Chapter 1030 - Bone Maiden

Destruction Energy was extraordinarily dangerous, as it came with an inherent chance of inflicting Deathblow. Even a God could die by a stroke of bad luck. Deathblow was an effect that granted the attack a chance to instantly kill enemies regardless of rank, race, and level. Its effectiveness was affected by debuff resistance and amplification.[1]

Powerful life forms had a natural resistance to debuff attacks from weaker creatures. Against opponents stronger than the user, the actual chance of activation dropped significantly. Against opponents of the same rank or lower, it would activate far more often. The workaround was to increase the number of attacks, which raised the odds. Every Destruction Clan member operated on that principle.

For Qin Shuang, whose specialty was lightning, the answer was evident. She could merge Destruction Energy with her lightning to create Destruction Lightning, a high-frequency barrage that maximized the Destruction Energy’s potential.

Beyond Destruction Energy, Qin Shuang also gained invaluable insight from Gu Feng’s cultivation techniques. Roughly ninety percent of his methods for raising the Calamity Crossbird could be applied directly to her Thunder Sparrows. All things considered, this mission had been a windfall for her.

Jing Jing’s gains were just as impressive. As the skeleton sea expanded, she destroyed over a dozen cities and swallowed every human and Summoned Beast within them. In the process, she amassed enormous quantities of Bone and Soul Energy. She also developed new skeleton variants based on what she had learned from her battles.

Jing Jing currently had many troop types, but only two could hold their own in high-stakes combat.

The first was the Skyreach Giant Skeleton, which relied on raw power and destruction. By stacking countless bones into an enormous frame, it turned its sheer size into a weapon and made every movement a devastating attack. It was extremely effective against weaker enemies, where brute force reigned supreme.

At Jing Jing’s current level, however, size alone didn’t provide much of an edge. Unless the giant skeleton could explosively scale its attributes as its size increased, as the Mythic Titan did, it was just a massive target that enemies didn’t even need to aim at.

Recognizing this weakness, Jing Jing later created the Bone Dragon. The original Bone Dragons were assembled from reinforced bone she had refined. Combined with the Wicked Dragon’s soul, they could reach the Microcosm rank.

After becoming the Soul God King and awakening the Soul Jurisdiction, Jing Jing no longer needed dragon souls. Her power was enough to manufacture Bone Dragons.

Bone Dragons were smaller than the Skyreach Giant Skeletons but were far more versatile. They could withstand attacks and deal damage in equal measure. Jing Jing had relied on them to destroy cities and defeat powerful Summoned Beasts.

The two skeleton types were sufficient for large-scale battles, but their massive frames made them cumbersome in tighter spaces. After careful consideration, Jing Jing decided to use herself as the template for a third variant.

For the undead, the soul was everything. It served the same purpose as Life Energy did for the living. Without a soul, an undead ceased to exist.

With that in mind, Jing Jing poured tremendous effort into designing the new soul. She implanted fragments of her own emotions into each new skeleton’s soul, giving them the ability to assess situations and adapt rather than charge blindly.

The bones received equal attention. She possessed an enormous stockpile and refined them through her Soul Jurisdiction. The resulting bones weren’t as strong as Crystal Bones, but they reached about seventy percent of that quality. Paired with the custom souls, each new skeleton emerged as a Microcosm undead.

Jing Jing named this new type the Bone Maiden because it was modeled as a lesser version of herself.

The first batch consisted of six. Initially, they knew only basic combat techniques and relied on their bones’ hardness to kill their enemies. After a few battles, however, they began learning from experience and teaching themselves more advanced fighting techniques.

During the later siege campaigns, the Bone Maidens performed brilliantly, assassinating numerous powerful enemies on their own.

After Jing Jing and the skeleton sea conquered the hundredth city, the Beast Tamer Civilization’s Will finally showed its displeasure. Every city was a source of the civilization’s strength. The destruction of a hundred of them had severely damaged the civilization’s overall power.

The Will poured a portion of itself into a local prodigy and rapidly elevated his Summoned Beasts. In a short time, two of them reached the Subcosm rank, while the rest advanced to the Microcosm rank.

When Jing Jing led the skeleton sea against the hundredth-first city, the prodigy conveniently appeared on the battlefield. His Summoned Beasts held the skeleton sea at bay and started to consume the bones to eliminate the threat at its source.

Jing Jing wasn’t alone, though. Han Wu summoned his five Subcosm fighters, crushed the prodigy’s Summoned Beasts with overwhelming force, and leveled the entire city.

That amounted to a declaration of war against the Beast Tamer Civilization’s Will. However, in the face of Han Wu’s brazen action, the Will didn’t dare retaliate. Instead, it used the prodigy as a mouthpiece to signal its desire for a ceasefire.

The Will had the power to simply break its own rules and wipe out Han Wu’s five Subcosm fighters, but doing so would mean violating the very restrictions it had set. The moment that happened, Han Wu would be freed from those rules as well. He could then force his divine realm open and launch a full-scale invasion.

The Will was certain that an unrestricted Han Wu would be far more dangerous than he was now. After confirming that it couldn’t defeat Han Wu within the confines of its own rules and laws, it chose to concede.

Han Wu hadn’t intended to destroy the Beast Tamer Civilization anyway. Doing so would cost him far more than it was worth, so when the Will quietly admitted defeat, he accepted its surrender.

In the end, Han Wu’s group walked away with three portions of the Beast Tamer Civilization’s Will. How long the civilization would take to recover from that loss was a problem for its natives to solve.

With all their spoils in hand, the trio rushed back to the Divine Civilization.

The moment they did, Han Wu unleashed his full power through the True Holy Dragon Transformation, and, as a Mesocosm fighter, he obliterated Gu Feng effortlessly. He obtained the Dark Jurisdiction, nearly half of the Microcosms in Gu Feng’s consciousness, a Level 45 Core, and a collection of Gu Feng’s Divine Aspect shards.

On top of that, Sacrifice worked as intended. Han Wu’s eyes widened when he saw the three options. Every single one was exceptional!

1. Added this portion to clarify how it works ☜