I became a legion lich

156 An irregularity

Tombstones were enchanted items that kept the undead buried below in a state of hibernation. The elder was an extremely powerful necromancer, possibly the best necromancer in mankind, but his power was still limited and controlling an undead army plus a few dozen powerful undead was too much for him.

That’s what tombstones were for. Her enchantments kept the undead hibernating and lessened the burden they placed on her mind. Keeping the undead active even if they weren’t doing anything put a burden on the necromancer after all.

To control an undead, a necromancer needs to subjugate its mind after creating it, but that doesn’t mean the undead would become a vegetable after that.

Unlike the currents of Athos that altered the minds of the undead to make them loyal, normal necromancy erased all memories and personality from when they were alive, their minds regressing to the same level as newborns.

After having their minds regressed, the undead no longer resisted their necromancer’s control, but they were still living beings and could slowly develop their minds, so the necromancer would constantly need to spend mana to destroy their minds to make them easily controllable.

Elder Louis walked over to the tombstone with a symbol of a dragon and fed it mana, feeling the earth begin to shake. The earth began to open up as the zombie dragon slowly awakened.

The undead rose and looked curiously around, but Elder Louis took control of the dragon’s mind and prevented it from thinking.

‘Kill all the black skeletons and spirits you find. Don’t think about anything else, don’t do anything else. Kill all the black skeletons and spirits you see. Don’t think about anything else, don’t do anything else,’ He kept sending mental orders to the zombie dragon, until all that went through his mind was his orders.

He needed to make sure the dragon didn’t attack his subordinates and focused exclusively on the black skeletons. Elder Louis also made sure to include the spirit in case the zombie dragon didn’t recognize it as undead.

.....

‘Excellent. I just hope those worthless ones can destroy their leader before the zombie dragon destroys them all.’ That was all Elder thought as he called the mages responsible for activating the portals and requested that they track his subordinates’ crystals.

In his mind, defeating the zombie dragon wasn’t even a possibility. No matter how young or stupid the zombie dragon is, a dragon is still a dragon.

**********

“And that was the last one!” Athos screamed, stabbing the last of the mages in the stomach before knocking him to the ground and firing a small bullet of darkness into his head to finish him off.

Athos looked around at the thousands of corpses crushed around him. The abominations were gathering around him, looking strangely sad. Athos did not understand the reason for all those sad skulls, until he saw Hecatonchires celebrating, despite all his injuries.

“Looks like we have an undisputed winner. I’ll separate some corpses and let them expire for you.” Athos and patted his leg, the only part he could reach without jumping.

The abomination made a happy moan and patted Athos on the head as well.

‘Emília, I finished things out here. How is your side?’ Athos asked as he lifted the corpses like undead. He started with the mages obviously, gathering the most useful ones first.

Since some time ago, he had been feeling an absurd amount of life force accumulating up in his body, so it was likely that the skeleton mages were lifting corpses all over the fortress.

‘We’re already finishing here too. We barely need to spend mana to transform corpses into the field of the dead, so we’re having an easy job here,’ Emilia replied happily. ‘Master, we made it. We won!’

‘With a certain ease, I would say. We won at the moment when the troops broke into the fortress. It would be a different story if the church’s forces managed to hold the holy field and create a safe space for the troops, but Treevor would still have teleported in and wiped it all out.’ Athos spoke arrogantly, as if everything had gone according to plan.

‘Things could still have gone very wrong. We should act more carefully next time – wait.’ Emília was about to lecture him, but stopped in her tracks. ‘Master, we have a problem.’

‘What’s it?’ Athos heard the concern in her voice and asked.

‘They found corpses of a team of mage slayers inside the fortress. An entire team dead.’ Emilia spoke.

The teams that had broken into the fortress did not immediately die, but managed to hide while trying to take cover.

There was a dead team in the sewers, another that managed to break into the fortress, and the last one that hid in a building near the walls that the skeletons discovered.

‘So we have extra corpses? More mages are always welcome.’ Athos thought with relief, I don’t understand her worries. He would understand if Emilia was worried about a breach in security that allowed the mage slayers to break in, but they would be leaving the fortress soon anyway, so it wasn’t a big deal.

‘Master, I think you didn’t realize the danger. If there is a team of mage slayers, it means that the elder sent them to capture or most likely kill him! Also, I doubt he sent a single team. There are likely to be other teams hiding somewhere. Please retreat back to the fortress for now.’ Emília pleaded worriedly.

She was running as fast as she could to reunite with Athos, at the same time ordering Caio, the closest loyal skeleton to go to the corpses and turn them into undead. Caio quickly arrived at the scene and only shared a spark of his life force, the field of the dead covering all the energy spent.

Once transformed, it took a few seconds for mage slayers to tell them everything they wanted to know. These skeletons didn’t know what had happened to the other teams, but they explained how many teams came. Caio shared the information with everyone while Emília ordered the skeletons to abandon everything they were doing and search every corner of the fortress.

‘We should re-enable the passive spells we’ve disabled. The energy of the field of the dead will run out soon and if the enemies are alive, they may be in possession of teleportation crystals or they may flee using invisibility.’ Caio spoke worriedly.

They had temporarily disabled the enchantment that forced teleportation and detection spells to allow Treevor to attack the church and the alarms would be useless, as they went off non-stop in the middle of a battle.

‘Do it. I’m going back now, most mages have already been turned anyway.’ Athos agreed with his idea, using death vision to scan his surroundings just in case.

‘Let’s retreat, we can collect the corpses later.’ Athos ordered and climbed on the shoulders of the Hecatonchires. All the abominations and wizard skeletons followed them and were about to move, when a purple light appeared near the walls, indicating that someone was trying to teleport here.

The purple portal slowly formed, but there was something wrong with it. According to what Emília and Caio had explained, the portal should be as thin as a sheet, looking like a two-dimensional purple circle.

What was appearing in front of the gate was far from it.

The portal’s edges were purple just as Emilia had described, but its center was dark and seemed to suck in air, much like what happens when an undead uses a teleportation crystal.

As the purple light expanded in height and width, the black center expanded in length, turning what should have been a two-dimensional circle and back into a three-dimensional sphere.

The sphere began to distort as the hole in its center expanded and swallowed up the rest. The light around it was drained along with the air, distorting the image of the sphere’s.

‘Enemy reinforcements are coming! Everyone prepare for battle!’ Athos ordered all the skeletons, who immediately prepared for a second fight.

The field of the dead was already starting to run out of energy, so they would have to prepare for an uphill fight if the portal actually worked.

‘Does anyone know what’s going on with the portal? I’ve never seen anything like it.’ Treevor asked atop the walls, again shrinking to human size. The corrupted willow was completely recovered now, as it had absorbed corpses while rushing to the walls.

‘I assume that the spell that redirects force teleportation spells is responsible for this. The portal appeared at the forced location after all.’ Athos answered the obvious.

‘That I already know. I want to know what that is!’ Treevor pointed to the portal, which had become a shapeless purplish-black sphere. Its shape randomly changed from a sphere to an oval, sometimes even reverting back to being a circle.

The truth was that just as everyone expected, the spell that forced teleportation was responsible for it. The portal had been opened using one of the crystals inside the fortress as a coordinate and the spell forced the portal to appear in front of the gates.

What no one expected was that instead of just changing the coordinates of the portal to the front of the gates, spell created a fissure in space in the center of the portal.