Chapter 2

  “Option one, is the path you already know, but with some adjustments. This is considered to be the standard or vanilla flavored option for mortal necromancers of your moral disposition. The bulk of your army would consist of constructed minions. You’ve had the ability to create constructs from the very beginning, and at the time they were unthinking and almost robotic in nature requiring a large amount of micromanagement,” Hades said while holding up a single finger.

  “Yeah, that was a pain in the ass. It was like trying to program lines of code or something for every potential situation that might arise. If something popped up that I hadn’t addressed, I had to manually control them,” Drew said, remembering how draining the whole experience was.

  Hades nodded, “Correct. Now, you have abilities and titles that can give your constructed minions a more animal-like intelligence, like that undead coyote that runs around the town from time to time. While not sapient, they would have instincts and you wouldn’t need to rely on coding as you did before. Above them, subcommanders would be required. Ideally, undead in nature as they wouldn’t fall prey to the same limitation that you have. Whether enslaved for a fair term, enslaved permanently, or volunteers. You can opt for a mix of the three, but ultimately the subcommanders are the only way to get the army size you’re looking for.”

  Hmm… so it would be pretty similar to my early days after The Descent hit, except they would all be animal-smart like Scolder rather than dumb things that stood still to be slaughtered because I forgot to program them to fight back. The downsides would obviously be the need for undead to command them, which means I’d either need to convince some of the citizens from Bonetown to volunteer, ask Daniel and the other Soulflames which I really don’t want to, or create enslaved minions that must serve a set number of years before being given freedom.

  “Good to see that you’re considering the option,” Hades smiled, “Now, lets move on. Option two has a couple of major flaws for you specifically. The first being that you would need to learn an extremely complicated school of magic that is highly technical and requires a lot of time to master. I.e. you would not have an army any time soon. The second flaw is the army would require souls.”

  “Uh… no. Not mucking about with Soulflames, I already said that,” Drew interrupted.

  Hades frowned, “If you would allow me to continue, I was going to say that the souls themselves would only be held briefly. This school of magic allows you to take a snapshot of a soul, a tiny mirror image of it in fact. Once the snapshot is taken, the soul moves on and you’re left with a tiny fragment reflection of what that soul was like.”

  “That doesn’t sound so bad,” Drew said before continuing, “but would this fragment or whatever be sapient?”

  Hades shook his head, “No. It would be as if you were taking a five-minute video of someone’s life and personality, and then viewed it on the internet anytime you wanted to. The downside however, is you would have no ability to choose what snapshot was taken or when. You could end up with a five-year-old who was just celebrating his birthday and eating cake, or you could have a person caught up in the throes of lust and passion. Meaning it would take a very, very long time to gather enough souls and then weed out the ‘failed’ snapshots before you end up with the army you want. And this is after you completely master the school of magic.”

  So no, that’s not an option at all. That would easily take years, if not decades of constant work just on the army portion with the fragments. Plus, I have no idea how long it would take to master a new school of magic and what that would involve. I need an army now, not in twenty years once everyone is already dead.

  “I don’t think that’s a good fit for me,” Drew replied.

  “Neither do I,” Hades barked out a laugh, “Lastly, we have a more drastic option. It would give you everything you want, and more.”

  “Now we’re talking!” Drew smiled.

  Hades held up a finger, “However, you would die and become undead in the process.”

  “…Uh, come again?”

  “You would become a Lich. It’s actually a relatively simple procedure with the assistance of a god like myself, but you would become undead. This would instantly solve all your issues. You wouldn’t need subcommanders of any kind if you didn’t desire them, and as long as your phylactery remains safe, you would be effectively immortal and unkillable. You soul would be removed from your body and held in stasis, and if your body is destroyed, you would reform in time near your phylactery. There are advanced methods to speed this process up, of course. Additionally, your willpower stat, the one that governs minion cap, would become far more… flexible. With my help, you could learn to wield an army a hundred times the size of your previous one.”

  But… I would be dead, like Maud was, right? She never ate or slept, and her emotions were even more muted than the Soulflames. It was like she was barely excitable about anything other than her crafting. Plus, there’s Amber…

  “Being undead has its downsides, as I’m sure you’re aware. But it is an option, one that would allow you to reach your goals without any moral issues.”

  If you stumble upon this narrative on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen from Royal Road. Please report it.

  “Uh… I think I need some time to think about this…”

  Hades clapped his hands and the white boards disappeared, “Good! Now, as much as I normally enjoy your company, these last few weeks have been trying and I’d like to get back to work teaching the mortals.”

  ***

  “Your only options are to become like Maud or create sub-commander slaves?” Amber asked.

  Drew nodded, “That’s what Hades said, yeah. Although I might be able to find some volunteers…”

  “But that won’t be enough?”

  “No, I don’t think so,” Drew said sadly as he dropped into the living room couch and sunk deeply into it while Amber continued to stand, a hand held to her chin.

  “Neither of those options are pleasant. I liked Maud, I really did, and being able to revive over time would be a weight off my mind, but she had practically no human emotions. She was cold and calculating, without any thought past those of a practical nature.”

  “Sounds like an easy choice,” Drew’s mom interjected as she ruffled through the pantry to find a paper bag of locally made potato chips, “Emotions and morals often hold people back from their potential.”

  “No one asked you, Ma,” Drew said with an exasperated tone. He was technically in his forties now after the time spent in the training dungeon, and yet his mom still felt the need to butt into personal conversations. “Besides, I figured you’d want grandkids!” Drew raised his voice for the last bit, though he said it through gritted teeth.

  The crinkling of the paper back stopped, and Drew turned his head from his position on the couch just in time to see the bag of chips drop to the floor.

  “Grandchildren?” she asked in barely a whisper.

  “Yes, Ma. Grandkids. If I’m an undead lich, Amber and I can’t exactly have kids, now can we?”

  Drew’s mom practically flew over to the couch and looked down at him from behind it, “I want to be called Gram,” she said firmly.

  “Ma, we haven’t decided anything yet. It’s just… it was in the realm of possibilities that we have been considering recently.”

  Drew’s mom huffed, “Well why did no one inform me?”

  Both Amber and Drew sighed.

  “We only started talking about in the last month or so,” Amber replied, “After finding Dallas, Waco, and Tyler all in pretty good shape with thriving populations and children running around… it started to give us some hope for the future.”

  “Drew, I forbid you from becoming a sterile undead,” his mom said with finality before walking away. She paused once she opened her TV room to yell out, “And remember, I’m Gram,” before slamming the door.

  “Ughh…” Drew groaned, and he felt Amber sit next to him and begin massaging his shoulders as he squeezed his eyes shut in embarrassment.

  “Sweetie, you do whatever you feel is right. Worst case scenario, we can always adopt. There are many orphans out there that could use a good home and a loving family, so if you decide to go the lich route…”

  “Thank you, Boo Bear,” Drew forced himself to smile. Her words were kind, and she meant well, but Drew felt like either option was terrible.

  On one hand, he could fix every problem he had, and if he was killed, at least he would come back due to the phylactery. He also wouldn’t need to enslave anyone. But that option came at a great personal cost. He would no longer enjoy food, he would lose his looks, and he would never be able to have children of his own blood. Then there would be the loss of emotions. Maud had been a good person, but she often had a morally gray outlook, even more so than Drew’s own pragmatism. He didn’t know if he was willing to give all that up.

  Besides, if I lose my emotions, wouldn’t my morals change? What would stop me from suddenly thinking that slavery wasn’t so bad if it meant my army was far more potent?

  But on the other hand, even if a few of his ex-minions from Bonetown volunteered, they likely wouldn’t offer enough in terms of manpower. For an army of more than ten thousand undead, if he kept everything relatively mindless, he’d still need a minimum of ten subcommanders. And that was a minimum, and it didn’t account for the fact that he could field an even larger army with his current minion cap. It was almost guaranteed that he’d need slaves, something Drew was staunchly against.

  Hell, I even released Dickbag and allowed him to pass on, and he was a total… well, Dickbag.

  It was a mistake at the time, but I rolled with it because I couldn’t allow the other original survivors to think they could walk all over me and my family. I kept him around as an example. But I still felt guilt as more time passed and I eventually relented and released him to The Halls of Reflection… wait a minute… maybe Hades doesn’t know everything. He’s just a god after all, maybe The Baleful Lady can think of another option!

  ***

  “I’m afraid that Hades is correct, Champion. Those are your only two choices,” The Baleful Lady replied via the telepathic link to Drew.

  “Wonderful…”

  “I am aware that this is not what you want to hear, but both options are efficient given your situation. You should also know that your experience growing up on an unintegrated world has left you biased. Term limits on minions with souls is a practice I generally encourage as it prevents the abuse of said souls and allows them to eventually reenter the cycle of life and death. You can think of it as indentured servitude if you like.”

  “I don’t understand,” Drew replied while he shook his head, “You told me before that necromancers often mess up the balance of the cosmos with stuff like this, so how could you be in favor of something so terrible?”

  “The System enforces oaths, Champion. These are not promises filled with empty words. You’re creating life. Undead life, but still life. You giving a being a purpose, an education through experiences, and then allowing them to move onto their lives like a parent with a child. What I am against is when necromancers abuse souls, especially natural souls, and force them to remain as servants without ever allowing them the release of death. This upsets the balance.”

  “Be that as it may, slavery is still slavery.”

  “It is,” The Lady agreed, “But indentured servitude is common throughout the multiverse. Slavery is as well, though both are looked down upon by many beings. No matter what choice you make, some will call you a monster. Good and evil are not black and white, they are a spectrum and every choice falls somewhere between them. But to your enemies, you will always be an evil monster.”

  “Okay, but what’s any of that have to do with my current options?”

  Drew felt a hint of amusement through the telepathic line to the primordial of death.

  “Hades is right, you don’t think too deeply on our words. You must choose the option that you feel most at peace with. I suggest you visit… Bonetown was it? What an awful name. I digress, I recommend you visit there before making a decision.”