Necromancer: Kingdom Building with My Legion of Undead Knights

Garren spent most of the evening making preparations for their absence.

The senior knights were gathered near the knights barracks while he explained what needed to be done over the next few days. The farmland work would continue normally. The farmers already knew their sections and the older workers seemed more than capable of keeping the younger ones organized.

The stable workers would answer to Wulfric directly. The carpenters would remain on standby until Seren fully finished the final sections of the farmland.

Speaking of Seren, Garren eventually saw her and he explained the trip briefly and told her what responsibilities would fall on the people staying behind while he and Darion were gone.

Seren listened quietly, arms folded while the evening wind pushed lightly against her hair.

The coins themselves weren’t something Darion worried much about leaving behind.

The storage room they kept them in was deep inside the castle and heavily secured now. Thick wooden doors reinforced with iron. Heavy locks too.

It had been the room in the castle coins and all this important stuff was stored before.

Then there was the matter of the trip itself.

Garren selected three knights to accompany them to Thandor the next day. Experienced men too, not recruits.

Darion thought the protection was unnecessary.

With his undead wolf nearby, he felt safer than most nobles probably did traveling with entire escorts. The creature alone was terrifying enough that random bandits would probably die from panic before getting close.

Still, appearances mattered.

A Baron traveling with no escort looked strange.

People expected certain things from nobility, and one of those things was a visible show of status. Guards, horses, the impression that you mattered enough for someone to follow you around. Arriving with just himself and Garren would make him look like a minor lord with no resources, or worse, a pretender playing dress-up in borrowed clothes.

So the three knights were less about actual protection and more about image. A small show of authority.

The next morning, Darion woke earlier than usual.

It was an old habit. Back on Earth, whenever he had something important planned: a trip, an event, even just a day out somewhere new, he couldn’t sleep. His body would wake him hours before necessary, restless, already moving, eager to go.

That same feeling had followed him here. Excitement, maybe. Or anticipation. The need to be doing something rather than lying in bed thinking about doing it. Whatever it was, it had him up before the sun more often than not.

The castle was quieter at this hour. The sounds of movement carried more clearly through the halls when fewer people were awake.

He got out of bed slowly before making his way downstairs.

He took a cold bath.

By no time he had finished washing and changing clothes. When he entered the lower halls again, Maret and Aldra were already awake in the kitchens preparing food.

Both women greeted him immediately.

”Morning, m’lord.”

”Morning,” Darion replied while rubbing lightly at his still damp hair.

The smell of cooking food spread through the lower floor now, warm bread and cooked meat mixing together pleasantly.

Wulfric was awake too.

Darion spotted him through one of the side windows near the stable area outside, already giving instructions to the new stable recruits while carrying a bucket himself like he intended to do half the work personally anyway.

The stable area had become significantly more active these past days. Back then, with the starving horses and just Wulfric attending to them, you hardly heard anything coming from there.

Now, with the new recruits? They changed that.

Of course, despite this technically being castle work, the recruits didn’t actually sleep inside the castle itself.

There simply wasn’t space. That was the reality of Percvale right now.

The castle looked pretty large from outside, but much of it was either damaged, abandoned or simply unusable after years of decline. Darion couldn’t exactly stack stable workers inside hallways like storage crates.

So every evening the workers returned to their homes throughout Percvale and came back again at dawn.

Darion preferred that arrangement.

After changing into his better clothes for the trip, Darion eventually sat down inside the great hall.

Maret brought him breakfast shortly after.

He had barely started eating when he heard footsteps descending from upstairs.

Looking over, he saw Garren making his way down.

The older knight paused slightly after seeing him already awake and dressed.

”Morning m’lord,” Garren said. ”Seems I’m late.”

Darion laughed softly at that.

”Morning, Garren.”

The fact that Garren considered himself late despite the sun barely being fully was funny to him.

Garren disappeared shortly afterward to wash and prepare himself for the journey.

Darion continued eating quietly.

Then more footsteps echoed from upstairs again.

This time he looked up expecting Garren to return or climb back upstairs.

Instead, Seren appeared.

That actually surprised him.

She descended the stairs casually before walking straight into the hall.

”Morning,” she mumbled tiredly.

”Morning,” Darion replied.

She sat down across from him.

Seeing her here now felt... different somehow.

Yesterday she had told him she intended to stay in Percvale.

That changed things.

Before, Seren had always felt temporary. Like eventually she would simply leave once the farmland restoration ended and Percvale would return to being only Darion, Garren and the others trying to survive together.

Now? Now he actually had to think about her future here.

Would she continue staying inside the castle?

Or would she eventually move somewhere else inside Percvale itself?

Honestly, the castle wasn’t exactly ideal living conditions.

Even now, with more people inside, the place still carried an abandoned atmosphere. The large empty corridors, the damaged stonework, the drafty windows and half-lit halls all made the place feel strangely haunted at times.

Even with people living in it, it still felt haunted in a way.

Seren suddenly spoke while leaning slightly back in her chair.

”You could have just told me about your journey today yourself you know, instead of sending Garren.”

That pulled Darion from his thoughts immediately.