Koyuki, the Necromancing Foxkin

While I had a lot of zombies to carry the bodies we still needed to identify usable ones. I decided it wouldn't be worth it to patch different body parts together for regular goblins, so we only looked at corpses that were mostly whole. Of course there were also fallen zombies among the bodies, the goblins did fight my undead after all. Sadly you could not reraise an undead.

Besides simply passable bodies we were also looking for better ones, like shamans, hobgoblins or assassins. Ideally I would be able to use them to create more specialised undead.

Our task took us way longer than the soldiers needed to pack up and leave. While Cathleen returned with them, Valeria decided to stay with us, even though she was not that enthusiastic about the corpse collection. However she stuck close to Garm, somehow his presence seemed to calm her.

"You know, even if we stack the bodies we are not going to get them all into the wagon they gave us." Helen stated, after looking at our pile of bodies.

"We have our own wagon, the zombies will march so we can pile up some corpses in there as well. The remaining ones will need to be carried." I said.

"We won't make it back before nightfall and we did not bring tents." Skadi stated.

I pondered that. "We have two banks and the floor between them in the carriage. I suppose it will be a bit of a squeeze but we can fit five people in there, I think. Do we have enough food?"

"We looted enough from the goblins." Hatsumi said.

My eyes widened. "No meat, hopefully."

"Well, they had some but we are not taking that. They also had some vegetables, nuts and a rather hard version of bread…"

"Oh no, not crackers!" Cassie said.

"...they also had mushrooms." Hatsumi finished.

"We should burn them." I muttered.

"We also have some of the rations we brought ourselves. I think I can cook a stew for you with the sausage we have left and the vegetables we looted." Hatsumi said. "I even brought my cooking gear since it's stored inside the carriage."

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That didn't sound too bad.

After we had all the corpses we wanted we moved everything back to the road and loaded our two wagons as best as we could. We made sure to have the better quality corpses inside the wagons and used magic to further freeze them. The remaining bodies…

"You know what, I am just going to raise them here. I don't think there is any point in enhancing every zombie or wasting more material on them. My tier two should be good enough and they are still fresh." I decided. We still had about 50 of the better corpses inside the wagons.

After raising some more zombies we were finally ready, however the sun was going down by now. We made the decision to spend the night next to the road and return tomorrow.

"I wonder if anyone will ambush us?" Cassie said, as we sat around a fire while Hatsumi cooked.

"I have 117 goblin zombies standing guard, in addition to our regular undead." I pointed out, then I looked at Nyx. "Don't eat any of my corpses tonight."

Nyx' eyes narrowed and I threw her a small bone, which she caught and devoured.

"You are all pretty relaxed considering the attack on Koyuki and the battle in general." Valeria observed.

"Battles are part of the military." Helena stated.

"I have been attacked a lot, I guess I got used to it, in a way." I mused. "It's not like I could do anything to stop Ilestria. Then there are the lunatics from the Brotherhood. They are just looking for an excuse to kill innocents and use their corpses, I would never join them. Even if I did I would just have different enemies. I don't think I will ever have a peaceful life, all I can do is get stronger and trust in my friends."

"We protect the pack." Garm stated.

"Koyuki is training for ambushes, Nyx especially helps her with that." Kaito offered. "And we are improving her defences."

"You, eh, you don't think being surrounded by over 100 zombies is creepy?" Valeria asked.

"You know, I did not like zombies at first and was all into skeletons but zombies are not that bad. We need to take some time to clean the new ones once we are back but overall you can keep the smell in check. Any of the really improved ones are well preserved anyway. You see the undead flesh stops rotting when it's part of a properly raised zombie. I think a lot of natural undead get a bad reputation because not everything is animated and there might be flesh left that continues to rot. That and the smell just sticks to them because they never wash." I reasoned. "Oh, and some screw up their battlefield raisings and do not properly animate the corpse."

"Battlefields themselves don't smell any batter anyway." Skadi pointed out.

"It's not just the hygiene, I have always seen undead as monsters." Valeria said. "I have never worked with a necromancer before coming to the academy."

"Well, we are monsters." Garm's left head said. "Although this body was a monster before becoming an undead anyway." Garm's right head added.

"You are not a monster!" Valeria said. "Well, I mean you technically are but you are so nice and fluffy…"

"Meow!" Three equally fluffy cats commented.

"It's just that I often forget that you are an undead and not tamed." Valeria continued.

"Undead are good company." Skadi stated and Ivy jumped on her lap and nodded.

"You said you have never worked with a necromancer but your mother was really quick to send you to ally with me." I pointed out.

"Mother is older than she looks and she has worked with all sorts of mages. However, because there is a lot of anti-undead sentiment in our duchy it has never been worth it to employ any directly. You are powerful enough that it's worth allying with you, especially since you are on the royals' good side as well." Valeria said.

"Dinner is ready!" Hatsumi announced.

It was a simple but hearty stew and tasted quite nice. After our meal we talked some more until it was time for bed. We managed to squeeze all five of us inside the carriage and went to sleep while the undead kept watch.