“Intruders have invaded the keep!”

“It’s the Roundear, and he brought reinforcements!

“Strike him dead! A hundred gold for his head. A hundred gold to whoever brings me his head!” The chieftain roared.

A roar echoed by scores of fierce battle cries as every musketeer and Classers within the keep roared in fierce accord, greed shoring up their weakened spines. A roar that a coldly smiling Eric heard so well as he stood at the feet of his fleshy siege tower, waiting for their unified outraged to turn into confusion.

Then horror.

Before the inevitable began to unfold.

“Chief Valeg! Something’s wrong!”

“Wait, those are our men. Soldiers! Report!”

The air was abruptly punctuated by surprised screams.

“Chieftain! Those bastards are attacking our own men.”

“Fuckin’ hell, they’re biting the musketeers. Fire, fools! They’re possessed!”

“The musket’s aren’t working! The fucker’s aren’t slowing down!”

“They’re headed for the cannon!”

Screams and incoherent roaring filled the night before the entire keep vibrated with the signal he had been waiting for.

“Fuck it, night of the living dead. Fucking love it!” Hooted an all too human voice as the air rang with the roar of multiple fired cannon.

Then Eric was off like a shot.

Heart pounding as he raced up his necromantic siege tower as fast as his superhuman stats could take him, wasting no time when he burst over the lip of the parapet, instantly summoning his soul-bound ace in the whole.

Before locking in on his target, catching the hard-eyed countenance of a scruffy faced man chomping on stogie that slipped out of his mouth as veteran eyes locked onto what was in Eric’s hand.

The man immediately dropped the shell he had been loading into what looked like a cross between a howitzer and the late 17th century cannons so popular with the orcs, raising his arms in a silent plea.

Skill check made. You have critically struck your opponent!

And the inky blackness flashed with a streak of plasma as a second cannon on the other side of the battlement spun around with surprising speed to get a lock on Eric, less than three seconds after having blasted over a dozen charging revenants to crimson paste.

The pinch-faced classer wearing an ragged Living Dead t-shirt then stiffened with a look of utter confusion as he toppled off the battlement, leaving a crimson mist of superheated brains and ruptured skull behind as he cartwheeled to the keep flagstones below.

“Shit,” cursed the cigar chomping gunner, eyes widening when a grim-faced Eric pointed his blaster the man’s way. “Look, man, I surrender, okay? I fucking surrender,” he implored over the shouts and roars of countless panicked orcs below as a score of their former compatriots did everything they could to devour their living counterparts.

Eric gave a slow nod. “You’re right. No need for me to waste priceless ammo on you.”

The man gave a relieved chuckle when Eric’s Mark II Deathblaze vanished in the blink of an eye. “Shit, man, you had me going there! For a second I thought you—“

You have successfully summoned and cast soul-bound pilum!

You have pierced your target’s heart!

You are now 24 kills away from your goal.

Eric didn’t hesitate, he threw for all he was worth in the precious moments that chaos ruled the keep grounds below. Because he had no doubt that the surviving orcs, no doubt the cream of their forces, would defeat his revenants in the end. But with their near imperviousness to impaling wounds, just like in every zombie movie ever, the spear chuckers were at a severe disadvantage. With any luck, they’d winnow the one threat Eric knew he’d always have to be wary of, before axe-wielding berserkers finished cutting them down.

So Eric made every second count, throwing soul bound javelins free of any flickering flame at all, so quickly that the double handful of orcs surrounding the pair of cannons only had a split second to get over the shock of their fellows dropping like flies around them before they too collapsed with desperate grunts and gurgling cries as freshly thrown pilum tore open their chests before disappearing an instant later leaving fresh wounds spurting a half dozen groaning orc’s life blood as a desperately sprinting Eric, fearing disaster or unseen gunners turning the tables on him at the last moment, sprung over the bodies of his fallen revenants and smacked his palm against first one artillery piece and the gunner that had been manning it and then the other, having to fight back the fierce desire to whoop for sheer relief, finally having claimed the deadliest pieces his foe had on the board.

But he did no such thing, instead crouching down as low as he could on the battlement before pulling up his interface map and this time using his head, doing his best to triangulate the reds he sensed still on the battlements with any possible classers or cannon nests that might still be able to take him out.

Much to his relief, he saw absolutely nothing on the battlements proper, only orcs hiding in the keep walls themselves, no doubt desperate to escape the mad melee happening in the courtyard itself.

A frenzied melee Eric allowed to proceed undisturbed.

At least until he had extinguished ever lamp and torch on the battlements proper, so that when he looked down at the furiously struggling orcs below, all his enemies would see if they chanced a glance upward would be overcast gloom.

While all Eric saw below was his prey.

But first things first.

What good was a trap, if his prey sprung free?

The keep suddenly shook with the crash of shattered stone and crumpled metal, and the roar of inconceivably massive boar that had just slammed both the north and south portcullises.

An act that earned terrified squeals and snarls from the cluster of some thirty odd orcs that had formed their own shield wall with which they successfully forced the snarling revenants back.

“Chief Valeg! Those fuckers are trying to break in!” roared a panicked custos by his side, though his wild eyes didn’t hinder the might swings of his fearsome axe as a mighty swing tore completely through the nearest revenant, the creature collapsing in a motionless heap a heartbeat later.

“Ha! The fuckers don’t have a chance of that!” The chieftain heartily declared, tusks flashing as he forced a smile in the dim torchlight that was all they had in the courtyard. “Take heart, brothers! Those monsters have no chance of breaking through the gates… the fools have only managed to jam them shut! And these pathetic necromantic summonings are nothing! Already we’ve managed to cut half of them down! By this time tomorrow you will all be singing praise in my name and we’ll all get drunk as hell in blood wine with a dozen fresh wenches from the Bloodtear Syndicate! No way in hell any human chump’s going to get the best of the Skullcrushers!”

The words earned roars of approval from the surviving orcs, and Eric could actually sense the soldier’s resolve strengthening with a Chieftain’s perks… until one Javelineer after another began stumbling to the ground with desperate cries or no sound at all, while the entire surviving swarm of orc revenants abruptly unified in purpose, rushing the shield wall at one vulnerable point after another, turning all eyes away from the Classers being struck down in the darkness until it was too late.

Not surprisingly, it was the chieftain who understood the threat when the massive orc beside him collapsed in a spray of crimson, the last two feet of a seven foot long pilum blossoming from his soldier’s neck like the deadliest of fountains showering them all with his lifeblood.

The chieftain immediately gazed up with wide, terrified eyes. “Snipers in the dark. Snipers in the dark!”

But there was nothing to see.

No target for the very small handful of surviving javelineers to aim pilums held in shaking grips at.

Because their softly cursing target was already sprinting through the dark, over half a mile away.

Saying the words he most needed to say to relieve the once-more awful pressure… and bring additional sentinels into the fold.

“Ego to voco!” Eric whispered in the depths of the night.

“Adiuro te!” His newly risen Revenants rumbled in unison.

“Obedire!” Eric answered as five additional Tuskers stomped at attention.

He gazed with pride as his cavalry company swelled with fresh recruits, each and every one of them willing and eager to serve. So long as they would get the chance to feel the evening breeze ruffle their impossibly thick hides, and be permitted to savor the warm light of the noonday sun warming their eternal bones.

Eric then made his way back to the keep, once again savoring the release of impossible pressure, thanks to an empty experience pool once more. He took a deep breath, feeling a dark heady sense of exhilaration in a way that had nothing to do with cultivation, so occluded he feared his peripherals had already become, having surrendered all limits as to just how dark a path he’d walk this night, if it meant that he, and not his enemies, would be seeing the light of a brand new day.

Yet Eric’s limbs still tingled with the fury of battle, slowly mastering a weapon that now felt almost as comfortable in his hands as his beloved bow. Just as his soul shivered with the delicious taste of sweet crimson power over life and death itself, tapping into gifts that came so naturally to him, that he understood so intuitively, for all that he had never once bothered playing a necromancer in any game as a kid, or had any fascinations with darker paths in the life he had known before.

Most of all, however, he exhilarated in the opportunity to embrace his darkest art. An absolutely forbidden path that, far from turning the land around him to ash and despair, he had somehow transformed to what could almost be considered a gift, granting any territory he claimed an actual blessing, even as he drank so much of its potential dry.

He couldn’t quite hold back a soft chuckle, his earlier trepidation highlighted by moments of sheer terror replaced by a growing sense of exhilaration, increasingly certain that for all that he was but a single individual, it would be he whose story rose triumphant this night, not the countless dozens of orcs roaring against the darkness of the night.

And that’s when he froze, gritting his teeth and glared out into the gloom. Only now recognizing the arrogance that almost cost him his life, once before.

So he paused, stared for long moments back at the darkened keep from which the Chieftan’s desperate cries to rally his men could still be heard, and retreated some distance back once more.

Overly cautious? Perhaps.

But an entire faction of money-grubbing, contract exploiting goblins were after his head, and he had been brilliant enough to make enemies of a pair of factions given special privileges, which meant that both cannons and blaster rifles were effectively in play. So he wouldn’t shame himself for finally exercising a little bit of caution as he huddled behind a particularly stout oak trunk with massive Tusker sentinels keeping solemn watch as he closed his eyes and took careful inventory of all the contents that his ES Space now laid claimed to, determined to make a backup present or two that his enemies wouldn’t soon forget.

Right before catching sight of that which had been so carefully hidden. Eric froze with wonder, his heart filled to bursting with an upswelling of gratitude for a realm that had sought fit to gift its protector with one final gift, before exiling him forevermore.

A gift that included every rightful prize he had claimed, and so many of the glittering priceless jewels that had dangled so brilliantly in the forest cathedral that had sheltered him and his friends for so long.

He allowed himself a single moment of pristine happiness, before his features hardened with resolve once more.

He had a territory to claim, and perhaps a title as well.

And only a handful of hours left to see one of them through.