I became a legion lich

177 Dwarf skeletons

The ancient had fallen forward in the sudden wind, so he had no chance to react to Treevor’s surprise attack. Its claws pierced the ancient’s back and impaled his heart, bypassing his clothing’s defensive enchantments and killing him instantly.

The other dwarves barely had time to process what happened before their surroundings disappeared. All dwarves had items enchanted with night vision since they lived underground, but even those were useless.

Treevor activated the field of the dead after killing the wyrm, before unleashing blades of aura on those closest.

The dwarves couldn’t see anything, but tried to activate their weapons’ enchantments as a desperate measure, finding it impossible to use them. In desperation, they tried to manipulate the surrounding land to defend themselves, but the aura blades were faster, inflicting deep cuts and killing the unlucky ones.

Unlike the dwarves who chose to stay behind, these younger ones weren’t wearing armor, just plain clothes that offered no protection from Treevor’s attacks.

Other purplish black spheres appeared around and the undead left one by one, easily ending any hope of survival for the dwarves that stayed behind.

“Was it really necessary to use the field of the dead here?” Emilia asked as she used death vision to find and exterminate the dwarves.

“The women have already fled through the tunnels and I don’t want to waste any more time here.” Treevor responded with a shrug as he deactivated the field of the dead, not wanting to waste any more mana.

“Split up and chase them. I’ll take the middle tunnel.” Treevor added and ran without hearing their answers. The skeletons split into the remaining two tunnels and relentlessly chased all the dwarves.

.....

There were no more warriors among the fleeing dwarves, so they couldn’t even fight back before dying.

‘I’m done here. How is it on your side?’ Treevor asked for the mind link, turning all the corpses into undead before exiting the tunnels.

‘We’re done here too. We’re heading back to the cave now with the dwarf skeletons.’ Emilia answered from the leftmost tunnel.

‘Done. we found only a few dozen here.’ Astrus answered from the third tunnel.

They all exited the tunnels and huddled together, doing a skeleton count to make sure they didn’t let anyone escape.

“If we add up the corpses we left at the entrance and these elderly people here, we must have killed them all.” Emília spoke after she finished counting, happy that the mission ended without major problems.

“Fine. Let’s collect the corpses that were buried and see if we can find anything useful in this sea of mud, although I doubt it.” Treevor spoke and set all the dwarven skeletons to work.

*************

“And that’s what happened. The invasion of the village was a success and we managed to kill all the dwarves without letting any escape.” Emilia finished the report.

“I see, good job everyone. Did you manage to find anything useful inside the cave? If the dwarves had large-scale spells, they should have plenty of magic metal to enchant it.” Athos asked with a greedy glint in his eyes as he finally got dressed, much to Emilia’s chagrin.

Treevor couldn’t stand looking away any longer and ordered the skeletons to bring some clothes to Athos. He received a nasty look from Emília, but he pretended not to notice as he answered his questions.

“We brought all the weapons and anything of value we could recover, but there wasn’t much magic metal to recover. The dwarves used the energy they injected into the mountain to maintain the spells, using a minimal amount of metal just to control the spell.” Treevor spoke with disappointment.

A dwarven skeleton approached them and handed a mithril hammer to Athos. The hammer felt small in his hand, as it was not a war hammer but a forge hammer, but Athos could feel that the hammer was a very powerful tool.

“So they use a separate tool to control spells? That’s way better than human technology that needs to build control rooms. I could control large-scale spells from anywhere, instead of creating a fixed target for enemies attack.” Athos could already see the possibilities that this new technology would bring.

‘I may not gain much in terms of materials, but I will gain a lot in terms of knowledge. It’s a fair trade for me.’ Athos thought to himself, a greedy smile spreading unconsciously.

“And then? It’s your turn to tell us about the attack on the fortress. We want all the details.” Emilia asked as she tapped her left foot against the floor, practically demanding an answer.

She knew she couldn’t force Athos to tell the truth, but she still wanted to express how worried she was about him.

Athos agonized over whether to tell the truth, thinking of the heartache that would come when Emília learned that he attacked the enemy general alone, but still spoke the truth in the end. The fortress army would arrive in little more than a week anyway.

He could force the newly arrived skeletons to keep quiet about what happened, but that would be too much work just to avoid a headache.

Athos told the truth and as soon as he finished, he felt Emília fighting against the control of the chains to strangle him with rage.

“Master, you really fought a general alone and unarmed? Why the hell would you do that??” She asked furiously, but Athos shrugged.

“Fun? It’s been a while since I’ve fought with my life on the line and I’ve learned a lot in my fight. I’ve depended a lot on all of you to fight and that’s been making me accumulate a little stress.” Athos could almost feel her fuming with rage.

“Okay, okay. There’s no use arguing with the boss. He’s crazy and no matter what we say, he’s going to stay that way.” Treevor placed himself between the two to prevent Emilia from complaining further.

“How are the preparations for our departure going? Have you finished loading all the carriages for us to leave?” Realizing that tempers had calmed down, Athos tried to change the subject.

“We’re almost done loading everything. We filled the carriages with concrete mixed with Divine mithril and the mithril plates, but we didn’t have enough space to carry spare weapons or other less valuable metals, so we used the skeletons as charge beasts.”

“Aren’t we leaving anything behind? I hate waste.”

“No, we managed to carry everything, although most of the beast skeletons are occupied right now. We also recovered some destroyed weapons from among the wreckage and are taking them for metal value. A few extra pounds of mithril or adamant won’t be a problem.”

“We’ve also gathered over 100 teleportation crystals. The actual number is higher, but many were destroyed inside the anomaly. All that’s left is to finish destroying the fortress and we’re free to go.” Emilia explained with an irritated snort.

“About that, it’s still going to take at least a week for the undead I left at the golden bow fortress to get here, so we’ll have to wait until then.” Athos informed her suddenly, increasing her irritation.

“So what? What do we do until then? Are we just going to stare at each other’s skulls?” Treevor asked innocently, but bitterly regretted it later.

“What are you talking about? We have a lot to do. You’ve collected dozens of weapons from the dwarves that need to be corrupted before runesmithing again, in addition to the enchanted weapons we obtained from the human army.”

“You have a lot of work to do Treevor, so don’t worry about getting bored.” Athos said in a gentle voice that sent shivers to everyone who heard it.

“The boss will also help, right? Even if I just corrupt the weapons and leave the rest to the runesmithing mages, it will still be hundreds of magical equipment!” He tried to beg for help, but Athos was relentless.

“I have my own work to do. I’m going to use the corpses you’ve separated for me and strengthen Hecatonchires. Besides, I still have some experiments to do with the prisoners, so-”

“About the prisoners, they are all dead. We forgot about them inside the prison and they died when the field of the dead was activated. We turned them into undead and mixed them among the rest of the army.”

“Well, one less task for me then. I’ll help you as soon as I’m done with the bone abomination. As for the rest of you, I want you to attack other dwarven villages within the range.” Athos spoke as if it were no big deal.

“There are other mountains nearby that may contain hidden villages. If we’re lucky, our presence isn’t known to the other dwarves yet and we can ambush them the same way they did the last village. We can use some of the mages among the dwarves as guides to guide us the other mountains.”

“I agree that it’s more productive to attack other mountains than to do nothing, but we still need to confirm whether the mountains are inhabited or not. Also, you seem to be excluding yourself from the mission, which is new coming from you.” Emília was suspicious of Athos’ meek attitude.

“Invading these underground villages seems boring. The dwarves don’t seem to be individually strong and despite having strong equipment, once you get close or bypass their defenses they drop like flies. From what you’ve told me, the biggest difficulty in the attack was achieved them, rather than the combat itself.”

“I’ll be much more useful working here with Treevor and the runesmith skeletons.” Athos spoke rationally, making all the skeletons’ jaws drop in unison.

“But how are we going to make up for Treevor’s absence? Without him, we would have melted into lava and no other skeleton has power comparable to his.” Emília asked after putting her jaw back in place.