Whispers of a Dead Empire

Chapter 19

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I sat up and rubbed my head, trying to massage out the pain behind my temples, and looked around. I was lying on my cot in my office. Thankfully Kharon was kind enough to place me here. As I tried to get my bearings, I glanced at the time and saw that a few days had passed and that quite a few notifications had built up during that time.

Well, I guess I should probably distribute some of these points into my stat tree since I am just lying here. I made a motion, opened up my menu, and looked through to figure out where I wanted my stuff to go.

Please use your attribute points.

True to my class, I lost all my stats related to the mana and got will. I dropped two points into it, bringing it to six since it was vital enough to my class that it replaced mana. That left me three more points.

Everything else seemed to like a good pick, but I needed survivability at the moment above all else. So I dropped a point into constitution and health. Ill keep a hold on the final stat point for later, just if I need to use it as an emergency. I confirmed my choice, and a strange feeling coursed through my body. It felt like I just finished running a mile, plus a strange tickle inside of my body, that was deeper than my organs. But it wasnt unpleasant. I dismissed the screen and brought up the next notification.

So, I only had two class points to get my first two skills. What would be the best? I carefully read over each skill. I lacked magic, which would be detrimental, but this class looked like it made up for it. It would even allow me to retro-pick skills as well, so I could more freely choose what I wanted to get.

Soul Manifestation would have to be a definite pick. It would be far more efficient as a first skill since I could do various things with it. I confirmed it, and a vague idea of how to manipulate my soul entered my brain. Good, I will experiment with this later. I still have to decide on my next skill.

I could choose soul flame, soul shot, or soul shield. I read over each one before I crossed off soul shield. I was using soul manifestation, so there was no need to select that at the moment, especially if I could create one myself. That left soul flame and soul shot. Soul flame would give me solid damage over time, but soul shot would give me range, which would make me feel safer. I looked between the two and selected soul shot, intending to come back to the others soon.

Once I confirmed the skill, more knowledge flooded into my brain, giving me the vaguest idea of using my newly gained skill. I dismissed the menu and took a moment to look at my medium. Black metal-coated my entire hand down to the wrist and glittered dangerously in the light of my office. I ran my fingers across the top of my hand, marveling at how it felt like the screen of my phone. Though everything now felt a little muted on this hand. I could feel it, but just barely.

I am going to miss my phone, but at least it will always be with me now. I rubbed my hand mindlessly and stood up to check on the notifications I unlocked from the domain.

Oh nice, they have been hard at work since I passed out. Maybe I should check on them and see what they are doing. I straightened up and adjusted my clothing before teleporting back to the outpost to get a bearing on what I missed.

I appeared in the courtyard and saw a large stack of various materials in front of the building. The undead was at work tearing down the walls, expanding out the area like good little worker ants. Two ghosts were close to the ground, overseeing the other undead. They looked like they were on the brink of evolution, and the lack of other ghosts in the area helped solidify that fact.

Alessia was at work training the ghosts. If memory served correctly, they were squires, something like a knight in training, which was nice. I was developing a little army at my command. Hopefully, I could fend off the adventures once they came. I made a quick motion and activated the storage function, and ate away the pile of various materials that the undead was leaving for me.

Oh, mistress, it is good to see that you have recovered. I heard Kharons voice behind me as I worked at chipping away the various materials.

Ah, hello, Kharon. How are you? I asked as I tallied up the number of units of material I was bringing in.

I am well, thank you. I see you have recovered quickly after your soul fracturing. He stepped up and crossed his boney arms, and watched the undead work like mindless ants.

Not quite; I still feel like total shit. But I dont have time to lay around. I clenched my teeth as my headache throbbed a little more. I really wish I had some medicine to drown away the painthat or alcohol, whatever came first.

That is very true. Would you like a status update on what you have missed since you passed out?

I glanced at my menu and quickly read through my notifications, and then nodded my head. Sure. My notifications only really give me superficial information, anyway.

So far, Alessia has forced evolution on the ghosts. As you have seen, they have the Squire class. I highly recommend that you try to transfer that class to the other undead variants for potential evolutions. Rikard has wrapped up all the mining operations and has moved all the undead in the area back here to work on construction. Aaron has been training the undead in this area and unlocked some elite mobs as well. I bobbed my head along as I finished absorbing the materials in this area before I brought up my map to hit the rock quarry.

Good. Ill have Alessia find a few undead and give them the squire class next. It would fall in line with part of my plan, anyway. Any idea what that ghast is up to? That creature terrified me; even though it belonged to me, it still instilled a primal fear in my gut.

It has taken residence in the northern forest and has consumed a few zombies that have wandered too close. However, it doesnt leave its territory. I shifted my map up, glanced towards the north, and made a mental note to avoid that part of the forest.

Got it, thank you. I think that should about cover everything Ive missed. I gained a bunch of essence back so I can begin construction. Afterward, I want to work on some lore for the domain, get some armor designed, and then I will practice my new skills. Kharon gave me a curt bow and stood next to me silently while I shifted my attention towards the pile of various items on the ground. I saved these so I could consume them and save the templates. They were nothing special, just various pots and pans, along with ruined books and bookshelves and the occasional miscellaneous item that had no real importance.

The undead did an excellent job of tearing apart the outpost. Normally I would have kept the original design, but I wanted to create something unique. I did not know who was aware of this area before I arrived, and I wanted to distance myself from the role this outpost may have played. I wanted to walk through and use the consume function on some of the smaller items to have the templates saved, but I would not risk walking to the building until I knew it wouldnt collapse.

I would also have to barricade that room upstairs until I figured out what it was. I considered leaving it out in the open, but I didnt want adventures tampering with it if it was something special. I walked closer to the outpost, storing the debris and tucking away some of the corpses that incurred from the collapse of portions of the building. Once I finished, I walked around the outposts remaining portion and opened the map to better view the surrounding area.

I had to ask myself, did I want this to be an outpost or something bigger? I had total creative freedom here, just not as many resources as I would like to have.

I cleared out a half kilometer of the surrounding forest and just straight consumed the trees instead of storing them, I just needed the essence, and I didnt want to wait for them to refine the wood.

Now, lets use this create function and start designing a wall to surround the future buildings. I activated it and began imagining the wall. I wanted it to be small to manage resources a bit, yet large enough to be imposing and make sense for a military installation. Once I checked over to the quarry to make sure that I gathered every piece of stone in the haphazardly stacked pile, I went back to the outposts skeletal remains.

Now, what should be a good size of a mini-fortress wall that makes sense? I think five meters seems like a decent place; thats roughly sixteen feet or something in that area. That means it couldnt be scaled easily, though; in this world, I wasnt sure how stats would affect physical capabilities at higher levels. But this wouldnt be a high-level area, so it wasnt too problematic. I was also trying to maintain some form of realism with it.

I scrolled the map around, selected the creation tool, imagined the wall to be roughly five meters high, and began working on maximizing the wall size and strength while reducing the number of resources that I was using. I could save portions of the wall as they were and then change minor details at will, though it was tough to keep the picture in my head with the throbbing headache that I had.

I kept the wall the same, mostly until I found the point where I imagined a set of large double wooden doors that were rotted and torn from their hinges, and portions of the surrounding wall collapsed and ruined.

Once I was happy with how everything looked, I saved it and confirmed the choice. My heart broke as I watched my essence bar quickly drain along with almost half of my total stone reserves. My sweet, sweet resources gone in a blink of an eye. At this rate, Im going to have to set up a trade agreement with the adventures that entire this area, or hopefully get enough life essence saved up to do more things.

A few seconds passed, and small moats of yellow light rained down in the designated area for the wall. More appeared with each passing second, and before I knew it, it became a downpour. The moats stacked on top of each other, and the outline of stone appeared. A part of me was hoping for something instantaneous, but I couldnt have everything going that easily for me.

While I waited, I shifted my attention to the far corners of my domain. I wonder what the world was like outside of my home, and I hope I could withstand whatever would come my way.

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