Back at the cave, I was only a little surprised to find that Hans levelled up and had chosen his level seven ability without me. As a creature with over five intelligence, the system judged him as literate enough to make his own decisions, and he had picked up [Chilling Gaze] with a mind to take the intelligence-based upgrade once it was ready for an upgrade. I levelled mine up on a chained up goblin and wondered if he planned to do the same. I didn’t ask. If I didn’t know, then I couldn’t lie about it later.

Hans was preparing to head out towards the [Silica Deposit]. He had borrowed a couple of zombies to carry [Stone Pickaxes] and was waiting for Pecs to return. He wanted our [Shaman] to complete the second shrine and attune it to the [Tactical Eyepatch] blessing. This blessing boosted intelligence and covered one eye with an eye-patch. The eye-patch was supposed to give basic information on whatever the other eye was looking at.

It was only as I came close enough to see Hans on the minimap that I noticed something a little odd. There was a white star hiding amongst the green stars that represented my clan. It was that sneaky screamer again! It had snuck in and seemed to be skulking around at the back of the cave.

‘Block entrance Pecs. Abs, Bob, with me.’ I said to them as I appraised our intruder on the party minimap. ‘Hans, screamer here.’

‘I know.’ Hans replied.

‘Why not say!’ I asked, frustrated.

‘I busy.’ He explained.

‘You talk?’ I sent, curious if the enigmatic screamer had said anything.

‘I yell it to not make mess, but it make mess.’ Hans grumbled. ‘Cave still smell smoke.’ He added with more than a hint of reproach in his mental voice.

Using [Hordesight] I could see our guest through Hans’ eyes, but it took me a second to figure out what it was doing. It threw a frying pan over one shoulder that landed in a pile of bathroom towels. That pan was the most valuable thing we found while rampaging through Voulos’ tower, between running into traps and jumping out of the window. It was going through our stuff!

We were still a fair distance from the cave entrance when Pecs tripped over his own feet. He didn’t fall over, just stumbled a little and kicked a few loose stones. However, through Hans’s perspective, I saw the screamer jerk upright, and its large ears flared out at the side. It turned its head from side to side once, then it lurched towards the cave entrance. I’d seen the screamer move, and I knew it ran a lot faster than my lumbering hulks. I was determined that I would not let it slip away this time, so I had to think quickly.

‘Pecs, throw Abs at cave.’ I ordered. Abs looked quizzically at me for a moment, and then in a logic defying moment Pecs grabbed her by the arm and launched her thirty meters towards the entrance. She shot through the air like a spinning dagger. The impact disoriented my [Warchief], but I didn’t feel her lose any health. I saw the screamer trying to push past her stomach, but her bulging abdominal muscles plugged the entrance quite nicely. Pecs might be a bit of a crap [Shaman] but he had damn good aim.

I watched through Abs’ eyes, and saw the screamer standing there, its eyes darting from side to side, and its ears flopped like those of the [Horned Rabbits] Ghost had slaughtered all over the forest. ‘Tell it stop, Abs.’

“Stop.” Abs said.

“Run run. It comes!” The screamer whispered.

‘What? Ask what comes.’ I sent.

“What comes?” Abs asked.

“He who clicks. He who kills. Master is dead, he killed master!” The screamer screamed as the rest of us drew close. It had a deep male voice that reverberated down the mountain.

‘Who is he who clicks?’ I sent and clicked in frustration.

Oh… that might explain why he was so skittish around me, even if it didn’t really make any sense. Ghost smelt the screamer to be at level twenty, and he could easily kill me in a fight. My vision tilted to the side as Abs scratched her head. Only Ghost and Hans had been aware that I killed Voulos, but now the screamer was shouting it for everyone to hear.

Fortunately, no-one really cared. Ghost had once chastised me once for the act, saying that minions weren’t supposed to kill their master, but the hulks didn’t even do that much. Only Hans had any kind of reaction. “Stop shouting, tidy mess!” The grumpy [Elder] shouted from inside the cave. With my new skill, I saw Hans was busy putting the pilfered kitchenware back into its pile.

As Hans tidied up, Pecs and I arrived behind Abs at the cave entrance. I jumped back into her perspective, and from there attempted to see the screamer’s point of view. However, despite Abs staring right at him, the skill wouldn’t work. I would have to tread carefully. Killing the cave troll had given me a third of my levels back, so a casual backhand was less likely to kill me. I was still wary of the unpredictable screamer; he could still do some serious damage if provoked.

I wished Cordelia would stop sulking in her flask. Defusing tense situations like this was literally her job, and I was starting to get annoyed at her for abandoning me a second time. Was she going to hide away whenever a zombie accidentally stepped on a butterfly? It wasn’t just her advice that I needed; without her [Omnispeech] skill, I had to use others to relay everything I wanted to say. It was frustrating. I would have to start teaching zombies the zed-clicks, and perhaps look into other ways to get the system to translate for me.

‘Ask him what want.’

“What want?” Abs relayed.

“Want?” He asked, its big ears twitching.

“Why follow?” Abs relayed.

“Clicking one promise brains.” He replied with wide eyes.

Thinking back to the tower, I vaguely recalled that I might have promised brains once or twice to get the hulks to follow me. Was it that simple? Had he really followed us down the tower, through the woods, all the way to this cave, just because I bent the truth a little? What was this feeling? The feeling was like a tightness squeezing in on me, a crushing sensation of some sort. Was this what guilt felt like? It wasn’t very nice. I kept lying about brains, and most of my kin were too stupid to call me out on it.

Maybe it was the gulf between our charisma attributes. It put me in mind of our absent [Messenger]. I often found myself nodding along with Cordelia, whether I actually agreed with her or not. Even when Cordelia said something ridiculous, like how eating people was wrong, I gave her arguments more consideration than they deserved. It wasn’t a specific skill or ability; her words were just hard to ignore.

If my lies had some kind of persuasive charm to them, then perhaps the truth would be just as effective. ‘Tell him I have no brains, but I hope to have many on the path ahead.’ I sent, drawing on my emotions to speak eloquently.

“Zed has no brain. Brains ahead.” Abs said, but she only registered the words once they were out of her mouth. “Brains ahead?” She asked and began looking around for these non-existent brains, the movement of her body leaving an opening.

‘Gompta. Stop moving.’ I cursed, as Abs’ movement left the cave entrance exposed. It took me a moment to regain control of my bodyguards, and I was pleased to see that whilst the screamer eyed the opening, he hadn’t taken the opportunity to slip away.

The screamer and I made eye contact, and I gave my most welcoming death stare.

“Kills master, kills me next.” He said with teeth bared. My death stare wasn’t working! How was I going to reassure the timid creature?

“He not kill you. You no brains, like him.” Hans said as he approached from inside the cave. “Master is delicious, was good kill. Move now.” He said, wiping his mouth on Voulos’ sleeve, before putting it back inside his satchel to take out an [Inkless Quill] I had seen Voulos use. “Pecs, use this. Is better than charcoal.” He said as he pushed past the unfolding drama and started dragging Pecs inside.

The tension broke, but it still took half an hour of reassurance to get the screamer to follow us into the cave. From there, I recruited it to the clan, and then the party. I had to shuffle Abs out of the party to get him in, but she was keen to get back to beating up her trainee [Warriors] so didn’t object.

Alarm Two

23:12, 20th of Iosi, 1465 3A

Total Level: 20 (Bronze)

Type: Screamer Zombie (D)

Attributes:

Dexterity: 10

Strength: 13

Vitality: 15

Wisdom: 11

Intelligence: 3

Charisma: 3

Affinities: Nether (100%), Poison (50%), Fire (-25%), Holy (-100%)

Traits:

Made to Serve

Flesh Construct

Screamer

Skills:

Supernatural Senses

Undead Resilience

Heartsense

Heartsense II

Abilities:

Rapid Strikes

Dash Attack

Stalker’s Bite

Aroma Specialist

Infected Claws

Cannibalize

Piercing Shriek

Alarm

Hush

Amplify

Sonar

I didn’t immediately replace Pecs as the clan shaman, despite the screamer’s wisdom dwarfing his. Pecs might only harvest half the stored faith from our shrines, but I had learned how to manage him and I didn’t trust our newest recruit yet. The screamer would instead serve as our first [Cultist], until I knew him better.

Making a basin was easy enough, but filling it with saltwater was problematic when we lived in a cave next to a forest with no sea in sight. If we were lucky, there might be an ocean on the other side of the mountain. If not, then we would have to be zombie pirates of the land, with the haunted woods as our ocean.

As for the saltwater conundrum, I almost solved it in a flash of genius. I thought back to Pecs and the frying pan. Saltwater is just water with salt in it, and Voulos had plenty of salt back in his tower. I remembered him liberally adding it to every meal he ate. I could just go back to his kitchen and loot his salt shaker!

Except the tower wasn’t safe. Why did I have the sudden urge to go back there just to fetch table condiments? Bob was itching my ear for me again. It was always my left ear that got itchy, and I suspected I was allergic to the tacky cursed earring I wore on that side.

Just to cover my bases, I had a look through our piles of junk, but there was no salt to be found. Oh well, the upgrade would have to wait. No way was I heading back to the tower until I had a proper horde behind me. If I hadn’t just lost a third of my workforce, I would go ahead and send a lone zombie on a fetch quest. The party system and minimap would at least make it less likely to get lost in the woods. Sadly, with the bombers gone, I wasn’t sure we could spare even one zombie.

We had thirty-five zombies when we arrived. Six of our strongest died today, a heavy blow to our strength even if we somewhat made up for it by finally adding the screamer to our numbers. The council was made up of five zombies, plus Cordelia, which left twenty-five zombies for our workforce. Of those, five were already half-way to becoming [Warriors], which meant we just barely had the twenty zombies we needed to work two shrines, with none left over for mining.

I needed more zombies, was the conclusion I reached after an hour of crunching numbers in my corner. If we were going to dig out a home in the mountain, then we needed bodies to swing the [Stone Axes].

Leggy could help relieve our problem, but he would only have one-hundred seconds to bite as many people as possible. Bite had a five second cooldown so that would be… I couldn’t work it out, but would ask Hans when he was less irritable. I didn’t need an exact number to figure out that we would have to get creative to solve that problem.

In the meantime, I sent Ghost a message to go deeper into the forest. We knew of at least one zombified ogre lived in the woods, and whilst my previous recruitment attempt failed, it was worth at least trying with the other undead of the forest.

‘Ghost, need more clan, can look in woods?’ I sent.

‘Ok.’ She replied.

‘Zombies best, other undead if follow.’

‘Want zombies?’ Ghost asked.

‘Yes, horde need to grow.’ I said.

‘My territory.’ She replied.

‘Your territory?’ I asked, puzzled by her response.

‘Where patrol.’

‘What about it?’

‘More zombies. Chop wood.’ She replied in a somewhat patronising tone, as if I should have already known.

After some back and forth, I gathered that Voulos had set up a forestry lodge in an area where high-quality trees grew. It seemed he had a few of these miniature bases set up in the woods, much like the quarry I crawled out of. I felt a weight lift from me as the conversation went on.

Ghost’s territory was on the other side of the tower, but as long as she avoided the tower itself, she could fetch lumber zombies for us. Voulos had believed in quantity over quality, so there were probably plenty of bereft minions throughout the forest for us to rescue. My [Scout] might only know of the one forestry, but she wasn’t the only feral that prowled the forest.

I dug up the strange stones that let the feral scouts communicate with Voulos from one of Hans’ piles of junk. That particular pile was full of interesting looking rocks that various zombies had picked up, but the communication stones were easy to spot from the numbers written on them.

There were ten rune-marked rocks, including the one with the number four written on it. It was the sister rock to the one Ghost carried. The stones were magic items of some sort. They didn’t use up an attunement space, and I had no idea how to make them work. I needed zombies, and a few elite scouts would go a long way. If I could figure out how the rocks worked, then perhaps I could kill two birds with ten stones.

Zed's end of chapter sheet:

King Zed ‘The Red’

08:22, 28th of Iosi, 1465 3A

Total Level: 6 (Copper)

Levels: Overseer 6

Experience: 1258 / 3400

Type: Overseer Zombie (C)

Attributes:

Resources:

Dexterity: 6

Stamina: N/A

Strength: 13

Power: N/A

Vitality: 15

Health: 180/180

Wisdom: 8

Willpower: 96/96

Intelligence: 5

Mana: 60/60

Charisma: 10

Soul: 120/120

Decay: 24% (Stage 0)

Affinities: Nether (100%), Poison (50%), Fire (-25%), Holy (-100%)

Titles:

King of the Braindead: Access to Kingdom subsystem.

Red-Handed: +1 Intelligence, sets alignment as evil, hands are permanently dyed red.

Traits:

Made to Serve: +1 Intelligence, +1 Charisma, -1 Wisdom. Gives understanding of system common, and the primary language of its creator (Orcish). Is able to follow simple commands based on the creator's intelligence divided by ten (3 words long). Gives access to a portion of the knowledge contained within the host brain, better preserved brains retain more information.

Flesh Construct: Sustained by nether magic, does not need to eat, drink, sleep or breath. Does not regenerate Health. Does not use Stamina or Might, but instead uses Decay.

Overseer: +2 Charisma.

Not Braindead: +1 Wisdom, +1 Intelligence and +2 Charisma.

Skills:

Hordesight: +1 Wisdom and you can share vision with any visible non-hostile zombie.

Abilities:

Unarmed Strike - Copper - Level 1 (Unavailable):

0% Decay

1 Second Cooldown

Strikes at the target with an unarmed limb for 10 bludgeoning damage.

Dash Attack - Bronze- Level 1 (Restricted):

0% Decay

5 Second Cooldown

Dashes to a target within 3 meters for 18 bludgeoning damage with a chance to push back or knock over the target.

Poisoned Bite - Bronze - Level 2 (Restricted):

0% Decay

5 Second Cooldown

+1 Vitality and Bites the target for 18 piercing damage and a further 16 poison damage over the next 30 seconds.

Enrage Zombie - Bronze - Level 4 (Restricted):

500 Soul

No Cooldown

The user lets out a rage-filled shout at a target zombie to increase its Strength, Dexterity, and Vitality by +5 for 50 seconds.

Overseer’s Aura - Bronze - Level 3 (Restricted):

10 Soul / Second

No Cooldown

+1 Strength to all zombies within 10 meters.

Corpse Explosion - Steel - Level 2 (Restricted):

200 Mana

20 Second Cooldown

Explodes the targeted corpse to deal damage equal to the health it had when alive in a 2m radius. Any corpses in the range of the explosion have a 25% chance to explode as if targeted by this ability.

Attunements (3/1):

Ring of the Jester (Cursed): +2 Charisma but curses the wearer with [Jester’s Curse].

Princess Tiara: +3 Charisma and makes the wearer more attractive to Princes.

Intellect Ring: +1 Intelligence.

Status Effects:

Jester’s Curse: The target is cursed by the jester. The curse can only be lifted by a Sphinx’s laugh.

Team-Killer (352 days remaining): -2 Charisma

Blessing of Roguish Charm (22 hours remaining): +1 Charisma, the higher your infamy the more attractive you are.