Among the books stored in the Singing Hut, there is a special one. This is a manuscript, made by local villagers from generation to generation. Decades ago, after an old man passed away, his children donated it to the Singing Cottage.
Some local stories are recorded in the manuscripts, and they are of a less formal, less circumstantial type, which cannot be included in the chronicle.
One of the stories is about the battle between demons and dragons in ancient times.
It is said that a long time ago, the king of demons and the king of dragons fought for ten years. In the end, the demons were defeated, the dragons won, and humans and other animals rejoiced.
There are many different versions of this story. The version commonly remembered by the villagers today is that the dragon swallowed the demon and died of exhaustion. The dragon suppressed the power of the demon, preventing it from being resurrected, and the dragon slowly turned into a mountain. Now the rolling hills and peaks around Heishu Village are the body of the giant dragon.
The devil is still suppressed in the depths of the mountain, and is still waiting for an opportunity. There is an inverted tower at the highest point of the mountain, which is now the Falling Moon Tower. The inside of the tower is the throat of the dragon. If you follow it down, you will Meet the imprisoned demon.
This statement is of course false. To put it bluntly, it is called a myth, but to put it bluntly, it is nonsense for laymen.
It is impossible for a dragon to turn into a mountain. How big a dragon must be... Moreover, the Falling Moon Pagoda is obviously a relic of an ancient sacrificial place, and the interior is full of man-made chisels. How could it be the throat of a dragon.
Also, all true alienology researchers know that dragons don't eat demons. On the contrary, abyssal creatures may really eat dragons.
Abyssal creatures strengthen themselves by devouring soul energy. While eating flesh/body, they will also swallow the souls of creatures. They will eat anything, plants, animals, people, elves, beasts, even undead creatures, including dragons of course.
The soul of the dragon contains heavy energy. For the creatures of the abyss, the giant dragon always exudes an irresistible temptation.
No one in the world has seen dragons at all these days, and few people have seen real demons.
Demons only occasionally appear in the mage's tower, which is far away from the crowd. Some palanologists try to summon creatures of the deep, usually weak and lowly monsters.
Bounty hunters also have the chance to meet demons. They are either helping mages clean up the mess, or they are dealing with some outsiders.
For the current people, compared to the devil itself, the infection from another world is the biggest threat to them. The flow of certain alien items into the crowd, or the reappearance of the ancient battlefield buried deep in the world, these may cause alien infection.
Alien infection is like a rare infectious disease. If it is severe, it is indeed severe, but it is not uncontrollable, so there is no need to panic too much.
As a bounty hunter, Kalinger has faced alien infections more than once, and has also seen real low-level monsters. He originally thought that the crisis in the Moonfall Tower was nothing more than that.
Now he realized that there was one thing that was completely beyond his imagination.
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When Kalinger rushed to the top of the rock, the sun was setting and the sky on the opposite side was already covered in dark blue.
He also didn't care about admiring the beautiful scenery, and rushed towards the gate on the rock wall without stopping.
The door is disappearing from top to bottom, and the process of disappearing is little by little, piece by piece, just like the paintings on the rock wall being wiped away by invisible hands.
In the last few seconds, Kalinger somehow got into the door. Standing in the tower, he was finally able to calm down and look back.
Looking from the inside to the outside, the gate of the tower was not erased, but slowly closed like normal double doors. The colors of the sky were squeezed into thin lines, and finally disappeared completely.
There are several four-legged golems in the hall on the first floor. They were all slumped to the ground, motionless, unresponsive to Kalinger's presence.
Rime said that he would cut off the connection with the golem, close the tower gate, cancel all the preset magic protection, and devote all his energy to preparing "the last spell".
Now there is no magic protection in the Falling Moon Tower, and anyone can walk unimpeded. But the ensuing problem is that the floating disc is gone, and you have to take the spiral staircase to go up and down.
Kalinger ran down the stairs, two or three steps at a time, much faster than the average person. The stairs were interrupted on the thirteenth floor, and Kalinger could only stop temporarily.
He leaned forward slightly, looking at the dark and deep bottom of the Falling Moon Tower.
More than half of the magic lighting on the stone wall was extinguished, and the ball of light was gone, leaving only some self-illuminating eternal burning stones that did not need to be driven by the caster. The spiral staircase was darker before, and the range that could be seen at a glance was also smaller.
Now that the magic protection has disappeared, Kalinger can reach the depths of the tower even without the company of rime. The question is how to get there. He had tried abseiling before, but he couldn't find a place to stay after descending for so long.
Kalinger dropped the scimitar, then the hatchet and dagger. Moments later, he heard a bottoming clang.
So he smiled and plunged into the darkness.
If you want to enter the area covered by magic, you must be accompanied by the master mage of the tower, otherwise the falling moon tower will be bottomless. Now the situation changed, Kalinger fell into the darkness, turned his body instinctively, and landed on the ground with a dexterous posture.
He rolled over, half kneeling and propped up his body. This is a very open underground cave, with a vaulted roof above it, connected to the shaft-like Moon Falling Tower. Due to the dim light, the front, rear, left, and right sides are so wide that the end cannot be seen clearly.
Kalinger retrieved his weapon. He noticed that the ground under his feet was not mud, but more like a thick ice surface, with a glimmer of light from the inside.
This was the crystal wall he had seen before. At that time, he walked down a gentle slope and saw the facade of the crystal wall, but now he should be standing on the top of the crystal.
Walk around and you should be able to find the slope from before. Maybe the rime is down there.
When walking, Kalinger could feel the vibration under the crystal. It was very slight at first, and then the frequency increased and the intensity became stronger, one after another, becoming like the frequency of a heartbeat.
Every heartbeat is a thunder in the depths of crystallization. Kalinger heard a small crumbling sound, and the part under his feet was still intact, but there must be a crack in the crystal wall somewhere.
He listened carefully, letting the crackling and roaring guide him.
After a few hundred steps, he saw a column of spell characters appear on the ground. The gilt strokes are hot on the crystal surface, and the characters bite together and connect into an arc, going deep into the darkness farther away.
Kallinger couldn't read the meaning of the characters, but could tell from their form what they were supposed to be used for. This should be some kind of confinement spell, equivalent to an invisible wall. Judging from the color, the caster used a lot of rare and precious gemstone powder to bless the effect. Judging from the degree of obsolescence, the spell was preset here a long time ago, and it was definitely not formed recently.
Kalinger first probed with the scimitar, making sure that he would not hit anything, before stepping into the range of the rune. After walking in, he turned around inadvertently, and found that the air behind him was unusually reflective. He pressed the scimitar up, and the handle of the knife touched the invisible hard wall.
"Yes, that's enough! Can you come in but not go out?" Kalinger stretched out his hand, and sure enough he touched the invisible barrier.
After walking a few steps inside the barrier, a rare but familiar smell reappeared. It was the smell after the white pills were melted with blood.
The smell here is stronger than the smell produced by a pack of pills. It squirmed like an invisible creature, and soon spread everywhere, covering Kalinger's whole body.
Kalinger wanted to find something to cover his nose, but after thinking about it, it was probably useless, so he had to endure it. He was afraid of being disturbed by the smell, so he kept reminding himself to focus on where he should really be on alert.
The crystalline ground slopes slightly, forming a concave surface towards the front. From here, some dark red liquid accumulated under the feet, and it became deeper and deeper because of the concave ground.
This is mixed blood. Wolf's blood, raven's blood, snake's blood, all kinds of blood can be used as powerful spell-casting catalysts.
At first they barely soaked Kalinger's boots, but as he moved on, the blood gradually went down to his ankles, and eventually he had to wade in pools of blood as deep as his calves.
There is a huge black shadow entrenched in the darkness ahead, it is too blurry at a distance, a bit like a cave on the rock wall at the end; when you get closer, you can see it clearly, this is not a cave, it is not attached to the wall , but a gigantic beast crouching on the surface of the crystal, soaked in the vast pool of blood.
It is not accurate to say that it is a "behemoth". It has no skin, no muscles, no hair or scales, no eyes on the huge head lying on the ground, only black eye sockets... Its whole body is full of white bones.
The bones are tightened and rubbed against each other. The giant beast crouched in the blood pool in a curled up posture, like a dilapidated castle.
As Kalinger approached, the spine of the giant beast lowered down a little more. It turned its head sideways, its eye sockets glowed slightly red, and one of its front paws was dripping with blood, and it slapped Kalinge a few steps away.
What it moved was the right front paw, while the left front paw stuck to the blood pool and remained motionless. Only half of the phalanx of the left front paw remains, the ulna is in a half-dissolved state, and only the radius is still connected to the claw wrist.
In addition, other parts of it are not complete: its ribs close to the ground are all missing, its hip bones are covered with small crack marks, one leg bone is completely missing, and the other leg bone is also broken in half. The shattered parts were bubbling in blood, and seemed to be melting and sinking.
Because it was completely white in the dark, Kalinger could clearly see the structure on its back: there should have been a pair of huge wings, but now there were only two incomplete bones left.
Its head is long and as big as a small house. Several spines of different lengths are stretched out on its orbit, brow bone and jawbone. The thorns were almost broken, and Kalinger could imagine what they had been like by observing the position of their roots.
This is the corpse of a giant dragon. An ancient, missing, broken... dragon that died long ago.
It is a dragon corpse, but it is not a real dragon. Judging from its black airflow eye sockets and the flickering red light in the eye sockets, this is a resurrected golem.
The Resurrected Golem is a product of the Necromancer School. It belongs to the Construct and also belongs to the high-level undead creature. Unlike simple metal or earth golems, these corpse-based golems require a soul core, often intelligent enough to communicate with humans.
Kalinger took a few steps forward and came to the claw bone in the bloody water.
Standing in front of this huge corpse, he knew that it had self-awareness, it had the ability to communicate with people, it had five senses, and it had memory.
The bone dragon's neck had long lost its vocal organs, but a threatening growl came from its beak. Kalinger did not back down, but placed a hand lightly on the pale claw.
"Rime," Kalinger looked into the bone dragon's eyes, "don't be angry. Anyway, this isn't the first time I've messed around in the tower."
Bone Dragon still can only produce a slight guttural sound. And the voice of the fairy rime came from a certain direction a little far away: "You... why are you back again?"
"You..." should be followed by a noun, probably the kind of noun that rime can write but can't say. Kalinger completed the complete version in his mind.
"No wonder..." Kalinger said softly, "When I saw you for the first time, I vaguely felt that 'rime' was not the name of an elf at all. There is no ice and snow in the Southwestern Forest and Yoll Island, and the elves basically live in the warm climate of the four seasons." Where there is hardly any elf named after Sharp Frost."
"We agreed, you will know in the future. Why do you want to come back, why do you have to know in advance..."
Distinguish carefully, the sound of "rime" is coming from the bottom up.
Kalinger thought of the ramp he had been on, and the crystalline façade beside it. Judging from the position of the sound, the elf body should be sitting under the entire crystal, leaning against the crystal wall, just like before.
Kalinger said: "If I really go to the Arcane Federation, when I bring people back, I probably won't see you again? At that time, there will be experienced mages investigating the Falling Moon Tower, After guessing everything that happened here, they will tell me that there used to be a mage who studied necromantics and otherworldly studies here. His mistakes not only killed himself, but almost caused a disaster. Fortunately, he Such a situation has been prepared for a long time, before the most dangerous experiment, he has already prepared a bone dragon golem. The bone dragon golem is not only the creation of the mage, but also the assistant of the mage, and even used by the mage to offset A dangerous instrument... I'm right."
"That's right," Rime's voice continued to come from under the huge crystal, "The teacher created me just to deal with today's situation."
Kalinger said: "For the creatures of the abyss, the dragon is an irresistible temptation. Devouring the dragon will make the demon full of power, and just smelling the wound of the dragon is enough to drive the demon crazy.
"However, if you eat too much without restraint, the demon will die because of it. To the demon, the flesh and soul of the dragon is more like medicine than food. You have read a lot of books, it should be Knowing that there are such medicines in human society, eating some can improve concentration and even physical strength, it will make people feel good, and they will want to continue to take it next time, and even become addicted to it, but if people who take medicine get carried away and take a lot of it for a long time , will eventually be poisoned to death.”
Rime's tone is the same as always: "You are right. You know a lot."
"Although you are just a golem, you are made of dragon bones after all. As long as you add the right spells, you can also attract the creatures of the abyss, arouse its appetite, and make it lose its mind."
"Yes. Even living clusters of abyssal elements will be attracted by this... by this drug."
"I'm a little curious, why did you let it eat you little by little?" Kalinger stroked the claw bone, "When something goes wrong in the experiment, you should be eaten immediately, follow the teacher to die immediately, and poison the elemental cluster by the way. Why do you have to be swallowed up like this? Isn't it painful?"
Rime said: "Because I need time."
"What do you need time for?"
"Check the extent of the leakage of alien elements, check the status of other infected bodies on this mountain... If I am eaten too quickly, it is likely that there will be omissions left, and it will be irreparable. Teacher Jinghu has prepared everything in advance , and left his corpse to me, I can transfer part of my soul to that corpse, so that I can leave the Moonfall Tower and do the aftermath."
"Is this your teacher's order?"
"It's the teacher's entrustment, not an order. It's also my own wish."
Kallinger asked: "For what? Just for the locals and their land? Do you think it's worth it?"
"not worth it."
This answer was a bit unexpected. Kalinger always talked a lot, but this time he didn't know how to answer it.
Wu Ri paused, and continued: "Whether it's worth it or not, and whether I want it or not are two different things."
Kalinger looked down at the pool of blood under his feet, thoughtful.
"These things," he gestured around, referring to the entire huge crystal and blood water, "if they are interrupted, what will happen?"
"Element clusters will break the crystals used for confinement, and will completely break free from the bondage."
Kalinger nodded. Rime said before that this cluster of elements comes from the depths of the ground, and it is formed by the gathering of a large number of demon corpses on the ancient battlefield. It is very powerful, basically equivalent to a lord-level abyssal creature.
Such a monster is inherently difficult to control, and it still eats the bone dragon day by day, eating the "medicine" that makes itself stronger... Although the medicine will eventually poison it to death, before it dies completely, there must be some strength Filled to the peak of the moment.
If it breaks free, it will infect the land and creatures around it as it goes berserk. This is much scarier than a real demon lord, at least a living demon lord will not spread the infection.
Kalinger took a few steps forward and came to the head of the bone dragon. He stood on the side of his head, facing the red light in the dark eye sockets.
"Rime, I have a way," he said softly, "With this method, we can destroy this living elemental cluster without you dying. How about it, cooperate?"
"No cooperation. What you say is impossible."
Kalinger smiled: "You didn't even listen to the details, how do you know it's impossible? Although you are just a resurrected golem, you are also a spellcaster who has read a lot of books. Come, let me test you a few questions."
The red light in Keel's eye sockets flickered.
Kalinger asked: "Humans will be infected and become abyssal creatures when they encounter clusters of abyssal elements. So what will happen if demons encounter clusters of abyssal elements?"
"Weak demons will be afraid of being swallowed and digested by the swarm. Powerful demons... will try to devour elements to strengthen themselves."
"That's right," Kalinger continued to ask, "Is this kind of knowledge common in human books?"
"Not often. Otherworldly studies have long been taboo, just like necromancy."
"Except for rebels like Jinghu who study other worlds, not many people understand this, right?"
"right."
"Besides some mages, what kind of creatures are particularly familiar with demons? Not just heard a few words, but the kind that really understands them very well."
Rime's voice was filled with a hint of a smile: "Then there's no need to ask? Of course it's the demons themselves."
Kalinger did not continue to ask. Just standing in front of the bone dragon's eye sockets, with a smile on his face, looking at the shaking red light.
There was a small friction sound on the bone dragon. It moved its broken forelimbs, struggled to support its upper body, and looked down at Kalinger standing in the pool of blood.
The blood water rippled due to the movement of the bone dragon. After the ripples calmed down, two shadows appeared on the crimson water.
One was a pale, bony skeleton, the other a pitch-black monstrosity. Both are almost equally massive, and the giant beast has an extra pair of wings on its back than the skeleton. The wings are folded and folded on the back of the giant beast.
Kalinge raised his head and looked at the head of the bone dragon above. At this moment, the wings of the monster in the projection fluttered and spread out to the left and right.
The wings are fully stretched, spanning the entire blood pool.
There are gaps between the black bones, and the color of flames flows in the gaps.
TBC