Chapter 1002: State Of Conquest
Once he was done reporting victory and had indeed confirmed that Maliah had become an undead, Loimos ended up in a place that he had not often been in, which was his office which had been constructed in the great platform that had once served as the main base of operation during the conquest of Belliste, in his absence, it seemed like the vanguard had decided to upgrade this place.
Now resembling a massive, dark rectangle standing upward with countless bridges extending out from it, and many floating constructs and islands all around it, some floating on their own, others linked to the main architecture with chains.
There was no point in trying to describe the sheer size of everything, as per usual when letting the famed architects go wild, they had created something that a living could take their entire lifetime trying to explore, especially since they hardly seemed capable of restraining themselves from making whatever they built into a labyrinth.
The place was crawling with all sorts of undeads from the numerous different castes of the vanguard, most bizarre however, were the statues and various art pieces depicting Loimos that were all over the places, there were mostly stone statues, which were rather true to reality, but also wood carvings, mosaics and even paintings, the latter seemed to have been made by the same person as the style was consistent, and also the fact that that they tended to depict things that Loimos certainly would not normally be doing, or events that did not happen.
Such as the one where Loimos tears open his black mantle to reveal his bare ribcage, which was ludicrous, why would he not have his usual chestplate underneath it? And why would he remove his mantle with his hands anyways? It was all rot, he just needed to think to make it disappear!
Or also the one where Loimos triumphs over an army of angels in what seems like a depictive of the divine realm, they hadn’t even found a way to this realm yet, was this some sort of propaganda? That couldn’t be the case propaganda was for the living colonies, not constructs deep within undead territory.
Also they managed to make his skeletal form look far more bulky than it really was...
In any case, Loimos quickly reached his office, where he received a rundown of everything that had happened during the very long time he had been absent, receiving reports from Ourlst, Horhir, Carnifex and Dimios.
As one could have expected, just because their general was absent did not mean that they spent their time doing nothing, in fact, they had made quite some progress, it was hard to see it at a glance because advancing was simply so slow for the Empire nowadays, but several realms had been conquered by the vanguard, as well as a couple of nearby islands or small tribes of beings that lived beneath the water had been subjugated as well.
"Most of the realms we have encountered lacked any restrictive means, or said means were too weak to impede us, leading to swift and efficient conquests- On the front of growing the ranks of the living soldiers however, things have been slow for us, the realms we encountered typically lacked in sapient species or beasts that could be of use in that regard, those realms were rather small and empty for the most part" said Ourlst, although swiftly conquering realms was good as it allowed to use the special manoeuvre to expand the territory in the main world swiftly, the realms the left hand mentioned provided little benefits beyond that and not all were in good positions to execute the manoeuvre too.