Necromancer: Kingdom Building with My Legion of Undead Knights

Darion looked at the status screen for a moment before dismissing it.

The numbers had moved well. Intelligence at ninety-one was the standout, nearly a hundred points in a stat that had started at 14 when he arrived at Percvale. The willpower and perception jumps were significant too. His body was keeping pace with the mental work, endurance and vitality both climbing steadily.

He had almost forgotten the system existed. That was a strange thing to notice. In the first weeks it had been constantly present, every new ability and rank and inventory change arriving with immediate significance.

Now days passed without him thinking about it because the work of actually running a barony had filled every available space in his attention.

He had been occupied with discussions on what to do with the coins, precautions from Kingdoms Percvale were owing and just kingdom building related things.

Back when he first arrived at Percvale, he fought more often than now, hunting and finding for venom and all that.

Now he was just occupied with running the Barony.

He still had work to do with the undead though. A hundred and fifty knight slots with only twenty filled. Seventy animal slots with ten. The graveyard had more to give and he hadn’t been back since the rebuilding work started. He would go soon. The slots were there and the graveyard was there and all it required was an afternoon.

He wouldn’t even have to dig himself anymore. He would supervise while his undead did the work.

Trouble and unexpected attacks was a constant thing in a region like this. He had to protect himself.

——

Darion decided that his visit to Thandor would have to wait for now. He was currently occupied with the little rebuilding he was doing but he would try within the week or the next.

He sent knights to buy seeds and they came back with more than he had expected, three neighboring settlements had been willing to sell from their own stores at fair prices, and fair prices turned out to be considerably cheaper than Darion had budgeted for. Seeds were not expensive. Land and labor were expensive. Seeds were just seeds.

He had enough to plant the restored sections and still have surplus for a second planting if the first season went well.

He spent just seventy silver coins.

The farmers arrived at the farmland gate at first light.

All one hundred and three of them. On time, carrying their tools, standing in the early morning grey, carrying with them patience and yet eagerness to work.

Garren was there to meet them. He walked them through the sections: this area for wheat, this for corn, this for the root vegetables that did well in the cold months, this section still being finished and to be left until Seren was done with it.

He showed them the irrigation channels that would need to be cleared and maintained. He showed them where the storage would be for tools at end of day.

The farmers listened and then they started.

Some of them, the older ones especially, stopped when they reached the dark soil and crouched down.

One man pressed both hands flat into the earth and stayed like that for a moment. Another picked up a handful and let it fall through his fingers, watching it fall, and then looked up at nothing in particular with an expression Darion couldn’t fully read from where he was standing at the field’s edge.

They knew what bad soil felt like. They had been farming in bad soil their whole lives. This was something different.

They began without needing to be told twice.

What they wondered was how their Baron was able to make the soil very very good for planting.

Two days later Seren finished the last section.

She did it in the evening, after the farmers had left for the day, the way she had been doing the final sections — coming out when the fields were quiet and the light was going and the air was cooler. Darion had come to watch the last one on a quiet instinct that this was worth seeing.

He stood at the field’s edge as the whirlwind settled and the color of the last section shifted from pale to dark. It happened faster than the first time he had watched it, many days ago, when she had stood in the center of a dead field and the dust had risen and he had thought the whole thing looked like something from a dream.

Then it felt like he had been watching something out of a ethereal and otherworldly place.

It still looked like that. He had just gotten used to it.

When it settled, Seren walked back toward him.

The farmland spread out behind her.

He looked at it properly. The whole of it, from the eastern wall to the far boundary, all of it now the same deep dark color of restored soil. The sections where the farmers had already been working showed the lines of early planting, the earth turned in rows.

The newer sections were smooth and waiting. No pale patches, no dead ground, no cracked powder that crumbled to nothing when you picked it up.

Dark earth, healthy, organized and usable.

Some days ago it had been trampled by Valdenmoor’s horses, everything ripped up, the work of weeks destroyed in an afternoon.

Now it looked better than it had before the attack, because Seren had been able to go deeper in the restoration work the second time, the soil more receptive to what she was doing with it.

The contrast with what he had walked into when he first arrived in Percvale was so complete that he had to consciously remember what it had looked like before to believe the same ground was in front of him.

Seren stopped beside him.

They both looked at it for a moment without speaking.

”It’s all done,” she said.

”I see it,” Darion said. He crouched and picked up a handful of the soil from the edge of the nearest section, feeling the weight of it, the density. It held together and it had substance. He let it fall back to the ground. ”Impressive work.”

She looked at the fields, seeing everything. This had taken her time and effort to do, but finally it was done.

Darion straightened up.

”So,” he said. ”Time for your payment.”