Chapter 4178: Death! III

The newly transformed creature knelt...an awkward motion for something designed for primitive violence, yet it managed with newfound grace!

The Legion of The Dead had truly begun!

"Ka Ka Ka!" Ra’Zan’s laughter rang out across the battlefield with the joy of someone who had just discovered their favorite hobby could also be their profession.

Below in Concordia, Living Existences watched in mounting horror.

From their perspective, tears had opened, Dead Existences had emerged...terrifying but expected. But now? Now one Dead Existence had attacked another, devoured its power, then transformed it into something else entirely!

Something loyal to purposes they couldn’t fathom.

Duke Visana of the Living Elementals actually took a step back. "What in the collapsed Folds is that thing doing?! Are they all mindless?!"

...!

Were they mindless?

Haha...KaKa!

What did these dumb fuckers know?!

Their worries were distant music to Ra’Zan’s consciousness. He turned his burning gaze toward the battles beginning across the Folds, seeing opportunity where others saw catastrophe.

"Master," he bellowed with joy that made death itself uncomfortable, "that was only the first! Many more will come!"

Without pause, Ra’Zan moved...he, the Stone Ape, and the Neanderthal Jiangshi taking a single synchronized step through death to appear around another Dead Existence near a different tear. This one radiated two hundred and fifty trillion complexity, its form a writhing mass of tentacles and regret.

The second target writhed with tentacles that redefined geometry, its squid-like body pulsing with colors that shouldn’t exist.

Ra’Zan studied it with the appreciation of someone examining a particularly interesting corpse...before making it one.

|Analyzing: Chthonian Horror of the Sunken Depths|

|Classification: Dead Existence - Abyssal Sovereign|

|Complexity: 250,000,000,000,000|

|Primary Authority: Dead Existential Autjority, Curse-Woven Death, Miasmic Corruption|

|Special Traits: Reality Decay Field, Corpse Manipulation|

|Warning: Some intelligence detected|

This one had noticed them. More concerning, other Dead Existences throughout the Folds had begun to take notice of them.

The element of surprise...such a living concept anyway, was gone!

The Chthonian Horror moved first.

Its tentacles whipped through space, but not to strike...to write. Each movement inscribed curses into reality itself, making the air become poison, making space become trap, making time become molasses.

The miasma that erupted from its form wasn’t merely toxic; it was the concept of corruption given gaseous form.

"Oh, how delightful!" Ra’Zan exclaimed as his bones began to dissolve at the edges!

The Primordial Stone Ape roared and charged, but walls erupted to block its path...not stone or metal, but flesh.

Carcass Inducement manifested as waves of corpses that had never lived, bodies that existed only to have died, surging forward in putrid tsunamis!

The Ape’s fists connected with wet impacts that made reality gag.

"Master always said," Ra’Zan mused while dodging a tentacle that rewrote the definition of his location, "that death should be artistic. But this? This is just showing off."

The Neanderthal Jiangshi attempted to hop through...its primitive form enhanced with thunderous impacts, but each landing spawned more corpse-waves!

The nearby battlefield had become an ocean of endings that hadn’t happened to anyone specific, death without the courtesy of prior life.

Ra’Zan’s skull tilted as he analyzed the situation. Raw power wouldn’t work here...the creature had turned the entire area into its domain. But domains were just another form of structure, and structure could be understood, exploited, devoured.

"You know what your problem is?" Ra’Zan called out conversationally while his staff manifested. "You’re trying to use death as a wall. Death isn’t a wall...it’s a door. And doors..."

He tapped his staff against the miasma itself. Where it touched, the corruption didn’t disappear...it inverted, becoming a pathway.

"Doors open both ways."

HUUM!

The Primordial Stone Ape understood immediately. Instead of fighting through the corpse-waves, it began devouring them.

Each body consumed added fractional power, but more importantly, created gaps in the creature’s defense. The Neanderthal Jiangshi hopped through these gaps with thunderous impacts that scattered the reformed flesh.

BOOM! BOOM!

The Chthonian Horror writhed, its tentacles accelerating their curse-writing.

New abilities manifested...Entropy Cascade that aged everything in proximity, Soul Reef that created barriers from spirits that had never existed, Null Depth that tried to drag everything into an abyss that was also somehow here!

"Your understanding of death is comprehensive," Ra’Zan admitted while using his complexity to simply tank through an Entropy Cascade that would have aged wheels to dust. "But it’s also limited. You see death as ending, as cessation, as wall between is and isn’t."

He appeared beside the creature through a doorway made from its own miasma.

"I see death as transformation. As possibility. As the moment where everything becomes everything else."

His staff touched the creature’s main body. The branding that erupted wasn’t a single skull but a constellation of them, each one keyed to a different aspect of death the creature wielded. The Horror’s own mastery became the keys to its locks.

The Primordial Stone Ape, now close enough, wrapped its arms around the mass of tentacles in a grip that redefined restraint. Three hundred trillion complexity focused into pure hungering strength!

The Neanderthal Jiangshi hopped onto the creature’s top, its primitive fury adding weight that transcended physical mass.

"Death is my domain," Ra’Zan said as the devouring reached its crescendo. "You’re just visiting."

BOOM!

|Successfully hungered and devoured: 100 Trillion Transferable Complexity|

|Distribution: 35 Trillion to Arch Lich Ra’Zan|

|35 Trillion to Primordial Stone Ape|

|20 Trillion to The Early Creature, Osmont|

|10 Trillion to Neanderthal Jiangshi|

|Current Complexity: Ra’Zan - 200 Trillion|

...!

The Chthonian Horror’s form had dimmed to near-transparency, its tentacles barely maintaining cohesion. Ra’Zan studied it with the particular attention of someone about to perform delicate surgery with a sledgehammer.

"Your curse-weaving capabilities are exquisite," he said, raising his staff. "It would be a shame to lose them. So let’s not. Summon... The Dead!"

HUUM!

The transformation was more violent this time...the creature had more complexity to restructure, more abilities to preserve.

Tentacles writhed and reformed, the squid body compressing and expanding simultaneously!

When the smoke cleared...

|A glorious Dead Existence has been Summoned|

|Entity: Abyssal Lich-Kraken of Cursed Depths|

|Complexity: 125,000,000,000,000|

|Special Traits: Retains Curse-Weaving, Gains Lich’s Magical Arsenal|

|Unique Ability: Can transform between squid and humanoid lich forms|

|Loyalty: Absolute to Summoner|

The new creature that emerged was magnificent in its impossibility!

In one moment it was a kraken of shadows and curses, in the next a robed lich with tentacles for fingers. It knelt, somehow, despite its ever-shifting form.

"Welcome to the Legion," Ra’Zan said cheerfully.

Below, the weak Living Existences and Fold Dwellers had gone from horror to something beyond...a kind of numb acceptance that reality had decided to stop making sense.

Dukes...had somber expressions as they were already forced to move, with the more powerful Dead Existences- the mummufied creature and the head of An Early Creature, had begun devouring everything around them!

Ra’Zan surveyed his growing Legion...two members, the fat Ape, and counting. His gaze swept across the battlefield where hundreds more Dead Existences emerged from tears that kept multiplying!

"Ah..."

So many candidates. So many possibilities for transformation!

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