City of Sin (Yanyu Jiangnan)

Secret

The barbarians and desert warriors worked together, moving all the bodies off the carriages. Zendrall sprayed some antiseptic medicine on them, before casting some spells. The corpses were drained of their moisture, but they didn’t shrivel too much and retained their original appearance. At level 12, the necromancer could handle a whole slew of bodies at a time. He only needed five rounds to go through the more than 200 bodies.

The Necromancer did not approve of Richard’s showing the corpses off in public. In his eyes, such a thing was pointless. Who would be frightened by a body? Richard should just have left them to him. These were obviously all veteran soldiers who had trained long enough to have sturdy bodies. They could become elite skeleton warriors in his hands, forming an army of level 4-5 beings who could wield sword and shield.

At his level, Zendrall could restrict the level drop from when his army was alive to only two or three levels. If he prepared meticulously and used a large number of supplementary potions, he could even avoid a drop in level at all. However, the resources such an act would consume would be immense, and it was only worth it when creating warriors of darkness.

Zendrall had not gotten high-grade materials in a long time, but Richard only smiled at his complaining. Weak undead creatures like skeleton warriors weren’t anything in the mage’s mind. Every mage could use spirit summoning spells, so using a few in small-scale battles was no issue. However, a larger number of undead would make it obvious that a necromancer was serving him.

Necromancy was a taboo on Faelor, comparable even to demonology and second only to planar invaders. It had taken much effort to blend into the locals, and he did not want to attract the attention of the gods for a useless army of skeletons.

By this point, Richard had a much better understanding of Faelor’s pantheon. Although he was indeed an invader from another world, his limited strength had marked him as an insignificant threat. Sinclair had come quickly on his heels, and given her many large wars with the allied armies of Ceres and Neian, she had inflicted great damage on the churches in the Sequoia Kingdom. Any eyes that had been following Richard had been attracted to her.

And now, the deal with the Direwolf Duke solved any issue of identity. There was no further news regarding the first intruder, and the people of the Whiterock Dukedom quickly forgot about any invasion by some insignificant force.

Richard was basically a mosquito to the gods. Annoying, but tiny. He would not be able to cause any trouble, and even if he went missing they would only assume he died in some dark corner. One would slap a mosquito if it bit them, but wouldn’t care even if it flew away. The gods felt the same about him.

Richard returned to his residence. What he needed now was to meditate and restore his mana. However, just as he sat down the hurried sound of someone could be heard bounding up the stairs and Zendrall rushed into his room.

The necromancer erupted with fury at the very sight of Richard, “The leader’s body doesn’t have a soul at all! What do you want me to create a warrior of darkness from? I have less than five warriors of darkness left, do you want me to start fighting with just curses?!”

“No soul?” Richard was stunned. This was unusual. It took a few days of rotting after death for a soul to fade completely. Until then, the body would have some fragments of the soul left within. Necromancers relied on activating the power of these souls to turn corpses into undead.

The souls of the pious could normally head directly to their god’s divine kingdom upon death, which was why necromancers needed to cast a soul-locking spell right away with such people. However, few outside of paladins would ever reach this level of faith. Richard had not seen the knight captain praying to anyone during battle either.

Richard thought back to the leader’s death. After sustaining heavy injuries from Waterflower, he had been dealt the last blow by Phaser.

“Alright, I understand. I’ll get to the bottom of this.”

Only after getting Richard’s guarantee did the necromancer leave. Corpses and souls of powerful beings weren’t just materials to summon undead with; they were also necessary for him to advance.

“Phaser, come to my room,” Richard ordered in his mind. Moments later, Richard’s window opened soundlessly and Phaser flitted in like a ghost to stand before him.

Richard looked over this special unit who was covered in her robes, saying, “Remove your robes.”

Phaser did as instructed, removing her robes and even the armour underneath. Outside of the natural armour of her body, she was completely nude.

He found her appearance strange. Phaser’s body was vibrating quickly, a very good state in battle that would allow her to deal a fatal attack at any moment. However, right now all it served was to make her skin ripple like it was a body of water.

She had grown again from when he had last seen her. He started off with a detection spell before walking circles around her, comparing her appearance to the memory of when she had just been born.

The light that glowed in response to the spell was weak, but they were stable. Shockingly, and in the span of a mere two battles, she had already grown to level 5! This was a horrifying rate of growth!

There were some changes to her body as well. She seemed much taller right now, already at 1.6 metres in height. He did not understand the use of this in an assassination unit. A larger stature supported more strength, more energy reserves. However, at a mere level 5 Phaser was far from filling out her physique for either. It would only mean she needed to waste more energy to conceal herself.

On the other hand, the coverage of her natural armour was starting to reduce, which was something he found difficult to comprehend as well. Phaser’s natural armour was similar to the broodmother’s shell, hard as steel with a quarter of the weight and much better flexibility. It was as good for defence as refined mithril armour, although not comparable to magic artefacts.

“You’re already level 5? How did you advance so quickly?”