Ripples disturbed the fabric of space as a portal tore open over the scarred, desolate plain.
Whoosh—
The northern wind howled.
Wild grass bent low before the gale.
This was the former site of the Battle of Okagral. Craters left by artillery bombardments and trenches carved out by combat engineers still pockmarked the flat earth, indelible scars of a merciless war.
Deep beneath the soil lay tens of thousands of Northern Kingdom soldiers. Over the span of several months, they had been battered by rains, scavenged by insects and bacteria, and slowly decomposed until thick mud buried them, transforming them into rich fertilizer buried deep in the ground.
Night fell, cloaking the surroundings in a heavy silence broken only by the whistling wind and the chirping of insects.
The lich cast his flickering, ghostfire-lit "eyes" across the lingering souls drifting over the wasteland, inhaling the stench of death that permeated the air with deep satisfaction.
Arriving in such a "paradise," he ought to have been thrilled.
The soldiers' remains were premier raw material for raising undead. After all, the old adage rang true: "The battlefield is a necromancer's heaven."
War never failed to bring endless slaughter and death, and such carnage was the very soil in which undead creatures flourished.
Here, he could raise an entire undead legion.
Yet times had changed. The lich was no longer reanimating undead for himself—he was performing labor for the empire.
With that realization, Orestes peered at the dense thicket of nearly a hundred thousand skeletons resting beneath the earth, and his scalp prickled with a sudden chill that shot straight to his head—even though, as a lich, he possessed no scalp, only a yellowed cranium.
"Th-these..."
"Do all of them have to be converted into undead?"
"You guessed correctly. This is merely the second batch, but I will help you see it through," Cassius replied flatly.
The faint smile that tugged at the corner of the dragon's mouth sent a shiver down the lich's spine.
This was "merely" the second batch?
Would there be a third, a fourth, a fifth, or even...
Yet with his life-sustaining phylactery firmly in the dragon's grasp, Lich Orestes had no recourse. He could only meekly follow orders to preserve his wretched existence.
Clenching his teeth, Orestes comforted himself, "It's just tens of thousands of ordinary skeletal undead..."
"Nothing truly insurmountable..."
"Besides, Master is lending his aid."
Though he told himself this, his exposed gums were already beginning to chatter.
Behirs were colossal beasts over a dozen meters long, requiring immense power to raise, but raising ordinary soldiers' skeletons was child's play for a lich.
Yet even small drops could wear away a stone. All told, the remains of the Northlands soldiers present numbered nearly sixty thousand!
Transforming all of them into skeletal undead was a colossal undertaking—even with the Scepter of Myrkul's Bones in hand.
Under Cassius's merciless gaze, the lich, trembling, raised the scepter before him and began to chant in a low, raspy voice: "Skeletons long buried in dust, beings wandering through the void, I summon your return..."
Buzz—
The necromantic gem atop the scepter abruptly unleashed a spherical force field of murky green, blanketing the vast expanse of the wasteland.
Beside him, Cassius gave a gentle sweep of his wings, bringing the formidable might of his Imperial Domain crashing down.
The surrounding Weave immediately surged with wild activity, fueling the spell's casting. At a speed visible to the naked eye, the necromantic field expanded severalfold, engulfing the entire sprawling, abandoned battlefield.
Animate Dead Legion.
Crack, snap...
Buried deep beneath the earth, the skeletons began to tremble and squirm, producing faint, clicking noises.
The lingering spirits roaming the wasteland wailed, wept, and shrieked, yet an invisible force seized them, dragging them inexorably back into the ground.
The withered bone hand with which the lich gripped his scepter shook with mounting violence.
Even so, Orestes had vastly underestimated the energy latent within tens of thousands of remains, just as he had underestimated Cassius's "help."
Never before had he felt such stupendous power at his fingertips—a force potent enough to unleash a catastrophic undead scourge across all of Anzeta.
Seventy thousand skeletal undead were bound to him alone.
Had he not been captured by Cassius, he might well have completed Myrkul's soul-sacrifice quest by now, embarking upon the path to true eternal life.
"Return in deathless form, and become my—"
For a fleeting second, Orestes became intoxicated by the rush, forgetting his grim predicament and genuinely fancying himself the true master of this undead horde.
In the next instant, an invisible, crushing pressure descended. The lich felt a lethal aura bear down upon him, causing his soulfire to flicker erratically.
It was an almost fatal blunder!
A shudder ran through him, and he scrambled to correct his chant, murmuring hurriedly:
"No—become the eternal servants of the great Cinder Emperor, Lord Cassius! Serve the Cinder Empire until the end of time!"
The oppressive aura dissipated in a flash, allowing the lich to breathe a sigh of relief. He knew with absolute certainty that if he had not corrected himself just then, his phylactery would have been ground to dust.
All at once, the earth began to quiver. The skeletons buried beneath the soil stirred restlessly, their joints grinding against one another with sharp, snapping sounds.
Whoosh—
The first skeletal hand burst through the dirt.
Then came countless more, erupting from the ground like a grotesque, pale sea of bone hands blooming across the wasteland.
The skeletons of Northern soldiers and commanders crawled out from the earth, wobbling as they struggled to their feet. Most still wore the tattered, rotting scraps of Northern military uniforms, their bony fingers clutching broken blades and swords.
Many of the skeletons were incomplete. Countless were missing arms or legs, others lacked skulls and stood with only half a torso, and some even had jagged shrapnel embedded in their rib cages.
One exceptionally tall skeleton, clearly once a richly attired general, bore an unmistakable bullet hole pierced through his cranium.
Yet such grisly wounds were only natural. According to the empire's official tallies, a third of the coalition army's casualties had resulted from artillery strikes, and another third from gunfire.
These unfortunate Northerners had not only been mercilessly butchered by the Cinder Empire's guns and cannons in life, but even in death, they were wrenched from the earth by a lich to serve as forced labor for the very empire that had slain them.
The skeletal undead spread across the wasteland, forming a spectacular, surging torrent of white bone. Seventy thousand fallen soldiers of the Northern coalition army had now become the Empire's undead legion.
Orestes leaned heavily upon his scepter for support. The ghostfire burning within his eye sockets dimmed noticeably, and his posture slumped into an even deeper hunch.
Forcing an obsequious smile, the lich bowed and scraped. "Master, this is the undead legion that belongs to you—and to the Empire."
Cassius offered a slight nod, then turned his gaze upon him, peering down with pale gold irises. "A moment ago... did you not seem to say they were your servants?"
"No, no!"
"You misheard, Master!"
"Wait, no—there is nothing wrong with your hearing, it was merely a slip of my tongue!"
The lich lowered his head until it nearly touched the ground, babbling desperate excuses in near-incoherent panic.
"I certainly hope so."
Cassius turned away, gently beating his wings as he rose into midair, looking down upon the undead legion bathed in the cold moonlight.
"Orestes."
"You have done well so far. I trust you will keep it up."
"Rest assured, my empire will never mistreat anyone who makes a contribution to it—whether you are an undead lich or a savage fiend, I treat all equally."
"Th-thank you, Master."
The lich remained kneeling on the ground, his body bowed low.
Hearing Cassius's praise, he actually felt a strange surge of flattered relief—after all, just moments before, he had been trembling in terror for his very life.
"Now, follow me to the next site to raise the next batch of undead."
"..."
Orestes wanted to weep, but had no tears to shed. A lich who had snuffed out countless lives had finally experienced firsthand what it felt like to be ruthlessly exploited.
Chapter 405