Upgraded aircraft could go ten times as far; and often faster; without fuel than a normal one; but the very nature of the experiment meant Grey needed to acquire something for himself… a heated suit to help keep his quasi-reptilian physiology from freezing over after he landed.

  Fortunately, technology had that covered long before the system showed up; and with Natalie pacing beside him, he made a stop at a store in DC that promised to have what he needed. He didn’t have much time, as he’d be leaving for Greenland within the hour… but he wasn’t going to be going through security, at least.

  The store was… abandoned. Nobody behind the counter. Half of what was inside was looted. He thought for a moment. Half the stores they’d driven by were similarly abandoned. Who would stay at their retail job when the cash they were paying you was worthless?

  Most corporations had probably dropped to a value of zero overnight. It was difficult to imagine any sort of functional economy emerging; the draft, and the fight with the monsters, would probably be a good thing for keeping the country together right now.

  Natalie was following him around; she’d been asking questions, placing calls, making arrangements… and Grey nodded at her. “Just a second. Looks like they’ve got my size, I’ll be right back out.”

  He stepped in… and picked up a couple of suits off the rack, stepping into a changing room that, thankfully, was still lit. The suits were simple enough; thermal underwear with strips embedded in it and wired to a central point. Provided power, turn a dial….

  He was mostly finished getting re-dressed when a knock came at the dressing room door. “Natalie, just wait at the door. This one fits, I’ll be right out.”

  He was a bit surprised to hear a deep male voice respond. “Not her. But don’t worry, she’s fine. Just want to talk.”

  He quietly slipped Right Hand of Death out of storage… and into the left sleeve of the armor as he finished re-dressing… feeling unusually… comfortable. Warm. Cozy…. He almost regretted it, as he was certain he’d miss it the moment it was gone, and he could almost fall asleep standing up. Would it hurt his focus, or make it better, to feel this comfortable?

  Over to the right, he could see the entrance; Natalie standing, her hands raised, the tablet on the floor. She seemed… frozen. Completely immobile.

  He glanced at her, then at the new figure… a serpentfolk. Wearing what looked like a loose-fitting black robe, adorned with spines and a rib-cage; practically screamed necromancer. “..What’s going on with her?”

  The man smiled, revealing a pair of fangs that Grey had never really cared that he had, and held up his right hand; showing a set of large, ornate-looking rings; an onyx was covered in softly glowing blue runes. “Stasis Ring. Time is traveling at about 1% normal for her until I shut it off. She can’t hear us, be harmed, or do anything, but is perfectly fine. I heard your talk with the others, and I was interested in having a few words. How attached to this little planet are you?”

  Grey considered for a moment. Shrugged. “Eh. There’s things I need to do here. If you’re offering a trip to wherever your people are from, I wouldn’t mind visiting later.”

  He gave a slow nod. “Look. The method you discussed. Its essentially a more primitive version of the means we at the Empire use to help cleanse worlds. We actually have a mutagen that gives someone an intense weakness to a specific type of light, one that has no effect on normal Serpentfolk… and when he makes infectious undead, they have the same weakness. We make a swarm of absolutely nasty undead with that weakness, let them mass-reproduce and replace the monsters… and then clean house in relative safety. Your solution is both elegant and workable, and demonstrates you’re exactly our sort of Necromancer..”

  “Good to know. We’ll test it anyway, but if we can find something like that on the market we’ll aim for that as well.”

  The man chuckled. “Ahhh, but. We would actually prefer if it didn’t work. You see… Safe worlds? Boring. Never really develop high-level warriors. Tons of useless, weak, civilians. When we clear a world, we deliberately create Bastion worlds. Stable city-states with solid defenses, and tons of monsters to help us keep leveling up and expanding our forces. If you use your technique with your world… they’ll try to save as much land, and as many civilians, as possible. Used properly, this method, alongside some of the other techniques being discussed, might not just turn Earth into a Harvest World… but a Safe World. And… this will cause problems.”

  He focused on Grey’s face. “We don’t want seven billion useless civilians added into the system. Those leeches from the Chain are bad enough. We’d prefer a much smaller number, and preferably mostly of useful, effective, people. Every living thing is a drain on mana. It should all contribute. Have a purpose.”

  Mostly sounded like nonsense to Grey, but didn’t effect him. “My employer would prefer to save as many lives as possible. It would seem we are at cross purposes then.”

  The man smiled. “And what would it take for you to sabotage the program? Ensure that nothing worked as well as it should, perhaps accidentally leave the cold vulnerability off the infection, so they think its a failure?”

  Grey blinked. Were they trying to bribe him? “What exactly are you offering?”

  He nodded slightly. “Opportunities. Wealth. Women. If we manage to turn Earth into one of our vassals, a high position… and if not, a high position in our Empire. I wasn’t kidding about you being our sort.”

  None of that improved his odds of killing Nightfire. But if these people had that sort of resources, and were spying on government meetings… “And what if I wanted something else… like a Fire Immunity mutagen. Or the corpses of a couple of Chosen? Or to preserve more civilians?”

  The stranger blinked. “...We aren’t actually allowed to interfere with the Chosen. Part of the whole agreement the Committee makes. And that kind of mutagen…No. I can get you a Major fire resistance one though, no problem. Civilians… well, getting rid of them is most of the point.”

  Definitely not enough resources to make up for what he might gain in terms of trust and assets. If he had to form the same sort of agreement, it could even put his goals out of reach. “Hmm. A major fire resistance mutagen for now, and I’ll screw up the first infectious zombie test. We make further agreements afterwards when we see where we stand. Agreed?”

  Ensure your favorite authors get the support they deserve. Read this novel on the original website.

  He extended his right hand out to shake. The stranger looked down at it… and blinked. “Oh! Yes, handshaking. Sure, though we’ll need…”

  He extended his hand, giving Grey’s a firm grip.

  Mutagens? Underhanded agreements? Pointless. That ring, though?

  He fired the Right Hand of Death from point-blank range, almost directly against the stranger’s forearm; and emptied all six rounds directly into him.

  The first round shattered the bone, almost severing the limb. The second buried itself in the man’s chest… and by the time the sixth round was fired, the arm was completely severed, and the wall was visible through a massive hole in his torso.

  As Natalie jerked into awareness, the man’s corpse fell to the ground… and vanished, leaving behind nothing but a bloodstain… and a severed forearm. He hadn’t been able to loot the man. Had he lived? Or a backup device retrieved his corpse?

  Grey looked at it for a moment. A light, insulated glove, and a set of four ornate rings.He dropped it into storage, turning to Natalie. “How much of that did you see?”

  She stared at the bloody patch on the floor; then at Grey. “He…. just walked in… pointed a gun at me. Said to raise my hands… and then… you were standing over his body. How did you move that fast?”

  “...I didn’t. He put you in stasis.”

  “...Oh. Well. I recorded the whole thing on my tablet. I started it before I dropped it. Should I… get rid of the recording?”

  A recording of Grey seeing what sort of bribe the man could offer, then executing him? It might cause problems. It might not.

  “....No. Listen to it first, then pass it to our superiors. He was a spy, and an enemy of humanity, but what he wanted is telling, and might mean the next one shows up with a knife instead of a bribe.”

  ***

  As Grey stood on the rocky plateau of an island a few dozen meters away from the helicopter, he was reminded in very unfortunate terms that he did, in fact, have a tail now. And that all of those amazing little insulated bits did absolutely nothing for it.

  The system-made Medium armor suit at least gave some insulation, since it had adjusted to fit. And the warmth from his body kept it from freezing. But he felt as if he had a single massive limb stuck out, constantly freezing.

  He tapped a few buttons on his phone, watching a helicopter delivering a massive crate, holding a handful of Arctic foxes, and sent a message back home. ~Kylie, this is Grey. Will be setting up a base near El Paso. Currently running an experiment up north. Get food and deliver it to this address. There are sentient spiders there. Tell them you know me.~

  He looked back up. They’d settled the crate down, and he examined it as he drew closer; picking one of the enormous foxes currently glaring angrily through the bars.

  Not fifty yards away, another crate full of giant badgers was stored… but they were already miserable in the cold, clearly, huddle together against the cold wind. The foxes would be the real test.

  He followed his usual routine, as they started setting up cameras; a group of soldiers armed with rifles, all over level 20, watching as well.

  First, he dropped the manhole cover with the right rune on it. Stepped onto it… and summoned an ant corpse from storage… stuffing it inside the second thermal suit. It would move quite clumsily in a suit made for a four-limbed creature; but it would prevent the cold vulnerability from rendering it helpless til the job was done.

  The ant was about four feet long… and he focused on it. An Enhanced, Infectious, undead, with the Venomous fog and cold vulnerability traits. He added Curse to it as well, to help it kill the foxes faster.

  He shook his head… and as the thing started to crawl away, a visible green mist rising around it, leaving a trail through the snow. When it reached the cage full of badgers, at first one of the larger ones tried to get close to the bars to attack it; then, the moment it got a whiff of the fog, it hissed, and backed up to the middle of the cage… which wasn’t large enough to escape the radius.

  It took a burst of the intense fog; which, as the wind blew some of it away, made the soldiers rearrange their formation; but after a few minutes, the badgers were all dead…. And the creature moved on to the Arctic Fox cage.

  “Timer started for the badgers. We’ll see how long it takes for them to animate… and then what the cold does to them. Watch the foxes. This will probably take a bit longer.”

  The beautiful white-furred creatures were far more active, circling around inside their cage as the ant approached… and when it reached the bars, one of them lashed out… jaw too big to fit between the bars, it tried a claw… but the ant backed up a bit, preventing any attack… and just went right on releasing its venomous cloud.

  The creatures took a while; at least five minutes… before finally succumbing to the mist. And when they did….

  Grey sent the Ant of Doom into storage. All they had left… were corpses.

  “So. The time varies, but usually its from half an hour to three or four at most for a corpse to rise as a zombie. More attacks is faster than less….. But I have no idea how it works with venom.”

  The timer for the Badgers showed 25 minutes when the smaller ones began to stir…. Barely.

  The whole mass of them had started to rise, becoming animate… but one by one, they fell right back to the cage floor, becoming immobile.

  “Proof of concept with larger monsters established. We’ll wait to see how well the cold-resistance ones do. Can we move the cage somewhere not quite as cold? Say…. right at freezing instead of so far into the negatives?”

  A nearby officer he didn’t know; a General, judging by the rank patches; studied them, and turned to Grey. “Obviously we’ll be doing exactly that. But this means the proposal will work in places where its this cold. If this works at all on the ones that are already cold resistant… this will be a game-changer. We’ll be dropping these things into monster swarms throughout the north, and changing all sorts of plans.”

  He frowned. “Though, you won’t be able to oversee it. The secretary has asked for you. Something about an audio recording?”

  Grey gave a nod. “Of course.” He glanced around… and then closer to the general. “I’ll head on. Before I do though… use caution around the Chosen. I’m reasonably certain they want us to survive… but there may be limits on just how well we’re allowed to. If this plan works, if we achieve a level of success where we can survive without needing them…. We may end up having to take them out to stop sabotage.”

  He studied Grey for a moment. “And why exactly do you say that?”

  “It has to do with that audio recording I’m being called in for. Best not make it a public thing yet… but everyone in command positions should be aware it might be a problem.”

  He didn’t really care about any of the other Chosen. But if he could provoke hostilities between them and the military? Well. That serpentfolk may have given him a variety of advantages in the mission.