329 The Living and the Undead (1/2)

So you want to fight against the undead? Most people would find either a Holy Knight or a priest of Holy Light to assist them as they were, after all, mortal enemies with the undead. Many abilities and Divine Arts of these two job classes were directly anti-undead in nature, and their specialized undead detection Divine Arts would prove very helpful.

”No undead shall ever escape the judgement of the Holy Light!” The Holy Light job class members were forever confident in this saying of theirs.

Yet, in my opinion, their ability to detect the undead wasn't as great as it seemed on the surface. It worked behind the principle of Holy Light's natural undead magic resistance. They would release a minute amount of Holy Light into their surroundings and consequently hunt for instances of resistance.

First of all, since the power of Holy Light was limited, it couldn't detect a significantly large radius. Even high-level Holy Knights would only be able to sense undead within a few kilometers of their position, so imagine low-level Holy Knights—they could only cover a radius equivalent to a house. And if they attempted to spot undead in a wide-open, flat area, then nothing was stopping the undead from discerning them back. The worst part of this Divine Art was that its basic principles helped ensure that the undead would find you the same moment you discovered them.

In fact, I knew of several old undead—each more than three hundred years old—with the ability to detect Holy Light job class members, simply based on the density of Holy Light in the air: it worked the same way, but in reverse. Casually using undead detection magic in an area like this—where there were so many undead—would be akin to suicide.

The typical scouting job classes, the rangers and thieves, were no good at detecting the undead. Rangers relied on divine arts that detected the presence of life, which made it useless on the undead for obvious reasons. Meanwhile, undead mages had plenty of anti-detection magic spells at their disposal, which would give thieves a really hard time. Most undead would detect their enemies with the help of their souls, rendering useless the thieves' typical stealth techniques of concealing themselves under the cover of the night or shadows… Alright. By now, you must have realized the sheer ridiculousness of Ah Gen's actions—he had actually believed that his not-even-stealth skills could fool a Blood Tribe noble!

However, just which job class was the most suitable for dealing with the undead?

First, this job class needed plenty of ways to detect the undead. The next most important thing was that this job class had to be able to survive whilst fighting against the undead—if not, then it should at least have the ability to escape.

In that case, the final conclusion was evident. The most suitable job class to give the undead trouble was… undead mage!

*Snap.*

With a snap of my fingers I cast one of the most basic undead magic spells, Control Undead. The corpse zombies that had just been hunting me like a pack of wild dogs now had to heed my every command. All that remained of their original boss was a pile of shattered bones.

Once I eliminated the lich in charge of commanding them, these low-level corpse zombies lost any semblance of order, no different from rabid dogs that would attack anything and everything in sight. All I had to do was imprint my soul upon them and they instantly became my puppets.

I closed my eyes and mentally sensed for the presence of undead. Undead mages were far better at detected undead compared to Holy Knights—their natural talent allowed them to be far more effective anti-undead scouts. After all, without such an ability, how were undead mages supposed to find undead ingredients and corpses?

”There's a small undead team about three kilometers forward. The team leader seems to be a death knight.”

I casually donned that unlucky lesser lich's black cape after giving it a nice shake. It would seem that my prey were aplenty. I would be quite busy today…

I covered myself in an aura of undeath and disguised myself, adjusting the appearance of my power level. The final result was a flickering image of me amid a black mist. Any Holy Knight or undead mage who sensed me would think that I was a lesser lich who only recently became a high-level undead.

As for why I wasn't disguising myself as a normal lich? I was here to hunt, not to be hunted. The weakest lich would be a Legend, and if such a lich manifested itself so close to the wood spirit and adventurer campgrounds, the wood spirits were certain to send a large force to eradicate it. And even though there were plenty of high-level undead under the Undead Lords, every lich would be a well-known powerful individual. Casually trying to disguise myself as some random lich made it highly likely that my disguise would be seen through. Nor could I use Rex's identity anymore, as he had long since been exposed.

Alright, then. By now, perhaps you readers have guessed what I intended to do… yep, an old favorite of mine, Undead Calamity!

”Oh my, here's another small team led by a death knight. Where do you think you're running off to!”

Since I was already here, how could I possibly be satisfied by merely doing some scouting? All these undead who were everywhere here were like free subordinates. Since I was soon going to have a big battle against the undead, why wouldn't I accept all these free soldiers? Perhaps I could even take advantage of disguising myself as an undead and obtain some information.

Although it was fairly common for there to be internal struggles between undead while they were back in the Undead Planes, the Undead Lords were now in charge here. The undead with intelligence would no longer have any internal conflict. Still, infighting amongst low-level undead wouldn't attract much attention. But intentionally wiping out the undead or reorganizing them en masse would attract too much attention.

”Remember, come meet up with me when I order you to do so.”

That was why I didn't actually have my new minions follow me. I merely had the highest-level undead stay behind with my soul imprint and had them remain where they were. It was only that they would now listen to my orders and would return to me when I commanded it.

Of course, I would unhesitatingly accept any specially modified undead or powerful undead I see and exchange them for some low-level undead.

It was similar to a wooden ship that would continuously exchange its parts as it sailed. By the end, it may appear the same physically, but would it still be the original ship if all its parts had been exchanged out? Well, I had no need to ponder on such a philosophical question. At the very least, the undead under my command were rapidly becoming stronger as they evolved under me as well.

”…The prey this time is quite troublesome.”

The skeleton swordsman currently fighting against my undead had a faint green light on its bone swords. It appeared that its swords were poisonous. Not only that, its bones were a dull yellow, which indicated that it had apparently been strengthened by the earth element. It was apparent that this was a strengthened undead, but, judging from its lack of emotions, it wasn't an intelligent undead.

The corpse zombies under my command were far too low-level. The skeleton swordsman easily sliced through them before rushing towards me. Meanwhile, behind the skeleton warrior was a skeleton mage who wore a black cape identical to the one I pilfered. He was currently casting buff spells on his undead.

”A skeleton mage who's an expert in undead modification? This skeleton's bones have been earth elementalized, its bone sword has been enchanted with magic poison, and it's been at minimum strengthened twice over. Not bad at all. Although it's obviously the best choice to directly attack the enemy mage in a duel…”

The skeleton was now right before me, the flickering shadow of its burning soulfire in its eye sockets right in my eyes. It was so close I could even catch a whiff of decaying stench. Yet, my reaction was to shake my head and take a single step forward.

”It's so foolish of you to have charged right towards me.”

With a simple piercing movement, I unsheathed my sword and stabbed straight through the skeleton warrior's rib cage, into its backbone. I then twirled my sword around, breaking the skeleton's bones apart.

Undead mages had an unparalleled understanding about a skeleton's weaknesses. For these high-level skeleton warriors, they wouldn't feel pain at all. Even if you smashed in a skeleton warrior's skull, it would still be perfectly fine and continue attacking you. Even if you sliced off its right hand, its left hand would still pierce straight at you. However, their greatest weakness would always be where their bones were connected. As long as you destroyed the skeleton's spine, it wouldn't even be able to stand up anymore.

The rest was simpler. This skeleton mage was smart and immediately surrendered after seeing that his greatest weapon didn't even last a single of my blows. He directly told me his task here and even signed the strictest soul contract with me.

And so, I took command over his skeleton warrior, fixed it up again, and made it into one of my personal guards. Then, I left some of the most seriously injured corpse zombies to the undead skeleton mage to fix for me. I left him there with his bitter expression.

This was only one such example of what I did today. By the time the sun started setting, ten-plus undead scouting and logistics teams had become my underlings. With all these new servants, I had eyes and ears over the entire Wendes Mountains the wood spirits' campground was located in.

There was something strange as well.

”How weird. Why am I not feeling uncomfortable?”