Chapter 001: The Beast and The Pyramid of Bones

God’s Ruins, where countless gods and warriors fell to their death. It became a heaven of treasures and opportunities for all. For thousands of years, all races tried to force their way into the Legendary God’s Ruins but only a handful of them succeeded. Those who encountered fortunes became supreme under the heavens. And those who encountered misfortune never returned to tell the tale.

Inside God’s Ruins, in a shattered space, everything was filled with the rust of blood and metals, even the earth didn’t remain unharmed. As far as the eye could see, only bone fragments and corroded earth came into sight. Everything in this space had a similar condition—decayed bones, old and rusty metal and stones—everything except the unassuming secluded place to the north. Surrounded by piles of bones laid an area booming with vitality and in the middle of it, a red egg stood tall, covered in runes.

If one looked carefully, they would realize the runes were placed layer after layer. Those runes didn’t look disorganized, in fact, they all followed strict rules and arrangements. The red egg with countless runes didn’t look out of place and filled the lifeless area with the feeling of life and vitality. Just a single glance would give anyone a mystical vibe as if the egg came from the hands of Gods.

Suddenly, a crack formed on the egg. Soon more cracks spread across its surface. Strangely, the cracks avoided the runes and after a long process of thirty minutes, the egg finally separated into two pieces as a strange looking beast crawled out.

The beast looked like a wolf but not quite. It also had some resemblance of a dog, but not a dog either. The whole body of the beast was covered by a thick patch of small platinum furs. It looked extraordinary but it was only a normal beast. The wolf-like-beast wobbled a little before coming to stop, laying in the patch of grass, as it lost its conscious.

Minutes... Hours passed by in this space. The wolf pup finally showed signs of moving. It didn’t open its eyes, more like it couldn’t. Sniffing around, it slowly moved, before chomping upon the eggshell. Slowly but surely, the pup cleaned the remains—including the runes—which kept floating with the shell, even after separating into two parts.

The runes glowed for a brief moment before going silent inside the beast’s body. By the time the pup was finished, its body flashed twice. The strength of the pup increased exponentially from its initial powerless state. And it also grew in size. It didn’t wobble anymore and stood straight as the strange-yet-wolf-like pup opened its eyes, revealing a pair of ocean-like blue eyes. Unfortunately, this pair of mystical eyes didn’t contain any hint of intelligence. Only instinct.

The pup remained laid on the patch of grass while curiously glancing at its surroundings. It got an ominous feeling from this place. Only this patch of grass gave it a sense of security but the pup occasionally glanced at the southward direction. As if pulled by something it couldn’t stay put anymore.

It staggered at first, sometimes slipping down, sometimes its cute nose rubbed on the poll of grass, but the pup eventually got out of its ‘safe zone’. Slowly but surely it started to get better and better at walking. Not long after it started running, the speed got faster and faster before the figure of the pup even started to blur.

There were many obstacles on the pup’s path, like gigantic pieces of stones and piles of bones. The pup at first avoided them but the distance to its destination kept increasing. Then the simple-minded beast driven by its instinct took the straight path. Whatever stood in its way were climbed by it. But soon it encountered another problem, it couldn’t climb through branchy mountains.

The branchy mountains were made of bone. The bones were fragile and sometimes light touch could turn them into powder. Whenever the pup tried to pass through these mountains, they collapsed and mushed into fine powder.

With its stumpy paws, it couldn’t stand straight on the mountain of bone powder, and it had to drag its paws on the sand-like-dusty-bones, exhausting its energy faster. The wolf pup born a few hours ago didn’t know what exhaustion was but it felt its body going heavier. And if this continued, the pup probably wouldn’t even be able to stand properly.

This filled the pup with a weird feeling. It didn’t want to stop. It didn’t want to feel weak. The feeling of weakness frightened it. The pup ran faster and faster. Soon it learned to jump. Although it couldn’t avoid the bone mountains through jumping, if it jumped fast enough, it could get away from the bone piles before they turned to powder. And so it did.

It ran for hours. Not willing to stop. Not willing to let the exhaustion to slow itself down, the pup continued. Its body kept getting heavier. At a point, the pup couldn’t run anymore, but it kept dragging its stumpy paws. It didn’t wish to feel weak. It didn’t like the feeling of being powerless. So it kept moving. Until it couldn’t move anymore. Finally, losing consciousness the pup dropped flat on the ground.

The body of the unconsciousness beast flashed brilliantly once again before dimming down.

Time passed by, the pup opened its blue eyes. In front of it appeared a pyramid, made of white and gray skeletons. The skeleton pyramid reached hundreds of meters in height and the width couldn’t be estimated from one side. Even after such a long time, some skeletons still exuded powerful energy. The skeletons varied from size to size but all had a single similarity, they all had at least one of their hands lifted towards the sky as if trying to grab hold of something.

Certainly before passing out the pup achieved its goal. And reached the destination it was being pulled towards. The pup with unyielding will refused to give up, or even faint before accomplishing its goal.

The feeling of weakness and heaviness already disappeared. In fact, the pup felt more energetic, but the dumb beast only felt relief that the weird feeling disappeared. Not even trying to think why did that feeling appear in the first place. And whether it would come again or not...

Above the thousands of bone and varied types of skeletons, floated a glowing light of purple color. The light wasn’t too intense, it might not even hurt anyone if they looked at it from a close distance. Yet the source of glow couldn’t be seen. It gave off a gentle yet unnatural feeling. Anyone would feel the enticement to possess this item from hundreds of miles away.

It wasn’t that this light called the wolf pup specifically but the pup’s instinct felt the enticement for this item from far away. Strong desire and greed took over the dumb pup’s eyes and it started climbing the stairs made by skeletons but just as the beast stood on top of a skeleton, the skeleton turned into fine powder.

Like a chain reaction, many others fell on top of the pup. In no time, it was buried inside a pile of bone powder.

Immediately the pup jumped out. Fortunately, it closed its eyes in time. And not many skeletons fell on top, else, this might’ve been its grave.

The pup warily glared at the pile of bone powder. Then its eyes shined. That’s right! The pup realized it could use the same method it used to avoid falling in the bone mountains. This time, however, it would use this method to climb up!

Distancing itself from the pyramid of bones, the beast jumped after building enough momentum. Immediately the pup flew a few meters high and like an invincible king-kong wherever it stepped, came destruction!

The beast kept jumping non-stop until it reached the peak of the bone pyramid. It didn’t remain unhurt in the process.

Not all the skeletons were fragile. Some in the top-middle were different. They didn’t turn to fine powder with just a touch. In fact, some were as hard metal. There were even those sharp fingers, those bony fingers were sharper than the sharpest daggers. Like a hot knife, they cut through hardest metals like butter.

If the beast didn’t have its eyes filled with desire on this glow, it probably wouldn’t even think about climbing this pyramid. Small and big wounds filled its body. The beast experienced its first injury. Ironically all caused by its own foolish actions and... from dried bones.

While blood dripped from its bloody flesh and paws, the beast reached the top of the pyramid. The heart of the beast beat wildly as it neared the purple glow in the sky. Fear? Anxiousness? Excitement? The beast didn’t know any of those feelings. But its heart beat furiously. It knew it had to possess that glow of light. And so it did.

Without hesitation, the pup jumped into the glow of purple light... Instantly, the world of the pup turned purple. It kept its eyes open but even though the light directly touched its eyes, it didn’t hurt but it couldn’t see anything either.

A hard feeling transmitted to the pup’s brain through the paws. Without caring about anything, the pup bit the edge of the hard item tightly. Unwilling to let it go. The blood from the countless small and big wounds flowed onto the item. Strangely enough, the blood didn’t slip out of the glowing sphere.

The purple glow suddenly grew brighter and brighter. It even started to hurt the pup’s eyes even when they were closed. A strong purple light shot through hundreds of meters high in the sky and—

—the glow of light completely disappeared.

The pup opened its eyes only to find itself flying towards the skull of skeletons. And, it collided nose first with the skeleton. Instantly being buried inside a mountain of bone powder.

Fortunately, due to the force of the jump being blocked by the ‘hard item’, the pup fell a little distance away from the middle. And also a bit far from the edge of the bone pyramid, else, its fate would have been unknown. The bone powder slowly slid below from the cracks of other bones. Luckily, it found a footing on a hard skeleton. It didn’t move but looked around. A flash of intelligence flew past the beast’s eyes, but sadly it was only for a moment. Many information invaded its head like a dam breaking. But the foolish beast couldn’t understand any bit of it. Nor did the pup care, it only searched for the glowing.

Even after looking around, the wolf pup failed to find the glowing light anymore. The beast had yet another strange feeling. As if it possessed the item and at the same time, it didn’t.

Anger boiled inside its heart.

Once again, the pup had no idea why this feeling came but it felt this feeling made itself stronger. And at this same time, this feeling gave birth to more emotions. Fear. It feared to lose control of itself out of anger. The pup growled. As if it had its mate stolen by another beast. And it wanted nothing more than chewing that beast’s bone. Not that it understood such complex feelings but it did what it wanted to.

AWOoooooOO!

The pup faced the gray sky and howled.

After thousands of years, the silent battlefield was shaken by the howl of this wolf-like-beast. The howl demonstrated its owner’s anger and dominance. It wanted to express its domination over the treasure. It was an instinctive desire of this beast. But the howl also caused another reaction...

Crack! Crack! Crack!

The pyramid, made from thousands of experts skeletons, finally couldn’t hold on any longer. Like a domino effect, the skeletons fell one after another. The pup instinctively felt it could only gain the glowing item again if it didn’t get itself buried in this pile of bone powder. And so the pup jumped and left the now-breaking-pyramid of skeletons behind.

Crack! Crack!

BOOM!

The glorious pyramid of countless warriors, a proof of destructive battle, that stood tall and mighty for thousands of years finally perished under the howl of one measly beast.

But the pup wasn’t willing to give up either. It had to get back its glowing treasure. Before the bone powder settled, the desperate pup already dove inside. It was not willing to go back without its glowing treasure.

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