Well, I learned something new, turns out that the people of Bedlev have the same type of burial practices that make them bury knights or warriors in their armours with their weapons. With that said I had to spend almost a full one and a half hour just building, binding souls too and impregnating the rusted iron armours with soulstones. Thankfully I managed to send out Garm and his pack, with the Ushabti riding them around the catacombs to clean up the ghouls, not in the central chamber.

That allowed us not only supplement some parts we were missing as well as farming a few souls that we needed to complete everything.

At the end, I managed to fill out my entire possession skill minion limit, which I was glad that I had managed to train it while with Németh and O’Malley. Those particular training sessions had been weird, by using two normal human skeletons and a single soul I had to make living armours continuously. Always having to be faster made than previously as Németh continued to just wave her hand and reset the entire exercise a moment after he had been successful.

Frustration was the least of the emotions I had to suppress during that time. The entire thing had been to test both my Basic Possession skill, Basic Bone crafting, Basic Soul manipulation as well as the mental barriers and filters I had been putting in place with my meditations.

In the end, I was supposed to be able to assemble a living armour within five minutes almost without touching the bones.

Shaking my head out of such thoughts I looked upon the mismatched armours standing before me. Some wore actual plate, though rusted iron mostly, or had ways to connect the pieces with either chain mail or tattered cloth or leather. Some, however, I had to supply the missing piece with a scavenged piece of armour from others or simply make one using bone.

The corpses around the armours were also fed into the armours, my hope to impart a bit more martial skill to them in the beginning. I infused the bones into the armours along with small powdered soulstones.

What this seemed to do to the finished result was to allow me to infuse two souls into a single one instead of the usual one. This seemed to increase as I infused a pure soul into the armours before I used two to raise them. The armour changed and seemed to grow incredibly hot before moulding itself into a new shape. I was rather surprised as I saw into what type of armour they changed, mainly by the shape.

It was like I was looking at a medieval version of the clone trooper armours from star wars. Though the visor on their helmets seemed more like a line that ended in a small triangle that would only just come down to the tip of the wearer's nose.

With that, I went into creating them with absolute gusto. Using furs of the wolves I had killed not so long ago in the Deepwoods I made capes. With two I even went on to use a shield to make pauldrons for one of their shoulders. With all of that done I recreated the entire batch as the parts just lay before me.

While a waste I could at least reclaim the souls used to create them but had to supply another soul into the armours to finalize the changes I had made. I stepped back with a wide smile, though very tired after this troop creation.

Before me stood a total of thirteen living armours, all with tattered kama’s coming down from their hips with sleek pauldrons that weren’t that thick to be called pauldrons.

Two stood with larger pauldrons much reminiscent of the ones arc troopers had in star wars though each had a tattered fur cloak that reached down from their back to their lower back. The fur-covered their shoulders.

The leader stood apart from the others as his cape reached over his upper chest with a pauldron in the shape of a raven’s head. The hooded cape flowing with black feathers from all the birds and ravens that my forces had been pillaging from around the woods when I stayed there last. His weapon was a stout heater shield with a heavy bladed mace. If the mace was a red lightsaber I’d say I’d just found a medieval sith lord wearing clone trooper armour.

Then I noticed the armour of each of them as I peered closer. The armour had taken on subtle etchings or light bends to give them skeletal marks and spidering cracks filled in with faint soulstone in it yet still holding the advantages of what armour should provide, their back had changed the most though. The armour’s metal had warped and turned and now looked much more like a spinal column with the armour growing out of its sides.

Then the last change came onto them all as the armours began to grow pitted, rusty and corroded, some even got a few straight cut lines or nicks into them. What resulted was a squad of knights looking like the medieval version of evil clone troopers with tattered kamas, cloaks and armour that seemed to have waded through hell and time.

Of the thirteen only the leader held a bladed mace, the two lieutenants instead held halberds, and the remaining seemed to split in a two to four to four ratio of spears, hand-axes and swords respectively and in that order.

All of them stood there stoically for a few moments before each went to their knees bowing before me. A guy could really get an ego boost with all this bowing and scraping, was that perhaps why all necromancers seemed like such egomaniacs?

In a slow walk from one end to the other, I knighted all of them, tapping my sword on each of their left shoulders ending in the leaders going up in rank. So lieutenants first then the captain. “You are the start of the black knights. The fist by which I will break any before me and the shield of my lands.” I spoke reverently and respectfully to the corroded knights as I continued to walk around them.

“Rise as the Black knights, one of the elites of my army to come. Yours will be a proud order!”Once I had finished all the knights stood up and saluted to me with a fist to their heart and a bow of their heads to me.

At that Abhorash came up behind me and looked them over. “I feel we should have each of them train in different styles.” His voice was a deep silvery bass, with hints of the ethereal quality of when spirits speak in movies and the like.

I looked up at him with a questioning gaze which he looked down to meet my gaze. “These… black knights as you called them should be just bellow my Umbral knights in rank, why not use them as grandmasters of their own orders?

Then much like how I will only pick the best and most loyal of my progeny to join the Umbral knights, why not make these grow to sentient undead to manage their own orders by raising their own knights?” I stared at him incredulously.

“How?!” I asked wondering if Abhorash had grown much smarter than ever before through his change. I idly wondered if I shouldn’t do the same to Vashanesh but given how much it had taken it out of me to create Abhorahs I was sure I’d damage something vital if I did it again anytime soon. My soul needed to recover after all.

“I believe I can answer this for you Abhorahs, simply add what I might forget.” Vashanehs said as he bowed a little in respect to my draugur knight vampire, who for his part simply nodded respectfully as well. With a smile, Vashanesh began.

“You see if you would sacrifice more souls into their creation and give them each a heart of soulstone they will grow to a higher ranking undead. Changing from living armours to Animated knights. However, this will make it so that you won’t be able to create any more spectral type undead as to create thirteen of sufficiently sized soulstones would require all the souls we have left. Is there anything I happen to be missing?” He then asked Abhorahs who seemed to take a moment.

“Lord Von Carstein, I believe that if you have your martial book open at a specific part then you might be able to impart the very basics of that style to them.” The whole Lord von Carstein was getting a little bothersome, it was such a mouthful, but I still listened and took Abhorashs words to heart.

With that myself and Vashanesh spent the next half hour creating these sufficiently sized soulstones, I decided to fuck around a little and made all of mine look like an anatomically correct heart. I even went the extra mile with three of them and made them perfectly anatomical with a bit of the larger veins coming out of it to hold the sufficient size for the object. These I decided to put into the three leader looking ones.

Then, of course, came what I’d have to name each order, Vashanesh and Abhorash both said I had to do that during creation if I wanted them to actually become higher-level undead. I still wasn’t all that certain about the difference between lower and higher undead but I suspected it was a functional mind. Something to figure out and experiment with later.

I started by using two of the spherical orbs that Vashanesh had created, he had made four while I made nine in the same amount of time. A result of the near brutal training Németh and O’Malley had put me through. These two I decided would be focused on mounted combat, giving them two of Garm’s pack as their mounts. Something the bone warg wasn’t all that pleased over. Though he was mollified when I told him he would keep them until I could create replacements. Since when was he such a prima donna?

With that done I flipped through the book to find good styles for their spears, that would work both mounted and on foot just in case. I ended up with two, one named hawk's beak and another named the Vengeful Prick. Yeah, I chuckled too when I read the name.

The Hawks Beak style seemed designed for Arial mounts and on foot, with that in mind I decided to make a flying mounted order with this one as the style was very focused on fluid snaking thrusts that almost flowed around their opponent. The Vengeful Prick, on the other hand, was mostly focused on brutal counter-attacks and heavy blows with the spear, using the butt of the spear even. With this discovery, I decided not to make The Vengeful Pricks mounted hit and run type of cavalry.

They would become my heavy cavalry aimed at smashing lines to bits. They’d need something heavy to ride and I began to imagine an entire knightly unit of these guys mounted on those huge shire horses from earth. Just decked out in heavy armour and instead of normal horses they’d be nightmares. I smiled at that thought, then I decided that the Hawks’ beak order should be mounted on wyverns or perhaps giant undead hawks?

In the end the two rose up as the grandmasters of the Shadow wing order and the order of the vengeful dead.

The next two were axe wielders and they ended up being inducted into the styles of the Trickster's Edge and the Blight's Plight. The first focused on feints, hooking with the hooked axe, blocking sight with the round shield and footwork to confuse and decimate enemies.

The second was geared towards using hacking strikes, powerful blows with the battleaxe and powerful bashes with heater shields and heavy armour to compensate for any lack of defences.

As such the order of masks came into the world with the tricksters and the blight’s plight user became the grandmaster of the order of the blighted axe.

I didn’t name any of them as I was already feeling my mind turning into mush figuring out the names for each order. The next was the other two axe wielders, these got the first of the anatomical heart-shaped stones. First got the style named Frosts Bane, aimed at using a heavy single-bladed and single-handed axe with a tower shield, a heavy hammer-like back part to the axe giving its blows much more weight. Thus adding in another heavy-hitting and armoured infantry order to the mix. An added bonus was the fact that this particular Animated knight gained the magic squire class and I told him to focus on magic pertaining to frost magic as well as skills focusing on buffing himself in the midst of battle.

The second style was named War reavers, this one seemed close to a berserker type style. Using fast movement, footwork and heavy blows with twin broad axes to move around an enemy and going for the soft spots in armours. Such as joints, knees and under the arms, even having a few hooking motions to pull down an enemy to the ground. As such The Crypt Reavers were born, these would be a fast-moving elite infantry order.

Next were the sword wielders, one had an executioner's great sword, a sword with a flat top instead of a blade tip and as such I had him learn the only style I could find that was tied to the death type styles for it in the book. Ironically named Faith keepers shield. Deciding to keep them as heavy two-handed infantry as this style focused on heavy chopping and sweeping motions which could cut a man in half. These I named the order of fear, mostly since I thought a full unit of these guys might cut a bloody path through a peasant type unit if not trained and equipped soldiers.

The second was using an arming sword and round shield. The style chosen for these was named The Unyielding sword and focused on precision strikes, precise flowing footwork and shield work to build a good well-rounded warrior with little in terms of deficiencies. The styles name gave the idea for the name of The Unyielding as their order name. An order of elite infantry that could manage the battlefield would be good they’d become to me like the Persian immortals were to their kings.

Third was a twin messer sword wielder and thankfully I found a style made for him. The style was named Crescent river and focused on round and fluid movements with both body and sword. Half the style seemed like dodges or counterattacks from a dodge. As such I felt they would be a very mobile order and thankfully it had a mounted part to the style though that part only used one scimitar. Naming them the martyred myrmidons.

The fourth and last one had a longsword with a heater shield. The style I decided on for them was named, The Eternal Host. A style focusing on survival against all odds while on foot but using swift brutal charges while mounted, using the skill of their swords and shields to break free to build up another charge. I decided that this order would be called after the style as well.

Then came one of the Lieutenants, this one held what I had first thought of as a halberd but on close inspection, it was like someone had taken a bearded axe and stuck a spike at the top of it which was bent to create a sharp and thin hook. With that little revelation, I realized this one needed a two-handed great axe style for use and as I flipped through I found one. I found out through the book that the weapon was in fact translated to earth English as a Lochaber axe and though I had a little to pick from I decided on the Cometfall style.

A style exemplified in utilizing the entirety of the axe, from its wide axe blade to the narrow hook even the haft and butt of the weapon were used. Using wide sweeps that could still be used in tight formations, using the butt of the weapon to push back the enemy as the head comes around for another powerful chop. These would be excellent bulwarks.

The other lieutenant still had a proper halberd though and as I looked through I found a particularly versatile style centralized on mounted skirting hits. Named Night's Reach, this style seemed to use the large amount of momentum swinging the halberd around could generate and feeding that into heavy strikes or cleaves of the blade. Interspersed into the movements are heavy strikes using the back spike to pierce heavy armour and thrusts with the spear tip at the top.

With that I had the makings of a fast-moving hit and run type elite cavalry. And order named the Black host, named since this ones armour seemed the darkest tinted of them all with an almost great coat level to its surcoat coming from around its hips reminded me of the blackguards of Naggarond. Though only slightly.

Last but not least was the one I had thought of as the squads captain. His bladed mace was like a flanged mace only with the individual parts that made up the head were all bladed, allowing for both a cutting and a crushing attack at the same time. I chose a versatile style named Stormbringer, a very solidly built style with a slight emphasis on sudden, precisely aimed crushing strikes with the mace or shield. These I named the Black knights as they could be mounted as well.

Now all I had to do was sit down and relax for an hour to get my brain out of the mashed potato-like state it was now in. This ended up being a good way to relax as both Vashanesh and Morice worked on his own minions and creating the groundwork for me to raise later in Vashanesh’s case.

By the end of that hour and another half hour to raise what Vashanesh had so kindly provided me I walked out of there with a total of sixty-eight minions under my command, though I decided to put Vashanesh and the skeletal horses away into my soul space as I had an idea to enhance him and didn’t want to risk him going over the level limit and well I didn’t see them as useful in the situation to come.

The most numerous of my minions were simple Ghoul skeletons I would use as fodder, though I melded two skeletons to increase the strength of the skeletons but thankfully since these creatures are so simple the minor skeleton skill worked on them. These numbered around twenty-five which would serve as a meat shield for my animated knights and the skeleton warriors I had created with a bit of space for Garm and his pack to dart in and out behind them. Then came myself, Abhorash, Charon, skeleton archers and the Ushabti.

I opened my minion management screen and got a good look at it with a smile.

Minion Management screen (Minimized)

Current maximum minion capacity: 68 / 103

Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.

Sources of minions: (+3) to all capacities due to intelligence modifier. (Intelligence at 38 = +3)

minor skeletons: A - Skill lvl. 10 = 26(+3) max

Skeletons: Skill lvl. 10 = 12 (+3) max

Minor Specters: A - skill lvl. 10 = 26 (+3) max

Spectral skeletons: Skill lvl. 10 = 12 (+3) max

Possession: Skill lvl. 10 = 12 (+3) max

Highest rank creature user can control.

Spectral skeletons: rank 3

Skeletons: rank 3

Minor skeletons: rank 4

Minor spectres: rank 4

Possession: Rank 3

Current Spectral Skeletons: 5 / 15

N/A: 1

Minor Necrotech (Vashanesh): 1

Shadeborn skeletal rouge (Charon): 1

Shadow bone Raven (Ashes and Dust): 2

Current Skeletons: 15 / 15

Skeleton Warriors: 4

Skeleton Archers: 4

Lesser Ushabti: 2

Bone Wargs: 5

Current Minor skeletons: 29 / 29

Bone Horse: 4

Skeleton Ghoul: 25

Current specters: 4 / 29

Ghostly squires: 2

Ghostly howlers: 2

Possessed undead: 15 / 15

Lesser Ironflesh Ushabti: 2

Animated Knights (Squire): 13

Morice also supplied our meat shield line with ghoul stitched zombies. These ghouls had been reassembled by Morice and he had asked Vashanesh and me to shape their hands into axes while he stitched the things up. He made around fourteen of these and they were between the skeleton ghouls and the knights I made as a buffer. A buffer I was rather certain we’d require considering the numbers against us.

I then focused inwards, to use the second set of mental barriers I had set for myself.

“You sure this is a good idea? I mean you are essentially limit your own strength after all.” O’Malley had said to me when I brought up the subject.

“Though it does have merit when blending in with society I still think it’s stupid.”

I had only smiled at him. “Well if we go by the idea that the body is an engine then why not put in a few gears for it? If I can be just a bit stronger and faster than normal for my race then I could blend in much easier though I’m also doing this to be able to learn to manage my own body better. It took me almost a month to get used to my body after this entire physical boost I got from coming here. Being able to switch from just above the normal to either the middle ground of my new strength to the full thing is what I’m looking for.

I can disguise the middle ground as a burst of strength or a second wind but while I don’t need to blend into the societies on the way I’ll be at full strength to make sure I don’t have to spend as much time to get used to it later.” I said to him with an almost shit-eating grin.

“I believe he does have a point.” Németh piped up. “After all if he is to tear down Wolfsgarde then he’ll need to be able to blend in easier. The fact we weren’t able to make him human is already a point against him in that endeavour.” She then moved on to actually help me achieve that goal.

I realized a little after I had woken up that I had subconsciously put myself in the first gear if I keep the engine analogy. Now however I was reeving up, unlocking all of my physical abilities that I had put mental barriers on. At baseline or gear one, to keep the analogy going, I was at I’d say Olympic level athlete for a Dökk Álfar but once I had gone to my full capabilities I was almost at two and a half that physical capability.

Jumping my own height from a standing start, smashing through stone blocks the thickness of my writs, all of these became available. I was essentially superhuman but given the idea we Earthers think of as superhuman I was just barely halfway there

I’m still not close to the vampiric speed, strength and agility I had seen on tv and in movies when they actually bothered to show vampires as actually powerful beings instead of near-feral humans with teeth and bad faces as so many movies and tv-shows did.

As much as Buffy was fun to watch I still found the vampires and demons rather… lacking at many times.

Tightening my fist as we closed in on the main chamber where the ghouls were gathered I looked towards Morice and fixed him in place with my eyes. “Your minions will hack at anything that gets past my skeletons and will attack above them as well if they can reach. Now, are you ready?” I asked him as I unsheathed my sword, my defensive carapace taking shape around my body. I had loaned my armour to Morice as he had rather inferior armour on, simple stiffened leather which wouldn’t really protect him all that much.

He had gone wide-eyed when the armour had grown out from my bare chest and had covered my entire body.

This time the entire thing took on a form rather similar to what you got if a Dark elf from Warhammer decided to reforge the armour Sauron from the shadow of war wore out of chitin. Though with a more sleek and sharp look adding in three horns rising out from the grown of the helmet instead of the actual crown-like motif the helmet had in that game.

From out from my hips and from under my shoulder guards and spilling forth like tattered chain-mail interwoven with ethereal fabric. I marvel at my subconscious use of mana materialization, a skill which would allow me to move and harden mana around me to create something like this, while at it’s basic it could only really form something like tissue paper strength cloth I’d be able to create weapons out of mana at it’s highest forms.

Feeling the horns and remembering the how the helmet from the game was, I thought of an idea of a crown with soulstones keeping my old party’s souls within it.

That sparked a memory of what Németh had told me she found odd about my use of souls.

Apparently, when I stripped souls I sent on just enough for the souls to go to their afterlives while still keeping the majority of the energy their souls had built up during their lives. That had made me think a bit on what Aona’s face would look if she had to face me wearing her little co-conspirators as little more than jewellery.

The thought warmed the cockles of my heart. With that warm thought, I kept myself from strutting as we made our way through the hallway.

With that done we all moved into the main chamber, looking like a bunch of badasses. I had to smile almost smugly underneath my armour as we entered the chamber and with a flick of my fingers forward like I was ordering a spec ops team forwards the four archers moved and drew, thankfully they could hold their draw for long, unlike living archers would.

Then I looked down into the inverted ziggurat and at the thing writhing on the operating table now. For now it was a thing, no longer even looking like some sort of ghoul any more, more like a skinless hulk amalgam than anything. The muscles all visible with even a few tears through them as the thing had somehow looked like an anorexic version of that hulk villain called abomination without skin and you know… living up to its damn name.

I saw the Necroshade cackling over it as he looked at a dozen other ghouls of the more evolved variety almost cowering before the sight. I decided to step forwards as the knights and minions got into a good defensible position as I walked slowly towards the edge of the first step down into the ziggurat.

“Shade!” I called with as much authority as I could manage, even going so far as to infuse my vocal cords with mana. That gave my voice an almost ringing quality as well as deepened my voice considerably, I sounded like the epitome of all commanding dark lords if I do say so myself.

My pause before composing myself and speaking again made the Necroshade turnaround and stare daggers up at me. The apparition was a spirit of an old and emaciated man with a beard that looked as if he was underwater, his green ethereal form visible for all to see. Ragged and heavily torn robes held tightly against his body with tattered twine crisscrossing across his body.

His fingers were long bony things ending in gnarled claw-like grips at the air. Small plates of heavily corroded and pitted armour plates came down along his shoulders and over his thighs, most likely an old style of mage armour from when he was alive.

Thick strands of dishevelled hair fell down from his crown, each around the thickness of dreadlocks, the green ethereal nature of him making them very greyish green in colour. Around his waist was a chain, as corroded as the plates on his body, from this chain, came seven other chains that dragged along the floor. At one was a spherical orb wrought in iron with several holes on its outside reminding me of a battle censer mixed with a meteor hammer of some sort.

Two more ended in these rings connected to a trio of smaller chains ending in these thick looking cubes, two more ended in pitons and the last two ended in these long rectangle metals that reminded me of some flails I had seen. All of these chains and metal objects were pitted, corroded and some even had obvious slash like nicks through them.

I realized my pause had dragged out just a bit longer than I had originally thought so I pointed my sword at the apparition. “I give you a choice, serve as you are or be irrevocably changed and serve me still,” I said simply and the look of utter fury with a toothy frown coming over the Necroshade’s face made me smile inwardly.

“I WILL NOT BEND THE KNEE TO SOME UPSTART NECROMANCER!” He screamed at me and raised a gnarled hand up to point at me. Realizing he was trying something I managed to back up enough to see a black lightning strike through the air where I had just been.

My relief of having just managed to dodge that spell was taken away as the ghouls let out their battle cry.

It was an utterly, horrific sound of wailing that cut me to my core, I couldn’t turn fast enough.

I ran back and with a leapfrog over the ghoul skeletons, I managed to get into the formation they had made. The Ghoul skeletons had put down bone spikes much like the ones used to defend against cavalry. It was Vashanesh who created these while myself and Morice rested, he had taken initiative and designed these to help funnel the ghouls or slow them down just a little.

Then as we waited for the horde to come charging towards us a creeping thought came to my mind. Had I just subjected Abhorash to my corruption by giving him a piece of my soul? As the horror of what that might entail hit me, so too did the Ghouls hit our defences. I managed to get behind the knights when the horde slammed into the defences, smashing aside the bone spikes but loosing many of the first to arrive in the process. The ghouls were ravenous as before, snarling and clawing at my forces and through their own dead. Many simply dragged corpses of their fallen to the side to feast upon while the others did the hard part of getting through the sharpened bone claws of my ghoul skeletons and the chops of the axe handed zombies. The latter helped cut down the ghouls so zealous in their pursuit of meat that they almost manage to climb over the first defensive line.

With a few quick thrusts, the animated knights with spears began to stab into those that threatened to have enough stability to jump. The lieutenants moved in and gave out arching slashes above the haunched over zombies to prevent them from being overrun. The archers never stopped firing their bows but they didn’t have many arrows left and they had managed almost a fourth of them before the ghouls arrived at our line.

The rest of us had to take attacks of opportunity when there was enough of an opening between the second line and us.

The Skeletal ghouls held out surprisingly long, the magic and thickened bones holding them together for longer than they had any right to be. That coupled with the fact that their attacks were much more reckless than the living ghouls who still had something of a self-preservation instinct left in their corrupted forms.

Then I noticed it, the horde arrayed before us was only just the ones at the topmost layer of the pit. There were still more pouring up from the pit with better physiques and I realized that right now, our line was just holding a stalemate. What was arriving would tip the balance beyond what we would be able to handle at the current state.

I looked over to Morice and saw the same realization hit him. With a grim look between us, we realized we were in a battle of attrition right now, and the enemy was supplying us with materials to keep going. The only limit for us was how long we would have the strength to continue to supply our side with bodies.

With a nod, he hardened his face and his zombies began to toss the ghoul corpses back at us for use when the opportunity was available.

Again we seemed to have managed some edge as we began to replenish what we were losing force wise at about the same rate as we were losing them. As the second step in the downward ziggurat’s ghouls hit we felt the difference. Our first and second-line held but it was at a rate of attrition much higher than before.

Our rate of replacement went from being able to manage the attrition to loosing two for everyone we managed to create.

The knights had to step in and begin to actively attack to lessen the rate of attrition to a manageable level once more. However, I saw that neither myself nor Morice could do this much longer. His face was growing a little paler and sweat beaded down his brow, nose and cheeks. The boy was at his limits, it was plain to see. I was in much the same state, cutting apart from one’s soul and depleting every scrap of mana around you to finish a raising doesn’t come cheap.

Power in Imerith does have it’s checks and balances. Not only did my soul need time to recover but the toll it had taken on my body just to finish the raising had taken it out of me. Even after our preparations, I had still needed time to recover. I could feel that my mana and stamina were hampered in some way, I wasn’t replenishing it at the same rate as before.

I moved my hand over to Morice’s shoulder and directed him to sit down and rest while he could. I on the other hand stood and began to help out. My world went back to those last three years as a human. Blood, screams and pain. I stood in the thick of it, swinging my sword, slashing out with punches, claws and kicks to stem the horde arrayed before me. The horrid memories of fighting off what had been named the green tide bashed against my mental defences and I allowed some of it through.

The enemy had done a similar tactic but had crossbred imps with goblins, the things had been horribly mangled and misshapen and much like then all I could do was listen to the words of one of my favourite videogames back home. Rip and tear, until it is done.

My world became a dull brown as putrid blood and steaming guts built up around my feet until I stood up til my knees in the gore. Time lost all meaning as I continued to fight to the best of my ability while trying to conserve strength. If there was one thing I'd keep from my long years of service it was the importance of conserving stamina in long battles. War was exhausting and allowing yourself to become tired in a battle more often than not got you killed.

All in all, we had been fighting maybe fifteen minutes or so but it had cost both Morice all his minions and I had been left with only the knights, Garm and two of his pack, Abhorash, Charon and the spectres. Luckily the spectres couldn’t be harmed by the ghouls as they didn’t have any magical attacks, this, however, was substituted with their sheer numbers.

I was breathing heavily, using my sword almost like a cane and my carapace was ripped open at some parts. While it could regenerate it was slow going and not fast enough to make much of a difference in such a short but brutal engagement. The knights all had nicks, scratches and cuts in them and some even had large dents from the third step ghouls.

Those had been lumbering bastards, stronger than the other two types combined. They had been the cause of most of the losses and had forced Morice to get into the fight as well. The kid needed to train more that was for sure as his style seemed more wild terror and fighting instinct than any direct thought put into his strikes.

I placed my hand on Garm and placed him in my soul storage. A large crack had formed over his bone carapace like shell and it had run along most of his side and down his left hind leg to the knee. I didn’t want to take chances with him dying, he was like a pet to me after all and I’m sentimental. I also took in his last two pack mates but as I looked towards the ziggurats stairway I knew I couldn’t let more go.

Standing there were the fourth tier ghouls, imposing in the style of those hunched over thugs one sometimes sees. There in front of them were two figures, the ghoul friend stood there staring at us, madness and pure hunger in its eyes as it’s maw snarled and salivated everywhere.

The Necroshade in contrast simply floated there with a contemptuous grin on his face. Every bit the overly arrogant commander that things the battered enemies before him were already beaten.

Too bad for him, only two individuals were near dead on their feet, so to speak. I and Morice were among the living so we got tired, drained in fact, but my undead? Now they were as fresh for a fight as they had been in the beginning. I envied them that endless stamina but they still hadn’t escaped unscathed from the fight, they were injured and beaten all to hell.

None of that mattered though as what I saw made every hair-brained idea or scheme that I could have come up with mute. I was staring at the ghouls. Every single one of them wore primitive bone or hide armour or a combination of the two. That was bad enough but many of the things held hide shields or strapped together bone on one arm. Those that didn’t simply held another weapon in their hands. Bone femurs as makeshift war hammers, sharpened up bone so it looked more like an amalgam of a prison shiv and a primitive sword. Others had two femurs as a framework over a sharpened piece of stone as a makeshift axe, others had two-handed variants on the axe or hammer, usually with thicker bones. From where they had gotten those latter types of bones I knew not, but what I saw was an enemy that had managed to prepare while whittling away at our strength with a tidal wave of chaff.