episode_0081

After receiving permission from the Guard to deploy skeletons, I immediately began mass producing skeletons. Since there were already a large number of corpses in the workshop waiting to be transformed into skeletons under the petrification curse, there was no problem in mass producing skeletons.

One day, two days, three days, four days. Every day, the skeletons used black magic to shed their skin and raise their bodies, leaving only the bones. After working steadily on the skeleton for a few days, I guess I gained some know-how and the speed of work got quite fast.

Naturally, most of the skeletons thus created were scattered throughout the village. To be exact, it was located around the wooden fence that protects the village. This is because it was decided to help protect the village through the knight’s command. Of course, if the newly created blacksmith shop is completed later, about half of them will move to the blacksmith shop.

Slowly.

A goblin skeleton stood up from the workbench, its jaw bones clattering, and looked at me with its blue eyes flashing. It looked as if he was waiting for some command to be given.

“Go over there, then out of the building. Then go all the way to the right and you’ll find a Skeleton Knight. Take command from that guy.”

“Tad-dak.”

The skeleton responded by quickly clicking its teeth, then jumped off the workbench and left the workroom as I instructed. When I sensed it with black magic, it was moving steadily as I said.

Soon, the skeleton that had just popped out was detected to encounter the Skeleton Knight at the main entrance through the wide open entrance of the wooden fence. The skeletons placed in the village acted as a kind of relay, making it possible to detect whatever was happening within the village.

“You’re doing well.”

As if under the knight’s command, I immediately sensed a figure slowly patrolling the outside of the wooden fence. I nodded in satisfaction and continued to work on creating the skeleton again.

There was a lot of material to make the skeleton. Thanks to the mercenaries’ continued supply of the corpses of the most important monsters, the corpses were piled up to the point where it could be said that they were still full. Because about half of the money paid to the mercenaries came back through burial, it was possible to purchase more corpses than planned.

The only problem was black magic, but that was quickly resolved thanks to Father Thomas. This is because, while visiting the church where he was attending, he collected all the blood that he could not bring back. Thanks to the abundant production of blood essence, the dark magic necessary to maintain the skeleton was overflowing.

It is said that they even sent people from the church to the city of Carbon and the Viscounty of Defuty, so if they waited a little longer, a huge amount of blood would come in. There was no problem at all if I continued making skeletons like this.

Of course, that didn’t mean I was going to just lock myself in the studio and create skeletons like machines. Although it was important to create a lot of skeletons quickly, it was also important to check how well the placed skeletons blended into the village.

He created about five more skeletons, and when the number of skeletons placed in the village reached 100, he got up and left. I had been working hard to place it for several days, and I wanted to check the reactions to the placed skeletons.

I left the studio and started walking around the village as if on patrol. This was to check the reactions of the guards collaborating with the skeletons and the villagers.

It started at the entrance to the village where the knight was. Originally, there was a door made of thick wood, but the lord’s knights broke it while fleeing and the door was left wide open. It was necessary to repair it, but it took time because the door itself had to be made new to make it stronger and stronger.

So, it was the place where skeletons were deployed first, and it was also where the knight, the most powerful skeleton, stood guard.

“Master, are you here?”

As I headed toward the entrance of the village, the knight standing guard with the guards near the entrance spotted me first and greeted me. Knight spun around, got down on one knee and bowed his head to me.

“Chu, loyalty!”

“… … No, you can’t be loyal to me. I’m not a lord, am I?”

“Oh! Sorry!”

And, seeing the knight like that, the guards appeared to greet me in a hurry. One of the new guards looked a little foolish.

I smiled lightly at that new recruit-like appearance.

“How about working with a skeleton?”

“I was a little scared at first, but I’m okay now. On the contrary, it is a great help.”

“Really?”

“Yes, that’s right. Visibility is limited at night, but skeletons are very alert even at night. We can discover wild beasts that were previously undiscovered and take preemptive action.”

The security guard seemed to genuinely like collaborating with the skeleton.

“Did the skeletons do anything?”

“Two days… … . No, it was three nights ago. It was a moonless night full of clouds, and when they noticed a pack of wolves approaching, they ran straight ahead and swept them up. We couldn’t even see what was there, but it was amazing. If it had been just us, we would have noticed the approach too late and someone might have died.”

It was a security guard who looked at the knight as if he were looking at a truly trustworthy colleague.

“That’s because skeletons can see even without light. Then it will be difficult to be active during the day.”

“Oh, that’s not true again. In fact, when we stand guard, we see the same scenery over and over again, which often causes us to lose focus during the day. However, skeletons don’t have that, so when something goes wrong, they immediately give a signal, enabling a quick response.”

Perhaps because he thought I meant that he would collect skeletons during the day, the security guard desperately talked about the advantages of skeletons. In some ways, it sounded like they were saying it would make it easier to mess around, but they were saying it was good because it lowered the intensity of work.

And when I looked at the other guards, most of them were lowering their heads as if they agreed with what he said.

“But when I try to sleep secretly at night, what wakes me up is jog, whoop! Whoop?!”

“Haha! Baron, we’ll take this friend away for a while! There’s work we need to do, but we forgot! Sorry!”

Seeing one security guard being dragged around by his fellow guards, it didn’t seem like they were making it easy to mess around.

Anyway, I was satisfied that the skeletons seemed to have blended well into the guard unit. I also felt fortunate that the skeleton didn’t cause any problems.

“Then, thank you for your hard work.”

Since I had confirmed the appearance of the skeletons who had adapted to being a security guard, I turned around this time to check the reactions of the villagers. This is because not all skeletons were concentrated on the wooden fence.

Some of the deployed skeletons were moving as if on patrol inside the village. Even though it was called a village, not everyone was a family, and it wasn’t all harmonious.

Naturally, crimes such as crimes often occurred within the village. In some cases, someone coming from outside committed a crime, and in other cases, crimes occurred due to fights between village residents. In addition, there were incidents such as accidents caused by drunkenness. Skeletons were deployed to prevent such things and to mobilize troops from any direction in case of emergency.

Of course, it wasn’t just a skeleton wandering around the village alone. It was obvious that people would be startled if they saw something like that at night. The security force, which can be seen as a sub-organization of the security guard and is similar to a type of militia that has been in charge of security in the village for a long time, was accompanying them.

In order to first find the skeletons that were patrolling the village with the security forces, I used black magic to sense the surroundings. If you were inside the village, it was quite simple to find.

“Well, if you go this way, I’ll meet you.”

It detected the nearest skeleton and immediately moved towards where the skeleton was. It was located in a place where a lot of people moved around, so it was perfect to see people’s reactions.

I walked quickly and found the security team and the skeletons patrolling the village.

And, surprisingly, no one could be seen keeping their distance from the skeleton. Even, a little boy who was passing by let go of his mother’s hand and walked up to the skeleton and tried to rub its shin bones. Rather than being horrified when she saw that, the child’s mother just said that she shouldn’t interfere with work. A member of the security force also smiled happily at the sight.

All that happened was that the mercenaries, who seemed to have just arrived in the village, were startled. I don’t know if it was because people weren’t surprised at all, but they seemed to adapt quickly.

Wondering how that was possible, I approached the mother of the child who was rubbing the skeleton’s shin bones and asked her a question. And, the answer was pretty simple.

“That’s it… … . There are a lot of skeletons just by going to the Baron’s blacksmith shop, right? In the first place, I got used to skeletons. Besides, if it’s the Baron’s skeleton, it won’t cause any harm to us. Rather, it is to keep us safe, so there is no reason to dislike it.”

The reason was that I wasn’t hiding the skeletons in the first place, because I was familiar with them. Even if you come to the store, you can not only see the skeletons, but also touch the mannequin skeletons used to display products. When I think about it, I rode a skeleton horse every time I went in and out of the village, and a skeleton mage who pulled a skeleton cart often went alone, so it was natural that I was used to it.

Moreover, there seemed to be no resistance, perhaps because it was deployed in the name of protecting the village and maintaining public order. However, this was because they did not attack people blindly in the name of maintaining public order, and only moved based on signals from the security forces.

In order to avoid attacking and injuring innocent people, instructions to simply subdue them no matter how many signals were given also played a role in reducing resistance.

Thanks to this, the skeletons I created blended perfectly into the village, and the village became more and more completely my territory. After a few days had passed, people had come to accept for granted that there were skeletons wandering around the village.

The perception of the villagers was also changing from ‘a village belonging to Viscount Tarr’s territory’ to ‘a village protected by the warlock Baron Steele’.

And, as I was making the village my territory, a guest came. They were uninvited guests who were not particularly welcome, and a large number of them came rushing in.