Chapter 157 - Troubled Times (4) : I'll Huff, And I'll Puff
What came out from the void made even Nurina open her eyes wide in amazement.
"WTF! Isn't this undead a little bit too big?"
"Can it be called an undead in the first place?"
Nurina and Jon were more curious than anything else.
"Haha… Don't think you can defeat this easily. This thing was remodeled by my very hands to resemble a Dwarven Centurion. Son, let's go!"
Gils held his son by the hand and started running the other way.
Nurina and Jon were still scanning the new Undead with wonder. The two mad researchers couldn't suppress their curiosity anymore.
"I see, it indeed resembles a Dwarven Centurion. Even though I have never met one in real life. It carries a lot of resemblances." Jon noting the similarities between the structure of the strange undead and the Dwarven Centurion.
"I've seen a lot of them and it is really not really a good imitation. But I am interested in how could they make it look like this."
Dwarven Centurions are very large mechanical guardians in Dwemer ruins. Their giant bodies, undoubtedly designed for combat, are constructed of solid Dwemer blocks and armored with thick dwarven plates. Their arms are equipped with a Dwarven Warhammer and a Dwarven Battleaxe. Their enormous body makes them move slowly, but this is balanced by the ability to take lots of damage and use very powerful attacks, making them extremely dangerous between all the Animunculi left behind by the ancient Dwemer, the Dwarven Centurions are the most elaborately constructed, well-armed, defensive, and arguably the most dangerous if one excluded the rare types of the Dwarven Animunculi like the Numidium and the Dwarven Colossus.
[A/N: Animunculi are ancient mechanical automatons that may be found in the Dwemer Ruins.]
"It seems like they put it piece by piece on a remodeled skeleton of a giant and added a lot of other pieces of bone to make it armored like that."
"I see! Good analysis, Jon. It is like Patchwork Zombies."
"Patchwork? Like Frankenstein?"
"I don't know what is that!"
"... Anyway, this looks dope as hell. Can I test it?"
"Go ahead, I don't have high expectations on it though."
It seemed that Nurina wasn't really interested in the Undead creature as much as Jon. She has lived for a long time and seen stranger things so she lost all of her interest immediately after she found out the secret behind it. However, she still wanted to hear an answer about the ability to normal undead that leave their remains after being destroyed.
She nonchalantly cast some 'Bound Arrows' at the fleeing enemies and killed most of them in a flash leaving Gils and his son alive but pinned down.
Jon, however, stood in front of the undead creature and cleared his throat.
"Ehehem... FUS RO DAH!"
And just like that, a force wave formed and flew at the undead creature in a blink. Once the force wave clashed with the creature, Jon's expressions darkened.
"So, So weak!"
The undead creatures crumbled in no time.
It was indeed because that Jon's 'Unrelenting Force' is abnormally strong, but also the quality of the undead creature and the way it was created wasn't to handle an attack as strong as Jon's. To start with, the Blackrock Clan indeed is a necromancer clan but its might was gained through hoarding a high number of undead creatures and using Curses and Illusions but that was nothing to pose as a threat in front of Nurina or Jon.
Jon was disappointed and looked at Nurina like a kid who got a new toy but broke it a little bit too early.
"What did you think? It is just some normal bones after all. Nothing fancy about them."
"... B, But!"
"It just looked fearsome but it was too fragile and badly designed."
"... I was excited!"
Nurina decided to not care about Jon who was on the verge of tears and walked towards the father and son pair who were pinned down by her arrows. Alina and Jullanar naturally followed her and left Jon screwing around with the bone fragments that he kept examining for some reason.
"So, the two little swines. Which one of you will start telling me a story I want to hear? The one that will speak first gets to live! The other one will have to experience seeing his guts by the very hands of that girl." Nurina said as she pointed as Jull.
Gils and his son Kalf turned pale from Nurina's and Jull's look. Jull admires Nurina a lot so she started to copy a lot of her actions, and that includes the 'Smile That Is Not Really a Smile Technique'.
"I- I- I will tell you! It- It was all f- father's plan... and grandpa too… he set the plan one week ago wit…"
Kalf started talking about the conspiracy of the Blackrocks and Bloodsails like a recorder. His father beside him was looking at him and got surprised by how coward his son turned out to be.
Nurina, however, cringed and spoke.
"I hate to break it to you but that's not what I want to know."
Kalf heard that and froze like a cold piece of ice.
"Stinking brat! You dare to spill out the beans this easily? You are selling your father?" Gils started acting like he is infuriated and wanted to struggle free but Alina made a crackle of lightning between her fingers that caused him to settle silently.
"L- L- Lady, I will tell you anything, just- *swoosh* -Hiiii…"
Kalf was about to spout something again but Jull threw a dagger between his legs right under the crotch.
"Shut the fuck up!"
Jull was annoyed by the cowardly actions of the pair.
"Now, might I ask about that Conjuration technique you just used… where did you summon these undead from?"
Nurina had many guesses but she still wanted a solid answer.
The atmosphere changed completely and the father and son pair gulped on their saliva. It seemed that they were a bit hesitant to answer the question.
Jon joined the group and started listening to the interrogation. After some questions and the intimidating that Jon added with his Aura, the father and son pair started singing rather than talking. It was so funny how Jon made them talk in a complete synchronization and didn't even miss a single word as if they were trained on it.
Jon and his party learned some very useful and shocking information about the power of the Blackrock clan and their methods.
From what was said. The undead creatures of the Blackrock clan indeed gets to stay in the mortal realm when they are destroyed for a very plain, simple and boring fact: 'From the very beginning, they belonged to it!"
Jon tilted his head not understanding and was about to beat up the two swines but Nurina laughed and nodded.
From her understanding. These undead creatures were created in Mundus and got Reanimated and Zombified in Mundus. Which means they were just simply some raised dead beings. The thing that made them summonable was the strange technique that the Blackrocks possessed and that was to 'Reverse' the processes of Conjuration.
For example; 'Undead A' was created by a 'Necromancer'. 'Undead A' was 'Reversely Conjured' to another realm in 'Oblivion', that realm is insignificant for the Deadra to care about and peaceful enough for the undead to roam freely without any danger or threat, and also allows the caster to be able to summon them anywhere and when by 'Reversely Banish' the undead from that realm and call them back to Mundus.
"In life, the correct answer is the most boring one."
Nurina sighed while shaking her head.
It was true that the theory was possible and she has no problem in recreating it but it is too inefficient in her eyes. One can freely summon better and almost a limitless amount of undead from the Soul Cairn as long as they have the power to do so. The normal undead that were raised by just a simple spell are just too week compared to that. The art of Necromancy itself needs the caster to prepare the corpse they are using the spell on by making it resistant to rotting and getting weaker with time as the Magicka will harm it somehow. The perfect Necromancy is to prepare a corpse by a lot of rituals and measurements to make the best zombie possible and the ancient Nords understood the fact really well and created the Draugr that still dwells in the ancient Nordic ruins until this very day.
One more flow to this was that the casters always needed to be linked to their undead all the time which is not an easy thing to do… probably, these Blackrocks couldn't exert the power of their full potential for just their lack of proper control as they always needed a lesser number of undead creatures than they normally can control to just give themselves a breather for controlling the rest of the undead better.
There were a lot of mistakes and flows that Nurina explained them in a few breaths. Jon was not as disappointed as Nurina and took everything to the heart. One day in the future, he will change the fate of a lot of people by using these Reverselytechniques of creating spooky undead and Revercily Conjure them… but that will be later in the future.
"Master, Senior! It seems that the reinforcement has safely passed to Kynesgrove and the supply lines were secured."
"Good! I think we can go and watch how the battle unfolds now. Jon, what will you do with these two little swines."
Jon smirked at Gils and Kalf who turned pale from his ruthless smile.
"Simple! She told you that she won't let Jull kill you but she said nothing about me…" Jun said as he evoked two Flame magic spells on his hand.
"... Two little swines, I will huff, and I will buff, and I'll blow you both up."
*BOOM*