"Yes, Master Fenn."
Samuel marched to the assorted weapons, while Aleric watched him carefully. The undead templar seemed to move with a normal speed for a human in heavy armor; more importantly, he wasn't wobbling on his feet as an undead slave would.
Then he picked up a sword and made several swings with it. Aleric knew nothing about swordsmanship, but they looked very fancy. And fast.
"I am slower than before, and my armor needs repairs, but I'm still a better swordsman than most people in Oakdale," Samuel declared after he finished a dozen more swings. "And I will never get tired. No matter my wounds, I will keep fighting."
Aleric smiled broadly.
"Oh, I'm so glad that you came to try and kill me, Samuel. Now. What else can you do? That armor of yours—do you know how to repair it?"
"Yes, but I will need a forge, master."
"We will find you one. Can you sew?"
"Yes, master."
"Even better. I have a lot of zombies that need repairs…"
As Samuel sewed together wounds on himself and other zombies, Aleric couldn't stop being happy about his new undead servant. The former templar obeyed his every order with precision and speed that undead slaves couldn't dream about.
Using him just for chores felt like a waste—but for now, there wasn't much more for Samuel to do.
Aleric spent the rest of the day recovering mana as quickly as he could and raising more undead servants from fitting bodies. However, with each passing hour, it became harder and harder to summon their souls, and the resulting undead lacked more and more of their personality.
He had successfully created five more undead servants before exhaustion forced Aleric to rest, lest he fumbled his next spell entirely. In the morning, Aleric tried to raise another undead servant, but the spell failed to summon the dead man's soul.
"It has gone too far, master," Spine Staff commented. "To summon this soul would take much more effort and mana than you can gather at this point. Things are much easier when the dead are restless already, and their souls are at arm's reach."
"Then I will just use what I have."
None of Aleric's undead servants were as good in a fight as the former justicar, but they could still do manual tasks.
And thanks to Aleric's Dark energy, which was present in all his undead, the undead servants could learn how to give mental orders to lesser undead and even control undead puppets. Samuel, who already knew the basics of magic, was the first to learn this trick.
This lightened Aleric's load substantially—he could spread his forces in several directions and command more undead effectively.
Aleric's mana reserve was only growing, but recovering mana to raise all these bodies still took precious time. The time that the bodies spent rotting! Until they were reanimated, this process would continue.
"I wish I had some sacrifices to recover mana," Aleric grumbled, walking away from the stinking courtyard to the fortress's wall and the fresh breeze there. "Samuel! Come here. I need your knowledge."
The zombie was out of earshot, but heard the order anyway. Soon, he came up the wall.
"What do you wish to know, master?"
"How long would it take for Aleshat to gather another army and throw it at me?"
"This depends on Count Arstain. If he doesn't attack you again, this is up to the king and the Praetor of my order to gather forces against you."
Aleric scowled.
"More templars. The Praetor—he's the leader of you all?"
"No, master, Praetor Bosnor only leads the military order of the Church in the Aleshat Kingdom. Above him is the High Precept Raindr, who leads all the templars in the zone of the Church's influence, and above the High Precept is the High Magister Arnadven. And there are also inquisitors, who also obey praetors, but usually work on their own to hunt witches and heresies."
Aleric listened to the information very carefully. Until now, there was nobody to tell him about the structure of the Church, or many other things. Even the Spine Staff was unaware of them.
"Even if Arstain attacks me, he doesn't have enough people to defeat me on his own. Not anymore. So I'm not worried. But how long would it take for the king or the Church to interfere?"
"It would take a day for a message bird to fly from Oakdale to Estairn. And it will take up to a month for an army to cross the same distance, master."
"That is wonderful news." Aleric smiled, but it was short-lived. "And how many soldiers might the king and the Church send after me?"
Samuel shrugged.
"I don't know how many troops the king can send or hire. The Church… The templar forces are spread out. If I counted all templar garrisons from Aleshat, there would probably be several thousand initiate templars, not counting clerics. But they would take weeks to gather."
"Initiates? Do you mean they are untrained?"
"No, master. Initiate templar is a full member of our order, just of the lowest rank—a line soldier, in simpler terms. Above them are captains, and above captains are justicars, like myself. Was."
Aleric nodded to Samuel's words, looking to the forested hills on the horizon.
Although his undead army seemed large before, if he wanted to stand against Aleshat—and against other human kingdoms!—Aleric needed an even larger one.
He would have to raise countless dead in a short amount of time, and it meant he would have to practice necromancy even harder, use sacrifices to restore mana whenever available, and make a second Tarnished Star amulet when he gets a cleric's body to match Samuel's used artifact.
Aleric turned to Samuel, about to tell him to return to his previous work, when he had an idea.
"Samuel, do you know about any villages nearby that I haven't been to yet?"
"Yes, master."
Aleric smiled.
"Take a squad of undead with you and visit one of them. Capture as many prisoners as you can and bring them here—alive. Don't bother with corpses. Bring any cattle with you, too!"
Although in life, Samuel would've balked at such orders, now loyalty to Aleric replaced all his morality. He didn't even blink.
"Yes, master."
"Oh, and… bring a good mattress with you, too."