Reincarnated as a bamboo rat, it begins its extreme survival struggle.

"Take this perfect home run."

Holding his sword in both hands, Bell assumed a baseball batting stance and swung his iron sword the instant he appeared next to the skeleton warrior.

The skeleton warrior who had been struck by the sword was cleanly severed at his eye socket, and a piece of his skull flew off.

The iron sword looks like a toothpick, but its slashing range is a solid 30 centimeters.

Riding the rushing water, Bell wielded his iron sword, and with a series of swift slashes, eight skeleton warriors fell to the ground, unable to rise again.

"I've already set your soul fire ablaze, let's see how you guys revive now."

With a soft hum, the shadow beneath Bell's feet shrank back into his body.

Once the surging waters had fully spread out, they lost their momentum, but Bell had already achieved his goal of breaking out of the encirclement and eliminating the skeleton warriors as much as possible.

Chapter 84 Experience and Soulfire

"Kakaka..."

As the skeleton warriors moved, their bodies became extremely muffled due to the water covering them.

With a flick of his iron sword, Bell shook off the soul fire that was wrapped around the tip of the blade.

He charged straight out of the encirclement of the skeleton warriors, and naturally, Bell wouldn't stop attacking; this opportunity was one he had fought hard to obtain.

"Activate [Shadow Assassin]."

He leaped onto the body of a skeleton warrior, cleaved its head in two with his sword, and then plucked out the soul fire from within and swallowed it whole.

At the same time, he swung his iron sword and fired a Shadow Strike to the side, instantly piercing the heads of three skeleton warriors and shattering the bodies of several others.

Without proper coordination, the skeleton warriors couldn't cause much trouble for Bell.

In just half a minute, Bell took care of twenty skeleton warriors.

Meanwhile, the remaining thirty skeleton warriors reformed their encirclement formation, surrounding Bell once again.

"My body has become sluggish."

Bell leaped lightly, dodging the skeleton warrior's attack, and found that his speed had slowed down.

As undead creatures, the skeleton warriors are not particularly fast-reacting, giving the impression of playing a game with a lag of 60-70%.

Among adventurers accustomed to life-or-death battles, such reaction speed is a joke; seasoned adventurers have a hundred ways to outmaneuver this idiot.

But accidents often happen at times like these. The aura of "death erosion" has lingered inside the Bone Spire ever since the skeleton warriors were revived.

And as the skeleton warriors continued to exist, the intensity of their presence grew.

Even after Bell killed twenty skeleton warriors, the dense death aura showed no signs of dissipating or thinning, and it seemed that it could not be cleared away in a short time.

When death energy accumulates, it causes physical decay, resulting in instant death for adventurers.

Bell has now replaced lung breathing with magic breathing, greatly reducing his interaction with the outside world, and he has not been injured by the skeleton warriors.

However, under these circumstances, his body showed obvious signs of discomfort. If an ordinary adventurer came to this place, they would suffer a great loss.

Even adventurers with protective gear would become extremely sluggish after a tug-of-war with the skeleton warriors.

Skeleton warriors are idiots who play games with a latency of 60-70, but adventurers who are in the [Death Corruption] for a long time are likely to reach a latency of 200-300.

In comparison to the lag, the skeleton warriors suddenly seemed extremely agile.

"Fortunately, I can use magic breathing, so my combat power won't be greatly affected in the short term."

Wielding his iron sword, Bell unleashed two consecutive Shadow Strike attacks, tearing apart the regrouped formation of the skeleton warriors.

After being reduced to only a dozen or so skeleton warriors, they were no longer able to withstand Bell's offensive.

Unlike enemies of human size, Bell, this little furball, jumped and bounced around, making it difficult for the skeleton warriors to hit him, even though they sensed his very obvious living presence.

Not to mention, every time Bale was about to be hit, he would mobilize...

The round stones in your inventory can either be used as shields to block attacks or as movement skills to change your position.

As the battle drew to a close, Bell was not content with merely scattering the soul fire of the skeleton warriors.

He began purposefully cracking open the skulls of the skeleton warriors, consuming as much of their soul fire as possible. For Bell, this was a great tonic, far superior to the tiger whip he had seen in the warehouse.

[Experience +448]

After successfully killing fifty skeleton warriors, Bell also gained an astonishing amount of experience, nearly 450 experience points, as if telling Bell that entering this bone spire was definitely the right choice.

"Unfortunately, the experience points gained from killing these skeleton warriors decrease significantly as the battle progresses."

With a sigh, Bell remarked that it would be great if the experience gain from killing the Skeleton Warriors was a fixed value.

He could gain nearly twenty experience points when he killed the first skeleton warrior, but he could only gain five experience points after killing the last skeleton warrior.

But aside from the experience gained, Bell also successfully swallowed seventeen soul flames during the battle.

In the early stages of the battle, opportunities are fleeting, and Bell cannot afford to be careless.

To ensure that the struck skeleton warriors would never be able to stand up again, Bell had no choice but to shatter their soul fire on the spot.

But Bell, who had once swallowed Soulfire, knew the nourishing effects of these things on him. Soulfire could be dismantled into building materials in the dream world to build a spiritual hut.

This can directly enhance Bell's mental strength, but it is unknown whether humans can directly utilize soul fire like he can.

"It's a pity that the soul fire can't be preserved for long, otherwise I would have taken it back to have someone test it. Or maybe when I go back, I could get a head from a resurrected corpse as a gift for Edu?"

Muttering something to himself, Bell walked past the pile of broken bones of the skeleton warriors.

The only valuable thing about them is their magically imbued bones, which can be processed into bone meal in Bell's workbench and used as fertilizer to catalyze plant growth.

Unfortunately, nowadays, the bamboo forest is full of living remains, and the bones that Bell needed can be found everywhere, making these bone fragments worthless.

As for the armor on the skeleton warriors and the swords and shields they wield, in the extremely distant past, these items would have been genuine magical equipment.

However, over the long years, these things have completely decayed and lost their value as handicrafts and antiques.

"Hmm... what's being guarded by the skeleton warriors is a square stone with inscriptions, somewhat like the kind of square stone with Poneglyphs in One Piece."

Bell walked up to the square stone that had been guarded by the skeleton warriors. His fiery ahoge illuminated the stone, which resembled black jade, and allowed Bell to see the characters engraved on it.

The font engraved here is one that Bell had never seen before. It is at least not a human script from this world, nor is it Chinese or English from Earth.

But these characters did not give Bell a feeling of being completely incomprehensible.

On the contrary, each character gives the impression that I should recognize this script.

With a puzzled look on his face, Bell used [Information Insight] on the stone. Anyway, scanning was a habit of Bell's when in doubt.

This time, using [Information Insight] on the stone surprisingly yielded a response.

[Unknown Inscription]

Description: A peculiar stone inscribed with unknown information; perhaps by infusing it with magic, one could obtain information recorded in the distant past.

Chapter 85 The Tomb of a Fallen Civilization

With a light touch of his fingertips on the black jade-like square stone, strands of magic surged from Bell's body, illuminating the characters on the black jade.

The message sealed within this square stone in the distant past quietly flowed out and slowly unfolded before Bell.

'In the year 194 of the Full Moon Calendar, the Kingdom's army crushed the seven alien races, successfully unifying the world. For my military achievements in quelling the rebellion of the southern alien remnants, I am awarded the title of Earl, a title that will benefit my descendants.'

In the year 199 of the Full Moon Calendar, the kingdom was at peace, and masters emerged in all walks of life.

In the year 204 of the Full Moon Calendar, the kingdom that unified the world turned its gaze beyond. Astrologers pinpointed the coordinates of another world, and the kingdom's strongest warriors took the lead, completing the initial exploration of that world.

In the year 206 of the Full Moon Calendar, the heroes who had explored the other world returned to the kingdom. This other world possessed abundant resources and an uncivilized indigenous civilization. The king issued an order to launch an expedition to the other world. Although many felt this was premature, under the king's command, countless artisans and mages devoted themselves to forging the interdimensional portal.

In the year 210 of the Full Moon Calendar, the kingdom completed its conquest of the other world. Resources from that other world brought the kingdom to an unprecedented peak of prosperity.

In the year 214 of the Full Moon Calendar, archaeologists discovered the buried ruins of a civilization in another world. Before the emergence of the indigenous civilization, this place had a highly advanced civilization comparable to that of the kingdom.

In the year 222 of the Lunar Calendar, archaeologists discovered the remains of an evil god buried beneath the ruins of an ancient civilization.

In the year 225 of the Full Moon Calendar, the evil god revived, and the alien colony lost contact. In the same year, the evil god crossed the interdimensional portal and arrived in the kingdom's territory.

'At the end of the year 225 of the Full Moon Calendar, the Kingdom, in alliance with the remnants of the alien races, joined forces to slay the evil god on its own soil. The cost was the loss of seventy percent of the Kingdom's powerful warriors, and the world itself suffered irreversible and fundamental damage. The Kingdom will forever remember the contributions of all those who sacrificed their lives in this war.'

In the year 237 of the Full Moon Calendar, soil pollution worsened, and the lingering poison left by the evil god continued to erode the world. Food production had declined drastically over the past decade, and even though the population was less than one-fiftieth of its former glory, the decaying kingdom was unable to continue feeding its remaining inhabitants.

The information transmitted to Bell's brain through magic allowed Bell to see a large number of strange scenes, starting from a prosperous kingdom that conquered the world, to cross-border colonization, and finally to the brink of collapse due to the resurgence of a forbidden evil god.

The information recorded on the stone was limited. Bell had no idea what kind of civilization had inscribed this information, how they had carried out cross-border colonization, or what the evil god who was about to destroy the world looked like.

Especially regarding information about evil gods, the person who recorded the information seemed to be afraid of violating some taboo, only recording that such an event existed, but without recording any specific information about the evil god.

"How powerful must a civilization be to transcend global colonization?"

With a sigh for this lost civilization, Bell continued browsing the information on the stone.

Following these inscribed historical events are the tomb owner's reflections on the end of the world, his words filled with...

It was filled with resentment.

In the year 240 of the full moon calendar, scholars confirmed that the entire nation was no longer capable of reproduction; in fact, the kingdom had not seen a single newborn for three years.

'In the year 241 of the Full Moon Calendar, the weak and impoverished all perished, the living suffered mental stagnation and were unable to think coherently, and the interdimensional kingdom, damaged by the evil god, was beyond repair. We are trapped in this dying world, and our homeland has become the kingdom's tomb.'

In the year 245 of the full moon calendar, the kingdom lost all hope, and the king issued his final order: to build a tomb for the kingdom.