I became a legion lich

127 The true enemy

“Let’s get in touch with the elder, I doubt we’ll find anything else here.” The captain spoke and the assassins walked away, not wanting to disturb the conversation. Despite their quick investigation of the city, there wasn’t much hard evidence they could find.

“What did you find?” The elder answered the call almost immediately, looking anxiously at the captain. The latter reported all of his findings and his assumptions, emphasizing the fact that the undead didn’t leave much behind to be discovered.

“...” The dark elder closed his eyes and thought in silence for some time, trying to assimilate the information that the captain had given him. Now, he was absolutely sure that the late-awakening corpse was responsible for it all.

Finn’s report said there was a master and apprentice belonging to the word keepers and the corpse came from the apprentice. It was entirely possible that after becoming undead, the apprentice would retain some rationality and refuse to change the master himself. Or maybe he didn’t know how to do that with corpses that weren’t freshly killed.

Recordings of the battle at the fortress showed that skeletons of beasts were loading carriages and carts, littered with corpses.

The elder also agreed with the idea that the plant monster was possibly a spirit. He himself had already done experiments where he tried to turn dead spirits into undead and failed, but it was quite possible that a natural undead could succeed.

But what really intrigued the dark elder was the dead earth. The city of Faltra was in disrepair because of mismanagement and a incompetent ruler, not infertile land. The information seemed irrelevant compared to the rest that had been discovered, but the dark elder’s intuition kept telling him that it was important.

“Captain, is all the land dead like this or just around the city and forest?” The elder spoke after a while.

“Let me check, elder.” The captain spoke and activated the communicator on the mask, ordering the others to check. Just as the elder suspected, only the land around the city and where the forest should have been was dead, the land in other areas was dry but not at the same level. The mage slayers also noticed that the trail the undead left was also dead, so the culprit was obvious.

.....

“Your theory seems correct, captain. Spirits are capable of extracting power from the environment, it seems that this one can extract more than just world energy apparently.” The dark elder spoke. His theory was wrong, but he was the closest to the truth these days.

“What should we do now, elder?” the captain asked, assuming his mission was over.

“Captain, do you believe that the investigators who will come later you will be able to come to the same conclusion as you?” asked the eldest.

“Unlikely, elder. Without the report from the other team of mage slayer, they have no way of knowing that there was a late awakened corpse. But it is possible that they realize that the plant monster’s identity is an undead spirit.” The captain replied after some thought.

“Fine. Be sure to erase anything that leads them to suspect the truth.” The dark elder ordered with a crooked smile, causing the captain to tilt his head in confusion. He hoped the greedy elder would want to take the plant monster’s corpse for himself.

“Instead of taking the monster’s corpse, I’d rather take its creator. If I can get my hands on the creator of these black skeletons, I can turn any spirit into an undead.” The elder spoke as if reading the captain’s mind.

“All of you must flee to Shiima City, Captain. The investigation team is almost formed and the mages intend to take turns with teleportation crystals to reach your position in a few hours. It will be difficult to explain what you are doing there, so be sure to run away.” The elder said and ended the call.

“Guys, we’re on our way out. Let’s get away from the city and find a place to camp. We’re too tired to run long distances anyway.” The captain spoke, taking a small pink orb from his cloak pocket and eating it.

It was a nutritional bomb in a capsule, containing all the nutrients the human body needs and satisfying hunger for an entire day. The mage slayers followed his lead and fled the scene, making sure they didn’t leave any tracks behind.

*********

6 hours later, purple spheres appeared a few kilometers away and exhausted mages and knights left, before making it all the way to the city.

The investigation proceeded exactly as the captain and elder had suspected. Investigators didn’t find anything unusual in the city, but they noticed the dead soil and vacant lot where the forest should have been and immediately went to investigate.

They made the link between the spirit and the plant monster and reported their findings to the kingdom, who sighed in frustration at the news. Spirits were considered harmless or even beneficial beings, as long as their territory was not violated.

The idea that could transform into a monster capable of creating the undead was a nightmare. The way the realm interacted with the spirits until now would have to be revised and the forests where the spirits inhabited would have to be guarded to prevent massacres like what happened in Faltra from happening again.

Of course, all this would have to wait until the current threat was eliminated.

Knowing the enemy’s identity didn’t help much in knowing how to face them, but now they had a vague idea of the enemies’ powers and limits, a plan of attack was starting to take shape.

The kingdom was gathering troops at the golden arch fortress, and in a matter of a week at most it planned to launch an offensive against them.

*********

Platinum fist fortress at the same time.

“Master, are you sure this will work?” Emilia asked as she looked at Athos climbing the wall and breaking the stone, as if looking for something.

“No, and that just makes it more fun.” Athos replied with a smile on his face.

A few days had passed since they had successfully conquered the fortress and things had more or less calmed down now. His army had grown immensely, reaching over 20,000 units, but the increase in power was much greater.

Unlike ordinary skeletons, skeleton soldiers were trained and fought skillfully. Athos lost approximately 3,000 common skeletons, 400 soldier skeletons, 50 crusaders, 8 paladins, 28 priests.

In comparison, he gained approximately 7,000 Skeleton Soldiers, 1,500 Common Skeletons, 950 Crusaders. 42 paladins, 22 priests and 44 mages. Furthermore, half of the siege weapons on the left side of the gate had survived the Athos battle frenzy and the rest were being repaired by the skeletons at the moment.

Good news for Athos was that among the non-combatant skeletons inside the fortress, there were blacksmiths and armorers. As there was a metal mine nearby, the kingdom decided to deploy a forge so that the fortress could make its own weapons and only sell the excess to traders.

The forges were close to the armory and Athos hadn’t noticed the first time he broke in because they were inactive at the moment and why there were several small buildings instead of one big building. Each building being responsible for a different type of weapon.

All the blacksmith skeletons were currently forging weapons, while the gunsmiths were fixing the siege weapons.

The collection of information also flowed smoothly. The general’s corpse was in a very bad state and Athos had to use dark magic to heal him before transforming him, but after that it was simple. It only took a few thousand soldiers under his command and he became loyal and spit out all the information Athos wanted.

Athos was now trying to find a magic metal plate within the walls, where large-scale spells were enchanted. According to Astrus, the walls were just made of stone mixed with concrete and were unable to withstand such powerful spells, so court mages used mithril plate inside the walls.

Of course, enchantments still strengthened the walls and prevented earth mages from manipulating them, but they were two different objects, connected by enchantments.

The plates were only 10 centimeters wide and 3 meters long and several of them connected around the walls. It was a model of ancient spells and most of the walls of great cities these days were made by mixing mithril dust, but the strongholds were old and the kingdom saw no reason to upgrade them.

Not only was the new model much cheaper and required less metal, but it also fixed one of the weaknesses of the metal plates, since removing one would simply break the connection between them.

It would be a huge construction project and a major disaster if the demihumans attacked mid-construction.

“I found!” Athos yelled excitedly, finally finding where the metal plate was. The stones were very resistant and he had been trying to find it for almost half an hour. Athos broke all the surrounding stone with a corrupted mana drill, but he didn’t dare remove it.

He heard from Astrus that without access to the control room, the large-scale spells would remain active until all energy was spent. If Athos tried to remove the mithril plate now, the energy would continue to leak out and most likely blow the entire wall apart. They would need to lower the barrier’s energy before removing it.