“You…” and as a group of them showed such a difference, I pointed my glaive at them from my chariot, “come, I’ll drop a rope for you to climb up here.”
And the next moment I threw down the rope the jumper first installed a long time ago on my chariot and didn’t leave it ever since.
The group of ten exchanged looks between each other, or that’s what I thought, before they started to move towards my chariot one by one.
As they arrived there, the first thing they did was to bow, deeply hitting their heads against my chariot.
“Lord… Thanks for your generosity, a generosity we never experienced ever in our lives.”
One of them spoke, seemingly acting as their leader. I waved my hand for them to stand while resisting that gloomy feeling that rose in my heart.
These folks… They weren’t living a life, they were getting tortured in hell.
“I’m not a merciless lord,” I said this first before adding, “all I’ll ask from you is to work diligently for me, kill my enemies, and win me wars.”
“Lord, that’s what we excel at, truly,” the dude spoke again while the rest were all silent.
“What’s your name?” if he was going to act as their temporary leader, then I’d just get to know him better.
“I’m Tove, the former general of the southern necromancers’ legion, at your service.”
A general?! I raised one eyebrow while looking at him and then at the others behind. There was nothing different between him and others.
“I know it’s hard to believe,” he spoke again, and this time I heard lots of bitterness in his voice, “but in our race, a secret technique runs which can keep us alive if no death energy can be provided.”
“How?” I got curious. I knew each cursed race had their own ways to keep themselves alive. And so I wanted to know how this technique worked and why it was related to him being in such a state.
If he was a general… Damn! Just recalling the fierce Lucias with all the orange fire engulfed his body and his might made my blood boil with excitement.
“It’s called the death sacrifice, my liege.”
“Just call me lord, ok?” I loved being called lord, not anything else. But that wasn’t the issue. That sacrifice technique reminded me of what I did with my souls.
Were they burning their death energy stored inside for them to survive longer without such energy?
“We… Sacrifice the gains we had from death energy, buying us time to survive. But that comes at the expense of lowering our grades and ranks, weakening our strength. So as lord can tell, I’m now not any better than any common grade necromancer.”
Well, my guess wasn’t off the mark. “But you can regain your former power, right?”
“A sacrifice is a sacrifice,” he said it in dejected tone, “but whoever walks once the path to greatness can always tell the path even blindfolded.”
“I see…” I got what he wanted to say. He couldn’t regain his former power with a flick of his fingers.
But he already walked this path and reached such heights. So it wasn’t that hard for him to return back to his former power.
He needed time, training, and lots of death energy for sure.
“This world is named after you,” I said, not only to Tove but to the small group behind, “and it will keep expanding, gathering death energy, and I’ll do whatever I can to increase the purity of this energy for you to train and get stronger.”
“…”
My words left behind shocking silence as they never imagined to get a lord like me, thinking about their benefits, and not fearing their cursed race.
“But… I need you to speak more about yourselves. I know literally nothing about your powers, what you can do, and how you can help in great wars. So…”
I paused and left the stage for Tove to speak.
But this ex-general seemed to be greatly shaken by my last promises that took him a few minutes before regaining his composure.
“Well… I can describe my race in one simple phrase… Support us in one battlefield, and we will win you worlds.”
“How?” I wasn’t affected by what he said until I’d got what he really meant by that.
“Lord, we grow stronger by absorbing death energy,” Tove started explaining, “and we do that by storing part of this energy in our body for us to use. The stronger we are, the higher and denser the amount of death energy we can store up.”
“And?”
“Using this energy, we can turn any dead corpse into skeletons fighting for our sake. These skeletons will be formed entirely from death energy, and they will gain stronger with each foe they kill as they will absorb part of their death energy and donate the rest to us.”
“So… In other words you are going to turn dead bodies into forces of your own?” I asked, while feeling this was something OP.
“It’s like this, but we can control limited numbers with our current weak strength. If the Lord can leave us here for a few days, we can increase our strength and double that number.”
“Few days? I’m planning to leave you for more,” I was intending on going to the second Earth and staying there for a long time. At this moment, I just felt regretful not creating this world inside my second Earth realm.
But it couldn’t be helped. They needed tons of death energy to grow stronger and my second world was too peaceful for them.
“How much can you control now?”
“Each? At most a thousand,” he gave me such a small number. But considering their current number, that meant this group of necromancers could bring forth one million skeletons.
And that was a considerable force, making them just second in terms of number and strength to my soulers.