It lets out an unnatural growl and decides to kick me with its hooved left leg, I conjure up a ward spell that absorbs the force of the hit, sending the large Minotaur construct on its back with a loud crash, kicking up dust from the floor. It gets up from the ground, rolling to its right and punches the ground to send himself up into a half standing position, one leg with its knee on the ground, the other the one with its ogre like foot on the floor, in a crouching position. Then it gets back up, its Minotaur horns scraping the ceiling of the cave.
It growls once again, I imagine it has bad breath, and readies its axe to swing once again towards me. I step to the right, and this time the axe lands on the remains of a melted zombie, and a skeleton, even though not much remained of that one. It lifts out the axe and cleans the acid off of it with a backwards swing, accidentally hitting another two zombies. Seems like they are on automatic control.
Well, this exchange goes on for a while, I don’t really fight back. Honestly, if I can, I would like to hijack the control over this one. It is kind of slow and all, but having one may never hurt. Not the best of reasons, I know. I just want it okay. Sometimes you don’t need a particular reason to get what you want. If you want it, take it, is my motto.
Anyway, back to reality, I dodge a few more of its swings. The actual plan to hijack the control over it is simple. Undead can tire, which also means the control over them gets weaker. How do they tire? The same as your Average Joe, with movements. Even though movements take very little negative matter, so this may take a while. Also, magical attacks from them also use up a considerable amount of negative matter.
And while from the looks of it, it doesn’t look like it uses any, in actuality it does use a spell that fastens the speed it moves and swings that enormous axe. I’m currently watching the negative matter getting fainter in the Minotaur Construct. Soon it will be weak enough, where I can easily take control and ownership of it. Just a little more.
It does get slower and slower with each new swing. I could pretty much just leisurely walk out of the axe’s way, well there are still a few hostile undead around us, but it seems like partly because of the Minotaur they stay relatively far from us. And mostly because they are busy trying to defeat the ogres, with very little success.
Oh, seems like with the next swing, the Minotaur is pretty much mine to take. Previously it held the axe with one hand, but now it pretty much holds it with both of its hands, the right one which definitely belongs to some reptilian monster being the closest to the blade, and the left one which probably belonged to him in life.
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It holds it up, above its horny head, ready to swing with as much force as it can, I think at least. But before it could, a ball of flame the size of its head, and three acid shots fly towards it, and light up its upper body. It lets out a weird growl once again, honestly I’m unsure if undead can feel pain, maybe they can in some special cases. Like me, who is in mental pain, forgetting to give mental orders to the undead basilisk children and goblin shaman to leave the Minotaur undead construct alone.
I watch as the negative matter fades into nothingness, and then my vision comes back to normal, witnessing it standing in place, burning, its body falling apart one by one. With that I have my first fuck up. Well, at least it is a minor one. I will make my own Minotaur construct when the time comes. In my anger I suck out the negative matter from the remaining undead, the sound of multiple rotten, skeletal bodies hitting the ground resonates within the large cave area.
Time to move on.
At least finally, we can move on to the Necromancer’s exact location. Me and the undead four ogres, now in a bit worse condition, make our way into the middle pathway, leaving the undead basilisks and goblin shaman behind. I’m afraid they can’t currently cross the river, so for now they stay back.
Seems like most of the undead have been cleared out, our path forward is quite uneventful. At least compared to the number of undead in the large cave section, we only ran into a few, maybe 10 at best.
And then we arrived here, at the ominous looking large and wide stone gate. If not for my eyes that can see in the dark perfectly, I’d have never noticed this door, the stones are just as black as the stone walls of the mountain cave, and the surface is smooth, a little old with a few cracks on it already. Unless those are cracks that were made by some other invader. Well it doesn’t matter, now where the handle is the question.
Feels like it was made to never be opened. Potentially, it contains some ancient evil that should never be released, otherwise it will come with a heavy price or something. Or it just a bunker so the Necromancer can control his undead safely and all. One of the two, my bet is on the latter one.
Well, let’s find out. I funnel and condense a large amount of negative matter, shaping it in the form of a spear or something resembling a spear, and I send it towards the door. Instead of a loud explosion, the spear like dark shape ooze into the stone gate and then after a few second of silence it breaks apart, the rubble stopping at my feet.
Beyond the rubble is a small room, with some wicked looking architectural design. There is a twisted quite evil looking obelisk around two meters tall, maybe a bit taller than that surrounded with six smaller ones, each connected in the ground with negative matter flowing in to them in the dark stone floor, the middle one even has an aura of negative matter around it, with a small gap in the middle of it with a dark orb in it pulsing darkness with a purplish hue to it.
That orb definitely feels like a soul, even though it is not whole. Like someone chopped off a part of their body, like their feet, and stuffed it in some kind of tall contraption. A makeshift phylactery if I’m correct. Probably the owner is on another level, and this is more of a signal tower of sorts. That would be my guess.
Well, I can work with this, or I mean I can absorb that piece of corrupted soul to gain control of the rest of the undead here. Well, let’s not waste any more time. Time to feast!
- Risen are those who usually rise from their graves, either as a corporeal undead or non-corporeal when they have an unfinished business, or under the effect of some kind of curse, not necessarily one belonging to the magic aspect of death.
- Most often, these undead have very little negative matter/necrotic energy mixed with their soul, which in the case of corporeal undead means that their bodies tend to have more fresh looking, but over time they do start to rot, decay as the energies of death grow naturally. In the case of curses not belonging to the aspect of death, its energies mix with the magic aspect the curse belongs to. For example if someone drinks from a lake cursed by a Spirit of Waters, who tend to protect their territories, their lakes, then if they rise to undeath their undead form will produce a constant wetness, making their bodies harder to set on fire with a flame spell, while the visible part of their soul turn to a transparent liquid like appearance.
- Some people even consider Vampires to fall into this group, instead of the fourth separate one.
- Unlike the previous two, the animated don’t possess their bodies original soul, but instead are a makeshift soul, set with certain commands and loyalty to its creator, necromancer.
- Most necromancers rely on animating dead, instead of trying to call back one. These undead tend to be much dumber compared to the risen and raised, who still retain some of the knowledge and experience they gained in their lives, which they can use in some capacity, dependent on the necromancer of course.
- 90% of the animated undead are corporeal, with only a few being non-corporeal, like the so called Shadows, who were first created by the Ur-Reaper to be his eyes in the mortal realm, then later turned them into his assassins, which role they still retain for necromancers.
- Undead construct are one of the common cases of animated undead. Necromancers who just started out, tend to loot graveyards, collecting bodies or just body parts to make their own servants at the start of their career. In terms of strength they vary. It depends on the experience, power and how much negative matter/necrotic energy the one creating them has, the body parts, are they fresh or not, even the races the body parts belong to matter in some capacity.
- Construct can even be a mixture of corporeal and non-corporeal undead, in which case they share two makeshift souls, one controlling the body’s movement while the other usually the non-corporeal is the one tasked with spell casting. But these construct are a rarity, one need extensive knowledge in the arts of necromancy, body sculpting and soul magic to create one.