Chapter 40 - Gutted Ruins

The battle didn’t last long. It wasn’t even much of a fight, being honest. As the enemy undead came my way, I started casting Control Undead on the ones toward the rear of the pack. As each one slowly came under my control, I had them bide their time, waiting. By the time I’d cast it four times back to back, I’d tapped out most of my mana. Much more and I wouldn’t be able to fight well, and as easy as this looked like it would be, I wasn’t in the mood to take major chances. As much as my new life might feel like a video game at times, it definitely wasn’t.

But with four of them under my control at the back of the enemy line and my row of six skeleton warriors, two zombies, and four regular skeletons formed up, I was in excellent shape. That wasn’t even counting Hope or the two skeleton warriors I’d made archers. I had the archers on standby. I didn’t think I would need them for this fight, and the arrows were of minimal use against skeletons anyway. I only had so many arrows, and the last thing I wanted to do was waste any of them.

My front line turned into a threshing mill, the shields holding back their foes while their weapons tore the enemy undead apart. It wasn’t even a close contest, not at all. The four skeletons I’d controlled grabbed some of the undead from the back, too, dragging them down and further turning the already confused mob of foes into a right mess.

Still, I wanted to capture as many of these as possible, not necessarily kill them all. The Control Undead spell was super useful, because I could capture an enemy and turn them to my side, rather than killing them. But in order to do that there had to actually be undead handy, and while it was quickly becoming clear undead weren’t going to be in short supply, I couldn’t count on always having them around to control. I needed to take advantage of the chances when I had them.

Like right then, I had a bunch of skeletons I could Control. Later, if I ended up in a pitched fight with the goblins, I’d probably have no shortage of dead bodies I could Animate, but finding undead to Control would be tougher.

It was the careful application of both spells which would maximize my combat effectiveness, so I wanted to be sure to take advantage of every Control Undead opportunity which presented itself.

Before the last of the enemy undead went down, I cast Control Undead as many times as I could. The final cast left me gasping for breath and barely able to stand, but I’d nabbed four more of the things. That left me with twelve Controlled skeletons, which was the beginning of a decent army.

“I’ve seriously got the Evil Overlord starter kit going on right here, don’t I?” I said, as my front line took out the final few skeletons.

I’d killed fifteen of them and captured eight, plus the four from earlier. It was a good start. I still needed four more undead to maximize the Control spell, but I didn’t see any more of them. There might be some, wandering about, maybe in the woods, but I was also cognizant that if my friends were in trouble, the clock was ticking. I looted the crystals from the dead and got ready to move on.

There were five clear crystals and ten black ones. I ended up with two Strength, one Stamina, one Intellect, and one Will, for the clear ones. The black stones gave me two each of Control Undead, Animate Dead, and Darkness, plus one each of Contagion, Curse, Augment Undead, and Nightvision. It was a good haul, and I loved being able to identify the crystals without actually inserting them. Now that my crystals were ranking up so well, I didn’t want to go taking them out all the time. The risk of loss was just too high.

The additions of a second Contagion and Curse finalized my decision to socket those. I merged them both into tier two stones, then added them to the outer ring Points. When it was done, I was a hell of a lot stronger, and ready for whatever I had to face.

Magical Stones

Point 1: Black Stone (Tier 5) - Control Undead

Point 1, Outer Ring: Black Stone (Tier 2) - Curse

Point 2: Black Stone (Tier 5) - Animate Dead

Point 2, Outer Ring: Black Stone (Tier 2) - Contagion

Point 3: Black Stone (Tier 4) - Drain Life

Point 4: Clear Stone (Tier 3) - Will

You could be reading stolen content. Head to the original site for the genuine story.

Point 5: Clear Stone (Tier 3) - Agility

Spare Stones

Black: Animate Dead (Tier 2), Augment Undead (Tier 3), Augment Undead, Control Undead (Tier 2), Darkness (Tier 3), Darkness (Tier 2), Drain Life (Tier 2), Harm (Tier 2), Harm, Health to Mana, Heal Undead (Tier 3), Heal Undead, Nightvision (Tier 3), Nightvision, Protection from Undead, Shadow Walk (Tier 2), Shadow Walk

Green: Entangle (Tier 2), Entangle

Clear: Strength (Tier 3), Strength (x2), Agility, Stamina (Tier 2), Stamina, Intellect (Tier 2), Intellect, Charisma, Will

I paused long enough to search a vacant garage next to the graveyard to see if I could get some more weapons for the eight new skeletons. There wasn’t much I could easily use for shields there, although there were enough tools to sink a ship. With some time, those saws could reshape chunks of plywood into new shields easy enough. I made a mental note to swing back through this place after and see what I could do about upgrades for my army.

No bats, but there were some heavy tools that worked okay as weapons. I armed the eight new undead with whatever was handy. One got a massive monkey wrench. Another got a hammer. There was a shovel I armed one with, and two more got big chunks wood, about the length of my arm. They looked like stakes for a signpost or something.

That might be another good source of shields, come to think of it. There were a lot of stop signs around, and they sure weren’t going to be useful for much else. Once I had some breathing room, I really had a lot of work to do.

As soon as my battle group was armed as best I could quickly manage, we moved back across the street and out a side road called Juniper Drive. According to my map, that would take us right near the highway again. I followed the road to the end of a big loop, then cut between two houses and moved into the forest. We skirted north of a pond and soon came back out at the big open space of the road.

I’d picked up a shield, myself, along with the biggest kitchen knife I’d found. The thing was practically a cleaver, but it still sucked. I wanted something better, but it would do for now. The shield was a bigger deal. Crossing an open space like this, we’d be wide open to attack from the other side, and I already knew the goblins had bows. I kept my shield up as we advanced into the open.

Fortunately, there was no whiz of arrows zipping past my head, no shout of alarmed goblins calling for backup. If any of them were watching, they remained very still.

Rather than re-enter those woods, where I knew I’d be surrounded by enemy forces in no time, I had my group move south along the highway instead. We kept walking until I saw the Hilton parking lot, then we cut off the highway and into the lot, and from there went up a narrow driveway to Centennial Woods Way, which went east and west. East led up to the parking lot where I’d slept two nights ago. West went toward the police station. I still couldn’t see it from where I was, but the stench of smoke was much stronger now. I had no doubts left about where the smell was coming from.

The road would lead me on a twisting path right alongside the deep forest, and I eyed those trees with intense suspicion. The woods were thick, the trees close together, and the space beneath them dark. Anything could be hiding in there. A whole army of goblins could be waiting for me to bungle.

“Nuh uh,” I said aloud. “Not today.”

It felt more certain all the time that I was going to have to battle the things. I wanted it to be on my terms, though, and not from an ambush. There might be no one in the trees there; it could be entirely clear. I was still better off taking a safer path.

We backtracked and went around around a small pond. There were still some trees, but it was much more open. I led us to the rugby field without running into any opposition. From there, it was just a short hike to the police station.

But the station itself was gone.

I could see where it had been as soon as we reached the rugby pitch. The smoking remains of the building stood like broken teeth, reaching for the sky. Gray smoke billowed from the mess. They’d built up the wall of cars around the site, but it hadn’t helped them. Several of the cars were gutted and burnt, too, and there were holes in the wall where they’d shoved vehicles out of position.

No signs of movement from inside the camp, so I pushed ahead. I wanted some clues, more than anything else. If Kat and Alfred escaped, that was awesome, and I’d see if I could help them. If they hadn’t, then I’d find a way to avenge them instead.

The place had been utterly ruined. The cars had been set alight. The building was destroyed, as were the other two nearby it. A few bodies littered the ground. No goblin corpses, but there were a few humans.

Lords was one of them.

I wasn’t sure how I felt about that. He’d been fair to me, at least for the most part. I didn’t think very much of his leadership skills, and I’d run off because his good buddy Brad tried to kill me and I didn’t trust Lords to believe me if I told him about it. Clearly I wasn’t that broken up about the man dying.

But he’d tried to help people, and that was worth a lot, especially given everything happening. When the world was falling apart, the people who tried to hold it together were valuable. He’d been one of those.

I ordered the skeleton I’d armed with a shovel to start digging him a grave. The least I could do is see him put into the ground, like I had for the man this morning.

Voices caught my attention. Someone was coming my way, moving toward the station from the west. Was it survivors from Lords’ group, or someone else? Whoever they were, they weren’t close enough for me to make out their words yet, but they sounded human.

That didn’t mean they were safe, though.

I ordered my skeleton to stop digging, and the others to take up hidden positions inside the gutted aid station nearby. I joined them inside, and once we were well-hidden, all we had left to do was wait and see who was coming to pay us a visit.