At this time, Hel naturally had no knowledge of the duke's schemes. She was busy controlling the little mage, watching him huff and puff as he climbed down the Great Black Mountain.
This little mage was released through a secret passage from Heim Castle by Hel. It was her tool for gathering information about the outside world. Additionally, she intended to find suitable talent traits for the thousand newly recruited personnel. After all, the most she had on hand were the traits obtained from the goblin ruins—Earth and Water element combat traits, along with some high-quality elemental magic traits.
Most of the Water element traits had been used to boost Lily's talent, raising her to red quality. So now, for the thousand recruits, only some Earth element talent traits remained. But they couldn't all train in Earth element, could they? That would turn them into an unkillable Terrapin Knight Corps!
Hel decided to balance their development. While not every element would be represented among the thousand, it couldn't be too monotonous either. There was no other choice but for Hel to go out and gather resources herself.
After passing through the Great Black Mountain, she arrived near Upper River Town. By now, the town had already been leveled by the small beastmen. Everything edible or inedible had been plundered, but the beastmen were long gone. Only a few slightly bloated corpses remained, likely the ones who had drowned previously.
"Animal bite marks?" Hel examined the corpses carefully. Their organs had been hollowed out, blood drained, and the flesh hardened from the cold. Continuing forward, she saw the same pattern repeated—every corpse had been gutted.
"Looks like small rodents, but could Heim really have that many rats? Shouldn't the beastmen have eaten them all?" Hel felt something was off. Investigating alone was too inefficient; she decided to summon some help.
[High-Level Death Magic: Mass Undead Resurrection]
In an instant, the spell covered all of Upper River Town. The corpses of the small beastmen began to rise as zombies under the influence of death magic.
But raising a bunch of mindless zombies to investigate clues could easily become a hindrance. So Hel followed up with another spell:
[High-Level Death Magic: Soul Network Construction]
This spell connected the souls of all the undead. While a single zombie's mind might be too chaotic to act, a hundred connected zombies could function normally as if sharing a single brain. This is the standard method necromancers use to control large groups of undead.
The Soul Network also allowed the caster to remotely control any individual undead, making the little mage safer and harder to put in danger.
Hel continued summoning corpses as she moved, and by the time she left Heim territory, a vast army of tens of thousands of undead followed her. Some were resurrected from the beastmen corpses, and others were unapproved undead from the Free Nations that had entered Heim previously. Though marked by the Underworld Witch, she had no idea where the witch was hiding. Without the Soul Network, controlling these undead at such a distance would be impossible.
Meanwhile, Hel discovered many anomalies. First, the organ issue: almost all the corpses had been gutted. After investigation, Hel confirmed that the beastmen had not abandoned their biological warfare plans—they had merely postponed them. The plague wasn't spread by the beastmen themselves, but by the rats that fed on their innards. These rats reproduced rapidly and spread the disease. By spring, when the climate warmed, the rats would unleash an unprecedented epidemic.
Secondly, Hel noticed that the entire ley lines of Heim territory had been polluted with the beastmen's blood. Similar to when she previously constructed the Territorial Refinement Array, many top-tier death magics required blood as a medium. This contamination created an ideal condition for her to perform magic.
If the entire Mandrake Duchy were like this, Hel wouldn't even need to construct underground arrays—simply placing five Blood Crystal Stones would allow her to perform the Territorial Refinement Array.
"This level of contamination is definitely unnatural," Hel concluded after investigating other areas.
It seemed the small beastmen's invasion hid a larger conspiracy—perhaps a blood ritual covering the entire Sacrifice Kingdom, or some forbidden magic. Regardless of the purpose, the enemy's plan was certainly significant.
Hel muttered, "The Sacrifice Kingdom really is a dangerous place." She continued to control her undead to investigate further. No matter the enemy's plot, she needed more manpower for a deep investigation.
As Hel summoned her undead army, a sizable knight order arrived uninvited at Heim Castle.