Tybalt found that his status was not as impressive as he might have wished, especially not with context.

  In every category but fortitude, the necromancer could not help noticing, he was weaker than Baldwin. Also, his health was almost underwater. The portion of health elixir he had consumed must have saved him from going negative—and probably dying.

  Gods… I was saved by the Sergeant’s mercy. And also, I guess I didn’t get experience for the people Baldwin and the skeletons killed?

  That must have been because they were far away when they did it. Either that or because he wasn’t directly in command of the attack. He needed to read more of his necromancer text to be sure of exactly what the mechanism was.

  He forced himself to chuckle.

  “Not bad,” Tybalt said. “Not bad at all. Let’s see if I can get another level. Bring me one of the intact adult males.”

  Baldwin knelt and dragged one of the non-decapitated bodies over to Tybalt.

  The necromancer didn’t want to move, let alone try to control mana just then. The pain was at the point where it was beyond distracting. Every nerve ending in his body was yelling at him to gently lower himself back to the ground and pass out again.

  Tybalt stared down at the dead man’s frozen face expressionlessly for a moment before he decided that he needed to address his own condition first.

  “Baldwin, I definitely want to work on these bodies, but could you please give me some of that health elixir you brought before I start? These injuries are kicking my ass.”

  The revenant nodded, drew a full glass vial from his side, and removed the stopper. He reached toward Tybalt, then stopped short, a conflicted expression on his face.

  “You’re not going to drink all of it, right?” Baldwin asked after a moment.

  “No,” Tybalt said. “I know why you’re asking.”

  The Sergeant had already made clear that Tybalt was not permitted to simply heal himself fully. He was expected to still be injured the next day, perhaps the day after that, perhaps indefinitely. Apparently this sort of thing had happened before, often enough that Baldwin knew the drill.

  Baldwin nodded. “All right then.”

  He reached closer and held out the bottle.

  Tybalt didn’t extend his hand to take the container. Instead, he simply opened his mouth and waited. Without further dialogue—though Baldwin did let out a little sigh of displeasure—the revenant poured the elixir into his creator’s mouth. He didn’t stop until Tybalt had consumed half of the drink and raised his hand to signal, Enough.

  “Thank you,” Tybalt said quietly.

  “You’re welcome, master,” Baldwin replied dryly.

  Tybalt felt the pain in his everything diminish down to a dull enough level that he could at least focus on something other than how much he wanted to slip into unconsciousness.

  He reached over to the dead man’s body and called on the same power that he had used to animate Baldwin, the skeletons, and his very first zombies. Tybalt knew he could do this easily now, practically in his sleep, but somehow, it still made his heart beat a little bit faster. He caught himself holding his breath as he placed his hand on the dead man’s chest and pushed the deep green energy in.

  The body shook and convulsed under the effects of Tybalt’s power. Fists clenched and unclenched, the jaws opened and closed. Then the dead man opened his eyes and looked up at the night sky once more.

  Yes. Death is on my side once again…

  The eyes looked up at Tybalt with the same sparkle of green in their color that Tybalt had noticed in Baldwin’s eyes back when Tybalt raised the revenant from death.

  It was confirmed, now, that was an effect of Tybalt’s mana—of his power.

  The corpse rose to a seated position and looked at Tybalt uncertainly.

  I am your master, Tybalt sent telepathically. You will obey me, protect me, and never harm me under any circumstances. Do you understand?

  “Gruhhh.” A strange, low noise rumbled from the creature.

  “Silence,” Tybalt whispered. The dead man cut off the sound instantly.

  Good, thought Tybalt. It understands how to obey direct orders, at least. I don’t think I have another Baldwin here, but I don’t need too many free willed undead anyway. You can conquer the world with stupid ones.

  The corpse slowly rose to its feet.

  “Be still,” Tybalt said once the dead man was standing.

  Again, the creature obeyed.

  Tybalt opened its status with a thought.

  As he reviewed the information contained in the zombie’s status, Tybalt recalled from Unholy Forces how the zombie transformation worked. Unlike revenants, even freshly created zombies generally did not keep their stats at the level they had achieved in life. Some changes depended on the condition of the body, but it was typical for fortitude and will in particular to drop by roughly half.

  Zombies were not very willful or strong in spirit.

  On the other hand, the physical elements were all still there.

  I wouldn’t want to bet on this guy winning a one on one with anyone in my squad, though.

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  Tybalt tried not to frown too much as he considered the logistics. He knew Baldwin was watching, and he did not want the revenant to think that Tybalt was unsatisfied with his work. The problem was that Tybalt was creating lame undead. There was nothing wrong with how Baldwin had fulfilled his mission. Nothing but the matter of the dead child, which Tybalt was putting behind him.

  We’ll definitely need to outnumber the squad if it comes to a straight fight. If they’re sick, maybe we’re closer to parity, but it’s impossible for me to know how much my pestilence weakens them until I get higher level skills.

  Tybalt checked his mana and smiled.

  He had 49/62 points left.

  Good. I can do it again four more times, assuming the other ones don’t take much more mana than this one did. I just need to wait a little bit between the second to last and the final one to recover a little bit so I don’t pass out. That would just barely cover every one of the dead, except for the headless fellow who Tybalt couldn’t deal with right now anyway.

  “You’ll follow him and obey him,” Tybalt said, looking at the zombie and pointing at Baldwin.

  “Oh, you got me a pet, master?” Baldwin said. “You shouldn’t have.”

  Tybalt and Baldwin shared a quiet chuckle.

  Then the necromancer crawled over to the other bodies—the pain was significant, but he didn’t like just crouching in place—and began charging mana for his second procedure of the evening.

  He had considered evaluating the corpses to see if he could identify the best ones and work on them first, but now he saw there was no need. He had enough mana for all, unless he got lucky and created something more advanced, like a revenant. That was quite unlikely.

  Tybalt raised the other two intact adult males first. There were no complications, and his confidence only grew with each monster rising and submitting to his will.

  Maybe I’m actually pretty good at this.

  With the latter male, Tybalt even gained a level, which gave him a renewed burst of energy and healed him up slightly more.

  Finally, he knelt beside the woman. There was only her and her son left, and an adult would obviously be superior to a child.

  A part of him didn’t even want to turn the boy into a monster, but he knew that instinct was soft. He had every intention of ignoring it.

  You don’t have to worry about that until after you’ve done the woman, anyway, he reminded himself irritably. Focus on the work at hand.

  He looked down at the woman, then placed a palm on her chest—which, he noticed only now, was pleasantly shapely and symmetrical. He lifted his hand for a moment and saw how the breasts jiggled slightly with the motion.

  Nice tits, he thought half-heartedly. He wanted to make light of the situation, but he couldn’t muster any genuine appreciation. Even though the woman had clearly been attractive in life, her corpse was so stiff and cold now that he could not pretend she was anything other than a body.

  It was unsettling to look too closely. He could see the evidence of Baldwin’s handiwork: a discoloration around her neck, like a bruise, that gave testimony to how she had died.

  A quiet reminder that Tybalt had ordered her murder.

  Baldwin killed her that way to better preserve the body, Tybalt reminded himself. But a little part of him couldn’t help picturing her breathing her last with the big revenant’s hands tight around her neck.

  She had been a beautiful woman with a husband and a son. She had lived and been loved. Maybe it had been a hard life, but it had been a life. Probably one that some people would envy. Now…

  Tybalt cut the train of thought off. There was no benefit to this sentimentality. None whatsoever.

  He focused instead on drawing on his mana and restoring the body to some semblance of usability. With every use of his defiant necromancer and pestilence mage mana, he understood his own power a little bit more, became a little more comfortable with it.

  Tybalt quickly visualized what he wanted to achieve, pushed the mana toward his left hand, and touched the woman’s body again, resting his palm gently on her collarbone. The energy flowed out of Tybalt and into her.

  Another pair of eyes opened. The characteristic green sparkle from Tybalt’s energy danced in the foreground of the iris for a moment before retreating into flecks in the background, unnoticeable unless someone was really looking.

  “Rahh,” the corpse growled.

  “Shh,” Tybalt replied.

  The dead woman shushed, and Tybalt quickly gave her the same instructions he had given the others.

  Then he examined her status as well.

  Tybalt whistled to himself.

  Pathetic. What a gods-damned waste of a life…

  “What is it, master?” Baldwin asked, interested.

  “I was just looking at her status,” Tybalt said. “This woman was level four.”

  “Remarkable,” Baldwin said. “Did she never do any work in her life?”

  “That’s kind of what I was wondering,” Tybalt said. “The only number she probably used to have at a decent level was will, but when you make a zombie, that tends to drop by half.”

  “Huh. Interesting.”

  “Yeah, she’ll be one of our weakest creations for sure,” Tybalt said. They were unlikely to come across anyone else as pampered as this woman must have been out here.

  He looked down at the boy thoughtfully now. The child was only ten years old. His physical attributes probably would not be much different from his mother’s.

  “Are you going to animate the child?” Baldwin asked.

  “I need to wait for my mana to recover,” Tybalt replied automatically, his mind far away. It wasn’t actually true, thanks to his recent level. He had enough power left for this job. But he was thinking about what he actually wanted to do next.

  Tonight, for all its quiet horror, had also been a fascinating experiment from his perspective. He was learning what to expect from his powers. Of course, he had known that creating something as unique as Baldwin would be abnormal.

  But these creatures were quite weak. The woman highlighted that. As much as Tybalt was enjoying the slow, steady process of simply creating undead and waiting to see what would emerge, he also had time pressure weighing on him. The squad needed to be killed, reanimated, and then trained to be capable of defending Tybalt against whatever retaliation force the Kingdom sent once it became obvious they weren't coming back. Bodies could retain some muscle memory even if they came back as zombies, but weaker undead tended to have extremely degraded capabilities.

  The eventuality of the Kingdom recognizing that the squad had gone missing was only weeks or months away, at best, even forgetting about the warning he’d been given by Vidalia.

  I probably need to send the creatures to go kill random animals to level up, Tybalt thought uneasily. I can’t send them to fight humans in their condition. Right now, they’re so weak that they could be killed by anything larger than a goat. Unlike Baldwin, the female zombie was even weaker than Tybalt. And the males were barely stronger, despite Tybalt’s level having reset to zero when he gained his new classes. There was a very real risk that they would get slaughtered while they were supposed to be growing stronger.

  At least the skeletons got a few levels, right?

  But the skeletons had also all started out weaker than Ariane, the weakest of Tybalt’s zombies.

  “Considering how weak they are, I think we have to send them to go fight the local wildlife to get stronger,” Tybalt said. “Hopefully they don’t die.”

  Baldwin nodded. “Your reasoning makes sense to me, master. Either that, or—” He stopped himself, shaking his head. “No, it’s too risky.”

  “What’s your idea, Baldwin?” Tybalt asked.

  “They could follow after the squad, wait until it’s engaged in battle, and use that moment to attack a few of our weaker squad members from behind.”

  “Very high risk, potentially very high reward,” Tybalt said, raising an eyebrow.

  Baldwin simply nodded.

  “I’ll think about it,” Tybalt said. “I like the idea. We have no choice but to take some chances.”

  Baldwin smiled, which Tybalt guessed was because Tybalt had appreciated his concept.

  In truth, Tybalt was a little nervous about trying Baldwin’s idea. But they were running short on options.

  Maybe I can do both. Train them on the animals first, then they might be ready to take on the squad with the element of surprise. If the zombies and skeletons work together, at least they have decent numbers to win a fight against a few people.

  Tybalt noticed that Baldwin was looking at him expectantly.

  Right, he wants to know if I’m ready to perform the procedure on the child, he thought. And he’s right. Even if I don’t like what happened, fundamentally, it’s pointless to waste a dead body. He felt a bit of self-disgust and forcefully quashed it. I’m just doing what I need to do to survive right now. I can worry about ethics later, if I live through this.

  He positioned himself beside the body of the boy, gathered his mana, and began pushing energy into the corpse—which seemed to slurp the power up like the body was a sponge.

  Tybalt was pleased the body was taking his energy so well. The process felt smooth. The mana rushed into the corpse quicker than it had with any of those before. He started to congratulate himself on having such a strong handle on this. Then he realized the mana was flowing out just a little too quickly.

  Was it supposed to be this easy? This fast-moving?

  Experimentally, he tried to slow the drain. It didn’t work.

  Ah. He recognized the feeling of his mana being pulled against his will. The last time it had happened had been with Baldwin.

  I had more than enough for another zombie, he had time to think. What am I making this time…?

  Just a moment later, before he could decide whether to try more firmly to get the outflow under control, he swooned and collapsed backward onto the salty earth.

  Not again…