Everlast Online

It didn't take Luthor long to arrive in the underground.

As usual he walked with an elegance that most undead lacked - even the former saint, Eren, seemed unsteady on her feet and she had been equivalent to a noble before she had been killed.

"I've brought the maps as instructed, My Lady." He said with a small bow and the items offered out. Liz noticed that Demeter didn't react to Luthor's approach like she did with almost everyone else. Demeter always gave off an unfriendly feeling to anyone and anything except Liz and Piper, but somehow Luthor had also seemed to be recognised; Liz shrugged it off and silently took the maps, giving a small word of appreciation.

She looked through a number of maps, but none were what she was looking for.

"Haah." Liz sighed as she turned to face Luthor, "Are there no maps that show the dwarf territory."

Luthor looked confused for a moment before shaking his head.

"Apologies, Milady, but Vradora has not had much contact with the Steel Fortress Alliance for almost a century and so information has not been gathered for around six decades." Luthor explained, having looked into the history of the territory and its surrounding lands in hopes it would increase his ability in managing the fief in Liz's place, "Vradora and the Steel Alliance have not had any battles beyond a few skirmishes ever since the Empire began trying to invade both countries."

Liz perked up at the word skirmish.

"Skirmish? Where?" She asked, feeling her plan come back into motion.

"Huh? Well, further north of here the dwarves had tried making their way further through the wasteland to try and secure a path to the Gorgon's Divide, but the lord at the time didn't want them passing through their territory." Luthor explained, going into further detail to say that there were a total of four battles over the course of a year before the dwarves finally gave up, "The reason they wanted a new route to the divide was never given, but most believe it was to harvest minerals to consolidate power they could use to strike back against the Empire."

Liz didn't care much for the history, but was more than happy to listen as Luthor pointed out where those battles took place. They were quite close by and much closer to Vradoran territory than the gorge.

"Let's go to these battlefields then, good work Luthor." Liz smiled, turning away from the ever growing pile of magic iron.

"If I may be so presumptuous, Milady, why have you taken such an interest in the dwarves?" Luthor asked, looking very worried he may have overstepped. Liz merely laughed, answering after shooting Luthor her widening, stitched smile.

"Even I know a single dwarf is worth a thousand regular builders." Liz said before heading towards the surface. Luthor, being the exceptional manager he was, understood and reciprocated his master's smile.

"I recommend taking a nightmare, My Lady." He called out as she headed further away from him, "As spiritual beings they are exceptionally fast."

Liz smiled happily and nodded, not even turning back.

When did I start acting like such an aristocrat? Liz wondered, catching her kind of dismissive behaviour towards Luthor - like he was just the help. She truly respected him and knew exactly how important he was and yet had been increasingly failing at articulating that with words. Liz shook her head. I'm merely fitting into my role. I'm a necromancer and he's my undead - I could tell him to rip himself apart and he'd do it with a smile.

Liz began the trek back to the surface, climbing on top of Demeter halfway through to increase their speed as she was clearly the slowest. She had originally turned to Gloria, but Demeter had stepped in and spoke before Liz could even ask.

After that they reached the surface much faster, finding little more progress had been made - not that Liz had expected much considering how little time had passed since she had last seen it.

In a burst of ethereal flames Liz's [Book of Damned Souls] appeared, absorbing Demeter before she could even resist and Gloria was returned to wherever it was she and Eren went to wait. This left Liz alone with Eren for the first time, Liz really looked at her for the first time and found that she was exceptionally beautiful.

She had heterochromatic eyes with one a lustrous gold colour and the other a deep crimson like a sea of blood. Her hair had a similar aesthetic with a perfect split of black and white like an old villain from a children's movie Liz could not properly remember. Even in the wasteland there was not a speck of dirt in her snow-white hair while the black side made Liz feel as though it was absorbing the very light around it. 

Furthermore, Eren's body was a work of art - having curves in all the right places without ever looking excessive or too small; she had the perfect body ratio. She only had a single flaw: The large scar that ran around her entire neck, the mark of her death that could never be healed as a dullahan. As Liz stared at it Eren began rubbing the scar, feeling slightly uncomfortable, but masking as best she could as always.

"Is everything okay, Lizzy?" Eren asked, her cheerful voice breaking Liz from her trance.

"Uh, yeah." Liz said, slightly bashful, "Can you summon your nightmare for the two of us?"

"Of course." Eren said with a genuine smile, once again bringing out her mount. A horse of black as deep as Eren's hair and a deep, blue main that was entirely ethereal and moved like a wave of water, "Riding together's gonna be fun."

And so Liz and Eren set off deeper into the wasteland, their destination the site of the skirmish between the dwarves and humans. The entire time Eren chatted with Liz and the little necromancer found herself enthralled with her servants' stories.

She spoke of the time she had defended the capital city of her home country for three days and three nights with a giant barrier against a demi-lich's horde of undead. She also told Liz about the time she had found a child hanging upside down in an alley; he was harmed in no way and did not seem to be hiding anything, but no matter how hard Eren had pressed for answers, the boy simply said 'I fell'.

She had hundreds of stories that were both brilliant and mundane, yet Liz never felt bored listening to either. She even began to feel disappointed as they neared their destination.

Why does Gloria always look so tired talking to her? Liz wondered. Must just be grumpy.

The pair finally reached the place they were looking for, what appeared to be the sight of a battle as indicated by the rusted weapons that were slightly buried beneath the ground; Liz quickly got to work in excavating by bringing out some more gravediggers who moved the earth beneath them in order to dig up a number of bodies. There seemed to be an equal amount of human and dwarf bodies, their size indicating who they once were.

The process was fairly long as Liz desired to gather as many dwarf skeletons as possible before beginning the process. There were a few problematic occurrences, mainly the interference of monsters known as [Wasteland Trolls]. Unlike regular trolls who hid their strong musculature under a layer of green fat, these trolls were a similar grey as the land of the deadlands and looked incredibly malnourished.

Liz could see their ribs as they moved and despite being quite tall, they looked to have no mass on them at all.

Unfortunately, their appearance did not decide their strength. While they were not as conventionally strong as regular trolls, they more than made up for it in their superior regeneration. In the end, either Gloria or Demeter had to hold the monster still while a platoon of skeleton mages let loose with [Flamethrower] to kill it. This did come with the benefit of evolving the skill; and while Liz wasn't given any special options, she found the basic evolution of [Blaze Torrent (A)], which shot out an even larger stream of blue flames, was both powerful and cool.

The digging finally came to a stop as the battle site Liz had arrived at ran dry of bodies, but she was disappointed to find it was lacking. With [Soul Sight] at a hundred percent proficiency she could see wisps of aggravated souls floating through the air, but it was far from enough to form a grudge and while she could move them with [Soul String], Liz could not reliably store them.

There simply wasn't enough remnant soul to form a new death knight.

She briefly considered trying to find a way to do so with a different application of [Soul Catcher], but decided against as the skill's description mentioned processing souls and that sounded like it may purify the grudges. She had already learnt [Soul Catcher] could not take souls that had formed grudges thanks to Demeter, but didn't want to risk it if she did find a way to store souls from those she didn't kill.

Demeter had proved to Liz that death knights retain not only a certain level of skill from who they were formed from, but also their memories; with a death knight made using dwarves as the base she would not only have a servant capable of creating weapons with all of their magic iron, but also a proficient architect or wood worker or any artisanal craft.

She looked over the pit she had created once more, pushing [Soul Sight] to its very limits, to the point her eyes began to hurt, the thread tying them down beginning to come loose. Just as she reached her limits, she thought she noticed something; a wisp of soul not coming from those floating around with the rest, coming from deeper below.

"Dig deeper!" Liz called, standing from where she had been crouched. As always her undead did as commanded and continued digging where Liz wanted, the trace of soul becoming stronger as she did until eventually she finally reached it.

From the ground a shard of metal poked out, and as Liz dug it up in its entirety she saw the weapon in full - shattered and separated from its handle that clutched tightly between a skeleton's boney hands, a dwarf skeleton.

The fallen dwarf was clearly of superior status than those she had found further up. His weapon may have been shattered, but that was the only damage it had suffered, not even a speck of rust had grown over it and even the wooden handle had not begun to rust. Of course that couldn't be said about his armour, a large slash having been made from the right shoulder to the middle of his chest, the metal crumbling outwards from their under duress of time.

However, what most caught the young necromancer's attention was the soul clinging to it. Luthor had told Liz that this battle was decades old and so she had not expected to find a full soul, but clinging onto that shattered weapon was almost a fully formed grudge.

It needed only a few fragments more of soul and would become a suitable death knight for Liz.

Threads of soul shot out from where she was, bringing every other wisp towards and all the bones were thrown down to gather by lesser undead. Liz let out a great smile as she activated [Create Undead], giving birth to her second death knight.

Like with Demeter, the black circle beneath the corpses was strong and gave off an imposing aura that caused all life in the area to flee; but what came from it was exactly as Liz had envisioned it. Her joy was beyond what it could have been, not because she had a blacksmith, not because she had another undead. No, it was not any of those reasons; Liz's happiness grew for a single reason:

She had finally created a subordinate that wasn't taller than her!

Her newest undead was a dwarf as intended and stood at a metre tall, just as Liz did. Of course his appearance was infinitely more imposing than hers, but Tess was no longer the smallest.

Like Demeter, he had jet black, metallic armour that covered most of his body; however, from beneath his helmet Liz could see that he had no flesh, being entirely made of bones. She had designated him as he due to a long, ethereal green beard growing from beneath his helmet; similarly, while he did not have any bones, there was a spectral image that seemed to overlay his body that depicted the man he had once been.

Tanned skin and bulging muscles, all covered in bushy hair with a long streaking scar from the bottom of his right eye all the way to his chin.

Perhaps what Liz found to be most cool was his weapon, it had stitched back together with magic, but seams of ethereal green could be seen holding it together as though a slight breeze would return his war-axe to fragments.

As he awoke, the dwarf kneeled before Liz - something she had become accustomed to.

"This one greets the Iron Chief!" It bellowed, his voice deep and gravelly. His form of address confused Liz for a moment, but she chose to ignore it and instead named him as she did with Demeter:

"I look forward to your work, Ustad!" Once again parts of her soul left her body and fused into his, increasing his strength massively and granting him a half-system of his own.

"I've got what I wanted." Liz called, "Let's get going. I've got a lot of work for you when we get back."

Ustad returned his grin as Liz recalled all of her undead, but as she and Eren climbed from the hole that had been dug she found herself in a troubling situation: She had been surrounded.

They were all wearing cloaks and so Liz could see nothing of their features, only briefly sighing that they were not dwarves if their height were any indication. Liz and Eren continued to stare, not bringing her book back out as she worried that even the slightest movement would begin a fight she could not win.

There were a number of enemies, an entire army division worth. She had more than enough to fight back, but was not currently active.

"Hello." Liz called out, only to immediately be silenced.

"Do not speak to us undead!" It yelled, the voice clearly feminine, but hidden within the crowd of cloaked figures. Liz became even more concerned, but knew by her tone there was no way out of the conflict; she brought forth her [Book of Damned] souls, but before she could utilise it a blast of dazzling golden light ran through her.

For the first time since beginning playing ELO, Liz felt pain. An undead felt pain.

Her [Voodooist] skill activated, but even that had become strange - not registering the light as a single killing blow, but multiple with almost a dozen of Liz's undead crumbling in different locations.

"SHIT!" Eren cried, quickly using [Rain of Condemnation] to bring forth unholy blades that descended upon the cloaked crowd. The first few hit, but soon a golden barrier appeared to block the following volleys, "Summon Gloria!" 

Each collision of Eren's blades against the barrier resulted in explosive noise and so Liz had not heard Eren's cries, bringing forth skeleton soldiers who charged blindly into battle; however, as they made contact with the barrier they dissolved into golden dust that blew away in the wind.

"What the hell is happening?" Liz panicked, Eren's volley coming to an end. Soon a series of bright glowing lights appeared from within the crowd, but before she could act a magic circle of radiant light appeared beneath her, golden chains shooting from below. As shackles bound her, dragging her to the floor she felt a strange sensation and lost contact with all of her summons instantly.

They were not dead, simply not present. Eren had disappeared, the monster created through [Create Undead] had returned to the [Book of Damned Souls] and she had even lost connection with her puppets, their wooden bodies fallen to the ground lifeless and Liz's soul returned to her.

"Begone from our world, heathen." That same feminine voice was all that she heard before pain rippled through her body - lessened thanks to being in VR - that felt like she was being incinerated from the inside out until finally she disappeared entirely, her visio black and replaced with a single system message:

"What the hell happened!?"