“You still there, ye yellow-belly bandit?” The voice on the other end of the stone said. It was a male voice, rich like the earth.

“Yes.” Bob replied after a brief pause. Something was off. The voice spoke too naturally, with no pauses between his words. Even I, the smartest zombie of all, didn’t speak that well…

‘No! Gompta, gompta, gompta. Put stone down!’ I mentally shouted.

“Ha! Relar is gonna lose his shit when he hears about this.” The voice mirthfully replied to Bob, in an abrupt tone shift. It was as if the voice had been wearing a mask. “So then buckeroo, I guess-” The voice said in the original drawl, only cutting off when the message stone dropped to the floor and the glowing runes deactivated.

Gompta. There was no way in hells that the guy on the other end of the stone was a zombie, which made it easy to guess who it was. There were only really two possibilities I could think of: either it was the angel, or the adventuring party. The voice had called out to someone else, which meant that he had company, and that narrowed the choices down to one. I had inadvertently alerted the adventuring party.

Gompta. How did the messaging stones work? Could the adventurers track me through them? What should I do? I was deep inside the cave, with plenty of solid rock separating me from the outside world, but the stones still worked. If the magic stone worked inside the cave, then it was likely that it could be tracked inside the cave too. I needed to get rid of it.

Gompta. What was the best way to get rid of the stone? Pecs could probably throw it a decent distance, even if he couldn’t use [Hurl Zombie] on it he still had arms as thick as tree trunks. I doubted that would work. Even if he threw it as hard as he could, it would still land relatively close to our cave, close enough that a search of the area would probably find us. If Ghost wasn’t halfway across the forest, I would give the stone to her, and have her go hide it somewhere far away.

Gompta. Whatever I did, I had to act quickly. I had to hope that they hadn’t already cast a divination ability, or used a tracing ability, and get the stone as far away from us as quickly as possible. The longer I delayed, the more likely it was that they could pinpoint our position.

‘Pecs, come here, bring screamer.’ I sent to the big hulk. They were on the other side of the cave chamber opposite where I sat with Bob, so it only took them a minute to shuffle over.

‘Sorry Abs, need kick party.’ I sent to our [Warchief], before unceremoniously removing her from the party. I wasted no time sending the screamer an invite to replace her. ‘Ok. Take this.’ I sent, passing the stone to the screamer. He was the next fastest zombie we had after Ghost, and his skittish nature, combined with his detection abilities, made him great at hiding.

‘Go far, hide the stone, your name is now “Mouse”, you have name, so you not allowed to die. Pecs [Hurl] Mouse as far as you can south. Go!’ I said. Fear turned the gears in my brain faster than before. The newly named Mouse nodded, but I could tell that I had spoken too fast for Pecs. At least Mouse understood the urgency of my request, and took Pecs by his giant hand, to lead him out of the cave.

Normally, watching Mouse hurtle down the mountain would have given me great amusement, but I wasn’t in the mood for mirth. The screamer should be able to fend for himself in the forest. He and Ghost were the only two level twenty zombies we had, but if the adventurers found him then he was as good as dead. Hopefully, the combination of his abilities would let him evade them. His [Heartsense II] skill let him hear a beating heart from a kilometer away and was probably how he had known when I killed Voulos.

With Mouse going south as fast as his lanky legs could carry him, the next step was to turn the cave into a bunker. I decided to put Bob’s [Crafting] to use and used the [Knapping Station] to start work on a wall to block off the cave entrance. The dry stack wall was pretty weak, with only a little more health than a level one zombie. I was hoping that the wall would help keep out scrying magics, and make the cave entrance harder to notice. Why stop at one wall? We had loads of rocks, they were very plentiful in and around the cave.

The cave began to fill with the sounds of chipping stones, as Bob and Leggy both got started on making stones to stack for our walls. Bob was a little faster than her [Knapper Apprentice], but as zombies, neither of them were particularly fast, to begin with. To help them out Pecs blessed them both with [Sea Legs], boosting their dexterity so that they could craft faster. I was tempted to give them [Boozy Blood] instead, but unfortunately, blessings were mutually exclusive. The increased vitality would have made the walls they crafted have higher quality, but speed was of the essence here. Perhaps we could switch them to the vitality blessing after the first two of three walls were complete.

With progress on the walls already started, I had to decide if we were going to recall Hans and his two test miner zombies. His cave was much easier to spot from a distance, but it was also a good two-hour shuffle away from us. Moreover, we needed to finish [Mining I] if we wanted to grow underground, particularly if I was going to block us off from the outside world. After weighing the risks for a while I eventually decided that it was worth it for Hans to push ahead.

Of course, Hans wasn’t the only zombie away from the base cave. Ghost was a full day away from us, and all alone. However, I wasn’t particularly worried about her. Ghost could handle herself better than the rest of us and had only needed rescuing previously because the system trapped her in a cave where she couldn’t run away. She would be better off staying in the forest for a while, and I could try to coordinate with her to bring in the scout holding the fifth stone.

Thinking about the stones made me panic, so I checked the remaining five stones I held to see who was holding the matching stones. If another stone was compromised I might have to recall Mouse. Fortunately, the remaining stones gave us no surprises. We spoke to four ferals, two of whom were friendly, but the other two wanted nothing to do with us. The tenth and final stone was inactive just like the first two.

I hoped my quick actions would save our kingdom, but I was full of doubts. It was then that I decided Cordelia had spent more than enough time sulking inside her flask. Bob and I went to the shiny pile and after a moment of searching she picked up the silver flask containing Cordelia’s ectoplasm. ‘Say after me: Spiritus fairy viagrum, spirit come out.’ I instructed Bob. She did so, but nothing happened. ‘Try again, and swear at her a bit.’ I tried again.

We stood there trying the flask for a good ten minutes. By that point, the initial panic of the situation had slowly drained away, supplanted by mild irritation. ‘Try calling her Kunya.’ I suggested.

‘Trying concentrate. You say it wrong. Is Spiritum eres viatum.’ Hans interrupted.

‘Oh… please and thank you. Bob try that instead.’ I said.

Finally, the words had an effect, and I saw the runes etched into the silver flask glow, not in a dissimilar way to the runes on the message stones. The flask wobbled for a moment as if Cordelia hadn’t decided if she was going to emerge or not, but then her ectoplasm began to leak out. She was really dragging out her appearance this time, as the tendrils of her essence formed a swirling fog before coalescing into the featureless female form she usually took. I wondered why her spirit didn’t look like a real person, but I had more important things to ask her.

“Done thinking?” I clicked in annoyance.

“Zed…” Cordelia said, her words drifting off like a ghost in the breeze.

“We in trouble.” I cut across.

“What do you mean?” She said, her essence taking on a white hue.

“Spoke with adventurer, knows about us.” I explained.

“And they didn’t kill you?” She asked.

“No, not find yet.” I clicked.

“What do you mean?” She asked.

It took me a few minutes to explain the situation to Cordelia. She kept her ectoplasm a calm blue throughout, and her words gave little of her emotions away either. After I finished talking the cave went quiet, save for the

“I would like to help you, Zed.” Cordelia said.

“Good, what do?” I asked.

“I would like to… but I’m not sure if I should.” She continued.

“What do you mean?” I clicked in confusion.

“If I help you grow powerful, that makes me responsible for what you do with that power. I’m not prepared to have that on my conscience. I like you Zed, but our alliance was borne against a common foe, one that you have since vanquished.” She said.

“What you saying?” I asked, a nervous feeling tugging at my metaphorical heart.

“I’m saying that if you want my help, you are going to have to accept some conditions. I can’t compromise on what I know to be right.” She explained.

“Conditions?” I asked. I didn’t like the direction this conversation had taken. I had been expecting her to apologize, like the last time she had abandoned us. This was something very different.

Cordelia laid out a few rules she needed us to follow. Some of them didn’t really bother me, like the right of all citizens of my kingdom to speak their minds freely. Others were a little more grating, like the rules of conflict and warfare she described. At least she wasn’t expecting us to become complete pacifists, but it was a well laid out and comprehensive list of demands. “-and blood must be willingly donated, or traded for without duress.” Cordelia finished.

Despite the serious nature of the conversation, I hadn’t really been listening to most of it. I had only really perked up near the end when she started talking about her rules surrounding blood baths. Why did she have to be such a killjoy? She was taking all the joy out of killing.

“I can see you need time to think about it, and I can tell that you aren’t keen. Ultimately, it’s up to you Zed. You have almost all the power in this relationship. All I can do is withhold my services. I know the ins and outs of the kingdom system, and you could use my help. Tykosia was a prosperous empire, in no small part due to my efforts. Call on me when you decide, I’ll be waiting.” She said as her essence started to crumble.

“What about adventurers?” I clicked loudly at her.

“I’m sure you will be fine without me.” She said as the bottle sucked her in.

Around day four post contact, I decided it was time to allow other zombies to come and go from the cave. We didn’t need food or water, but in those four days, Ghost had travelled to the zombie forestry and back, carrying a woodchopper zombie back to the cave. The forestry was right in the northeast of the woods, in an area where the trees grew metal bark. Ghost’s scouting identified it on the map as [Ironbark Valley], one of many [Points of Interest] she had uncovered in the forest.

I couldn’t really leave Ghost outside the cave, particularly because she brought two guests with her. She had successfully met up with the friendly feral that roamed the woods adjacent to her old territory. They had both been familiar with a waterfall on the river that separated their territories. With no adventurers in sight I relented and had Bob and Leggy dismantle their stone walls. Dismantling the walls took a couple of hours, but by doing so we salvaged half of the knapped stones used in their creation.

After that, I decided to relax my precautions a little and began to allow zombies in and out of the cave again. I still wanted the entrance walled up, so I developed a routine. An hour after sunset I had Bob and Leggy start work taking down the walls. Zombies then had ten minutes to come and go from the cave, before my [Crafter] and her [Knapper] apprentice began walling us back up.

Bob made so many [Shaped Stones] in the days that followed that I had to start sending out gathering parties just to keep up our supply. The system even rewarded Bob’s efforts with a title on her third day of knapping.

Stoner: +1 Vitality, and +50% Affinity towards poison.

The effects of the title didn’t have much to do with building walls or knapping in general, despite the notification claiming that it was the reward for crafting a thousand stones. The title was nothing to complain about. Extra vitality was always useful, and extra poison affinity was probably a good thing… I hadn’t worked out what different affinities actually did yet.

The odd title reminded me of a conversation I had with Cordelia about my status as [King of the Braindead]. I might have mentioned once or twice that I was the smartest zombie alive, and the title proved it. She hadn’t wanted my head growing too big for my crown and had informed me that the title was just a joke; it was a terrible pun that poked fun at the true [King of the Dead].

The system was a being of logic. Some considered it a God of gods, while others believed it was natural law made manifest. It could calculate the damage behind every single attack, the value of every trade, and a million more things simultaneously as they happened. However, some meta-religious scholars claimed that behind the cold logic of the system there was an architect. They claimed this mysterious architect left clues hidden within the system for those who went looking. Irregularities like my title were but some of these enigmatic clues.

Cordelia herself believed it was more likely the result of rebellious angels that had found a way to interfere with the system and alter it in subtle ways. Angels were direct creations of the system, and as such, they were closer to the system than any other beings, dead or alive. They were made to assist the system in jobs that required a personal touch, or an element of creativity, so Cordelia’s theory was certainly plausible. It was a bit strange to find out that I might be the butt of some big cosmic joke. Cordelia said that sneaking juvenile puns into the system was exactly the kind of thing her ex would have found hilarious.

My missing [Messenger] hadn’t budged on her ultimatum. Since we went on lockdown, I had tried summoning her a couple of times. The first attempt was a couple of days after she disappeared again. I summoned her and tried to argue that she was being unreasonable. She listened to my complaints, namely that she was being a killjoy, but she hadn’t wavered.

My strategy the second time around had been a little bolder; I told her I would sign a contract with her, but she just needed to answer a few burning questions first. She had somehow seen through my lie, and the attempt hadn’t gone over well. Maybe it had been the way I grinned madly as Bob scratched my ear like a rabid dog?

After that, she told me not to summon her again until I was ready to be serious, and make a decision. She left me a number of [Messages] that laid out her list of demands. Her effective charisma limited the talent, so each [Message] was only eighteen words long. There were a lot of them. The [Messages] were like system notifications, but I could open and close them as I wished, without them being archived.

I started to find myself with plenty of free time on my hands. The elements of clan management I understood I was getting the hang of, and those I didn’t I ignored. Unfortunately, that meant I had little excuse not to read through Cordelia’s laws. It was a lot of work, and incredibly boring, but I knew this was important. Not just for me personally, but for the future of my kingdom. The ultimatum she gave me left me at a crossroads.

If I indulged Cordelia my clan might one day become a serene republic of reformed zombies. We could be productive members of society like those weaving goblins, and rebel against our darker urges. The thought made me want to vomit. On the other hand, we could become an unending horde that washed over the world. If we embraced the evil within us we could bring about a new dawn of undeath upon the lands, slaughtering the living, and bathing in the blood of our enemies. That sounded a lot more fun in principle but an awful lot of work in practice.

Why did it have to be one extreme or the other? After breaking free of one tyrant, why would I chain myself to another? In many ways, Cordelia’s rules were worse than Voulos’ minionship. My old master had understood that I was a monster. He hadn’t tried to force me to go against my nature… except the few dozen times he made me blow myself up… and when he forced me to choose boring ability upgrades.

I decided to put both Cordelia and Voulos out of mind; it was better to focus on the positives. Stoner Bob had a fancy new title, we had made it twelve days without being invaded and had almost finished [Mining I]. The only bad thing to happen over the last week was when I got bored of waiting for the mining technology to be completed and had my hulks attack the cave walls with [Stone Axes]. No one died, but one zombie lost an arm to the falling rocks.

In other news, we were also coming up close to the five-hundred faith mark, and with it, I could let the bishop-captain know what I thought of his stupid religion. My anger had cooled off somewhat, but I was still annoyed. Tiyanon’s blessings were more or less alright, though some were more useful than others. For example, [Tactical Eyepatch] was pretty awesome, and I would have kept it running on myself permanently if it wasn’t for my need to keep [Roguish Charm] for the charisma boost.

A couple of days ago while spying on Hans I had come up with a genius way to retain the benefits of both blessings. I had been looking through his eyes as he refreshed his blessing and I realised that I could see the same labels that he could see. For example, when he looked at me I saw myself analysed by the blessing.

King Zed the Red, Level 6 Overseer Zombie - 180/180 Health - You could take ‘im matey.

I spent the rest of that day watching through the eyes of Abs and her soldiers, who I had given the blessing to before they left to do [Warrior] stuff. I could follow Abs as far as I wanted into the forest because of another interesting discovery I had made early into my self-imposed lockdown. As far as [Hordesight] was concerned, any zombie I could see on my minimap, even ones not standing within the circle itself counted as zombies that I could see. That meant that I could spy in on any of my party members at any time. It was a good discovery, as I had been close to self-destructing from boredom.

It was through my [Hordesight] that I watched Mouse as he approached the mountains. The skittish screamer had gone all the way to the south of the forest and dropped the [Sending Stone] into a big river. On the other side of the river twisted trees gave way to tundra, and his [Heartsense II] had detected large monsters in the area.

What was fun about dropping in on Mouse was that he saw the world differently from normal zombies. He had a nifty ability that let him see sounds, so he could often see creatures, even when they were hiding. [Heartsense II] let him see red pulsing dots in his vision, and the range of detection on the skill was frankly ridiculous.

Mouse was a bit odd. Perhaps it was because his wisdom was so much higher than his charisma and intelligence, meaning that he was running on pure instinct most of the time. He had a tendency to randomly freeze for minutes at a time, to jerkily change directions mid-shuffle, and to scream into the forest around him for no discernible reason. His instincts often made him do strange things, but they sometimes worked to his advantage.

As I watched Mouse make his way up the base of the mountain he abruptly came to a halt. He turned one way, then the other as if looking for something. I couldn’t see anything, even through his enhanced senses, but something had clearly spooked him. Nothing happened. I was starting to think it was just one of the many occasions where he acted strangely for no reason when a shadow came over him.

Mouse lurched to the side, and the air where his face had been moments ago was torn apart by razor sharp talons. Mouse turned to face the creature and what he saw made me glad I was still inside the cave. The [Carrion Crow] was an evolution of the crow, but unlike [Storm Crows] they had a nether affinity. Most creatures with nether affinity were dead, or undead, but these little terrors had a nether affinity because they liked to eat the undead!

Mouse quickly dispatched the crow with a flurry of [Rapid Strikes]. Even evolved, the bird was only an F tier creature. We had encountered its kind a few times, but they did little more than take a bite out of us and fly away. They were annoying to deal with, because they gave off the scent of an undead creature and were thus hard to detect. They were cunning, fast, and numerous, but were barely more than pests.

So why was Mouse still standing still as a statue? The dead [Carrion Crow] was still gripped in his hand, unmoving. The threat had been dealt with, and I wanted to reward him for getting rid of the stone for me. He was only a short shuffle-run away from the cave, so I should probably get Bob started on dismantling the walls.

At the edges of Mouse’s vision his [Sonar] pinged, revealing what I first thought was a giant red dot, but after a moment realised that it was actually a large number of small dots clumped together. The skittish screamer let out an [Alarm] and turned to face the red dots. Through a gap in the canopy, I saw another pair of [Carrion Crows] flying north.

I wasn’t sure what was going on, but a moment later I felt the familiar feeling of a party member’s health being chipped away. It was Abs. My [Warchief] was out [Patrolling], a professional talent that was supposed to increase my [Control] of an area. This sounded important, but I couldn’t work out what [Control] actually did. It was on my list of things I needed to do.

A second tug over our party bond confirmed that something was wrong, so I opened up my minimap. Mouse was four kilometres away, and Abs was only two kilometres away, both west of the cave, but the screamer was coming in from the south. I needed eyes on what was going on.

Stepping into Abs’ perspective I felt immediately overwhelmed. In front of her a murder of crows had focused their swarm on one of her [Warriors]. Once I got my bearings I switched to the unnamed [Warrior] and saw the writhing mass of birds from his perspective. He held up one hand holding an invisible shield, and in the other, he wielded a primitive spear. His shield hand was covered in blood and some kind of white slime. The invisible shield was unlikely to give very good protection to the zombie on account of it also being imaginary. Providing wooden shields to my army was another item on my to do list.

I saw a [Carrion Crow] break from the cloud, take a dive towards the [Warrior], and slice his shield arm with metal-tipped wings. A moment later several other crows followed the example of the first and dove at the zombie with their own steel wings. Suddenly, I found myself staring at the skull and crossbones painted on our cave wall. Gompta.

Zed's End of Chapter Table:

King Zed ‘The Red’

18:43, 38th of Iosi, 1465 3A

Total Level: 6 (Copper)

Levels: Overseer 6

Experience: 1749 / 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 metres 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 +50 for 11 seconds.

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

10 Soul / Second

No Cooldown

+1 Strength to all zombies within 10 metres.

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 (343 days remaining): -2 Charisma

Blessing of Roguish Charm (4 hours remaining): +1 Charisma, the higher your infamy the more attractive you are.