Pestilence: Rise Of The Pure Undead

"What is your name?" asked Dimios, thankfully, he was equipped with a ring bearing the blessing of comprehension, otherwise, making sense of so many different languages spoken by warped vocal cords would have been a tremendous challenge.

"Litrakq" she responded in the deepest, most guttural voice Dimios had ever heard, it looked like she was on the verge of coughing up blood and dying, but it was just how she normally sounded.

The undead had to admit, when he saw her elven features, he had expected a slightly more melodious voice than whatever auditory assault that was.

"Litrakq, I couldn't help but notice that you show much elvish traits, do you think that you would be able to do what an elf is capable of?" in this realm, the elves did not have much magical capabilities, or connection with nature, in that regard, they were tied with the humans, but they did demonstrate superior physical strength, and an uncanny weightlessness to their movements, calling them agile would be an insult, they could traverse treacherous woods faster than any wild animal, they could climb a tree faster than any monkey, they leap higher than a tiger…

And they could do all of this whilst wielding a sword or bow to great effects at that, the humans of this realm only stood a chance, not because they had more mages, but because they harnessed another energy for themselves.

Unlike in the main world, where the vast majority of people used mana to cast spells, here, what was more common was for warriors and knights to gather 'fighting spirit', and use it to temper their minds and bodies, resulting in the humans possessing many great warriors that could match or even surpass the elves.

The humans had better quality overall and invested heavily into equipment, whilst the elves had a much greater quantity since their strength was innate, and they instead relied on the fact that they lived in rugged, hard-to-access areas to ward off any invasion.

Fighting spirit was not a new thing for the Empire, it was one of the many energies that could be found alongside mana, and indeed, this realm's humans were using it to great effect as its properties were perfect for increasing one's strength.

They seemed to be predisposed to using that energy as well, so Dimios had already tried to have the dirt-blooded with the most human blood attempt to use fighting spirit for themselves, but without clear guidance, they weren't having much progress.

"I do not know" Litrakq replied after a few moments of thinking.

Dimios called over one of his followers.

"Help her train, I want to see if she could match the elves"

"Understood"

Next, Dimios went over to the Ill-Bred Minutemen, that was what they called themselves.

Amongst the dirt-blooded, they were somewhat unique.

Originally, they were a group of goblins who refused to crossbreed with the other monster species, and instead, from the very beginning, believed in their natural capabilities to be unaffected by inbreeding, but eventually, although the goblins were indeed rather resilient to the adverse effects of such a practice, it did catch up to them, so they joined in on the raids to capture elves and humans, though, they solely focused on humans, after all, your average elf was much stronger than your average human, and since they operated alone after separating themselves from the other monsters, they could only target the easier prey.

Being few in number, and as aforementioned, unaffiliated with the other monsters, they kept all of their prisoners to themselves, leading to their population developing in a very peculiar way, much less warped and deformed than the rest.

As indeed, the goblins of this realm were not the sort who could just have offspring with other species and have the child be a pure-blooded goblin, human and goblin mixed, until it resulted in what Dimios was looking at.

Tall for goblins, short for humans, their facial features an unappealing mixture of both species, the Ill-Bred Minutemen had volunteered themselves to work any job Dimios and the undeads might want them to do, but Dimios, considering the strong presence of human blood within them, wished for these half-blooded goblins to show strong affinity for fighting spirit.

If there were any around that had good chances of being able to match humans in that regard, it would be them, not to mention, that after being cleansed of the horrors of consanguinity, and having their bloodline traits enhanced, they were actually rather strong.

Even if overall, they were of short stature and appeared non-threatening, they were capable of impressive feats of strength, speed and nimbleness, the capabilities of goblinkind and humankind had melded nicely within them.

They would leap around using their polearms like vaulting poles, landing strangely stylish, yet devastating blows to their adversaries, allowing them to split the skulls of enemies that stood much taller than themselves.

By the time a great army had been assembled thanks to the efforts of the dirt-blooded, and a little bit of doping provided by Carnifex, Litrakq had demonstrated good capabilities in using her elvish heritage, although, she had proven herself to be more competent as a war leader, as such, Dimios put her in charge of a large portion of the troops.

"It is quite impressive that we could raise such a large army made out of livings in such a short amount of time" as the first battle was soon to begin, Dimios overlooked the vast ranks of the dirt-blooded army.

"I am quite surprised that you just walk around with all of those potions and elixirs that are of such benefit to the livings" he added after a moment, addressing Carnifex.

"I often visit living territories to make sure I am still familiar with their ways, and it is always useful to have ways to bribe them, it helps to see other sides of those who live… As you could see, livings are much more receptive to our preaching about Death when they are in despair and feel like they are cornered, it allows them to use their brain in a more critical way, to look past their misconception about life and death, making them consider what you are saying instead of outright rejecting it without even sparing a single thought about your words" the leader of the Erado rubbed his chin.

"Of course, if we, the undeads, are the source of that despair, it has the opposite effect, trying to orchestrate situations like this from the shadows to make livings willingly submit so swiftly is a good idea, but unfortunately, it tends to be a bit complicated to execute, what do you think?"

Dimios simply shrugged.

"I am not much of a thinker, I am a slayer, I do see the point, but my role is to serve as a blade, I trust you and the other smart guys to make the right calls- But if you insist on hearing my thought-out answer… I would say that it is pretty simple, don't we have experts of the apocalypse and plagues? Just secretly unleash that if possible, surely, the livings won't assume that the benevolent undeads coming to their rescue were responsible for their misery in the first place…"