Solidifying my claim on my castle and Leb’on’e brought up two options for me. First was the Castle interface the other was the city interface. The castle was made up of everything inside the second curtain wall. From there out was the city interface, including the walls and other buildings. Unfortunately, most of the buildings were showing as empty with a slight level of disrepair.

Both the castle and the city had listed other cored buildings in them, which I thought was both amazing and strange. I would have expected the cored building inside the castle to make the castle a cluster core. However, I knew that wasn’t the case because it didn’t claim to be a cluster, and I had created the first cluster core.

While I would have loved to have spent the time going through the dozens of screens on both the castle and the city, I knew I didn’t have the time. If I didn’t need to lock down the Merchant Guild’s trade hub, I would have gone right into building a dungeon and trying to find a cure for Kasidy.

As it stood, I figured the best place to go would be through the gate. If nothing else, hopefully, it would be out of a cored building that was too high for me to place a dungeon. Of course, if it was, I would just have to go through one of the gates to find another place.

I took a few moments to attempt to get the core to start repairing the city’s walls. However, I got an error message as soon as I found the repair function.

Unable to start repairs while occupied.

Estimated hostile forces

163024 Undead

15000 Dark forces

Activate City Defenses?

Yes/No

I blew out a deep breath. “Fifteen thousand.”

Kasidy standing next to me, asked. “Fifteen thousand what?”

“Dark forces inside the walls. I can’t start repairs while they are here. The undead I are a massive number too. But at least those I can somewhat expect to be dumb.”

Her eyebrows went up, and as she said. “That’s a lot. Is this a new attack or something ongoing?”

I smiled just a little. “It’s been ongoing from what the lich told me. I could turn on defenses to attack, but I’m not sure if they will start taking out the undead. I would rather take the time to turn them into troops and then turn on the defenses.”

She nodded to me as I got myself transferred back into the necromancy throne. I could understand why people feared necromancers. After all, the more we fought, the stronger we could become. With the power some of my higher-level guards had, it was a wonder that anyone ever defeated them.

I cast my thoughts to Blink. “I am heading to the portal. Have you caught anymore?”

I felt a chuckling hiss from Blink. “I caught them all!”

When she said that, I jumped into my shade near the gate. The guild members were all face-first on the ground. Standing over each was an undead with a weapon poised and ready to strike.

Letting go of the shade, I returned to my body. We were heading that way quickly and would soon be down there. Kasidy was walking beside the throne, giving sideways glances at the woman who was still following me around.

Shaking my head slightly, I asked Kasidy. “Kas, are you coming through the gate with me, or do you want to stay on this side? I can leave guards to watch over you.”

Kasidy shook her head and shot me an apprehensive look. “I told you. I’m staying with you now. Please don’t try to leave me behind again.”

I smiled and nodded. I got it, I really did, but I wished I could put her someplace safer. I didn’t like the idea of her coming with me to fight the guild, but not wanting to be away from her made too much sense to my heart.

A few minutes later, I had to hold back a laugh as I entered the gate room. Blink had moved herself up to the edge of the gate, and as new troops came through, she would hit them with her tail. She was so insanely large for this area that her mass alone was enough to keep a fight from happening. She almost looked like a horse, shooing flies away with her tail as she batted the reinforcement back and forth.

We paused for just a moment as I looked over at Renfry. “Ready?”

My revenant friend smiled and said. “As ready as I will ever be, my lord.”

I nodded and glanced over at Kasidy. “How about you?”

She shook her head. “No, but I will make do.”

I looked down from my throne at the captured troops. Then I looked over at Kasidy and smiled. I didn’t know what they had done before, but I knew I either had to kill them or let them go. I just didn’t have the manpower to keep them locked up. Even if a skeletal guard could keep watch all day. I couldn’t afford to lose one guard per.

I raised my voice. “Merchant guild, you have two choices right now. Your first choice is simple, pledge a binding vow to me, renounce your gods, and swear to either Order and Chaos or Batholomew. Your other option is even easier; you can die right now, your soul bound to me as a wraith, your body as an undead, or perhaps a few of you both!

One of the men on the ground, a cleric, from the looks of his white robes, yelled out. “I will never pledge myself a necromancer! You will have….”

As he spoke, I had the skeletal guard standing watch over him drop his hammer onto the man’s neck. He didn’t even get a scream out as he did. Then I reached out with the throne and ripped his soul from his body. It only took a moment for the throne to break the mortal coils, and his soul got the screaming in that I hadn’t let his body have.

I yelled. “Who else?”

As I waited, I reached over to the now-dead body of the cleric of death and raised his body. It would have been better to have had the lich do it. While I might have a claim that is much higher than the lich’s, my ability to raise an undead was tied directly to my spell at level zero.

None of the captured spoke out for a moment, so I filled the silence and yelled out. “Sounds like you are all choosing to die! I can use more minions!”

One of the clerics yelled out. “I’ll do it! I just have to be on my knees first!”

I signaled the skeletal guard to let him up. “Be quick about it!”

When the man got to his knees, he yelled out. “Oh, Death! I call out to you! My life has been offered me if I but renounce you! I want to live! I want to live where I can follow you! Bring forth your fire and bring your faithful into your embrace!”

I sneered at him as I had the guard kill him. However, it was too late. Small little tears in the air showed up above all of the clerics as they screamed out, calling for Death to come to everyone. The portal also snapped shut like Death didn’t want anyone to run that way. Then flaming blue balls of exploding magic started to rain down on the clerics of Death. As the balls hit their targets, the clerics fully dissolved. My undead also took splash damage as I had them move back quickly.

One of the mages lying next to a cleric cast a shield, only for it to be broken with the faith magic. He screamed out in pain as the blue fire hit him. But, unlike the followers of Death, he didn’t break or dissolve. Now he started to convulse in pain.

Another one of the guild members seeing what was happening, started to get up, only for my guard to knock him back down. The same scene played out repeatedly as others would get up to try to run.

Some even started to call out to the gods that they worshiped as they were now being attacked by Death himself. No help came to those who called out. Their shields didn’t protect them, and their armor just served to cook them as they started to be hit.

Then One of the soldiers on the ground screamed out. “I renounce War! I pledge my life to Order! Save me Order!”

A slight white dome covered him as a burning blue ball slammed into it. The ball disappeared, and the man started to cry. I saw him move from lying on the ground to kneeling as the light of the dome began to glow brighter.

Then the man yelled out. “Order saved me! She’s real! She listens!”

Like a ripple through the room, more screamed out, dropping their allegiance to their current gods, most of whom I had never heard of before. As more renounced their gods, other things started to happen in the room. The blue fireballs were joined with lightning and spheres of rocks. Others must have had enough faith to draw the anger of their gods but not enough to draw their favor.

Soon enough, it ended like it started, with the tears in the air closing. Kasidy looked over at me and said. “For every level of devotion someone has to their god when they leave them, they will be attacked with that number of heavenly strikes. I am surprised that anyone lived through it.”

I nodded slightly. “Yeah, we might not do that again.”

Then I yelled out. “That was only part of what you had to do! You must swear your souls to me that you will not betray me or my house!”

Of close to a hundred in the room when it started, only about two dozen were left after the gods threw their tantrums. I didn’t get how it worked. I had faith in several gods, so why should it matter if I renounced one or not? I doubted it related to who they needed to swear to. However, I wasn’t sure about that.

Renfry called out. “Repeat after me if you want to live.”

My champion paused for a moment, then took a deep breath and yelled. “I swear before my new god and on my body and soul that I will serve Arn Marquess of Westiral and the land of Westiral. I offer my soul and body to enter his eternal army of undead if I break my oath. I renounce all former oaths of service and promise not to seek to harm Westiral or its ruler in any way. I swear to seek to help the people of Westiral and its rulers as penance for my crimes and actions. I acknowledge the laws of Westiral have priority over me and that I will seek not to break these laws and encourage others to follow them.”

The former guild members started to scream as they took the oath. Many of them became noticeably weaker as they broke with the guild. A few had to rip pieces of equipment off as their stats or alignment changed.

I had my guards form up around the newly changed men as I asked Renfry. “Does the oath matter? After all, they just broke their other oaths. Can’t they do the same again?”

Renfry smiled and nodded. “So if they break the oath, we will know. That alone will help keep them in line. But the other thing is that you are a necromancer who can take their souls and bodies as payment for broken oaths. Others couldn’t put that on as a condition as you can only condition things you can back up.”

I nodded slowly as I looked over the men standing before me. It hit me like a storm. Some of them lost levels; that would be the only reason they would get weaker, which meant that they served someone who could take levels.

* * *