With our unliving siege towers with us, assaulting the palisade of the town was as easy as 1 2 3. Literally, took 3 hits from those monsters to break through. And this was with them being pincushions due to their immense size making them huge targets.
If it wasn't for the fact that the town streets often narrowed to widths they can't access, and the need to clear buildings, I feel like just these things alone could annihilate the defenders.
That is until I saw him, dressed in resplendent armor and armed with a fiercesome blade, a true heroic image of which I will think reverently of for the rest of my days. The joke is I'm already dead, and now so is he.
He put up a decent fight, even managed to kill one of the behemoths, but that was one out of around six, and he was quickly smashed into bloody paste by a cudgel that I think it got from the palisade, one of the logs that made up the wall.
Beyond him though none of the others fared so well versus the behemoths, at best the archers and crossbowmen hindering their movements with how many arrows and bolts filled their bodies. Unlike the man who slew one, whose blade was able to fully sever the thick neck of the behemoth, their attacks could at most pierce the outermost layer of skin, the crossbows making it a little further in.
Even when they had arrows enter their eyes it worked against them, as the beasts grew more violent from it while still retaining the ability to find people to kill.
Truly a pitiful sight, the poor bastards.
As for us zombies, we weren't just gawking either, myself especially eager to see if I can curb my desire to eat flesh to try and acquire what it is I want the right way.
We slammed into lines of a hastily thrown together group, around a dozen men against my pseudo-squad of thrice their number. I hope the necromancer isn't able to tell I'm directing these zombies, but I feel like it's a instinctual thing for them to follow my orders than a magical one, that it's ingrained in them to follow the smartest and therefore the strongest. Or it could just be I can exert control over lesser undead, but I'm not that experienced in the matter, with just a week of experience under my belt in being a zombie.
Back to the battle, as I dislodge my axe from the head of a soldier, my undead bretheren swarming over the rest using their superior number, I try to do something I've wanted to do since the first frenzy.
Berating myself for ending his life so quickly, I try to find a way to channel the death energy released into myself. Despite never doing this before, for aforementioned reasons, I feel like I can do it. Like how a baby knows it needs sustenance and how to get it, I feel like an undead will have an idea as well when they can think about it (with less crying of course, even if I wanted to).
This book is hosted on another platform. Read the official version and support the author's work.
It...didn't work as I imagined.
Beyond feeling the death energy, I couldn't actually see it or tell where it was beyond knowing it's there. Then there was drawing it into myself, another thing I hadn't a clue in doing.
However, not being under the influence of frenzy, I could feel the death energy in me swirling around my soul. I also felt a light tug on it, to what I would compare to a magnet though very faint.
Scrambling to find a way open the connection between the death energy inside myself and that from the corpse, I remembered the crack from when I was reduced to my soul. I wonder what would happen if I were to loosen it, ever so slightly, to allow the death energy to enter in.
The result, however, was I lost death energy. Not a lot, thankfully, but enough to warrant caution in attempting this again. Like I said, it's like a magnet, and my conclusion is if I don't hold onto the death energy in me it'll seep out to meet with the rest like two water droplets merging together.
Several desperate cries of agony and mercy later, and I finally got it working. Sorta. The process involved a lot of concentration to ensure my death energy didn't leak out while at the same time loosening the seal on the crack to allow the connection, which was harder than I originally thought it'd be.
The process was also highly inefficient, as I could barely siphon 1% of the death energy before it was whisked away to the necromancers.
But the result of it I could tell immediately.
I already knew that an undead's power is linked towards the culmination of death energy within them, as well as the source material for them. I just didn't know that death energy could be increased. Usually an undead is stuck at a certain threshold, the power of the necromancer as well as the corpse(s) used determining where it lies.
If it weren't for the necromancer attached to my very being, I would try to replicate what it is he's doing but in reverse, connecting to a target and draining it instead.
But I'm certain he'd pick up on it, noticing the change. That's a benefit of my current method, it's at a below the radar amount that allows me to keep doing it.
From whence the attack began, I would say my accumulated death energy to be the size of a pebble if completely condensed. After all my efforts to acquire more death energy, despite the initial leaks, it's doubled in size.
The difference in before and after is apparent. My already increased strength rose ever so slightly, enough for me to tell, and my movements became more fluid. My 'subordinates' also responded better to my commands, still not able to give overly complex commands or anything close, but now able to add some details to them.
I also just felt better, like I had been missing something but didn't even know it. Since the first increase, a new desire welled up within me.
I wanted more. More death. More power. My own freedom.
I have no complaints about the past week, mainly because I can't feel anything emotionally. Which is odd considering my previous statements...?
I suppose my emotions are tied to the necromancer's influence, its hold loosening enough for me to feel just a bit of that sweet nectar that is an irrational desire for strength.
But I don't enjoy being a bad guy. I mean, like I said no complaints, but I always wanted to be a bad ASS guy. And that is most certaintly not the lowest rung zombie soldier, even if he is leading a pack of them into a skirmish.
However, for my new dream to come to fruition, I must bide my time, accumulating more power. Thankfully plenty of opportunity to do so is before me, our conquests sure to bring a high body count....