Chapter 177: Prep For War; Unbearable Force (P4)

The two stranded, disabled and isolated Werebears still defied their ugly fate. Despite no longer having feet they dragged their bodies a great distance, roaring and growling all the way no doubt.

To their credit, they made it pretty close to where the main action of the battle was taking place, any closer and they would have probably fallen victim to Shaco's indiscriminate use of my spells.

Out of reach of their claw swipes and gnashing teeth I tilt my head as I stare down at the two, a single question on my mind.

"Which one should I condemn...?" I mutter out to my present company; Anselm and Shaco. Juri stayed back with his men to monitor the progress of their healing and keep things going as fast as possible in anticipation for another attack.

He's also keeping a stern eye on Piol. Though, I think the rascal has given up on running off after that talk down I had with him, or at least I hope he has.

The two Werebears growling, crippled at my feet are similar but not identical. For the ritual I need to perform, I already face two problems with them.

For one, the ritual creates a higher form of undead from the live body of a humanoid, a live and whole humanoid…I think. It doesn't really specify if the preferred state of the humanoid body except 'alive'

The Werebears don't have feet, so I'm left wondering if the ritual will just spit out a really good and powerful undead but not replace the feet and just leave it crawling.

That would be a supreme waste of mana, time and a perfectly alive Werebear.

Then there's also the fact that the Werebears are…bears.

Sure, they walk on two feet and to some extent can be considered 'humanoid' but are they really? Are they really humanoid?

For the most part I'm willing to risk the spell failing on this humanoid ambiguity of the Werebear.

But on the chance that it does succeed, I'd like to have a nice, strong undead capable of walking. 

With that decided I'm left asking a different question; which one of these Werebear's should I pull a soul out of and which should I use for my ritual.

The two are both large and muscular in size and bear giant fangs and claws capable of killing a human with a single swipe, but what bugs me is the height difference between the two.

Does being any taller add to fighting ability? Yes, I'd think so. Shorter people have a harder time fighting than tall people, but these beasts are far taller than any of the opponents I'm sure I'll be facing.

At least, the human opponents.

In the end I choose to use the taller one. Best to be on the safe side. Though it means the beast will be even more of a target for attacks than its counterpart, I'm willing to bet that the kind of undead this ritual turns it into will be able to shrug that off.

Which brings me to my current predicament.

"Should I heal it? I should heal it shouldn't I?"

Shaco says nothing.

Anselm stares blankly at me, "If you heal it, you realize it'll just come at you again."

"I do."

"Then you must have some other way to keep it restrained then?"

I pause as I go through the blue list of all my available spells and sigh.

"Nothing…specific."

"What do you mean?"

"I mean, I could improvise…I need it to stay still for the ritual so I could pin it down with the bones of it's friend…but that might damage the body far more than I'd like."

Anselm heaves a sigh, "How about I just freeze it in place for you then?"

Shaco slithers around my shoulder, "That would be…applicable."

"My thoughts exactly." I grin widely at Anselm.

He rolls his eyes at the two of us but doesn't say a thing.

"Death Grip." I utter, sending an ethereal green palm at the Werebear designated to give up its soul for my purposes. "Soul Invasion."

Immediately I feel a great resistance which comes as a great surprise to me given the fact that…it's a Werebear. You'd think they'd be dumb as rock.

Or perhaps they are and the will fighting against me is simply their instinctive will to keep on living, eating and reproducing. Or perhaps just raging anger at being incapable of harming me.

Either way, I push back against it with growing will of my own, smothering the incoherent struggle of its soul to dust before ceasing it in my hands.

The result, a dead Werebear and a floating, shining white soul.

"I wonder, who do the souls of monsters go to? Anera as well? But they surely don't have enough sense to know to go to the light, much less studied the faith and religion of a Goddess like her."

Anselm shrugs but at this point as I tinker with the Soul Manipulation menu, I'm just talking to myself.

"Or perhaps she makes an exception for the souls of those far too unintelligent to realize what to do when approached by her light. Huh, I guess I'll find out much later."

After turning the newly extracted Werebear soul into a mana filter, I have Shaco go get the Werebear's chopped off feet. 

With their extraordinary regenerative powers, I half expected to see another Werebear growing out from the chopped off feet. No such thing however.

"Summon Spirit; Healing Dire." I utter once again the one and only healing spell that heals others for me, but rather than feel my mana be sucked out into the ground, I get a notification from the System.

[Healing Dire In Use. Retrieve Healing Dire?]

[Yes] [No]

What a strange notification. I haven't gotten to make a choice about something since…well since I chose Necromancy.

Still, it's good to know that the Healing Dire can only be summoned in one place.  And inconvenience though.

"Should we…"

Anselm doesn't bother letting me finsh before shutting my thought down, "Drag the Werebear over to where the soldiers are healing? No."

"Why not?" I chuckle.

"How would we even…" He huffs, "Besides, you don't want to freak them out with your Necromancy, whenever you talk about rituals you end up turning into some weird mana swirling, chanting Mage. A sight reserved for…for no one actually"

I don't see any reason to argue with that logic so I let it be and decide to wait for the men to heal a bit.

"I'll call the Dire here once they're half way through. Shaco, go tell them."