Maria continued to tread across the lands of the unknown planet while exterminating any living creature she saw as she expanded her army of shadows and undead along the way. After many hours had gone by, Maria had successfully evolved all of her Skeleton Soldiers into powerful undead familiars. The strongest one was naturally Skeleton King Morte, while after that came the Lich.
Two more Skeleton Soldiers had evolved into Death Knights, so Maria had 3 Death Knights now. The 5 remaining Skeleton Soldiers had evolved into 2 Necromancers, 2 Bone Fletchers, and a single Skeleton Warden.
Naturally, Maria had to go through so many skeleton soldiers to be able to get this incredible lineup, but those evolved skeleton soldiers that were tossed aside by her were added to Morte’s Undead Legion so they weren’t put to waste.
Now that her lineup of powerful undead was finished, all Maria had to do now was level them up. Thankfully, this was pretty easy and fast, since the evolved undead were now more useful than before, so they could stay on the battles’ frontlines. With them constantly being at the front, Maria’s undead leveled up very quickly, with Morte having reached level 100 by the time Maria had come across an indigenous city.
“It’s a city so there’s definitely going to be some people there! It’s time to do the clean-up!”
Maria’s army of shadows and undead marched straight towards the city on her command. Along the way, they encountered the planet’s indigenous people that were, unsurprisingly, just like humans. Their shape and form were practically the same, so Maria decided to just call them humans. Naturally, these people ran away the moment they saw her and her army but Maria made sure not to let them get away. She had her mounted soldiers, particularly her Death Knights, chase after them with their [Undead Charge] skill.
To her surprise, these human NPCs were only level 30 to 50. It was too low for Maria’s liking. The low level meant they wouldn’t give too much EXP to her undead children and, because they were NPCs, they had higher HP pools than ordinary mobs, making them tedious and unrewarding to kill. However, because her quest objective required her to cleanse the planet of any living creatures, she couldn’t overlook these people.
“A quest is still a quest. I gotta get rid of these people so there’s no getting around it…”
When she reached the city’s walls after leaving a long trail of blood behind her, Maria frowned when she noticed that the city was already on lockdown and there were soldiers on the battlements, manning their stations in preparation to fight against her army.
Numerous defensive siege weapons of various kinds were pointing down at her army from the walls, causing Maria’s frown to deepen even further because she knew that this battle was going to be a little tough.
“Tch, my army doesn’t even have any siege weapons, so it’s going to take some time to even breach the city’s gates...Well, whatever, I could use the challenge anyway!”
Maria needed the challenge to test out her shadow and undead army, so this situation was quite ideal for her, especially since she was at a severe disadvantage. A human wearing regal armor stepped onto the city wall’s battlements and began yelling something at Maria. She assumed that this was either the City Lord or the city’s Guard Captain as he was saying something to Maria along the lines of turning her forces back or else this and that would happen, which would be horrible for her and whatnot.
Their city was part of this alliance and under this agreement, the something-something union would retaliate against her if she were to attack and a lot of other nonsense that really didn’t register in Maria’s ears.
Literally, everything the gaudy person said to Maria flew in one ear and right out the other. She let the person finish because she found it quite hilarious to see the guy prance on and on like a clown. She had been marching for hours already, so she wanted a little bit of entertainment and, conveniently, a clown had appeared at just the right time to entertain her.
Anyway, it was all just a bunch of hubris and even if the threats weren’t just nonsense that the person had recited and actually had some substance to back it up, Maria wouldn’t care. Her mission was to kill everything alive, so there was no need for any dialogue.
In fact, she thought that it would be great if she attracted the attention of every civilized power on this planet. If they gathered together in one place for her, it would make it so much easier to wipe them all out in one fell swoop. This idea was so much better than trudging through the vast expanse of this planet's land, randomly looking for her targets.
This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.
Maria had already used [Inspect] on all of the humans on the city walls and saw that the highest of them was only level 85. This was definitely a beginner sub planet and she felt a little bit insulted that Death even put her up to exterminate this place.
“Tsk, I wanted a challenge but instead Death gave me a playground. Does he think I’m some kind of child?”
With the way she thoughtlessly acted, even others would say that Maria was sometimes kind of like a child, though when she properly showed her adult side, people would think that she was too astute and cunning for her age. Once the clown finished saying his piece and Maria got a good laugh out of it, she turned to her Skeleton King and calmly ordered, “Morte, start the siege. I want this city taken down.”
“KIIEEE!!!”
Morte let out a horrifying cackle that immediately incited the other skeletons and undead to do the same. The shadows couldn’t talk or make any noise but they raised their weapons as a sign that they acknowledged Morte’s order.
“Also, make sure you bring that clown to me. I want him alive since he seems to be quite well-informed.”
“Kkhakahakahkak!” Morte only replied by rattling his jaw, but Maria got the notion of what he was trying to convey.
The humans on the walls immediately grew pale with fright when they heard the terrifying cries of Maria’s undead army and when the army of shadows and undead began marching forward, a few of them were so stricken with fear that they wanted to just run away.
*DING*
Skeleton King Morte’s [Undead Legion] has inflicted a wide-range army effect: [Fear and Loathing] Description: While under this effect, all allied units will have their stats buffed by 5% while enemy units will have their A.SPD and M.SPD decreased by 5% and suffer from the [Fear] debuff Effects last until the [Undead Legion] or the enemy loses all their units!
“Haha, nice! Let’s get the show under the road!” Maria exclaimed after seeing the notification window.
Morte’s Ultimate Skill constantly brought her many surprises, so she was looking forward to what more it had in store for her. Skeleton King Morte was marched forward with her army and once they arrived at the city gates and walls, they started to siege it, but with the lack of siege weapons, it would take quite a bit of time before her minions could bring the gates down. The lack of siege weapons also posed another problem. Maria had to send her army into the enemy’s effective attack range, which wasn’t a smart move on her part, but she had no other choice.
The only ones that could perform any sort of ranged attack that was outside of the enemy siege weapon’s range were her Lich, Bone Fletchers, and Necromancers. Everyone else had to move forward and get into the danger zone.
After observing for a bit, Maria thought that it didn’t matter. The enemy was so weak that the only thing her army had to worry about was the siege weapons mounted on the walls. Even then, those siege weapons didn’t put a damper on her army’s assault because Maria would send her high-ranking shadow puppets to block the siege weapon projectiles that were fired at her army.
Her elite puppets were the perfect meatshields to tank these siege attacks as they had 150% of her max HP. Taking a few tens of these hits wouldn’t phase them at all and even if, by some freak accident, one of her elite puppets were destroyed, Maria could just resurrect them with her DE. With her elite shadow puppets acting as the meatshields, Maria’s undead and lesser shadow puppets began clawing and hacking at the city gates.
The durability of the gates was going down very slowly, but even if it was slow, her minions would be able to eventually break down the gates in due time. There was no time constraint placed on her so she could wait it out for as long as she wanted. Maria did think about launching a magic spell that could instantly destroy the gates and bring down the walls, but she decided not to do it.
She wanted to preserve the city’s integrity as much as possible because she was going to turn it into her base of operations. The siege weapons on the walls were also something Maria was eyeing because she needed them for any future sieges.
“Tsk, this is too easy,” Maria clicked her tongue and said.
Usually, people would be overjoyed if this kind of thing happened to them, but Maria was the opposite. She didn’t like it if things were too easy. She needed and she wanted a challenge or else, where was the enjoyment and thrill of playing this game if it was too easy?
She hoped that the future cities that she would attack wouldn’t be as easy as this one. After half an hour into the siege, Maria was starting to grow a bit bored, but she was a bit excited to hear the desperate cries of the humans rushing back and forth frantically on the city walls.
Seeing their frenzied actions, Maria thought that it was a bit amusing but this really was taking a bit too long for her liking. She wanted to end the siege a bit earlier, so Maria ordered the shadow puppets and undead that weren’t attacking the gates to start scaling the walls. The humans were already distraught by the unbreakable siege that was happening at the gates but Maria decided that she was going to give them something else to worry about on top of that.
“Oh, that’s weird…when have I become like this? To think I’d find it entertaining to watch other people struggle…” Maria said out loud to no one in particular.
Only her Lich, Necromancers, and Bone Fletchers were around, but they were focused on attacking the city walls so they didn't respond to her.
Maria looked at them for a moment before shrugging, “Bah, who cares?”
She looked up to see that a few of her shadow puppets and undead had managed to scale the walls and were battling the soldiers that were guarding them. She gave her minions a quick mental order to not damage any of the siege weapons unless they absolutely needed to. Once the order was given, Maria took to the skies and began observing the siege from a bird’s eye view.
“Ohh, there’s an interesting fella over there!” Maria exclaimed as she saw the clown from earlier attacking and pushing back her minions that had gotten onto the walls.
This clown was rather skillful but there was an amused smile on Maria's face when she ordered more of her minions to swarm and attack this person.
“Let’s see how many you can take on at one time before dying~”