CHAPTER 198: LEGIONS OF THE DEAD

Kai breathed deeply. Before he could use his Broodmother to create a legion of rats, he had to do something with his souls.

He felt them tearing him up inside.

He quickly pulled all of the petty, lesser, and grand souls from his soul vault.

Almost fifteen thousand souls floated above them, making the sky look as though is housed thousands of planets right above their heads.

But they weren’t released. They were still connected to him. Still overloading him with their energies.

Ylthara’s town square trembled.

It began as a whisper of wind, then a chill that spread across stone and bone alike.

Shadows pulled unnaturally toward the figure in the centre, cloaked in black, hood down, hair damp with sweat.

Kai’s breath steamed, despite the summer air.

His spine arched as his soulspace pulsed violently.

It was overfull.

Too many voices inside him.

Too many memories.

Too many souls.

[Contained Souls: 15,631]

[Warning: Physical body approaching rupture threshold]

[Stability: 81%]

"Well... That’s... New..." Kai said, struggling to focus.

He fell to one knee, clutching his chest, teeth gritted.

With a flick of his wrist and a twist of thought, a tear in the world opened between this reality and his shadow space.

From it, the Soul Forge emerged, slamming into the cobblestones with a dull, final clang.

Obsidian and silver, ringed with runes. The central brazier burned cold with amethyst light. Ethereal chains drifted around it, anchored to nothing.

Kai staggered upright.

The forge hummed, recognizing its master.

He reached inward and fed it the first soul.

A Petty Soul flickered, then vanished into the heart of the forge. Then a second petty soul. The flame shuddered. The runes turned. A Lesser Soul dropped into a recess of light.

He kept going.

Faster. Louder. Harder.

Each cast soul shook the stones.

4,986 Petty Souls converted to 2,493 Lesser Souls

Existing: 7,209 Lesser

New total: 9,702 Lesser Souls

He grunted, pouring them in. His fingers smoked with strain.

[Stability: 36%]

9,702 Lesser Souls converted to 4,851 Greater Souls

Existing: 2,052 Greater

New total: 6,903 Greater Souls

[Stability: 21%]

His eyes flickered. Blood streamed from one nostril.

6,903 Greater Souls converted to 3,451 Grand Souls

Existing: 930 Grand

New total: 4,381 Grand Souls

[Stability 9%]

A sharp crack echoed through his ribs. He clenched his side.

4,381 Grand Souls converted to 2,190 Sovereign Souls

Existing: 496 Sovereign

New total: 2,686 Sovereign Souls

[Stability: 3%]

The forge’s flame burned brighter. Pure white now. Screaming without sound.

His own body screamed. The heat inside him matched the heat of the soul forge.

"Fuck!" Kai yelled.

He felt his body reaching its limits.

2,686 Sovereign Souls converted to 1,343 Primordial Souls

’I didn’t think... This is how... I’d be getting all of these souls...’

"Kai! Your eyes! They’re glowing white!" Vepice called out.

Kai gasped and vision swam.

His skin glowed faintly, veins like rivers of starlight.

He paused.

Then looked down at the burning core of the forge and whispered to himself.

"Let it be enough."

Reality checked him. Or the system did, at least.

[Souls: 1,350]

[Soul Vault: 1,357/1,000]

[Stability: 1%]

He couldn’t take them in. He was full.

And holding them in his body now would tear him apart.

His jaw tightened.

Cracks formed on his skin, letting out wisps of light. As the seconds grew, so did the size of the cracks.

He stood, arms stretched wide, and let the wind of his shadow pulse outward.

The extra 350 souls ripped away from his soul vault, scattering like embers into the sky.

A storm of spirits burst into the air, curving, twisting, and vanishing into clouds, stones, trees, and perhaps... A world beyond.

Some flared like falling stars.

Some dove into the ground and were gone.

One seemed to hang around and watch him.

Kai let out a ragged breath and knelt once more.

The forge still blazed.

He reached out, and with a subtle tug of will, it folded back into his shadow, vanishing beneath him like a swallowed nightmare.

The light died.

Only Kai remained in the silent town square, soul vault thrumming with power.

[Soul Vault: 1,000 / 1,000]

[All Excess Released]

[Stabilization: Recovering]

His hands trembled. His breath caught.

But he was alive.

The souls were either contained or set free.

"You’re... Okay?" Vepice asked.

"Yeah. Now I’ve just got to get to work."

"Work?"

"Yeah. We have a lot to do, and so does one of my minions. A mother, of sorts."

"A mother? You should rest... You almost died, right?"

"I was about to lose all stability. Whatever that means."

Kai brought all of his undead from the city towards them. Everything older was absorbed into the shadow space, but the legions of zombies, all stood before them.

The skies over Ylthara had long since dimmed.

The scent of smoke and silence lingered where a city once thrived. Broken homes. Abandoned markets. Bodies, once living, now corpses. And those corpses, soon to be something else entirely.

Kai stood at the center of the ruined square, the charred remnants of banners fluttering weakly in the wind. Around him, twelve thousand eight hundred and four lifeless forms sprawled across stone and dirt, every citizen that had once lived here.

Undead.

Preserved.

Waiting.

Kai’s shadow stirred.

He reached within and pulled out a form that crawled and writhed, resisting the light.

The Undead Rat Broodmother.

Her form unfurled like wet fabric.

She towered over Kai, Vepice, and the zombies.

A glistening, a bloated horror of ribs and bristle and bone.

Half-rat, half-plague made flesh, her dozen milky eyes blinked out of sync as she slithered forward, sniffing the air. Clusters of smaller rats burst from her underside, hungry and screaming, only to vanish back inside her after moments.

"Go," Kai said simply. "Strip them. Feed."

The Broodmother squealed in glee, high-pitched and unnatural, and lunged toward the nearest corpse.

Hours Passed.

The sun set. Stars rose and watched in silence.

The sound of flesh being devoured was constant.

The sound was of wet tearing, chewing, cracking.

Kai remained still. His body still hurt from his oversaturated level of souls.

One by one, the bodies were ripped clean. Skin, muscles, organs were all devoured. Left behind were white bones, clean and glinting under starlight.

He watched the gruesome sight unfold.

And in return... from her heaving sides, the Broodmother birthed them.

Rat after rat.

Fanged, black-eyed, ribbed and rotting.

Not mere rodents like farm mice or warehouse rats. These were undead rats, bearing fragments of soul, glowing with necromantic instinct. Hundreds became thousands. They swarmed, formed spirals, waited for his command.

The ground looked as if it were a single writhing mass of rotten flesh.

When the final body was stripped, the Broodmother curled in on herself and slumped into Kai’s shadow, purring.

Kai stood before the results.

12,804 skeletons, perfectly stripped by the Broodmother’s magic.

6,201 undead rats, writhing, twitching, ready to kill or crawl into cracks beneath the earth.

The city was silent again.

Kai’s gaze swept across the vast open square, the stone ground stretching into streets filled with rank upon rank of bones and beasts.

[Undead Army: 20,309.]

A quiet whistle escaped him.

"Well," Kai muttered, arms crossed, "that’s more than twice the amount I needed."

He ran a finger along the sharp curve of his jaw. "I’ll upgrade them all through fusion... once I get my hands on some souls of relevant quality."

From behind him, a soft voice broke the quiet.

"We’ll be safe now, yes?" Vepice asked. She stood at the edge of the square, pale in the moonlight, her eyes wide as they swept the horde.

Kai looked over his shoulder.

His tone was calm, almost clinical. "A legion of more than twenty thousand undead? Maybe. Ylthara wasn’t ready. They weren’t an army."

He turned back to the skeletal ranks, his voice low.

"Who knows what could happen if we attacked all of the forces of the church, for instance. They’d have relics. Seraphs or something like that. Maybe even a god’s proxy. Maybe even a god themselves..."

He thought of Mari and how Elerin possessed her.

"Oh..." Vepice said.

He let the silence sit heavy.

Then, he stepped forward, and the rats parted like water.

"So, we know you’re a chronomancer, we’ve destroyed a city, and we’ve got just a couple more tasks to complete before we leave for Sala."

"Do you think... That with my ability, I could undo all of this one day?"

"I don’t know, Vep. Maybe."

They looked at the wreckage of the city. Kai couldn’t feel any survivors after a few more hours of his soldiers scouring every inch of Ylthara.

"What I do know is that we need to find Ebonbrand’s Final Resting Place."

Vepice nodded once, tightly. She stepped up beside him.

Her voice, though quiet, held no fear.

"Then what are we waiting for? Let’s go."

And together, they walked through the city towards the exit, twenty thousand soldiers that following, deep into he shadow of a necromancer.