The beach was quite spectacular; it was a strip of white, powdery sand that stretched in a gentle arc for miles. A thick mass of palm trees fringed the sand, and the broad expanse of turquoise water was crystal clear, quite flat, and with barely any waves. I could see why the old blacksmith had recommended I come here to get my army into the sea.
The warm sun on my face, the rich blue sky above clear of clouds, and the gentle sea breeze whispering through the swaying palms, I found myself somewhat contemplative. I thought that this would be a great place to come back to one day when the world wasn’t caught up in so much chaos. My mouth curved into a smile as I pictured my women frolicking naked in the water and waiting on me, bringing me drinks while I lay on the white sand and relaxed. Not today, but one day.
Such images were pushed out of my mind by the magnificent sight of my army marching across the beach. With numbers bolstered by zombie troops raised from the Warlock’s army, the size of my undead army was now close to forty thousand troops. The biggest and strongest troops, the undead Jotunn, led the army, dragging the stacked-up sleds behind them. Behind them marched all of my cavalry units, then came the bulk of the army: the infantry units. They marched in perfect order, their movements synchronized with far more precision than that of any living troops.
However, they would now perform a maneuver requiring more complex mass synchronization than anything I’d ever had to do before. If ever the individual troops of my army needed to work together like the cogs and wheels of some enormous, impossibly complex machine, it was now. Every single troop—those with hands, anyway—carried a spear, which would be used as an improvised bargepole. If these bargepoles weren’t driven into the seabed in perfect unison, with an absolutely precise rhythm, this whole mass movement operation would fall apart, and the army would be left floundering at the bottom of the ocean, barely able to move.
To get this right, I would have to consciously control almost every single undead minion in my army simultaneously. This was something I’d never done before.
Rollar, surveying the marching army with an admiring gaze, walked over to me.
“Are you sure this is going to work, Lord Vance?” he asked.
“It’s going to work, Rollar, trust me. It’ll take a bit of effort, but I’ll get them all moving as one. They’ll glide across the seabed as smoothly as my ship will sail above the waves.”
At the shoreline, where the waves lapped gently at the powdery sand, the undead Jotunn unpacked and linked up all the chains and sleds. Each giant then took one of the many main chains and walked into the water, until they were deep enough for one of the kraken’s arms to grip. When the kraken’s arms were all full, the undead whale gripped the remaining few chains in its mouth. Once the kraken and the whale were holding all of these chains, the Jotunn took their places on the first of the metal sleds. I’d directed Each Frost Giant to chop down a pine tree and turn it into a huge bargepole; the Jotunn, the kraken and the whale would be the main force pulling the sleds. After this, I ordered the rest of the army to position themselves on the sleds, which stretched across the entire length of the beach.
“Watch this, Rollar,” I said with a grin. Then I closed my eyes and drew in a deep breath, shutting out everything around me, all sounds and sensations and directions. Before trying to perfectly synchronize the movements of every single member of my army, I needed to visit the Gray Sentinel to fill myself with power.
In the blink of an eye, I was on the Black Plane, and the towering Gray Sentinel loomed on the horizon.
In one powerful leap, I cleared the mile that separated me from the tree. When I looked up, I saw a new skill glowing brightly at the very top of the tree. It was the final skill I’d attain, but now wasn’t the time to pluck that tempting fruit from the bough. As frustrating as it was, I would have to delay this particular gratification.
For the first time since the beginning of my visits to the Gray Sentinel, I didn’t climb the tree to get myself a new ability. Instead, I drew Grave Oath and stepped up to its trunk. After the battle with the Warlock and the fight with Hengchun’s troops, it was crammed full of souls. I slammed the weapon into the trunk, and like a steel rod on a cathedral spire conducting a lightning strike, I felt the energy of the souls coursing through Grave Oath into me. The energy filled me with power. I felt like a dry rag dropped into a puddle, soaking up water. I kept pulling soul energy from the Gray Sentinel until I couldn’t hold any more.
At the top of the tree, the glow of the new skill began to grow dimmer, and it seemed to shrivel up. Now it wouldn’t be ready for me to pluck until I’d refilled the tree with souls, but I wasn’t worried about that; plenty more lives would be taken in the name of the Temple of Necrosis in the days and weeks to come. Overflowing with power and feeling almost omnipotent, I jumped back into the physical present.
“Lord Vance, you’ve … grown stronger, immensely so,” Rollar said to me when I opened my eyes. He was looking at me with an eerie mix of fear and awe on his face. “Now that I’m a Death Knight, I can sense your
