The gates slowly opened and the army started to funnel into the city. Waves of undead crashed against the retreating army. Lucifer ordered the undead to be more aggressive and try to push the men back or into a panic. If too many soldiers tried to force their way through the opening outward facing gates then the push of bodies would lock the gate shut.

However, it seemed that those close enough to the gate felt secure in the knowledge that it would take quite some time before the undead could get to them. There was a push coming from the mid-ground between the men in combat with the undead and those waiting to enter the gate. But enough soldiers kept a cool head that it didn’t matter.

Lucifer sent the last of his bird bombs onto the gate people opening the gates. He figured the reinforced gate wouldn’t be damaged by such small explosives so he could only target the men operating it, but this too had little effect. Any gap was quickly filled.

Ten long minutes later the survivors were inside the city. Again the outward facing gates proved a problem. It would require men on the other side to push it close leaving them to play with the undead hoard. Lucifer used this chance to send undead into the gates, but the undead could only steam into an encirclement of spears and blades.

After losing a few hundred undead this way Lucifer called back his undead and had them drag any bodies they could on the way. He had lost thousands of undead, however, the enemy duchy had lost almost a third of its army and would quickly refill the ranks.

Several days passed and the undead encirclement continued. The defenders moral was near zero, not only did their attack fail miserably, but they saw no decidable drop in the undead numbers afterward. Food shortages were becoming a big enough problem that riots were a nightly coinsurance. Their already thin spread force was further spread from having to quell the riots.

Martial law was enforced soon after. No-one was to be seen outside after sunset. Nobles and soldiers excluded of course. However, this did little to stop the riots, it only reduced the frequency, but this had more to do with their prisons being full of the agitators and worst rioters than the law itself.

Then just as the defenders were getting a handle on the situation a plague spread throughout the city. Priests were immediately dispatched to find the cause and cure the infected. However, few priests had the ability to cast cure magic without the cathedral. So they started quarantining the infected. Which in turn caused more riots.

It didn’t take them long to find the cause of the plague. Their wells were poisoned during the underground attack. Which made the wells the first priority to check when the sickness appeared, but instead of finding a simple poison in the well that they could cure alchemically like last time, they found undead birds without feathers and covered in pus leaking lumps.

Corpses piled up and the cities leaders ordered for all bodies to be cremated, lest they become undead too.

While the leaders were preoccupied with that thousands of residents were escaping the city. They used the tunnels the previous attackers used to escape the city, often led by ‘guides’ that popped up from who knows where.

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Two weeks since the attacks started the city was practically empty. Almost half of the residential district had burnt down and only a few residents remained. This helped with the food shortage now that there were fewer mouths to feed. Far fewer mouths, so much so that it became apparent to higher-ups that soldiers were fleeing the city with the civilians. Deaths from the plague were massively over-reported amongst the soldiers and men marked as dead simply left with civilian groups.

The pope paced back and forth under the worried gazes of his ‘saintesses’, his hands clenching and forcefully relaxed sporadically. A knock on the door brought him out of his thoughts long enough for him to receive more bad news. “the civilians are back--” said the messenger.

“wonderful” beamed the pope, but before he could thank god the messenger spoke again.

“your holiness the civilians are back as undead” he finished.

…

Lucifer was once again flying above the city in the body of a hawk, or an eagle he couldn’t tell. The city was about to fall after two weeks of careful planning. He initially wanted to starve out the city for a month or so, however, the defender's reckless charge allowed him to move his plans along.

He could have sent the undead through the underground tunnels on the first day, but with the ensuing chaos and still dangerous army, he doubted he would be able to kill everything like that. Instead, he attacked the cities infrastructure, their food, and water, then he further spread chaos with disease.

The cities inhabitants were more than willing to leave the city at this point through ‘his secret tunnels’. And he was more than willing to offer his people as ‘guides’ for that purpose. As an added bonus almost a third of the duchies remaining forces used said guides too, further weakening the city.

Now he just watched from above as the city flood with undead, most of the defenders were simply crushed under the tide of undead. There were some pockets of resistance around the city, however, Lucifer had been busy these last two weeks. A network of hidden tunnels akin to a labyrinth now set firmly under his control just below the defender's feet.

most pockets of resistance had giant ants dig through the thin flooring beneath them and were quickly overwhelmed. The only remaining ones would either fall to the hoard of undead eventually or Lucifer would intervene personally.

Lucifer took note of the last survivor's locations and made a mental check to, 1 come back later to make sure there were no survivors, and 2 scout better next time so he wouldn’t miss these groups and not have a ready-made tunnel underneath them.

With that taken care of Lucifer turned his attention to the castle, or what was considered a castle in this city. It looked more like a walled church than a castle and it was faring better than the rest of the city.

Heavily armored knights protected the church from the undead hoard with shining golden swords, paladins Lucifer assumed. There were a hundred of them at most, but they were killing more undead than the army did. The undead seemed to become sluggish the moment they got close to the paladins and were promptly cut down. Worst of all the paladins didn’t seem to be tiring at all.

‘no matter’ thought Lucifer, ‘I’ve planned for far fiercer resistance than this’. He pulled his undead back several hundred meters away from the church. Then left his avian body and went underground. After a few moments, he arrived in a large chamber.

There was nothing inside but empty space around the size of the church. Lucifer made a portal and ants carrying mana crystals poured through, this is why he waited at least two weeks. So he could use two weeks worth of explosives.

He lined the roof with the explosives, then jumped back into his bird and flew above to watch the show.

Then just like last time he blew up the enemy stronghold. The earth shook and the shock-wave threw Lucifer out of the sky. By the time Lucifer was able to get eyes back on the church, there was no church to see.

A few paladins managed to pull themselves out of the rubble, but they were heavily injured and were quickly overwhelmed by undead and ants.

The moment Lucifer got back to the dungeon he ‘obtained’ a new body and modified it to his liking.

He had thought about sending the undead to clear up the rest of the duchy, but he doubted the undead could understand the idea of borders much less follow complex orders, like kill everyone in this duchy but don’t go into the neighboring duchy and kill everything.

So he ordered the newly sub-servant duchy to kill every living thing in the duchy for him. This would both save him the trouble and show them what happened to those who opposed him.

Now he had other things to do, awarding loyal followers was top of the list.