It was early afternoon, the day after the dream meeting.

  Tybalt watched with a slight frown as the last of the captured animals was laid on the ground before him. It was bound with hempen rope that Tybalt had borrowed from Vidalia’s Uncle Edmund.

  “Master, we have secured another group of beasts for you, as you commanded,” Baldwin said. He sounded almost like he expected to be breathless, except that he didn’t need to breathe.

  “Would you like us to go back and get more?” Hieron asked, watching the necromancer’s face closely.

  Tybalt shook his head slightly. “Thank you both.”

  Unfortunately, my newest undead and my older undead have too large of a gap in strength, he thought. The animals that Baldwin and Hieron are capable of capturing alive, even with assistance from two dozen zombies and skeletons, aren’t on a high enough level as a threat to be a challenge to these mummies.

  “Um, may I have a repair, master?” Baldwin asked. He sounded nervous.

  Tybalt looked at the revenant and raised an eyebrow.

  He barely has a scratch on him. Why’s he asking for healing?

  But it would be quicker to give Baldwin what he wanted than to interrogate him. Tybalt needed to practice Undead Repair more, anyway, so that the System would recognize he knew how to do it and give him the skill.

  He quickly and efficiently used Fleshcraft and Scrimshaw together, then shifted to just Fleshcraft; he could sense that Baldwin didn’t have any damage to his bone structure this time. The repair was over in roughly a minute. The revenant smiled as it concluded, his expression as comfortable as if he’d just stepped out of a warm bath.

  “Thank you,” Baldwin said.

  Tybalt grunted, “You’re welcome.”

  Not that you needed it, he thought. Maybe he just wanted the attention…

  With that task done, he turned to look at the newer undead he had raised. He had gone to the Valley of Martyrs that morning, so there were a total of four mummies under his command now. All were former Beastkings, so it was a bit ego-affirming that they waited, postures rigid, for his command. He had noticed them looking over the beasts the other undead had gathered for Tybalt to test them against. Tybalt sensed no anticipation of threat in their poses, though the bound beasts looked angry and ready to try and maul the first thing that stepped near them.

  Hopefully the status screens I’ve seen and the feeling I get from the mummies means we’re actually going to be a serious problem for the Kingdom.

  He fixed his eyes on his two newest mummies in particular. He had raised them just that morning and picked up a new level in defiant necromancer at the same time.

  One of them was another huntsmaster, and the other was the last of the line of Priestkings to have ruled the beastfolk. His class in life had been high priest, which was also, slightly confusingly, his actual role in beastfolk society, like Tybalt’s. High Priest of Mudo.

  Not all priests in Astara or Vika’s religious orders had the priest class, even if they had sufficient connection to their deity to perform healings. Classes were only distributed to a select few, who some referred to as “the elect.”

  To receive the High Priest of Mudo class gave skills that somewhat resembled Tybalt’s necromancer powers but were more diverse.

  Between former High Priest Stanislaw and chthonic mage Edgard, I could advance my class a lot.

  They each had skills analogous to those that the System had offered him or that Unholy Forces hinted he would be offered. It should be like having a couple of mentors in necromancy.

  “Stanislaw, show me how Corruption works,” Tybalt said. He pointed at one of the weaker animals that Baldwin and Hieron had presented him with, a macaque.

  “As you command, master,” the former king replied through their bond. None of the mummies could speak aloud. It was the biggest downside of this type of undead that Tybalt was aware of thus far. Their tongues could not be preserved in functional form, even by the embalming processes passed down among the alchemists of the cat tribe.

  “Is there anything we should be doing?” asked Mariella, who was standing off to the side next to Kistana and Vidalia. Vidalia was present at Tybalt’s invitation, mainly for her own entertainment. Kistana was there in her bodyguard role. Mariella was there for another reason.

  “Yes, I want you and the mummies to spar,” Tybalt said. “If you’re up for it. You’ve been a great sparring partner for me, and I need the mummies to gain some levels, so you seemed like the most logical choice.”

  “It would be my pleasure,” Mariella said warmly. She walked up to Tybalt, took his hand, and whispered, “Good try last night, with my father. I was too groggy to say it this morning, but I feel a little better that we spoke to him at least.”

  Tybalt smiled, leaned down, and pressed his lips against hers for a brief kiss.

  “Thanks, gorgeous,” he said after their mouths parted. He lowered his voice. “We tried. We’ll try again. Let’s give it a few days, or maybe a week. Let his feelings cool down. Come up with better arguments.”

  “Yeah,” she said.

  “And I guess this means you and I will actually get married!” the necromancer continued. He couldn’t keep a note of uncertainty out of his voice. The General had technically given a sort of blessing, in the sense that he had told Mariella she could go ahead and marry Tybalt, but that was right when the conversation devolved into accusations and arguments. “I mean, I’ll get down on one knee and ask you properly. But now I feel like I can say you… belong to me.”

  She pressed her head against his chest and nuzzled into the space in the middle.

  “Yeah, I’m going to be yours for life now,” she said. “No returns. But you have to take care of me.” Her voice took on a slight teasing edge. “Or my dad will kill you.”

  There’s a non-zero chance he’ll do that anyway…

  The story has been taken without consent; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

  “I’ll take care of you later, there are too many people around right now.”

  He couldn’t see her face, buried as it was in his shirt, but her ears and neck turned red.

  “You know that’s not—”

  He laughed, and after a moment, she started laughing too.

  Yeah, I’ll take good care of you, gorgeous.

  “Don’t worry.” He caressed her hair for a few seconds before she pulled back.

  “All right. Um, sparring. Which one should I fight first?”

  “Go for Edgard,” Tybalt said, pointing.

  The former chthonic mage shouldn’t be very effective against Mariella, since most of his skills were not combat specialized. But his strength stat should be close to hers. He had been incredibly high level as a living person, though his class was not a physical one by nature.

  Mages were almost never as physically strong as physical class holders like Beastking William, a former huntsmaster. If that mummy sparred with Mariella, Tybalt reckoned it was possible he might accidentally break bone before he realized how much stronger than her he was. Hopefully sparring with Edgard would be safer.

  It was good to see their statuses as a reminder of what this world is like at the peak, Tybalt thought. I still have a ways to go. These might be among the strongest Beastkings, but the strongest warriors in the Kingdom probably wouldn’t be very different from them.

  “Edgard, don’t do anything that will injure her,” Tybalt sent. “Be very careful until you take the measure of her strength.”

  “Understood, master,” the chthonic mage replied instantly.

  It was interesting, as Tybalt thought about it, how the mummies instantly seemed to understand their situation and content themselves with it. He didn’t know if it was religious devotion or the nature of the mummification process over creating fresher undead.

  But there was none of the resistance that he had experienced with Baldwin, for instance, or the grappling-with-his-condition that Hieron had gone through. There wasn’t even the sort of subtle negotiation he had experienced from Heimar, who had seemingly retained his entire personality from prior to death after his revival as a nachzehrer, complete with the old man’s attachment to Raybeck.

  The mummies were more like obedient servants who were completely calm and steady at all times while retaining their intelligence—and probably most of their personalities—from life. At least that was his perception thus far.

  Mariella and Edgard squared off, and Tybalt watched the first few exchanges before he decided that the mummy was playing nicely enough with the necromancer’s future bride. They were both feeling each other out, which meant the chthonic mage should be able to register how strong she was and adjust his fighting methods accordingly.

  He turned to face Stanislaw, who was crouched over the macaque, just waiting for the go-ahead to demonstrate his power on the creature.

  “Proceed,” Tybalt said.

  “Watch closely, then, master,” the mummy replied dryly.

  Stanislaw’s power gathered around his hand—a dark gray aura that reminded Tybalt of his time in the Tower of Death, fighting the lich—and then the necromancer felt it as the energy pushed into the macaque, invading its form against the beast’s will. The living creature let out cries of pain as its body fought the power, but Stanislaw pressed on, and Tybalt observed how Corruption was similar to what Tybalt had tried before, in his own experiments—and how it was different.

  Before he knew it, the mummy had fully corrupted the creature.

  It wasn’t an undead. Tybalt hadn’t asked for that, and Stanislaw apparently hadn’t gone for it. But the beast’s eyes had changed color, from a tranquil brown to an off-putting red. And there was a different air about it. The creature’s maw was twisted in a vicious, silent snarl now, its head twisting from side to side as if it wanted to sink its teeth into someone.

  It was hard to be certain exactly what had changed. Possibly the creature’s species. It didn’t belong to Tybalt as an undead, so he couldn’t see its status. He could only speculate.

  He pushed in something more than mana, the necromancer thought after processing for a few seconds. It felt divine. Reminiscent of the angel’s energy in Lord Mudo’s realm. And the amount of mana he needed… wasn’t as much as what I was trying to put into turning humans into undead before.

  Tybalt tried to conjure the same energy around his own hand, not just pulling mana from within, but feeling for his connection to the Death God.

  But it didn’t seem to work. Mana appeared around his hand, his usual deep green energy, but he couldn’t feel the trace of divinity the dead high priest demonstrated with his skill.

  “Did you get what you needed, master?” the mummy asked. He seemed to know the answer before Tybalt replied, though.

  “No,” Tybalt sent. “Show me again.”

  “Very well.”

  Stanislaw demonstrated Corruption on three more creatures, and although Tybalt thought he was getting better at understanding what was happening with that skill, it still wasn’t something he knew how to replicate. It was the divine energy component of the puzzle.

  “Did this skill give you access to that power you’re inserting along with your mana?” Tybalt finally asked. “Or was there some other way of drawing on it?”

  “The power from Lord Mudo?” the mummy asked.

  Tybalt nodded.

  “You can draw upon it by prayer, meditation, fasting, undergoing visions that will bring you closer to our god…”

  The necromancer scowled. That all sounded like it would take more time than he preferred to invest.

  Stanislaw let loose a dry, telepathic chuckle at Tybalt’s expression. “I don’t suppose you have a skill selection available. There may be a quicker way, depending on what skills you have available and whether there is a slot open for you.”

  “I’ve never met an undead with a sense of humor before,” Tybalt said.

  “I try to stop and smell the roses when I have time,” the mummy replied.

  “Do you even still have a nose under those bandages?”

  This time, they both laughed together, out loud, though the sound from Stanislaw was strange and muffled by the bandages wrapped around his head.

  “Sure, I have a skill selection available,” Tybalt said after a moment. He pulled up his skill options and read them out telepathically to Stanislaw.

  “Choose Unholy Consecration, master,” the mummy sent immediately. “With that skill, learning how to use Corruption should also come much more easily. They both draw on the same connection with Lord Mudo, but Unholy Consecration will strengthen it far more. You must be a very special mortal to have been given access to such a skill.”

  Tybalt nodded. “Well, you are an expert.”

  The necromancer used his skill selection, and his eyes widened.