"What did you just say? There's mithril in the mine near Mountain Town?"
Inside the council chamber of Heim Castle, Hel was stunned by Sebas's report. She hadn't expected that this backwater territory would actually contain a mithril vein.
"Yes, young master," Sebas replied calmly. "And aside from that, I found a stationed knight squad near the mine. Judging by their equipment and level of training, they definitely didn't come from Mountain Town."
"What's their strength like? How many are there?"
"Roughly three hundred in total. Their commander appears to have the strength of an Earth Knight."
"An Earth Knight?" Hel's fingers tapped the table rhythmically as she frowned in thought. "Could that 'dangerous presence' Arwin mentioned earlier be referring to him?"
"Within the entire Mandrake Duchy, the only one who could afford to send an Earth Knight to guard a mine would be Duke Mandrake himself. That would also explain why, after exiling me to Heim, he sent assassins to finish me off."
According to imperial law, if she were to die, the inheritance rights to Heim territory would naturally revert to the Mandrake family.
"With his ducal authority," Hel continued, "he could then openly exploit the mithril vein. The yield from full-scale mining would far surpass these secret, small-scale operations."
She glanced back at Sebas. "What about Viscount Grey?"
"So far, he hasn't been located within Mountain Town. I suspect he's at the mine, but since that knight squad's strength is formidable, I didn't act rashly."
"You did well, Sebas. We can't afford to act recklessly. Not even the slightest hint of this can be leaked. It's best we wait for Arwin's return before making any move—that'll be safer."
"Sir Arwin should be returning within a few days," Sebas nodded. "He mentioned that his arrival this time might be… just a little loud."
Hel raised an eyebrow. "A little loud? How loud could it possibly be?"
——
Three days later, Hel stood atop the hill behind Heim City, staring at the countless undead that blanketed the mountainside. For a long moment, she was speechless.
A little loud?
If this meeting had been arranged inside the city, it would've turned into an undead siege!
"Lord Hel, mission accomplished," said Knight Arwin as he knelt on one knee before her. Behind him, the entire undead host mirrored his gesture—tens of thousands kneeling in eerie unison. The sheer spectacle left even Hel slightly awed.
"Enough, rise. How was your harvest this time?"
"I gathered every undead creature I could find within the Beast Forest," Arwin reported proudly. "Currently: twenty third-tier undead, fifty second-tier undead, five hundred first-tier undead, and around fifty thousand unranked undead."
"Wait—what? Did you just say fifty thousand?"
"Yes, my lord. And that's only from the Beast Forest side. Across the border, in the Free Nation of Freedem, there should be even more undead. But I didn't dare venture there—I sensed the presence of fourth- and fifth-tier undead."
"You did the right thing, Arwin. Our current strength still isn't enough to challenge that," Hel nodded approvingly.
Of course she knew Freedem was crawling with undead—unfortunately, it was also the domain of the Nether Witch.
Hel had seen plenty of posts about her on the Witch's Court forum recently: fierce clashes between the Nether Witch and the Holy Tribunal. Rumor had it that the entire royal capital of Freedem had been blasted into a crater. The scale of that battle was apocalyptic.
And a monster capable of fighting the Tribunal's holy-ranked powerhouses to a draw? Not someone they could afford to provoke.
Better to keep our heads down, Hel thought. Survive, grow, then strike. One step at a time.
For now, she had to focus on absorbing the undead army Arwin had brought back. Most were ghouls and zombies, with a smaller number of skeletons mixed in.
To be honest, Hel much preferred the skeletal kind.
Not because she had a particular fondness for bones—but because the flesh-based undead reeked. The stench of rot was unbearable, not to mention that it made concealment nearly impossible.
She wasn't some pervert who enjoyed the smell of corpses, after all.
So, with the aid of the Necrotic Sigil, Hel re-summoned the entire undead force, restructuring them into purer skeletal forms. Together with Lily, she used the blood from the original corpses to summon Blood Bats—the usual mass burial procedure, only on a staggering scale.
It took them more than ten full days to process all the corpses.
During this period, the Witch's Court held another meeting—Hel skipped it, too busy as she was—but she kept up with the forum gossip.
Most of it was nonsense: noble scandals, rumors, and trivial chatter. The only truly valuable updates were about the ongoing war between the Nether Witch and the Tribunal.
The reports said the battle had reached a fever pitch. The Tribunal's holy-ranked combatants had arrived but gained no advantage; several were seriously wounded. The Nether Witch wasn't unscathed either, and both sides seemed locked in stalemate.
Unfortunately, the witch who had been live-posting updates about the war hadn't been heard from in days. Hel could only hope she was still alive.
Still, Hel hadn't spent all her time doomscrolling. She'd been doing real work—mainly undead synthesis.
This time, after multiple rounds of synthesis, her army's quality skyrocketed. Not in numbers, but in sheer power.
After countless fusions, only one undead remained.
But that single undead had reached Tier 5—her first ever fifth-tier combatant, on par with a Sky Knight or a Grand Magus.
The Skeletal Berserker Commander.
Empowered by an orange-grade swordsmanship trait and an aerial dragon bloodline, its combat strength in normal state was 288. With suitable equipment and activation of the Soul Burn Secret Art, it could peak at 558.
Unfortunately, the Necrotic Sigil's synthesized undead came with a heavy price—their souls became chaotic and shattered.
In other words, they were mindless engines of destruction. Even after Hel removed their "Black Word" corruption, they couldn't regain consciousness—only obedience.
She sighed. "So that's the cost of wielding such a broken ability."
Thus, the Skeletal Berserker Commander could only serve as a powerful enforcer—not as a general.
A monster born for battle, and battle alone.