"Who are you? What power do you refer to? What were your orders?"

"We are members of the Black Gauntlet. We had received orders from the Hand of Ma.s.salia to investigate this place. Because of what happened with the Academy of Magic, we used a medium, the Lord of Blackwood, to recruit mercenaries and adventurers." His voice was void of any emotions and his eyes barely blinked while reporting everything he knew. The ratman near the human was only nodding in a stiff way.

"Why this lord in particular?"

"Because he was indebted to us. His territory was suddenly plagued by diseases, a year ago, and he had to spend a lot of gold to bring priests and alchemists to his domain. However, cattle and peasants had succ.u.mbed in ma.s.ses, and he had to borrow even more money from the neighboring lords. That's how he contracted a debt to us, after exhausting everything else."

From what he was saying, this lord was truly unfortunate. A disaster happened, and even after trying to save those living in his territory, he ended up ruined. And afterward, even used by the Organization to do much more than just using his name. She could already guess that his end won't be pretty to see after the king learned his shady deals.

"And afterward, what was the plan?"

"If we could explore the tomb, we had to bring back everything interesting. And if did not contact anyone before 3 days, that would have meant we had all died. But with our numbers, we were confident that we could have at least escape." Hearing something like that from a man that did not even wipe out the saliva on the corner of his mouth was quite comical. Letting Malakov take him away to extract as much as possible from his broken mind, she looked at the ratman.

"What were you doing in the Synnada Empire? And why are you here now?"

"I ne-never set foot in that desssert. I was sssupposed to br-bring this to Genablum but was ordered to lo-look at the sssituation here. I wwasn't even sssupposed to stay more than a mi-minute." While painstakingly hearing the ratman convey his words, she saw him bring out something from a hidden pocket in his clothes. It was a letter, probably one written by the magus Kardel fought.

Cleanly opening it thanks to a lich nearby, she began to read its content. There were a few sentences ruled by the protocols, the basic courtesy, and finally what was interesting. Apparently, he was contacting an elder magus in Genablum to have information about a giant snake. It made sense, after all, any forms that the duvodiad could take will always be foreign for anyone on this world. Reading the entire letter once more, she concluded that it was just a normal letter.

"But if that's the case, why is the Organization tasked to transmit it?" This puzzled Leilade, until she heard the answer of the ratman. "Misstressss, the two co-countries are at war. Even n.o.bles and ki-kings often asked us to tr-transmit letters for them. It was lessss threatening than se-sending a potential a.s.sa.s.sssin."

Chuckling about the idea of someone like Kardel being used just to basically give a letter, she acknowledged the issue. Any conversation, especially between two magus of two countries at odd, would be watched heavily. Meaning that hidden arrangements had to be made, and who could do a better job than the giant of the underground. Right before the ratman left, she still had one last question.

"About the dwarves, do you have anything specific?"

"It is not my te-territory. I am sssorry, Misstress." Waving her hand, the little girl expected that. Salvaging the fraction of mana that the letter could produce, she headed toward Master Agnil, to see how the ghostly dwarf was doing. She had already lost count of the time the later spent repeatedly forging weapons and armors. His lack of basic needs besides energy to maintain his soul was truly formidable in such situation.

" ... swords, as many s.h.i.+elds. Still missing a huge chunk of armors, but that's fine, yes, that's fine. Now, those trolls, what should I do? Heavy hammers? Giant axes? No swords or s.h.i.+elds, only weapons but what?" As she approached the room, she felt the extremely hot temperature raising. It was the first time she entered the workplace of Agnil, and she was truly pleased by what she was seeing, even if it took her a long time to reach it. It was the deepest part of their base, so far that it would force a normal human to walk for dozens of minutes.

Multiple rivers of lava were cutting the room in several smaller parts. Around all of that burning magma, the same giant skeletons were hammering and refining metals. This helped to relieve the burden on the liches, that were not forced to creating a magic fire. Instead, she saw them by a group of tens channeling their power in a single point. After a few seconds, she saw the result of such a spell, of the size of a grain of sand. One lich cautiously picked it up and brought it inside a container where dozens of such grain were present.

After that, the group of liches had to rest and recharge their reserves of mana, proving once more than creating something out of sheer mana was extremely costly. On the other hand, there was a constant stream of skeletons entering and leaving the scorching room, one with stones and metals, the other with forged equipment. As for where the storage was, well, she had absolutely no clue.

"Ah, Leilade, glad you are here. Did you have anything specific concerning the trolls? Ymir still hadn't told me anything, or even brought one for me to see how they are shaped." Finally stopping to murmur incomprehensible stuff, the dwarf was showing no sign of stress or anything. However, he still looked expectantly at the girl in front of him.

"Do as you wish for them, Ymir will surely come soon. Concerning the undead, is everything ready?" While talking, Leilade concentrated a dark tendril on her hand, that was aimed at Agnil. The later showed a happy smile while being comforted by that influx of energy.

"Yes ... yes ... I mean, almost. For the basic troops, it is complete, but for the more powerful undead, I still lack many components. As you can see, the process to even produce a few grams is terribly slow. And with Malakov often affected at other tasks, it is not improving at all." He appeared slightly bothered by it, but not truly mad. After all, only one person could order that lich around, and she was in front of him.

"Show me one armored skeleton."

"As you wish." Signaling to a nearby skeleton, the later began to equip itself. It was one that seemed similar to those that attacked Archet, only that it was far more resistant and quicker. Seeing the bones clearly visible from under the armor, it will be a long time before she could have enough leather or other fabrics to hide their nature. After all, they will serve as future guards, so to reduce the innate fear of the undead, conceal the bones and empty orbits was a necessity.

The design of the armor was similar to the guards of Archet, or should she say, nearly every soldier in any world still at the such an archaic age. The helmet was entirely covering its face, only having a small opening at the level of the eyes, or where they should have been. The back of the helmet was extended to protect the neck, but the throat was still slightly exposed, with even the lower part of the jaw visible.

As for the rest, the skeleton was entirely protected, from the toes to the fingers. That way, even if it stiffened a bit the undead near the articulations, the bones were hidden by the armor. Making it walk for a while, the sound produced was horrible. The metal was permanently hitting the bones, creating a supernatural noise. As far as she was concerned, there will be no way for any of them to be even remotely discreet.

Picking up the sword, Leilade applied it to her arm and tried to cut it. Seeing that it did not even leave a trace, she was a bit disappointed. However, it was expected, if some random weapons had the ability to injure some as high ranked as her, the Demon Empire would become a joke. She hadn't submitted herself to all those treatments just to experience pain for fun. Using the sword nearly as a hammer, she nearly cut through the s.h.i.+eld. The blade was stopped in the middle, a satisfactory result.

"That's good enough for them. Coupled with the numerous liches that will reinforce those skeletons, anyone daring to attack will have to throw a lot of bodies at us. However, I hope the quality of the equipment designed for the superior undead will be higher."

"This was a certainty, Leilade. If that wouldn't have been the case, I would have personally dispersed my soul myself." Just as she began to walk away, she remembered her idea, that will only be possible after making sure the G.o.ds won't try something funny soon.

"Master Agnil, do you want to have a look at the dwarves of this world?" Her unexpected question made the living soul ponder in silence. Even if he wasn't the one to complain about working like that, a pause was always welcome. And if he could get his hands on real artisans, and not those undead that were brainless and forced him to check their every action, it would be great. And what better a.s.sistant than a dwarf? They existed, only, not on this planet, from what they had seen.

"Of course. Just unfortunate that there is no one to execute the enchanting of the weapons. But with an a.s.sistant, I am confident that I could begin to engrave a few runes on the equipment of Meridiana and Davion. If that's needed, of course."

There was a noticeable difference between enchanting something and adding a rune on an object. The first was entirely made with magic, meaning that the dwarves being them, they couldn't do it. To compensate that, like many races with deficiency regarding mana, they came up with another option. Using mana sources, like certain stones or cores from undead and such to act as a subst.i.tute. The basic spell attached to the mask of Davion was an example of enchanting, albeit being extremely crude. It was definitely not the domain of expertise of Malakov, making it unlikely that he will be able to create something better.

On the other hand, the runes were easier to create, before a certain level. The main issue was, however, the fact that the rune will slowly lose power if it was not recharged with mana. This problem also plagued the enchantments, but one could easily transfer mana to the later, while that simple act required a lot of preparations for the runes. One slight error could entirely destroy the pattern, forcing to rebuilt it from the scratch. Since they had not yet seen a single item bearing either an enchantment or a rune, Davion and Meridiana couldn't have one of them either. Otherwise, this would have created an uproar that could have threatened their ident.i.ty.

Finis.h.i.+ng to fix the last details with Agnil, the following days were awfully quiet and peaceful. Not even one stranger appeared in at less than a kilometer from their base. On the other hand, it was a nightmare on the other side of the mountains. Following the fact that the human the succubus picked up managed to end up as the Mayor of the city, the complaints were extremely few. The fresh memories of that horrible night were making people think twice before talking.

But that didn't last very long. The first one was the Adventurer Guild higher-ups, that were extremely displeased by the loss of the Guild Master of Archet. Following this, there were also rumors that corpses of elves, probably enslaved in secret, were found in numerous locations. The only reason why none had actually tried to judge the human was the protection of the orodil and the succubus, as well as the former Mayor backing her up. Nonetheless, it seemed that the two won't be able to escape the storm before a long time.