A heavy ledger dropped with a great boom onto those already weighing down Reud’s desk.

“My lord, here are the requests for skeleton assistance.” Rowan said, before bowing and retreating to the corner of the room to wait in silence. The man was one of the people recruited by Rachel to act as Srinaber’s governing body, and so far he’d proven his worth many times over.

Reud studied the books with resignation. He’d much prefer to be going over the notes recovered from the Seeker compound instead of dealing with all this bureaucracy. Lilia had been handling this duty just fine in his absence, but the moment he'd returned she'd fled, leaving it all up to him again.

Well, he certainly couldn't blame her for that.

Opening the ledger, he began leafing through. Neat rows of spiralling script lined the pages, listing names and what they requested, when they requested it, the reason for doing so, and if it was granted.

Hundreds and hundreds of lines worth.

“How do you work out who deserves what with this?” Reud asked, looking up at Rowan. “There’s just so many requests!”

“I’m afraid so, my lord.” Rowan said with a bow. “The city has grown rapidly, and as per your orders we have been supplying what people need for free. It is difficult, however, to make sure that we are being fair and equal in our treatment of all citizens.”

Rowan straightened his collar. "Your government is handling the requests for goods as the ledger shows, you do not need to worry about that, but we have run into an impasse with the allocation of your undead workforce."

"There's not enough skeletons for all the requests." Reud finished for him.

Reud was well aware of the problem. His use of zombies in both fights with the Seekers had left him with few viable bodies to raise into skeletons, and there had only been a single death in the city in his absence. He just didn't have the raw materials available to reanimate to fulfil the city's voracious desire for the labour the undead could provide.

"We have stopped assigning dedicated undead to any individual projects" Rowan continued. "But there are a great number of smaller projects that would benefit from a few hours of assistance, from home construction to planting to tanning."

"And the concern is how to rank one request against another." Reud said, tapping a finger against the ledger. “Do we have any records of who has already requested labour?”

“Beyond that ledger, no.” Rowan said, gesturing at the book on Reud’s desk. “As a result, to fulfil a request requires going through the ledger to determine what the recipient has already requested. It is further complicated by the fact that not all tasks require the same effort. The building of a house drains the skeletons far more than planting some seeds, for example.” A look of concern flashed across Rowan's face. "I'm not criticizing the capabilities of your minions, though, my lord."

Reud waved a hand. "It's okay, I'm aware of their deficiencies."

The man did make a fine point, though. In the absence of Reud's near-limitless source of mana, the skeletons would be fuelling themselves via the ambient mana they could absorb from the air. Sustained hard labour would eventually drain them. Certainly a concern for when he was away from the city, given the constant usage they seemed to be getting.

“I do, however, have some possible ideas for a solution,” Rowan said. “We had some discussions, the other administrators and I. It’s not a full plan, but I thought I would bring it to you anyway.”

Reud nodded for the man to continue.

"Well we were thinking, instead of people coming to City Hall to apply for skeleton aid, and all the paperwork that comes with it, we would instead provide everyone with some form of token that can be redeemed with a skeleton for what we've been calling a 'unit of work'. A predetermined amount of effort for the undead to perform."

Rowan bowed his head. "Of course, this is just speculation, we do not know what is possible with your magic, my lord. But if this could be achieved then we could truly, fairly, distribute these tokens to everyone. Skeletons could then be placed throughout the city, and could independently be requisitioned for work without needing to come to City Hall."

Reud's mind whirled as he considered the implications of the idea. "And then people could save up their tokens for larger tasks, or trade them with others for goods they'd rather have." He mused.

"We could also simplify the current distribution of goods by assigning them a token value, and only handing out the bare essentials for free." Rowan said.

"Rowan, this idea is genius!" Reud said, smiling widely.

"There are still some major unknowns, my lord. Such as how we actually make and authenticate the tokens, and how to make the skeletons understand the process."

"On that front, I already have an idea." Reud said, tapping a finger on the ledger. "I've played with mana aspected metals in the past. A token made from such, holding a mana charge, would be perfect for this. It could also solve the draining issue with the skeletons, providing the exact mana cost the skeleton would expend in the 'unit of work'."

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"I… I'm afraid most of what you have said is out of my realm of expertise, my lord." Rowan said, bowing his head. "Do you have such a metal in mind?"

"I just might, though it will take a little effort to acquire. How long do we have before the current system becomes unviable?”

Rowan thought for a moment. “We can continue for around another month before we need a new approach.”

“Right, that’s not a lot of time.” Reud said. "Can you get me a competent metalworker to cast these tokens? Preferably with some inscribing experience, but if that can't be accomplished, a separate inscriber as well."

Rowan bowed. “I will endeavour to find a suitable candidate. If you don’t mind me asking, my lord, where were you thinking of sourcing these metals?”

Reud smiled. “In the North Rudean Dungeon.”

—

With the clatter of bone on bone, another group of skeletons juddered into motion, striding out of the city depths towards the surface. Reud watched them go with a sense of pride, marvelling at how quickly they’d acclimated to moving.

Expertly animated, if he could be so bold. A far cry from the clumsy undead he’d shown Lilia all those months ago.

He was really starting to run low on viable skeletons available in the catacombs, however. The vast majority of the remains that had once filled it, and the entirety of the remnants of the Srinaber’s former population, had all been lost in the… mistake. The bones that were left hovered right on the verge of unusable, the soul aspecting left in them too weak to have been taken in that event.

Reud sighed as he watched the undead go, off to their new life labouring for Srinaber’s glory. Soon, he'd have to find some new sources of bodies to reanimate. Maybe he could go lurk around the neighbouring villages and cities, stealing corpses from their burial sites.

It would be just like being back in the academy.

Shaking his head, Reud turned to the notes recovered from the Seeker compound. They were currently spread out across a couple of tables in his underground workroom, organized into rough piles based on topic. He hadn’t had much time to go through them yet, but the little he’d been able to read was fascinating.

It seemed the Seekers had been investigating the nature of affinities. Specifically, they were attempting to induce the formation of an affinity in children already susceptible to doing so. Marla, Vorlo, and Hamo were all products of this research. Their experiments had met with… mixed results. It seemed that most of the treatments they’d experimented with had side effects.

Fatal side effects.

They were trying to apply the theory about how chimeras formed to people. Chimeras came about when an animal was born and raised in a mana rich environment, for example a dungeon. In some of these creatures, the mana warped them, changed them. Enhanced them. The Seekers had posited that this too was how mages formed. They were, in essence, human-chimeras.

They’d also claimed that the reason mages had a higher tendency for mage offspring, was that children born to mages tended to grow in more mana-rich environs, with their parents casting spells and living close to mana-rich areas. That, alongside the residual mana in their blood provided by a mage mother, resulted in more of them forming affinities themselves.

Apparently, they’d tried birthing children inside dungeons, but the sheer intensity of the mana in those places made the child mishappen and none of those attempts lived more than a few months after. So they’d tried limiting the mana dosage, trying to figure out the exact right quantity along with the right delivery mechanism needed to induce an affinity.

And it seemed they’d found it.

The visit from the Seekers Cecily had mentioned was the injection of a ground up, mana-rich crystal, to slowly maintain a specific mana concentration throughout her pregnancy, though the specifics of how the injection was formulated was annoyingly absent. The same potion had been used on Hamo, and a variety of other children besides. Leo and Aleida seemed to predate the development of the treatment, so out of all five of the mages Reud had rescued they were the only naturals.

Reud placed the papers back onto the desk, rubbing his stiff neck with one hand. All this research was fascinating, but why was Lightire doing this? They’d apparently poured vast sums of money into this over the course of over a century, and were only just barely producing results.

What did they need with so many mages?

He could at least console himself with the fact that he’d liberated five from the clutches of the Seekers. Five mages who, once they’d been taught to use their affinities, would help to revitalize Srinaber.

They’d be the first students of the reformed Royal Academy of Magic.

For now, however, he had a more pressing task to focus on. Delving a dungeon. Dungeons was the colloquial name given by adventurers to the places in the world with exceptionally high concentrations of mana. Places that, due to that mana, were packed to the brim with deadly chimeras. In fact, they were the original birthplace of most of the chimeras that roamed the lands, the creatures venturing out of their home once they reached maturity. The intense mana also warped the very substances the dungeon was made from, giving rise to all sorts of strange and exotic materials. A plant that grew within may gain healing properties, or ignite when doused in water. Stone could change into beautiful crystal, or condense into an unbreakable substance. A vein of ore may mutate into mana-consuming magebane, or any number of other brilliant variations.

Reud hadn’t been into a dungeon for a long long time. He’d had no need to, as none of the materials within helped with his necromantic craft. But during his life as an adventurer, he’d fought through his fair share, Lilia by his side. Together, they’d cleared all the major ones around Rudase.

Well, the ones that were major centuries ago.

Dungeon were not fixed. Their mana ebbed and flowed over time, strengthened and weakened by forces beyond anyone’s comprehension. What may in Reud’s time have been a deadly dungeon may now just be an empty cavern. What was once a mere blip in the ambient mana may now be the source of the most horrific monstrosities imaginable. But Reud knew of at least one that still held power, and held the metals that he sought.

The North Rudean Dungeon.

It lay a few leagues south-east of Srinaber, nestled at the base of a cliff deep in the centre of the forest. In Reud’s time, it was also known as the Metalflow Caverns, due to the strange quality of the mana within. A great vein of what may have once been iron ran through it, but the mana had changed it into a strange greenish-silver ore that had excellent mana affinity. However, when the moon was at its fullest and the mana of the world was at its strongest, the ore would melt, dripping down the walls and coating the chimeras within. When it solidified once again, the creatures were left with layers upon layers of an armour as hard as steel.

Making them even deadlier than before.

Reud hadn’t seen any of the metal in use during his travels, so it was doubtful that anyone was delving that particular dungeon any more. Which left all the ore for him, and for this token project.

He just had to clear out the monsters guarding it.