Pestilence: Rise Of The Pure Undead

"Loimos, don't we have someone with a mana affinity for salt in the Empire? You know, that somewhat short, cute girl- She used to be an elemental champion before you murdered her and you possessed her corpse for a little while… Wasn't her father the king of Starkefolten too? Well, anyways…"

"...Maybe we should bring her here, that would make for some nice field experience, and her whole thing is salt, so it fits the theme" Maliah said something very sensical, though the argument was slightly tarnished as her face was covered in blood and her metal teeth had bits of flesh stuck in between them.

"Hold on a moment, Maliah- If we bring in a third woman, we really won't be able to escape the 'harem' allegations, that guy earlier said it with such confidence, like he was convinced that it was true! Don't we have an undead that is skilled with salt magic, that is not a woman?" One, sitting underneath a salt tree whilst waiting to process all the blood she drank, spoke her own piece.

"No need to be so shy, One, everyone knows that you love it when someone implies that you are in a relationship with Loimos, I am sure I saw you squirm a little bit earlier, and honestly, I almost expected you to respond to the harem stuff with- 'I wish!' You know?"

"...Do you have to expose me like that, Maliah?"

"No, but I think it's funny"

The two corpses stared at one another in a most great application of Death's aspect of Silence.

Meanwhile, Loimos was once again scanning the horizon, standing upon a beach of soft salt, waves would sometimes come and fling some saline water onto his boots, but it was the salty liquid that would be taken apart upon contact.

Although Loimos was able to glean much information about the realm by just looking at it from a distance, that information was still mostly limited to the main island where the gateway was situated, what Val-Dalek had called only habitable piece of land was, as expected, not so at all.

The Warmaster's world was small, the island was about one quarter as large as the kingdom of Tamaris had been, and that was by being generous and counting the water in between the small bits separating the island from other, smaller bits of land close-by.

This Saline Land was indeed small, most of the island itself was taken up by a white mountain and by forests and areas inhabited by beasts, so overall, the sapient really occupied only a minuscule portion overall, they had carved a place for themselves, that was for certain, and they were thriving, which had turned out to be a problem.

As the safety was high, people died less frequently, and as such, population was steadily increasing, but the area they lived in was simply not wide enough to accommodate so many people, and this was exactly what had led to a rebellion and coup.

Many deemed it necessary to expand and continue attempts into reaching other islands, but the chief had refused the second demand altogether, and had been going far too slowly about the first demand, being overly cautious.

This had led to the coup that Loimos and his two companions had just ran into the ground, but there was good news, the regime that had replaced the chief for a short while had carried out plenty of executions, the fighting had also caused a lot of death, and now, three undeads had come in and massacred the forces of the new regime, so the overpopulation problem was going to be solved for a while.

That was definitely great news, after all, who could the loss of life be bad news?

In any case, the Warmaster was going to be in charge for a little while, and that man, believing Loimos to be a god, was going to follow every instruction like it was gospel, so the island was pretty much already under the Empire's control.

However, whilst the sapients were restricted to a small area, the realm itself was vast, it seemed to only be made of small to medium-sized islands, mostly covered by the Saline Sea, although they had experience, conquering oceans was definitely more difficult than conquering land.

Here in particular, the concentration of salt got higher and higher the further from the shores, most of the aquatic undeads would see their bodies being broken down if they swam too far, so this called for specialised undeads, or equipment.

The Undead Empire would naturally do both options to their fullest extent, there was no need to limit themselves.

Loimos opened up a rift, bringing out two undeads into the realm.

The first was the one One and Maliah had mentioned earlier, her name was Lunate and despite having been maintained alive and possessed back during the siege on Tamaris, she had turned out into a good undead and not a negator.

She still wore the white uniform she had had when she was an elemental champion, and her hair was still fully in place, everything else, however, it was all bones, only the scalp still had flesh for the hair to stick to.

It was correct to give her an opportunity to do some work since she was indeed the champion of salt, this realm was tailored for her.

The second undead that was brought over was Poitirus, The Mistborn, Loimos had made him into the one in charge of basically all bodies of water, and if there was any undead that could endure the Saline Sea, it would be him, he had already tackled plenty of bizarre oceans and the likes, such as the perpetually boiling sea, or the one that was filled with oil without problem, as long as something was even a little bit related to water or bodies of water, even if the content was not water at all, he could handle it.

Now that this was done, the pure undead waited until One was done absorbing the blood, picked both Maliah and One up like they were sacks of potatoes, and sprouted wings, taking the three of them toward the nearest island over the horizon.

"I wish I could fly too, I would be able to dive bomb on anyone and make them explode into a bunch of meat chunks and entrails"

"Can you not control the energy inside of you for a bunch of purposes as long as it doesn't have to go outside your body? I am sure you could fly like this"

"I may just be a bit dull when it comes to energy manipulation, but I never manage to fly, float a little bit at most…"

The discussion did not last long as Loimos's flight speed was quick, especially since the beasts that attempted to attack from the clouds all decayed away in the blink of an eye.

There was no disturbance on the way.