Suddenly, Duke was an observer in another location. It took a quick look around to get his bearings. He was in an opulently decorated bedroom. The massive four poster bed was decorated with intricately carved erotic scenes highlighted with inlaid gold. The curtains were rich violet with gold tassels. Each piece of furniture in the room followed the same theme as well as the thick rug covering most of the floor. A large fireplace opposite the bed was roaring with flames.
There were two figures in the room, and aging man lying in the bed with the covers up to his neck and a black-robed figure hunched over him casting some sort of spell. Duke moved closer, somehow inherently knowing that they could not sense him.
“Your Majesty, the ritual has been completed. You are now immortal!”
“Truly?”
“Indeed. Rise out of bed and see for yourself. The bonds of mortality are no longer your concern.” The figure stepped back and stood up giving Duke a good look at his face. It was Chopie’s pet mage!
The old man who Duke now recognized as an elderly King Chopie easily got out of bed and rose to his feet, a terrible grin crossing his features. “I feel…that’s it. I don’t feel at all.”
“Quite right, Your Majesty. That body is merely a vessel. It bears no more significance to you than a night robe. You can discard it for another, change it, regrow it however you like. As long as your soul remains protected, no one can truly kill you. And I will hide this phylactery deep in the vault where no one will ever consider it of consequence.”
“Yes, do that, my grand necromancer. You have fulfilled the first part of our bargain. There is but the matter of the three greater undead I have designated. Once that is complete, you will have free reign over all the graveyards in the entire kingdom and your full Dukedom.”
“Many thanks, Your Highness. I will hide this,” He held up a five-inch-long iron spike. “in the lower vaults where no one will search for it and will begin work on your three greater undead generals.”
“Yes, yes, yes, you do that right away. I have an appointment with my sister. It seems we have let our rivalry carry on too long and too far. United, none shall stand before us! Grow your army in the depths of the catacombs for there will be a time soon that I have will need for them.”
“I will leave you to it, Your Majesty.” The necromancer bowed and swept out of the room. Duke had a decision to make – to follow the necromancer, or to follow the king. He decided that knowing where the phylactery was hidden was paramount and rushed out of the room to follow the necromancer.
The path led down dozens of flights of stairs and into the darkest of basements. The necromancer did not seem to be bothered by the lack of light as his eyes glowed with an electric violet radiance that lit his way. He followed down multiple corridors to an armored door that was guarded by a pair of hooded guards. The guards silently glided aside as the necromancer approached and the door opened at his touch.
Duke took a close look at one of the guards as he passed by and almost exclaimed when he saw that it consisted of a faceless pair of glowing yellow eyes floating under the hood. He quickly followed into the room to see the necromancer push a rack of shelves out from the wall. He then proceeded to hammer the spike into a gap in the mortar between stones. After moving the shelves back in place Duke was sure that no one would have ever thought to look for the phylactery there. A smile stretched across his face and then with a violent wrenching he was back in his body.
Duke shot out of his seat, sending his chair slamming into the stools by the bar. “Fucking lich! The king’s a fucking lich! Goddammit!”
“What are you talking about, Duke?” Elaine was the first to react and respond.
“I just had a vision showing the king’s pet mage to be a fucking necromancer and he made the king into a goddamned lich! But here’s the really fun part – I know where the phylactery is hidden!”
“Are you sure?” Baslin asked?
“Quite sure. It’s really fucking clever how they hid it too. Sneaky assholes. It’s in an iron spike driven into the wall behind some shelves in the vault. Hard to get to, and absolutely would be overlooked if someone actually got into the vault. But I know where it is and I’m going to destroy the thing.”
“That’s great and all but aren’t you skipping just a few steps. And since when have you been getting visions?” Grat asked.
“Well, yeah, but that vision was important – it was a reward for doing something special in the dungeon. We now know something about what we are up against. They are building an undead army to conquer somebody. Since I severely doubt that they know about us here just yet, it’s got to be a neighboring kingdom.”
“Pahst?” Baslin asked.
“I doubt it. The king was heading off to meet with his sister and it sounded like he was ready to work with her. She must have beaten the longevity issue some way as well.” Duke replied.
Baslin frowned but continued. “Perhaps the same way. It is even more imperative that we prepare our army to face the undead. Sam, can you include that in the training dungeon?”
Sam looked over to Duke for confirmation. Duke agreed. “Yes, Sam, you can take orders from any of the four of us.” Aurelia seemed momentarily annoyed to be left out of that command structure but resigned herself to it rather quickly.
“OK, Aurelia, what is the mental state of everyone? Do they remember their past lives? Are they willing to go back to war?”
Aurelia settled herself and replied. “We all have vague recollections of our past lives but any of our loved ones we may have left behind died of old age centuries upon centuries ago. There are some who are not taking it well, but the majority are ready to actually do something. We can spend the next day or two drinking and eating but beyond that, they need something to do. Even if it’s simple dress and ceremony drills, we need activity.”
Duke fired off another 100,000 Mana CLEANSE and looked pointedly at Sam. “Get things going on that training dungeon. Keep the Inn as a safe zone for now at least. And most importantly, make the training truly meaningful. These troops need to be able to fight in small squads and in large formations. They need to be able to handle undead threats and come out on top of it all. Aurelia, I am counting on you to select and assemble a leadership cadre so we can give them additional training. If you have any questions, make sure you don’t hesitate to ask me or one of my core team. I want everyone pushing towards, or at Tier Two before we engage the king’s forces. Everyone got that?”
This novel is published on a different platform. Support the original author by finding the official source.
Elaine, Grat, and Baslin just looked incredulously at Duke. He responded with, “Did I stutter?”
“No, but you are giving orders like you know what you’re doing. And that’s a scary thing.” Grat responded.
“I was put in charge of an air-training squadron for a year. I learned a few things.” Duke stood up from the table. “Now let’s all get to it. Baslin, shouldn’t you be heading outside and preparing for your thousands of mage candidates?”
“Right. I indeed should be.” Baslin trailed off incredulously as he headed for the door.
“I’ll help you clear the foliage.” Grat offered as he joined Baslin heading out.
“Sam, show me what you have for training. Aurelia, care to join me? Elaine stood as well deciding where she felt she could be most useful. Aurelia waited with Duke at the table watching Elaine, Grat, and Baslin heading for the outside door.
Duke, for his part, spent the next few minutes preparing himself for the road ahead. There’s still the three greater undead generals that the necromancer is raising to go along with who knows how many undead. When it comes time to fight, I really want to be able to wipe them out with an airstrike. I need a standoff weapon. And we have to remember that these aren’t going to be dealing with some poorly-programmed dungeon creatures. There are going to be some clever and sneaky bastards as part of it all. Fuck. We are not ready for this. OK, time to quit bitching and get to work!
The sound of a great many chairs sliding back from tables broke Duke out of his thoughts. At first it was a few dozen, but over the course of the next few minutes, thousands of people headed outside. Duke followed them out to see how this was going to go, Aurelia joining him almost as an afterthought. “Duke, you seem distracted. I’m going to go work with Sam on the training dungeon.” Duke absently nodded in agreement with an acknowledging noise.
Once he got outside, he was amazed to see that Grat had cleared the forest back nearly 500 meters already and there were no stumps and very little evidence that there had even been forest there at all. He watched as Grat continued to expand the clearing, causing all the vegetation to literally walk into the forest. Duke noted that the surrounding forest was quickly becoming overly dense. He made his way over to Grat to check on him.
“How’s it going, Grat?”
“The forest has been oddly cooperative in moving back away from the shore. Almost as if it fears the dungeon.” Grat responded, his voice holding a tone of concern.
Duke stopped himself from making some sort of sarcastic remark about plants and feelings. Magic shit. Don’t doubt the druid about plants. “That’s interesting for sure. I’ve noticed that as you push the forest back further and further, it’s getting denser, almost impenetrable.”
“Yes, that is by design. I don’t think we want an army to be able to easily walk in here so I’m making it as dense as I can as far back as I can. I’ll create a meandering path through it all and some cut-ins from this side so we can add archery and mage platforms to hit anyone trying to get to us that we would rather not meet.”
“That’s…that’s really solid tactical thinking. I didn’t even consider anything like that.” Duke admitted.
“That’s why you have a team. We all have our own capabilities and specialties. I know I was really only useful for some minor crowd control in the dungeon, but in this environment…well, this is where I thrive. I apprenticed under Farthell Maslovich who designed all the defenses for the Council. I even helped build some of them but, more importantly, I listened to everything and learned.”
“That is really the best thing to do in that kind of situation. Do you have any other suggestions on what we should do?”
“Not yet but eventually we will need some sort of defense against flyers and burrowers. Sam might be able to help with that. I don’t know.”
“Good points. And since you have your head on straight about all these things, I’m going to ask you to be in charge of our defenses. You’ve already got a good start on it. What do you say?”
Grat smiled. “I will take that responsibility on one condition.”
“What’s that?” Duke asked, intrigued.
“You actually listen to me when I tell you to do or not to do something when it comes to our defense. I don’t want to be in a situation where I have set the perfect trap for our approaching enemies, and it gets blown because you got impatient.”
“That’s fair. And really highlights a character flaw of mine, doesn’t it?”
Grat just stared back at him blankly before turning back to coaxing the forest back further. Duke took the hint and turned to see how Baslin was doing.
What he saw when he turned shocked him. Standing in neat rows were thousands of troops all watching Baslin as he floated a few meters off the ground and addressed them. Duke did a quick count of the troops arrayed before him. There were just more than forty rows of two hundred troops. Duke’s quick calculation gave him more than 8,200 troops wanting to take on the mantle of being a mage. That was an astounding number. He moved closer so that he could hear what Baslin was saying.
“- can never close your channels once they are open. So, be sure this is what you really want before taking this step. I’m going to go over to speak with Duke for a few minutes. Consider what I have told you. Discuss it amongst yourselves and make a decision that fits with what you truly desire. When I get back to you, I fully expect at least half of you to have reconsidered and returned to the ranks of our warriors.”
Baslin descended and came over to Duke, ignoring the troops lined up behind him. “This is a much higher turnout than I expected. We will see how many will remain when I go back.”
Duke agreed. “There are more than eight thousand candidates there. What’s involved in giving them a mage class?”
“A right and fair question. As an Archmage, I have a Class Ability that allows me to open up someone’s Mana channels and grant them the basic Mage Class. It’s a bit too Mana-intensive for a group of this size. It costs me a thousand Mana each time. To induct a group of this size will take a while.”
“But it will be worth it, right? If we can get them trained up to Tier 2, that would be an amazing force to put into the field.”
“You do realize, Duke, that most mages never make it much past Tier 2.”
“Why is that? Tier 2 is only like hitting level 51. That’s not that hard to do. Hell, I’m already halfway through Tier 3 and I’ve only been in this world for a matter of a month or two. Hard to keep track of it all with the dungeon-time fuckery, but levels don’t seem that hard to get.”
Baslin got a pained look on his face as he replied to Duke. “Do not even entertain the notion that your progress here is anything beyond phenomenal. You have leveled up in a set of rather extreme and unique circumstances. Imagine how slow your leveling would have been if all those dungeon levels were set to their minimal levels. Would you even be at Tier 2 now?”
“Well, probably not. But I figure that since I did it, it’s possible for others to do it. Maybe not. Either way, I can help you with the Mage-making stuff.”
“You have the Ability to impart the Class?” Baslin gasped.
Duke laughed. “No, but I do have the Ability to channel my Mana to you so that you can keep going longer. I can transfer about fourteen hundred Mana a second without even tapping into my regen.”
Baslin smiled. “Yes, that will help. It is unlikely that I will be imparting more than one every few seconds so my own regen will be sufficient, but this is going to be tiring. Give me a RESTORE from time to time and we can get through this. The newly-minted mages, themselves, will be thoroughly exhausted so we need to be ready to help them.”
Duke nodded. “Gotcha. Let’s get this show on the road.” He ignored Baslin’s gripe about idioms as he turned to see the ranks upon ranks of troops still standing in the same place. He was not sure if any had actually left. The two headed to the first rank and Baslin began to impart the Mage Class to the host of candidates. It took more than 13 hours to get through them all. At some point servers had started coming out of the Inn, providing food and drinks for all. When it was all done, the official count of new mages was 8,264. Baslin was overjoyed but exhausted. By unanimous consent, they all called it a night and went to bed.