“...No, it’s too early for that.” I muttered to myself, and pulled back from the bandit camp hidden in the forest.
For all I knew, they weren’t even bandits, maybe they were just refugees hiding in the forest or just a group of friends that were just camping out in the woods. I wasn’t going to just plug walk into their camp and try to say hello when I didn’t know anything about who they were, and what their views were.
But it was probably safe to assume that they’d at least be on high alert when they saw me, as, while it was impossible to tell that I was an undead from a first glance, it would not be that difficult to tell that I wasn’t from any races they knew.
But I didn’t need to stay here to observe them for days if not weeks on end to decide if I could try and convert them into my followers—at least not with my main body.
Marking the, possible, bandit camp in my mind, I had Jarek continue to guide us through the forests of Prady, and we came across many villages and different kinds of people, from people and traders that were travelling between the villages, and possibly coming into the area from other cities to troops of armed and armour men accompanied by men in orange-red-white clothes, who were probably just clergymen.
Whenever I saw a village, I made a note of them on a mental map, and then on a real map one of my golem bodies back in the goblin village was drawing.
And I was... indecisive about how to feel about the things I had seen in many villages.
Sure, there was clearly abuse from authorities and villagers against their fellow man, and even from some clergymen, directed towards the minorities in the smaller villages, with around 100 or less people living in them, but in the bigger villages, the guards and the clergymen seemed to be mostly a force for good, breaking up fights, and trying to keep everything orderly, even though villages were segregated in many ways.
From the sides of the villages people lived, and to where they worked and spent their free time.
And this was only the things I could glean from observing them for a few minutes of observing them! If I had enough undead to spread into the surrounding forests, and perhaps some flying undead to get an aerial view, I could probably see a lot more than just simple arguments and small fights.
As we spent the next 4 days going around the various villages in Prady, I took on the liberty of hunting down small animals, birds, and various other critters of the forest I came across.
And turned them into lesser souls, replaced all the meat on their bones, other than their brain, eyes, and ears with plant matter, so they would last longer, and started spreading them around various parts of the forest, prioritizing places near villages, junctions on the roads, and a few bandit/refugee/whatever camps we found in the forest.
Looking at the map I drew through my golem’s eyes, I saw that we had found a total of 23 villages around Prady, and 7 possible bandit camps.
The smallest of the villages seemed to have at least 30 people, while the biggest of the goblin camps had around 15 people in them, with most of them having around 10 or less people in them.
And through my undead making escapades, I had basically doubled the number of lesser souls I had, but even though I now had more than 50 undead animals, all of them using plant matter to move around as I really could not be bothered to worry about keeping all of them alive all the time, I still didn’t have enough undead to observe all the villages at the same time.
After a bit of contemplation, I decided to focus my undead on the 10 southmost villages of Prady, which were the ones closest to Lublin, the village that was going to be my base of operations for the foreseeable future.
And, from those small animal hunting and undead turning escapades of mine, I had gained 2 levels and reached level 65!
And stared at my 40 free stat points, and thought how best to use them for a moment.
“I could always just divide them like normal, with most of it going into intelligence and a small amount of points going into wisdom, but... I don’t think that will be a good choice anymore...” I muttered to myself.
Intelligence was still my most important stat, by far, but Charisma was becoming quite important as well, and even though I had 120 charisma from just how my body looked, if I went into a body of creatures that was simply ugly, that 120 charisma would quickly plummet to 0 or even lower, as I had seen that stat becoming negative a few times in the past.
“Hmm... then, let’s go with a 2:1:1 split for now, with 2/4 of my points going into intelligence, and the other 2/4 beings split equally into wisdom and charisma.” I decided, and put 20 points into intelligence, bringing up to effectively 440 with all the brains I had on me.
Then I brough wisdom to effectively 374, and charisma to 130.
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Then, we spent another day going back to Lublin. And after 6 days, we had arrived back in town.
And we were immediately met with a few new faces, in the form of 6 holy knights and a bishop who had brought the first batch of corpses I wanted.
Thankfully, they weren’t rotten to an unusable extend as they were being preserved in what was basically a refrigerated carriage, powered by mana.
The corpses inside were from quite high levelled monsters as well... well, high levelled to me.
The weakest corpse belonged to an F rank monster that looked like a triceratops the size of a horse with stone spikes on its back.
Which was... a bizarre sight, but most importantly, the strongest corpse belonged to a monster that was a D rank! 2 entire ranks above me!
Stronger than anything else I had seen before!
And it looked... well, weirdly familiar...
“Weird... is this... is this a queen hybrid?” I muttered to myself as I looked at the creature in curiosity, but decided that it was just a familiar species after a few moments.
Its whole body was covered in oily black fur, with no patch of skin exposed, unlike the Hybrids, but some of its features were still similar, like it having weird things that connected its legs together, and its paws looking more like a toad’s feet rather than a normal cat’s.
So, if I had to guess, this thing had a slightly worse ability to merge into shadows, but it compensated it with some other magics and just being a stronger creature overall.
After completing my check of the refrigerated carriage, I found that there was a total of 10 mostly intact corpses, with 5 of them being F rank, another 4 being E rank, and the last corpse being a D ranked one.
And beneath these 10 corpses, which I could just start using right away after thawing them and pushing a lesser soul into, there was also the bones of many different beast under them.
Though, I can’t say for sure how many bones were here, I’d say that I could make at least 10 decent sized, the size of a horse or slightly bigger, undead using them.
And the great thing was, this wasn’t the only carriage I was going to get!
The bishop, whose name I hadn’t gotten yet, informed me that, by the end of the month, another 50-70 clergymen, and another 5-10 carriages like this would arrive in the village!
Ohohohoho! The undead I could make with those corpses... if there is enough of those D ranked Hybrid like monster corpses, I am definitely combining them all into one and making a super shadow beast... or I could just break them down into lesser monsters, and have a swarm of them instead!
At worst, I would degrade the undead I’d make from the corpses to F or G rank.
And, while not having such high ranked undead would be a problem, the sheer number of sneaky undead I’d have should cover for that.
“But I at least have to take this thing on a test run!” I told myself to justify taking the D rank corpse on a joyride.
Standing in the middle of the refrigerated carriage, with the bishop and one of the holy knights to my side, I pulled out a small part of my soul, gave it wings, and started slowly flying towards the corpse of the D ranked monster.
This was more of a show for the eyes of the bishop and the holy knight next to me, but, hey, I wanted to look cool every so often, okay?
After a second or two, the lesser soul of mine landed on top of the corpse of the D-ranked monster gracefully, and seeped into it.
Quickly spreading my lesser soul’s mana cloud network across the beast’s body, I made it stand up and look at me as soon as I could.
And a moment after, the undead monster had taken a few steps towards me, before lowering its head down to the ground, and closing its eyes in a show of submission—again, just trying to look cool here. Ignore the fact that I am controlling everything it’s doing, the men behind me don’t know that.
“Oh! What an obedient undead! You truly are deserving of your title, Lord of Souls, Lord William!” The bishop said and started clapping, and the holy knight followed behind it’s liege.
“It’s nothing impressive, bishop, no need to congratulate me on an achievement as little as this...” I told the bishop, but inside my mind a storm was raging on.
Because I lied a few moments ago. I wasn’t controlling the undead. It had a piece of my soul in it, and I could feel it, but it was moving on its own, without my permission or order.
“W-WHAT IS GOING ON?!” I screamed internally as I opened the monster’s system window immediately.
Name: None Race: Undead Hybrid Superior
Level: 200 Exp: 0/7.215 Rank: D
Health Points: 0/10.000 Mana Points: 12.500/12.500
Strength: 2000
Vitality: 1000
Agility: 2000
Intelligence: 1250
Wisdom: 750
Charisma: 1000
Free Stat Points: 0
Skills: Dark Attunement (A), Mana Manipulation (D), Mana Sense (D), Dark Magic (D) +, Mana Strengthening (D) +, Far Sight (E), Sensitive Ears (E), Sharp Nose (E)
Titles: Least Self (B), Night Terror (A), Enemy Of Holy (C)
And what I saw was... not what the undead’s system window was supposed to look like at all!
My racial skill, Ethereal Self, was just... gone! And Lesser Self had devolved into... Least Self?
Description Least Self (B): Wisps of memories not your own plague your mind. You are not in the body you are supposed to be, but you do not know what body you are supposed to be in, or who you are supposed to be.
You are a shell of your former self, whoever, or whatever, that’s supposed to be.
“...WHAT DOES THAT MEAN?!” I yelled in my mind in anger, and immediately pulled my lesser soul out of the monster, but it resisted, but its resistance wasn’t strong enough after I grabbed the undead monster and used all of my mana on it though, and I was able to quickly pull my soul out, which still felt like a part of me even after everything, and quickly realised that it was covered in... something.
It felt like the tar like substance that demon had thrown at me, but more... worldly, and esoteric at the same time.
And wrong. Oh, so very wrong.
I then quickly pulled on those tar like patches that had infected my lesser soul, not spending the time to ask Rifu-san for help again, and a moment later, my soul was clear as ever, and joined my main soul without a problem.
And in front of my feet, laid the still corpse of the Hybrid Superior.
“...Message gotten, not going to try and put a lesser soul into a corpse belonging to a monster higher ranked than me...” I muttered to myself as I touched the monster’s corpse with my feet a few times, and left the carriage, wondering what would’ve happened if I had been slower at freeing my soul out of the monster’s corpse.