“The idea of using necromantically raised skeletons as scarecrows always creeped out visitors for some reason. I don’t get why they’re so freaked out about it? It’s a most effective thing at its job!” - Maulan Indris Galing, farmer from Ptolodecca.

When the carriage reached a small town on the eastern side of Ptolodecca that evening, Aideen called for a rest break. While a necromantic contraption like what they rode needed no such thing as rest, and given an actual skilled necromancer to drive it, could keep going even while the driver slept at night, she wanted to show Celia a bit more about her homeland, as well as allow the young necromancer who served as their driver some proper rest, which he was quite grateful for.

Banyumas was a small town built on the bend of a rather large river. The place got its name from the gold mine located in the hills nearby, close to where the river originated. The proximity to the gold veins meant that the river water sometimes carried bits of gold ore as sediment, which resulted in the town’s name, which roughly meant “Golden Water” in the local dialect.

The pair of skeletal behemoths that stood guard over the town gate had not surprised Celia much. By that point she had expected something like that, given how heavily the Lichdom made use of undead sentries. It only made sense that they’d do the same for things like gate guards and the likes. She also saw the multitude of undead skeletons standing guard over the lush, fertile fields and orchards, where they played the part of both sentries and scarecrows, another thing that surprised her at first.

What did surprise her was the continued prevalence of undead sentries inside the town itself. Every street corner or important location had a skeletal guard standing watch. Yet at the same time, the locals of the city just went about their lives without being bothered by their presence. Celia even saw some who greeted the skeletal guards as they passed, or toasted them while drinking outside some nearby establishments.

It was obvious how integrated the undead were with the local community.

In the city, she also got to see odd places where local farmers “borrowed” some skeletal beasts of burden to work their farms. Like the contraption they rode on their way to the town, those were rather recent developments, a byproduct of Mimia and Èirynn’s research. The thick-bodied six-legged skeletal constructs were simple ones, that only advanced at a walking pace in the directions its reins were tugged towards.

Those same constructs also possessed enough power to plow through rocky soil while maintaining that same pace, however, which made for a more powerful beast of burden that never gets tired. Of course, unless the farmer in question happened to be of the Death affinity, they still needed a mana recharge after a while, but the local necromancers apparently made their rounds once every week for that exact purpose.

Mimia, as the inheritor of Aoife’s pets, had always wanted to attempt recreating others like them, though her research so far had little success. Èirynn on the other hand, focused on her unique brand of craftsmanship for the most part, and its applications. Where a necromancer would typically just use the natural contours of the bones they used and combined them accordingly, Èirynn’s method was different.

Instead, she molded the pieces she used to the shapes she desired, often creating a lifelike mosaic out of large amounts of tiny pieces of shaped bones in the process. The constructs she created that way naturally had drawbacks too, like how they took far more effort to create and needed more mana to maintain, but in turn they tended to be sturdier, with greater flexibility to boot. The new bodies that Haon and the others inhabited nowadays were all hand-crafted by Èirynn with this method.

The contraptions Celia saw along the way were byproducts of the two’s combined research. Èirynn’s unorthodox method of crafting – which grew more popular amongst the younger generations of the Lichdom by the day – meant that they were far less confined by natural shapes, and could create undead contraptions that were designed for only one specific task.

In turn, Mimia’s research delved deep into the soul realm, which included ways on how to “instruct” the undead they created to respond without needing direct control. Where most tried to create undead that could respond to a greater variety of situations, however, Mimia took the reverse approach. She developed new ways to place a very specific set of instructions for the contraptions, designed for the work they were meant to, and no more.

As a result, a variety of specialized undead contraptions that were primarily designed to make life easier for the less-skilled people proliferated widely through the Lichdom since over a century ago. Aideen had seen some of their early results before she left back then, so after a century of further development, it had not surprised her to see them being far more widespread.

It was still quite a shock for Celia, though, who had never expected to see people so widely adopting all sorts of undead contraptions to make their life easier.

Maybe seeing undead beasts of burden for either heavy farmwork or pulling carriages were still within her expectations, but she had not expected to see things like platforms that crawled up the walls of taller houses while carrying items on it, to allow the homeowner to simply take the items from a window at the upper floor without having to carry it themselves.

Nor was she used to seeing the animals that were typically prized as beasts of burden being fattened and ranched specifically for their meat or milk, or both. In a typical village a bull would have been considered a prized possession to work the lands with, and people only ever ate them if they passed away from old age or illness, usually.

With the advent of undead alternatives that were better in every way, though, the locals no longer needed them for farming, so instead they were ranched for their meat.