[1% LIFESTEAL] Chapter 196 - Smart Enough to Fight, Dumb Enough to Obey

Deep in the interspace beneath the Valhalla headquarters, Freddy watched Sophia try her hand at raising an undead for the fiftieth time.

She lay her hand on a crude mass of flesh in the rough shape of a humanoid being, and then, with a gulp, she used Raise Undead—stage 0. As soon as the ability activated, she leaped back to hide behind Freddy.

The two of them watched nervously as the mass of flesh slowly got up to its feet.

Freddy’s heart was hammering in his chest, a blend of frustration and trepidation making him subconsciously clench his fists. 

The undead finally got up, and then, it simply stood there. 

Sophia glanced at him anxiously and he nodded. Then, with a gulp, she waved her hand and activated her Command Undead. 

The creature twitched violently for a few moments, and then, it calmed down, curiously looking around itself. 

Sophia took a deep breath and walked forward a few steps. The undead looked at her curiously, but didn’t attack. Sophia smiled and then turned to face Freddy, who released Bloodshed from his ring. With a sinister red glow in its eye sockets, the skeleton leaped at the undead, raising a claw as if it were about to attack. 

The undead immediately responded, raising its hands to defend itself. When the pretend attack missed, it stood there confused for a few long seconds. 

Freddy and Sophia watched on with bated breaths.

And then, a miracle happened. After mulling it over for a while, the undead finally decided to raise its hand and attack Bloodshed. Bloodshed dodged, and then nodded back at Sophia and Freddy. Their gazes met.

It hadn’t gone wild. It hadn’t attacked Sophia. It defended itself from an attack. And finally, it actually realized that it had to fight back. 

The two of them smiled. And then, they broke into overjoyed shouting as they started dancing around. 

“It worked!” Freddy shouted. “It actually fucking worked!”

Sophia shrieked as she did several backflips and pumped her fist. 

With her talent, Sophia had an uncanny mastery over the life affinity. But that meant nothing for her death affinity, which was kind of important when trying to make undead. Who would have thought? 

Raise Undead was very easy to create, but insanely difficult to master. If it needed to just bring a corpse back to life, the biggest moron on the planet could make it work. All it really took was injecting death essence into a corpse and voila! It would become an undead. 

But if the necromancer in question wanted that undead to do literally anything at all, the difficulty spiked exponentially.

Most necromancers—as in, pretty much all of them except for rare freaks like Sophia—had only mindless corpses to work with. For Raise Undead to work, the target needed to be both dead and also kind of rotten. The only exception was if the target had been undead while it was still alive, but even then, to make it dead its brain needed to be destroyed first, which again resulted in it being mindless.

To make such undead capable of movement, necromancers basically had to “program” their ability the way one would a practice puppet or a golem. This was extremely difficult, and for most people, it was the biggest reason why using the undead was never going to happen. Basic movement was easy enough, but actual combat ability required a college diploma worth of education and research.

This was where Sophia had an advantage. Since she could turn anything into an undead, the corpses she could work with didn’t have to be rotten at all. On top of that, she could easily repair the brain enough to make intelligent undead.

But this was where they met their first problem—making those undead actually listen to her. 

This was why it took over fifty tries to get a single success. It had been an extremely frustrating process of fine-tuning the brain to be just dumb enough for her to easily control it, while being smart enough to actually perform the required tasks. 

With their most recent attempt, they finally found a ratio that worked. 

However, their joy soon deflated. Freddy put his hands on his hips as his smile slowly died down. “It’s still kind of stupid, tho, innit?”

Sophia deflated as well. “Yeah… But it’s something, at least.”

“Mmmh,” Freddy muttered. “But we won’t stop the monster invasion with something on this level.”

Sighing, Sophia nodded. “Yeah.” She chuckled. “I could just make a million of them.” 

He snorted. “We both know you don’t have the time for that.” His expression turned serious as he slowly turned to meet her eye. “How about we go in the other direction?”

“No,” she spat without a single second of hesitation. 

He winced. “But if it’s truly intelligent, we could—”

“That’s stepping over a line, Freddy,” she asserted. “Yes, I understand that we could reason with a truly smart undead. But I’m not in the mood to play god with my power.”

Trying to look innocent, he touched the tips of his fingers as he gave her his best puppy eyes. “Not even a little bit?” 

She snickered and shook her head. “No. I’m serious.”

He sighed. “We’ll have to do with what we have. Now—” he turned to head towards the nearest passage—”we’ll go back to the surface and continue testing there. We’ve been away for too long already.”

The rumor that Freddy could tell when someone was spying on him had already spread far and wide. Several times, he had sensed a spy in hiding. But he wasn’t fully confident that it would work every single time, and that made him nervous.

Sophia was someone he cherished deeply. If his recklessness got her hurt, he would never forgive himself. And her help was crucial in this defense. 

If they wanted this plan to work, they would need to keep the source of the undead a secret. And that was easier said than done.

Their mercenary hires and the other two were defending the wall with the rest of the fighters. They left them alone as they made their way into the wilds where they continued experimenting. Thankfully, there was a practically unlimited amount of material they could use for testing, as the tide of monsters was virtually endless. 

After locating a small grove not too far from the wall, they dove inside. Before allowing Sophia to start, Freddy first scouted the perimeter, listening to any hint of insanity and keeping an eye out for any sign of scouts or spies. He even sent Bloodshed out. It was to an almost paranoid degree that he ensured nobody was around to watch them, and even then, he was barely confident enough to let Sophia get started. 

As she finally got to work, her experiments went much faster. Some were too smart, some were too dumb. But Sophia was quickly gaining experience, and before long, she finally landed on an acceptable level of intelligence. 

She created an undead that could fight at an extremely basic level, with little regard for its own safety and no knowledge of actual fighting forms. That being said, it attacked viciously, and it was smart enough to actually channel miasma into its blows, albeit crudely. Regardless, that was more than they could ask for.

Naturally, given that the undead were actually intelligent—albeit barely—they also formed a talent when they were created. Sophia could technically just revive a monster, which would let it keep whatever talent it had—just adjusted for the death affinity—but that was too risky. So she was forced to deconstruct the flesh and put it back together. 

This meant that all of her undead only had the death affinity and a very crude overall physical boost as their talent. Their maximum star capacity was also pathetic, at only about 20% essence per star. 

As for the form, she settled on a roughly humanoid, top-heavy creature standing about three meters tall, with a thick head full of eyes on all sides, tough skin the color of dried jerky, enormous muscles, stubby legs, long arms, and hands with massive claws attached. To have as few weaknesses as possible, it basically had no neck, its tiny brain was hidden deep in the center of its body, and it also had numerous small hearts that would keep pumping blood no matter what. 

It also breathed through its skin and exclusively fed through a sharp tail that grew out its back, which could suck blood out of corpses.

This was Sophia’s idea—basically, these things weren’t viable in the wild unless they had a constant influx of fresh blood. Without the kind of density of monsters they were currently dealing with, these things would starve to death. This was just in case some of them broke loose, she claimed. So that they wouldn’t become a menace to people. This was also why they had no reproductive organs.

To be frank, these things lacked almost everything a creature needed to survive in the long term. They lacked organs of any kind—the only way they could expel waste was by sweating blood through the same pores they breathed through, and that was hardly an efficient method.

At most, they would live for a couple of months before the buildup of waste in their bodies made them effectively incapable of moving. At that point, undead or not, they would die a slow death of being eaten by fungus and bacteria, which they also had no real immune system to defend from. 

Still, despite their lack of viability in the long term, they were extremely sophisticated beings, and Freddy was shocked at how quickly Sophia put the first one together. All that practice she’d had with the giant hadn’t gone to waste. 

They were built for a single purpose—to fight for a while, and then die. It was now only a matter of seeing how good they were at doing so.

Sophia used Command Undead. She still didn’t know how to do any kind of complex command, so all her ability really did was set the monster loose to roam and do as it wished. 

The thing jolted and then blinked with its dozens of eyes, looking over its surroundings. Then, it started moving. It was surprisingly lithe and well-balanced, despite its top-heavy form. It was also eerily quiet, given the lack of vocal cords and the snow keeping its steps silent. 

After confirming that it wouldn’t attack humans, they set it loose and then quietly followed it. It didn’t take long for it to stumble upon its first prey. A cat-like monster with scales instead of fur leaped at it from behind a tree, swinging its sharp claws across the undead’s back. The claws cut into the jerky-like skin, but that was about it. They drew no blood and caused no real harm.

The undead whirled, swinging its massive arm in a backhanded strike, pushing the cat away. Then, it simply charged it, taking wide, wild swings, each of them imbued with a bit of miasma. Given that it was practically a newborn, it only had like 2% total essence capacity, meaning that it only had enough essence for a single attack. 

But it didn’t really matter.

The cat was extremely mobile, running circles around the undead, but the undead’s relentless attacks and complete lack of response to damage started to impact the monster’s confidence. It tried pulling back, only for the undead to keep chasing it in a straight line. 

The cat sped up, but the undead persisted, building up a surprising speed as it chased the now-panicking cat down, where it finally slashed its claws across its back. The attack was unbelievably strong, crushing the cat monster’s spine and almost breaking it into two pieces. Having claimed the kill, the undead sat down and moved its snake-like tail, embedding it into the monster’s corpse and sucking it dry. 

Freddy gave Sophia a look. “Wow. That thing is genuinely horrifying.” He suddenly looked a little uncomfortable. “Are you sure it can’t be infected by the ether virus?” he asked. 

Sophia sighed. “I honestly have no idea.” She raised her hand. “I have installed something of a kill switch next to its brain that I could activate with a single touch. That being said, from what I know on the subject, it's supposed to be impossible to usurp control over an undead. But if I lose control over it, first…”

Freddy winced and groaned. “We don’t really have a choice, anyway. We’ll just have to take the gamble.”

As they waited for the news from the empire, they started on producing as many of the undead as possible. Freddy gathered materials and kept guard over Sophia as she worked. Her subsequent iterations became more sophisticated, growing more balanced, and a lot more lethal. She cut down on the number of claws, leaving only two, and made the creature’s arms a little shorter.

She added extra muscle tissue to the tail so it could be used offensively in combat.

Some of the undead were built for greater physical power while some were built to face faster and smaller opponents. Some she kept bare and light, and some she plated in armor of bone. 

All the undead were let loose, where they immediately got started on hunting down the first thing they came across—as long as it wasn’t a human, of course.

Before long, Sophia was too exhausted to keep going, having overexerted both her talent and her essence reserves. “That’s all I can do for now,” she said.

“Well done,” he complimented. “If this works, you’ll save a lot of lives.”

She gave him a tight smile. “I really hope this doesn’t bite me in the ass.”

“Hey now…” he said with a wry grin. “Don’t raise flags like that. Now it’s basically guaranteed to go to shit.”

She chuckled and shook her head. “Just shut up, dude.”

For the rest of their wait, they simply joined the defense in hunting down as many monsters as possible, all while staying relatively close to the wall in case of another emergency. 

As they continued fighting the neverending war, Freddy’s emotions boiled inside him. He wanted this all to be over, to just evacuate the civilians and leave it all behind. And for a brief, bitter moment, he thought he wouldn’t mind even if the worst came to pass—as long as it was finally over.

In those moments of running between one monster and another, hacking, slashing, punching, and kicking, he found himself wondering how he hadn’t already lost his mind, having spent so long teetering on the brink of insanity. He wondered whether he’d already lost himself a long time ago. 

Eventually, the awaited moment came to pass. The watch lit up with red, ringing as the adjudicator called for them to meet at the tower as soon as possible. 

Sighing, Freddy tapped the watch to make the light go away. Truth be told, he already knew the empire would say no. There was little doubt in his mind about this. He told Sophia to wait for him by the wall as he ran back.

There, up in the adjudicator’s office, everyone arrived. 

Reginald, Peri, Georgie, Emily, and even Matt Canstone, who had been tasked with leading the scouts further out. They walked into the room in quick succession, gathering around the adjudicator who looked at them and then sighed.  “My petition was rejected,” he said. “The evacuation wasn’t authorized.”

Freddy watched with some degree of twisted pleasure as the young elites stared at the adjudicator in disgust. Deep in their eyes, he could see a certain something crumble away. 

Clearly, regardless of how wise they believed themselves to be, they had never truly been exposed to the filthy side of the empire. They were too rich. Too privileged for that. But on that day, that had changed, at least a bit. He could only hope they would carry this moment in their hearts and remember it when they found themselves in the position to change things for the better. 

The adjudicator excused himself as he walked out to handle some official business. 

Reginald walked over to Freddy, handing over a ring just like the one he was wearing. “Here. As promised.” The man paused for a moment. “This model is a bit better than what I was going to give you. From what I’d seen and heard, you never took the ring off, not for a moment. The information you collected will be invaluable. While I can’t give you much else in the moment, I hope you accept this little gift for now. And if you ever need anything in the future, just contact me.”

Freddy felt his throat tighten a bit. “Thank you, man.” He clasped his hand. “It was a pleasure fighting alongside you.” Then, he smirked a bit. “I hope the next time I see you, you’ll have a better way to fight than to shove bugs up your target’s ass.”

Reginald smiled crookedly and chuckled. “Not the prettiest way to fight, I know. But hey, it certainly gets things done.”

Freddy shrugged. “Can’t argue there.”

Reginald finally sighed as he walked past Freddy, tapping his shoulder. “Best of luck. I hope you still find a way to keep these people safe.” His grip tightened a little before letting go, a resolved look on his face. “Goodbye.” He walked out of the room. 

Peri approached him next. She simply bowed a bit and said, “Good luck, Freddy.”

He smiled at her. “Good luck to you as well, Peri. Hope you grow out of your problem at the next star.”

She scoffed at his pun and shook her head. And then, she smiled. “Thank you.” And with that, she walked away. 

Next up was Emily. She just gave him a long, hard look, a strange light dancing behind her eye. Then, she quietly walked past him and left. 

“Rude,” Freddy muttered. “Could have at least waved or something…”

Georgie chuckled. “I’m surprised she didn’t spit on you on the way out.” 

“I’m disappointed she didn’t,” Freddy said. 

Georgie burst out laughing. “Okay, wow! That’s not what I expected you to say.”

He chuckled, waving her away. “It’s just a joke.” Then, he frowned and whispered, “I think.”

Shaking her head, Georgie walked past him. “I’ll go and continue fighting, I guess.”

“And why aren’t you leaving?” Freddy asked, making her pause in her step. 

After a long moment of silence, she said, “Because I’d feel awful if I did.” And then, she left the room.

Freddy was left alone with Matt Canstone, who sighed. “It would be wise of you to leave now, but I can tell you won’t.”

“What’s the problem? Wouldn’t me staying make a better story for Madame?”

“Only if you come out the other end alive,” Matt said. “Now that the defense structure fell apart a bit, I hope you don’t mind me joining your team.”

“I do, actually,” Freddy said, making the man pause. “Don’t take offense, but I’m going to be going out with my friend. If you want, you can join the mercenaries I hired in defending the wall.” He didn’t want Matt to know what he and Sophia were doing.

Sighing, the man said, “I suppose I’ll have to settle for that.”

Nodding, Freddy turned to leave, only to be interrupted by the adjudicator, who suddenly rushed back into the room, a furious look in his eye. “I have some bad news,” he said in a tone that made Freddy’s stomach drop. 

“The mercenary groups you hired are getting ready to leave.”