Reincarnated with the Country System-Chapter 249: Dungeon Floor 3: The Boneyard

Belly Valley Dungeon– 26 Hours After Hive Queen Elimination

Kain didn't like the way the walls pulsed.

Like a heartbeat. A slow, wet, waiting heartbeat.

The air was thick, clogged with something wrong. The deeper they went, the worse it got—fleshy, organic tunnels giving way to something even more sinister. Stone. But not just any stone. Tombstone-gray, carved with names that had no right to be there.

His name was there.

Kain's eyes flicked over a weathered slab half-buried in the dirt. Kain Vasquez, 7th ISSD, KIA.

He spat. "Real fucking funny."

The squad moved in silence. Thirty Exo-Knights. Fourteen Artificial Mages—one lost to the Berserk Flower Knight. And Kain, leading the way, Gauss rifle at the ready. Their boots crunched over brittle bone fragments, the remains of something long dead—or maybe not long enough.

SYSTEM ALERT – Dungeon Bestiary Updated

Wraithbound (Level 50-60) – Spectral entities anchored to rotting remains. Immune to conventional ballistics.

Hollowborn (Level 55-65) – Reanimated soldiers, memories twisted into madness.

Charnel Centipedes (Level 60-70) – Multi-limbed horrors that nest inside corpses.

Tomb King (Level 75 - Floor Guardian) – ???

The moment the update hit their HUDs, the first thing moved.

A Hollowborn, ribs split wide like an open maw, stumbled out from the fog. Its armor—old, rusted—clinked as it dragged a shattered rifle, jaw hanging loose, twitching. Its voice came in bursts, a garbled transmission of agony and hate.

"--WHERE IS--"

"--MOTHER?--"

"--WHERE IS--"

Kain didn't hesitate. The Gauss round took the Hollowborn in the skull, blasting rotten bone across the tombstones. But the corpse didn't fall.

It laughed.

No. Not laughed. Echoed.

A dozen voices. A hundred. A choir of the dead.

"YOU THINK YOU KILLED ME?"

Then the cemetery woke up.

First Contact

The Exo-Knights barely had time to react before the ground erupted beneath them. Charnel Centipedes—hulking, writhing masses of bone-white chitin and human faces frozen in silent screams—burst from the soil, dragging soldiers down.

Someone screamed. Short. Choked. A Knight disappeared beneath the dirt, his armor crunching as the centipede's mandibles clamped down.

"BURN THEM!"

Artificial Mages unleashed hell.

Arcane fire roared through the graveyard, blackening tombstones, searing flesh and chitin alike. The Hollowborn didn't scream. They sang. A war hymn in a language no one should understand, voices overlapping in wet, drowning syllables.

And still, they advanced.

One Knight went down, legs trapped in shifting gravestones. Another took a rusted sword through the shoulder, servos whining as his systems locked up. Kain pivoted, slammed his boot into the attacker's knee—bone snapped, but the Hollowborn didn't fall.

"FUCKERS DON'T STAY DOWN!"

The Wraithbound came next.

They drifted from the tombs—wisps of shadow, hollow eyes burning with hatred. Their presence alone was a disease. Electronics glitched. Targeting systems stuttered. Even the Artificial Mages faltered, their violet cores dimming as tendrils of spectral energy latched onto them.

A Knight convulsed, his suit locking up. His voice crackled over comms, warped and wrong.

"GET IT OUT—IT'S IN ME—GET IT OUT—"

Then he turned his rifle on his own squad.

Kain put him down. Fast.

Tactical Shift

They weren't winning.

Every inch of ground they took bled them dry. The Wraithbound could only be damaged by arcane weapons. The Hollowborn ignored pain, ignored logic. And the Charnel Centipedes burrowed, hit-and-run tactics bleeding them one by one.

Kain snarled. "We're not dying in this shithole. SHIFT STRATEGY."

He slammed a neural override through the squad's systems.

Artificial Mages prioritize Wraithbound. Full arcane payload. No reserves.

Exo-Knights engage Hollowborn with thermal rounds—burn them from the inside.

Suppressive fire on centipedes—keep them underground. If they surface, fucking vaporize them.

The Mages surged.

Bright, violet energy cut through the fog, vaporizing Wraithbound mid-drift. The undead screeched, their forms unraveling like smoke in a storm. Hollowborn armor melted under the Knights' incendiary rounds, their screams becoming real—not echoes, not ghosts.

The ground trembled.

The centipedes didn't like the fire. They started pulling back, retreating to the deeper tunnels. That was fine. Let them rot down there.

Then the Tomb King spoke.

"Enough."

The Tomb King

The fog collapsed inward. A vacuum of silence. A weight that pressed against the skull, the soul, the very fucking bones.

He rose from the center of the graveyard. A towering figure, wrapped in ancient, corroded plate. His helmet was wrong, elongated, shaped like a burial mask fused to his skull. In one hand, he carried a sword taller than a man, its edge chipped, rusted—yet humming with something far worse than time.

"You are not welcome here."

"You will never leave."

Then he moved.

The Kill

No ceremony. No grand speeches.

One second he stood.

The next—

SHINK.

A Knight exploded as the blade passed through him, bisected at the waist, armor and all. His upper half hit the dirt, arms still twitching. The Tomb King didn't even slow down.

Kain fired.

A Gauss round hit center mass—and bounced. The shockwave barely rippled his armor.

"FUCK!"

Artificial Mages bombarded him. Didn't work. Arcane energy dissipated before touching him.

He was already inside their formation.

Another swing.

Another Knight gone.

Then Kain saw it.

The same weak spot as the Berserk Flower Knight.

Not in the chest this time. The crown.

A rusted, jagged thing fused to the Tomb King's skull, pulsing with sickly, violet light.

"GO FOR THE HEAD!"

The Knights rerouted fire, unloading everything they had. Plasma melted the outer layer, exposing the rotted bone beneath. The Tomb King staggered—but didn't fall.

His voice was everywhere.

"YOU THINK YOU CAN KILL ME?"

"I HAVE DIED A THOUSAND TIMES!"

"I WILL NOT FALL TO YOU!"

Then Kain moved.

One shot.

One perfect Gauss round.

Right through the exposed skull.

The Tomb King froze.

Then he screamed.

The crown shattered, violet energy pouring from his skull like dying starlight. His armor cracked, crumbled—his form collapsing inward as if something was pulling him back into the abyss.

His last words were barely a whisper.

"No… not again…"

Then he was gone.

Mission Success

✔ Dungeon Floor 3 Cleared!

✔ Boneyard Purged!

Visit freewebnoveℓ.com for the best novel reading exp𝒆rience.

✔ New Core Secured – Estimated Yield: 2.1 Billion SC!

✔ Artifact Acquired: "The King's Crown" (Grants unknown necrotic abilities and spectral dominion).

Kain exhaled.

His hands were shaking.

He looked at the grave where the Tomb King had stood.

The name on the tombstone?

His own.