The Necro-Industrial Revolution

The first morning of the Inquisitor’s stay was agonizingly quiet.

Up in the castle, Silas Thorne sat at the long wooden table in the Great Hall, enjoying a breakfast of warm bread and bear meat. He ate with the refined, delicate manners of a high noble, cutting his meat into tiny, perfect squares.

Karen stood near the kitchen doorway, her hands tightly gripping her apron. She was trembling. The magical pressure that naturally radiated from the Gold Core mage was suffocating, making the air in the room feel heavy and thick.

Jack sat opposite Silas, picking at his own food. He kept his Iron Core tightly suppressed, burying his mana deep inside his chest so that Silas would only sense a weak, sickly boy.

“Your cook is quite skilled, Lord Jack,” Silas said smoothly, dabbing his mouth with a cloth. “I must admit, I expected to be eating boiled shoe leather in this forgotten valley.”

“My people are resourceful, Inquisitor,” Jack replied, his voice completely flat. “We make do with what the mountain provides.”

“Resourceful indeed,” Silas murmured, his golden eyes flicking toward the window. Down below, the steady ringing of Barnaby’s forge echoed through the valley. “Your blacksmith is already working the pure iron you bought from the merchants. And your farmers are digging irrigation trenches in the newly thawed earth. It is a picture of absolute, thriving order.”

Silas leaned forward, resting his chin on his steepled fingers. “It is almost too perfect, Jack. A village of forty starving peasants survives the worst winter, builds a massive wooden fortress, and slaughters enough beasts to buy out a merchant caravan. All under the leadership of a boy who cannot even walk without a cane.”

“Are you accusing me of a crime, Silas?” Jack asked, meeting the man’s intense gaze without blinking.

“Not at all,” Silas smiled, though it did not reach his eyes. “I am simply admiring a miracle. And the Holy Church takes a very deep interest in miracles. I think I will take a walk through your lovely village.”

Silas stood up, smoothed his pristine white robes, and walked out of the Great Hall.

The moment the wooden doors clicked shut, Jack let out a slow, controlled breath. He stood up, grabbed his cane, and hurried to his private study.

He locked the door behind him and slumped into his high-backed chair. He closed his eyes and reached his mind down into the deepest, darkest levels of the ancestral crypts.

He checked the mental locks he had placed on his undead. All the skeletons, the armored guards Rusty, Dusty, and Bones, and the massive skeletal wolf Grim were all sealed behind the heavy stone doors of the lowest vaults. Jack had completely severed the active mana threads connecting to them. They were entirely dormant, completely devoid of any magical energy that Silas’s Gold Core senses could pick up.

But there was one undead retainer Jack could not hide in the dark.

Elias Varna, the flesh-bound fire mage, was standing down at the village gatehouse, wrapped in his traveler’s cloak, acting as the hired mercenary.

Jack looked out the window of his study. He saw Silas’s white robes moving down the mountain path toward the village square.

The villagers saw the Inquisitor coming. They did not bow, and they did not offer polite greetings. The memory of Silas abandoning them to the snow was still burning fresh in their minds. As Silas walked past the forge, Barnaby deliberately swung his heavy hammer harder against the anvil, sending a shower of hot sparks flying dangerously close to Silas’s pristine robes.

Silas ignored the blacksmith. He ignored the women carrying water. He walked straight through the slushy mud of the village square, heading directly for the wooden gatehouse.

Jack’s heart began to hammer in his chest. He immediately extended a thick, heavy thread of mana from his Iron Core and slammed it into Elias.

Down at the gate, Elias slowly turned his head as Silas approached.

“The Wanderer,” Silas said smoothly, stopping a few feet away from the silent swordsman. “The veteran mercenary who single-handedly held the wooden wall against a mountain bear. The villagers speak of you with incredible reverence.”

Jack sat in his study, sweating. He had to manually puppet everything.

“Blink,” Jack commanded frantically. “Breathe.”

Elias blinked his dull eyes. Jack forced the dead man’s chest to expand and contract in a slow, steady rhythm, perfectly simulating the breathing of a calm warrior.

“I did what I was paid to do,” Elias rasped. Jack burned a heavy chunk of mana to force the frozen vocal cords to vibrate, keeping the voice hoarse and rough.

“Yes, your blade,” Silas noted, looking at the high-quality ancestral steel sword strapped to Elias’s hip. “That is a very fine weapon for a wandering sellsword. The forging is ancient. It looks like it belongs in a noble’s crypt, not a mercenary’s scabbard.”

Jack’s grip on his chair tightened. Silas was actively probing.

“I took it from a dead man,” Elias answered flatly, staring straight ahead. “He didn’t need it anymore.”

Silas chuckled softly. “A pragmatic man. I like that. But tell me, Elias… why is your mana so incredibly still?”

Silas took a single step closer. The overwhelming, crushing pressure of his Gold Core suddenly flared, pressing down heavily on Elias.

Jack felt the magical weight slamming against his mental connection. Silas was trying to force a reaction. If Elias were a living, breathing mage hiding his power, the sudden pressure of a Gold Core would instinctively cause his own mana to flare up in self-defense.

But Elias was dead. His mana didn’t react because Jack held it in a vice grip.

Jack forced Elias to casually shift his weight from one foot to the other, completely ignoring the suffocating magical pressure that would have made a normal man drop to his knees.

“I am a swordsman,” Elias said simply. “Not a scholar.”

Silas stared at the mercenary for a long, silent minute. His eyes searched Elias’s pale face, looking for a twitch, a drop of sweat, or a sign of fear. He found absolutely nothing.

“Fascinating,” Silas murmured softly. He finally stepped back, letting the golden pressure fade away. “Keep up the good work, Wanderer. The gate is safe in your hands.”

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Silas turned and walked away to inspect the new palisade wall.

Up in the castle, Jack slumped forward over his desk, gasping for air. His head throbbed with a sharp, vicious migraine. Managing a conversation with a Gold Core mage while actively puppeting a dead body was like trying to thread a needle while riding a galloping horse.

And Silas was going to be here for another six days.

The shadow game had begun.

For the next four days, Jack did not sleep.

Silas Thorne proved to be an incredibly erratic, unpredictable guest. He would stay up late reading in the Great Hall, or he would wake up hours before dawn and wander the village perimeter. Because Silas was always moving, Jack could never safely disconnect from Elias.

Jack was forced into a grueling mental marathon. He sat in his study day and night, staring blankly at the wall, keeping the thick mana tether attached to Elias.

He had to remember to make Elias blink every few seconds. He had to force the dead lungs to breathe. When Elias stood guard at the gate, Jack made him occasionally shift his stance, stretch his neck, or rub his hands together to simulate fighting off the spring chill. If a villager walked by and said good morning, Jack had to expend good amounts of mana to make Elias grunt a rough acknowledgment.

By the fifth day, the physical toll on Jack was severe.

His skin was pale, and dark circles had formed under his eyes. His hands shook slightly when he tried to hold his tea cup.

Karen already knew the truth about his skeletal retainers, but she didn’t fully grasp the agonizing, active mental tether required to puppet a flesh-bound corpse in broad daylight. Seeing his pale face, she begged him to let Old Martha brew him a restorative tea. Jack flatly refused. He explained through gritted teeth that if Martha’s remedies made him lose focus or fall asleep for even a single second, Elias would freeze into a lifeless statue, and the Inquisitor would slaughter them all.

He couldn’t let anyone near him.

Down in the village, Silas’s unnatural obsession with Elias only grew.

The Gold Core Inquisitor completely ignored the massive pile of wealth in the smoking sheds. He didn’t care about Barnaby’s new blast furnace or the pure coal. He spent hours just standing in the village square, watching Elias guard the gate.

On the afternoon of the sixth day, Silas escalated his game.

Silas walked up to the gatehouse carrying two wooden practice swords he had borrowed from the militia’s training rack. He tossed one directly at Elias.

Jack, watching through Elias’s eyes, instantly forced the dead man’s arm up. Elias caught the heavy wooden sword smoothly by the handle.

“You look bored, Wanderer,” Silas smiled, twirling the other wooden sword effortlessly in his hand. “A warrior needs to keep his blood pumping. Care for a warm-up spar?”

Jack’s heart sank. A spar was the absolute worst-case scenario. If Elias fought too perfectly, he would reveal his ancestral elite training. If he fought too poorly, Silas would know he was a fake. Furthermore, dead bodies did not sweat, and they did not tire. If they fought for ten minutes and Elias wasn’t panting, the secret was ruined.

But refusing a direct challenge from an Inquisitor would be incredibly suspicious.

“First blood,” Elias rasped, stepping down from the wooden walkway into the muddy square.

The villagers stopped their work. Barnaby set his hammer down, and Giles walked over, watching nervously. A spar between a Gold Core mage and their veteran defender was a terrifying prospect.

Silas did not use magic. He simply stepped forward and swung the wooden sword with blinding, terrifying physical speed.

Jack pushed his Iron Core to its limit. He relied entirely on Elias’s preserved muscle memory. Elias brought his wooden sword up, parrying the heavy strike with a loud, cracking sound that echoed across the square.

Silas immediately followed up with a sweeping strike at Elias’s legs, then a thrust toward his chest.

Elias moved backward, his boots sliding through the slushy mud. He parried, deflected, and dodged. Jack didn’t try to win; he just focused on survival. He made sure Elias fought like a seasoned, pragmatic mercenary, using rough blocks rather than elegant noble footwork.

Thwack. Thwack. Crack.

The wooden swords clashed violently. Silas was smiling, clearly enjoying the test. He was pressing harder and harder, looking for a weakness.

Jack’s mind was burning. While managing the complex physical combat, Jack also had to actively simulate the biological reactions of a living human.

“Breathe heavier,” Jack commanded the dead body. “Open your mouth. Pant.”

Elias began to heave his chest, sucking in loud, ragged breaths of the cold air, perfectly acting the part of a man growing tired under a relentless assault.

Silas swung a heavy overhead strike. Elias raised his wooden blade to block it, but Silas suddenly twisted his wrist, bypassing the block entirely, and lightly tapped the tip of his wooden sword against Elias’s throat.

“Dead,” Silas said softly, lowering his weapon.

Elias stood still, his chest heaving violently from Jack’s simulated panting.

“Your technique is highly effective, Elias,” Silas praised, though his eyes were still searching the mercenary’s face. “Your parries are heavy. But you rely too much on your arms. You do not step into your strikes.”

“I swing a sword for coin, not for sport,” Elias grunted, tossing the wooden sword onto the mud. “Fancy footwork just gets a man killed in the mud. I fight to survive.”

Silas chuckled. “A fair point. Thank you for the exercise.”

Silas turned and walked back toward the castle.

Up in his study, Jack wiped a stream of dark red blood from his nose. His hands were trembling violently. The sheer concentration required to puppet a dead man through a high-speed spar against a Gold Core genius had nearly scraped his Iron Core hollow.

He was running entirely on empty. He didn’t know if he could survive another day of this. He constantly worried that Silas suspected something was wrong, but so far, the Inquisitor hadn’t acted.

The sun finally set on the sixth day.

Jack sat in his chair, his eyes bloodshot, staring blindly at his dark room. He kept the tether to Elias active, forcing the dead man to stand perfectly still at the gatehouse through the long night.

When the morning of the seventh day finally arrived, Jack felt like he was going to die. His vision was swimming. The edges of the room were turning black.

He heard the wooden doors of the castle open below.

Jack forced himself to look out the window.

Silas Thorne was walking down the mountain path. He wasn’t wearing a travel cloak, and he hadn’t packed any supplies, mostly because he hadn’t brought any to begin with. His white and gold robes were still immaculately clean.

Silas walked into the village square. The villagers stopped their morning tasks, staring at him nervously.

The Inquisitor walked straight to the gatehouse. He looked up at Elias.

“I am leaving, Wanderer,” Silas said smoothly. “My week is up. I have urgent Church business to attend to in the neighboring territories. I cannot delay any longer.”

Elias simply stared at him, offering a slow, stiff nod.

Silas offered a polite, completely unreadable smile. “Keep up the good work. The gate is safe in your hands.”

Without another word, Silas turned his back on the village. He walked out through the open wooden gates and headed down the muddy, slush-filled southern mountain pass.

Jack watched him go. He watched the white robes disappear into the distant tree line.

Suddenly, the suffocating, crushing golden pressure that had blanketed the entire valley for a week completely vanished. The air felt light and breathable again.

Jack violently severed the mental tether to Elias.

Down at the gatehouse, Elias slumped slightly, reverting to his lifeless, standby posture.

Up in the study, Jack finally let go. He slid out of his high-backed chair, his legs completely giving out beneath him. He hit the stone floor hard, but he didn’t care.

The shadow game was over.

His eyes rolled back, and he fell into a deep, absolute darkness.

Hours later, Jack woke up.

He was lying in his own bed. Karen was sitting in a wooden chair nearby, wiping his forehead with a damp cloth.

“Lord Jack!” Karen gasped, quickly setting the cloth down. “You are awake! Praise the gods, I found you on the floor of your study this morning. You were completely unresponsive.”

“I am fine, Karen,” Jack rasped, his throat dry. He slowly sat up, rubbing his temples. The migraine was gone, replaced by a dull, hollow ache. “How long was I asleep?”

“Nearly a full day, My Lord,” Karen answered, her hands wringing her apron. “The Inquisitor left. He just walked out of the valley without saying goodbye to anyone.”

“Good,” Jack muttered. He swung his legs over the side of the bed and grabbed his cane.

He walked to the window and looked out.

The village had not stopped. Without the terrifying presence of the Gold Core mage looming over them, the people of the Frost-Grip fief were working with renewed, frantic energy.

Barnaby was outside his forge, surrounded by the farmers. The blacksmith was handing out shiny iron plow blades he had forged from the merchant’s pure ingots. Old Miller was directing the men, organizing teams to haul the plows to the newly cleared southern field. The green shoots of the iron-stalk wheat were already breaking through the dark, muddy earth.

Spring had truly arrived. The fief was booming.

Jack leaned on his cane, watching his empire grow. He had beaten the winter, he had secured the economy, and he had successfully hidden his massive undead army from the Holy Church.

He had played a deadly game of deception against a Gold Core Inquisitor, and he had won. Silas Thorne had walked away completely fooled. His secret was absolutely safe.