The Blood Race (1): The Blood Lord's Shadow
After the war, a fair amount of time had passed.
I stood in the corner, idly turning over a shiny little object in my hand.
“This is fascinating.”
“I’m glad you like it. It’s our traditional toy.”
It had been made by the newly recruited dwarves when they got their hands free. The craftsmanship was solid, so maybe we could afford to set up a proper workshop now.
The dwarves I rescued numbered around a hundred.
In addition, I’d brought a few corpses back to life and turned them into undead. Even at skeleton stage, their hands were skilled enough that if one of them died in some unfortunate accident, we wouldn’t lose anything.
“Are the elves okay?”
“They’re far from our settlement, so there’s no issue.”
Duke seemed completely unbothered by mentioning the elves who had once enslaved us.
They’d lost the World Tree, and even their god. Now we were actually in a position to feel a little sorry for them. Why would they still hate us?
I told Duke everything the dwarves had been making and how far along the projects were, then headed toward the World Tree.
“Ah, Lord Necromancer.”
“Aliac. How’s the farming going?”
“Thanks to the royal family’s secret farming techniques, the yield is quite good.”
Aliac had latched onto me like a barnacle.
The Cardinal had possessed him once, so I was a little worried… but since he’d sworn he’d never possess anyone again, it should be fine.
Beyond his shoulder, I could see elf skeletons busy cleaning up around the World Tree.
And further beyond that, the dead World Tree was slowly leaking life force.
Death energy clashed with the World Tree’s energy, so it had vomited it all out in a single day, yet a tiny bit of vitality remained inside.
It wasn’t draining life anymore; instead, it was returning it to the earth.
It was almost as if blood was flowing from the wounds of the corpse—life and death energy canceling each other out. Only death should have remained, but the World Tree’s final struggle had left a small amount.
Even small by World Tree standards was still a decent amount.
“That’s why we can farm. It’s a blessing.”
One of the reasons we attacked the elves was because of their farming.
We couldn’t live on just canned food and calorie bars, and those were running out too. With the dwarves here, securing food was an urgent problem.
“When can we harvest?”
“Right now, rice and wheat can be harvested once a month, and the others can be harvested whenever we want.”
“When will the World Tree’s power run out?”
“It probably won’t last more than a year.”
Then we should have enough food for at least a year.
We could eat bread and rice. We’d planted a lot of vegetables too—spinach, tomatoes, and more.
Incidentally, all those seeds had come from the tower where I was keeping them underground.
“Our elves collect and study plants because we have the power to handle them.”
Now that I thought about it, the Cardinal had turned Aliac’s arm into plant matter using some kind of Plantification magic.
I’d restored it with my skill. After that, Aliac had cried and sworn his eternal loyalty.
If he was swearing loyalty, maybe he’d stop being scared of the undead soon…
“Good! The table’s going to be rich with food.”
Aliac had been promoted to the farming department head, just like a minister.
He might be a little dense, but his skills were excellent. Especially since he was part of the royal family, he knew a lot about agriculture.
“If it’s the royal family, wouldn’t you just gather taxes instead of farming?”
“In the fairy realm, farming is a privilege reserved for the highest rank.”
That was interesting.
Aliac’s face was covered in nervous sweat as he said it.
“Relax. I’m not going to turn you into an undead.”
“Y-yes, I understand.”
Unlike the dwarves, the fairies were obsessed with staying alive, so becoming an undead terrified them more than anything.
That was why the faces of the fairy skeletons working the fields around the World Tree looked like the dead.
Even their bones showed expression.
The fairies had lost their unique powers when they turned undead. Now they were just skeletons with extra bones.
The Bishop line was a higher species called Skeleton Mage, so they could still use some mana… but it wasn’t very reliable.
“A mage who can’t cast magic? What kind of joke is that?”
“Th-that’s because the power of the Endless Land withdrew its blessing…”
That was the reason.
The fairies had relied on their god to use magic.
“Now we have to start from scratch to learn how to draw on the power of the Endless Land…”
Even that was out of the question since their mana had dropped after turning undead.
The mage battalion was basically dead in the water.
“I’d have been really disappointed if the Archbishop wasn’t here either.”
Still, the Archbishop who had summoned the World Tree here knew how to use magic reasonably well.
He was one of the few who had survived as a Lich instead of a skeleton or higher species.
But the fact that he was still disappointed by the same thing meant he was putting the mages under my command to do the farming.
“Hmm, you can manage personnel on your own. Just report to me regularly.”
“Yes! I’ll break my bones and soul for you!”
Where on earth did he learn that kind of speech?
I patted Aliac’s trembling shoulder and headed back.
Actually, in Dobong-gu, a few more refugees had joined besides the dwarves and elves.
In Dobong-1, there hadn’t been any, but after I turned the entire Dobong-gu area into my territory, cleared it out, built walls, a few dozen people hiding in the shadows came out.
“I’d love to see their faces….”
Ttacttac-i and Lahan had found them. At first they’d screamed and fainted at the sight of the undead, but later they’d adapted.
When I asked if they wanted to stay, half of them said they wanted to leave Dobong-gu, and the others decided to stay here for now.
The ones who decided to stay would live near the dwarves between the first and second walls, learning their skills.
I wanted to see them, but Ttacttac-i had flatly refused.
He said if I saw their faces in person, my dignity would drop.
“My dignity’s not that low, is it?”
Even though I looked a bit young, I wasn’t without dignity, was I?
Duke and Lahan had made their clothes and accessories with care, so they should be fine.
Anyway, until I controlled Dobong-gu and declared it my territory, I had decided not to show my face publicly.
After that, I headed to Mari’s house next to my own.
“Mari!”
“Master, you must have had a hard day today.”
“What’s there to do? Just walking around.”
“But you decide all the important things yourself.”
“That’s right.”
I sat on the sofa, curled up in Mari’s arms.
Se-a was nice, but she’d started nagging me more and more lately.
Especially because she lived in the same house as me, I saw her every day.
At least the officers had to maintain close relationships by seeing each other often.
Since Mari was the second undead I created, I had developed a bit of attachment.
“How do you feel about handling curses?”
“It’s a bit vague. Using them in large amounts like Lahan does with soul power isn’t the same, and scattering poison fog makes it weaker.”
“Don’t rush! We have all the time in the world.”
I spent the late night talking with Mari, then headed home.
It wasn’t because of Se-a’s nagging that I was late.
Clink. The door I had broken when I was alive before had been repaired by Se-a, and I opened it and stepped inside.
Se-a must have gone to bed early tonight. The bedroom door was closed, and the lights were off.
“What are we watching tonight?”
On nights like this, I’d either read a novel from the library in Dobong-gu or watch one of the countless killing-time videos I’d saved on an old external hard drive from my past life.
I had thought the most difficult thing in the bunker was boredom, so I’d filled a 5-terabyte external hard drive with real movies, dramas, and animations.
If I had known I’d end up with a body that didn’t sleep, I would have saved even more.
“Nosferatu? Let’s watch this one.”
I picked a movie related to vampires and turned it on.
Bored, so I might as well watch something scary.
While I was watching the movie,
“Hic… is this too much?”
When I startled at the lewd bedroom scene.
Suddenly, a strange sensation hit me.
It was sticky and unpleasant, like a bad omen.
It lasted only a moment before vanishing, but for some reason it kept bothering me.
“Is it because of the movie?”
It was bothering me too much to dismiss it as my mood, so I turned the movie off, got up, and started checking the house.
Not long after, I found a small note in the kitchen.
“…What is this?”
Was it written by Se-a? No, there hadn’t been anything like this earlier.
I thought about it for a while, then decided to read it.
**Blood Lord, I’m finally here!** **We’ve been waiting for you underground. Please find us quickly!**
“…?”
Blood Lord? Was this for me?
No, no matter how I thought about it, there was nothing to suggest anyone would call me the Blood Lord.
My undead army didn’t bleed blood, and my skin was pale enough that Se-a often worried about it.
So this was for someone else.
Someone who thought I was the Blood Lord and had sneaked in without anyone noticing, left the note, and left.
“Hmm.”
This was suspicious.
It bothered me that they had mistaken me for the Blood Lord and broken into my house.
“I decided. I’ll find them tomorrow and give them a good beating.”
I didn’t know who they were, but invading a house with Se-a in it was a serious matter.
“Wait here!”
***
“Fufu, the Lord has finally come… Since you left the note, you’ll find us soon.”
“What a happy occasion!”
“But are you really the Lord? No matter how great you are, you couldn’t have created such a large army so quickly…”
“What?! Are you doubting the Lord?!”
Somewhere underground in Seoul.
People with red eyes were chattering.
“If the Lord’s power can defeat this planet in no time, it’s as easy as eating cake during your afternoon break!”
“Is that so…?”
The temporary leader of the pale-blooded clan said this and incited his kin.
“When the Blood Lord comes, this Earth will be ours!”
“Waaaaah!”
“We won’t go hungry, right? Really!”
“Blood! Let’s drink blood!”
Unaware that the Necromancer who had received the note and was waiting for the Lord was completely different from them.