Jules swallowed the crimson crystal in one gulp. Within seconds he could feel pleasant energy diffusing from his stomach. These were the magicules coming from the magicule crystal he had just ingested. Judging from the sensation, Jules felt that they were equal in quality to that of the leader and his right-hand man.

As expected, the energy started to make its way around his body. Quickly enough, his muscles, brain, and heart began to absorb it greedily. However, to Jules’ surprise, most of it was in fact absorbed by his heart! Jules could feel it swell at a rapid pace on his back. The smoke being emitted from it grew denser and denser and began to form a black fog.

The energy seemed to be limitless as it flowed out of the crystal. Magicules were being constantly emitted with no signs of stopping. Only after about five minutes then did the energy gradually decrease.

The sheer amount of magicules contained within the crystal was extremely large. It could be compared to the entire quantity Jules had absorbed up to this point. Although this was great for Jules this instead made him frown.

‘Xena bring up my stats.’ He calmly ordered within his mind.

‘[Beep! Name: Anne Martel (Jules Argent). Species: Zombie (Strand). Body statistics: Strength – Rank 0 Level 7, Vitality – Rank 0 Level 10, Agility – Rank 0 Level 7. Mind statistics: Intelligence – Rank 0 Level 2, Perception – Rank 0 Level 5 (Rank 1 Level 1).]’

The reason Jules was unhappy was due to the fact that his stats had only increased by a tiny bit. This was all because of the heart on his back. It was like a huge black hole that sucked all magicules that came nearby within it. Although Jules had been able to increase in strength, the weight on his back increased much more. Due to that, he was forced to use more strength than he had gained to support this new weight. Jules felt that if he wanted to keep his mobility, he should refrain from eating any more crystals. That is until he had enough zombies not to have to worry about it anymore.

Regardless of that, Jules was still quite glad. His perception had increased to become equivalent to that of a rank 1 level 1. This was all thanks to Xena who had the ability to process the information from all his senses and then send him the information in real time!

Focusing back to the matters on hand, Jules had to make some changes to this camp he just took control of. The bandits had never bothered reinforcing it before, believing that it would never be discovered. However, Jules would never be so careless as not to have any defenses set up in a world where he would be killed on sight.

Therefore, he decided to ask Xena to create a blueprint of the best possible defense plan for the camp. Within seconds of asking, Xena had gotten back to him with a great plan. Jules was astounded at Xena’s processing power. After all, she had come up with something that Jules would never be able to think of within seconds. It made him seriously glad for her to have accompanied him into this strange new world.

Looking at the plan Jules felt that the camp could be easily defended against at least 50 people with his current man(zombie) power. The camp would have three layers of defense. The first one would be a field of concealed traps that were cunningly placed at strategical locations. The second layer was a trench that followed the base of a long wooden barricade that would surround the whole camp. The barricade being the last layer of defense.

The idea was that the traps would be able to either take out or incapacitate about half of the approaching enemies. The trap area would extend to the forest allowing to be very well hidden. The best part was that all traps would be reusable and easy to re-arm.

The trench would be continuous and run all along the barricade. A small draw bridge would be used to get in and out. The trench would be about a meter and a half deep. However, it wasn’t just a simple pit. On the side opposing that of the wall would be a multitude of small wooden spikes hidden inside the dirt. The dirt on that side would be replaced with another very brittle kind found nearby. This meant that if the intruders made their way within the pit to scale the walls they would be trapped. If they attempted to leave the trench, then the dirt would crumble causing the spikes to be revealed. Those spikes would surely make it very tough for anyone to climb out.

The purpose behind that was concealed within the third layer of defense. Multiple holes the size of a tennis ball would be cut out within the barricade wall. This would allow Jules’ zombies to use spears to stab any unlucky beings trapped within the pit. As for ladders, there would be large rock available to break them in the event they couldn’t be removed.

Jules was aware that these defenses would not be able to stop a full unwavering assault of over 50 people. The intention behind those defenses was that they would be enough to dissuade most enemies from attacking. And hopefully, be able to protect Jules from those who chose to attack regardless. Unless the attack was planned carefully taking into account his base’s defenses Jules would be rather safe within it.

The main downside with this plan was that it required a huge amount of wood and work the complete. Even using all of his zombies Jules estimated that it would take him at least two weeks of non-stop work to complete it.

As for the wood, Jules wasn’t too worried, he was surrounded by a forest after all. Despite that, he was thoughtful enough not to get it from near his base. If he did so he would lose places to hide traps in. Therefore, he would order the zombies to get it from an area further away.

Support the creativity of authors by visiting Royal Road for this novel and more.

The other thing that worried him was times. With zombies, this was the one thing he did not have. Being reanimated corpses, they would soon start to decay. Two weeks was probably pushing the limits of how long he could use a corpse for. The only way to solve this issue was to either get new zombies or to feed them blood.

Jules had previously noticed that blood had healed him when he was still just a normal zombie. Therefore, he suspected it would also be able to reverse decay.

Thinking back about it, it was probably the magicules contained within the blood that made it possible. This meant that if Jules was willing to, he could crush one of his crystals into powder and feed some of it to his zombies. He was very reluctant to do so since these crystals were quite rare and valuable.

Jules shook his head vigorously. The defenses weren’t going to build themselves; he would think about that problem later. He quickly dispatched his zombies to start the construction. There also were plenty of axes within the storage for the zombies to use with which allowed the process to start swiftly.

Two days later.

The construction had been going along smoothly and nothing remarkable had happened within that period of time. The zombies had managed to build about half of the barricade. On the other hand, Jules had been staying indoors all of this time.

The reason behind his actions was that he wanted to try and improve the way he controlled his zombies. To do so he conducted a few experiments such as trying to transfer his consciousness to one of them. Although he found himself unable to fully switch bodies, he was still able to enter a state in which he felt like it was his own. To do this he had to focus intensely on the zombie of his choice, this, of course, took lots of time. This process was so slow it really pissed off Jules. Therefore, he spent his most his time trying to get better at it.

Within that time, he also noticed he did not need to sleep at all! Jules was a bit sad because it meant he wouldn’t get to dream anymore. However, that also meant that he had plenty of time on his hands now. He also found that he would get hungry very slowly. So slowly, in fact, he hadn’t needed to eat yet.

Therefore, when he would get frustrated at trying to switch zombies, he would try to lead different experiments. He mostly focussed on the smoke emitting from his heart. His tent was densely packed with a dark fog mostly made of airborne bacteria. That fog would then leak out and make its way outside. The whole camp now was surrounded by the black fog. It totally didn’t look suspicious or anything.

Trying to resolve that Jules tried a few methods to stop the fog from coming out. He first tried to plug the heart, but immediately stopped when he saw that it started to inflate like crazy. He eventually settled on covering the openings with a cloth. This method filtered out the bacteria and a black goop would slowly condense on the fabric.

Jules was very curious about this goop. It was pure black and somewhat shiny. What stood most about it is that it almost seemed alive. It would jiggle and move at random. If Jules focused on it, he could even control it at will.

‘They’re kinda like slimes…’ Jules thought.

“Wait! Slimes! Could I make zombie slimes!?” He excitedly yelled out.

Slimes were the basics of any fantasy video games. How could he not be excited at the prospects of making some? On top of that, they were completely free to make! The more Jules thought about it the more excited he got. He started thinking of many different ways to use them, the possibilities were truly limitless.

As Jules was about to lose himself in his thought, he suddenly noticed something through one of his zombies. It was a human voice. Therefore, he immediately shifted his mind to that zombie. He was now much quicker at doing so, it only took him a couple of seconds.

He quietly moved towards the noise as not to raise any attention.

Once he arrived, he could clearly see a group of three humans seemingly in a standoff with a huge lizard. The human group consisted of three individuals that looked to be in their late teens, two boys and one girl. One of the boys held a small pistol whereas the other one held a sword. The girl did not seem to wield anything, she stood at the back and giving out orders. She was probably the brains of the group.

It was easy to tell that these kids were inexperienced. Both of the boys’ hands were shaking whereas the girl seemed uncertain with her decisions.

On the other side was a huge black lizard the size of a large dog. Judging from the information he got from the stolen memories, Jules could tell it was a Lesser Red-Tailed Lizard. Its tail was indeed a deep red and seemed to be as long as the lizard’s body. The lizard itself looked like an overgrown salamander with glossy skin. It had two big cute googly eyes that showed an amount of fright. It clearly didn’t want to fight but the small group had managed to corner it.

Behind the lizard was a steep cliff that seemed rather tough to climb, especially for a lizard. Therefore, leaving it completely unable to run away.

Jules could guess the reason behind the human’s actions. Lesser Red-Tailed Lizards were arcane creatures, this meant that it had a magicules core which was worth a lot of money. However, they weren’t easy to kill, they easily had as much strength as a fully-grown bull. They were also able to innately use magicules to heat their tail to extremely high temperatures when threatened. When they did so their black tail would turn glowing red hot.

The reason that the teenagers actually dared fight such a dangerous creature was that these lizards were cowards. Lesser Red-Tailed Lizards would generally not put up much of a fight, being paralyzed in fear.

“Felix, you should distract it and-and then when you get its attention, Ross you should sh-shoot it in its eye. Then, Felix, you use that opportunity to go for the other eye, o-ok? Does that seem all right to you? If we do that then it will be blinded, and it’ll be easy to take care of it.” The girl hesitantly spoke out.

“Don’t worry Mia we got this.” The boy with the sword spoke out, obviously looking more worried than she was.

From that short conversation, Jules could tell that the boy with the pistol was called Ross, the one with the sword was Felix and the girl was Mia. He also realized that this language was different than the one he spoke in his world. It looked like having merged with Anne gave him the ability to understand the language so well he hadn’t realized until now.

Looking at them Jules could tell that both parties were equally scared of each other.

Suddenly Felix roared out as he charged towards the lizard. Seemingly trying to reassure both himself and Mia with his fake confidence.