Cleaning out every nook and cranny of the mine was a Sisyphean task that took Lilith over six hours. Every side corridor, every crevice had to be checked to ensure that no rotten carrion lurked in the darkness.
However, what came next was even worse. For the following four hours, Lilith supervised the skeletons as they steadily, like macabre ants, carried hundreds of disgusting zombies outside.
When the last carcass finally landed on the surface, a gigantic, steaming mountain of rotten meat towered before the mine entrance. The stench was so horrendous that even in her demonic form, Lilith had to cover her nose with her hand.
"Christ... what am I supposed to do with this?" she muttered, furrowing her brow in disgust. "The best thing would be to burn it all to prevent some plague from spreading, but... well. We don't have anyone for fire magic. Lysandra is ice, Mina is nature, and Kala... well, Kala is just destruction."
She wrestled with her thoughts for a moment, staring at the pile of half-orc-zombie corpses.
"Nothing bad should happen if we just bury them, right?" she asked the void of the Forest of Chaos rhetorically. "They won't just crawl out of the ground again, will they? Or create some cursed territory of death that poisons our entire surroundings..."
She fell silent for a moment, feeling a slight pang of anxiety, but after a while, that specific, somewhat reckless smile she used to have in her previous life when she put off studying until the last minute bloomed on her face.
"Oh well..." she laughed foolishly under her breath. "I'll leave that problem for 'future me.' Present me has had quite enough of these corpses."
She issued a short order to the skeletons. For the next two hours, the undead warriors dug a gigantic, deep trench far from the mine entrance. Then, one by one, they tossed the dismembered bodies in.
When the last inch of earth was leveled, the place looked almost normal - only the freshly turned, black soil over a large area betrayed that an army of the damned rested beneath.
"I guess it's not bad," Lilith murmured, brushing the dust off her hands. "It looks like... a field. Maybe we'll plant something here one day."
She looked at her squad of skeletons. They were dirty, their bones darkened from earth and gore, and she herself felt like she was dreaming only of a hot bath in her new castle.
"Alright, boys. Let's go home."
With those words, Lilith spread her powerful wings. With one strong beat, she soared into the night sky, leaving behind the Mine of Sorrows and its freshly buried secrets.
Flying toward the obsidian silhouette of the castle looming in the distance, she felt fatigue in every muscle, but also a wild satisfaction from a job well done, albeit a dirty one.
As soon as Lilith's feet touched the ground beside the blackened Bone House, the Monarch immediately summoned the interface.
[Notice: Do you wish to use "Necropolis Evolution Catalyst" x1 to evolve the building: Bone House?]
"You bet I do!" Lilith snarled, vigorously tapping the [YES] button.
However, nothing happened. The button remained dead. Lilith hit it a second, third, and tenth time, her face contorting into a grimace of pure fury.
"Oh, for heaven's sake! What a piece of crap!" she screamed, tossing virtual windows left and right. "Fucking system! Fix this! You're a bunch of incompetent programmers! First, you make me fight that damn tree with faces on the bark, and now you can't even make a button work?! Just click, you piece of junk!"
Suddenly, her gaze fell to the bottom of the screen.
[Requirements: 10 Undead Gems and 3,000 gold coins. ]
[Undead Gems in possession: 0.]
Lilith froze. Slowly, with a loud smack, she slapped her open palm against her forehead, sliding it down her face all the way to her chin.
"Christ..." she muttered hollowly. "Working with these skeletons has made my intellectual level drop to the level of these dead bones. I am officially an idiot..."
With an immense sense of embarrassment, she looked around to make sure no one had seen her outburst of fury, then pulled ten shimmering black gems from her inventory. As soon as she laid them on the ground, the slots in the menu glowed green.
"Yes..." she hissed, clicking confirmation.
The ground beneath the building shook. The Bone House was suddenly doused in a thick, tarry ooze that seemed to devour the structure. Bones creaked and fused, and the entire building began to grow, swell, and darken.
After a moment, instead of a primitive hut, a monumental construction stood before Lilith called the [Crypt of the Eternal Legion].
It looked like an ancient, royal tomb carved from black obsidian and dragon bones. The facade was decorated with bas-reliefs depicting armies of marching corpses, and a pale, jade smoke drifted from two small towers on the sides. The entrance resembled the gaping maw of a monster, from which the chill of absolute death radiated.
"This is it..." Lilith smiled predatorily, immediately checking the stats.
[Crypt of the Eternal Legion]
Effect: Regeneration speed of undead subjects: +50%.
Unit Summoning Limit: 1000.
"A ten times larger limit?!" Lilith nearly shouted in disbelief. "A thousand skeletons?! I'll flood this whole forest with them!"
She quickly scrolled down to the list of available units. Next to the ordinary skeletons, two new entries had appeared:
Skeleton Mage: Cost: 200 gold. Limit: 30.
Skeleton Commander: Cost: 80 gold. Limit: 100.
Lilith started to laugh. First quietly, then louder and louder, until her manic chuckle filled the valley.
"Hahaha! Soon this world will know the power of the most potent necromancer in history! A necromancer who is actually a succubus!" She clutched her stomach, choking with laughter. "God, this is so stupid and brilliant at the same time! A thousand corpses at my beck and call!"
However, suddenly, the laughter died in her throat. Lilith went still as she realized something with horror. Her eyes began to dart quickly across the numbers, and her lips moved in silent calculation.
"Wait... 100 commanders at 80... that's eight thousand..." she murmured, her voice beginning to tremble. "Plus 30 mages at two hundred... that's six thousand... and almost eight hundred ordinary skeletons to fill the limit at five gold... that's four thousand..."
Lilith felt the blood drain from her face. Her legs turned to jelly.
"Eight... plus six... plus four... is..."
She staggered and fell to her knees.
"Eighteen... Eighteen thousand gold coins..."
She looked at the beautiful new Crypt with pure, concentrated hatred.
"You... you thief!" she rasped, shaking her fist at the building. "My wealth! My hard-earned money! This isn't a building, it's a financial black hole! You want to send me to the poorhouse?!"
At that moment, one of the old skeletons stepped out of the forest, dragging a small, miserable log behind it. It placed it on the pile, then - seeing its kneeling, despairing Mistress - approached her with a slow step.
It placed its bony, dry hand on her shoulder and fixed its empty, eyeless sockets on her, as if to say: "Easy, Mistress. Money isn't everything, but one can never have too many pairs of hands."
Lilith only felt her soul slowly leaving her body at the thought of the coming bankruptcy.