With Clavi ruining the already small potential for an epic showdown, my sprint turned into more of a casual jog. In all honesty, while a direct hit from Zhargorb’s hammer could possibly cripple me; that would require him landing one first, and it wasn’t even a guarantee then. Since the sarcastic skeleton slew any semblance of seriousness, I didn’t feel like bothering to keep up the farce.

The chief roared, and I flinched back. Spittle was flying out of his mouth; reflexively dissipated by a thoughtless .

“*Ugh, please. Save that kind of thing for the real beasts of the realm.*” Large arm slamming down, a cascade of dirt flew up into the air just to my side. Conjuring a to unleash down his throat, Zhargorb’s neck only rolled slightly backward, spitting out a fragment of a fang covered in blood.

The metal warhammer swung from my right, causing me to roll my eyes. It hardly required a half step backwards to evade the blow, and the foolish creature continued his swing; eye widening in surprise that he missed.

“*So many openings…*” struck the side of Zhargorb’s lumpy knees, sapping the brown flesh of some of its color. It didn’t cause him to collapse, but he did start to shift his weight off the leg. Nevertheless, he raised his warhammer up again. “*Tsk...Really, no knowledge of the game at all.*”

Seeming to deign me as a threat, he changed his stance to one more able to support the changing momentum of the weapon. It was already a step too late, though it was slight, the chief’s leg had taken damage. For someone as unbalanced as he was, it could already be considered my victory.

Setting both hands on the haft, a quick downward strike led, easy enough to slip pass. Then, as expected, he used the enormously muscular limb to quickly change direction to follow me with a side-smash.

“*The elegance of the hammer—*” A struck the crook of the elbow, causing his grip to loosen. His knee gave way slightly from the sudden change, and the surprise meant he had no chance to regain the weapon. slowed the projectile before it pulverized a few of the goblins that stood a small distance from their chief’s fight. “*Lies not just in brute force.*” I hefted up the maul, getting a feel for the weight. My eyebrows rose when I felt the slight difficulty in lifting it.

“*You were using this beauty so crudely? For shame…*” In games I would have high strength to carry warhammers, and in real life the sledges I picked up were composed of density distributed alloys with lightweight handles. It had been quite a while since such a simple work fell into my hands. Closing my eyes for a moment I tossed it from hand to hand, swaying as I did so. “*High teens to mid twenties—perhaps 19, no 22 kilos? Maybe a little heavy for this body at the moment; but that will be sorted out in time. Say, why don’t I give you a demonstration?*”

Swinging the head upwards, my right hand slid up the haft. The deformations along it were minimal, wherever the craftsman was, they had made a good work. Handle crossing diagonally in front of me, the spiked head dipped with my gait, like a serpent ready to strike.

Zhargorb warily watched my approach, then made the mistake of approaching first.

“*You see, the true essence of the hammerer—*” Swinging down at him, he used his broad arm to divert the path of my strike towards the ground. Lifting it as it torqued downwards in a now clockwise motion, as it passed the equilibrium position, my right hand let go for a moment to cross over the left, which switched grips. “*—is making every motion fluid.*”

With gravity, as well as the energy both he and I provided, the maul inverted almost immediately, smashing into Zhargorb’s skull with the easy of crushing a soft fruit; almost decapitating him with the blunt force. Red and dark grey gore sprayed across the ground in a cone starting five feet out, and terminating on the wall of goblin spectators. A little under a quarter of which visibly began shaking, though the rest were still terrified.

“*Who is it that dares use a hammer before me in such a crude fashion? Was this garbage your leader? DESPICABLE!*” A geyser of blood shot up high enough to paint the canopy crimson as I slammed the sledge down on the central body cavity of their leader. “*For days and days I have continued to SLAUGHTER you! Have any of you ever put up a challenge? How many graveyards must be filled before someone, anyone worthy of fighting shows their face? How many of you have I already KILLED, AND HOW MANY MORE BEFORE YOU PUT UP A DECENT FIGHT?*”

As the first of the horde tentatively stepped towards me, I rushed forward; vertically compacting him to the ground, until the hammer struck dust. The only damage I had taken in hours came from bone shrapnel that originated from my own strike. How laughable.

Perhaps my Fear Aura experienced a bit of a boost from the display, as the others were now not daring to approach me. I was not satisfied.

“*You lot SWARM to your deaths all hours of the day! Why shirk from it NOW?*” Whipping my head around, tKlor’t’t and Ghojtroik were only in the beginning of their battle, but my cries had them turned my way.

Why not take this opportunity to strike her down, chief? It doesn’t seem like you to lose your head and not take this moment to attack, I haven’t seen your scruples before this. The only honor coming from you was in self interest!

Well if you won’t, then I can take care of it for you!

“*Tell me, are you a foe worthy of my power? COME! Have a small taste to see if you are worthy!*” Lowering the weapon to my center of mass to move more easily, as soon as I began my bull rush the chief turned to flee. tKlor’t’t looked momentarily stunned and did not take the chance to attack either.

“*I already KNOW the answer! You are WORTHLESS!*” Chasing her down, the goblins thrown between us were about as effective as a cardboard box in front of a freight train. Arcing the maul in vertical paths made my course undulate slightly from side to side, but the variance was negligible since I was running almost at full speed. I almost instantaneously caught up with Ghojtroik. “*You are called a chief? Before my lowly self, can NONE of you do ANYTHING other than FLEE?*” Swinging at the chieftess’ back in an upward arc spike first, her entire spine was gouged out—at least pulp that once belonged to the spine.

Ghojtroik didn’t fall down dead immediately, but only because the momentum gifted by the maul sent her a small distance into the air, crashing into several goblins paralyzed with fear.

“*COME! LET ANYONE WORTH FIGHTING SHOW THEMSELVES!*”

The rest of the battle consisted of fighting an opponent who more or less stood still. By the end of it, my arms managed to feel achy; having spent most of the fight clearing out half a dozen goblins with each swing. The enemy was too weak to put into my eyes.

Unfortunately, my current minions were even weaker than they. After striking down Zhargorb, the task of controlling them completely slipped my mind. Clavi’s basal intelligence kept him unharmed, and the same went for the Freshmen. As for the bulk of my legion, I lost two Skeletal Elites, and was left with 60 zombies and 41 plain skeletons. There were a few more that technically survived, but they were missing enough parts that I just destroyed them.

Destroying the undead; originally a meaningless task in Underworld, it seemed to have additional depths in the new world. That seemed to be the way of many abilities; acting as though they were a remake of an old game, with the new system creating inevitable differences. It became ever more apparent that unlike my stats that had a numerical value of some sort still tied to them, my spells were shoehorned into some pre-existing system.

I had always recognized it as a possibility, but had yet to give much thought into it. The lore of Underworld of Armok was well known to me; in the spirit of YGGDRASIL, or at least in the spirit of its fictional namesake, information was of paramount importance. Despite my knowledge of the lore, I had remained unsure if the spell shapes of the world were accurate representations of those from the game. In the end, even though they went to great lengths to develop the interface in Underworld of Armok for immersion, corners would be cut to increase the enjoyment of the game.

The task of destroying undead was one of such things. Though summoner classes were encouraged to focus on several powerful allies, the devs wouldn’t go so far as to make those who chose swarm tactics suffer for their choice. Getting rid of a summon, or creation only required a quick thought and single point of mana, and naturally could be done in huge batches.

This was not the case in the real world however.

Missing an arm, both legs, and most of its teeth, I stepped up to the first zombie that I wrote off as unusable. Unsure of how to proceed, I just wanted it gone, and hoped the magic inside would guide me. So far that worked out well, though there were the occasional hidden inefficiencies. To my surprise, other than a slight wiggle in our spiritual connection, nothing happened.

Looking oddly down at the zombie, it shook its limbs, but otherwise seemed unaffected. I tried again, but no further reactions took place.

The first real discrepancy from Underworld of Armok, it was more of the new world having taken extreme liberties with my powers. Altering that which was not well fleshed out was fair play. Not one to give up in the face of a puzzle; this was my specialty, how could I give up on its secrets just because I didn’t inherently know the answer?

Delving among my spiritual connections, I tried further examining the link between the two of us as it shuddered. Since the creatures were strengthened by Soul Power, what would happen if I tried pulling the soul out of it? Grasping at it was the difficult part of the attempt, after all souls weren’t something I could reach out and touch.

Which is a great segue into the aspects of {Soul Field}!

Where {Soul Control} deals with the interaction of foreign souls, {Soul Field} works with the expansion and empowerment of the user’s soul. At its most basic, it would make it so that the user became better linked with their minions—in game terms, better updates on their status and a small boost to their power within the radius of effect. This somewhat carried over, but as things occurred on a continuum it was not as noticeable as I would have liked.

Much like , {Soul Field} gave me an awareness for my surroundings. It was like the core part of my soul that controlled my minions turned gaseous and expanded to fill up a larger area. If the minions were within it, interacting with them became much easier. There was also a vague sense of foreign bodies within the field, but it was analogous to looking through a thick fog to see where there wasn't any fog.

So with {Soul Field}, the zombie existed within my soul. Trying to remember how {Soul Control} drained away the souls off of the dying goblins, I made an attempt to tug the presence away from the corpse.

It budged, and so I continued to repeat the process more forcefully. Shattering apart, mana was consumed as it did so. Falling to pieces, the fragments of the soul weakly vanished into mist; even and were unable to detect anything.

The zombie lay still, and I smiled in accomplishment before retiring the rest of them.

Goblins watched from afar without causing any disruption. The battle concluded, yet few were eating the bodies of the dead in my sight. It seemed they did not wish to eat where a necromancer passed through to bring death. Instead, tKlor’t’t ordered them elsewhere to begin sating themselves.

“It seems I was not needed in the end. Victory may have come sooner had you fought with all your power from the beginning, although I am not sure if that would have been desirable.”

“All my power? Psh.” Most of my abilities were being utilized, but I would hardly call that fight all my power. It more or less was a straight-up fight requiring very little on my part other than muscles.“Oh right, speaking of not being needed Khtraal wants me to assassinate you. How do you feel about that?”

“H-how do I feel?” For the first time, I got tKlor’t’t to stutter. Well it was a fairly odd question. “I do not think I will ever know what to make of you.

“So he asked you to assassinate me? I would perhaps play along if it meant being able to escape the coming times in the shadows, however I am rather invested in the results to be gained from ruling over Yhrack. Of course, if he plans on killing me, I may not be given my rightful reward. Then again, my troops are already stationed there. If you would, say you killed me and claim your reward for it. I take it you are grabbing something from his hoard this time and not more wildlife?”

“That would be the case, but how exactly is that going to work out? For both you and myself.”

“The treasury is located within Oirk, and Khtraal will not send you there alone. At the very least several of his remaining warg riders will return with you. My shamen will contact me in the meantime and if his forces have been weakened enough, I will take the opportunity to counterattack.”

Tamping the ground with heavy thuds, I pondered over the proposal. This could be troublesome, but I wasn’t totally averse to the idea either. tKlor’t’t wouldn't take action if he was unable, or even unlikely to succeed; and seemed more open minded than Khtraal.

I supposed it would be to the village’s benefit if I backed the larger candidate.