Taking the time to do a quick murder/minions calculation, roughly guesstimating my new stats, I optimized for how many Grave Shadows I should make if I wanted to get home by a bit before sunset. It came out to two dozen, but that felt like spending too long waiting for my mana to recharge, so I cut the number down to twenty. That would give me some breathing room to cast more spells as well.

This took a bit under two hours, and shadowy figures slowly filled the room. The first creation was an important figure, but there was no use wasting good resources on training yourself when the chaff would do. My score of spirits were formed from crappier items laying around; the bone necklaces contained a soul per piece, and while they weren’t at the same level of quality as the spirit, I didn’t feel bad about transforming them into what I felt were trash mobs.

Sitting in the cavern, meditating, I briefly felt uneasy about why I was being allowed to stay down in the depths with the treasure for such a long time. Had the guards forgotten, were they just stupid? I mean, goblins of their level didn’t show the greatest of intellect but still—this was just shameful. Giving them the benefit of the doubt, perhaps they were just confident there wasn’t another way out, or that I wouldn’t do something so brazen as attacking them within their nest. For anyone other than me, it kind of was a dumb idea.

Well, I didn’t dwell on it too long, and focused on recovering my mana(AKA lazing around).

The foolish goblins gave me far too much time to prepare. Popping a bone necklace around my neck to create additional grave shadows while fighting, I led the way, followed by a whistling mass of black shadows, skeletons, and pack zombies bringing up the rear. The pack zombies were rather burdened, despite leaving many items behind for tKlor’t’t, the skeletons would focus on helping defend the caravan, while I and the shades went grinding.

Confidently striding out of the depths by myself at first, the shades stayed hidden in the shadows for a moment. The four goblin guards looked at me curiously for a moment, before realizing their comrades were no longer present. Before they fully had a chance to react, I raised my fist to the air.

“*Viva la revolucion! Long live tKlor’t’t!*” That moment, the shadows spewed forth like demons from the underworld. In a very liberal sense, perhaps that could be a literal interpretation of what was happening. Falling on them like a poisonous gas, the Grave Shadows began swiftly moving from goblin to goblin, one shot, one kill,.

Stirring up the hornet’s nest, the goblins seemed more analogous to ants, especially if the undead were being modeled as anteaters. Contrary to expectations, the pack zombies didn’t seem to be in any danger of losing their baggage at all. The goblin nest may have been starting to bear down on us as one large horde, but our incredible damage output kept them back. A metal shield can help defend you, but a truly metal shield is a wave of bullets.

Encountering no problems, when the goblins struck out at the Grave Shadows, it rarely did anything, the weapon simply passing through. In the case of the unarmed combatants, they would even suffer damage on occasion from doing so. The manifestation of the harmful aura was not a passive ability for them, but the shades took the opportunity when it presented itself. Stubby green beasts charged at them continuously, to attack a few times, realize their mistake, and be killed before they could flee. Keeping the kill rate high enough that the fear wouldn’t start spreading outwards was important; not able to put together a reason why we hadn’t been killed, the stupidity of goblins was really working in my favor.

Milling our way through Oirk, every so often an ‘elite’ would come along. They were weak enough for even the generic grave shadows to dispatch. Able to kick back mid-battle again fed my ego unnecessarily. Hubris is the downfall of many great figures, but only when they can’t see Mt. Tai—I was totally qualified to be arrogant in this situation.

Figuring I didn’t need mana to fight shortly after we began, and decided just kick back even further and started to mass produce grave shadows. There would be a slight decrease in the amount of experience and Soul Power that I gained if I left it all to my minions, but that was really only a side benefit of the current situation. Mostly the attack on Oirk was to help tKlor’t’t out. After all, this turn of events would likely force him to make a move, so the least I could do was make it easier for him to take over. Since the grave shadows killed at a similar rate that I did due to their mobility, they essentially paid off the opportunity cost after the time it took me to accumulate the energy to create them.

Charging mana and spitting out another grave shadow around every five minutes, my profits in the situation were huge. With the fact that they were more or less untouchable, I could freely let them move autonomously without worry of their destruction. The benefits of increasing my control load lasted permanently, but I could always work on that later. Grave Shadows wouldn’t have their combat power increase by much in this situation anyhow, better to focus on accumulating mana faster.

Leisurely watching the battle while accumulating mana, I watched the first of the grave spirits. It seemed quite enthusiastic about its job, which was a good thing. The pent up rage probably wouldn’t apply positively to many other situations, though I could turn it off if it ever became an actual problem. Here, despite the heavy limitations placed on its emotions and personality, bloodlust showed through. Certainly capable of dealing damage faster, instead it focused on making more brutal strikes, complete overkill. When observing it earlier, I thought a more mellow vengeance had permeated the spirit, not something this volatile.

Come now Grave Spirit, punching holes through some random goblin’s chest is overdoing it don’t you think? There’s no need to show such excessive force.

…

Well when I do it, that’s because I’m having fun, not because I’m trying to work out psychoses.

Waving it off, it didn’t affect the course of the conflict enough to pay it any mind. A small mental note about possible mental instability counted as dealing with it for the moment. For the moment, I was madly focusing on gathering my mana.

“*Power, unlimited POWAHHH!!!*” Going ham, despite the fact that nothing actually needed to be done to gather energy faster, and otherwise just idling about, I worked on my various laughters. Mocking, jeering, snide, cackling—there wasn’t much of any other way to channel the joyous feeling of levels. Even though I was only getting a single point of experience for pretty much anything my minions killed, the sheer numbers made up for it.

This could never be done in Underworld of Armok. There were large populations of monsters, but rarely at such low levels, and if there had been they would be accompanied by a boss creature of some sort. After all, other than as a method of leveling up, and maybe the occasional spree to let off steam, mindlessly mowing down huge quantities of pathetic monsters wasn’t much fun. It didn’t make much sense in-game either, the weak would be devoured by the strong. So from both a game design and setting standpoint, this kind of occurrence should never have happened.

But I wasn’t in Underworld anymore, now was I?

Feasting on a steady stream of experience, this battle differed from the earlier ones because here my minions were free to spread out and attack as quickly as they were able. Every few minutes, another avatar of death would spring from my hands, and the rate increased. Though it took longer, starting at the first quarter hour, I leveled up, raising my mana regeneration—thus the rate at which I produced grave shadows. It cascaded into an exponential pattern of growth.

At least, it did until the goblins began fleeing.

There isn’t any way to not have predicted that outcome. Dozens were dying every second, at some point even the stupidest of creatures realized that this was not a fight they could win, no matter their numbers. The goblins only figured this out after about a third of the present population had been wiped out, so this wise move didn’t really call for a reevaluation of their intelligence; it actually may have warranted lowering my view of their mental capabilities. Seriously, no chief and insects became better tacticians.

Scattering into the trees like the bugs they were, by the end a total of 51 grave shadows phased through the forest in a radius some distance shorter than a kilometer. Reaching a nice number, shade production stopped. Killing speed was no longer the problem, but the number of goblins that could be reached. A major downside to living shadows is they couldn’t leave my range of control. Perks could extend the range, give them an amount of time they could leave for, or some other tricks, but again I lacked the power at the moment to send them out.

Lightly jogging between the trees, zig-zagging to sweep up some remnants, due to their numbers a huge amount were caught while fleeing. As the day began to die along with the goblins, I felt one last rush of power for the day.

“*HAHAHA! Look at you all scatter! Fall beneath my armies of the damned and be silenced! May the only noise you make again be the howling of your spirits as they are bound to slay your kin! Let Oirk become a land forbidden, where even such impotent creatures as yourselves are able to remember this. The tale of the folly of daring to slight a NECROMANCER!*”

Chasing away the dregs of the goblins, Oirk stilled. The nest vacated of all goblins, only true grubs were left behind, and the settlement fell into silence, save the chill winds that wrapped around my grave shadows and the rattles of Clavi bouncing around—such a hyperactive skeleton.

It definitely did not fit the grim, yet bombastic tone of my victory. Especially when he started to go around trying to fashion himself a crown and cape, prancing about victoriously like he was the MVP of the battle.

“*Oi, you rascal. Don’t forget that sort of thing is why I’m going to ground you!*” I didn’t know what grounding even meant for a skeleton with personality. Being spiritually linked, I was aware that he seemed to be doing all this without apparent emotion, but the more Clavi joked around, the more I felt I was overlooking something.

Maybe he was just a Philosophical Skeleton, but that wouldn’t stop me from grounding him! Clavi has been way too unrestrained in the backgrounds of my epic moments. To Inventory with you!

I didn’t order him to come to me, in case the override messed with his apparent emotional states. In addition, it also felt a lot more fun to physically chase after him. Hot on his tailbone, we started running about, hopping over the carnage and dodging around trees. In Clavi’s case, he made an attempt to scramble upwards like a squirrel.

My increase muscles and agility improved by less than a point per level on average, but while that wasn’t much in relation to Underworld of Armok, it did mean I was more physically adept than almost anyone on earth. Plus my already tall body, I flew through the air, tackling Clavi of the side of the trunk.

We landed with a squish in the surrounding mess. Already filthy, there wasn’t much reason to pay attention to it. Not to mention that I had to work with, which quickly swept over both Clavi and myself.

“*In you go, you hoodlum!*” Grabbed by the skull, Clavi found himself shoved face-first back into Inventory.

Dusting off my hands, I popped a few s into existence as the sun lowered beneath the canopy. There wasn’t much time remaining, but I still had one last thing to do after cleaning myself up and putting my shirt back on.

With a muffled fluttering noise from the rags picked up by their sourceless winds, the grave shadows awaited with their semi-corporeal forms. Hard to see in the darkness, but not exactly impossible either. They couldn’t stray outside my range, but I also didn’t want to scrap them all.

Eh, my range had gotten closer to a kilometer. They could just sit around in the forest while I was in the village. I just needed to keep an eye out in case Ross and Troy made a trip through the forest, heart attacks weren’t something I could just fix.

So my unholy entourage followed me back to Salt Village, after two incredibly productive days.