Chapter 219: Chapter 108: A Resounding Victory! Demonic Strategist Lynch
Scarface Craig was dead.
With their leader dead, what little will to resist the remaining bandits had completely crumbled. Many threw down their weapons on the spot and began to kneel and beg for mercy. A few tried to take their chances by jumping into the lake to escape, but under the combined assault of the Undead Army and the Fishman forces, they were quickly silenced.
On Lake Heart Island, Lynch watched without expression as the last pocket of resistance on the mudflats was crushed.
He had no intention of accepting any surrender.
The men who had charged over with Scarface were mostly his trusted inner circle and a number of greed-driven desperadoes. They had no shortage of innocent blood on their hands.
Accepting their surrender was neither necessary nor safe.
Once the fighting on the mudflats had completely ceased, Lynch returned to the shore with Catherine and the Bone Mage in a small fishing boat.
The Bone Mage had now been promoted to Tier Three. Its physical form hadn’t changed much, but its entire skeleton had taken on a jade-like quality, giving it a faint air of majesty. The Soul Fire flickering in its eye sockets seemed to possess a budding, uncommon wisdom.
The Magic Staff in its hand had also been replaced with the one from the Crimson Reaper.
’Clean the battlefield.’ Through his mental link, Lynch issued the command to all the Soul Fire units under his command.
The Skeletons and Fishmen sprang into action at once, their efficiency astonishingly high.
The Fishmen dove into the water, dragging the bodies floating in the shallows onto the shore.
The Skeletons worked in pairs, quickly stripping the corpses of their armor and leather gear. They collected weapons, bows, and crossbows, and searched the bodies for coin purses and other miscellaneous items.
All the loot was sorted by type and piled up in several open areas.
Scarface’s band originally had seventeen or eighteen warhorses, but seven died in the chaotic battle. The eleven survivors were led to the side and put under the watch of a few Skeletons.
The dead horses were handed over to some militiamen who had followed them, who skinned and butchered the carcasses, piling the meat to be divided up later.
As for the Fishmen who had fallen in battle, Lynch, considering they died fighting for him, did not strip them of their flesh. He simply converted them into Undead Units to continue the fight.
Next came the Necromancer’s signature post-battle ritual.
Lynch and the Bone Mage, master and servant, had long been working in perfect sync. The man and skeleton divided the labor.
Lynch focused on reanimating the human and horse corpses.
The Bone Mage, in turn, handled the Fishman corpses, reassembled fallen Skeletons, and repaired the injured ones.
An aura of death energy spread across the mudflats.
POP! POP! POP! CRACK! SNAP!
The gruesome sounds of corpses exploding and bones grating against each other rang out continuously.
One by one, the freshly dead corpses transformed into Skeletons. They staggered to their feet and, driven by Lynch’s command, picked up the weapons they had used in life, becoming new "ripples" in his Sea of Skulls.
But there were a few surprises among them.
After Scarface Craig was converted into a Skeleton Servant, two clusters of ghostly green Soul Fire ignited in his eye sockets. His strength was barely preserved at Tier Two.
A conspicuous scar ran across its cheekbone, a sign that the original wound on his face had been deep enough to damage the bone.
’Not bad.’ Lynch had seen plenty of Soul Fire Skeletons by now, and with so many powerful commanders under him, he wasn’t particularly overjoyed. He simply nodded and casually bestowed a name upon it. "From now on, you’ll be called Bone Scar."
Bone Scar’s Soul Fire flickered as it received its new name and information. It then picked up the War Axe it had wielded in life and stood quietly to the side, awaiting new orders.
Due to the large number of corpses, seven others besides Bone Scar also successfully awakened their Soul Fire.
However, their strength and potential were mostly average. Lynch simply assigned them generic designations like "Bandit One" and "Bandit Two" before incorporating them into the various Skeleton Corps as low-to-mid-level officers.
As the Undead Army’s ranks swelled like a snowball rolling downhill, Soul Fire units would inevitably become more common. Naturally, not every one of them was worth Lynch’s special attention—the formal naming and focused training he had originally given the Bone Mage and Bone Spear.
They existed more as cogs and screws in his vast war machine.
The seven dead warhorses were also successfully converted into Skeleton Warhorses. Although none of them became a Soul Fire unit, their skeletons were intact, making them more than adequate as mounts.
Lynch assigned them to a few of his commanders—Bone Jade, Bone-Base, the Bone Mage, and Bone Scar—to improve their mobility.
As for the mountain of various types of armor and leather gear, Lynch carefully sorted through it. He selected about a hundred of the best-quality, most complete sets and stored them in his Space Ring.
He had the Skeletons pack up the rest to be dealt with by the militia later.
Since they were all well-practiced at this work, the entire process of "cleaning the battlefield" was remarkably efficient. In less than half an hour, the bloody scene was "picked clean."
Aside from the lingering stench of blood and Negative Energy in the air, and the two or three hundred new "members" in the Undead Army, there was almost no sign that a battle of annihilation had just taken place.
"Let’s go. On to the next place."
Lynch swung himself onto Red Rabbit and called over to Catherine.
Catherine nodded silently and mounted one of the captured warhorses.
She watched the Undead Army before her, which had grown even larger in such a short time, her feelings a complex and indescribable mix.
’So this is a Necromancer’s way of war... fueling war with war, their numbers growing with every battle.’
’Perhaps this is exactly why the Holy Light Church is so wary of Necromancers.’
Comments