I became a legion lich

140 Storm cloud

At the same time, in the mountains east of the fortress.

The queen of the hive hawks was flying over the mountains along with most of the flock, finally reaching her goal. They took longer than expected, mainly because The Queen had a hard time understanding what she had to do here.

Despite being incredibly intelligent, teaching her how to attract clouds and charge them electrically was a challenge for Emilia. After an hour of lecture, the queen finally understood what had to be done and led the flock into the mountains.

The queen followed Emilia’s instructions and crossed the first mountain, looking for clouds that had not yet reached the mountain and were not too heavy. It would be much simpler to attract the clouds before they had reached the mountains and the heavy clouds were in danger of already being charged and the hawks would become lightning rods if they used lightning magic in that situation.

The queen had found a medium-sized cloud suitable for what they were looking for and was about to order the flock to head towards the cloud, when one of the males spotted a small humanoid being climbing the mountain.

Emilia had instructed the flock to avoid contact with humans, even though the chances of encountering humans in these mountains were low. The queen looked closely at the figure and realized that it was too small to be a human. Despite the queen being more than 1 kilometer away from the creature, she could see it clearly thanks to her excellent eyesight.

Maybe it was a human cub? No, it was too wide for that. The queen could not identify what it was, but the small humanoid soon touched the ground and the earth glowed, creating an underground tunnel that the small humanoid entered, before closing behind him.

The queen watched for a while longer to see if it reappeared, but it never did, so she went back to her main task, making a point of remembering the spot where the tiny humanoid had buried itself.

When the queen turned around, the cloud had already deformed and spread out, making it useless to she. Annoyed, she started looking for another suitable cloud for nearly half an hour until she finally found one.

.....

It was smaller than his first choice, but better than nothing. The cloud was only 500 meters, but it was enough. A cloud that is too big could disperse or risk the winds blowing it in a different direction.

The queen led the party and the hawks fanned out within the cloud, before the queen shared wind and lightning spells with them. The males fed the spell with their own mana and released it as soon as they completed them, releasing gales that accelerated the clouds and ensured the cloud stayed in the right direction and releasing electricity to charge the cloud.

Sparks of electricity formed around the males and they transferred all the electricity to the queen. The queen charged the concentrated electricity with her own mana until it dried, before giving it back to the male hawks, who fed the lightning with their own mana and charged the clouds positively.

Much of the energy would disperse, but the cloud would slowly be charged with multiple charges and the cloud would become a storm cloud. The most important part was that the clouds would be charged with their energy signature, so it wouldn’t harm the hive hawks themselves. After the cloud reached the fortress, the wind and water mages could increase the size of the cloud to cover the entire fortress.

Now, all the flock could do was fly slowly along with the cloud, sometimes releasing strong winds to redirect the cloud in the right direction whenever it started to swerve. They would also charge the cloud whenever they had energy to spare, random lightning bolts appearing more and more frequently.

The queen kept looking for the small humanoid until the mountain was no longer visible, but he was never seen again.

**********

A few days later, at eight o’clock, in Colonel Orus’s tent.

“What do you mean none of the scouts are back yet? They should have regrouped with us yesterday, why haven’t we heard from them yet?!” Colonel Orus yelled at the hapless soldier on duty who came to report.

As usual, the bishop and the blue fang had met with him, but the news was not very good. They were only two days’ journey from the keep and there was still no sign of the scouts.

The army had sent some mages as scouts to ensure the undead were still in the fortress and those had already returned and regrouped with the marching army, but all the others sent afterwards were missing. It was almost certain that they had been killed, but it didn’t make sense that only the scouts sent later would have been eliminated.

According to the scouts who managed to return, none of them had been attacked and although they were unable to infiltrate the fortress, they noticed that the skeletons seemed busy setting up defenses around the outer area, probably planning an urban war.

It was very important and vital information for planning a strategy, the fact that the scouts had brought this information without difficulty almost seemed armed to the colonel.

“It’s a tragedy that these lives were lost to the undead scum, but there’s no use standing here mourning. All we can do is make sure their deaths weren’t in vain and put an end to the evil being that holds on to this world.” The bishop spoke with unveiled fanaticism, causing the blue fang to lift its lip in disgust.

Unlike the other two, Blue Fang knew what had happened, as the group of adventurers who had witnessed the scouts’ deaths had gathered with them last night, taking care that their presence was not noticed as they gathered at the camp of adventurers.

They reported everything they saw to the blue prey, who congratulated them on coming back alive and ordered them to rest while they processed the information received.

‘Only three possible reasons for one group of scouts to have escaped unscathed and another completely eliminated. The first scouts fled before the undead began to eliminate them, the mages among the scouts were too strong to be eliminated incognito, or the information the first scouts brought back is false and the later ones found out too much.’ The blue fang thought, as he watched the colonel throw a tantrum.

‘Whatever the reason, the information provided is not very reliable. It is better to form another strategy if the information is wrong. Not that I’m going to mention it here.’ The blue fang finished the thought and went back to eating without caring about the world.

“Fuck this!” The colonel swore one last time and sat back in his chair, his face contorted with rage. It was an overreaction for someone who had lost scouts, but the look on the colonel’s face was one of pure anger rather than sadness for the lives lost.

‘This is totally personal to him. He doesn’t care about any of the lives on this mission as long as he gets revenge. It also means that he won’t give the order to withdraw, even if the situation gets ugly.’ The bishop thought with distaste.

Fighting to the death to purge evil was one thing, sacrificing honorable soldiers for personal revenge was another. The three spent the next hour reviewing their plans with the information received, but in the end, there weren’t many significant changes and they all returned to their respective camps.

In the end, the colonel sent new scouts ahead of the army, saying they needed to confirm the wizards’ report. They were ordered to make sure at least one of them would come back with the information, even if they had to sacrifice the others.

The bishop and the blue fang didn’t like his attitude or the way he was sacrificing his own soldiers, but they didn’t say anything as it wasn’t their subordinates being sacrificed.

**********

At the same time in the fortress of the platinum fist.

“Good job guys, that was intense.” Athos congratulated the mage skeletons lying on the ground around him, looking at the row of bone abominations in front of him. They had been working for the past two days stopping only to regenerate their mana.

Of the 2000 corpses that Athos brought back from Faltra, 1800 were turned into 36 bone abominations, all identical to the Hecantochires. Just as Athos had predicted, using the Hecantochires’ body as a model greatly sped up the creation process and the Skeleton Mages gathered like an assembly line around the abominations.

36 bone abominations were standing in front of Athos. Their tyrannical bodies were impressive to say the least. Athos walked among them and shared a single spark of his life force with each, causing his bones to darken and a wave of joy to flow through the mind link.

“It’s really an impressive sight, but I believe my idea won first place.” Emilia spoke proudly as she approached, looking up at the sky. High above them, black storm clouds swirled slowly in a whirlpool.

The clouds were nearly a mile long and filled the sky above the fortress, but they didn’t move beyond the wall’s confines for more than a few feet before the hawks appeared and sent them back toward the center. The cloud was at a height of approximately 5 kilometers high, too high for even a large-scale spell to hit it.