Mana Stone Revolution! (4)
"What? What's going on?"
Skeletons came pouring in first thing in the morning. I looked at the one standing at the front, and he stepped forward to explain.
"A Gate… has opened…."
"What!? A Gate opened?"
The promoted skeletons had stronger senses of self and a firmer grip on soul-related power, so they could speak — clunky as it was. I jumped to my feet and followed them, and sure enough, there it was: a Gate.
"Ttacttac-i! What the hell is this?"
-Clack!
"You're saying skeletons might count as a Gate generation condition?"
Ttacttac-i had been waiting for me at the Gate, and he laid out his theory at once. It couldn't just be any skeleton. It had to be because I'd promoted so many of them all at once yesterday. In other words, Gates didn't form where there were a lot of humans — they formed where there were sentient beings.
"…So infinite power generation might actually be possible?"
Open a Gate, send undead in to kill monsters and harvest mana stones; more undead get promoted; more intelligent undead means another Gate opens… Instead of trekking all the way out to someone else's turf to scrape for mana stones, I could farm them right in my own front yard.
"It's like oil struck on my land!"
I hopped up and down with pure joy. And since monsters weren't pouring out immediately — the Gate was just sitting there, holding — it was a fixed Gate!
"We're going in right now!"
I could have just watched through Spirit Possession, but if I was going to do this, I wanted to go in myself. Still, better safe than sorry. I sent a skeleton soldier in first, confirmed it was safe through Spirit Possession, and only then stepped through.
"Whoa…."
Inside was a broad, sun-blasted savanna — open grassland under a hard white sky. The Gate looked as if a slice of some other world had been cut free and dropped here, the landscape simply ending at a hard edge, but even at a glance it was huge.
"More important than the scenery, though — what monsters does it spit out?"
Hopefully something good for turning into undead. I walked a little ways with Ttacttac-i's troops, and in the distance monsters began to pour toward us. Their identity…
"Wolves?"
Black, gray, every shade in between — wolves came thundering across the plain, kicking up a dirty cloud of dust. Their fangs had grown long and jagged, their manes unnaturally thick and wild; no mistaking them for ordinary animals.
-Clack! Rattle!
At a single word from Ttacttac-i, every skeleton snapped into formation and set their stance. Shields locked forward, spears thrust through the gaps. Behind them, skeleton archers — bows of bone they'd gained upon promotion — drew and aimed.
-Clack-clack!
Whoosh! Arrows arced high and slammed into the wolves. Plenty stuck, but the pack's speed barely dropped. Crude bows; nothing to be done about that. Lahan's weapons would be another story.
Crash!
The wolves smashed into the line. Skeletons went flying backward, but they'd driven their spears home to the last, and every point was buried in wolf flesh. The front runners staggered, badly wounded — and the second line didn't waste the opening. Shields and hammers rose instead of spears.
Boom! Skeleton brutes charged behind their shields and drove the wolves back; warriors' hammers came down on top of them. Special units like Bone Berserkers tore through the rest, and dozens of wolves were crushed in moments.
"See? A little quality upgrade, and they're pretty solid."
To be fair, the skeleton unit's record so far hadn't been great. They hadn't done much at the Bukhansan Fortress battle either, and one hit from the Flame Emperor had wiped out half of them. But the moment better skeletons started showing up, a former army major's tactics locked in with them and the synergy was real.
-Rattle-rattle.
"Ah — so becoming a Grave Marshal made it even easier?"
According to Ttacttac-i, promotion to a higher species had shoved strategic understanding and instinct straight into his head. On top of that, the whole battlefield laid itself out like a real-time strategy game, and he could issue orders to his subordinates with pure thought.
I found myself grateful to Mari all over again for making Black Viscount Bestowal possible.
Available Undead Types
◈ Necrowolf
◈ Bone Wolf
Two undead types I could make from the wolf monsters. As a test, I raised one corpse as a Bone Wolf and another as a Necrowolf. The Bone Wolf looked quick and lean; the Necrowolf felt heavy and blunt.
"Which do you want?"
-Clack!
"Okay. Half and half."
Bone Wolves as light cavalry, Necrowolves as heavy cavalry. Running a mobile strike force like that would blow the tactical options wide open.
"What — another wave already?"
Not long after every corpse had been turned undead, more wolves came charging in. Roughly one wave every thirty minutes. One fist-sized mana stone per kill meant about fifty an hour. With this single Gate, I could clear a thousand a day easy.
"Fixed Gates really are the answer."
Old memories rose up sharp and clear. Mega-guilds buying Gates at auction and rotating their members through them; small-office hunters like me clinging to the edges just to get a slot… Ugh. Compared to those days, now was a hundred times better.
And right as I was thinking that —
Something huge stood out among the oncoming wolves.
"There we go. Gotta have a boss mob."
Boss monsters came one per Gate, as a rule. Smarter, stronger, and usually trailing a pack of subordinates.
-Clack. Clatter.
"Mm-hm. Do whatever you want. Might as well put the monster undead through their paces too."
Ttacttac-i immediately launched the mass of monster undead waiting in the rear. Countless monsters Lahan and the Flame Emperor had killed for mana stones — slipped here under cover of dark dawn so no living eyes would see them — already numbered over five thousand, even though it hadn't been long.
"Whoa…."
The undead monster horde started trampling the wolves flat. Ordinary wolf monsters from the previous waves were swept aside with ease… but the boss held on for a long time. No — "held on" didn't cover it.
The beast vaulted high and came down like a landslide, and hundreds of undead were crushed in a single instant.
"Hmm. Yeah, monsters aren't it after all."
Skeletons were roughly even in size, strength, and intelligence, which made them perfect for strategy… but undead made from monsters weren't. Their attacks tangled with each other; they tripped over one another's feet constantly. Every form was different, so you couldn't even forge weapons or armor for them — low floors on performance all around.
"Is that really okay?"
Ttacttac-i turned his head. So even you didn't expect it to be this bad, huh?
In the end we sent in the elite skeletons and finished off the thoroughly exhausted boss. Their fighting styles were all different and too individual to use properly. Softening a target first like this might still be fine. Unless something was specially strong, monster undead just didn't mean much.
But a boss monster was different.
I laid a hand on the beast the skeletons had dragged over and raised it as undead on the spot.
Available Undead Types
◈ Nightmare
◈ Necrowolf
◈ Bone Wolf
"Nightmare?"
A type I'd never seen before. Clearly a higher species at a glance — no reason to skip it.
The moment I chose the species, deep blue smoke billowed up. The beast's bones and muscle melted and fused, mixed with the smoke, and reshaped into the form of a horse with the texture of tar.
"What, it's a horse?"
So Nightmare was a horse undead. Since the whole corpse melted down and remade itself, the original body didn't have to be a horse at all.
"Hey. Back up."
Nrrrh. The Nightmare bent its knees and lowered its neck so I could mount. Once I was on, it rose and walked at an easy pace.
"Whoa — it's insanely fast!"
I tapped its flanks with my heels and the Nightmare broke into a run, and the speed was serious. No license, so I couldn't say for sure, but it had to be pushing a hundred kilometers an hour.
I dismounted and ran it through a few tests. Durability was excellent too. Just charging and ramming was enough to shatter ordinary skeletons, and even shield-bearing skeleton brutes went flying.
"Not bad at all."
And true to that tar-like body, it recovered from wounds almost at once. As long as the damage wasn't catastrophic, the horse would never go down first.
"This one's for Lahan."
The Flame Emperor already had artifact legs and could run just fine on his own, and Ttacttac-i needed one too — but not as badly as Lahan.
"Ttacttac-i, I'll get you one later when the boss respawns."
Boss mobs, unlike regular monsters, took a long time to respawn. Sometimes only one a month. Now that we had a fixed Gate, it'd be nice if enough came out for the whole officer corps to ride.
When we finished clearing the Gate and stepped back out, Seah was waiting.
"I came because something seemed off… Did a Gate open?"
"Ah, yeah. Perfect timing, actually! Can you heal the undead a bit?"
On cue, wrecked undead came spilling out behind me in a clattering heap.
"Th-this many are broken?! How strong is this Gate!?"
"Huh? It's not that bad."
But my words drowned under the endless clatter of snapped and shattered bone still pouring out.
"Aah! It must be an S-rank Gate!"
"I said it isn't…."
It took more than thirty minutes for Seah to stop freaking out. I explained that we'd only charged the boss without proper weapons and stress-tested the Nightmare a bit, but…
"No, you can't treat skeletons like that! It's not like there are no monsters outside!"
All I got back was a lecture about working the skeletons too hard.
Hey — undead don't feel pain!