Zach hugged a wooden plank as he raced across the surface of the sea around Bilgewater.
Every time his feet stepped onto the water, a golden ripple spread from the tips of his toes.
With the recoil of Ascended power, he had temporarily managed to run across the waves.
Behind Zach, the sky-covering Black Mist was rapidly closing in on him, and the roars of the undead within the mist had already become incomparably clear.
Zach had never imagined that he could be unlucky to this degree.
Running into Nautilus, one of Bilgewater’s four great horror legends, was bad enough.
He had only just escaped from Nautilus’s anchor and surfaced, only to immediately run into the once-a-month Harrowing!
The so-called Harrowing was a certain day each month when the endless Black Mist would begin at the Shadow Isles in the southeastern corner of Runeterra and spread without limit toward all of Runeterra.
Within that Black Mist were the countless undead of the Shadow Isles.
Normally, these undead armies could not leave the Shadow Isles, because they had to use the Black Mist as a vessel in order to move freely.
But on the day of the Harrowing, the Black Mist would break away from the Shadow Isles and surge toward every corner of Runeterra!
Wherever the Black Mist reached, the undead hidden within it would madly devour and assimilate every living creature.
And as the place closest to the Shadow Isles, Bilgewater was almost always the first target of the Harrowing’s corruption.
No wonder there had not been a single ship in Bilgewater’s outer waters today.
After all this, it turned out everyone knew the Harrowing was coming.
Only Zach had been floating unsteadily across the sea on a broken little piece of boat, without paying the slightest attention to the Harrowing’s arrival.
Zach was still sprinting across the surface of the sea, pouring all of the Ascended power in his body into the seawater beneath his feet without holding anything back.
However, Bilgewater’s outer waters were far too vast, and the Harrowing spread with terrifying speed.
As a result, even though Zach had already gone all out, the roars of the undead behind him were still getting closer and closer, and he still could not see Bilgewater Harbor.
Clop!
Clop!
Clop!
Whether it was Zach’s imagination or not, he kept feeling that amid the undead roars behind him, there seemed to be the sound of hooves.
And those hoofbeats were getting closer and closer, just like the Black Mist that filled the sky!
In the next instant, Zach’s charging body suddenly stopped.
His right hand swept across the back of his waist, gripping the Ascended dagger in his hand, then stabbing fiercely behind him.
Clang!
The dagger in Zach’s hand collided with the glaive in that figure’s grip, and Zach’s body borrowed the force to fly backward.
At this moment, Zach also clearly saw the being acting as the vanguard of the Harrowing.
The Shadow of War, Hecarim!
Behind Hecarim were dozens of figures with forms extremely similar to his.
This was clearly a knightly legion formed entirely of undead centaurs!
These figures followed behind Hecarim, their eyes burning with green-blue flames as they stared fixedly at Zach on the sea.
And as the Harrowing continued to advance, they also drew closer and closer to Zach.
“Living thing, die!”
Hecarim’s voice was hoarse and oppressive.
His forehooves rose high, and the long blade in his hand chopped straight toward Zach’s head.
As an undead forever imprisoned by the Black Mist and the curse of Ruination, Hecarim carried endless hatred for all living things.
Facing Hecarim’s attack, Zach infused his Ascended power into the dagger in his hand, colliding once again with Hecarim’s glaive.
After every collision, Zach would choose to use Hecarim’s power to retreat at high speed.
Because Zach knew very clearly that once he became tangled up in a fight with Hecarim, it would mean he would be completely enveloped by the Black Mist.
And once he was swallowed by the Black Mist, he would have to face the entire undead army of the Shadow Isles!
Moreover, Hecarim was not the only top-tier undead within that shadow.
If Zach was surrounded by large numbers of undead, he would very likely be worn down and killed.
So Zach could only retreat while searching for a way to shake off the Black Mist.
Clang!
Another metallic collision rang out, and Zach once again retreated rapidly.
But this time, Zach’s gaze suddenly changed.
Opposite him, the green-blue flames in Hecarim’s eye sockets burned even brighter, while the dozens of undead who had originally been behind him gathered at his back, staring at Zach like predators.
After failing to kill the living creature in front of him for so long, Hecarim no longer wanted to waste time, because he still needed to save time to slaughter more living beings. Find the original chapter at novelping . com.
Hecarim’s forehooves rose high once again, and his long blade pointed straight at Zach.
In the next instant, Hecarim and the dozens of undead cavalry behind him charged toward Zach together.
In life, Hecarim had been the commander of a knightly order.
Even now that he had become undead, he had still never forgotten the most terrifying ability of cavalry.
Under the charge of dozens of riders, any living thing could only be mercilessly crushed.
As Zach watched the undead centaur legion rapidly approaching him, he gripped the dagger in his hand tightly, and the Ascended power within his body poured into the blade without reservation.
Although he had already used up a great deal of Ascended power while hurrying along earlier, Zach still could not hold anything back now.
Hiding his strength in front of the Harrowing could very well leave him with the same fate as Hecarim before him, becoming an undead forever unable to escape the curse!
At a certain moment, a splash rose on the surface of the sea with a sharp slap.
It was also at this moment that Zach swung the dagger in his hand fiercely forward.
The Ascended power gathered on the dagger erupted instantly, turning into a wave of golden light that spread toward Hecarim’s knightly order.
Buzz!
Boom!
Beneath the pitch-black night sky, Ascended power collided with the charge of Hecarim’s undead knights.
In the blinding light, Hecarim and his knightly order were almost instantly swallowed whole, while Zach’s body was pushed beneath the surface by the explosion.
The blazing and radiant nature of Ascended power seemed to have an innate, extremely powerful restraining effect against both the Void and the undead.
Under Zach’s full-force strike, the Black Mist of the Harrowing was actually forced to stop in its tracks.
Amid the dense wails of the undead, Zach, nearly completely drained, sank deep beneath the sea.
Within the fading light, Zach could only watch as his body gradually descended, drifting farther and farther away from the surface.
And it was at this moment that Zach heard the sound of seawater being split apart beside his ears.
Immediately afterward, several green-blue tentacles rose from the abyss, coiling toward Zach above them.
He becomes connected to Silco’s side, gains a Skin Master System, and uses League skin-based weapons, tech, armor, and abilities to change the fate of Zaun.
Instead of letting Arcane’s tragedies play out exactly the same way, Felix tries to protect the people around him, especially Powder/Jinx, and push Zaun toward open rebellion against Piltover.
The story starts with the Piltover-Zaun conflict, then expands into the wider Runeterra setting: Noxus’s invasion of Ionia, Demacia’s internal conflict, the Freljord, Shurima, the Void, and eventually the Ruination/Shadow Isles plotline.