The Extra's Rise - Chapter 871

871: Undead Evolution 871: Undead Evolution With Seraphina and Ren both settled at Radiant-rank, I returned to my own work.

Not to chase Liam’s lessons, but to push the edge of my sword art where I could feel something waiting-close, clear, and not yet mine.

I drew my blade.

The weight set into my grip like it always had, a promise and a measure.

I moved through long forms I had carved into muscle and breath over years.

Cuts tracked true.

Guards set without thought.

The rhythm of Sword Unity-steel and wielder as one-beat steady in every motion.

But as I finished a complex chain that left thin lines of energy floating in the air, I felt a second rhythm under the first.

A higher gear.

A door I could sense with the skin, not yet with the hand.

“There’s another level,” I said quietly, easing the blade back to center.

The thought pulled up a memory I usually kept wrapped: Magnus Draykar’s final strike.

His body was already being eaten by corruption, joints stiff, breath ragged.

He still set his stance, drew a clean line, and cut.

The blade moved through space-and through the order that sits beneath space.

No borrowed fuel.

No outside anchor.

He used refined swordwork and his own mana, and the sky itself opened.

I can break sky now by folding Grey energy through the cut.

Magnus did it without that.

Technique carried the weight.

He reached a point beyond Unity that I can feel but can’t yet hold.

“What are you thinking about?” Seraphina asked from her platform, her fire quiet as a banked ember.

“My master’s last cut,” I said, retracing the path as best I could.

“He hit something past Unity with pure swordwork.

I can match the effect with Grey, but I want the method itself.” “Can you reach it?” Ren asked, God’s Eyes mapping the pressure lines around my blade.

“Not today,” I said.

“The gate’s there.

The key isn’t.” I sheathed the sword.

Some thresholds answer patience better than pressure.

Knowing the shape is still progress.

“Let’s keep exploring,” I said.

“If Liam left his knowledge in the building, he may have left tools to match it.” We walked the facility’s odd geometry-stairs that turned a half-step longer at the top than at the bottom; corridors that ended and then didn’t.

We passed workrooms full of instruments tuned to fields I could taste but not name at a glance.

We passed quiet bays where training platforms slept in neat lines, each one built for a specific skill.

Ren found the vault.

“Arthur.

Seraphina.” His voice came from a side hall, steady but bright at the edge.

“You should see this.” The vault was circular, its walls cut with alcoves from floor to arch.

Each alcove held a piece wrapped in low light: blades that hummed on a thin note, armor with runes stitched under the plates, lenses and rods set in precise cradles.

The air felt heavier in a clean way, like the room itself respected what it kept.

The center alcove held gauntlets.

Adamantine, dark with depth.

Their surfaces carried patterns that slid between neat spatial seams and tightly tuned gravity knots.

Nothing loud.

Everything exact.

Whoever made them understood load paths and lived with them.

“Those were his,” Ren said.

The God’s Eyes flared and settled.

“Liam Kagu’s personal gauntlets.

Blood-attuned.

Built for space-time and close-range work.” Ren stepped closer.

The gauntlets woke-quiet purple light rising like breath.

They lifted from their rest and met his hands as if greeting an old agreement.

Plates shifted; seals clicked; the light sank into the lines.

“Perfect fit,” he said, flexing.

“They recognize the bloodline.” Energy ran with his motion, not around it.

When he threw a short test punch, space within a fist’s reach didn’t buckle; it aligned, as if his fist and the air were on the same track for the instant of impact.

The force would land cleaner, twice over.

“Legendary grade,” Seraphina said, studying the arrays under the metal.

“And designed for precision, not brute weight.” “They carry method too,” Ren said, turning his wrists to follow the etched paths.

“I can feel how to pair a step with a fold, a pivot with a pull.

The techniques sit under the skin like diagrams.” Watching him claim that legacy turned my thoughts to choices I had kept waiting: Erebus, who had held at Arch Lich long enough; Valeria, who had grown by rules no book wrote.

“This place makes the path clear,” I said.

“I’ve held back with Erebus and Valeria out of caution.

It’s time to move.” “Your undead,” Seraphina said.

“Erebus first,” I said.

“He’s ready to climb.

I wanted his frame clean before we pushed.

Valeria is a different matter.

There’s no map for her, but I think I see the shape.” I opened my storage and brought out two hearts.

One was Bahamut’s: a crystal heart that beat slow light, deep and sure, as if tied to tides no sea had seen.

The other was the Basilisk’s, whole again now that I had rejoined the halves I kept aside.

Seraphina stilled.

Ren watched without blinking.

“Arthur,” she said.

“Is that-” “Bahamut’s Heart,” I said.

“Why not use it on yourself?” she asked, eyes sharp.

“That much reserve could push you toward mid Radiant.” “My block isn’t fuel,” I said, weighing the dragon heart.

“It’s method.

Power won’t fix that.

For Erebus, this is the right lever.” I called him.

Erebus rose from shadow with the calm of old stone.

The light in his eyes went straight to the hearts and held there.

“Master,” he said, voice low and even.

“You propose a full advancement.” “Lich King,” I said.

“We’ll use the Dragon Heart’s mana to refine your three cores: nine-star skeleton, nine-star skull, and the Basilisk’s Heart.

But first we seat the heart in full.” Erebus glanced from the Basilisk’s Heart to the cavity in his chest.

“Correct,” he said.

“Structure must match supply.” I opened his chest with steady hands.

The socket I had carved for the Basilisk’s Heart was clean; lines of my work and older magic waited like empty channels.

I set the halves, aligned the flows, and let the heart remember itself.

Veins of mineral tissue brightened.

Power lines found each other.

The beat settled into a true cadence.

“There,” I said when the loop steadied.

“Full heart restored.” I split Bahamut’s Heart and put half into his hands.

“Step by step.

Skeleton first.

Skull next.

Heart last.

Keep the tolerances.

No rush.” “Understood,” he said, and sat to begin.

Power moved through him in ordered layers.

The skeleton took it first.

Long bones brightened from inside, the light deepening as old constraints unbound.

The spine set to a cleaner axis.

Joints that once relied on anchors I had added now carried themselves.

The skull drank next; the glow in his sockets turned richer, faint harmonics coming off his frame like a bell note you feel in the teeth.

“Refinement stable,” Erebus reported, voice carrying a new resonance.

“Components approach the Lich King threshold.” I nodded and turned to Valeria.

“What about the symbiote?” Seraphina asked.

“Valeria isn’t like the other Ancient Undead,” I said.

At my attention, she rose from my shadow.

Her form was bone shaped to grace, joins tight, lines light and precise.

The empty eyes were not empty.

They were watching.

“She isn’t standard, or a simple hybrid,” I said.

“She is a new thing-built from parts that don’t belong together by any old rule, bound by design and by me.” “How do you evolve something with no pattern to follow?” Ren asked.

Practical.

Exactly the right question.

“Not by forcing a pattern onto it,” I said.

“And not by pretending it’s something it isn’t.

She has grown with me.

She responds to our work together.

When I reached Radiant, her growth stopped.

That tells me her next step needs a new condition-something that matches her nature.” Valeria stepped closer, tilting her head as if pacing my breath.

I traced, in my mind, the choices I made when I created her-the materials, the lines of intent, the channels that formed on their own.

She is both build and being.

She is decision, still deciding.

“Organic evolution?” Seraphina said.

“But directed?” “Likely,” I said.

“But there’s more.

The way she was made points at a proper axis.

I kept missing it because I was thinking in categories that don’t fit her.” A surge from Erebus drew our eyes.

The current around him swelled and then smoothed, like a river meeting its deeper bed.

The Dragon Heart’s power folded into the Basilisk’s Heart without a fight.

The skeleton set into its new lines with quiet certainty.

The skull’s light steadied with a finer ring.

“Final phase,” he said, voice a shade deeper.

“Cores are converging.” “Good,” I said.

“Hold sequence.” I looked back at Valeria.

The pieces aligned: her origin as my design given life; her growth as a mirror to my state; her stops and starts keyed to my own thresholds.

She wasn’t meant to climb an old ladder.

She was meant to be tuned against me-not as a copy, but as a separate chord aligned to my pitch.

“I know what needs to be done,” I said.

Seraphina’s gaze sharpened.

“What does that mean for her?” “That I’ve been trying to squeeze her into undead logic,” I said.

“She’s my logic made other.

I need to stage an evolution that uses my frame as a template without erasing her difference.

It has to be a dialogue, not an order.” Ren’s mouth tipped.

“You can make that dialogue happen?” “Yes,” I said.

“Not while Erebus is finishing.

But the method is clear now.” Valeria stood very still, attention taut as wire.

We waited while Erebus closed the loop.

The chamber stayed steady; the sense of weight thinned, then settled.

Lines worked into the floor for distribution lit faintly and dimmed again, as if the space itself had adjusted around him.

“The refinement is complete,” Erebus said at last.

He rose in one smooth motion.

“Skeleton and skull at Lich King grade.

Basilisk’s Heart integrated and tuned.

Overall system stable.” I looked him over.

The old fixes-places where my work had bridged his-were gone.

The frame carried itself.

He was still Erebus: calm, precise, anchored.

But the presence was fuller.

Nothing leaked.

“Well done,” I said.

“Hold this state and let it set.

No hard tests yet.” “Understood.” I turned back to Seraphina and Ren, then to Valeria.

The path for her sat in my mind like a clean lattice-specific, careful, and true to what she is.

“I’ll explain once Erebus completes his evolution,” I said, watching as the Lich King transformation entered its final phase.

“But I finally understand what Valeria really is, and what she’s capable of becoming.”