I became a legion lich

183 Big losses

Continent Caprio, in the southwestern savannas.

On a plain of tall grass, a pack of saber-toothed tigers were resting after a successful hunt, lying in the shade of rocks. There were 20 tigers in the pack, with an alpha leading the pack.

Saber-toothed tigers were nearly eight feet long, with orange fur and black stripes all over their bodies. A pair of 30 cm long serrated fangs protrude from its upper jaw.

They were greedily eating a pair of desert wildebeest that they had managed to separate from the rest of the herd before slaughtering.

“?” One of the saber-toothed tigers pricked up its ears suddenly, hearing a rustling in the tall grass around it. He turned his head and started looking for any potential enemies, but found nothing.

Deciding it was just the wind ruffling the grass, the saber-toothed tiger stopped paying attention and lay back down, only for an arrow of darkness to hit him in the snout. The arrow of darkness was slow but made no sound and the saber-toothed tiger had no heightened magical senses, failing to detect the attack until it hit.

“Grr!” The saber-toothed tiger began to thrash around as it pawed at its snout, its eyes brimming with tears from the pain it felt. This alerted all the surrounding tigers, who stopped eating or resting and went on alert.

They dragged the wounded tiger to the rock and surrounded it protectively, looking closely for the enemy hiding in the tall grass.

A second arrow of darkness flew at them, but the saber-toothed tigers were alert and easily dodged the spell. The alpha roared right away, ordering the tigers to charge in the direction the arrow came from.

.....

Half of the saber-toothed tigers broke away from the group and charged into the tall grass, only for a mist of darkness to appear and surround the entire group, engulfing the tigers and sapping their strength.

They groaned painfully and retreated back to the rest of the group. The monsters began to feel threatened and looked for a way out, but the fog was high and perfectly surrounded them, cutting off their escape route.

Arrows of black lightning flew towards them, these ones much faster than the previous ones. Spears of lightning and fire also came from different directions, causing deep wounds to the monsters.

The saber-toothed tigers started to panic and roared against the fog, but there wasn’t much normal monsters could do.

“ROAR!” the alpha roared in defiance, refusing to die like that, and charged into the haze of darkness. He felt the darkness corrode his skin on contact and sap his strength, but he just clenched his fangs and ran even faster.

The fog wasn’t that thick, despite its density, so the alpha broke through the fog without too much trouble, only for a black spiked shield to hit him in the face, stopping his run.

A knockback skill pushed him back into the mist and two black fire spears impaled his brain and heart, killing him instantly. The rest of the saber-toothed tigers quickly died as well, before the fog dispersed.

“Good job, guys. I think we’re finally getting used to the savannahs.” Athos spoke as he wiped the blood off the shield, using death vision to make sure they were all dead.

Malti, Emília and Caio joined him, the only skeletons that were currently with him.

“We’ll talk after we’re safe.” Astrus spoke as he cast the mass raise undead spell and hurried them out. All skeletons seemed tense and aware of their surroundings.

“Yes, let’s go. The base is only half an hour away and it’s about to get dark.” Athos agreed to back down, showing how precarious the current situation for the undead was. Although they all saw perfectly in the dark, not a single skeleton dared to go out at night.

Night was the time when the strongest monsters came out to hunt and the undead were far from the top of the savannahs strength scale.

The skeletons moved stealthily with the new saber-toothed tiger skeletons, using the tall grass that was spread all over the place as cover and taking care not to be seen by other predators.

“We’re here.” Athos sighed in relief when he saw an area without grass and a rough stone wall in the distance. The land in front of the walls was dead, its nutrients completely drained.

Black skeletons could be seen working all around the wall, digging pits with wooden spears at the bottom and building wooden stakes into the ground.

There were a few dozen monsters killed in previously prepared traps, but the amount of black bones on the ground was even greater, showing that their losses were even greater than their gains.

The earthen wall was small, only 5 meters high, and did not look very reliable, something clearly created by hasty magic without proper work.

It was something that the earth mages among the skeletons and the dwarves created as an emergency to have a safe base, even if it was something temporary.

Athos and the high ranking skeletons entered through a passage in the wall guarded by skeletons, before heading towards the center of the camp.

There were few buildings in the camp, as the skeletons did not need any basic needs and Athos forced them to work non-stop.

The few buildings built were warehouses for the important items they brought along, as well as forges to melt the metals they had in weapons, and a single building for important meetings.

Athos moved straight to the meeting building, ordering the tiger skeletons to assemble with the rest of the beast unit. As soon as he entered, the first thing he saw was a long stone table, with a makeshift map on top.

The map was something they got from the fortress of the golden bow and Malti brought it as he found it useful for them. Unlike the platinum fist fortress that had access to the mountains and functioned as a mine, they had the duty to act as scouts and explore the Demihuman empire.

They were only able to scout less than 100 kilometers accurately, but were able to investigate the terrain even further away using observation magic items.

Treevor was on the other side of the table, making notes in a small notebook about some empty areas of the map. Vanilla was next to him, adding things based on her own memories.

Unlike Treevor who had lived most of her life in the far south, Vanilla led a small clan very close to where they were now camping, so her knowledge would be much more useful.

What they were noting down was geographical information, rather than the territory of monsters and other tribes. It had been decades since the last time they both came to the savannahs and while some monster territories may be the same, most clans would be long gone.

There were some skeletons around them, using the notes and adding them to the map after doing some calculations. They were some of the cartographer skeletons that came along with Malti.

It was an imprecise method based on ancient memories, but it was the best they currently had.

“Welcome back boss. How was the raid?” Treevor asked without taking his eyes off the map.

“Twenty saber-toothed tigers, one alpha included. All in the second layer, except the alpha which was in the third.” Athos said with a shrug before asking back. “And how was it over here?”

“We suffered 7 attacks since morning, all from monsters that had habitats close to here and felt threatened by our intrusion. The traps managed to kill some of them, but we still lost hundreds of human skeletons and beasts.”

“In the end, I needed to get involved every time to lessen the damage.” Treevor said with a weary sigh, even though he didn’t feel tired or have lungs.

“Our numbers are decreasing more and more and even though we go out hunting every day, we can’t cover our losses. The good news is that our overall power is increasing, even with the loss of so many skeletons. The monsters around here are really another thing compared to skeleton soldiers.” Athos spoke of the only good thing that had happened to them since they came to the empire.

“That’s a fact, but we still need to reduce our losses. Human skeletons are useful not only as soldiers, but also for complex jobs as you can see.” Treevor pointed to the skeletons busy drawing slowly on the map.

“Also, once trained, they all have the potential to become dark affinity mages, so we can’t waste them like that.”

“We’re already doing everything we can to reduce the skeletons destroyed. It’s no use dwelling on things beyond our control.” Athos shrugged once more and this time Treevor had to agree.

“I know boss, I’m just feeling weird coming back after so long. This place is even more violent than I remembered and moving with so many numbers isn’t helping. The monsters see us as a threat and attack us several times a day and to make matters worse, we still haven’t found any demi-human clans.” Treevor suddenly started to vent, but Athos couldn’t blame him.

Since leaving the fortress, they had suffered heavy losses thanks to misfortune and powerful monsters.