The skies were gray with mana ash. What was once the battlefield between Sanctum and the Omega-tier monster, Tzakaroth, was now a sunken wasteland. The blackened soil still crackled with fractured mana pulses, and the air shimmered like an open wound.
But deep beneath Sanctum—in a chamber carved below the old Forge Tower—Iden was not done.
He stood alone, his gloves scorched, blood dried at the edges of his lips, eyes flickering with quiet intensity. In the room before him lay what remained of Tzakaroth—ribs that could block out the sun, abyssal sinew that still pulsed with corrupt power, and shards of a shattered abyssal core.
But that wasn't all.
Piled around the monstrous bones were the remains of countless D-tier and C-tier monsters, corrupted elites from the beast tide and leftover limbs from Tzakaroth's personal horde. Beside them, crates were cracked open, spilling rare abyssal ichor, enchanted relic-bone, and hardened core splinters.
And standing in a triangle around the altar were Iden's two most powerful creations:
Ikaros, the black-plated Angel of Death, silent and still.
The Commander-General, golden-armored, hand on his broad-blade, eyes glowing with deep mana analytics.
Both watched.
Because tonight, they would witness something not even the Fallout superweapon could match in terror.
Iden raised both hands, activating the Skeleton Fusion Evolution from the system interface.
[Fusion Catalyst Activated.][Injecting: Abyssal Worm Bones ×9][Injecting: Epic-Grade Mana Alloy ×14][Injecting: Abyssal Corrupted Core Fragments ×3][Injecting: Crystallized Soul Residue ×6][Injecting: World Boss-Grade Ribcage (Tzakaroth)][Processing…]
The chamber turned black. Even the torches dimmed under the siphon of magic.
The altar cracked. The stone bled.
Then came the sound—a deep exhale, as if something massive had just taken its first breath.
Bones flew together like they were answering an ancient call. Mana stitched sinew. The fusion had no elegance, no structure at first—just primal force. But it began to mold. To take shape. To stand.
From the chaos emerged something that wasn't just a skeleton.
It was a being of command. A towering monstrosity of abyssal brilliance, humanoid in form but clad in naturally formed bone-armor, etched with glowing glyphs. One eye glowed violet, the other burned like a black sun.
It opened its palm, summoning a jagged black halberd that whirled with raw entropy.
Iden didn't need a prompt.
The system whispered it into his mind:
[Abyssal Warlord - Supreme Commander Class Created.][Rank: Above Mythical][Intelligence: Independent][Loyalty: Absolute to Summoner Iden.][Command Priority: Oversees all other summons except Mythical-tier.]
Ikaros stepped forward first.
He looked up at the creature, wings slowly unfurling in reverence. The Angel of Oblivion—who had once faced gods in the skies—knelt without hesitation.
Then the golden Commander-General followed, his blade reversed, planted into the ground before dropping to one knee.
In unison, every skeleton in the fusion chamber knelt.
Miners. Mages. Tanks. Scouts. Even the recent elite evolutions—all of them bowed to the only one still standing.
The Abyssal Warlord, tall and unshaken, slowly turned his head toward Iden.
And then, he knelt too.
"I rise only at your command, Sovereign Iden," it said in a voice of crushed stone and battle hymns. "Let my shadow be your sword. Let my presence be your banner."
The wave of reaction spread fast. The newly leveled skeletons—those forged in war, scarred from the siege, hungry for direction—felt something shift deep inside their core runes.
A force now stood who could lead armies without flaw, process millions of commands simultaneously, and adapt in combat.
The system interface updated itself.
[New Command Hierarchy Formed.]Supreme Summoner: Iden➤ High Commander: Abyssal Warlord➤ Tactical Field Leader: Commander-General➤ Sky Operations: Ikaros➤ Specialized Units: Assigned beneath tiers automatically
As Iden walked out from the underground chamber flanked by the three, Rael and Nyra stood at the top of the stairs.
Their eyes widened.
The pressure from the Abyssal Warlord was different. It wasn't cold. It was commanding. It demanded obedience.
Rael whispered, "Is that thing really… ours?"
Nyra, unusually silent, replied, "No. It's his."
Standing above Sanctum's command hill, Iden looked over the slowly recovering lands. His summons, his people, his allies… all rising again from the ashes.
But now, they had something they didn't before.
Not just a weapon. Not even an army.
They had a Warlord.
And the world wouldn't know he existed—until the day they heard the sound of his halberd cutting through the wind.