Chapter Twenty eight

Throwing parts onto tables and pulling switches, the creations started to fill the room as everyone acted like kids with new toys. The monstrous soldiers weren't attacking contestants or bonds, but they did slowly wander directionless. A plant monster with tree trunk legs and vine-like arms lashed out breaking the curious focus on crafting tables. Its vines lifted up a moaning zombie ripping it in half with ease.

The starting chaos sent people scattering. Harmony's water elemental enveloped a chimeric mix of goat, and lion trying to drown it as it thrashed.

A heavy stone golem smashed bugs until the floor was slick with green goo. No one made more creations as the violence played out, settling once a few creations ended up on top, neutrally waiting.

"We need to figure out what creatures play nice together," Harmony demanded. There was enough space to keep them segregated at first but having this happen when you sent them out to fight would be disastrous.

The center of the fort became an arena to test compatibility and strength. Fire elementals might not attack the trees or undead but they certainly set them ablaze like kindling. "Some of the choices are clearly subpar," Owlsley commented.

It was the undead. It was almost a point of wounded pride. It took two, three, or four of them to take down any other crafted soldier. The one advantage was that every other creation except for the trees ignored their existence.

The trick was finding a strong team composition without conflicts. Figuring our counters and synergies. Gareth, the bookie or more in his role as a probability accountant became key in crunching the numbers.

"Statistically the mana charged golems are the best, but it's a false confidence. Great against some of the next strongest options, and able to crush weaker opponents. No amount of undead will take one down, but the mid-range ones that round out any composition like lightning or water elementals hard counter them. I don't care how strong a fighter they look, if they have a glass jaw it's a sucker's bet."

Six different kinds of troops were the largest group you could get. Synergies could be solid if you narrow the focus, but ultimately it was all a game of sword, club, and scroll based on what opponents picked with only thin margins between with no other information than the simple directions given. "I'm going to cheat." Harmony declared. With the army composition set that's what the spare competitors were relegated to.

She made her way to the undead crafting table. The formation of the zombie-like undead was pretty boring. It filled in a few conceptual holes, but it produced a shit product. Even quick and vicious shamblers on the first floor of Old Bones were better. This creation table was a bit sloppier than the other tables since it wasn't making anything living or mana-based. Someone built a zombie with four arms and it had been imbalanced.

Harmony piled every arm, leg, head, and body she could on the table. While restricted, vital body gave her plenty of strength to move the pieces quickly. [Mend] fused them together so they wouldn't fall, [Manipulate Dead] cracked open connections so she wouldn't need to try to form a standard body shape. She'd already tried fusing two undead creations, but the skill core controlling it messed that up as order interpretations to fight had it rip apart in two separate directions.

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Flipping the switch on the table she shoved a severed undead toe to lock the lever in place, the bloody things would also automatically shut off if you didn't do that. Pure undead flesh being flooded with necromantic spiritual energy. [Manipulate Dead]ngot to work, even sealed she could do this. All that crafting had refreshed the basics. From spongy and rigid she turned the flesh to clay.

The material was halfway towards that synthetic composition as the pieces provided by the dungeon had missing biological details like veins, organs, and even brains. Might as well have been flesh poured into a mold rather than anyone waiting to be reanimated. Start with shit you get shit.

The pile of limbs turned into a squishy pile of flesh with free-floating bones from all the limbs. The feet were even wrong, one hinge to a flat piece of bone, a cheap replacement for the twenty-six bones in a human foot. She shoved her arms into the filling container elbow deep it quivered as she exerted her will over the weakly designed and will-less entity. It was easier to work from within.

While the undead here lacked durability, density, and definition, Harmony figured she could fix that by making it simply bigger. With flicks of her fingers each one targeting separate bones she dragged them into place into a model of a new skeleton, fusing them into a new femur, tibia, spine, and skull to act as a frame for the massive pile of flesh that was thick enough now that maybe it could actually blunt attacks, diffuse the energy of strikes, and take effort to cut into.

Redesigning the spiritual container was also needed. You could sculpt the flesh all you want but without that modified to an acceptable shape it wouldn't move. Ocular structures designed on the fake heads provided didn't require eyes to work, dozens of them floated around the mess, so she dotted them everywhere to give her creation the ability to see in all directions. The vocal structures were stupid. What was the point of having fake groans and moans? Those got scrapped into the basic frame, their more complex structures adding density to what was clearly lacking it.

It was a race against the energy flooding in from the table, a vessel not complete until it was full. The skills started to form. One to maintain it, one to control it, and one to provide movement. The movement skill had to be attached to the bones, in that way, the reformed bones had to match the blueprints provided by the pieces. As the energy tried to start the skills Harmony withdrew her hands, her necromantic control had started to war with the activation and she wasn't going to linger and mess up her cheating.

Where all the other creations were roughly man-sized this one ranged the height of three of them and far wider, a tubby eyeless, mouthless, noseless mass of grayish pink flesh to cushion and protect the skeleton within. It didn't even have a neck, the head ended up a hairless pyramid on top of the body, the hands were more pinchers with bone tips and it didn't even have toes. "I dub thee Patrick!"

The goliath hobbled over to their group's army. The craft project almost made her regret not taking [Raise Dead]. A different career trajectory from what had gotten her so far in life. She already had Bea back at the manor, and one didn't want to overdo it. It's one thing to be a necromancer, it's another to be a necromancer with an army of undead minions. It's not like she needed [Raise Dead] to do that anyway.

[Recall] set off alarm bells. When has she ever liked playing with dead goop? The puzzle and organization were there, improving and fixing spirits, yes. Even now it was more about bringing things back to life she caught as she traced this inkling and missing out on something she'd never really regretted. Necrotuned revivalist was starting to rear its head in how it functioned as a class. It helped with the mess that was Kenny's guts as well. There would be a balance in how she worked around this, not that she would fully rebel against her class's tendencies, but it would be her, not it in charge.

"Countdown to the war started over a thousand seconds ago," Adric informed her.

Had there been a notification in the middle of that? A countdown sat at five-hundred and fifty-three. "Ashes." There wasn't enough time to build a second Patrick. Instead, she got to work helping the others with little improvements to the army they already had built.

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