I snuck down the side path where the voices were coming from and eventually saw a large group of people. I peeked the corner with a spell ready to be cast, and saw a group of 27 people finishing a fight. There was 23 slaves and 4 people that I assumed were Erabalt's employees judging by the way they were dressed. I saw 3 that looked like guards and one in some fancier armour. He had iron armour that was slightly decorated and had some embellishments but nothing too crazy. I saw that of the 23 slaves, 9 looked rather beaten and bruised all over. One of the 9 fell and collapsed in a heap from his injuries and was promptly kicked.

"Why the hell do I have to deal with this trash? Why didn't sir Erabalt just send the adventurers? Would have saved us the time of dragging this fodder with us, even if its to just clear the path and be manual labour." He kicked the man that was laying there again and continued his rant. "You don't wanna get up? Fine, go ahead and die. Cmon you sods! We're going back to the main path! The treasure here has been taken so lets get a move on!" He gave one last hard kick to the person on the ground and ended up sending him flying into a wall, instantly killing him.

"Ah shit I used too much force. Now he wont be getting up even if he could have. Oi you there, grab his stuff and lets go." He turned towards the main entrance and I quickly ran back towards the main tunnel and went into another side path. I decided I wasn't going to bum rush them. I needed a plan if I wanted to save them, not that I had to but my mind was knawing at me to do something regardless of what that something was. So I came up with a way to try and free the slaves with minimal effort. As much as I wanted to save them I wasn't going to risk my life, call me a selfish bastard if you want but thats how it's going to be.

The group walked into the main path and turned left, heading towards the next room deeper into the dungeon. I was hiding far away in a side path and looking at an obscure angle. That fancy armour looked like a tough cookie to be honest. He killed that man with one kick and broke all of his rib bones instantly, even if it was a normal person that still required decent strength.

I sighed as I kept looking on at the group that left my eyesight was gone. "Man should I even bother to head deeper? I mean I got some decent cash and its not worth the effort to fight some rando's to free other rando's I don't care about. Mhhh, what to do..."

I mulled over that question for a bit and got an idea. I snuck forward to follow the group while smiling slightly. Why bother fighting when I could just have others fight for me? "I mean I'm not just a mage. Why am I so dumb? Not using my other skills in so long seems to have made me forget about them. Time for some good ol necromancy. mwehehe" I opened my inventory and saw that I had a veritable shit ton of goblin corpses and a decent load of ogre corpses. I wasn't going to waste ogre corpses since those were actually worth something.

"Meh might as well make another army of undead goblins." As I was about to use my raise undead skill I remembered the golem cores." What if I... Would that even work? It didn't work in the game... but this isn't the game so it might work. Nothing ventured nothing gained! Experimentation time!"

I stopped walking and moved into a side room out of the way to do my experiment. First, I pulled out a goblin corpse. Next, I took out a golem core and some iron from the iron golems. I heated the iron using fire and slapped my golem core into the pile of molten metal and then cooled it, encasing my core in iron. Then I put the iron-cased core into the chest of the goblin. "Now to see if this even does anything other than explode... Raise Undead!"

The body didn't violently explode like I thought it would and instead the glowing black magic circle appeared with some silver light shooting out of the chest of the goblin. The silver light flowed into the black magic circle, adding a few silver runes into it. The black tendrils then shoved itself into the goblin and finished its job. "Holy hell the corpse didn't explode violently...Did I just make a Soul-Caged Undead? Hell yeah! This turned out greater than I thought it would!"

Stolen novel; please report.

The reason why I was so damn excited was because I made a Soul-Caged Undead, which was an undead with a soul-cage inside it. Soul-Caged Undead were like the upgraded version of regular undead except on drugs. They usually were made naturally when undead lived long enough and weren't summonable and only attainable through create undead, which was far too high level of a spell for me.

I was still celebrating when I got a notification that dampened my mood rather quickly.

Soul-Caged Undead was made without the proper refinement process and is therefore unstable. Any raised undead using this method will have a lifespan of 30 minutes before the soul cage ruptures, killing the undead instantly. A better refinement process will increase the time limit.

I was sort of disappointed by the time limit but at the same time I was just glad I could make something better than the dumb lesser undead. "I mean its an upgrade so I shouldn't complain. I just gotta be strategic with my summoning. Ooh what if I could make them rupture their soul-cages on purpose to make suicide zombies? Man being able to experiment in this world is so cool. Oh I know! I should..."

~~~

I kept thinking of various experiments I had been wanting to try in the game but was unable to due to restrictions in the game, and by the time I knew it I had made it to the group that went far ahead of me. "Man my rambling really passed the time quickly..." I quickly peeked the corner and saw that the group had joined another group and was now 72 strong, with 62 slaves and 10 guards, 2 of which were fancy armours, I'll just call them captains for convenience. The second captain was a big dude with a big mace strapped on his belt and a sword sheathed on his right side. The guy was rather big too, probably 6 feet 3 or something. I'm bad with guessing heights and distances.

The 2 captains were discussing something as the slaves tended to each other's wounds while they waited, not daring to make any noise or move from their spots.

I heard the first captain yell "Why don't we just send them to bum rush the golems like usual?! Its what they are here for you moron! You're wasting our time like this!" The big guy stared down at him and said "They will heal their wounds and be sent in with a strategy. I don't care if they are expendable slaves , they will be used efficiently to make the best use of them. I will not send my men to their deaths unnecessarily."

I had been summoning soul-caged goblin this entire time had had around 40 ready. It took too much time to summon them fast not to mention required a golem core for each one. I also had around 150 lesser goblin undead as fodder. Some might say that I was wasting resources with this massive attack party but I was really wasting nothing. I had several thousand goblin corpses. I had cleared a city's worth of goblins to be honest. The guild didn't want any of the corpses as they were useless to them. They couldn't even sell that many and even if they did it would be chump change, so they hired me for a few coppers to help clear the city of goblin corpses along with dozens of others, who just gathered the corpses and burned them outside the city.

Anyways I had finished summoning my 40'th soul-caged undead and went back to listening to the conversation. "-arn't going to waste my time anymore! I'll report you directly to Sir Erabalt for wasting precious time! They are fodder and not your 'soldiers'! They are S-L-A-V-E-S! So use them as such!" He turned towards the group of slaves and guards and said "Let's move! We have wasted far too much time arguing with the softhearted meathead. Get a move on!"

The big captain was grinding his teeth and clenching his fists in anger but didn't say a word. He just stared at the group of slaves who looked as if their last hope had been shattered into a million pieces. I watched as they continued marching forward in a disorderly fashion as the slaves were herded into the depths of the dungeon. "I'll strike when they are fighting golems. Might as well get them while they are distracted." I looked towards my undead and back at the slaves. I finally took a look at the big captain and finished my plan of action. I was going to try this rescue operation soon and was going to book it the second shit hit the fan, summoning dozens or even hundreds of undead goblins as I ran if need be. I pulled out a cloak from my inventory that I had gained from the city while cleaning up goblin corpses and hid my face.

"Let's get this show on the road. Necromancer style."