Unfortunately, I’m Not A Hero: 113

Unfortunately, I’m Not A Hero: 113

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Commissioned by Shaderic

Wordcount: 2500

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My return to Ylstu came with only minor celebrations, because I had no plans on sticking around for a prolonged period. I intended to only check on certain projects, maybe sleep in my bed for a few days, and then go back to help Roseanne, so that the Kindred’s civilization didn’t keel over and rot with all the growth it was currently experiencing. I would’ve liked for there to be no celebrations at all, but apparently coming back from a legendary diplomatic mission to your prosperous city-state meant that you had to have celebrations.

Anyway, after enduring the parade and making a show of returning home, I dusted off the panties and flower petals that fell on me whilst walking on the streets and didn’t waste any time.

Well, I considered the fact that the panties had either far less fabric or didn’t conceal a thing anymore for a moment, but besides that I didn’t waste any time and met with Henri to take a look at the Necropolis.

Surprisingly, I was pleased with what I found.

I thought it was going to be an underground filled with pale exhibitionists who liked writing demeaning things about themselves, but instead I found myself looking at a center of industry beneath my city that was making me lots of money.

Sure everyone could’ve used more clothes, but they were decent, and since they were making me money I was willing to ignore my personal gripes on the matter.

Money, after all, is what I needed most of all now as Roseanne’s honorary second-in-command.

…

In order to handle the issue of an Undead Realm corrupting the land and killing crops and herds, Henri planned on building underground and essentially sealing the area off with wards and magic. Future expansions would require some witches-in-training to painstakingly remove and apply new wards, but we were training our own witches, so that was just going to be a learning experience for them and free labor for us.

Win-win.

But back to Henri’s Necropolis.

Ylstu was a long valley between a mountain range that divided the continent between the Kindred and the Empire. That meant that valley was essentially amidst mountains and only existed because of the river carving it out over a few million years. There was plenty of rich topsoil in the valley, but if you dig deep enough you hit mountain quickly. In those mountains were plenty caverns and hollowed out areas courtesy of natural circumstance, which Henri was able to find and locate with the help of our enterprising population of Dwarves. With that prime location found, the castle was built atop a large cavern to facilitate rapid, starting growth for the Necropolis and all the energies required for Henri’s subordinates to become more than mere Ghouls would be sealed in there to ensure that the rest of the valley didn’t become corrupted.

Through magic, the unwavering stamina of Undead, and the desire of Dwarves to exploit mineral wealth, the Necropolis was born as part city and part massive, underground mining operation. I had a lot to say to them about making sure that it wouldn’t collapse, which got my Dwarves the angriest I’d ever seen them. Not the sexy or cute sort of angry either, but actual steaming anger. They demanded that I look through their tunnels and tell them I was concerned about Ylstu collapsing in a massive sinkhole again.

I had to apologize after the tour, and I’m pretty sure that my sincere apology after seeing it all was the only reason why I didn’t earn any enmity from my shorter citizenry. Despite being a race of neurotic shortstacks who fetishized getting put into harnesses and used while they were working, they sure could blow up when their craftsmanship was questioned. As a good leader and capable individual, I made a note to always just ask for a tour, ask questions, and check things out instead of talking out of my ass about things I didn’t know.

What was I talking about before my first taste of Dwarven rage again?

Ah, the Necropolis. Right.

After the a massive cavern was hollowed out, magic and manpower transformed it. Immense black pillars rose from the bottom to the top as structural safeguards against any collapse. The Dwarves assured me it could withstand the entire mountain falling upon it, but they built it to be capable of swaying with any earthquakes that might come about in the future. From there on the structures necessary to facilitate Undead society was built. Spires put out “necrotic” energy and bathed the obsidian cavern in a pale, green glow. Lichen, vermin, and other living things died in the first few days, but soon enough they were replaced by undead counterparts. Skeletal rats, eerie flowers blooming amidst dead fungus patches, and the odd undead spider skittered around, until Henri placed her transforming Ghouls within the place in “tombs.”

In those tombs, the lesser Undead that lost their minds, but kept their souls were bathed in the Necropolis’s power and isolated from anything else that could interfere. They had the perfect place to discard their lesser forms and become greater while retaining her minds and souls. Undead that were transformed from corpses without any souls could also enter the tomb, after ‘living’ long enough, and become fully sentient as well… but so far we didn’t have any of that.

So, the Necropolis was manned mostly by those Henri saved from the downfall of her family’s fiefdom.

That was a mistake, but I’m getting ahead of myself.

In terms of strategic assets, the Necropolis was a tremendous asset. From a bunch of Ghouls, mindless things that had brute strength, but little else, I got a whole slew of power Undead Kindred. Vampires that could become powerful spellcasters and warriors arose from the former, lesser nobility that Henri’s family commanded. The loyal soldiers of her household developed into Undead Warriors, like the Onimusha that Kurama’s family employed. However, the most interesting development were her servants, who all become Phantoms.

Powerful ghosts that can interact with physical objects whilst invisible? Incredibly tough warriors that’ll never tire in battle with all their skills from their past life? Officers that could wade into the battlefield to secure points of conflict, or just glass an area that they spot on demand?

That was just the cherry on the top.

The Undead that weren’t going to advance to their next stage of existence, yet were all improved by the Necropolis to the point that the Dwarves were willing to use them for digging and mining under Dwarven foremen. Their dexterity increased, their open wounds were closed, and they could follow more direct orders, so they made for good workers, especially since they were inhumanly strong and untiring too.

It was like having a broken field-type card for all my summoned monsters.

The Dwarves grumbled a bit about giving them pay and getting taxed for their employment, but when I brought up fairness and giving them what they were owed, the shortstacks grumbled and complied.

Yeah.

I was putting a lot of Undead to work, getting mineral wealth dug out of the ground to be sold in my markets, and getting an income tax out of them and their employers. The Necropolis also didn’t need a sewage system, barely needed any maintenance, and had no crime to speak off. The only thing that the elite Undead wanted in life were luxuries, which they purchased off their wages, which I had existing taxes on. In essence, I had a massive expansion to my residential, industrial, and commercial sectors of Ylstu, boosting my tax revenue immensely, at the absolute minimum possible expenditure.

It was, in a word, perfection.

Why couldn’t all my citizens be Undead?

Wait… does thinking that make me racist?

…

Henri’s castle was an imposing sight. In truth, it barely constituted as a center of administration, and was primarily a defensive fortification. It had eighteen towers, each one spiraling higher than the other, with the tallest one at the center. Each tower was placed carefully so that they could be garrisoned with users of magic and fire at nearly every direction with as much firepower as possible. The walls that surrounded it were tall and thick, like the Empire’s, designed to withstand superhuman assault and magical bombardment.

It was linked the to Necropolis, which could act as a massive shelter for my citizens, and it had enough storage to allow my people to withstand months of siege. If that wasn’t enough, then the connection from the Necropolis to the Dwarven stronghold would allow my people to retreat, because my Dwarves finished digging and tunneling to the other side of the mountain range. So, even if it looked like Ylstu would fall the, the castle could still hold back any army trying to take the valley while my people escaped and created a new line of defense in the mountains.

When it was completed.

And paid for.

“Why does everything worth having cost so much.” I grumbled while looking over the numbers and walking through the construction at the same time. Since it was such a big project, I was doing the auditing myself and making sure my money was being spent well. Technically, once the mining sections were fully operational, they’d pay for the debt that I incurred for the construction of the massive, defensive structure. For now, though, I was paying for it. Even with the gifts I got from the land of the Pharaohs, I had to take on debt. Enough debt to keep the city running for nearly half a year. “How do you even verify the fact that these stones can withstand strategic, magical attacks?”

“Testing was conducted in a field and every stone’s enchantments analyzed and compared before being placed. It would be far cheaper if we didn’t implement your ideas, my lord.” Henri walked alongside me with her students trailing behind her. The class was a bit smaller now, but I recognized a few faces of her first class. The looked older and… bouncier… than I last saw them. Did getting better at magic make you go through some sort of enhanced puberty or something? “I believe you described it as composite armor? Layers of armor, with the first few designed to absorb and slow, so that the last won’t break? That is a significant expense in the construction, but I can easily provide an example of its strength.”

“Later. I want to see it for myself.” I muttered to myself and Henri looked over her back. Two of her apprentices detached with nods and flew away to prepare the demonstration. I glanced towards my Lich. She wore a long flowing black dress and a large pointed hat with more than a few magical artifacts hidden on her as jewelry. The family heirloom we’d recovered a few months ago was aglow as she used it as a walking staff. If not for the deep cleavage at the front, and the lack of fabric in the back of the dress, that confirmed twice over that she wasn’t wearing any underwear above and below… she’d look like a serious wielder of magic. “What about the wards? It’s twice as expensive from the estimates.”

“You specifically requested that there be tertiary and quaternary sets of wards, which could be turned on to supplement the first pair.” Henri explained the situation by referring to my demands first. It was the perfect move, because that meant I had no one to blame besides myself for the situation. “We couldn’t simply make four wards. We had to make one system with four points that could work together all at once, one at a time, or in any combination. It is a revolutionary defense that is quite expensive, but it easily rivals that of the strongest wards of the Empire.”

I grumbled at that explanation and reached my destination.

At the heart of the fortress was my war room.

When I first met Roseanne, I got a good look at the Kindred’s intelligence assets and since then I’d done all I could to get my hands on it and expand it. Initially, I couldn’t afford the magical maps that they used, so I compromised. I used flying scouts, familiars, and used my magical resources as efficiently as I could. However, now that I had money and spare magic-users, I didn’t skimp.

The center of the room was dominated by a scrying well which I could theoretically use to look down upon in the continent and see what’s going on somewhere in real-time. Henri had tried to talk me out of it, since protections against scrying was very popular, until I explained to her how high I intended to look. It was true that most people could get their hands on a charm that prevented scrying, and important buildings were protected against it, but with a wide-enough and high-enough view… the people and who had such protections stood out.

The war room had other things at its disposal other that the well. Half of it was dedicated to an office for interpreting reports and sending out orders through speedy messengers, while a quarter was for supplementary eyes in the sky in the form of deployed familiars. A section was saved for when a prototype of a long-range communication system showed promise.

However, from the moment I saw the large crying table, I couldn’t help myself.

I had to look.

“Show me the Empire’s capital.

Instantly, I spoke and Henri was ready to manipulate the magics of the massive scrying well, the first of its kind with its potency in history. The water flowing waters changed color, the colored sands at the floor shifted and rearranged themselves, until I looked upon what I wanted to see.

The Empire’s capital was a massive, sprawling metropolis that stretched alongside the eastern coastline of the continent. Crystal towers, white palaces, and immense layered defensive walss stretched in every direction. Thousands of locations were blurred and resisted being looked upon from above, but not everything was concealed… especially the newer constructions outside of it.

The expanding, burgeoning wasteland that replaced verdant forests and mountains, because of the capital’s hunger for resources to fuel their next attack. Rivers ran brown, steelworks belched black smoke into the sky, and a large road was being forged with magic. On that road was a nigh-endless stream of carriages heading into factories for now… but eventually the contents of those factories were going to come our way. The Empire hadn’t liked what happened during my last attack, so their next offensive was going to have all the weight and power that they could muster.

No matter how fast I could speed up Roseanne’s reorganization and industrialization of the Kindred, it was going to be too late for the crusade that was coming.

I looked at it for a long time, before nodding and looking at Henri.

“What’s next on the tour?”

“The long-range batteries of incendiary missiles meant to set the Empire’s entire point of egress aflame.”

“Please tell me you spent too much on that, too.”

“Naturally.”

Yeah, the costs of this castle felt a lot lighter after taking a long look at the Empire’s next attack.

Even the new debts I took from my neighbors felt better now.

Because if they wanted that money paid back, they’ll come to my rescue (lol).