Although the remaining flesh still maintained an eerie vitality, unrotted after thousands of years, the ancient creature’s main body had long since died and lost its form.
There were no signs of battle nearby. They seemed to have been discarded here, more like a warehouse than a graveyard, with smaller, twisted, and meaningless bone fragments scattered about.
Under the immersion of the turbid mist, their outlines and shapes formed an indescribable, terrifying yet profoundly solemn scene.
Ashley struggled to tear her gaze away from this bizarre and grand vista and surveyed her surroundings.
She discovered that the underground space’s walls were constructed from protruding bones and recessed leathery hides. Spine-like conduits divided the area into regular geometric zones, with the hard, barren undulations of the vertebrae clearly visible.
The walls featured circuits mimicking biological nerves and blood vessels, alongside bone-framework reliefs with a religious aura—like clusters of upward-rising bull-horned crosses, faint images of nuns formed from veins, their headscarves flowing like a blood-red river backward across the ground, spreading out and sinking into the depths below.
Ashley couldn’t control her ragged breathing. Even someone as irreverent as her found it hard to steady her mind before such a dark, silent, and majestic wonder.
But curiosity urged her on, cat-like, tempting her to court death.
She had to go down and see.
Just look. I won’t touch.
With little inner struggle, she made her decision.
Ashley carefully edged along the rim, wary of slipping off the dozens-of-meters-deep cliff.
As she had imagined, if humans had ultimately reached the surface, there must be a Sky Road stretching up from the endless subterranean depths.
After walking about a quarter of the way around, she found it: the slope, or rather, the bridge.
The slope was narrower than expected, held together with adhesive that fixed masses of shattered bones and remains—even curled-up human bodies. They lacked horrific death poses, instead arranged as if peacefully asleep.
If materials were scarce, incorporating comrades’ corpses into the road wasn’t a bad idea. The sacrifices willingly bore their companions on their shoulders to the surface in the end—a miraculous leap like a gazelle crossing a chasm, a path of redemption like in a divine symphony, ascending to heaven after passing through purgatory.
The mist gathered and dispersed, bones flickering into view. The Black Lantern’s beam illuminated dense, tangible sectors. After walking who knew how long, she finally set foot on solid ground.
Ashley walked among the colossal beast carcasses the size of small hills, feeling utterly insignificant as she quietly sensed and observed.
Bones and leather formed the ground everywhere; walking on it gave strange sensations of alternating hardness and softness underfoot.
She followed the straight road extending from the slope. Corpses littered the roadside, ghostly souls offering distant sacrifices to the empty expanse.
At the road’s end rose a towering wall of biomass and a massive humanoid skeleton.
Because she had seen so many bones already, it didn’t feel horrifying or evil—instead, it harmonized perfectly with the scene.
The skeleton sat upon a throne woven from fine bone branches. The chair’s back resembled a diagonally slung, heavy spiderweb radiating outward, with aged medals hanging in the tiny lattice gaps, forming a vast, shimmering expanse like rippling water—quite spectacular.
Before noting its entwined and complex bone structure, Ashley’s eyes were firmly drawn to the two skulls.
What the hell… a two-headed ogre?
On closer inspection, the skulls were human, though irregular fin-like bone ridges protruded from their surfaces. The central one was more complex, with finned ridges threading between the orbital, cheekbones, and jaw, while the one embedded at a 60-degree tilt into the shoulder had fewer.
Countless arms and finger bones converged toward the center, interlacing tightly across the chest in a long, centipede-like chain clasp—like a bizarre bridge extending outward from the jaw, in a pose of prayer or contemplation.
Its ribs numbered dozens more than a human’s, fine and thick alike, reinforced in the gaps by short, stout vertical bones. The spine split into three strands from the center of the back, firmly securing tank-armor-like shell-shaped hip bones. The middle spine extended a long, thick tail—at least three or four meters—curling around the chair and coiling at the feet.
Looking down at the leg bones, they formed sturdy reverse-jointed hooves. On the inner surface of the tibia clung a Spindle-Shaped Crystal Blade, its end embedded in the bone and connected via mechanical structure. Given that its seated height already exceeded two meters, the blade appeared enormous. It could pop out for kicks, forming a terrifying slashing arc.
Beside the throne stood a grayish stone stele, its inscription glowing with elegant tech-blue light.
Ashley crouched down, brushing away the dust with her fingers to make the text clearer.
All heroes have ascended to the dawn, while you slumber eternally here.
Dearest Elvaldorina Ascligoya Nerin Psomas, you are the twin stars of eternal night, streaking intertwined across history’s dark skies. You are the dawn’s first light, together illuminating humanity’s path forward.
May your loving souls henceforth find eternal peace.
Though the scene was eerie and morbid, the inscription brimmed with warmth and boundless, ethereal melancholy—as if penned by a close friend.
This must have been a big shot, Ashley sensed faintly.
But as the saying goes, a thief never leaves empty-handed! The Blue-Haired Loli’s thief eyes darted about.
She considered dismantling the spindle blade, but couldn’t imagine its uses. Scanning up and down, her gaze fell on the vivid red, bizarre biological tissue connecting the side skull to the body.
It had a sea cucumber-like soft body, with a blood-red gelatinous texture, sprouting fine tendrils—like a complete spinal cord extracted intact.
Ashley stared at the thing, rapidly searching her mind… Found it!
A-Grade Relic—”Angel’s Kiss Mark”!
Even among A-Grades, it was exceptionally rare and special, with some applications rivaling S-Grades.
Its function was to connect two different organisms without rejection—like a universal biological adapter. It even had cyberpunk-style hacking capabilities, but for lifeforms rather than electronics.
So it wasn’t a two-headed ogre; the second head had been grafted onto the neck via the “Angel’s Kiss Mark.”
The biggest prize was hers!
Ashley’s heart raced. Socrates would be proud of me!
To make this cross-time teacher even prouder, the Blue-Haired Loli lifted the side skull with both hands. It was huge and heavy, like a steel helmet. Just touching it chilled her palms to the bone.
She tossed it aside, then grabbed the “big sea cucumber.” With a rip, she tore it free, dangling it and shaking it—it was especially soft and bouncy.
She still had to put the head back; otherwise, it’d be too disrespectful to this human hero.
She found a suitable bone shard, jammed it into the shoulder blade gap, reattached the head, bowed, then slipped away like a thief.
Like a fox sweeping away its tracks in the snow with its tail, Ashley erased the marks she’d made along the way and returned to the Fluorite Cave to wait quietly.
A day later, the search-and-rescue team found her.
…
Ashley lay in a hospital bed, fielding questions from the police.
“So, why didn’t you call the police at the time?”
“Because it was urgent. The killer had taken a hostage and was about to strike. As a Tribunal trainee agent, I had to stop it—duty and instinct. Besides, I sent my parrot to report it.”
“That parrot injured someone.”
“Because someone tried to stop it from reporting. It’s a flying police dog, a trusted partner. It fought grave robbers—it’s a hero bird.”
“And the hostage?”
“Dead.”
The officer in the chair rubbed his forehead, feeling an immense headache.
Juvenile delinquent, Jenkins Family member, Tribunal trainee agent, eight-year-old loli… How did such a mishmash exist?
“This is a Transcendent crime, sir. Let the Tribunal handle it,” Ashley reminded him.
