Returning to the carriage alone after a few hours, I stared at the corpse of the hybrid superior, and tried to control it again, not with a lesser soul this time but with my main soul, and, while it was fine for a few moments, by the time my soul fully enveloped its body, I felt a slight aching in my head.

“So, controlling the full body of a single D rank monster, without getting my soul corrupted, is putting a strain on me, huh?” I thought, as I wondered how many D ranks I could directly control like this before the mental strain was too much to bear.

And it was probably less than I hoped for.

I could not even keep any of the D rank corpses I was given to for later, but I also couldn’t control them directly... what a pain.

But, dissecting them, and using parts of them in my body while making smaller, and weaker, undead from each of them was still a possibility.

Afterall, I had all these bones lying under these corpses, and those needed some muscle and brains to star working.

And having a small squad of shadow melding undead at my command was pretty enticing too... not that I would start using them right away though.

A D rank corpse was too useful, and I’d be getting around 10 of them at most, so they needed to be preserved for a final battle of some kind.

I’d probably start dissecting, and making a few lesser undead from the F ranked corpses as soon as possible, and as each rank was basically 3 times stronger than the last, even the weakest F ranked corpse should give me 3 G ranked undead at the peak of their strength, while the strongest F ranked corpses could potentially produce anywhere between 8-9 peak G rank undead.

Tough, with G ranked undead I wouldn’t really be caring for their strength, but instead their numbers.

I could, of course, always turn those G ranks into H ranks and get dozens of small and weak undead fit for swarming my enemies or acting as my eyes and ears in the villages, but H rank undead, even in a swarm, would still be an H rank undead—beatable by even a mediocre G ranked animal or monster, or even a person with ease.

So, in a forest filled with wildlife? Not a chance I was going to make a H ranked undead unless I was just desperate for numbers instead of quality.

So, I needed to keep the weakest of my undead at bottom of G rank, otherwise they’d be too weak to be even slightly useful.

“So, I should be able to make 3-6 G ranked undead from a normal F ranked corpse, and 3-6 F ranked undead from a normal E ranked corpse, and the same from a D ranked corpse as well—though I may want to keep the E ranked corpses mostly intact as they will be my strongest soldiers in any battle...” I thought to myself, while I controlled a few of the E ranked corpses near me at the same time with my lesser souls, and didn’t detect any weird shenanigans going on with them.

“Then, I should start taking out a few of the F ranked corpses, and some of the bones, and go into the forest to make more undead, as I want to put vines and branches and such on any undead, I make so, even if their muscles rot away to nothingness, they can at least come back to me, or to another undead, and transfer their souls.” I muttered to myself as I started taking 3 of the 5 F ranked corpses out to thaw.

I could just put lesser souls into them, and they’d be able to move as they weren’t frozen to the bone, but I’d much rather them be in at least somewhat of an intact shape so I can make most of their usable muscles.

Then, with the help of some of my golems, I took out some of the bones as well, and moved out of the village and into the forest after informing the bishop, and my men.

“Now, I should be able to make around 10-18 undead with all these corpses, but the problem is... I don’t have enough bones, no matter how you look at it...” I muttered as I laid the 3 F ranked corpses and a sizable pile of bones in a clearing in the forest.

That’d mean, I’d have to go out hunting to get some bones, and other needed components like eyes and ears.

I’d like to give all of my undead 2 eyes and 2 ears at the least—but only a single eye and ear was going to have to cut it for most of the undead I was about to make, as I didn’t want to overhunt.

Leaving my golems to defend the corpses, I went on a quick hunt and returned after midnight, and started working in darkness.

Removing unneeded organs, separating the brains into small chunks so each of the 18 undead I was making had an at least half decent mana capacity, and putting some muscles on those bones!

And soon, I realised that I was making these undead quite fast!

I mean... I normally made undead really fast, in a matter of minutes, but those undead were all just basically unchanged from their time of dead, but these undead all were hand crafted by me!

I can’t really give an exact time on how long each undead took to make, but the first few undead I made took around 70 minutes to make each, so an hour and 10 minutes.

And as I got in the groove, I started being able to make them in a single hour!

And after 20 hours or something along those lines, I stood in a random clearance in the forest at night, surrounded by 18 G ranked undead, and 4 Golems.

You might be reading a pirated copy. Look for the official release to support the author.

And, while I could basically make the 18 undead in any form I desired, I choose to mimic the appearance of normal forest animals, like deer and foxes, instead of something more humanoid for these first patch of undead.

I’d probably make more humanoid undead in the future... or at least ones with a few arms that resembled a human’s as being able to hold and use weapons would increase the effectiveness of any undead in battle.

But as these first patch of undead were only designed for reconnaissance, there isn’t a problem with them only having animalistic appearances... and I need to give myself a few more arms if I want to make humanoid undead as even these simple undead took a lot of time to make.

“Hmm... I wonder how bad their stats are...” I muttered to myself as I had intentionally made all of these undead as weak as possible, without lowering their rank to peak H rank.

“Well, here goes nothing I guess...” I muttered as I opened up the status window of one of the undead at random.

Name: None Race: Lesser Soul (Chimeric Abomination)

Level: 1 Exp: 0/27 Rank: G

Health Points: 0/300 Mana Points: 340/340

Strength: 24 (6)

Vitality: 20 (6)

Agility: 20 (6)

Intelligence: 28 (6)

Wisdom: 16 (6)

Charisma: 10 (6)

Free Stat Points: 0

Skills: Ethereal Body (S)

Titles: Lesser Self (A), Lesser Undead (G)

“...I don’t believe those parenthesises are supposed to be there...” I thought in confusion, as I first laid my eyes upon the status screen of one of the undead, but my eyes immediately moved down and onto the titles.

“Lesser Undead? The hell is this...” I muttered as I opened the title’s description with a mental click.

Description Lesser Undead (G): Even though hand crafted by The Lord Of Souls, this undead suffers from the lack of attention and time given to it by its creator, but even then, the materials and techniques used in its creation allow it to outperform any Undead of same rank and level.

“...That’s it? No explanation for why this undead has extra stats? Can titles even give out buffs though? Aren’t they supposed to be basically useless?” I muttered even more confused than I was before I read the title’s description, and decided to check all the other undead too.

And, yup, they all had a flat +6 extra stat points in all of their stats.

“I don’t get it but... sure, whatever. I am not going to say no to my frontliners being slightly better than normal, but will I get extra stat points after I hand-craft a body up from zero? Or is it only for lesser souls?

“And why haven’t I seen this title before? Surely, the title “lesser undead” applies to all the undead I’ve made before this... or are they just so bad that they didn’t even qualify for the bare minimum to be classified as “lesser”.

“...I mean, I’ve only been making undead from full bodies of animals after all, and the most complex body I’ve made, which is the one I am using right now, was made from carving the flesh off of a large monster’s insides, so I kinda see them not qualifying for this buff, but also, I don’t, but... sure, like I said, I am willing to take any handouts.

“And not like the people I’ll be fighting in the future won’t have any magical items, or stat boosting tools in their possession so, if anything this levels out the playing field.” I muttered, as I ordered all 18 of the undead surrounding me to go up north, and start observing the villages like all of their other brethren, and get a few more sensory organs while on the way!

At this point, I am starting to feel even a tongue would be useful for them...

Then I simply trained with my weapons until morning, and walked back to the village, and was greeted by the sight of my men and the bishop, all of whom were excited to see undead I had crafted by myself, but were disappointed to learn that I had sent them on their missions hours ago.

And, after a short session of prodding, I learned from Gob that Krone had been complaining about not having the time to make his own undead while he was in charge of the goblin village.

So, it seemed that I wasn’t the only one getting this buff from the title, which was made sense, but I also became more scared of that Dark Lord fella that seemed to be ruling the underworld... literally.

Not that I’d ever butt heads with the man, or his underlings, directly, but he was still scarry nonetheless as I couldn’t help but imagine how busted a G ranked undead he made would be.

“But no need to worry about those things for now... just have to get the last 2 F ranked undead out, wait for them to thaw, and then make 12 more undead and maybe show them to my men first.

“Nothing can go wrong with tha—wait, the hell’s that?” I muttered in confusion as my vision focused on one of my bodies up north.

I was resting that body, which was made out of a random deer I hunted while Jarek was guiding us through the forests of Prady, on top of a large stone near a small pond of water.

It had been running around a lot as it was one of the stronger undead I had made while up north, being near peak G rank, and I was kinda using it to keep taps on the 2 bandit camps there, as I didn’t want to spare a lot of undead on those guys, and thought 3 were more than enough, with me using the 2 smaller and weaker undead to keep taps on the bandit camps, and using the deer to listen in on their conversations.

And with it being somewhat vital to learning more about the bandits, I was taking my sweet time to give it enough time to recover all of its mana pool before sending it out again.

But it seems the place I chose for it wasn’t far away from any villages as a tiny rabbit girl was peeking out from behind a tree to look at that body of mine.

“...God, how shit am I at spying that a random child that isn’t even from the camps I was observing managed to find me?!” I screamed internally, but the deer body of mine didn’t even flinch, as I didn’t want to scare her, and make her run deeper into the forest as there were a few packs of predatory animals, the 2 notable ones being a terror bird pack and a wolf pack that were constantly in fights against each other over hunting grounds, so, if I scared her away, I’d literally be feeding her to the wolves.

“Haah... how to deal with this now...” I muttered, as I didn’t have any idea where the child had come fro—wait a second, I recognize her!

She is the only child of a lumberjack I’ve been seeing around the edges of one of the villages, whose name I didn’t bother memorizing.

The only reason I know of her is because her father sometimes takes her with him into the forest, and as my bodies are in the forest as well, he gets close to them every time he is out and about.

Yeah, I HATE that guy! He nearly exposed me twice!

Though that may also be my mistake as I am quite literally parking my undead in the part of the forest he goes to chop down trees... yeah, I need to move those guys somewhere else soon, but the other areas are too contested by wildlife! I don’t have a choice... or at least didn’t up until now, with the arrival of those 18 G ranks, I should be able to clear a small patch of land in the forest to park my undead at.

“But I should worry about that later, now, how do I bring this kid back to her parents...” I thought as I watched the rabbit-girl with pure-white fur looking at me from the periphery of my eyes.

“...She looks uncanny as hell... but I guess that’s what you get when you just give a rabbit a humanoid form... though, I wonder how these things managed to evolve, but that’s not a rabbit hole I am delving in today!”