Chapter Eighty-Nine: An Empty Shell

Wade picked up the scale, and Mia drifted over to it as well, staring at it with the curious wonder of a child.

Wade turned away and carried the scale beyond the patch of glowing moss. Even there, it continued to shine.

It seemed the moss’s magic had seeped into it; through a skeleton’s sight, one could see magic gathering upon its surface.

That scale of unknown origin could actually store magic.

It appeared that during the nine days Wade had lain there, it had undergone some strange reaction with the glowing moss, causing it to light up.

When Wade lifted it, that gentle radiance illuminated the cramped little cave.

Suddenly, Wade remembered a legend York had once told him, one concerning the Silvermoon Elves.

A fairy dragon that swept through the night, shedding a dreamlike light.

The wizard’s bones he had found while gathering firewood that day looked very much like the Silvermoon priest York had spoken of, as well as Julia Silvermoon, that mysterious figure who claimed to be the last Silvermoon Elf.

Could this wasteland be the homeland of that race?

Could this scale have come from the legendary fairy dragon?

Wade sat down and turned the scale over in his hands, examining it from every angle, lightly tapping it with the round gourd hammer beside him.

It showed no particular reaction, nothing like a shell washed ashore by the tide suddenly twitching into motion.

Apart from beginning to glow, it seemed unchanged from before.

Before this, Wade’s greatest impression of it had been its hardness. When he first found it near the nameless ruins, he had smashed it hard with the round gourd hammer, yet not even a white mark had been left upon it.

The wave-like patterns on the scale slowly dimmed now; originally those rings had been bronze in color, but as it began to glow, the hue grew ever closer to pure white.

It truly had the smooth, lustrous texture of jade, beautiful as a priceless treasure.

Its outward value alone was enough to make it a treasure.

As for its inner value... well, Wade could not think of any use for it beyond watering and digging.

The same went for the three crystals. His knowledge was not broad enough to know what to do with such extraordinary materials.

If only he had a workbench at hand. He could stuff all the baffling things into it, and then it would randomly produce a usable weapon or tool.

He had once thought the same when he was a baker, always imagining that if he poured eggs, flour, and white sugar together, they would simply turn into bread on their own.

But reality was never a game. One could not skip the steps in between.

A man who knew only how to fight could never bring out the value of extraordinary materials.

A farmer who obtained a dragon scale would at most use it to prop up a table leg.

Only in the hands of a master smith could the value of a dragon scale be fully realized, forged into armor such as shoulder guards, or fused with ore and hammered into a sword.

Sadly, Wade could only claim true mastery in the realm of baking bread.

He was merely an expert at toasting loaves; even if this truly was the scale of a fairy dragon, he would not be able to make much use of it.

Still, it could be hung overhead to provide light.

Its glow was brighter than that of the luminous moss. He ought to carve a hook later and hang it up. When not needed, it could serve as a lamp; when it was time to water the plants, he could take it down again.

With that thought in mind, Wade set the scale aside.

He reached the cave mouth, crouched low, and listened to the sounds outside.

Good. No wind.

The world beyond was calm, free of any extreme weather.

He pushed away the stone blocking the entrance and squeezed out through the narrow opening.

At once, the view opened wide. Mia fluttered out behind him.

The little one could finally fly freely in open space; she had clearly been stifled for too long. She shot out at once, racing from the cave mouth across the sand before rising straight up into the sky.

Wade looked up. Twenty days had passed since the blood moon he first saw had become full.

The full moon had now waned into a crescent, with about a third of it missing. In roughly forty more days, it would nearly vanish, then begin once again to grow toward fullness.

Just as he had estimated before, a single phase change took about sixty days; roughly every one hundred and twenty days, the moon completed a great cycle.

The surge of magic tides seemed to have passed. The wasteland had grown much calmer, with far less wind, only a light breeze remaining.

Wade climbed the slope by the little home and looked into the distance.

Far away, he spotted a wandering skeleton, the nearest of his skeleton brothers. Scattered even farther off were a few tiny black specks, also wandering skeletons.

The wasteland had returned to its most familiar form. He estimated the strong winds had stopped for several days already, and the skeletons that had once been swept away by the storm had begun to roam mindlessly again, like a drop of ink falling into water and slowly bleeding outward to fill the empty spaces.

Looking at that skeleton brother, Wade formed a plan.

Wasn’t it nothing more than a body in motion?

That fellow was roaming near his little home. What if tomorrow it wandered up to his doorstep and blocked the entrance?

Sometimes, one had to learn to prevent trouble before it happened.

Rather than wait passively for the fellow to invade his territory, it would be better to strike first.

After the battle with the necromancer, he had crossed into a new rank. By the standards of adventurer classes, he should now be a silver-tier skeleton.

It was the perfect chance to find an opponent and test how much he had changed since before.

Practice was the only standard by which truth could be tested, was it not?

Wade nodded, gripped the round gourd hammer, and prepared to move in on that skeleton brother.

After flying a circle, Mia returned to find him.

Wade communicated with the little one by thought, saying they were going over there to play.

The little one looked excited. Noticing the bald skeleton, she even clenched her tiny fists and, with a serious expression, threw a left hook and a right hook toward it.

Her violent tendencies were becoming increasingly obvious. Well, so be it—there was nothing wrong with that. The place they lived in could hardly be called a civilized society.

The undead of the wasteland were savage and untamed; in such a place, one had to speak with one’s fists.

Wade led Mia up to that skeleton brother.

The filthy skeleton, its body smeared with mud and sand, was no different from the skeletons Wade had met before. When Wade approached within a certain range, it opened and closed its jaws and stretched out its hands as if it meant to bite through his skull, then fled in a fury.

Wade only felt that its movements were pitifully weak, its whole body full of openings.

Mia flew over and teased it as though mocking a monkey.

After watching for a while, Wade raised his hammer. He did not repeat the small mistake he had made last time; this time, he easily cracked open the skeleton’s skull.

He controlled his strength, trying not to damage the skull, and only struck a small fissure at the temple.

The skeleton’s soul fire slowly leaked out. Like a bleeding man, it could still struggle on for a little while; during that time, Mia kept teasing it in front of it.

But before a few minutes had passed, the soul fire in its eye sockets went out. With a clatter, it collapsed to the ground, lifeless and silent, becoming a dead thing, an empty shell.