Rescue Excavation

Kurd City wasn't worried about the murlocs gathering. Audrey even organized a hunting competition, selecting a group of Skeleton Archers to compete over who could kill enemies most efficiently.

The murlocs were drawn in by the smell of blood, then fell beneath the Skeleton Archers' Bone Arrows.

The Skeleton Archers never ran short of arrows. They all had the Bone Hyperplasia Trait, and their excess Bone Tissue could be smelted into Bone Arrows.

The Skeleton Archers were all Hoarder Rats, and their homes were stocked with quiver after quiver of Bone Arrows.

Each time a battle ended, they retrieved their arrows, refurbished them, and put them back into circulation.

Besides stockpiling arrows themselves, the Skeleton Blacksmiths responsible for logistical support also made Bone Arrows from damaged bones and smelted metal into Iron Arrows.

The Armory on Kurd City's walls stored large quantities of General Bone Arrows and Refined Iron Arrows.

Needless to say, the Bone Arrows the Skeleton Archers produced themselves were the easiest for them to use. Under normal circumstances, they preferred their own Origin Bone Arrows.

The smell of blood outside Kurd City's walls grew stronger and stronger, eventually drawing in Transcendental Murlocs.

A year ago, those two first-tier Transcendental Murlocs had nearly killed Medivh and Audrey.

A year later, first-tier Transcendental Murlocs couldn't even get close to Kurd City.

The Bone Spirit Rangers and Bone Spirit Assassins joined the competition. The few Transcendental Murlocs went down in just a few minutes.

The smell of the Transcendental Murlocs' blood spread, dousing the murlocs' frenzied retaliation like a bucket of ice water.

Just as they had a year ago, the murlocs would steer clear of any tough opponent capable of executing Transcendental Murlocs.

After those few Transcendental Murlocs died, no more murlocs attacked Kurd City.

When the hunting competition ended, Audrey handed out rewards to the winning Skeleton Archers.

The Graveyard District Skeletons cleaned up the murloc corpses. After special treatment, they were hauled to the Underground Palace for storage.

This rainy-season diversion came to a perfect end.

There were no other dangers during the rainy season besides the murlocs.

Kurd City developed quietly beneath the rain, growing stronger by the day.

In the blink of an eye, the rainy season, which had lasted for over half a month, came to an end.

Kurd City's waterworks had withstood the test. There had been no flooding in the urban area or the Farmland District.

The Square Pond Reservoirs in the various Reservoir Districts were full.

If drought came later, these deep-water ponds could irrigate the Farmland District and Livestock District, easing the impact of drought on farming and animal husbandry.

"Moo!"

Under clear skies, the Big-Horned Ox beast strode heavily into the Blood Donation Field in the Livestock District.

After resting for a while and recovering its strength, the Big-Horned Ox beast had resumed its periodic blood donations.

Taking a moderate amount of blood wouldn't affect a magic beast's growth.

After donating blood, the Big-Horned Ox beast happily dragged several carts of high-quality fodder home.

Bathing in the Big-Horned Ox beast's blood had awakened Bone Spirit Power in two more Skeleton Rangers, allowing them to advance to the first-tier low level.

Kurd City already had more than enough close-combat Transcendental Skeletons, so Medivh prioritized using magic beast blood to cultivate ranged attackers.

Construction in Kurd City had continued throughout the rainy season. The walls of the Livestock District, Graveyard District, and West Reservoir District had reached sixteen meters in height.

In the second Nine-Grid District, the walls of its five areas had risen from five meters to eight. The Armory District had also been built in the urban area.

The High Tower Castle where Medivh lived had changed little above ground, but construction underground had continued without pause.

Three underground levels had been built beneath the entire Castle District, storing the bones Medivh used in his daily work and various supplies.

Over the past month, Medivh hadn't slackened in his work of resurrecting Skeletons.

Recently, he hadn't found a suitable Ancient Battlefield to excavate, so he had used bones from ruins in ordinary Residential Districts as spellcasting materials.

He had resurrected 312 Grey Bone Skeletons, 208 White Bone Skeletons, and 136 Green Bone Skeletons.

These Skeletons were mainly farmers, Warriors, and hunters, along with Logistics Skeletons such as cooks, butchers, blacksmiths, leatherworkers, and artisans.

"Lord Medivh, a flash flood tore through the land. While patrolling, we found a place that might be an Ancient Battlefield."

As Medivh was sunning himself on the terrace, a Spirit Cat Skeleton Warlock who had been out on patrol stepped forward to report.

Transcendental Skeletons were highly intelligent. Among them, Spirit Cat Skeletons, Minotaur Skeleton Shamans, and Human Skeleton Mages had especially powerful mental strength, which they could use to vibrate the air and produce precise speech.

Under Suixin's instruction in the Voice of the Soul, the Spirit Cat Warlocks and Minotaur Shamans had already learned human language and could converse with Medivh without difficulty.

"Take me there!"

The moment Medivh heard the words "Ancient Battlefield," his spirits lifted.

He leaped to his feet and told the Spirit Cat Warlock to lead the way.

After riding for a while, Medivh arrived at a stretch of wasteland washed out by the flood.

Scattered bones littered the wasteland. Medivh released his mental strength to examine them and found that they were all 282 years old.

So many bones from people who had died in the same year made it clear that this was an Ancient Battlefield.

Looking at the bones scattered across the wasteland, Medivh winced.

When smelting bones into parts, he couldn't work with missing limbs.

It would be difficult to find all the scattered bones and reassemble them into complete bodies.

Simply putting the skeletons back together would have been manageable. Medivh had done that for a living in his previous life, and he had plenty of patience and experience.

What worried him was that some of the bones might have been swept away by the flash flood. No matter how skilled he was, he couldn't restore what was gone.

"We'll start here!"

There was no time to lament. Medivh immediately began the rescue excavation, lest changes to the burial conditions cause further damage to the bones.

The wasteland soon became a hive of activity. Thousands of Skeletons carefully scraped away the mud, digging bones out of the silt one by one.

If the wandering bandits of the Wilderness had come across such a bizarre sight, they would probably have questioned their sanity and thought they were trapped in a nightmare.

"What a great find!"

As the excavation went deeper, Medivh recovered dozens of Transcendental bones belonging to humans and members of other races.

The bones unearthed from the wasteland were mostly human and Orc.

As expected, the armies of the Gewalt Federation and the Orc Kingdom had once fought here.

Medivh had the Skeletons continue digging while he smelted Transcendental bones in a makeshift camp.

His mental strength had long since reached the threshold for advancement. He needed a major reward from the Spring of Time to trigger a transformation.

One by one, the Transcendental bones melted under his magic power and condensed into Transcendental Skeleton parts. Human Transcendental bones yielded Knight and Mage Skeleton parts, while Orc Transcendental bones yielded Orc Berserker and Orc Prophet Skeleton parts.

Resurrecting a new kind of Skeleton was always the most difficult.

Resurrecting a spellcasting Transcendental Skeleton was harder than resurrecting other types of Transcendental Skeletons.

Medivh had a feeling that his chance to become a formal mage would come when he resurrected an Orc Prophet Skeleton.

For several days, he smelted over a hundred Transcendental skeletons before finally collecting a complete set of Orc Prophet Skeleton parts.

After steadying his excitement and bringing his mental strength and magic power into peak condition, Medivh took out the Orc Prophet Skeleton parts and began assembling them for resurrection.

As he assembled the Skeleton, the long-absent sight of sweat pouring from his head returned.

With all his concentration, the Orc Skeleton Prophet rose to its feet, brandishing a Bone Staff.