Chapter 134: Spirit Communion

The skill book rested in Kael’s palm, warm and faintly humming. He focused on it, and the description unfolded in his mind.

[SPIRIT COMMUNION]

Skill Grade: SS

Effect: Through the bond between tamer and companion, copy one of that companion’s skills. (Certain unique skills cannot be copied.)

Mana Cost: 500

Cooldown: 60s

He read it twice, and then he read it a third time to be certain."It copies companion skills."

The weight of it settled over him slowly, and the excitement behind his eyes grew with it. At any moment, he could reach into the kit of any companion he had bonded and borrow whatever he needed.

Wraithlord’s summons, Lyra’s volleys, the Hollow Emissary’s reaping stroke, Void Cataclysm’s thunderous stomp. His own repertoire had just multiplied by the full strength of his roster.

The cooldown was a real limit, sixty seconds between uses. But the Skyborn Bloodline cut every one of his cooldowns in half, which brought it down to thirty.

Thirty seconds. That’s more than fair for what it does.

He didn’t wait. The skill book dissolved into a ribbon of golden light and sank into his palm, and a new icon bloomed on his skill panel, shimmering softly.

Time to try it out.

He considered the options for a moment, then selected the one that would be both the most visible and the safest to test around Elara: Endless Legion, Wraithlord’s S-rank summon.

His mana ticked down by five hundred. On the panel, the golden icon of Spirit Communion changed shape, becoming the blood-red icon of the borrowed skill.

Kael raised his right hand and cast it.

Light rippled around him, and sixteen skeletal archers in crimson leather stepped out of the air, bows already in their hands, their eye sockets burning with a low pale light.

The Northvale soldiers nearest him jolted back, several reaching for their swords on reflex before the shape of the thing registered.

The moment the cast finished, the icon on his panel returned to its golden form, grayed out and waiting for its cooldown.

That works.

"Archers. To the parapet. Fire down on them."

Let the dead fight the dead.

Time passed, and the Hollow Legion’s assault grew heavier with each hour.

Undead had already begun to climb onto the first gallery, spilling over the edge of the platform in clusters and engaging the players stationed there in vicious, close-range fighting. Bloodlust glittered in their sockets.

Along some stretches of the wall, the bones of the fallen had piled so high that they formed ramps reaching from the snow all the way up to the lowest gallery, a gruesome staircase built from corpses.

Troops of skeletal cavalry thundered out of the blizzard and charged straight up those ramps, iron hooves splintering bone as they went, bursting into the first tier with the momentum of a landslide. Blood sprayed across the platform.

Further up, on the second tier, forty meters above the ground, the defenders had begun to see the first breaches as well. Wave after wave of undead struck the lines.

Players fought furiously with everything they had, but the tide was too deep, and the situation was growing more precarious by the minute.

Then a roar split the sky.

Not the cry of an undead creature. It was deeper, longer, a bellow of enormous power that rolled over the wall like thunder.

Every head on the battlements lifted.

Out of the sky above the Bulwark, from beyond the topmost ramparts, came dragons.

Dozens of them, vast and gleaming, scales like beaten iron, flashing coldly in the morning light.

Their wings were wide enough to block the sun and fling great shadows across the snow, each beat of them driving a hard gust across the defenders’ faces.

On every dragon’s back stood a warrior in full plate, one hand locked on the reins, the other holding a lance several meters long.

"The Dragon Knights," someone breathed. "The Solarian Dragon Knight Legion."

"That’s incredible."Every warrior on this server dreams of riding one of those.

"That’s what a real power fantasy looks like."

"One day I’m going to bond the biggest dragon on the continent."

"A priest on a dragon? It’d swallow you whole."

"Don’t underestimate priests! I’m going to be the greatest dragon-riding healer this game has ever seen!"

"You two. Stop talking. There’s something at my throat. HEAL ME."

The knights dove into the battle without hesitation, each one streaking in a different direction.

Some climbed straight into the heights, plunging into the Hollow Legion’s aerial swarms, spears whirling, hurling bolts of battle aura twenty-five meters long that tore the flying monsters apart one after another.

Others hauled on their reins, sending their mounts swooping low over the battlefield, and the dragons opened their jaws.

Fire poured out of them, a sustained, roaring torrent of it, scouring the snowfield and sweeping across the foot of the wall in long blazing lines.

The undead wailed as it passed, flesh burning, bones cracking and crumbling to ash. When the fire died, black scorch marks lay across the whole plain in a crosshatch of ruin.

The Dragon Knights were a formidable force by any measure, a living union of elite warrior and apex predator, effectively mobile fortresses.

A few dozen of them had changed the shape of the battlefield almost at once, and the Hollow Legion’s advance staggered.

Cheers rolled along the ramparts.

Before the defenders could properly catch their breath, however, something changed.

One of the knights had just pulled out of a dive, his dragon’s last breath still smoking, wings beginning to spread for the climb back into the sky.

From somewhere in the depth of the blizzard, a single streak of pale light shot out of the snow.

It was a spear, a long shaft of crystalline ice, shimmering with a bitter cold that seemed to freeze the air around it.

It crossed the distance in an instant and struck the dragon square in its armored chest, punching clean through the green scales as though they were paper.

The force of it was enormous. The great beast was flung backward and driven into the stone face of the wall, pinned there, its wings sagging, its knight slumping in the saddle.