Necromancer: Kingdom Building with My Legion of Undead Knights

[Command Word Activated: REVIVE]

Something seemed to connect Darion’s soul to the skeleton in front of him, like he was sharing a tiny morsel of energy from himself to the corpse.

Black-green lines of light spread suddenly across the skeleton — from its hollow eye sockets to its ribcage, to the nose, skull, legs, hands...

Then a faint green light settled in the skull.

The eyes, which had been empty before, suddenly shone green and the mouth opened slightly.

Darion, who had been watching closely, stood up and backed away slightly.

Then the skeleton rose. It looked at Darion for a moment, then fell to its knees, eyes looking downwards.

For a second, Darion had actually expected it to say something. Something like ’Ready to serve, m’lord.’

He dismissed the thought with an inward smile. As far as he knew, undead skeletons didn’t possess the ability to speak, and he was sure there wouldn’t be some miracle exception with this one.

The system screen appeared in front of his eyes: visible only to him, hanging in the air:

[First Undead Knight Raised!]

[Undead Knight – Rust Tier]

Former Rank: Percvale Infantry

Combat Instinct: Preserved (Fragmented)

Strength: 12

Endurance: 15

Loyalty: 68

Pain Response: None

Morale: Irrelevant

Special Trait: Tireless (Does not fatigue)

Weakness: Core Destruction (Skull / Spine)

’Not bad.’

The loyalty was higher than he had expected, and the strength and endurance both cleared his own current numbers, which was either encouraging or slightly humbling, depending on how he chose to look at it.

But what caught his attention was the tier.

Rust.

He read it again. Then once more, as though a third pass might reveal it meant something better than it sounded.

It didn’t.

He understood it was just a rank...a classification. But of all the words available in the language, Rust was what the system had landed on. He willed the display to show him the full tier rankings.

[Undead Tier Rankings]

▸ Rust ← Current

▸ Rotten

▸ Decaying

[Further ranks exist beyond current visibility]

Darion stared at the list for a moment.

Rotten. Decaying. Rust.

”Well,” he muttered. ”Those are oddly specific names for ranks.”

So Rust was the highest visible to him, sitting at the top of what the system was willing to show, with Rotten and Decaying below it, and whatever lay above still hidden from him.

He dismissed the tier list and looked at his updated status screen.

[STATUS]

Name: Darion

Title: Baron of Percvale

Class: Necromancer

Rank: Novice

Territory: Percvale (Border Domain)

Territorial Resonance: Low (Death-aligned)

[ATTRIBUTES]

Strength: 12 [+3]

Agility: 8

Endurance: 14 [+4]

Vitality: 11

Perception: 12

Intelligence: 15 [+1]

Willpower: 18 [+2]

[Undead Inventory: 1/5]

[Skills:

Death Perception]

He noted the increases quietly. Strength, endurance, willpower, intelligence: all up.

Frankly, he had earned them.

It had taken willpower to make his first real act as Baron a trip to a graveyard to dig up a decades-old corpse.

It had taken endurance to ignore the burning in his shoulders and the smell that had hit him halfway down. It had taken strength to keep the shovel moving through packed, stubborn earth.

And it had taken some measure of intelligence to connect his class ability to the one resource Percvale had in abundance before anyone else had even thought to.

He willed the stats away.

The undead knight was still kneeling in front of him, head bowed, motionless. Patient in the way only something with no concept of time could be patient.

It made him think, suddenly, of the awakening hall. The orb going dark in his hand. His half-siblings watching, and the Empress among them, barely concealing her satisfaction at seeing him walk away with nothing. The quiet humiliation of it, standing there in front of the court with an empty result and nowhere to put his face.

Darion’s mouth curved slightly.

”Well,” he said to himself. ”Come see me creating an Undead!”

He looked back at the kneeling skeleton. ”Rise.”

The skeleton stood immediately, straightening to its full height and going still again, upright now, waiting, like a puppet with its strings held just slack enough.

Darion looked it over properly for the first time. The bones were solid-looking, the structure intact and tall. Taller than him, actually, by a noticeable margin.

That was saying something. Darion was not a short man.

He decided to test it.

He knew the theory: undead retained combat instinct from their former life, muscle memory preserved in bone, but the consciousness was gone. No personality, no will, no inner life. A person in shape only.

”Run to the gate,” Darion said. ”Then back to where I’m standing.”

The skeleton moved immediately, crossing the graveyard at a steady pace, reaching the gate, turning, and returning to stand exactly where it had started. The motion was precise and entirely without hesitation.

It was also, objectively, slightly strange to watch, a full skeleton moving purposefully through a graveyard in broad daylight, arms swinging with the rhythm of something that had remembered how running worked but not quite why.

Darion kept his face neutral.

”Nice,” he said, with the tone of someone evaluating a horse at market. ”Nice.”

[Congratulations on First Command]

[Loyalty Increased]

[Loyalty: 75]

He had been about to store it in his undead inventory when a better thought arrived and stopped him:

’Why dig the next four graves alone?’

He looked at the skeleton. Then at the rows of graves behind it. Then back at his own hands, which were already telling him they had opinions about doing this again four more times.

”Take a shovel,” Darion said, nodding toward the rusted tools still scattered in the grass. ”And start on that one.”

He pointed to the grave directly opposite.

The skeleton walked to the tools, selected one without deliberating over it, positioned itself at the indicated grave, and began to dig.

Darion watched it for a moment. The movements were efficient, not graceful actually, but functional in a stripped-down way, each motion exactly as large as it needed to be and no larger.

He could bet a Decaying ranked undead skeleton or a Rotten ranked skeleton wouldn’t be capable of doing this.

For a Rust Tier unit at the top of what was currently visible on the rank ladder, it was performing about as expected.

He could only wonder what a skeleton ranked beyond Rust would be capable of.

Darion picked up a shovel himself, moved to the next grave along, and got back to work.

The graveyard was quiet around them — a baron and his first undead knight, digging side by side in the grey afternoon, neither of them speaking.

Author’s Note:

A quick clarification regarding the ”Loyalty” stat.

In this system, Loyalty does not refer to emotions.

It’s the stability of the necromantic binding that keeps the undead under Darion’s control. Higher loyalty means stronger control and obedience. You’ll see it explained more later.