“My name is Ezekiel Verniac,” my voice boomed across the arena and across the town around it. The stands were full, the news of the failure of the invasion had spread quickly when players were drug into the arena one by one by the Dread Thirteen. “This is my dungeon and my domain. These fools challenged me at the request of a mad god.”

The fifty captured players were still bound and gagged, now stripped of gear and evenly spaced around me. A very simple ritual was drawn out around myself and each of them. “Let me show you something I swore never to do to a sentient being—but these are bound souls, their lives are not worth anything.”

I slammed Mercy down, shattering a death core at my feet. Eldritch power flooded out of the staff, shattering dozens more. Death energy swirled through the arena, not touching the captured players. They were protected by domes of eldritch power.

Activating the ritual, chains made of death magic bound every player and lifted them into the air. All at once, the protections faded and the death energy flowed into them, but not quickly. They all screamed. The ritual I was wielding reached out and seized each of their hearts with eldritch power as wisps of soul energy fed into it.

Slowly their bodies were overwhelmed by death energy guided by necromantic power. The wisps of soul energy coursing through my eldritch power suppressed any resistances. The ritual was crude, cruel, and efficient. When the last dregs of the death magic and death energy funneled into their bodies and their hearts were consumed, the spell ended.

“I told you all once I could create the living dead, so long as it was earned and you brought the necessary resources.” Every player was a whimpering mess on the ground, though I noticed the elemental wizard was recovering quicker. “Those resources were to ensure the process was smooth, and also so the process was complete.”

“What have you done,” the leader of Larry’s guild demanded, but the confidence of his voice was gone, it shook with pain and horror.

I kept my voice loud enough to address the crowd. “I changed your race. You’re now living dead of whatever race you were before. But not a living dead like I’d created before out of kindness, you’re missing something. Your bodies will fall apart and die unless you consume life. You are not quite a zombie but you’re also not quite living dead.”

His eyes were distant as he read over something, and I pulled up the description of what he was just to check one more time that I’d done it right.

Remnant Living Dead

Level: 152

The remnant living dead are caught between worlds. They are neither fully living nor fully dead. Driven by both the needs of the dead and the needs of the living they slowly go mad as their body regenerates and decays at the same time. Neither death nor life can help them. Unless this condition is fixed, the inevitable is true death and oblivion.

Royal Road is the home of this novel. Visit there to read the original and support the author.

“Don’t panic overly much, you’re bound souls, so you won’t ever actually die here, though you might have to make a new character,” I said. “But in my lenience, I do offer you a way.”

Kellnock strode out onto the arena. “Bind yourself to my dungeon and I will keep you alive until the death priest arrives to cure you.”

The other players were recovering by this point, and the crowd in the stands was deadly quite. I returned my address to them.

“This town will become part of my dominion.” There was a crack and flare of magic from the top of the ziggurat. From where I stood on the sands, I could see the top and the steady column of bone guard marching down the stairs. “I would suggest running if you have a problem with this. And run far, because I am not stopping here.”

***

“Well, this is not how I expected the day to end,” Livia said to me in the town square. “First their army marches in, and then your army marches out and you enslave a whole bunch of players.”

“Enslave is such a dirty word,” I protested. “I think of it as more pressed into service to pay for their crimes.”

Livia snorted. “Okay, Mr. Overlord.”

“I’m not sticking around, I have some places to be and people to kill,” I told her. “My vampire, Vito, will arrive shortly to make sure things are running correctly. Overall, this should be a good thing. There is also going to be a high death priest that can create living dead eventually.”

“I was wondering about that,” Livia said. “Marcus was actually joking about changing himself, said that Olattee was getting a bit not fun.”

“I will convert him right here on the spot if he wants to,” I said, looking around for Marcus.

“No, I don’t think he does,” Livia laughed. “After your little display I think it’s going to be of few days before anyone makes that choice.”

“Anyone who wants to come with my army to go kick some ass will get it done for free, unless they still wish to provide the resources, otherwise they will have to wait for me to gather them as I go,” I said.

“Following an army of undead to war…” Livia smiled. “You know players, always looking for a new kick, you probably get a few more interested than you think, though none of my good teams are waiting around for gear from Kellnock.”

“Yeah, he’s been a little busy,” I agreed. “Vito needs help with a project developing a type of undead that can command detachments to send reinforcements to me, I was hoping you could help figure that out.”

Livia’s eyes went distant and I smiled. “You know, for claiming that you’re not a normal NPC, you did just hand out a quest.”

I shrugged. “Gotta work with the tools I have.”

“You’re building a road,” Livia pointed out. “How are you going to defend that from the creatures in the marsh?”

“It’s rather simple, I’ll make something to defend it, and the problem you guys had was the living were using the road and looked tasty, for my needs, I don’t need anybody living to use the road.” I hopped up on Shadow. “The dead worked just fine for me.”

The construction of the road went fairly quickly. It still took us several days to make it out of the marsh, and it wound around several of the larger land spurs, so it wasn’t a quick road, but that was okay. Any creatures we came across were hunted down and added to a growing pile. Once big enough, I worked with Izban, Tola, Jair, and Othniel to create a massive undead construct.

I didn’t want it to be a living dead, it existed to patrol the road. It was as big as an elephant but simple. Its size was its strength. There was nothing I knew of in the death marsh that could threaten it and it would keep away anything that would destroy the road or threaten the undead moving up and down it.