The First Lich Lord - Chapter 158

I had gotten less experience from the conquering of the city than at Dead Water. It was a smaller city size with a smaller garrison. Still, it had been enough to give me another level and I put the points into intelligence. The more power I had access to right now the better.

On the second day we were there, a group led by Aaron arrived. They were leading a platoon of six of the controller type zombies, led by an advanced eldritch bone archer. With the two I already had, that brought me up to a total of eight of the controllers, which meant I could effectively control eight hundred mindless undead inside of my army.

“Is Vito going to use players to run troops out to me then?” I asked when Aaron dropped off the soldiers. Abimelech was already integrating them into the army.

“No,” Aaron shook his head. “We are actually here on a quest to look for something he said would help, since we were coming this way, he sent what he had with us. Kellnock created a holding pen of sorts for troops that he will send.”

“That’s good,” I said. I didn’t want to be reliant on players. “Marcus, if you’re interested in swapping who you follow, there’s a death temple here now following a raven god.”

“I shall go check that out.” Marcus looked at his friends. “If you guys don’t mind.” He, along with his team, had become living dead. I doubted Olattee was thrilled with him and with what we knew about Olattee, it was now making people question where their loyalties lay.

No one protested and Marcus headed off into the city. I didn’t need to tell him where it was, after all, they had been to this place before.

“Vito made it up quicker than I expected,” I said, wanting news.

“He arrived only a few days after you left, I think you were still building your road,” Jessica the archer said. “But he didn’t have his soldiers for you yet. The town’s official name is now Dead Wood, and Vito is trying to convince Livia to run it for him.”

Jess, my sister, was with them as well, but she was logged off and her character was in autopilot. She told him she had to take care of something on Earth and wanted to be free when they got here, evidently, something had delayed her.

“How’s that going?” I asked.

“Last we heard she was holding out,” Aaron said. “She wants the job, but she is pretty certain she can get Vito to give her something.”

“I bet those two make quite the pair.” I laughed. It didn’t bug me that what she was trying to get in the end came out of resources I could use, but it would likely be inconsequential anyways.

“Oh they are.” Jessica rolled her eyes. “Vito’s just her type. They both enjoy that tedious administration work a little too much.”

“I shudder to think what’s going to happen when Livia finds out that Vito has his own espionage side.” I shook my head. “Then again, you never know when you’re going to need a spook.”

Maxwell and Raven strode up at that point. Raven was in her lynx form and went over to Jessica to get some pets.

“Why are we standing out here?” Maxwell asked. “There’s a tavern.”

“I have a hard time believing there is a tavern open,” I said. “We did just conquer the place.”

“You, my friend, know nothing about how taverns work.” Maxwell shook his head. “Of course there are open taverns, we just invaded. The people don’t need a reason to drink now and there’s a potentially entirely new customer base for the ambitious tavern owners to steal coins from.”

“Who has coins other than us three?” I asked, following as Maxwell took the lead.

“The Dread Thirteen do,” Maxwell said. “You really should pay them, but they looted some people they killed while taking the city.”

“I’m afraid the ambitious tavern keep will be disappointed then,” I said. “The vast majority of my troops, heck all of them outside of the Dread Thirteen, aren’t what you would call tavern goers.”

“They don’t really go anywhere you don’t want them to,” Aaron agreed.

“I don’t know about that.” Maxwell shook his head. “I’m pretty sure I saw some of the commanders watching the Dread Thirteen a little more closely than just listening for orders.”

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“Are you saying they’re self-aware?” I asked. “Or becoming self-aware? That shouldn’t be possible with what they are. Even though they are very complex mindless undead, they’re still mindless. It would take them shifting out of that category.”

“And what would that take?” Jessica asked.

“You know, I don’t really know that for certain. I have some theories, but,” I paused, thinking about the topic. “I’ll have to give that some thought.”

***

“Hey, Jess,” I said when I felt her arms wrap around me. “Glad you’re back.”

“Sorry, that took longer than expected.” Jess looked down at the mug sitting before her, I had got a cider I figured she would like it.

“Anything interesting?” I asked.

“I don’t know—well, yes actually, just I don’t know what to make of it.” Jess sighed. “Some unknown person paid off my mortgage and car loan. No explanations. Just received an email about it from the mortgage companies. I called them to check, that’s what took so long.”

“Congratulations, Jess!” Jessica the archer was sitting next to my sister and pulled her into a hug. “That’s great.”

“Theoretically,” Jess agreed, her tone thoughtful. “But what if whoever it is wants something from me later.”

“Well,” Maxwell chimed in, “unless there was some kind of contract you signed, there’s nothing they can hold against you. You can tell him to fuck right off if they come after you. In fact, you should probably call a lawyer when you get off next. I know they’re expensive, but it’s a phone call you should probably make.”

“He’s not wrong,” Aaron agreed. “I think we established we live in the same state, I know a guy.”

“Thank you,” Jess said. “It’s just all a bit much right now, my life this last year has been crazy.”

I looked away from Maxwell, something in his tone had drawn my attention, but he was avoiding my gaze, or it seemed that way anyways. “Aaron’s right, call a lawyer.” I hugged Jess. “Try not to worry about it.”

Jess finished her cider. “I know, I know. I am a banker after all.”

Marcus walked into the tavern, gone were his robes adorned with the symbols of Olattee. Instead, he now wore black robes with a silver crow emblazoned on the chest.

“Looks like we have a new death cleric in the house,” Decker said. “Is this your way of saying that stick that was shoved up your ass is really gone now?”

“No, now I have to be all drab and depressing,” Marcus said, doing his best to play the part. “Ooo, I’m a scary emo death priest now.”

“No, please no,” Decker sobbed as Marcus pulled up a chair, fighting a smile.

“Jess,” Jessica said, “you should think about streaming, we’ve all been talking about it.”

“I thought you guys already did that?” I asked.

“We do,” Aaron agreed. “But we were approached by a producer, evidently there is some pretty big desire for the next thing now that Lox’s story has run its course.”

“Really?” I asked, leaning forward on the table. “What ended up happening, I followed the story, but don’t know how it ended.”

“Oh, that’s my bad,” Maxwell said. “That’s actually something you might find interesting.”

Several hours later, after much alcohol and conversation, I was caught up. “I can’t decide if I’m happy that’s how it ended or sad. But you’re right, that does explain why the world went mad.”

“Yeah, we thought that was a bunch of shit,” Aaron said, slurring his words slightly. “But then we met you and realized we had been purposely ignoring a lot of stuff. Once we started looking for it, this place being a real world started to make a lot more sense.”

“You have to be careful about Ezekiel in your streams though,” Maxwell said. “If people find out that he’s from Earth, it could cause a big problem.”

An awkward silence spread, then Nick, the normally quiet one, spoke. “You do know this is live streaming, right?”

“Oops…” Maxwell said. Silence stretched again as all of the team members got distant looks and one by one indicated they’d stopped the stream. “My bad.” Maxwell gave me an apologetic look.

I shrugged. “I’m not hiding any more, I’m strong enough to mostly protect myself, and I have a horde and the Dread Thirteen.”

“I don’t know.” Jess looked at me in concern. “What happens if one of those messed up guilds come after you?”

“You mean like the one I was in?” I asked.

“Yeah.” Jess nodded.

I sighed. “While they are dicks, I doubt it would be as bad as you think. Truth be told, I was probably an idiot for running away. The real people that would be a problem are the PKer guilds, but even then I might be crossing the line for a lot of those people. They like messing with regular players, only the real sickos would actually want to cause real harm.”

“I don’t know,” Aaron said. “The world is full of real sickos. I do think there’s a degree of truth. If it was widely accepted that you weren’t just an NPC, even if they don’t accept this world is real, there are a lot of people who wouldn’t tolerate you being messed with overly much.”

“It doesn’t matter, if they’re not here to help,” Jess said.

“The other thing you’re missing is that I’m not some lone, easy target. A Lich is never an easy target, and even when I was refusing what I am, I’m still more powerful than anyone of equivalent level. And now it would take a large, focused guild to actually be a threat. That or some crazy over-level bound soul, outside of the immortals, I don’t know of very many who meet that category.”

“And the immortals are likely to leave you alone,” Aaron agreed. “I think, heck they might appreciate you helping convince people that this world is real.”

“What you guys are also forgetting is one of the reasons Ezekiel gave me for not wanting to tell people at first,” Maxwell said. “Think about what this would cause on Earth.” He looked around the table, everyone was buzzed but the conversation was rather sobering. “Do any of you have a hard time thinking that governments wouldn’t want to get their fingers on this? I don’t care where you live, federal governments love to regulate things that they should honestly have no part of.”

“And,” Nick added, “think about how it would change how people saw this world and the streams.”