After reviving nearly ninety people, the process came to a bit of a halt. The lack of Norman’s magical powder was the main contributing factor to this stoppage. You might think just make more. Well no shit, Sherlock! The problem with that was there was only a finite amount of blood in a human body. Especially Norman’s skinny body. And it took time to recover after drawing half a liter of blood.

A few other magically inclined people had donated additional blood for the cause. That’s where the second issue came into play. It seemed like the magical powder made from the greykin blood could not empower the spell to revive other greykin. But it worked perfectly fine to power Norman’s spell anchors, which made no sense to him. It seemed to be only constrained to the spell circles. He would have to experiment later on to try and figure out why that was the case.

The third issue, that Norman in his current form didn’t suffer from but the revived citizens of Ashvale did, was mana starvation. Since the greykin relied on their stored mana to survive, running out completely turned out to be a death sentence. After one particularly enthusiastic volunteer died from giving away too much of his blood, Norman had to put a stop to the activity.

It wasn’t that he didn’t appreciate their help, he totally did. But sacrificing one’s life to revive another wasn’t moving them in the right direction. It actually slowed them down. Because the blood had to be pumped back into the corpse before the ritual to revive him could be performed for a third time.

At least the man had enough sense to look embarrassed by his actions.

The healing potions helped a bit by topping off the greykin’s mana, but it was a drop in the bucket. Norman hadn’t had much time to test his theory while he was undead, but he was pretty sure greykin stored way more mana than they would if they were normally alive.

Norman made a note of this issue in his loose collection of papers that had replaced his grimoire. Grobert had stolen the papers from the same village where Norman had acquired his second set of wasteland clothing from. It wasn’t much but it helped Norman to keep his thoughts and ideas on track so he appreciated the gesture.

With all that, it meant everything slowed down. He was a bit disappointed that he wasn’t going to be able to resurrect the entire city as rapidly as he hoped he would. The few guards he had resurrected were sent down south to watch the border. They couldn’t afford for the enemy to stumble upon them while they were in this weakened state.

Norman had gotten lucky when resurrecting his guards. Two of the three guards had dexterity-based callings with the third being a mage. He sent them off with three vials each of healing potion. Norman wasn’t sure how long it would be until they were relieved so he wanted them to be set for some time.

The three vials would allow them to maintain a watch for over a month without having to find sustenance or move. Norman was essentially reducing them to intelligent security cameras. Not that Norman wanted to compare them to inanimate objects, it was just the most fitting analogy he could come up with.

The two dexterity-based guards could hopefully beat any enemy forces back to Ashvale to warn the city. If the enemy crossed the mage, she would not be able to outrun the enemy. But she could alert the others and possibly slow down any pursuit. It was a harsh thing to ask people to give their lives to save others, but Norman had to be the one to ask. Not that he thought the enemy was likely to show up after so long of an absence, but he wanted to be prepared. With Eugene still M.I.A., it was the only thing Norman could think of. Grobert was a help, but the man was better with long-term planning.

After the guards were sent on their way, It was time for cleanup. There was the cleanup of the city, but that’s not the cleanup Norman was referring to. He stared at the mountain of corpses and sighed. “Grobert, I need someone to kill a grazer and bring me their bones.”

The man nodded and sent five people to complete the task. It was normally something Norman would just go and do himself, but he was in charge now. Whether he liked it or not, that meant giving orders rather than carrying them out himself.

Norman used the anger he felt for the Brotherhood as motivation to push down his anxieties and worries over his past mistakes. And he had plenty of those. But now was not the time to dwell on those.

“You, you, and you,” Norman pointed to three gron greykin.

All three stopped and saluted Norman.

He suppressed the sigh that wanted to escape as he addressed them. “You three are in charge of sorting the bodies. I want you in charge of finding the guards. You find the stone mages. And you, find any people with a calling that isn’t part of those first two groups,” Norman pointed to each man, earning a determined nod in reply. “If you need more people to help out, you have my authority to recruit them. Sort the bodies into neat rows so they can be stored. Set any that you think might be too damaged for revival off to the side.”

The men rushed off to fulfill their assigned duties while Norman turned back toward Grobert. “Have the remaining people that aren’t working on a task, start clearing the city and taking inventory. I want them looking for any items that might be useful… clothing especially.”

Grobert looked around at all the naked people running about and quirked an eyebrow. “I don’t know, I kinda like it.”

Norman rolled his eyes, “I bet you would find it appealing to watch naked gron females running about. But it’s becoming a bit of a distraction, and not just for you.” Norman wasn’t referring to himself either.

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He had resurrected the easiest to get to bodies first, not caring whether they were male or female, guard or not. Only two of the revived ninety people were non-gron, thanks to the vast majority of Ashvale being former gron themselves. And well, let's just say work was slowed when the gron men stopped to watch the naked gron females rush about.

Norman also learned more about gron anatomical functions today than he ever wanted to. Apparently, everything still worked down below, even though they were undead. Bleh! He wished he could scrub the image from his mind with bleach after how many flagpoles he watched rise today.

Grobert chuckled, “fair enough. I will make clothing a priority. If we find a seamstress or cloth maker, we can also just weave clothing from the tall grass or the hides of the grazers. It’ll at least cover people up.”

Norman nodded, feeling a bit bad about sending the guards out completely nude. But he didn’t want to wait for clothes to be crafted to ensure their southern border was safe. If only his storage spell would store inorganic or processed materials. That way the bodies would still have clothing. It was another reason Norman didn’t like using the ferals. Having nude zombies pop out and attack you was certainly a shock for his enemy, but it was also a shock for Norman as well. It was why he wanted to switch to using animals as his ferals. And the dinos made the perfect ferals.

Things moved quickly after Norman and Grobert issued orders for everyone. Nine people stuck around to help the three Norman had assigned to sort bodies. While the rest moved through the city like locusts to find anything worth salvaging in the mess left behind by the Brotherhood.

The body sorters went about their work rather stoically, but soon the mountain of bodies was spread out upon the castle hill. Soon after that the people sent to hunt one of the grazers for its bones returned. They were retasked as cooks after handing off the bones to Norman.

Norman spent the next two days storing the bodies in smaller bones and marking them with his charcoal pencil. As much as Norman wanted to revive everyone right away, he needed to prioritize the safety of the town first. So all of the guards were stored in one spell anchor. In a few days when Norman recovered from his blood loss and mana expenditure, he would revive them first. At the moment, he barely had enough mana to store them. But leaving them to rot was not an option.

The mages and other people with callings, that weren’t guards, went into three separate spell anchors. And the rest of the civilian population went into twenty-five additional spell anchors.

Norman was trying to keep the people per anchor as low as possible so they could all be revived in one go instead of having to store them for a third time. The only exception was the one that held the guards.

The town had seventy-two additional guards that needed to be revived. He wanted to revive them all in one go, similar to how he did it today but he wasn’t sure that was feasible. Norman hadn’t quite realized how many guards Eugene had added. That count didn’t even include the fourteen dead guards that Norman was sure couldn’t be revived at the moment. Their heads were either sliced apart or crushed. One poor bastard even had his entire torso obliterated, and there wasn’t even a sign of his lower half. He must have gotten hit directly by the enemy siege weapon.

If that were all the dead, it would have been enough for Norman to hate the Brotherhood forever. But it wasn’t. It seemed the enemy had changed tactics at one point and started targeting the heads of civilians as they brutally murdered their way through Ashvale. Along with the fourteen dead guards, there were three hundred and eighty-four civilians he couldn’t resurrect. It was impossible to tell if any of the dead civilians had callings because they didn’t carry any markings like the guard or some of the non-combat ones like the stone mages

The amount of dead was atrocious but Norman was glad he had refused to turn children into greykin. He knew the Grothlosburg storage area had its share of the young bodies, but Norman hadn’t even thought about experimenting with them. He was now extremely glad he hadn’t.

Thoughts of the Brotherhood going through town and butchering greykin children made Norman shudder. It was bad enough knowing he was partially responsible for the enemy's change of tactics thanks to his spell. But at least everyone that died was a consenting adult.

Could Norman have resurrected the children fully and given them back to their parents? Yes. But could their young minds cope with the pain? He wasn’t so sure and didn’t feel it justified the risk to find out. Norman knew the process was not a painless one thanks to watching Toby go through it and recently experiencing it himself. That was also a whole box of worms Norman didn’t want anything to do with.

Eventually, the groups that were sent to search the city returned to the hill. They did not come back with many useful items. But Norman noticed they all now had at least a loincloth or chest covering made from torn cloth. In one case a man looked to be wearing a rotting patch of carpet. They handed out more pieces of clothing to the workers that remained behind and by the time the sun set, everyone was at least partially clothed. There were even a few spare sets of clothing left over.

After that, everyone moved into the armory for the night. It was safer than staying on the exposed hill where a fire could be seen from miles away.

The people sat around a fire made from gathered wood. It wasn’t much but it banished the chill in the air. While everyone ate a stew, they quietly chatted amongst themselves. It was a miracle that intact bowls had been found. Apparently, the Brotherhood couldn’t be bothered to steal them, not that they hadn’t tried their damndest to destroy every dish they had come across.

After everyone had a bowl of meat stew, Norman stood up and clacked his spoon to his bowl. Soon the quiet murmuring of the crowd petered off, all heads turning toward Norman. They were all waiting for him to speak.

He cleared his throat, suddenly unsure of himself. But he pushed his insecurity down and continued. “I know this isn’t the most auspicious start to our recovery.” That got a quiet round of chuckles from the gathered people. “But we will recover, that I can assure you. The Radiant Brotherhood struck what they thought of as a killing blow, then they ransacked our town like some fucking savages!” Norman put as much heat into that statement as possible. “But they are short-sighted fools led by a traitor. They think us dead, but we cannot be killed, we can only be delayed. We will rise back up, we will rebuild our city, and when we are ready… we will destroy the Brotherhood, root, and stem. We will never give them a chance to hurt us again!”

There was a moment of silence following Norman’s proclamation, For a moment, he thought he had completely misread the emotions in the room. But soon one person started clapping, followed by others. Then a roar of approval swept through the room.

When Norman sat back down, Grobert clapped him on the shoulder. “That was a good speech. The people needed to hear that.”

Norman nodded quietly, he was too choked up by the outpouring of support from his people to say anything.

“You should get some sleep, Norman, it’s going to be an exhausting few weeks.”