The Necro-Industrial Revolution

“Come out now,” Jack muttered, flicking his wrist.

A dull pulse of mana emanated from his silver spatial ring. With a clatter, a chaotic pile skeletons tumbled out of the dimensional space and crashed onto the rocky dirt. Without Jack’s active magic flowing through them, Rusty, Dusty, and Bones were nothing more than inanimate human remains.

Jack closed his eyes for a fraction of a second, tapping into his Iron Core. He visualized his mana stretching outward like invisible strings. Three more distinct mental threads shot from his mind, latching onto the three piles of bones. Instantly, the three skeletons stood at attention.

Jack turned to the fully armored figure standing silently beside him. “Elias, keep a close watch on the surroundings,” Jack ordered. “If anything approaches, break my trance and wake me up immediately. And if it’s hostile, protect my physical body at all costs.”

Unlike the standard skeletons that required constant, direct micro-management to do anything complex, Elias possessed a much higher level of autonomous intelligence. Elias could easily determine what constituted a threat and how to react without Jack holding his hand.

Satisfied that his physical body was secure, Jack sat down cross-legged on the cold ground right at the edge of the trench. He took a deep breath, closed his eyes, and plunged his consciousness fully into his undead workers.

Taking direct control of the skeletons was a bizarre sensation. It felt exactly like splitting his mind into three individual pieces. Imagine a person trying to write three different letters, with three different hands, all at the exact same time—without making a single spelling mistake. For a normal person, the mental strain would be agonizing, perhaps even maddening.

But for Jack, it had become second nature. He had spent a lot of time sitting in the dark, simultaneously commanding dozens of skeletons to carefully mine raw gems from the mines. Compared to that, driving three skeletons was a walk in the park.

Though he controlled all three bodies simultaneously, his visual perspective was tethered to just one. He looked out through Bones’ empty eye sockets.

Alright, let’s go, Jack thought, sending the command down the mental threads.

Through Bones’ eyes, Jack watched as Rusty and Dusty moved toward the precipice. He commanded all three to begin their descent. They moved with agonizingly slow, deliberate steps. The trench wall was sheer and treacherous; one misplaced skeletal foot would send them tumbling into the bottomless abyss below, shattering them beyond repair.

It took a considerable amount of time, with loose rocks clattering down into the echoing dark, but the trio finally reached the first major ledge. This was the exact spot where Jack had harvested the Frost-cap mushrooms to cure his failing lungs last winter.

Even though the sun hadn’t completely set up on the surface, it was pitch black down here. Yet, through Bones’ vision, Jack could see the place perfectly.

Since it was the dead of summer, the Frost-cap mushrooms were completely gone, dormant until the ice returned. However, the place was far from barren. Jack’s skeletal gaze swept over clusters of strange, alien fauna. Oddly shaped mosses, thick vines, and strange fungi clung to the rock walls, many of them emitting a faint, ghostly bio luminescence.

Interesting, Jack mused from the surface. I could probably harvest these glowing herbs and sell them to the Mage Guilds or Merchant Guilds interested in such things. They pay fortunes for rare alchemy ingredients. He immediately shelved the idea, though. To legally sell magical flora or fauna, he would need an official merchant’s license. More importantly, he couldn’t just drag unknown, glowing weeds back to his castle for random experiments. If even one of these plants released deadly, toxic spores when dried, he would be walking himself and the others right into an early grave.

Deciding to ignore the flora for now, Jack commanded the skeletons to push deeper. However, a quick glance over the edge revealed that the downward slope here was completely vertical. It was a suicide drop.

He needed a different approach. For the next thirty minutes, Jack marched the skeletons sideways along the jagged walls, taking random turns through narrow fissures and rocky outcroppings, simply exploring the dark perimeter.

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Finally, they stumbled upon a narrow, winding pathway that tilted downward at a manageable angle.

Jack tightened his mental grip on the trio. Down we go.

It took another half an hour of careful, silent marching down the winding path before the skeletons reached a new, significantly deeper layer of the trench.

This place was entirely different from the upper part. It was overwhelmingly dark, but more than that, it was wet. Through the tactile feedback of the skeletons’ feet, Jack could feel them sinking into thick, squelching mud. Even with his undead night vision, he couldn’t see things clearly. A shallow layer of dark, stagnant liquid—most likely underground water—covered the muddy floor.

Jack stopped Bones and looked down. Swimming through the murky liquid and hopping across the mud were tiny, pale creatures. Blind, translucent fish darted away from the skeletons’ bony toes, and strange, pale frogs croaked softly in the gloom.

Where there’s prey, there are predators, Jack thought, his interest in this subterranean ecosystem suddenly skyrocketing.

He marched the skeletons forward, the mud sucking at their bones with every step. After a few minutes, Jack spotted larger silhouettes looming in the murky darkness ahead. As they got closer, he could make out their shapes.

They looked like massive plants. Thick, fleshy stalks rose from the mud, topped with wide, dark leaves.

Jack halted the trio. He commanded Rusty to step forward and touch the nearest stalk with its hand, while he kept Bones perfectly still, watching closely just in case something happens.

Rusty poked the plant. Nothing happened.

Frowning, Jack commanded Rusty to pinch one of the thick leaves and peel a piece off. The skeleton’s fingers tore a strip of the fleshy leaf away. Still, nothing happened.

It’s just a normal plant? Jack thought, thoroughly confused. But how the hell does a plant this massive grow down here in total darkness without a single drop of sunlight? From its shape and texture, it definitely isn’t a fungus…

CRACK.

A crunch echoed through the cavern. Before Jack could even process what had happened, an intense, blinding spike of pain assaulted his actual head up on the surface.

Jack gritted his teeth, forcing himself to ignore the phantom pain, and violently jerked Bones’ vision around.

Dusty had been hit from behind. Three of the skeleton’s ribs were completely shattered, the bone fragments sinking into the mud. The attacker wasn’t an animal. It was one of the other “plants” positioned a few metres away. The thing had uprooted itself, closing the distance in complete silence.

Suddenly, the top of the plant split wide open, revealing a horrifying, gaping maw lined with jagged teeth.

The plant monster lunged off the mud, launching itself directly at Bones’ face. A split second later, the muddy waters around them erupted as six more of the massive plants uprooted themselves, their jaws snapping wildly as they rushed the skeletons.

“Damn it! What the hell are these? Carnivorous plant monsters?!” Jack cursed aloud on the surface.

He didn’t panic. Instead, his mind shifted into overdrive, rapid-firing a barrage of complex commands down the mental threads.

As the first plant monster flew through the air, Bones didn’t step back. Jack commanded the skeleton to step into the attack. Bones raised both of its massive, bony arms, catching the plant mid-air. Its skeletal fingers dug violently into the monster’s upper and lower jaws. With a brutal, fluid motion, Bones ripped its arms outward, tearing the monster’s mouth completely apart in a shower of thick sap.

The dead plant hit the mud with a wet thud.

These things are incredibly strong, Jack noted, feeling the heavy resistance of the plant’s muscles through Bones’ hands.

But one have to keep in mind that normal human strength was nothing compared to the raw power of a Necromancer’s undead. And ever since Jack had advanced to Layer 1 of the Iron Core, the physical strength of his undead had skyrocketed. Coupled with his exceptional micro-management skills honed from mining, he was a deadly puppeteer.

The cavern devolved into a chaotic, muddy brawl. Jack controlled all three skeletons in lethal harmony.

The plant monsters were heavy and aggressive, but at the end of the day, they were still just plants. They had soft, fibrous spots near their roots and beneath their jaws. Jack couldn’t physically see these weaknesses in the dark blur of the fight, but whenever Rusty or Dusty grappled with one, Jack could feel the give of the softer tissues through the mental feedback loop.

Using that tactile information, Jack orchestrated a massacre.

He commanded Rusty to sweep the legs of a lunging plant, while Dusty followed up by stomping its ribcage—or whatever passed for its chest—into the mud. Bones acted as the heavy hitter, grabbing snapping jaws and tearing the fibrous creatures in half.

For ten brutal minutes, the mud flew in all directions. Bones cracked, sap sprayed, and the dark cavern echoed with the violent sounds of tearing flora.

Finally, the mud settled.

Jack let out a heavy breath on the surface, opening his real eyes for a brief moment to wipe a bead of sweat from his forehead. Down in the trench, his three skeletons stood victorious over the shredded, sap-leaking remains of the seven plant monsters.

Jack wanted to examine the bodies to see if they held something valuable, but since he couldn’t physically touch or see them clearly down there, he decided against doing it blindly in the dark.

I’ll push forward and explore the rest of this layer first, Jack decided, re-establishing his firm control over the trio. I can command the skeletons to drag some of these carcasses back to the surface on our way out.