The Necro-Industrial Revolution

Hearing the name of Gold Core mage Silas Thorne, Banty's aggressive posture instantly deflated. He sank slowly back into his wooden chair, his jaw clenched, seemingly cursing under his breath.

Jack took a calm sip of his water, watching the reaction with quiet satisfaction. To these low-ranking grunts of the Church, a Gold Core mage was an existence akin to a demigod. They were incredibly rare prodigies, representing the highest echelon of the Church's reachable authority. Stating that a Gold Core mage had authorized this arrangement meant it was the undeniable will of the Church itself—unless a Cardinal or someone of equal, astronomical rank stepped in to oppose it.

What were a few Grey and Iron Core mages in the face of a Gold Core's mandate? Absolutely nothing.

"If what you say is the truth, My Lord," Banty finally said, his voice tight after a long moment of heavy thought, "then we have no choice but to comply. But remember this: if your arrogant claims turn out to be false, and your defenses fall, we will report the catastrophe to the capital. You will be in grave trouble. You won't just be stripped of your nobility; you will be severely punished by the Holy Church for your hubris."

"You do not need to worry yourself with these administrative matters," Jack replied with a light, dismissive laugh. "I know my position and my limits very well. I will definitely not do anything that goes against the overarching will of the Church. After all, who actively wants to die?"

James, Carla, and Nathen remained completely silent. They didn't dare speak a word of disrespect to Jack, not after Banty had already tested those waters. This young, supposedly impoverished Lord possessed direct connections to a Gold Core entity. These low-class mages had only ever laid eyes on Silver Core veterans from afar, and even those individuals seemed impossibly, terrifyingly powerful.

"If you are so confident, then we cannot force our assistance upon you," Banty pushed on, his pride still stung. "But I still have my doubts. Your heavy ballistas and spiked trenches are impressive, yes. But against a beast tide, the numbers are unpredictable. If even a single beast breaches those walls and enters a village filled with peasants, it will be a slaughter. If someone on the inside makes a single mistake, it is over."

Jack already knew exactly where this conversation was going.

"Very well. I can see what you want," Jack said smoothly, setting his utensils down. "Let us propose a hypothetical scenario. Let us say a catastrophic mistake occurs during the beast tide. The palisade walls fall, and the starving winter beasts enter my village. Even in that absolute worst-case scenario, I have my retainers to deal with them. It is not a problem at all. You truly do not need to worry."

He leaned forward slightly, his eyes locking onto Banty's. "But… if you possess such a burning desire to test the actual strength of my retainers, you are free to do so. I will allow a duel."

Banty's eyes sharpened.

"However, for the sake of everyone's safety," Jack added, "the duel ends the moment one party surrenders or is clearly no longer able to fight."

"As you wish, My Lord," Banty said, a spark of fierce competitive energy returning to his eyes. He finally picked up his fork and took a large bite. "We will have our duel. But it must be held down the hill, in the village square, so that everyone can witness it."

"Before that, we must finish our food," Jack countered calmly. "Then we will head out into the snow."

"Very well."

While James, Nathen, and Carla remained visibly overwhelmed by the tension at the table, Jack quietly ate his meal, his mind working at lightning speed.

He was confident. Over the past year of relentless mining and forging steel, his mental endurance had increased significantly. He could now control his undead like a master puppeteer. Although Jack himself lacked real-world combat experience, Elias was a different story. Because Elias's brain and physical structure was preserved perfectly, the undead retained his deep, ingrained combat instincts. Jack only needed to supply the mana and give macro-level commands; Elias's muscle memory would handle the micro-reflexes of the fight.

Furthermore, even if Elias somehow lost, Jack had nothing to lose. The mages still had to comply with Silas's orders.

However, this public duel would undoubtedly expose the fact that his mysterious, silent retainers were indeed powerful mages. But that secret was bound to get out eventually.

The real puzzle Jack was trying to solve was Silas Thorne himself.

Silas had visited the valley last spring. He had audited the entire fief and knew for an absolute fact that Jack possessed no retainers, let alone two heavily armored Iron Core mages. So, where would the Church assume they came from? Hired mercenaries? If Jack had the wealth required to permanently hire two Iron Core mages, why did he need to take out a two-hundred-thousand gold loan from Silas?

Silas wasn't an idiot. When he will receive the reports of these two new mages, he would immediately suspect something was incredibly wrong. Yet, it seemed as if Silas was actively covering for Jack.

Why is Silas helping me? Jack pondered, chewing a piece of spiced root vegetable. When Silas had visited the second time, his demeanor had changed entirely. At first, Jack assumed that it was due to some cruel punishment for disobeying Church mandates. But after thinking it over for months, that level of leniency didn't seem natural for a ruthless Inquisitor like Silas.

Seeing the sheer terror on the faces of these lower mages at the mere mention of Silas's name only proved Jack's suspicions. Silas had a hidden motive.

Is he some distant relative of the Frost Grips? Jack scoffed internally. Bullshit. If that were true, the violent conflict between Silas and original Jack's father wouldn't have happened in the first place.

Whatever the reason was, Jack intended to take full advantage of it. If Silas was willingly shielding him, Jack would gladly accept the help—but with extreme caution. He would absolutely never leak the truth of his Necromancy. Unless, of course, he wanted to find out exactly what it felt like to be burned alive at the stake.

Finally, the food on the table was cleared. No one had spoken a word for the last twenty minutes, leaving the room thick with suffocating tension.

Except for Karen, the maids standing near the walls looked terrified, sensing the impending violence.

Jack gestured for the maids to clear the plates. He stood up slowly, leaning on his cane. "Now that we have eaten, take some time to rest. Visit me whenever you are ready for the duel."

"Let's do it right now," Banty challenged, pushing his chair back. "Unless your retainers are afraid of me, that is."

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Banty's three teammates exchanged deeply worried glances.

"Sigh… Let us head to the village square, then," Jack said, shaking his head at the man's impatience.

He turned to his head maid. "Karen, send a message to the village through the guard at the courtyard gates. Inform them of the duel. And… you all should come along as well."

Karen hesitated. She had already expressed that she didn't want to go out into the freezing snow, fully trusting that Jack's retainers would easily win. But Jack insisted. She had been working tirelessly, managing the castle and studying the new apothecary texts all day. A little entertainment might relieve her stress.

"As you command, My Lord," Karen bowed, quickly dispatching a young maid to relay the message.

A short time later, Jack, his two silent armored retainers, Karen, other maids and the four Church mages walked down the snowy hill toward the village.

By the time they arrived, the massive central square was already packed shoulder-to-shoulder. Youngsters, adults, and even the few elderly residents of the valley had braved the falling snow, eager to witness a clash of true magic.

"I feel bad for the boys still working down in the coal shafts. They're going to miss this," one of the villagers muttered to his neighbor, rubbing his gloved hands together for warmth.

"Then quickly, send some of the kids to fetch them!" the neighbor replied, waving over young Alan, Corin's apprentice. "I seriously don't get why they're even working right now. The Lord just lowered the prices of food and spices for the entire winter. We're going to be eating good! What's the point of breaking your back in the dark today?"

He patted Alan on the shoulder. "Run to the mines and call them up! But walk slowly near the palisade trenches, you hear me? Don't fall in!"

Jack and the mages waited in the center of the cleared square, allowing the stragglers from the mines to finally jog into the crowd, their faces still smeared with black coal dust.

Seeing that the entire valley was now in attendance, Jack stepped forward.

"Banty, since you are the one who requested to test my retainers, I will give you the privilege of choosing your opponent," Jack offered smoothly.

Banty didn't waste a single second. He pointed a firm finger directly at Elias, who stood silently to Jack's right.

"Lord Jack, I choose your male retainer," Banty declared.

Jack kept his face impassive, but internally, he was reeling. How the hell did he know the other one was female?

Both Elias and Sylvia were encased head-to-toe in bulky, identical heavy armor. There were no visible physical indicators. Then, Jack realized his mistake. Because he allowed the flesh-bound undead to rely heavily on their preserved instincts to save his own mental energy, Sylvia naturally adopted the subtle posture, gait, and idle mannerisms of a woman. A trained mage like Banty had easily picked up on the behavioral cues.

"Very well. As you wish," Jack said.

On Jack's silent mental command, Elias took a heavy step forward. The crowd of villagers instinctively shuffled backward, giving the two combatants a wide berth. No peasant wanted to be caught in the crossfire of a magical duel.

"Let it begin," Jack announced.

Instantly, Jack severed his mana connection to Sylvia, letting her stand completely dormant to conserve every single drop of his Layer 2 Iron Core reserves. He focused entirely on Elias.

Elias didn't wait. Driven by Jack's macro-command to attack, the undead mage lunged forward with terrifying speed. He threw a brutal, straightforward physical punch aimed right at Banty's chest, devoid of any magical flair.

Banty reacted instantly. He stomped his boot into the snowy dirt.

A thick, dense wall of hardened mud and rock erupted from the ground, intercepting the blow.

So, he is an Earth Mage, Jack analyzed from the sidelines.

CRACK! Elias's steel gauntlet slammed into the mud wall. Instantly, Jack flooded Elias's core with fire mana. The heavy steel gauntlets glowed a cherry-red. Elias threw a second, devastating punch, completely shattering the earthen barricade into a shower of scorched dirt.

Banty didn't flinch. With a swipe of his hand, a sharp, dense pillar of rock shot horizontally from the ground, rocketing directly toward Elias's torso.

Relying on his ingrained combat reflexes, Elias cleanly side-stepped the projectile. The rock pillar sailed past him, embedding itself deeply into the frozen dirt of the square.

The battle rapidly escalated, growing fiercer by the second. Neither side backed down. The village square became a chaotic war-zone of conflicting elements. Banty summoned jagged pits and walls of stone, trying to crush or trap the retainer. Elias retaliated with blistering waves of fire, his heavy armor shrugging off glancing blows as he shattered the stone defenses with super heated, concussive blasts.

The villagers continued to inch backward, their eyes wide with terror and awe at the sheer destruction tearing up their newly leveled town square.

To the untrained eye of the peasants, the two mages seemed equally matched in their ferocity. But Jack and Banty knew the truth.

Banty's attacks were undeniably more powerful. His earth magic was dense, highly concentrated, and lethal. Is he at the peak of Layer 2, or perhaps already at Layer 3? Jack wondered, observing the mana density through his connection with Elias.

If Elias were a living, breathing human, the blunt force trauma transferring through his steel armor from the exploding rocks would have shattered his ribs and ruptured his organs by now. But Elias was a walking corpse. He felt no pain, he had no lungs to crush, and his raw physical strength was heavily augmented by Jack's Necromancy.

Time dragged on. The physical ferocity of the battle didn't wane, but the magical reserves of the combatants were rapidly hitting rock bottom.

Because both Jack and Banty were hovering around the second layer of the Iron Core, their total mana capacities were incredibly similar.

Standing on the sidelines, Jack looked completely plain and unbothered. His face was a stoic mask. In reality, his mana was nearly bone-dry, but he was so accustomed to the agonizing mental friction of operating the blast furnace for hours on end that this combat strain barely registered on his features.

Banty, however, was a mess.

The muscular mage was huffing violently, his breath pluming in the freezing air. He was drenched in sweat despite the snow. His mana was completely depleted, and his physical stamina was shattered from dodging the super heated strikes of a tireless, armored juggernaut. His legs were visibly trembling.

How is this man still standing?! Banty thought wildly, staring at the imposing metal figure. His mana capacity is equal to mine, but his physical endurance is monstrous! He's fighting in heavy plate armor and he isn't even panting!

On Jack's final command, Elias closed the distance with heavy, inevitable footsteps.

Desperate, Banty tried to summon a rock spike from the earth, but nothing happened. His core was empty. With a roar of frustration, he threw a desperate, physical punch at Elias's chest.

Clang.

The blow bounced harmlessly off the thick steel breastplate.

Elias smoothly extended his right hand, grabbed Banty by the throat, and effortlessly hoisted the heavy, muscular mage off his feet, holding him suspended in the cold winter air.

Banty choked, kicking his legs weakly. He was utterly humiliated in front of his peers and the peasants. He had several bruises and minor burns across his body. He desperately didn't want to surrender—this deployment was his only safe chance to trigger his Layer 3 advancement. But as the metal fingers tightened like a vice around his windpipe, he realized he was completely powerless.

James, Nathen, and Carla looked on with solemn, pale faces, deeply ashamed and terrified by the overwhelming defeat of their strongest member.

Meanwhile, the villagers erupted into roar of cheers, dancing in the snow at the grand, undeniable victory of their Lord's retainer.

"Enough," Jack commanded loudly, letting his voice carry over the cheering crowd.

Internally, Jack issued a micro-command. Elias slowly turned his helmeted head to look back at Jack, perfectly simulating a loyal retainer silently asking his Lord for permission to yield.

"Put him down. He has already lost, and you have won," Jack ordered.

Elias released his grip. Banty collapsed into the snow, coughing violently and gasping for freezing air. The undead mage turned and marched silently back to Jack's side.

Jack looked down at the defeated mage with a calm expression, though internally, he felt like he was going to pass out. He was completely, utterly exhausted. If it wasn't for the physical immunities of his Necromancy, he would have undoubtedly lost this battle of attrition.

Banty pushed himself up onto his hands and knees, spitting a wad of blood and saliva into the snow.

"I have lost, My Lord," Banty rasped, looking up with a mixture of resentment and newfound respect. "You have won. As per our promise, we will comply with your orders and stay out of your way. But do not expect our final reports to cover for your mistakes. You must still perform flawlessly during the tide."

"You should return to the castle and take some rest now. You look tired," Jack said in an authoritative, final tone.

He turned his back on the Church mages, beginning the walk back up the hill. But as he turned, he sent one last, subtle mental command to his undead mage.

Elias stepped forward, reached down, and offered the defeated, exhausted Church mage a heavy hand to help him stand up.