Seeing that most of the nearby men were dead or on the verge of death, Athos cast the spell to raise undead en masse again, turning the few that remained into undead. With a satisfied smile at the sight of the new undead, Athos ordered the waiting skeletons around the village to attack and began the second phase of his plan.
Athos could destroy this village with sheer brute force, but he chose to use a complicated plan instead, to test his command ability, as well as the ability of his skeletons to follow his orders. Any brilliant plan he came up with would be useless if his skeletons didn't follow him, just as having brilliant soldiers would be useless with an incompetent commander.
Athos knew that in his future battles he would be leading armies, so it was something he needed to test. A screaming sound from the other side of the village informed Athos that the mage skeletons had begun their attack.
********
Green Village, at the back gate, at the same time.
"What happened? Why are you sounding the alarm?" Random villager 1.
"Is it an attack by bandits or monsters?" Random villager 2.
"How the hell am I supposed to know? Just run!" Random villager 3.
The villagers had not been informed of the undead and only knew that the village was under attack. They thought it was just an onslaught of hungry monsters that didn't find food for the winter, so they were slowly retreating while the few men guarding the back gates watched them. That's why they took so long to react.
Black skeletons of angry boars leapt out of the bushes and charged at the fleeing villagers, trying to run them over. Angry boars could accelerate their running speed up to 60 km/h while running in a straight line and bolster their skulls, charging hard enough to knock down trees.
Seeing the skeletons furiously rush towards them, the villagers ran back to the safety of the walls and hurriedly locked the gates. One of the village girls, an aspiring adventurer, peeked between the cracks in the wall to see the monsters and almost choked on what she saw.
A black skeleton wearing a cloak waved his wand towards the gate, causing the earth in front of the gate to rise like a ramp. The gate was only three meters high and the ramp equaled that, allowing the wild boars to break in.
"Get away from the gate, now-" The young woman tried to scream, but it was a second too late. The wild boars ran over the ramp and jumped, landing right on top of the fleeing people. Their hardened skulls slammed into people and partially crushed them into a paste of flesh.
The villagers screamed in panic, running as fast as they could while those closest to the children grabbed them by the arms, trying to get as far away as possible, but it was useless. The quickest to get away tried to round the corner of the nearest house and hide, but black fists hit them and sent them flying back into the middle of the street.
The two-faced monkeys were the first monsters to invade the village, using high mobility to climb the walls and wait for your orders. As soon as their master ordered the second phase to begin, they went into a rage and transformed, doubling in size. Of course, because they're undead, no matter how angry they are, they won't do anything outside of what they're told.
"Shit, you bastards!!" The would-be adventurer screamed with tears in her eyes, looking down at one of the partially crushed bodies on the ground. It was his younger brother's body. She glared at the undead as she placed an arrow in her trusty bow and fired, aiming for the boar skeleton that killed it.
The arrow hit the skull hard and broke harmlessly without leaving a scratch. The boar skeleton turned to her and ran furiously, trying to crush her. The young woman desperately shot arrows at the skeleton, but it was a futile effort. The boar arrived in front of her and advanced with her head down, trying to run her over. At the last second, the young woman jumped, before clinging to the bones of the boar's back, straddling him.
She pulled a hunting dagger from her waist and jabbed it into the skeleton's spine before twisting. The skeleton fell to the ground without losing momentum, hurling the young woman through the air, before hitting the ground hard and rolling until it hit the wall of a hut.
"Urk! Shit…" She struggled to her feet, spitting dirt from her mouth. The young woman tried to get up, but lost her balance and fell to the ground again. Looking down, she noticed that her ankle was twisted at an unnatural angle, but didn't notice it because of the adrenaline. She leaned her back against the wall, trusting all her weight to the wall, and picked up her bow again, determined to take at least the skeleton that had killed her brother with her.
The boar skeleton also tried to get up, but its hind legs didn't respond and it crawled towards she, while other boar skeletons surrounded it as if to protect it. She tried to aim at the crawling skeleton, but a monkey skeleton jumped off the roof of the house she was standing on and grabbed her wrists before crushing them.
"ARGHHH!!" The young girl screamed as she fell to the ground, before the ape skeleton punched her in the chest, sinking her rib cage and crushing her internal organs. The killing had also ended all around, with all the villagers reduced to corpses. Skeletons also killed all the cattle, so corpses of cows, pigs and chickens were mixed in, but no skeleton paid any attention to it.
'Gather all the corpses at the main gate.' Realizing that the skeletons were finished, Athos sent a mental order to rejoin him. Athos was standing in front of the gate, lining up the newly acquired skeletons, or more accurately, those with either broken bones or missing limbs.
He was practicing dark magic on the corpses, trying to heal them. Athos had realized that dark magic could heal the undead, just as light magic could heal the living. Unfortunately, he had no experience in healing people nor in controlling dark magic, so he was struggling to heal bone cracks, he didn't even dare try with those with missing limbs.
He had no experience controlling dark magic, but the darkness was second nature to him now that he was undead. It was literally like moving a limb, as his body had no nerve endings and the darkness that moved his body. As Athos practiced, dark magic became more and more familiar and required less and less focus, allowing him to use a little more mana at a time.
By the time the last of the corpses was gathered around him, Athos was already healing whole bones with the same skill an apprentice priest would have. It was an incredible evolution that would make any necromancer green with envy, and it was only possible thanks to his undead nature, his mana body, and his innate talent. However, there was a problem.
"Lack of nutrients. It seems that just like light magic, dark magic still needs nutrients to heal." Athos said, looking at the human skeleton he had just healed. The bones were a little thin from lack of nutrients. The undead didn't need to eat because their bodies were powered by magic, but they would still need nutrients to heal.
"If I want to turn these crushed corpses into the undead, I'm going to need a power source." Athos thought for a while, before a simple idea crossed his mind. "Wait, we're in a village, aren't we? There must be more than enough food to feed all these people besides the livestock. If I gather all this together, can't I heal all the undead to a perfect state?"
Excited by the idea, Athos sent a mental order to all the undead to bring him anything that was edible, even hay for the cattle. After bringing all the reserve the village had prepared for the winter, Athos launched the mass undead raiser turning all the surrounding corpses into skeletons.
Athos felt a dizzy and weak feeling from expending so much corrupted life force to create so many undead at once, but the feeling quickly faded, replaced by euphoria and a sense of power like he had never felt before. There were approximately 150 corpses around it if he took into account the livestock and the corrupted life force received from all of them at the same time was immense.
"If it continues at this rate, I should be able to form a new layer of death before I attack the city." Athos nodded, satisfied with the improvement in his own power, before focusing on the task at hand.