I looked at my stat sheet and fought back a sigh. Just over four thousand Souls left. Sure, I was terrifying. I'd had to demonstrate my new abilities for the Fangs and Kril last night while handing out tens of thousands of Souls to long lines of nomads. I was still worried about what would happen when we met the main armies of the South. I wouldn't be able to carry a battle on my own. Probably.

We were back on the road—an unfortunate turn of phrase as it was rough grassland, stripped bare of any life too stupid or slow to run away from the feral Huskar that moved ahead of the main force as scouts. Glimpse circled overhead, and I jogged alongside Wilson at the front of the main formation.

As the sun peaked and began to fall, I sent Glimpse on ahead, but it was a waste of time. The outriders and scouts had picked out a spot for the next camp already, and when I sent him winging back down our line, the wagons were still trickling along in our wake.

Three long days ground by. Days of running and riding, arguing with Jandak, who still wasn't happy about Haylin heading back north, despite her heavy escort. Days of stopping my mad golem from threatening to murder anyone other than Fay, who got close to me. I got to sleep in a king's tent every night, but I knew the average legionnaire and nomad trooper was making do with far less. It didn't sit right with me.

"We'll be there today, love," said Fay. "Once we take Gethanel and the other trader towns, we'll know what we're up against. Come back to bed!" She moved the furs to make space for me and revealed a long glimpse of her naked body.

"Temptress!" I chuckled.

"You haven't slept properly since we set out!" she complained, dropping the furs back to conserve the warmth.

"I don't need much sleep anymore, Fay. It's finally happening. I've done everything I can think of, but now it's time to cast the dice. Mortimer isn't an idiot. He'll have things I couldn't have predicted."

"We couldn't have predicted. If you want to ride out and see what the Ur-viles have already done to whatever forces he had garrisoned in Gethanel, be my guest. I'm going to stay here where it's warm for a few more minutes!" Her head vanished under the furs.

I left the tent and breathed deeply in the fresh morning air. It would be soon. I could feel it in my bones—the first real test of this mishmash army we'd cobbled together. The legion was already breaking camp, while the nomads were a bit more relaxed about the whole process. Being mounted and relying on the speed of their horses rather than their legs bred a certain arrogance into them that I'd been noticing more and more as they grew into their new role.

With a sword at my hip and a lump of black metal on my shoulder, I set off after the forward elements. They'd set off a few hours ago and would be closing in on the outskirts of the northernmost shit-sitters already. The feral Huskars had orders not to eat people, and they were Soulbound, so they didn't have a choice, but not eating was a lot different from not slaughtering. Best if I were close at hand in case any of them got… overly enthusiastic.

Wilson ran alongside me happily, tongue lolling out to one side and snapping in the wind. The sun caught on his bronze fur as we raced after the poor bastards marching and riding since before the sun rose.

Glimpse went ahead of us, giving me a bird's-eye view of our advance. Five hundred legionaries jogged along in a narrow line, and they were escorted by nearly a thousand cavalry on their flanks. Mulius and Marbo loped along at the leading edge of the infantry, towering over their former brethren.

The feral Huskars had already devastated Gethanel by the time Glimpse got that far ahead of us. The wooden walls had been smashed aside, and half the town was demolished. Half a dozen very pissed off looking Ur-viles were watching over maybe fifty survivors while the rest chased down the undead that had infested the place or ran further south across the farmlands.

The ones running ahead weren't getting far as they constantly stopped to smash into farmhouses and feast on farm animals. I needed to make clear the rules on looting and how that applied to enemy livestock to the crazy giants.

Glimpse flew east and west, but it was only more of the same. All the border towns, only recently taken by Urkash, were either dead, becoming dead as Huskar stomped through them, or had been abandoned. I sent the bird south, hoping to catch some hint of the main Urkash forces.

I yanked on the threads of the furthest feral Huskars, summoning them back. As long as they were close to our lines, they couldn't be swarmed by "wizards" or Mortimer's Soulbound Servants. I slipped off Wilson's shoulder outside Gethanel and sent the wolf off to hunt anything the ravenous giants had missed.

The wooden walls were broken into splinters in places. I'd run from this place not so long ago, as a few dozen undead had been set on us. To be fair, I'd caused a bit of a kerfuffle, but Getha had been a bit of a prick. Then we'd come back and burned some of their fields to the south in order to exact recompense for the murder of Hatrikandos, miserable asshole though he had been.

Some of the prisoners I'd taken back then had left family behind in this ruin. They were still working for me in the Pass or at Riverwheel. I strode through a gap in the walls and began bellowing orders at the Huskar.

"You. What's your name?" I demanded, yelling at the biggest Huskar guarding the prisoners. "Gruth, lord," he said, bowing his head to me.

"Take a couple of Huskars and lead these people north to the main column. If they give you any shit or try to run, squash them." I glared at the survivors and spotted someone with a face I sort of recognised.

This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.

"You. You're part of the ruling family?" I demanded harshly. I was addressing the least shit-scared-looking member of the human survivors. None of them had the telltale glowing letters over their heads to indicate they were Soulbound.

"Not anymore, barbarian," he sneered. So not the smartest of Tanil's family members. Last I'd seen him, the leader of the prisoners we'd taken here last year was happily learning to be a smith at Riverwheel.

"You know Tanil?" I asked calmly.

"That snot nosed-" I flashed forward and snatched the man up by his throat.

"I like Tanil. He's become a valuable part of the tribes, on his way to becoming a smith. Don't disrespect your… cousin?" He tried to nod, which only made him gasp harder, so I dropped him.

"Gruth, if any of them run, eat this one." I grinned evilly at the man. Right now, that asshole was frantically praying none of the survivors hated him enough to risk running. I saw his Adam's apple bob up and down like a fishing float. The boost to my reflex stat had changed my perception of the world around me. It was like everyone else was operating at half speed, plodding slowly through things that could be done in a flash.

The Huskar began shepherding the human survivors toward the north. There was nothing left of this town. It had been on a downward trend when I got here the first time, probably due to the pressure from Urkash and the replacement of a competent ruler with a scared boy.

"You, there should have been hundreds of people here. My troops weren't out to kill, so why are there so few of you?" I asked a woman as she filed past me with giants glaring down at her. She spat at my feet, and I held up a hand. The bronze automaton that constantly stalked me stopped and retracted its killing limbs. Got to stop forgetting about Bob!

"The King passed by. The other King, the real one," she sneered. "Unless you were useful, you joined the Grey Horde. You fucking nobles, just using us like we're chaff on the wind!" She pulled her shawl tight over her shoulders and marched away after the other survivors.

If Old Morty was stripping every town and city he owned to make swarms of undead… I thought of all the mana potions sitting in my storage space. I grinned happily.

"Bob! Spit isn't going to hurt me! It's great you're so protective, but pick your moments, bloke!"

"A female assaulted you. Threat detection noticed dangerous levels of pathogens in her saliva and prompted intervention," Bob replied in his caricature of Aresk's voice.

"Spit isn't a prob–you could detect the bacteria in her spit?" I turned to stare at the mismatched blue eyes of the metal monster I'd made.

"Of course, Ray. Your skin is absolutely crawling with the things as we speak." I shunted that thought to the side and moved hot showers up my list of inventions to push on the tribes.

"Go find any nearby undead that were missed and kill them. Don't hurt anyone who's still alive," I ordered.

"Very well, Ray. Have you considered washing more frequently?"

"Just go, bloke," I snapped, then leapt backwards as his tentacles blurred into the ground at my feet and began throwing stone and dirt over the machine's shoulders. The spider legs pulled close to its body as it moved into the tunnel it was making.

Fool me once, you bastard…

"All Huskar, fall back to the north NOW!" I yelled as I began running back towards our main forces. "Bob, just kill them all!" I found the threads linking my soul to Mulius and Marbo and yanked on them. I felt the titans lurch into motion and surge ahead of the legion forces.

Grey fingers began to pull themselves out of the dirt as I drew my sword. I removed the first heads that appeared with swift slices, and without breaking my stride.

"Pick them up and move them north!" I yelled as I passed the tail end of the human prisoners just outside the walls. I snatched up a man under my left arm as I ran, looking back to check my orders were being followed. Then everything went white.

Health points: 476/600

My tunic was burning rags, again! Fireproof clothing was going to be vital in the coming weeks. It hadn't been Fire, though. I could walk through lava now. It must have been something else.

The man I'd scooped up was a sooty outline across my torso. The parts of him that had lain against my side had left an outline and a shadowy mark, but the rest was just ash in the wind behind me. More flashes went off, and I spun to see what was happening. Threads snapped in my mind as Huskar died.

The ones who'd lived through the suicide trinkets on the human survivors were taken by surprise when the giants were pulled into the roiling dirt as a swarm of undead clawed its way to the surface. I shook my head to clear my ears of the dirt that had been forced in as my head skipped along the ground from the explosion. Disposable troops were, at the end, disposable.

I shot back into the city, moving at a blur with my sword flicking out left and right. I made my way to the closest Huskar and cleared the area around him. Any grey-skinned head that dragged itself out of the ground got a few inches shorter and lost half a kilo of brain matter.

Reanimated Humanos slain x43

Six hundred and forty-five Souls harvested.

"Get out of here! Don't stop till you're clear!"

My big "friendly" giants lumbered into motion, showing just how quickly they could move when the mood took them. I felt the ground shaking, bouncing me up and down ever so slightly as more reverberations from retreating Ur-viles joined together into a harmony of thudding footsteps.

It wasn't my giants that were making the earth shake. Something was rising up to the south. From Glimpse's perspective, it looked like a brand new mountain was bulging out of the ground. The earth tumbled away as something struggled out of its grave.

A bulbous mass of grey flesh, bubbling and flowing, with no set form, came into view as Mother Earth gratefully let the thing go. Tendrils of flesh shifted and grew, shooting out to snap at the nearby Huskars, snatching them up and pulling them into the pyramidal mass of dead flesh. This was not acceptable.

I rushed forward, ignoring buildings and the southern walls of Gethanel, leaving splintered wood in my wake. I burst out to the south and moved so fast that I left metre-wide divots in the dirt behind me.

I skidded to a stop and cast a spell I hadn't had a chance to play around with yet. One hundred mana vanished, and jagged lines of glowing light spread away from my bare feet. They stretched out ahead of me, disappearing under the abomination. After five seconds had passed, the light intensified. It began to shine up through the body of the monster.

Molten rock spilled out as the cracks sank away into the earth in front of me. The lava boiled up in a wave that washed away from where I'd cast the spell. Steam exploded out of the thing's body, chunks boiling away from underneath. It heaved its colossal mass to one side, temporary legs writhing under it like it was a vast woodlouse.

The ground shook again, but this time the crashing footsteps were growing closer. Mulius shot past me on my left, giant armoured mammoth-feet leaving divots far larger than any I could achieve. Marbo almost flowed, despite his mass and metal scales, making hardly any sound compared to my first shaped servant.

They collided with the abomination at almost the same time, and a cloud of dust exploded into the air, obscuring my view. I wasn't going to let them have all the fun. I shook off the burnt remains of my tunic, shifted my grip on the handle of my sword, and charged forward to join them.

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