With the slave problem shelved for now I turn to what I have acquired. This is several weeks worth of food and other supplies but the important part is the equipment and bodies. I will have the silvered weapons melted down for other use and the supplies I can stash for use later. The bodies however are rather important to me, the priests will become undead priests to aid my troops with support spells as I change them to use miasma instead of their divine power.

The gold ranks can become a new cadre of knights for my use and the bronzes become veterans. Of course the mages will stay mages but it is the former leader I have plans for. His equipment is mildly enchanted as typical of a land without a dedicated mage’s consortium or a country of mages. The body however is ready, a steel rank magic swordsman will be perfect material for a wight. This guy will be my most powerful minion I have made in this land so far but I think he will stay my personal champion. The knights can handle leading my troops well enough with the mages but I need a minion to do some work. If I had more I could make a shock group but just one means that I will be using it for shall we say special work.

This is a good haul for me, my numbers have expanded heavily now in terms of elites along with many other things. I would be rather annoyed at constantly having to check the troop and equipment manually but thankfully part of this dungeon sequence, actually a rather major part is a numerology system. Many things are codified in numbers and labels in general, rather a headache at times but certainly better than a regular bureaucracy. As of right now I am the only one who can handle this system due to simple fact that I am the only highly educated person here. The necromancers here never went to a unified academy and my creations are not exactly geared towards this sort of thing. No need to ask about the new intake since they can’t handle or are not trusted just yet. Yes they are loyal but exactly how heart felt is this loyalty, I would rather not risk any bits of passive resistance causing me issues.

That comment previously about shadows has my paranoia levels higher than usual, extra wards sprinkled across the area along with a few more patrols is the general security upgrade. However I felt the need for some more work, thanks to the pruned souls of the group I can now craft ghosts for use. Mashing together most of the lower quality soul energy after having purged them of anything of their past I then split them up to make spirits. If I had better quality soul energy then I can make spectres but let's not continue wishing for what is not possible. Wraiths for keeping watch along with harassment and banshees for alarms will work well. If they are weak enough they will die from either getting their life force sucked out or heart stopped by a banshee. The better quality souls are not going to be used to make spirit troops but rather for my pseudo soul work. My lower quality reserves were a bit low after making all the elites so stocking up is a good thing.

Now after that failed expedition they will need better stuff to actually do anything. Once my immediate threats are taken care of I can actually head deeper into the fields myself, I feel that if I can get a skeletal general grade minion then I can leave the defenses to it and head off feeling confident my base will survive. My scouts are unfortunately unable to get far since the pressure from the miasma is too much for them, while miasma helps sustain undead concentrated doses can shatter anything too weak to stand up to it. I will need better quality scouts then spectral or skeletal mice. Flying skulls may be an option or skeletal hawks/eagles, something higher quality to help me explore.

Regardless of everything else I am proud of my acolytes progress once more. They have lasted through the basics of training on how to hold swords and run around in weights, now they get to actually try hitting stuff with their swords. It is one of the worse moments for them since as necromancers they can absorb miasma to to replenish themselves so I could cram their schedule into a smaller frame. Now that they have better physiques and movements they can better control their skeletal minions. If you do not know how to move the body then how easy will it be to control your minions to properly move, now that I can trust them with stuff that is not peon level undead they can start my favorite training tactic. Mini wargames with each other using limited resources, always a fun thing when I also limit their good food supply. Of course they get to eat but the difference between simple porridge and bread and sausages is big. Turns out that the woman who yelled that she could cook was not lying, her family ran a decent traveling kitchen and now we get stuff that is not the most basic fair. That should get them a decent amount of motivation, the core disciples get a bet of an easier time but not by much. They simply have to last long enough against me in mock battles and commanding of units.

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Sometimes they work together and sometimes I go solo against them, other times I have the knights or mages lead the battle against them. Our newest edition gets to join in on the battles and it is interesting to see her and her acolyte style, a bit archaic and sacrificial with their minion use but still interesting. They are alright in terms of strength but soon enough will be outpaced by my acolytes, not that I will tell them. Whether they will break down and beg for me to teach them or be stubborn and only use the basics I give them will determine how far I will let them into my ranks.

I think back to where I got some of my combat knowledge from, I often over the course of my work as a leader of troops for the empire met many talented people. Some were fellow soldiers and officers while others were enemy forces. I took the opportunity to drain the enemy of any useful knowledge and more discreetly did so for my allies. In this particular case I remember I had gotten some knowledge from a female knight commander, it was after we had had some liaisons together that I took the opportunity to quietly get some tactics and strategy knowledge along with weapons, we did not start meeting however because I wanted the knowledge expressly. It had been a long campaign with many ups and downs, as fellow officers we had gotten to know each other rather well and both felt a bit of a need. We started seeing each other when we had the time during rests in towns and I decided to get some other things while we were resting.

She never knew what I did and we eventually parted on good terms since any more serious relations were simply not possible and we knew it. We remained good friends afterwards and kept in touch both to know how the other was doing and for help with various things. A good friend who helped me with keeping some of the more annoying politcal schemes at bay and I helped with keeping any nay sayers away along with supplying a larger quota of my quality products than normal. A good scheme I kept with several others for mutual gain and trust, always nice to have a good understanding of each other even if I had so many secrets.  

I also used other methods when the opportunity arose and especially during my later times when I could use proxies to do my work for me though I did have similar situations as above several times but moved to more impersonal work as time past. There are few places that a spectre cannot go and my careful modifications ensured I could manipulate souls from afar. This especially allowed me to gain industrial knowledge and enabled my research into special knowledge imprints and especially my arquebus experiments. My grimoire is simply saturated with all my hoarded wisdom and know how on basically anything and everything. I had only a few plans then for this much knowledge but now with the dungeon I can put everything to good use.

Now that I think of it I wonder how junior is doing, enough time has passed that I should be declared quite dead what with not being nearby for my connection to work for my creations there. Still I made those important creations capable of independent work and my will bequeaths control of a large portion of my assets to junior, should help him win his political battle against his siblings whom I disliked for various reasons. I can be reasonable sure that my territory is under safe management with my appointed overseers and junior to hold off any big attempts to take possession of my lands.

My connections to other nobles and groups should also prevent smaller affairs, unless someone is stupid enough to make a big grab then well civil war is not something that can be denied. This might seem like over exaggeration but it is not, that much military force and the production facilities for it up for grabs with my presumed death is unpleasant. Still like I said junior should have things under wrap with his faction, the rest of my property is properly arranged for to be divided so anyone attempting to intervene will face much opposition. Well enough about that place, I am now in a faraway land and must prioritize things here for the present and future.