After devouring the information in the tos, Kai left the library, his mind spinning with everything he’d learned. Everything he wanted to try.
He set out into the city again with more knowledge of the undead, their habits, their patterns, and their weaknesses.
Kai used so of his remaining life essence to subdue and take control of so skeletons in the city square with ease.
He dodged each one, using one skeleton to put distance between himself and the others while he cast Undead Enslavent. Then he did the sa with two skeletons blocking the others, and then three.
When all four stood motionless, his breathing grew ragged.
[Life Essence: 1,401/5,500]
’Figures. I still can’t continue like this. I thought that if maybe I understood the undead better, it wouldn’t consu so much life essence.’
Kai climbed and sat on a broken statue, thinking. His magic was burning out. His body ached.
Kai stared at his own undead servants.
The four skeletons he had enslaved stood silent, awaiting orders.
"What gives life essence?" he asked himself. "Life." he answered.
But there was no life here.
Or was there?
His eyes wandered over his minions. Their bones causing a whistling effect each ti another gust of wind blew through the city.
He peered over at the skeletal remains scattered across the ruined streets.
"Bones!"
Bones were part of a once-living being. They had been marked by life.
And if necromancy could pull the dead back into movent...
Kai slowly stood, staring at a pile of discarded ribcages and skulls.
He stretched out his hand.
"Wither."
The magic seeped into the bones—ancient remains long untouched by the living.
At first, nothing.
Then, the whisper of sothing long-since gone.
’Life.’
Sothing stirred.
A pulse of faint life force trickled into him and the bones crumbled to dust.
It wasn’t much. Just barely a fla large enough to be the flicker of a candle.
But it was enough.
Kai’s eyes widened.
"It works. I can do this!"
Grinning, he scanned the city.
Bones were everywhere.
Kai placed his hands together and silently thanked whatever killed all of the residents of this city.
Scattered in the streets. Littering the graveyard. Forgotten in old buildings.
Each one carried a trace of what once was.
The trace was old. It was weak.
But if he gathered enough of it...
Kai cracked his knuckles. "Ti to get to work."
It was slow, tedious, and exhausting.
Even the hunters in the primitive ages would have spent less ti hunting for a al.
But it worked.
The city of the dead stretched before him. The ruined streets, crumbling towers, and abandoned courtyards held only silence, save for the shuffle of mindless undead.
Kai wiped sweat from his brow.
His body ached from overexertion, his mind burned from constant spell-casting and his stomach twisted from the drain of his Life Essence.
But he kept going.
By the ti the moon reached its peak on his first night, he had over thirty new undead soldiers.
"Not enough."
His forces moved awkwardly, sluggishly, like puppets still learning to dance. A hundred and fifty wouldn’t be enough. Two hundred wouldn’t be enough.
He needed them all.
Each day, Kai pushed forward.
Every morning, he awoke feeling like death itself.
Every night, he collapsed into a dreamless void.
He continued gathering bones, discarded remains, and long-forgotten corpses.
Orlin didn’t intervene.
The old man watched, observed, and only stepped in when Kai’s control slipped too much, forcing him to adjust and refine his technique.
"You’re improving, boy," Orlin mused one evening, watching as Kai effortlessly bound another undead to his growing army.
Kai snorted, exhausted. "If by improving, you an I’m not collapsing as much, sure."
Orlin chuckled, leaning on his cane. "That, too."
And so the days blurred together.
By the end of the first week, Kai’s forces had swelled to one hundred and fifty.
The city, once aimless and chaotic, was slowly becoming his domain.
Orlin started showing more interest in his progress.
At night, they sat together in the manor’s dusty halls, discussing magic, past battles, and necromancy’s lost history.
Kai found himself talking more, asking more.
For the first ti in years, he had a teacher who understood him.
And, strangely... he didn’t mind it.
The next week, Kai broke the two hundred mark.
He felt it in his bones—the sheer weight of so many undead bound to his will.
The city was nearly his, but his strength was waning.
Then, one night, Orlin did sothing unexpected.
"Kai," he said, tossing sothing onto the table.
A wooden plate.
Atop the wooden plate rested pieces of a roasted animal of so kind and so vegetables.
Kai frowned. "What’s this?"
"Food. Surviving from Life Essence alone will keep you alive, but your body still needs other nutrients."
Kai froze. His mouth watered.
He hadn’t eaten real food in years.
The mont he touched anything with his necrotic magic, it would rot it until it turned to ash.
The only thing he could consu was Vepice’s dicine—a bitter, foul-tasting concoction that did nothing but sustain him.
Kai eyed the plate warily.
Orlin grinned. "I wove a light barrier spell around it. Enough to keep your necromantic essence from disintegrating it. You should be able to taste it."
’Can I really eat it? Can I trust it?’
Kai hesitated, then slowly reached out, picking up a piece of roasted at.
He braced himself.
He bit down.
And flavour exploded in his mouth.
It was warm. Savoury.
’It’s not rotten...’
The richness of the at, the salt, the herbs—it all hit him at once.
His fingers trembled.
His throat tightened.
He lowered his head, and, for the first ti in years, he wept.
Orlin said nothing.
He simply let him cry.
Sothing changed after that night.
Orlin started making more als.
Simple ones at first: bread, stew, roasted ats.
Kai didn’t always cry, but each bite felt like a stolen miracle.
Each ti he ate, his body provided him with more energy. More motivation to push on.
And so, Kai pushed forwards in his attempt to take control of a city of undead.
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