The first wave of Ethermen didn’t know what hit them. Dave wasn’t feeling all that confident on the numbers side of the battle. There were just too many enemies that were too strong for his current forces to handle. He made an executive decision that he needed to thin the herd a little.

It was just a coincidence that it was also the perfect opportunity to really flex his new powers.

The transition from Death Knight to War Wight was like dropping a hundred kilotons of high-yield explosives into the hands of someone used to fighting with a water pistol. Normally, that would be a recipe for disaster as the person in question fumbled their new powers and blew themselves up.

In that regard, Dave had one advantage. Only one, but it made all the difference. He was used to going into fights against those with metaphorical bazookas against his water pistol and winning. That kind of nigh-miraculous victory required him to eke out every ounce of his power with absolute precision and control.

Stepping into the shoes of a War Wight, Dave felt like he had taken off a lead jacket he’d never realized he was wearing. It wasn’t so much his power increasing to new heights, but his base capabilities finally catching up to his skill level. He could finally breathe. Well, if he had lungs. Which he did now, funnily enough.

All of this meant that, while there was still a learning curve for him to adapt to his abilities, Dave had been able to use nearly the full potential of his new form from the word go. Unfortunately, he hadn’t had a single opportunity in the months since to really flex that new power.

The closest he’d gotten was a couple of fights against Caeden while the entire team was in the Forge. That had been an interesting experience, though not exactly what Dave was looking for. While in the Blade Forge, Caeden was essentially and omnipotent god. Dave never stood a chance, despite his vast increase in power. It wasn’t the best example of him using his abilities to their full potential. Rather, he spent a few hours throwing everything he could at Caeden while the young god shrugged off everything and slapped him around a bit.

Of course, this battle wasn’t perfect either. Facing a numerically superior army was nice, but there wasn’t a single Etherman in that force that could even threaten him. They just weren’t strong enough, especially once Dave had stopped by his personal army back in the Necroverse.

The last time he’d fought an Etherman one on one, Dave had been a freshly minted War Wight with weapons formed from the remains of his deathsteel armor. They weren’t exactly the premier of weapons. Then the assault at the Central Academy and the mock battle with the ant shrouded had hardly required him to dip into his personal armaments. Generic deathsteel weapons had been more than enough.

The Ehterman army offered an opportunity to flex a little. Dave watched through the senses of a Banshee scout as the cloud of machine-men descended. At the same time, a dozen different weapons emerged from his shadow to hover behind him.

Dave had been more than happy to take a page from his boss’s book and set up a personal Shadow Storage. It had never been an option for him before, but it was easy now. Having a portion of his arsenal on hand was extremely convenient.

Every weapon arcing out behind him glowed with arcane power and violent energy. Each one was an artifact Dave had painstakingly collected over literal centuries from across time and space. They were his pride and joy back when he was a Death Knight, and one of the many ways he’d closed the power gap between him and higher-ranked undead or whatever else he was facing.

Now, one of his primary abilities as a War Wight made these weapons a part of his own soul, connected directly to him. They were extensions of his being, allowing him to freely control them without effort. A thought and flex of will coated each with a layer of Necroflame. The Ethermen had proven susceptible to the most basic of necromantic energy attacks, so Dave saw no reason to fix what wasn’t broke.

He watched carefully as the descending army drew closer and closer to the only avenue of attack that Dave had left to them. His arsenal slowly tilted along with his intent until all of them, swords, spears, axes, knives, and even a chakram, were leveled at that same entrance.

The first wave rushed the entrance and were met by blades sheathed in green fire that rotted their way through metal and flesh. Dave almost found it funny. None of his artifact weapons even had an opportunity to activate their secondary effects. The Necroflame was so effective the weapons barely touched an Etherman before they’d melted through the corroded and rotten mess.

But Dave couldn’t handle everything on his own. He could only control so many weapons at once, and the sheer number of Ethermen was too high for him to handle alone. For a moment, Dave was reminded of his battle against the army of ants, but there were several key differences.

The Ethermen were individually stronger, faster, and more intelligent than the ants had been. That didn’t make much difference against Dave’s personal weapons, as the power gap was still too wide. A one-hit-kill against a human was also going to kill a fish. Nothing he’d faced so far was strong enough to jump the gap to needing two hits.

That meant that moments later when the first of the Ehtermen snuck past his blades, they hit the undead frontlines like a runaway elephant plowing through a sandcastle. Despite bracing, the first undead practically dissolved on impact.

Dave had honestly expected that. These artificial weaponized humans were powerful, especially compared to a lesser-rank undead. It just wasn’t an even fight. That was why he’d placed the very weakest of the Undead Soldiers on the frontlines, knowing they’d die.

Dave let himself smile a little as he watched the first undead to pass on explode into a dense ball of Necroflame. This was also his doing. Dave was a Spirit of War and a pinnacle-rank undead. That granted him some abilities especially tailored for mass combat like this.

One of those powers was the ability to infuse any undead that was a lower rank than him that he was linked to with a spell called Soul Burst. It was a Necromancy spell that turned an undead’s soul into a bomb, converting all the Mana in their body and soul into Necroflame the moment they were destroyed.

It was a perfect counter to the Ethermen, as proven by that first lost undead. Normally, one Etherman would carve a path of carnage through a hundred lesser-rank undead before it was taken down. But Dave watched as the first one to engage his forces melted into a pile of slag and giblets on the ground after only ending a single undead.

A dozen and then a hundred more Ethermen slipped past his arsenal to strike at Dave’s front line, only to find it just as deadly as the barrage they’d avoided so narrowly.

This wasn’t a perfect solution, nor would it win him this battle. It especially wouldn’t win him the war. Dave calculated that his attacks were killing somewhere between a third to half of the Ethermen attack their position. Even in his most optimistic scenario, and accounting for the Ethermen that had died on the way to the surface, he still didn’t have enough undead to be trading one to one with them.

It wouldn’t be long before Dave expected his opponents to figure that out as well. He knew that the Ethermen were intelligent, and that they had a method of communication similar to the Death Link. Once one of them realized that they were technically still winning…There.

A sudden, massive wave of Ethermen barreled through his meat grinder of flying weapons to dive at the undead in an undisciplined suicide charge. Just what Dave was waiting for.

Dave knew from his first encounter with an Etherman that they were single-mindedly driven to complete their mission at any cost. He had adopted the exploding undead strategy specifically to lure them into making a careless charge like this.

Before they could reach the front lines, the Ethermen were blasted with a simultaneous strike from all of the Blight Throwers. Dave had several Abominations lift them and tilt the mostly immobile undead down far enough to pull off the attack. In an instant, the entire wave was gone, without Dave losing a single undead.

It was only seconds later when another wave followed in. No doubt it would take a few moments, maybe even several minutes for the Ethermen to realize they’d been tricked. In the meantime, Dave was rapidly depleting their numbers as they were caught between his meat grinder and the cannon fire.

They caught on faster than he would have liked, but well within his expectations. Their network seemed to lack a vital component that the Death Link possessed. The ability to tell when a connected member was destroyed.

Dave had to consider for a moment how lucky he was. Mainly that the Ethermen showed such an acute vulnerability to Necroflame. It was the only reason his army was surviving, realistically. That, and that fact that these Ethermen seemed built more for stealth and reconnaissance than mass combat. They lacked shields or even solid weapons.

The only armaments the Ethermen had were several varieties of gun. If they’d been allowed to attack from the air, Dave had no doubt they’d be devastating. But since he’d funneled them into a narrow angle of attack that immediately put them in melee, they were resorting to what seemed like backup weapons. Small daggers and spiked knuckles on mechanical hands.

If they’d been able to employ those weapons effectively, they might have been able to cut a swath through the undead. It was too bad for them that they didn’t have a good counter to Necroflame. Though Dave didn’t expect that to last forever. His boss and her friends might have access to the Forge, but he had no doubt that the massive flagship overhead held secrets of its own. One of which was likely to be a workshop.

No doubt they’d be seeing modified Ethermen at some point that could resist or even ignore Necroflame. At least, if the people in charge on that ship were in any way smart. So far, they’d been doing a decent job, especially for such short-lived mortals. At least, they were trying. It wasn't their fault they were just outclassed.

As if to prove him correct, the next group of Ethermen staggered their attack just slightly. Ten members went out ahead of the other and intercepted the Blight Throwers attacks. The dens balls of Necroflame consumed them entirely, but their sacrifice made space for the rest to charge in.

For the first time since all this started, the undead forces met the Ethermen in combat. Sure, Dave could have just sacrificed more lesser-ranked undead, but he was worried about the battle after this one more than what was happening in the moment. If the only way he could stop the Ethermen was through suicide explosions or aerial bombardment, they weren’t going to be doing well in a few days.

Dave needed information about how the Ethermen would fight his undead, and he needed to find counters to that. And that meant letting the two clash. He hadn’t done so at the start because he wanted to at least thin the herd before he started losing troops by the dozens. That way he could guarantee victory, if not how much it was going to cost him.

Initially, it went about as well as he expected. The Ethermen were faster, smarter, stronger, and better equipped than his lesser undead. Every blow from a mechanized fist or cut from a glowing blade would either destroy an undead or leave it defenseless for the second strike.

That was until the Abominations started stepping in. Dave had kept his frontline mostly composed of Undead Soldiers. They were a great all-rounder unit that could use a wide variety of weapons and armor, perfect for testing against an unknown foe. It turned out that that was a poor decision.

As vulnerable as the Ethermen were to Necroflame, they seemed to have no trouble tearing through deathsteel like it was uncured leather. Many were simply punching the Undead Soldiers whose skeltal forms were especially vulnerable to blunt force damage.

The Abominations were a polar opposite. Composed of rotten flesh reinforced with Necrotic Mana, they weren’t armored or even armed. What they did have was mass. The infusion of Necrotic Mana inflated the necrotized flesh, swelling an Abomination’s body to many times it’s original size.

It turned out that mass and added strength was key. The Ethermen were strong, but not as strong as an Abomination. They were still significantly faster, but the kill box Dave had created with his blades and spells limited their mobility. The mass of fighters limited them even further.

As a result, the Ethermen found it nearly impossible to dodge an Abomination’s attack. Of course, the massive undead couldn’t dodge either. But the Ethermen’s melee attacks were significantly less effective or a bif pile of reinforced flesh, as opposed to a skeleton wrapped in armor. Dave would have to ask the Bladeborne ot look into why the Ethermen’s weapons were so much less effective on reinforced flesh while they chewed through deathsteel. There was insight to be had there.

Meanwhile, Dave had the Abominations take over the frontlines. Immediately, the number of undead falling dwindled as the hulking brutes gave as good as they got. Dave resolved to have Cat summon a second Dread Lord; they needed to make more soldiers.

The battle raged on with Dave tweaking troop distributions and finding ways to use the Undead Soldiers. That mostly involved giving them long spears and having them stab between Abominations while using what little Necroflame they could muster. It took some of the pressure off the frontliners to do damage and let them focus on being literal meat shields.

Dave was feeling good until one of the Ethermen, seemingly on a whim, decided to use some kind of ethertech flamethrower. Undead, and especially those composed mostly of flesh, were vulnerable to fire. The Abominations went up like fireworks, exploding into flaming chunks that lit others aflame.

“Well, that’s unfortunate.” Dave sighed. Information gathering time was over. He was about to lose his front line and likely a large portion of his army. With fire in play, the confined space no longer worked to his advantage. Doubly bad, Dave had no direct counters to fire himself. He was still an undead, even if he’d been elevated. His own flesh was weak to the flame, and no Necromancy spell he knew of could put out a fire of this size. Not with this many undead in a confined space.

Dave needed help. So, he called a friend.

Snapping his fingers and thanking his new boss once again for his greater control of Necroflame, Dave burned a series of complex sigils and arcane writing into the bone floor of the cage he’d summoned. Then, he cut his wrists. Back when he was a Death Knight, he’d needed someone else to do this step. Now that he had a proper body, he could handle it.

The blood that came out was black as pitch and as thick as molasses. Dave carefully dripped it onto a few sigils as he spoke a guttural tongue not of this plane of existence. The splotches of blood flared, burning with a sanguine flame that spread to cover the entire series of symbols he’d carved.

“God, undead blood is so gross, Dave. Just call like a normal person next time. I don’t even want these rancid bodily fluids.” An exasperated voice entered his mind. A moment later, the symbols flared and vanished as a woman with black skin, red hair, and wearing a light green dress took their place.

Before he could respond, the woman snapped her fingers, much like Dave had moments ago. Instantly, all the fire inside the Cage of Bone vanished.

“Did you seriously call me to put out a fire? I have my own things going on you know.” She put her hands on her hips, smirking at him in amusement.

“Hi, Mel.” Dave smiled back at Mel’Zally, Greater Duchess of the Nine Hells and Succubus Queen. Also, a close friend and former work colleague. “How’ve you been?”