Ashen Dragon

Chapter 416: Chapter 339: The Empire’s Skeleton Legion

Accompanied by ripples in the space, the portal opened on the devastated plain.

“Whoosh—”

The north wind howled.

Wild grass bowed with the wind.

This was the site of the former Battle of Okaglar. On the flat ground, there were still craters from shelling and trenches dug by engineers, all remnants of the brutal war that had taken place here.

It buried tens of thousands of soldiers from the Northern Kingdom. However, over the months, most had been washed away by rain and eroded by insects and bacteria, gradually rotting and eventually being buried under thick soil, turning into deep underground fertilizer.

Night fell. All around was silent; only the sound of the wind and insects could be heard.

The lich, with its ghostly eyes flickering, gazed around at the desolate spirits wandering the wasteland, savoring the scent of death in the air.

Coming to such a “paradise,” he should have felt ecstatic.

The soldiers’ bones were excellent materials for transforming the undead. Otherwise, how could there be an adage, “The battlefield is the necromancer’s heaven”?

War always brings endless slaughter and death, and these are the soil from which the undead creatures are bred.

He could raise an immortal legion here.

However, today was different; the lich was not transforming the undead for himself but working for the Empire.

Thinking about this, staring at the nearly 100,000 bones underground, Orestes felt a chill run up his spine, though liches had no skin, exposing a yellowing skull.

“These, these”

“Are they all to be transformed into undead?”

“You guessed right, this is only the second batch, but I will help you accomplish all this.” Cassius answered lightly.

The unintentional smile on his lips made the lich shiver.

This was only the second batch?

Would there be a third, fourth, fifth in the future, or even more …

But after all, his life box was in the other’s hands. Lich Orestes had no choice but to obey orders to save his own life.

Orestes gritted his teeth, comforting himself: “It’s just tens of thousands of ordinary undead skeletons…”

“It’s nothing…”

“Moreover, there’s the master’s help.”

Though the lich spoke like this, his exposed jaw already began to tremble.

The Bluefoot Dragon-snake, being a monster over a dozen meters long, required considerable strength to transform, but for the lich, transforming ordinary soldiers’ bones was exceedingly easy.

But even so, aggregating piece by piece, accumulating into a tower— the number of Northern Kingdom soldiers’ remains here was nearly sixty thousand!

To transform them all into undead skeletons would be a colossal project— even with Milco’s Scepter of Bones in hand.

Under Cassius’s relentless gaze, the lich still trembled as he raised his scepter and chanted softly: “Bones long sealed, existences wandering in void, I summon your return…”

“Buzz—”

The necromantic gemstone at the scepter’s tip suddenly emitted a spherical dark green force field that covered the vast wasteland.

Beside him, Cassius lightly flapped his wings, and the power of the “Imperial Region” descended abruptly.

The surrounding Magic Web instantly became extremely active, propelling the spell’s casting. The necromantic force field expanded several times, covering the broad abandoned battlefield.

[Undead Scourge]

“Creak, creak…”

The deeply buried bones began to tremble and wriggle, making slight cracking sounds.

Wandering souls on the wasteland began to howl, cry, and wail yet were dragged back underground by an invisible force.

The lich’s skeletal hand holding the scepter trembled even more violently.

However, Orestes had underestimated the energy of these tens of thousands of bones and Cassius’s “assistance.”

He had never felt he possessed such great strength, which could unleash an undead scourge across Anzeta.

Seventy thousand undead bones at his command.

If Cassius had not captured him, he might have completed Milco’s sacrificial task by now and set out on the path to true immortality.

“Return in an undying form, become mine…

In an instant, Orestes was somewhat intoxicated, forgetting his plight and considering himself the true master of these undead.

Yet the next moment, an invisible pressure descended. The lich felt an extreme danger approaching, and his soul fire flickered.

This was a fatal mistake!

He snapped to attention, hastily revising his incantation:

No, it’s the great Ashen Empire’s Emperor—Lord Cassius’s eternal servants! Serving the Ashen Empire until the world’s end!”

The surrounding pressure suddenly dissipated, and the lich breathed a sigh of relief, realizing that if he hadn’t corrected himself, his life box would surely have been crushed.

Instantly, the ground began to tremble slightly, and the bones buried in the dirt began to move, producing the “creak” sound of bone joints rubbing together.

“Swish—”

The first bony hand broke the surface.

Next, more bony hands broke through, as though an eerie, pale, flower field of bones was blooming on the wasteland.

The skeletons of Northern Kingdom soldiers and generals crawled out from the soil, staggeringly standing, often still clad in tattered and decayed military uniforms, holding broken swords and knives in their bony hands.

However, many of these skeletons were incomplete, missing limbs and heads, some even with only half their bodies left or embedded with shrapnel in their ribs.

One particularly tall general’s skeleton still wearing traces of noble clothing had a significant bullet hole in its skull.

This was indeed common; according to imperial statistics, one-third of Allied Forces casualties were from shelling, another third from gunfire.

These poor Northerners, slaughtered without mercy by the Ashen Empire’s guns and cannons in life, had to be dragged from the earth by the lich after death to toil for the Empire.

Undead skeletons occupied the wilderness, forming a vast skeletal flood. The seventy thousand Northern Allied Forces who once fell here had now become the Empire’s immortal legion.

Orestes struggled to use his scepter for support, the ghost fire in his eyes dimming several notches, and his figure more hunched.

The lich forced a smile, nodding and bowing: “Master, this is your and the Empire’s immortal legion.”

Cassius nodded slightly but then turned his head, looking down at him with those pale-golden eyes: “You just now… seemed to say these were your servants?”

“No, no!”

“You misheard!”

“No, you’re not wrong, I misspoke!”

The Lich bowed lower, apologizing profusely, almost incoherently.

“I hope so.”

Cassius turned away, slowly flapping his wings, rising into the air, and looking down upon the undead legion in the moonlight.

“Orestes.”

“So far, you’ve done well. I hope you continue to do so.”

“Rest assured, our empire will not mistreat anyone who contributes to it—whether you’re an undying lich or a cruel ghost, I will treat you all the same.”

“Th-Thank you, Master.”

The lich knelt, bowing low.

Hearing Cassius’s words of praise, he felt strangely flattered—as he had previously been trembling about whether he could keep his life.

“Now, come with me to the next site for undead transformation.”

“…”

Orestes was on the verge of tears. This once merciless lich finally deeply experienced the feeling of being exploited.