Chapter 70

"Lord Karnasen, do you have any planes for sale? The price can be negotiated, terms don't matter—but it must be delivered soon."

"I don’t have any, but if you’re in a hurry, I know someone who does. It’s a necrotic plane—normal beings can’t use it directly, and forget about rare minerals or stable elemental channels; it’ll take time to clean up. If you’re interested, I can arrange it within a few days."

"I need to think about this. Can we visit the site for an inspection?"

"I can ask for you—it shouldn’t be a problem. Planes like this have no value, so there are few buyers. Wait a few days."

…………

Three days later, Sakavi and Verna stood on a watchtower built from pale, massive bones; even Sakavi, with his vast experience, paused in astonishment. Before them stretched a world without sun, moon, or stars—the sky a perpetual, sickly violet, occasionally pierced by translucent wraiths drifting like jellyfish, emitting faint, maddening whimpers.

The land was gray-black, blanketed in thick dust like bone ash. Distant mountains twisted into grotesque shapes as if forged from crushed corpses; murky rivers oozed dark yellow fluid like open sores across the earth, while visible gray dust hung thick in the air.

"Verna, do you think this plane is worth acquiring?"

"Hard to say yet. We only have Grap as a druid, and clearing this will be difficult—but since he’s useless in the coming war, he might as well work here."

"Let’s move forward. This ruined plane dares to ask me seventy million gold coins plus three hundred forged rune swords? These bastards are truly insane—any price they’ll name."

A towering spire of stacked skulls had been snapped mid-height; countless skulls littered the slopes, their hollow eye sockets staring blankly at the sky.

As they advanced, the area once known as the “Soul-Binding Forest” now held only charred, twisted trunks—the souls once bound there long vanished. Farther on, a vast, bizarre palace complex stood reduced to broken walls and shattered pillars, as if devoured by some colossal beast.

"It seems the 'cleaning' was thorough," Sakavi remarked. His humanoid form seemed better adapted here; his shadowy robe stirred without wind, silently absorbing nearby negative energy particles. His dragon eyes scanned the wasteland like a farmer assessing a recently harvested field.

As intelligence indicated, powerful necrotic lords, liches, and death knights had vanished. Beneath the pale bone platforms, across the gray-black plains, only lowly denizens wandered aimlessly.

Skeleton soldiers were mostly incomplete, dragging rusted weapons, shambling through the dust like headless flies, their lower jaws clacking unconsciously. Some near-exhausted specters and wraiths drifted like thin mist—their shrieks now feeble, incapable of harming living souls.

A few ghouls rummaged through piles of corpses, searching for any lingering "meat scraps," fighting pointlessly over scraps. Sakavi noticed, in obscure corners, a handful of rabbits darting about—life, tenacious and stubborn, still clung to this dead land.

"Sakavi, you’re the necromancy expert—any valuable mineral deposits here?"

"I can sense several untapped veins of negative energy deep within the earth. Though no powerful entities now draw from them, they sustain the plane’s generation of low-tier undead—precious resources for cultivating specific undead creatures or casting large-scale necromantic spells."

"Supposedly, a few kilometers away lies a place called the Withering Bog. Let’s go see it—I suspect it’ll surprise us. Boglands are notoriously hard to develop; they’re favored hiding spots for desperate factions or reclusive liches."

They arrived above the bog, overlooking its expanse shrouded in emerald-green mist—a wound on the earth, pulsing with unnatural vitality. One of the few places in the "Eternal Silence Wasteland" still brimming with high "activity" and dangerous outputs.

Vast and endless, its muddy black waters interwove with rotting land, forming a labyrinthine maze. The surface floated thick, oil-like emerald-green mist—not still, but slowly writhing like a living thing, obscuring vision and swallowing sound.

The air reeked of a complex stench: overpowering decay, the cloying sweetness of some bizarre, diseased flower, and a sharp, acidic chemical tang—combined into a toxic miasma capable of inducing dizziness and vomiting in ordinary creatures.

Ghostface Mushrooms grew here—gigantic, pale fungi with caps bearing patterns resembling agonized human faces, occasionally ejecting hallucinogenic clouds of spores.

And the Weeping Blood Orchids—dark red, orchid-shaped plants whose petals oozed thick, blood-like sap, emitting a cloying fragrance that was a lethal neurotoxin.

And of course, the Strangling Vines—black as iron, coiling like serpents in the water or around dead trees, striking swiftly to entangle and pierce any living being or energy entity that passed.

The sparse trees in the bog were long dead, their branches pale and twisted like raised arm bones, bark stripped away, crawling with glowing moss—clusters of cold, emerald-green orbs flickering in and out of the mist, casting eerie, dim light and deepening the bog’s dread.

"Verna, do you think a powerful lich hides here?"

"What, have your tastes gotten so refined now? Even liches aren’t safe from you?"

"What have you been through these past years? You’ve changed so much—I remember you weren’t like this."

"Because you were young back then, hahaha! You were busy swindling, running magical experiments, or developing high-damage necromantic spells. You never had time to care what I liked. Besides, drow are like this—you think we’re wood elves?"

"I thought you were different from other drow. Turns out I was wrong. I forgot—you fled because you lost an internal power struggle, not because you rejected drow ways."

"Don’t trust those who fled either—they’re mostly scoundrels. In that environment, no good drow could grow. Speaking of liches, I have a good idea: let’s bring a few high-rank rangers from our territory to scout. If we go ourselves, no lich would dare show his face."

"Fine. But that’ll take time. Let’s check other places first."

At the entrance of a massive, low fortress at the border between the bog and the Pale Plateau, the interior sight made them gasp—it had once been a workshop for crafting and assembling flesh golems, bone titans, and other high-tier undead. A fusion of slaughterhouse, stitching workshop, and enchanting forge. Though abandoned, it still held vast quantities of corpse residue, blueprint schematics for stitched horrors, and half-finished monsters, waiting to be reactivated.

Black stone stelae stood at key energy nodes throughout the factory, inscribed with blasphemous runes designed to channel and amplify the plane’s negative energy. They were components of the "Death Ward"—and proximity caused continuous spiritual erosion and life-drain.

"To abandon such a factory—it’s a shame, Sakavi. Any plans to reactivate it? There’s plenty of valuable stuff here."

"It can be renovated. Later, during plane transformation, it can supply massive skeletal labor. I have no intention of creating undead troops."

"Fine. What a waste. Why do you, a chromatic dragon, care so much? The lawful factions are still colluding with the Cult of the Dragon behind your back."

"Let’s go to the capital. There, we might find a map of the plane for a full assessment."

Nakshir was the only settlement in this plane worthy of the name "city"—built entirely for the undead. Streets were designed for bone steeds and ghostly carriages; buildings had no stairs, only ramps. At its center stood a colossal Soul Furnace, once used to mass-produce soul crystals. They’d hoped to find cursed scrolls or similar relics—but were bitterly disappointed.

"Sakavi, do we still need to inspect other places?"

"No need. If I’m right, the map’s 'Silent Forest' is a forest entirely composed of undead flora—trees of black iron-bone, leaves of ash-like Mourning Moss, ground covered in Sound-Eating Flowers. The entire forest is utterly silent; any creature making loud noise here will be collectively attacked by all plants, drained of life."

"Be careful with the Pale Plateau—this isn’t ordinary terrain. I once read about it in ancient texts. I thought the Holy Church had eradicated it completely. Never expected to see it here—it’s astonishing."

"Oh? What’s so special about it? I’ve never heard of it."

"You wouldn’t know—it was developed by a god-tier lich. Supposedly, by dispersing a specific spore across a forest, it creates a domain exclusively for the dead, nearly impossible to fully eradicate. These fungus-infected plants are horrific hybrids of bone, fungus, and withered vines, forming a pale, silent, yet slowly 'breathing' and 'growing' death ecosystem."

Such desecration of life was naturally intolerable to the Pantheon, especially the Holy Church, which saw it as direct provocation. Ultimately, under a joint crusade by three major churches, the spore vanished—mentioned only in necromantic tomes."

"So our inspection is over. By the way—do we even have seventy million gold coins? We couldn’t raise that even if we sold the duchy!"

"We don’t have that much—but we can borrow. Someone will be willing to lend us the money."

"Your credit with the Church of Justice won’t cover this. We have no ties to the Temple of Wealth—they won’t lend us a copper. Are you planning to ask the Trade Alliance?"

"No. I’ll ask the Cult of the Dragon. They won’t miss this much—and they’ll be happy to pay."

"They must be insane to lend money to a black dragon who just attacked them—or maybe you’re just daydreaming."

"Don’t forget—the Cult of the Dragon isn’t just the Black Veil Guild. Its largest faction is the Golden Radiance Sanctum—they’re lawful, and filthy rich."

"You’re clearly delusional. The Chromatic Dragons are backed by the Ashfire Brotherhood. You got the name wrong, and you just attacked their subordinate unit—they won’t give you a single coin."

"Who said I’m buying the necrotic plane? It’s Aequilon who’s buying. As a pure-blooded metallic dragon, he must contribute to the lawful good cause. This is exactly the kind of noble act the Golden Radiance Sanctum must support."

"Does Aequilon know you’re planning to trick him? Honestly, that’s a clever move."

"How is this tricking him? It’s helping him build a good reputation. The Golden Radiance Sanctum might even send people to help—and we can negotiate lower interest."

"What if they don’t send anyone? Are you going to just beg outright?"

"Hahahaha!"