"Now that's what I call a success!"
The Gray-Dwarf king beamed wide at my words. As did the thousands of shadow-clad Duergar streaming around us to man the machines and shops below.
My Shadow Undead put down 5,988 Dray-Dwarves in less than ten minutes. That and the thousands of 'tamed' beasts kept by the Duergar netted the 65 of them a promotion to at least Shadow Undead Children. Though, they weren't the only ones.
Through her battles with the endless waves of the king's guard and the clergy who came to their aid from the rear, Lana absorbed the life energy of over one hundred fifty sentient creatures and evolved through her teen phase into adulthood.
[Lana: 5/20. Adult Shadow Undead - Adult Shadows are equal in strength and constitution as they were in life. However, they are now incapable of growing in power by killing creatures weaker than them. To be promoted past an adult shadow, Lana must seek out and defeat a continually-larger sum of strong opponents. Sentient or not doesn't matter. So long as they are stronger than her. In this case, ten creatures.]
She was around the ring now, giving the former-slaves a briefing on what was to come while the others cleaned up the mess in a quick fashion, leaving the zombies and skellys with me and the man himself.
Zaraxus firmly held his post at the king's gate throughout the battle, preventing the free members of the other races from aiding the king or, in most cases, attempting to run to safety. The resulting mounds of flesh around the doors were stacked almost a thousand bodies high but seemed thrice larger from the twenty-three most formidable foes Zaraxus faced.
The Stone Giants from a far-off mining pit as large humanoids looming 18 meters above everyone else, heaving boulders through the magical darkness with wild abandon. Boulders that Zaraxus easily dodged and sidestepped, even while cutting down rank after rank of blind combatants.
In life, they had bald heads and lean bodies wrapped in smooth gray skin covered in loose rags or leathers. Now, however, dozens of zig-zag scars of seafoam green ran up the length of their abyssal flesh. And the others were no exceptions.
The second biggest challenge for Zaraxus lay in the 265 Orogs, Darkworld variants of orcs that made the surface orcs look as small as humans did to bears. While they were known for their crafting expertise, their displays of size and strength stood pitted against Zaraxus. But still, they were no match for an angry draugr wielding a necrotic war scythe.
He mercilessly slaughtered them the same as he did the 296 Derro. Though they- a type of mutated deurgar weaker and more agile than the Gray-Dwarves- tried to sneak away, they were cordoned off by the archers above while Zaraxus hunted them down one by one.
The last to be slain was the Durzagon, or Gray-Dwarves tainted by a devil's blood. Due to that, they were unwilling to fight, seeming to be moving to investigate the claim of a greater devil being present rather than aid in supporting the king.
But I had enough fanatics under me. 391 more was the last thing I needed.
With the magic imbued within his war scythe, Zaraxus absorbed far more than just the life essence of a passing individual. His weapon was no different than the Leech Hand and thus allowed him to leach every ounce of vital energy from those he cut.
From that energy, from the essence of 975 souls, Zaraxus evolved into a new class of Draugr on his own accord. He was now a Death Jarl, King of Draugr. And he gained a suite of abilities that even I didn't possess because of it.
Perhaps it was from some unknown effect of a piece of Carbury's horn ingrained into the handle- if not his natural ability- but Zaraxus' new spells were eerily similar to those put on display by the gray-dwarves.
Like them, he could enlarge himself and, like the stone giants, could even assimilate or meld into solid stone. His scream of bloodlust was more potent than ever, able to induce a maddened frenzy in the minds of mortals, and a wind as cold as the Underworld itself seemed to blow from his body without end.
The most intriguing ability of all was the capacity to regrow his flesh by consuming the dead, enabling him to shed his skin for a buff in speed and regrow it later to regain his immense strength.
'Interesting.' A brilliantly terrifying idea formed in my mind while my eyes turned between Zaraxus and the fields of adamantine below. I turned my eyes to the stone ceilings to send some orders to Simion, far above, then returned an excited grin to my Death Jarl.
I had an experiment planned for him that would make up for his missed rewards and then some, but before I could even begin to ponder it further, some incessant yipping and chattering rose about the rings of pounding metal.
I looked down to see a child-sized but aged figure with dull-green skin, rat-like ears, and large yellow eyes. Like the many other small figures and humans around her, sparse and tattered rags covered her. Alongside a thick layer of soot concealing her features from head to toe.
"I do not speak goblin," I flatly said in Undercommon.
"What are you?" A human asked in her stead. Then she asked for herself. "Who are you?"
Due to her filth, her visage was entirely unrecognizable. A set of green eyes peered from a black sheet, interrupted by thin lines of pink along her face. She almost appeared inhuman, so I couldn't help but ask. "What do I look like?"
"A… dark elf. With black hair." Came her hesitant answer.
"Then that is what I am." I smiled before gesturing around us. "As for who, I am the new owner of this mine. And." I ceased my waving hand to point at the thousands of gray dwarves toiling away. "Those are my workers."
"And what of us?" She swallowed hard.
"That is your choice." I dismissively shrugged, yet her face seemed to illuminate the whole cavern. "You can go to the surface in three months. You can roam the Darkworld in search of your homelands. Or, you can remain here as free citizens of this soon-to-be port city.
"Whether you chose to stay or remain." I pressed on through the rise of murmurs and babbling. "You all spend the next three months recovering and being educated while these shadows renovate the place. Now, raise your hand if you speak Undercommon."
As I expected, virtually everyone tepidly stuck their hand in the air.
"You two." I threw my chin to the translator and the goblin that spoke to me. "And… you two." I gestured to an orc and a dwarf who happened to be next to each other. "And you." I motioned towards a deep gnome. "Follow me.
"The rest of you." I motioned to the ring of empty estates and castles. "Go get fed and cleaned up. We'll talk tomorrow."
The yipping and hollering returned in full swing with those words, and soon, a stampede of soot-caked humanoids and Goblinoids trampled down the stairs, desperate to be the first to acquire a taste of luxury.
Those that followed me seemed indignant about having to wait. At least until we entered the king's quarters, where I advised them to do the same and return the next day, giving me some reprieve to check the loot while the original designed a proper layout in the apps.
Quite interestingly, the most prized treasures of the Gray-Dwarf king were highly detailed maps of the Darkworld. Everything, from other societies, to the locations of ore veins, was annotated in addition to natural paths leading to the surface.
Of course, I took the many gems, baubles, and mountains of gold found in the treasure room. But the most distinguished items by far were the archaic magical items described to me by the king through our mental link. Some were talismans able to summon golems. Others were tomes describing fiend-summoning rituals, and a slew of magical or enchanted items that could do everything from camouflage the wearer and absorb damage to grant them a faux-affinity to stone.
They were fascinating, to say the least, but hardly used by the Gray-Dwarves for a reason and thus were graciously stored in the furthest reaches of my Shadow Pocket with the items I made from Carbury's horn. I wanted to wait until I was able- or seek out Zoop if I wasn't able to appraise the items as the gnome did with my Shadowsteel Reaper. They would only be handed off to my subordinates when I understood their specific limitations. Only then would I feel at ease.
As if in response to our funds increasing, the blueprints for the cavern before me came in. Essentially, the overall theme for the project wound up being. 'If it ain't broke, don't fix it.' Instead of changing anything, the cavern was to be scaled up to encompass the entirety of the complex and sealed off to contain the heat.
The aqueduct was to expand enough to float above the concentric rings of smelters and refineries for all metals used in the Legions. The metals with lower melting points were reserved for the outer rings, leaving the inner rings for the more demanding materials such as tungsten or adamantine.
Though that was the last item on the menu, the first was to carve out the largest of five abandoned mining pits and turn it into a proper residential district for the freed slaves. And with that came using another two of the pits for a Rothay reserve and mushroom farms.
A commercial zone and 'cold' industrial hub would comprise the final two. Those, like the central forges, were to be completed later. For now, I sent two thousand Gray-Dwarves into the most-cavernous pit to begin working and divided another thousand between the farms and ranches.
Another thousand were dispatched after that and sent inside what used to be the king's hall, the location of the future cultural hub, wherein the university, my church, as well the Twilight Sanctuary will stand, leaving the rest to be split between the chemical plant above and the forges spread before us.
As for the others- the Derro, Durzagon, Orogs, and Stone Giants- they, sadly, were rendered into husks and thus were the same type of decrepit zombie as Zaraxus' base form. Their skin hugged their bones tightly, revealing clawed fingers of bone and feet blackened with char. Soon, they would become like Draugr.
For now, however, half of their absurd strength was put to work in the now-vacant mines to gather more ore than the former-slaves ever could have during bondage.
And the other half was through a pinhole in the collapsed tunnels outside and sent at a full sprint to the mithral vein just a few kilometers away.