Koyuki, the Necromancing Foxkin

CHAPTER 334: Undead Armies and Mana

While I considered the party a success it did make me think about my undead and potential weaknesses. Hatsumi had dealt with the light mage but Bob was taken out with one hit. We had new Bob now, something else I needed to explore, but it was time to examine my forces more closely. So the next day in the evening I called a meeting with my tier three.

It was inside the dorm room I shared with Helena, which meant that she was here as well.

"Is this going to be a conspiracy? Should we wear a cloak or something?" Helena asked.

"What? No. I want to discuss my undead forces in general." I replied.

"Ohhh, you are finally going to raise an army? Awesome!" Helena said.

"I don't have enough corpses for a real army, but could I even raise one? Maybe, but I was thinking about potential weaknesses - like light magic - and how we can deal with that in the future." I said.

"There has not been enough time to explore Bob's power." Hatsumi stated.

"Wait, I thought Bob was destroyed." Garm interrupted.

"That was the old Bob, the new Bob was raised from the corpse of the light mage. I turned him into a tier two undead when I killed him with my bite." Hatsumi explained.

"So he is called New Bob?" Garm asked.

"No, he is just Bob." Hatsumi replied.

"You were rather resistant to light magic, Hatsumi." I said. "However, vampires are supposed to be weak against light magic. Was that because you are a spellblade or because we created you from the corpse of a light mage?"

"Perhaps we can find out when we test Bob. We would need the help of a light mage though." Hatsumi stated.

"Do we have a light mage in our class?" Helena wondered.

"I don't think so. Only Eva was a light mage as far as I know." I replied.

"Perhaps we should ask a teacher for help?" Katio suggested.

"I should talk with Gronir first anyway. Maybe it is common knowledge that the corpses of light mages are resistant to light magic, or something like that." I mused.

Suddenly there was a knock at our door.

"Yes?" I called.

The door opened and Cassie walked in. "Are we late for the secret meeting?"

"There is no secret meeting." I replied.

"Good job, you sound very convincing." Skadi said, as she walked in after Cassie. In her hand was a bowl filled with fried potato slices. "We brought snacks."

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Helena nodded. "Any good conspiracy needs snacks."

"My apologies, I should have organised some." Hatsumi said.

I sighed. "This is no secret meeting, or a conspiracy, or anything sinister."

"So, what is this about?" Cassie asked.

Kaito's head rotated towards Cassie, while his body did not move. "Koyuki is planning to increase the effectiveness of her troops. She also wants to establish plans for her army to cover any weaknesses."

"Rising an army, cool. Totally nothing sinister." Skadi said, while placing the bowl on our small table. She settled on one bed with Cassie while I sat on the other one with Helena.

"So, how big of an army can you create, Koyuki?" Cassie asked.

"Hm." I pondered the question. "It is hard for me to say exactly because it depends on the type of undead. The more powerful and more intelligent undead consume more mana." Then I frowned. "Actually, Nyx is a bit weird."

"Meow!"

The sound came from underneath a pillow. I lifted it and stared at two glowing purple eyes. I placed the pillow on top of her again.

"So, Nyx, besides being a cat, is my guardian. I can only assume that changes things because she requires less mana than my other tier three. I admit I did not pay that much attention to the individual links before but it is interesting. I think the other cats might be slightly cheaper too? Hm. If I had to guess, Nyx takes around 0,1% of my core, Hatsumi, Kaito and Garm take around 1% each and the other cats are slightly cheaper, but only slightly. Overall my tier three are about 6% in total I would say." I concluded.

"What about the other undead?" Helena asked.

"Frank used to be about half a Nyx but he seems a bit cheaper now. Chariot is roughly the same. The goblin zombies are about half a Frank, I think. So I could have something like 5000 goblin zombies if they were my only undead. Well, not true, since that would use all of my mana. I think it is reasonable to not go below 50%. Then we have the Iron Beaks, they are rather cheap. I have some skeletons too which are around the same as the goblins. The horses are a bit more expensive than the other skeletons. Oh, there is my magical skeleton! He is closer to Frank." I replied.

I quickly checked my mental links, then I concluded: "So I have about 55 goblin zombies left and 5 hobgoblin zombies. That is a bit more than 1% of my mana. The Iron Beaks take about 0,5% right now, I think we have around 70 of them. Then there are Frank, Chariot, the magical skeleton, the two horses and around 18 normal skeletons, including the new ones from yesterday. They are about 1% in total as well. With too many of the same undead it can be hard to check the cost of each of them. With unique undead it is a bit easier."

"So you are using about 8,5% of your mana right now and your core is still growing." Skadi stated.

"Awesome, that leaves room for a big army!" Helena said.

"There is also some mental strain when it comes to the tier three, but it's not that bad. Gronir seems to think it should be worse." I shrugged. "The real problem is that raising a new tier three uses almost all of my mana."

"But senior mages with less mana than you can create a tier three." Cassie pointed out.

"I do believe that Koyuki simply dumps all she has into most of her tier three. She seems to be able to get great results with her intuition." Kaito mused.

"She clearly instills greater fashion sense into her undead than most." Garm mused.

"Hey, you never mentioned new Bob when you counted your mana use." Skadi pointed out.

"It's just Bob, and he is my undead so I pay his mana cost." Hatsumi stated.

"Isn't that a way to get an infinite army? If your undead raise their own undead?" Cassie asked.

"They don't have unlimited mana either but yes, it is a way to increase your army. However your control would be more limited if you don't raise them yourself." I replied.

"If I raise too many it would weaken me in combat." Hatsumi stated. "As a spellblade and bodyguard it is important that I excel at battle."

"So an army of 500 goblin zombies with a few elites mixed in would cost around 10% mana." Kaito stated. "If they were all better tier two's, like draugr, vampiric and so on you could still do 250 for 10%."

"And she could raise new ones during the battle." Hatsumi pointed out.

"Do you have to control them?" Cassie asked.

I scratched my head. "No. I could raise them and set them free."

"An unbound undead is much more likely to attack the living than the fellow dead." Kaito stated.

I would still suffer from magic fatigue if I kept raising undead and kept releasing them but it would be really problematic for a living army. I could see why people were concerned about powerful necromancers.

"So, where do we get hundreds of corpses from?" Helena asked.

"Wait, I am not actually going to raise an army! The plan was to discuss ways to counter light magic." I objected.

"An army does counter a lot of things." Cassie pointed out.

"Very true." Kaito agreed. "However, one needs to plan an army. We need front line soldiers, ranged attackers, scouts, cavalry…"

"Maybe we should focus on something smaller for now? Like a special unit to counter light magic?" I suggested.

"Not a bad plan." Hatsumi agreed.

Of course, there was the small problem of figuring out how I would counter light magic in the first place. And I would need more corpses. Maybe we could go hunting again during the next break?