The sound of bones rustling and grinding against stone softly reverberated throughout the long corridor, only sometimes accompanied by the distant crash of a piece of rubble or something collapsing.
They came from both sides of the stone hallway, but not only, noises also came from beyond the walls, from below and above.
There was no telling just how large this place was, all that was certain was that it was in a slow process of decay.
Which was strange, nothing seemed to be the cause of it, the dungeon may be old and unattended, but it didn't appear fragile in the least, the rock wasn't falling to dust, it was still strong and compact.
The only signs of damage were due to the illogical source of the destruction too, something else was at play here, but the undead had no way of knowing what it was.
It couldn't speak, it couldn't read, it wouldn't have been able to get an answer out of either of the two persons it had met even if the skeleton had wanted.
Instead, the creature of bizarre origins simply kept on walking without any reaction to what was going on, whether or not it was even thinking or realising any of this, there was simply no way to tell.
After dozens of minutes of walking at a slow pace, the monster arrived in a fourth room, this one, was the last.
There wasn't any way out of here.
The same four grey walls were all that greeted him, everything was empty save for the usual rubbles.
The old man had to have gone in there somehow, there was no proof of it however, by all means, the elder had just popped in there.
Running its bony fingers along the walls, producing a sickly melody, the corpse suddenly stopped, the confused words of the youthful-sounding core reminded it of the things it had been seeing as well.
Most notably, when it had killed the old man and the orb, which had all seemingly been alive, otherwise there would have been no reason to destroy them as well.
Thinking about this, the skeleton smashed the remaining orb to pieces, not only had it fulfilled its purpose already, the undead didn't find much difficulty in navigating the dark anyways.
Also, it helped to bring up that flat, bright but not luminous thing in its vision again.
The rotten skeleton couldn't read, yet, he was able to understand what was written on there for some reason.
*Slayed an unwanted presence*
It tried to touch it, to no effect, phasing right through the thing, even when waving through it and covering its hollow sockets, the undead could still make out the information conveyed on the dark purple surface.
It was something curious, but it didn't completely fit the description the orb had made.
The apparition soon went away on its own.
Perhaps the skeleton needed to do something to bring it up, what could this something be though?
The undead hadn't been having any sort of thoughts at first, when it had killed the old man and dropped the orb to its death, there had been nothing going on up there.
A few moments ago however, it had remembered a past action and wondered about it, in fact, it had somehow understood what the orb had said.
Not ruminating on that, the undead thought about bringing the luminous surface, it worked but it was just the same thing as before, trying again, it just kept on bringing up the words telling about what had been killed.
Not trying anything for a few dozens of seconds, the skeleton then tried to bring up something again, this time, not thinking about what it had seen before.
Wanting to see what the orb had spoken of.
And once it did appear before itself, it understood what the orb had been talking about.
The sheer amount of information present on there appeared endless at a glance, everything was neatly separated but it didn't change the fact that one needed to crank their necks up and down to look at some of what was displayed.
Ignoring much of the information since most of it was empty, the undead focused on what was actually filled in.
*Species: Putridum Ossa*
*Title: First Of A Kind*
It was all that truly mattered at the moment, no need to pay attention to what was empty or was followed by a zero, especially when information about the whole thing was already entering its mind without being asked for.
The first thing was good to know, but was, ultimately, of little importance.
The second one however, if what he was in the process of spontaneously learning was to be trusted, mattered a bit more.
Focusing a bit more on the 'title' section of this maze of words, which was apparently called 'system', at least it was just a single word.
Not that pronunciation was something bothersome for a mute corpse.
*You are the first one of your kind, and you'll be the only one, thus deserving of a name*
The logic didn't seem sound but the undead's gaze was attracted to a previously blank portion of the purple surface.
It stood right at the top of it, implying that it was an important facet of the skeleton.
It now read something, it was the skeleton's name, no longer a simple monster.
And with it, came the very first true thoughts of the undead.
Perhaps it should have been more grandiose of a moment, maybe he should have felt something about it.
Loimos was already dead however, there was no emotion to be had, there was only one thing.
There being nothing of use in here, he moved through the ambient darkness enveloping the hallway, still unbothered by the progressive collapse of his surroundings, the skeleton found himself back to the room filled with papers and parchments.
He still couldn't read them despite suddenly being capable of comprehending words and somehow being able to think.
He couldn't read them, but he could still find a use for all of this mess.