Lord of Estaria

by K R Zax

  “Hahaha!” He backed away, slapping my shoulder enthusiastically. “I was just talking to the boy about how big the Empire is.”

  “I see.” Nah, she didn’t buy it. “Anyway, Safia wanted to say goodbye to Master Alex.”

  Lady Safia approached me slowly, and I could see that she was nervous. I hope she didn’t develop some fear of Necromancers over the night?

  “My lord, um,” she presented me with a red scarf, and I could see where this was going. “I am grateful that you saved my father and hope to see you again one day. Until then… Please, have this as a sign of my...” She cast her eyes down, blushing. Such a cute girl, she wants to give me a token of gratitude, but her sweaty hands showed me just how nervous she was.

  I took the scarf and put it inside one of the pockets on my coat. “My Lady, I shall cherish this gift while looking forward to our next meeting.” I then lightly kissed her hand and watched the girl return to her mother’s side, with a bright smile on her face.

  “Good m’boy, good!” The Duke slapped my back with enthusiasm. “I hope we’ll see each other in the next couple of years! We must talk about the wedding after all! Hahaha!”

  I bid them farewell, mount my horse, and we rode out of the city. The rest of our forces were already on the other side of the river, but their pace was faster, since we had fewer wagons and carriages than when we left Tsarigrad.

  Out of the big army that left the capital, barely 500 people remained. There were about 150 adventurers, 300 soldiers and a handful of knights and mages.

  I had a hard time seeing that as a ‘victory’, despite everyone’s claims. The bodies of all the others were inside my Storage. No, I didn’t turn them into zombies. In fact, I sucked all the Dark Magic from the ones that the Elder Lich zombified and turned them back to ordinary corpses, so I wouldn’t offend the remaining people.

  Ah, I had less than 10000 zombies now. Most of those who perished were the ordinary ones, as they tried to slow down Uhra’s high ranking undead while protecting the living.

  The Duke appreciated that I relinquished the human and demihuman undead from the necromancy spell. He went that far as to offer me compensation in gold for my efforts, but I declined and instead asked him to provide me some crystals.

  “Congratulations on getting a fiance, my lord.” Lillian broke the silence as she moved her horse beside mine.

  “Huh? Oh, you mean Safia?” She got me there for a second. It must be because I was used to seeing her serious expression all the time. “Ha-ha, funny. The Duke was joking, you saw it? He’s just that kind of fella.”

  “No, he wasn’t.” Lillian looked so confident in her words that I started doubting myself. “She even gave you a red scarf.”

  “That was a thanks for saving her father. She said so herself.” I know what I heard. She’s pulling a fast one on me, isn’t she?

  “She was nervous and couldn’t finish her words, but everyone knows what a red scarf means.”

  “No Lillian, dear. Not everyone knows what a red scarf means.” I was getting scared right now. Just tell me already!

  Lillian let a deep sigh. “It means ‘Love’, my lord. She wanted to say: ‘Please, have this as a sign of my love’. It is a tradition in the Rasik Empire.”

  Oh, my God! She deceived me! The little vixen! A 14-year-old girl conned me into marrying her!

  Bloody hell!

  “Ah, at least she’s cute.” Damn, that’s another girl to add to my harem. Now I only need to find some big place to live in. “Shit.”

  The girls from the Demonic Order were openly laughing at me, and then Nastia said: “You can explain things with the Duke, I’m sure he will understand.”

  “Nah, it’s fine.” I took little bags with candy and hand them around. That should be enough to shush them. “Besides, that makes it 19.”

  “19 what, Darling?” Lina and everyone else seemed confused, or simply unable to grasp the deeper meaning of my words.

  “Women.” I said and put a caramel cube in my mouth. I wonder if they used milk to make them. The taste was so good.

  “Are you perhaps including us in your numbers?” Lillian had an incredulous expression as she asked me that. “Because, I can’t remember ever agreeing to that.”

  “Oh, sorry. My bad.” I apologized and move my horse sideways, so I could face the bunch of them. “Listen here! You swore both bodies and souls to me. And I get it. You might have got carried away, or you just meant that as knights. As you all can see, I am not familiar with the customs here. And I don’t know how a knight is supposed to pledge allegiance to someone. But there is one thing that I know.”

  The girls watched attentively; they knew that I was from another place and that I mistook their oats. And they seemed assured that I was clearing the misunderstanding.

  “I saved your lives, so I don’t give a flying fuck about your consent. Every single one of you, belongs to me.

  I. Own. You.

  Of course, if anyone has an issue with that, then please, you are free to leave.”

  This is a win-win situation. If they choose to follow me, then they will be mine. And if they refuse, I still have Lina, and I can buy more obedient slaves.

  They are pretty girls, but they are also members of nobility. That can turn out to be troublesome in the long run. So now is the perfect time for them to distance themselves from me.

  “As my lord wishes.” Lillian put a hand over her heart and bowed to me from horseback.

  Eh? After all the crap that I just said?

  “My lord?” Nistry Reyly, a fox-kin girl, raised her hand. “If we accept, does that mean that we will all become official wives?”

  “That’s right.” I do have a dream of acquiring a hundred women, legal wives or not, doesn’t really matter to me.

  “My lord, my lord!” Another girl, Adrea Stamenova, waved her hand excitedly. “You will not request of us to stop being knights? As legal wives, will we still be allowed to fight?”

  “Yes? Why wouldn’t you? Even Duchess Faris is a fighter, or was I wrong?” Could it be that there were restrictions for Legal wives?

  “My lord, rare are the men who will allow his wife to go to battle. They do not want to lose their loved ones, the mothers of their children.” Lillian said and pointed to the remaining soldiers. “People die. The majority of women do not want to fight, because they fear losing their lives. That is why there is such a disparity between women and men. Two thousand people died on this quest, and almost all of them were men. Can you imagine how many widows and orphans that battle created?”

  Ah, so that is the reason men could marry multiple women. There were so freaking much of them! Dude, what a horrifying world.

  For the weak, that is. I kinda felt lucky.

  “Well, I won’t let any of you go on a suicidal mission, that’s for sure. But I don’t mind if you want to fight by my side.”

  After answering a few more of their questions, the girls agreed to become my wives. Some told me that they would marry eventually, so why not pick a strong man? As for making things official, there were several ways to do that.

  The most common one was to hold a wedding. And since the prevalent religion in the Empire was The Holy Kriss religion, the ceremony needed to be conducted by one of its priests. Of course, there were other religions, and the state acknowledged them all, despite their different ways of conducting a ceremony.

  For example: in the wolf-kin tribes it was sufficient to bite your partner’s shoulder, hard enough to leave a mark, and that would be officially acknowledged by both the tribe and the Empire. The only thing left would be to register with a civil servant. And it's all done.

  That brings us to the civil servants. Because there are people who don’t want, or can’t afford a wedding, then it is enough for them to go to the civil servant’s office, sign the papers, and they’re officially married. And it's completely free of charge!

  Lillian told me that sometimes even nobles just went with the civil serva
nt option, because it leaves the impression that all they care about is each other, and not making a show for everyone else.

  These people just kept surprising me.

  I tried to act calm and composed as we continued traveling, but deep inside I was feeling like the greatest pervert that ever lived, dancing in joy and fantasizing about my girls.

  But some things that went through my mind had me worried. I know that I wasn’t into the hardcore, binding stuff before, so what changed? I liked hentai, and I considered myself a healthy perv, but now…

  I took the Status Plate from the Storage and looked at it again.

  Name

  Alex Miller

  Mana

  S

  Strength

  A

  Speed

  A

  Dark Magic

  A

  Fire Magic

  C

  Air Magic

  C

  Water Magic

  D

  Earth Magic

  D

  My Dark Magic went up a rank after the battle with Uhra.

  That should be a good thing, and I believed so, when I first saw the change.

  Change. That’s right. I feel like I’m changing somehow. Is the Dark Element affecting me? Or am I looking too much into it?

  We made a good progress that day, and when we set up our camp, I sent all the ordinary zombies into a nearby forest to hunt.

  “They won’t be going inside?” Lillian asked me when slightly more than 1000 Darkness Zombies stayed in the vicinity.

  “No, I’ll have them guard the camp.” I sat on a little wooden stool and took a bowl of porridge from Lina. “I hope that the guards won’t mind.”

  “It’s fine, Darling.” Lina brought another stool and sat beside me. “Even if they do, I doubt that any of them will try to mess with an undead Troll or Vogor.”

  “They are creepy to look at,” Velira shuddered. “But I am certain that no monster will want to approach them either, so it's fine.”

  “My lord, what are we going to do when we reach the capital?” Nistry asked, and I could see that the other girls were also showing interest. “Since you contributed that much on this quest, it would be outrageous if you weren’t bestowed with a title at least.”

  Bloody hell! She’s right!

  I mean, forget the damn title, where are we going to stay?

  God! They swore allegiance to me, not to mention that they will also marry me. Which means that they won’t be staying in the castle anymore. They probably could, since they are all nobles, but what kind of man would I be if I allow that?

  ‘Oy, look! It’s the Demon Lord. I heard that he can’t even provide his wives with a place to stay! Hahaha!

  Demon Lord? You mean, Demon Poor!’

  Shit! It wouldn’t surprise me if people actually said that. I’ll be a joke!

  “So, ahem, since I am new in the Empire, can someone tell me if I could buy some big property, like a castle or a mansion? And what would the price be?”

  “You can buy a castle, but there aren’t many of those for sale.” Milia said while polishing her breastplate not far from us. “But you won’t be able to rule over big parcels of land, because you need explicit permission from the Empire to do that.”

  “Right, not everyone can rule over others.”

  “Yes, even a knight who is in charge of a village can have his ruling status revoked if he mistreated the people.”

  “You can buy a mansion in Tsarigrad for about 10000 gold coins. Well, there are cheaper ones, but they’re too small.”

  “Oh, I see.” I put my poker face as I sipped some water.

  10000 gold coins! And the cheaper ones are ‘too small’? Holy Christ, where do these girls live?

  What should I do? I don’t know how big of a reward I will receive, but I doubt it’d be anywhere near 10000 gold.

  Monsters. I will need a lot of them. But how much? If the average price for an orc is about 2 silver coins, then I would need to kill… 250000 orcs!

  WTF?

  Stronger monsters. Yes! Only stronger monsters can help me now!

  OK, starting tomorrow, I will deploy most of the Darkness Zombies as well.

  Chapter 3.

  It was still dark when I woke up and left the tent. I couldn’t sleep at all. The whole time I was turning around, and at some point I saw that Lina was annoyed, so I decided to go out.

  The guards were sitting around a fire, drinking and talking. They sure looked relaxed now, despite all of those zombies around.

  No, it was because of the zombies that they could be at ease.

  “Go. Kill. Bring.” I ordered, and the majority of the Darkness Zombies went to the hills on the other side of the road. The regular ones had this side covered, so I went to the big pile of corpses they brought.

  There wasn’t much, only about 500. But maybe today I’ll gather more. We were still near Tolia, so there should be a lot of them further away.

  I took a bag with crystals and begun absorbing the remaining life force. All these monsters, and I can’t Absorb a thing for myself because I need more strong zombies. Alright, I’ll only be making Darkness Zombies for now.

  From five monsters, I get five full crystals, which I then insert inside a single corpse. That way, I’ll have one super strong Darkness Zombie, and I can sell the remaining four to the Guild. Even the goblins and the other small fry that I would usually just throw away, I put them all inside my Storage. Coppers are also money.

  When the first sun rays appeared on the eastern sky, I closed my eyes and ordered the undead to came back. There were so many of them that I needed some time to store them.

  “Darling, what are you doing?” Lina asked when she saw me repairing a broken arm on one of my Darkness Zombies. It was a shame that I couldn’t do the same with the living. I can’t ‘heal’. But the undead were different. Broken bones, torn flesh and even limbs, I could fix it all with Dark Magic.

  “Fixing the zombie, can’t you see?”

  “But you never did that before.” she was right. Before, I used them until they weren’t able to move anymore, then I would Absorb what was left and toss them aside. I didn’t want to sell the remains, because the Guild may suspect that I was a necromancer. “Why are you doing it now?”

  “Because I’m poor!” I snapped at her and immediately felt guilty. She can be annoying sometimes, but she’s also my precious kitty. “Sorry, it’s just… I need money, okay? Do you have any idea how it is to be poor?”

  “Yes, I do,” she responded while pointing at her slave crest. “But don’t mind me, I am sure that we’re talking about different levels of poverty here.”

  That’s right, at least I shouldn’t end up as a slave. Lina knew how to cheer me up. My precious wife.

  After patching my minions, we had a nice breakfast. The girls were chatting merrily, without a care in the world, while I spent that time doing some math in my head.

  ***

  At noon we were still on the road, riding slowly towards the capital. I didn’t go to the forest since my Virsk birds couldn’t find any monster above D rank.

  “Are you worried about something?” Lillian asked me as she rode her horse closer to mine. “You barely said anything the whole day.”

  “What? There’s no ‘My Lord’ now? I thought you liked to be formal.”

  “Well, we are alone.” She then smiled and lowered her voice a bit. “Of course, if you want your future wife to be formal all the time, then I could do that too.”

  Huh? Why am I getting the feeling that she likes the idea of being my future wife? I would write that off as just my imagination, but even her voice sounded different. More… sexy?

  Was it all because of this ‘Demon Lord’ nonsense? I was rocking my brain, trying to find a justification for her abnormal behavior when a knight approached us.

  “My Lady,” he saluted when he got in front of Lillian. Since Sir Stephen Gorzo and other high ranking knights and
lords were killed by the Elder Lich, they all accepted Lillian – an Imperial Princess, to take command of the army until we reach the capital. “Scouts have found something further ahead. It appears like bandits attacked a carriage, but we didn’t go closer, in fear that it might be an ambush.”

  “Good job,” Lillian then looked at me, and I already had two Virsk birds out of my Storage. We previously agree that if scouts found something, they should send word first. And then I would take a look with the birds. We already had few scouts, no need to waste them needlessly.