“Rrrr…” the raspy sounds emitted by tens of thousands of rotting corpses usurped all other noise.
The army of the dead was upon us.
Which could only mean one thing… Besides a genius dwarf crafter, the lionkin found themselves another ally.
A necromancer.
Skeletons of various beastkin races formed the vanguard of the advancing army. Their exposed bone structures served as indicators of what they once were.
The reanimated bearkin corpses towered over the other undead, occupying the frontlines of the necromancer’s army. If their size wasn’t enough to ascertain they were bearkin, the girth of their bones left no doubt. On the other hand, the remains of wolfkin bore elongated snouts and jagged teeth.
It was similarly easy to guess which subspecies each corpse originated from, as almost all beastkin sported some unique characteristic they inherited from their animalistic traits.
Whatever flesh remained on these creatures was dry and blackened, clinging to their frames in thin, leathery strands. Some still wore scraps of rusted armor, and most of their weapons were dull yet stained with the remnants of past battles.
Even the reanimated apex predators seemed to sport some makeshift armor and weapons despite their living counterparts refusing to stoop that low. To them, relying on anything but their Goddess-given strengths was dishonorable. The non-apexes seemed to share the sentiment, but when push came to shove, they were much more open to the idea of using manmade tools.
But as I observed the incoming tide, I sensed an aura of pure dread settled over the surroundings. It was not just the sight of the undead that was unsettling, but their mere presence. The air itself felt wrong, as if the world rejected their existence yet was powerless to stop it. The ground beneath them seemed to die in their wake: the healthy, green plains decayed as the very soil darkened under their advance. The sickly stench of death and rot carried on the wind, overwhelming the senses and threatening to choke the living with its putrid embrace.
This army was akin to a moving graveyard, a tide of the damned marching forward with a singular purpose.
As I watched the massive horde march, I couldn’t help but remember back to Mearie’s words. ‘Necromancy is not about harvesting souls but merely about reanimating corpses! It’s a filthy class associated with necrophiliacs, who are the happiest when they are surrounded by death and misery. Necromancers travel from graveyard to graveyard, digging corpses from their graves only to take them back to their sick labs and stitch them together to repair any damages.’
She was right. What the necromancer did to these creatures was merely doing their best to make the corpses as effective in combat as possible.
Furthermore, Miri was also right in that—at least as far as I could tell—this person had nothing to do with the soul business. The necromancer merely kept using their mana for what I could guess took years of constantly reanimating corpses, adding them to their perpetually growing undead horde. These creatures were soulless; they were resembling a hivemind.
“Necromancer!! You dare!” Many beastkin on our side were enraged at the sight, understandably so. Not only were the lionkin enslaving their brethren—which was heavily frowned upon in beastman culture, unlike in the human lands, but this time around, that was just the tip of the iceberg.
The slave army marching side-by-side with the undead one told us all we needed to know about the strategy of our enemy. The captured beastkin would be enslaved, and upon their deaths, they would be reanimated to join the undead army. Using this method allowed the necromancer to keep growing their forces simply by winning battles—hell, not even that. The lionkin could just feed them corpses/slaves, resulting in their conquests over other beastkin tribes using the weaponry crafted by Ragnar.
Considering we had no intel on this necromancer and his ginormous army of the dead, the second option seemed more likely. I bet Leohtar Sunfang, the lionkin leader, was harboring the necromancer in his lands, letting them amass this giant army unimpeded.
Be that as it may, I didn’t have the luxury to gawk at them. We had to do something. We had a little over 600 units on our side, while there seemed to be at least a thousand slaves and god knows how many undead. I couldn’t even see what lay behind their frontline of rotting skeletal corpses. Even my mildest estimate would indicate we were facing ten thousand undead.
“Leohtar, you bastard! Just how low are you willing to stoop?!” Kargrim shouted, he was boiling with fury, just like the rest of his warriors. What their eyes were showing them was utter sacrilege, the antithesis of everything they believed in. Warriors who lost honorably deserved to be killed on the spot, not be given to a filthy necromancer to play with.
Knowing the severity of our situation, we quickly looked for Vex. Just as we neared, I saw Raika part her eyelids, as if her supernatural senses informed her of the upcoming grave threat even while she was knocked out cold.
“Vex, unless you three have been hiding some giant trump cards all this while, I don’t see how we can fight this.”
A wry expression welcomed my words. “We do have some tricks under our belts, but…”
Yeah. The sheer number of our enemies was overwhelming.
“This necromancer is a bad matchup for me…” Ignis said with ashen features. “Mummies and zombies are vulnerable to fire, but I have to expend a lot of mana to burn bones to ash.”
“They are weak to bludgeon damage. Just keep punching them until their bones are pulverized,” Raika’s wisdom sounded as she got to her feet and spat a mouthful of blood, the remnants of the beating she received from Vex.
“Kargrim!” Vex shouted.
Her voice successfully brought the large bearkin out of his rapidly building rage. He turned toward her and nodded grimly. “Retreat!” Kargrim bellowed his command, and perhaps, thanks to the extreme respect his subordinates held for him, they, too, regained their cool.
However, this time around, the issue won’t be solved simply by running.
*BWOOOOM!*
The ear-splitting blaring of a magically enhanced horn shook the air.
The uniformly marching slave and undead armies began charging.
The might of the Necromancer class quickly bared its ugly fangs at us when the skeletons lacking any musculature began rushing toward us as if they were in their tip-top physical shapes.
On the other hand, the weakness of the towering bearkin species was also very evident. Each of them had the strength and tankiness of multiple lionkin or tigerkin, but their speed was lacking in comparison. The effort to retreat seemed futile.
Kargrim came to the same conclusion as me, as in the next second, he halted and turned on his heels, facing the incoming horde. The rest of his subordinates did the same.
He looked behind for a moment, glancing at Sova and then at us. “Windbreaker, continue the retreat efforts. Red-Eye and Grim Reaper, you do so as well. This is not your fight. There’s no shame in running. We’ll win you as much time as possible.”
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