The World-Ending Skeleton

Chen Mo was a broke young loser, bankrupt and buried in debt, who inherited a crumbling old house in the countryside from his great-uncle. In the basement, he cut his finger on a bone ring and summoned a skeleton. It was scrawny, missing an arm and several ribs, with a cracked skull, and couldn't even stand steadily.

The good news: he had a golden finger. The bad news: that golden finger was a skeleton with osteoporosis.

Even stranger, the skeleton would automatically disappear to “idle” on its own, just like a cat. While Chen Mo ate and slept, it fought wild skeletons and devoured their soul fire. Every time he summoned it, it might have an extra bone that didn't belong to it: a dark gold hand bone that could cast fireballs, a holy knight's arm bone that could purify the undead, an assassin's toe bone that moved without a sound, or a dwarf king's rib that maxed out its defense. It was like opening a blind box, with a surprise every time.

Chen Mo only wanted to stay at the old house, grow a little food, fix the walls, and drink tea. Whenever trouble came, he'd summon the skeleton to deal with it.

From local thugs to property developers, from feng shui masters to the Gray Tower's enforcement squad, the skeleton used increasingly outrageous combinations of parts to beat its opponents black and blue.

As the little skeleton evolved,

its consciousness gradually awakened:

“Ha!

Ha!

Ha?

A thousand years... I'm finally seeing daylight again?”