undead warhorses, and rejoin the formation as if nothing had happened.

Since only one hundred and fifty cavalry had accompanied John, the enormous amount of EXP earned from killing monsters was concentrated among a relatively small number of units.

Gray-white leveling lights began flashing across the Dark Knights one after another.

[Your unit, Undead Dark Knight, has reached Lv.10!]

John opened the Dark Knight’s updated status panel.

[Unit: Undead Dark Knight]

[Tier: 4-Star]

[Level: Lv.10]

[HP: 1,600]

[Attack: 1,000]

[Defense: 200]

[Trait: Undead Body — Immune to mind-affecting magic, feels no pain, and never tires.]

[Skill: Trampling Charge — Lv.2]

[While charging, Movement Speed increases by 120% and Impact Damage increases to 180% of Attack.]

Not only had their base stats doubled—

their individual Attack had broken one thousand.

"They leveled up."

John nodded slightly.

"That makes this even safer."

He opened the marked map.

"Less than fifty kilometers left."

John dismissed the interface and patted the warhorse’s neck.

"Pick up the pace!"

Twenty minutes later—

the surrounding landscape began to change dramatically.

The lush green vegetation gradually disappeared.

The verdant earth gave way to dry, blackened, dark-red soil.

A harsh smell of sulfur hung in the air, mixed with an oppressive aura of death and desolation.

Ahead of them, the terrain suddenly collapsed downward—

forming an enormous basin several kilometers across.

They had arrived.

Ancient Dragon Battlefield.

John pulled back on the reins and stopped at the edge of a cliff overlooking the basin.

The entire depression looked as though some unimaginable force had smashed it into the earth.

Bottomless fissures scarred the ground.

Blackened burn marks covered the landscape.

But the most breathtaking sight of all was the enormous skeleton lying at the center of the basin.

A dragon.

Even after lying dead for countless years, its bones still carried a dark-gold sheen.

The skeleton stretched for more than a hundred meters.

The massive framework of one dragon wing was embedded diagonally into the cliff wall, resembling a gigantic pale umbrella supporting the heavens.

And around the Ancient Dragon’s remains—

thousands of staggering humanoid figures wandered aimlessly.

They weren’t undead soldiers like John’s converted units.

They were rotting corpses.

Living dead.

Every corpse wore battered heavy armor.

The armor was cracked, rusted, and torn—

but the eagle emblem of the Old Empire engraved across their breastplates remained unmistakably clear.

Their unit types were equally distinct.

Imperial Greatswordsmen wielding chipped broadblades.

Elite Guardsmen clutching broken halberds.

Imperial Crossbowmen carrying rusted heavy crossbows.

Maimed Rangers mounted on decaying skeletal horses...

They wandered endlessly around the dragon’s remains.

Long ago, the Old Empire had dispatched its most elite punitive legion to slay the Ancient Dragon that had devastated the northern territories of Godfall.

The Ancient Dragon was eventually killed.

But at the moment of its death—

the gods unleashed punishment.

The entire decorated Imperial Legion was transformed into living corpses.

They were condemned to remain beside the dragon’s body for eternity—

guarding it forever.

And beneath the enormous skull of the Ancient Dragon...

a gigantic figure sat cross-legged.

The warrior stood nearly three meters tall.

His body was encased in extraordinarily thick dark-red plate armor.

Both hands rested atop the pommel of an enormous executioner’s blade nearly as wide as a grown man.

A dense, blinding crimson killing aura poured from his body.

Even from several hundred meters away, John could clearly see the mad blood-red light flickering through the gaps in his helmet.

"Finally found it."

John breathed out slowly.

Then he reached into his inventory and withdrew a faintly glowing golden parchment scroll.

Under the rules of Godfall Continent, a Hero Recruitment Scroll had two completely different methods of use.

The first was the method almost every ordinary Lord used.

Tear it open on the spot.

Establish a random connection with the Hall of Heroic Spirits.

Then leave everything to luck.

The second method—

was to use it on a Hero’s Tomb.

A Hero’s Tomb was the burial place, sealed coffin, or resting ground of an ancient Hero.

Using a Hero Recruitment Scroll directly on a Hero’s Tomb could forcibly break through the temporal seal and awaken the specific Hero sleeping within.

Then—

a contract could be formed directly.

And any Hero powerful enough to leave behind a Hero’s Tomb was usually at least A-Rank.

That was the method John had mentioned before.

No gambling.

No relying on probability.

But there was a price.

Hero’s Tombs were inevitably guarded by powerful forces.

If you didn’t want to gamble with luck—

then you had to gamble with strength.

And strength was the one thing John had never been afraid to bet on.

He had already decided to come here first thing this morning.

Because John knew—

an SSS-Rank Ancient Dragon Hero was buried here.

In his previous life, an absurdly lucky novice Lord had stumbled upon this ruin by accident.

Later, that Lord recruited the Ancient Dragon Hero hidden within and went on to dominate the battlefield during the later stages of the game.

On the very first day after John spawned in this wasteland, he had checked his map coordinates.

When he realized this place wasn’t too far from his territory, he had actually breathed a sigh of relief.

If it had been much farther away...

he would have had no choice but to give it up.

Fortunately—

luck was still on his side.

Below the cliff, gray winds swept dark-red gravel across the basin.

Tiny stones rattled against the Dark Knights’ black-iron armor.

John sat atop an undead warhorse, his gaze piercing through layers of gray mist toward the army of living corpses wandering below.

Pale-blue detection windows began flashing one after another.

[Target: Old Imperial Guard Halberdier — Living Corpse]

[Tier: 3-Star]

[Level: Lv.8]

[HP: 2,200]

[Attack: 280]

[Defense: 130]

[Traits: Fight to the Death, Virulent Infection]

[Target: Old Imperial Elite Crossbowman — Living Corpse]

[Tier: 3-Star]

[Level: Lv.8]

[HP: 1,800]

[Attack: 350]

[Defense: 90]

[Skill: Repeating Heavy Crossbow]

...

Everywhere John looked, the basin was packed with soldiers of the Old Empire, their rotting flesh stained black-green with decay.

There were at least two thousand of them.

Outside this ruin, that would have been enough to form an entire regular Imperial vanguard force.

This was absolutely not a place any novice Lord should have chosen to challenge.

But John didn’t care.

His gaze barely lingered on the ordinary living corpses.

Instead—

it passed over the gray-white sea of dead soldiers...

and settled on the deepest part of the basin.