Chapter 8

Vito mindlessly followed the guard's order and stood on the stool. The executioner came up to him and put the loop on Vito's neck.

'What an unfair world...' He thought as the execution was happening.

Every second seemed to last hours.

"Will you say any last words, dead man?" The executioner asked.

It was then when Vito saw his undead unit entering the town and approaching the crowd surrounding Vito.

"I am not the only one who will not see the end of this day." Vito said with a cruel smile on his face.

The crowd started laughing at him, but stopped soon as a cold shiver ran down their backs as they heard his confidence.

"Hey look, what is it over there?" The guard standing next to Vito said and pointed at the horde that was charging at them. Everyone turned in its direction and tried to understand who it was.

"Undead!" One of the crowd shouted.

"The little devil called upon his servants!" Another screamed.

"Kill the witch!" Soon, everyone started repeating the very same phrase, almost in unison.

"Do it." The guard said to the executioner.

He doubted whether to do it or not. 'Probably the dead will have mercy on me if I don't kill him.' The executioner thought. While he was in doubt, zombies had reached the crowd and started the massacre.

Killing guards that were stopping them was easy for undead, killing unarmed peasants was pleasurable. Vito's subconscious order made them as cruel as they never were. Their main goal wasn't to save their master, anymore, but to make a show that he would enjoy. However, undead Nuvian was smarter and listened only to sensible orders and the only sensible order he had got was to save Vito and that's what he was trying to do.

While weak zombies were murdering citizens as "beautifully" as they could, Nuvian was making his way to his master.

"I will do it myself, whereas you will be charged for treason." The guard snarled and kicked the stool out from under Vito's feet.

Vito felt his consciousness slipping away and his vision becoming blurry as he was choking. The last thing he was able to see before his eyes went blind from the lack of oxygen was Nuvian stabbing the guard and the executioner jumping off the gallows and running away for his life.

'It was a good life, what a shame that it didn't last long.' He thought.

At the last moment Nuvian cut the rope and Vito's limp body fell on the ground. Thanks to Vito being a bookworm and reading everything he could, he also knew how to save a drowning man. So the faithful zombie knew how to do it as well and it acted accordingly. Nuvian started doing chest compression with his rotting hands and mouth-to-mouth resuscitation with the remnants of its lungs. It was a rare moment when the manifestation of death was trying to return someone to life. Soon, Vito started coughing and about ten seconds later breathed without anyone's help. He felt a sudden and strong adrenaline rush followed by a burst of energy that he used to call "surge of strength". His mind was blank while life was returning to him.

"Oh god, thank you my savior!" Vito exclaimed happily and hugged his servant.

"What are your next orders, my master?" Nuvian said with the same monotone voice.

Vito fell quiet for a second.

"My faithful servants, stop this massacre." He said.

Undead stopped when a quarter of all people who were in the crowd were dead already. They were staring at his master, all of them were awaiting his command.

Vito looked at his shaking hands and at the body of a guard lying next to him. He stood up, picked up the guard's sword as firmly as ever and said: "Guard me from any threat."

"No one will stay unpunished." Vito whispered to himself.

He jumped off the wooden construction and got surrounded by his servants. They followed him as he was walking along the streets toward the entry of the town.

'The genocide should have its own order.' He thought.

After that, Vito came up to a house that was the closest to his current location.

"Open the door." He ordered and a couple of zombies who were standing nearby knocked out the door.

"Catch those who are inside it without killing them and bring them here."

Undead obeyed. Vito heard a lot of noise and screams. Soon there was an angry swearing middle-aged man with a beard and a woman whose eyes were veiled with tears standing in front of him. They tried to get out of the undead's grip at first, but stopped their struggle very soon.

"What do you want of us?!" The man snarled at Vito.

With a cruel and wide smile on his face and a sword in his hand, he slowly stepped closer. Vito put an edge of the sword at the man's throat.

"Please have mercy." The woman pleaded.

"Did you all have mercy on me when I was hanging up there?" Vito croaked.

"We are not the ones who hung you, it was an order of the lord!" The woman exclaimed. Whereas her husband was too scared to speak.

"It isn't me who is going to kill you, it's my hand and it is out of my control." Vito said with a laugh. He swung and cut off the man's head.

"Nooo, my Andrea!" The woman shrieked.

Vito gave the dead body a disgusted look and said in an appropriate voice: "This peasant has such a good name... Let's fix it." After this phrase he took the dagger of one of his servants and carved a new name on the forehead of the dead man. "That's better." Vito said with a satisfied expression.

Woman started swearing at Vito, but it did not last long as he stuck the sword in her jaw so that the end of the sword came out of the back of her head.

"Let's go. We are just starting." He said to his undead and headed to the next house.

About an hour later the population of the entire town was massacred by a cruel boy, whose mind was twisted. No one escaped his wrath, not even children and infants. However, he got tired soon, so most of the people were slain by undead.

"Time for dessert. My faithful servants, let's go get even with the hero of the occasion." Vito said after raising more weak undead. Their planned life span was just an hour, moreover, Vito had a new level up recently so the total number of raised undead counted to almost three hundreds which was almost the entire population.

He started marching towards the local lord's fortress.

Meanwhile in the fortress itself there was panic and total chaos. By this time, most of the guards escaped the town and came to the last place on Fimbalwinter they considered safe - the fortress. Most of the people there were either praying, crying, thinking hard or drinking as hard as others were thinking.

'Looks like the boy wasn't lying. but he is a necromancer, so he should have been executed anyway.' The count thought.

"How many men do we still have?" He asked his only general.

"Not many. About twenty, others are either dead or far away in the fields, running for their lives." The advisor replied.

"That's surely not good." The count said as he was looking through the window and seeing the horde marching in his direction.

He went downstairs to see the survivors with his own eyes.

"I order you to barricade the gates from the inside and do your best to keep the enemy outside of our walls." The count commanded his men.

"Yes, your nobility." They answered in unison and started completing their task.

'God of life, save us from this horror.' Everyone prayed.

About ten minutes later, Vito and his army were standing in front of the fortress' entry.

"Find a way inside." He ordered.

Zombies tried to. At first they tried to break the main gates, after several unsuccessful attempts they tried pushing it. The gates were quite narrow so the barricade was focused in a little spot which made it extremely hard to get through it.

"Do you think it will stop me?" Vito shouted with a mock.

"Climb the walls. Make a ramp out of your own bodies if needed." He ordered.

When the problem at hand was solved, Vito came closer to Nuvian.

"Take everyone under your command except for the horse and twenty more random zombies, they will protect me. Your objective is to kill everyone in there except for two richly dressed men. You should bring them to me alive." Vito said to the smartest of his undead.

"As you wish, my master." Nuvian replied and explained everything to the lesser undead with a telepathic link between them which Vito shared as well.