Chapter 57: A Powerful New Troop

Inside the castle, Ambrose gazed at a collection of bones soaking in a nutrient solution and nodded in satisfaction.

The bone-proliferation virus had been perfectly infused into the bones. Once the soaking process was complete, they would be capable of long-term repair and continuous growth.

"Well done," Ambrose said. "You're close to being qualified to run a laboratory on your own."

The praise brought Isabel no joy at all. Dark circles hung beneath her eyes, and her body swayed as if she might collapse at any moment.

The experiment itself wasn't difficult despite its many steps. The only real problem was the danger.

Throughout the process, Isabel hadn't dared make the slightest mistake, terrified that a single lapse might infect her with the virus and see her being turned into one of Ambrose's undead creations.

The more nervous she became, the greater her mental strain. After forcing herself through an entire day and night, she felt utterly wrung dry, so exhausted she could barely remain standing.

"I... I'm going to rest..."

𝗳𝐫𝚎𝗲𝚠𝚎𝗯𝕟𝐨𝘃𝚎𝗹.𝗰𝗼𝗺

She staggered toward her room. Ambrose stroked his chin, briefly wondering whether it might be more efficient to simply turn her into an undead. Human bodies needed food, drink, rest, and all manner of maintenance. It was hardly cost-effective.

But after a moment's thought, he dismissed the idea. Undead had their advantages; humans had theirs.

In any case, Isabel would die in a few decades sooner or later. There was no rush.

Turning back to the jars of bones, Ambrose let vast quantities of magic gather around him. Pale blue energy condensed into the shape of hands that floated at his sides.

More than a dozen Mage Hands moved in swift, orderly fashion.

One bone after another was lifted out and assembled according to Ambrose's design.

These bones belonged not to humans, but rather to what were known as deep routh.

Native to subterranean depths, they were massive beasts resembling yaks, only far larger and vastly stronger. Some of the more brutal drow were said to use their skulls to crack boulders, a testament to both their strength and the hardness of their heads.

The bones were part of a shipment from Black Rose. A significant portion of the early payments had been made in materials rather than gold.

Given the rouths' immense size, its bones were correspondingly thick and sturdy. They were ill-suited for creating small mantis-type skeletons. This time, Ambrose intended to build a different kind of undead altogether.

Under his control, the massive bones began to interlock. A sturdy base took shape, still following a multi-legged, insect-like structure, though the thick joints allowed only basic forward movement and turning. Ambrose reinforced the design's structural integrity and load-bearing capacity at the cost of agility.

The upper body was pure armor: a thick deep routh skull formed a spiked, domed shell that left only a single, massive opening.

Then, Ambrose had his Mage Hands haul over a portable magitech cannon.

It had been built according to Alkhemia's original blueprints, though the inferior materials used meant there was a real risk of an explosion.

But that wasn't a big problem. Ambrose excelled at turning low-grade materials into cheap, functional skeletal constructs.

Moments later, an exceedingly bizarre creation stood at the center of the laboratory. It couldn't quite be described as a skeleton. Rather, it looked more like a circular tank.

It was two meters tall, nearly four meters in diameter, and possessed a cannon barrel three whole meters long.

A hardened dome-shaped skull enclosed its entire body. Even its multi-legged base was hidden within the shell. Only the cannon was exposed by the squat, solid mass.

Ambrose infused one of his artificial souls into the construct as the skeletal tank came to life.

A series of dull thuds echoed through the room as its many-legged joints began to move, causing the floor to vibrate.

Forward, backward, slow turns... Its movements were clumsy, but functional.

Next came the firepower test.

Ambrose guided the skeletal tank into a teleportation circle.

With a flash of light, the massive fusion of bone and machinery vanished and reappeared deep within Alkhemia's sewers.

The moment it arrived, it drew attention. Red lights flared in the darkness as corrupted slimes began crawling toward it.

The sewer slimes seemed to have mutated again since Ambrose was last present.

Metal fragments studded their bodies: iron spikes, blades, steel bars, and sawteeth. Someone had clearly been dumping industrial waste down here. Any ordinary person ensnared by such a slime would be shredded in moments.

The skeletal tank, an emotionless undead machine, burned with soulfire. Ripples spread along the cannon barrel.

Then came a muffled but heavy boom, the detonation of compressed air. A mass of gray-white matter burst out of the barrel, immediately scattering and splitting mid-flight.

Bone shrapnel blanketed the area ahead. More than a dozen mutated slimes were struck.

Bone fragments squelched as they sank into soft, gelatinous flesh. Bones clanged upon striking embedded metal.

The immense impact blasted the slimes apart. The barrage tore their bodies to shreds, and even the metal pieces visibly warped and flew off in all directions.

Slimes could resist many forms of physical damage, but not this. One shot from the portable magitech cannon reduced them to pulp. Slime paste splattered the ground.

And that wasn't all. A few lucky slimes had only been grazed and hadn't been immediately destroyed. But once the bone fragments entered their bodies, they began to grow and multiply, fusing with nearby shards.

Strange white bone corals erupted from within their bodies, ripping the slimes apart from the inside.

Some died instantly. Others desperately tried to digest the ever-growing bone growths, locked in a vicious tug-of-war against the virus that left them completely immobilized.

Two more shots rang out. Every slime in the area was annihilated.

Ambrose inspected the skeletal tank. Its bone structure remained stable. He had cleverly limited the virus's growth to the ammunition chamber, where it could continuously generate bone shells that were then launched by the cannon's compressed force.

The cannon itself was made of garbage-tier materials and likely wouldn't last more than ten shots, but that was fine. Its internal magic arrays could only support six shots anyway. The magic would run out long before the barrel exploded.

Portable magitech cannons from Alkhemia had never sold well. Mobile barrels were difficult to recharge and often lacked sufficient power even when mounted on city walls and linked to charging arrays. They felt more like expensive toys.

Flawed though they might be, this was the simplest short-term enhancement available to Ambrose. He still didn't know what had decapitated him. Better to be safe than sorry.

After taking the skeletal tank on a circuit of the sewers and firing all six shells with excellent results, Ambrose nodded in satisfaction. Within twenty meters, being grazed by the shot meant a serious injury; a direct hit was certain death. At close range, even Ambrose himself couldn't withstand six consecutive shells from behind a magic shield.

Against legends, however, its usefulness was limited. The tank was slow, and firing required an obvious pause and charge-up. Competent foes could easily evade or strike first unless they were foolish enough to stand their ground, or the terrain forced a head-on confrontation.

As Ambrose teleported the skeletal tank back to the castle, a sense of unease crept over him.

The castle had been breached. Magical traps had been triggered and dismantled. The intruders clearly knew what they were doing.

Assuming the paladins had moved faster than expected, Ambrose quickly checked his surveillance. He discovered two familiar figures in sight.

Bear and Husky, the "clients" whose possessions Ambrose had stripped bare, were creeping up from the rear of the castle. They were the ones who had dismantled the traps.

Ambrose was just about to move to capture them when a massive shadow over four meters tall appeared on the crystal display.

Ambrose sighed.

Those two were finished.