novelraw Chapter 101: Reforging the Venom
Chapter 101: Reforging the Venom
The snake was still on the ground where the wolf had pinned it, coiled and agitated, head moving in a fast restless way.
The undead knight crouched down and unwrapped the cloak just enough to expose the bat, still alive, wings pressed flat under the grip.
The knight shoved it toward the snake’s face.
The snake struck immediately, no hesitation to the movement. The fangs went into the bat, sank, held for a second as the venom delivered, then released.
The bat made a sound, a short, sharp squeak that was more surprised than pained, and went still in the knight’s grip.
The undead drew its arm back.
The snake was still moving, agitated by the whole encounter, twisting against the wolf’s hold on it. The wolf had it pinned but the Pachian was strong for its size, it was also slippery and the angle was awkward, so after another few seconds of thrashing it found a gap in the grip and came free.
It hit the ground and immediately oriented on the nearest warm presence.
Which was Darion.
It came at him fast, low to the ground, and Darion had about half a second to process what was happening before he said the only thing that mattered.
"Kill it." He commanded the wolf.
The wolf moved.
It came down on the snake from above, jaws closing around the body just behind the head with the full force of Strength 55 behind the bite.
The snake’s body thrashed violently, the tail whipping against the ground and the wolf’s legs, but the head was already destroyed, crushed between the wolf’s teeth, the skull collapsed, the fangs no longer a threat to anything.
The wolf shook its head once, hard, and the body stopped moving.
Then it chewed.
Slowly...
The sound of it was not pleasant. Bone cracking, the wet noise of tissue being broken down, the snake’s body reducing itself under consistent pressure into something that was no longer recognizably a snake.
Darion stood and watched, making a face.
"Yikes," he said.
The wolf finished, stood up straight, and looked at him. Its muzzle was dark. It waited for the next instruction with the same patience it always had, completely unbothered by what had just occurred.
Darion looked at the remains on the ground and made a face again.
"Yeah," he said, to no one.
He turned to the bat.
The undead knight was still holding it, the cloak wrapped back around the grip. The bat wasn’t moving anymore, the venom had done what it did, working fast in something so small. He crouched beside the knight and unwrapped the bat carefully, laying it on the ground.
He waited for roughly eight minutes, watching the bat and watching the forest around him. The wolf stood nearby. The undead knight stood nearby. Nothing else came through the trees. The bat lay still on the ground, the green-tinged marking already beginning to show faintly at the bite point, spreading outward in the way he recognized now from the knights and from the villagers at Gonnb.
When the movement in the bat’s chest stopped completely, he placed two fingers against it.
"Revive."
The green light came, small and quick, threading through the fur and the membrane of the wings, settling in the tiny skull. The eyes opened, two points of cold green in the dark fur of the face. The wings shifted.
He looked at it for a moment.
"Yes," he muttered.
One venomous bat. It was a start.
He unsummoned it and the undead knight together, and stood up. The status screen appeared before he had taken a step.
[Knight Undead Inventory Expanded!]
[Animal Undead Inventory Expanded!]
[STATUS]
Name: Darion
Title: Baron of Percvale
Class: Necromancer
Rank: Acolyte
Territory: Percvale (Border Domain)
Territorial Resonance: Low (Starving-aligned — Improving)
[ATTRIBUTES]
Strength: 57 [+3]
Agility: 45 [+4]
Endurance: 53 [+5]
Vitality: 48 [+6]
Perception: 44 [+3]
Intelligence: 68 [+7]
Willpower: 50 [+4]
[Knight Undead Inventory: 35/50]
[Animal Undead Inventory: 3/25]
[Skills:
Death Perception
Distant Command]
He read through it.
Both inventories had expanded significantly. Fifty knight slots now and twenty-five animal slots. He was sitting at thirty-five knights and three animals, which meant fifteen empty knight slots and twenty-two empty animal slots.
The intelligence jump was the largest gain, seven points, which tracked with the last several days of problem-solving and improvisation.
The animal inventory expanding to twenty-five was the number that caught his attention. Twenty-five animal slots meant room for considerably more venomous bats than he’d had before.
This does not mean that his animal inventory would be just venemous bats, no. He might just use ten slots and the rest for wolves and whatever animal he revived.
He dismissed the screen and walked back toward the road, the wolf following for protection.
Back at the castle, Maret had something light ready for lunch. He sat in the great hall and ate and drank water and let the morning catch up with him.
Garren came in after a while, saw Darion at the table, and paused at the doorway.
"May I?" he said, gesturing at the chair across.
"Sit," Darion said.
Garren sat. "Haven’t seen you since last night. Been wondering."
Darion swallowed a mouthful of food. "I’ve been busy. Went to the graveyard first, created undeads and then the forest, needed a Pachian snake." He paused. "That was the harder part."
Garren’s eyebrow moved slightly. "Find one?"
"Eventually. The wolf helped." He thought about the snake coming off the tree and striking the undead wolf repeatedly without effect, and then the wolf’s response to the command to kill it, and the sound of that. "Found it and used it. Then got one venomous bat out of the morning."
Garren nodded. "Eventful morning I see." He folded his hands on the table. "Well, twenty knight recruits came in this morning."
Darion looked up.
Huh?
Twenty?
Without a formal announcement, without a board posted at the market the way they had done for the archers. Just volunteers showing up at the barracks gate saying they wanted to join.
He thought about what that meant. Three weeks ago, Percvale’s knight order had been a hundred and twenty one starving men who had refused to walk into the forest.
Now people from the town were choosing to come forward. That was a different kind of barony than the one he had arrived in.
"Have you assessed them?" he asked.
"Not yet. Wanted to confirm with you first."
Darion nodded. "Take them. Put them through basic assessment, see what they can do, where they need work. Anyone who has the build and the will for it, start training them in combat." He paused. "Don’t turn anyone away yet. We can afford to be selective once we know what we’re working with."
"Understood," Garren said.
"If we get recruits for knights, take them in and train them in combat."