I became a legion lich

184 Stormy beginning

It’s been a month since they left the fortress. In the beginning, the terrain hadn’t changed much and the monsters they encountered weren’t very strong, so the skeletons were hopeful that they wouldn’t face too many problems at the beginning of their journey.

They couldn’t be more wrong.

After marching for almost a week without stopping, the terrain began to change from dry grass hills to tall grass savannahs. But the biggest change has been in the world’s energy density.

Most skeletons didn’t notice the change right away, but more sensitive ones like Athos and Treevor noticed the difference. Treevor didn’t mind as he was used to it, but Athos was shocked.

With the world’s energy so dense, it would be much easier to develop the core by training in the desert. This also means that the monsters would be much more powerful than those outside, but Athos only realized their real danger after the first wave of monsters attacked them.

Individual monsters would flee when they saw the army, but large groups would try to fight back to defend their territory.

One such group was sand pythons. It was a lesser basilisk species, which lacked the racial ability petrifying gaze characteristic of the species, but they were still dangerous creatures alone and deadly in groups.

They were nearly 20 meters long, with scales the same color as sand.

The skeleton army invaded these pythons’ nest while they were hibernating by accident and the monsters furiously attacked them. All 200.

.....

They crushed the army’s vanguard without the skeletons being able to fight back, killing nearly 500 skeletons before they could properly organize themselves. All the sand pythons had to do to crush the skeletons was crawl over them and their heavy bodies would crush them to death.

The corpse explosions that followed forced the serpents back and bought the undead a few precious seconds.

Athos and Treevor immediately mounted SImogo and flew to the vanguard. They managed to kill all the serpents thanks to roar influx and dragon breath, in addition to their spells.

The serpents were slain and turned into the undead, but the undead army encountered other nests of powerful monsters as they advanced, losing hundreds to thousands of skeletons with each encounter.

The monsters weren’t mindless either and would attack their formation where they were weakest, avoiding more powerful undead like bone abominations or generals. The only thing that stopped the monsters from attacking was ordering Simogo to fly above the army while releasing his aura.

Even the bravest monsters would cower when they sensed a dragon’s aura. Athos wanted to avoid revealing Simogo’s existence, but this became irrelevant with the amount of times Simogo had to reveal himself to face monsters.

The skeletons finally sighed in relief when the monsters started to run away instead of attacking them, but the disasters kept coming.

An elemental storm was brewing near them and they only escaped thanks to Athos and Treevor’s sensitivity.

Elemental storms happened when there was an excess of a single element in an environment, breaking the world’s energy balance.

The effects of the storm varied depending on the element in excess, in this case, it was an earth element storm and generated a strong earthquake, opening a huge crater and swallowing everything that was too slow to escape.

Athos was relieved that they were able to get away from the magical storm, but they became unable to advance any further. The storm’s area was too large, and they were forced to take a long detour to avoid being hit by the elemental storm.

That’s when the skeletons decided they couldn’t go on like this. They had greatly underestimated the dangers of the demihuman empire and had already lost over 10,000 skeletons in the battle, so they needed to revise their plans.

Athos never planned to be a nomad like most tribes, but he intended to get as far away from human borders as possible before starting to set up camp, away from the effects of the elemental storm. He wanted to at least cross the savannahs and reach the deserts in the far south, but it didn’t seem possible.

Left with no choice, Athos sent the bird skeletons ahead to find a suitable place to form a temporary base. More than half of the bird skeletons were destroyed by flying monsters, but the ones that returned found a spot that seemed suitable.

The site was less than 20 kilometers from their position. a giant anthill almost 20 meters high. It was the nest of a race of fire ants, a species of ant 50 centimeters long, with a red carapace and jaws larger than its head.

Fire ants bit their enemies and latched onto them whenever they detected enemies, before setting their carapaces on fire. They would be burned along with the enemy, but the ants didn’t care about their own lives, only the colony’s survival.

Athos found them perfect not only because they would be easy to kill thanks to their small size, but because he could test whether he could turn insects into undead. Insects only have one exoskeleton, so it would be the perfect time to test it out.

They didn’t need a lot of planning to destroy the anthill. It was enough to send the hawks to the hive and rain lightning on the anthill. The ants had no means of attacking the skeletons in the sky, so the queen was free to burn them as she pleased.

There were almost two thousand ants in the anthill. plus a queen that was three times the size of common ants. After everyone was killed, the skeletons marched to the anthill, before Athos tested it by turning ants into the undead.

Athos succeeded after a few tries. All he had to do was drain all the ants’ insides and preserve the carapace to succeed. The ants’ appearance remained almost unchanged, only the red carapace turned black while its interior was filled with darkness.

The earth element mages and dwarves quickly got to work, building a makeshift wall and constructing the camp’s buildings.

They hoped that between the walls and traps they planned to create, they would be able to buy enough time for the skeletons to safely deal with the weaker monsters and at least buy time against the more powerful ones.

It was a total failure. Monsters with nearby nests considered them invaders and attacked them several times a day, further increasing their casualties. They had already lost 15,000 skeleton soldiers and the losses were only increasing.

To try to solve the problem, Athos ordered the high ranking skeletons to lead the new skeleton monsters and bone abominations and attack the monster nests. The attacks subsided for a few days, but Athos noticed that new monsters had migrated and taken over the now vacated territory, resuming attacks less than two days later.

They continued like this for another week and it was only the day before that the situation turned in favor of the skeletons. A flock of echo bats attacked them during the night, only to be taken down by Simogo’s roar influx.

The dragon avoided using its racial abilities at camp, as these effects could still be harmful to other skeletons with reduced effects, but it was free to fight as it pleased in the sky.

Echo bats made the day’s hunts much easier, attacking monsters from the sky without them being able to fight back. They could fire sonic attacks from a safe distance, so there were few monsters that could defend against them.

Very few savanna monsters had abilities that allowed ranged attacks, most monsters evolving to become physically stronger. Things were finally looking up for the skeletons and Athos wanted to keep it that way.

‘Master, please come to the forge. We finally finished the job you gave us.’ A hoarse dwarf’s voice sounded in his head, snapping Athos and Treevor out of their reverie.

“You come?” Athos asked Treevor, who continued to stare at the map.

“Of course, I-” Before Treevor could finish speaking, skeletons guarding the north wall spotted a group of iron-tailed scorpions approaching them. It was a group of almost 500 and the traps were useless for them, so they would need the use of magic to eliminate them.

“Haah...go ahead, I’ll handle it.” Treevor sighed and left the room. He could have sent the skeleton mages, but most were already out of mana or went along with the skeletons to hunt monsters.

It was necessary to send skeleton mages along, as monsters couldn’t use magic on their own and needed to turn corpses into undead.

Athos wasted no time and went to the forges, noting how most of the skeletons were standing around doing nothing. The only tasks the skeletons had were guarding the warehouses and walls, as well as building traps and fighting monsters when they attacked, so most just stood around doing nothing.

But Athos didn’t bother to think of something to keep the skeletons busy. The longer they were idle, the more time they would have to think about their current condition and fall into despair, facilitating the corruption of their minds.

He had noticed that several skeletons had already given in to corruption and become truly loyal to him, despite having only the chain itself weighing on their minds.

Unlike skeletons that still resisted corruption, those truly loyal to him would have a bit more free will, not needing to follow his orders to the letter like most skeletons did.