"What do you have in mind, Dave?" Lone asked.
Dave smiled, "I told you, it"s a surprise. Now, let"s start with raiding the towns."
Dave emerged out from the tent followed by the rest of his party. The undead had already split in two, half of his hundred thousand strong were moving behind the bellowing Singund.
The rest was standing at attention in front of Dave.
"Boyz, listen up, our mission today is to cause a lot of chaos in the Qin Kingdom. Don"t kill indiscriminately, we need to stir the bee-hive only," Dave said.
Dave"s words echoed through the wilds. The undead heard his calling shouted in unison, "For the Legion!"
"Go, undead! Kill any that stand in your way!" Dave roared and the legion turned and marched ahead kicking up a rooster tail of dust in their wake.
"Guys, let"s go," Dave said in a smile and crouched down, slapping his palm on the ground. Black sigils spread out from under his arm and a puff of smoke blew up in front of him. Grumpy appeared from the smoke, looking at Dave in all bewilderment.
"You alright buddy?" Dave said patting the basilisk. The big lizard cooed at Dave positively.
"Right, let"s go then," Dave said.
Dave"s party followed after him.
Dante spoke through the voice-chat, "We get to shoot something now?" Dante asked.
"Yeah, you get to shoot something, just be careful they shoot back," Dave said smiling.
"Right, it wouldn"t be fun if they didn"t," Dante said as he loaded his gun. A black Magnum .44.
"I can"t understand what interest you so, with this violence," Samuel shook his head; however he had a small smile plastered on his face, he was also excited for the upcoming fight.
"Davey, you think this is a smart idea?" Lone asked.
"What do you mean?" Dave asked as the group followed after the charging undead.
"I mean, you do remember what happened to the guildies, they were destroyed," Lone said.
"Yeah, because they weren"t quick enough, you"ll see," Dave said and nudged grumpy to run even faster.
The rest of Dave"s party headed after them and were able to run past the sprinting undead. They soon made the lead, but Dave made sure to keep a few paces behind the first row of mounted undead.
He has fifty Death Knight with him, the other fifty were with Singund, and every one of these Death Knights had their own dunlord as a mount.
There was a small town in front of the charging army, the villagers looked frightened and lost, they didn"t know what was happening, and when they noticed the hordes of undead coming their way, they all ran back to the safety of their homes.
Dave had no interest in spelling useless blood, and his undead knew it. Only kill what fought you.
The town guards noticed the incoming undead and hastily readied to defend the village, they gathered in a thin line at the front of the village. But the increasing sound of hooves, the rattling of armor and skittering of dunlords made every one of these guards shake in fear. They were tasked to protect the villagers from the occasional monsters that appeared every once in a while. But no one prepared them to face against an army of raging undead.
Before the undead reached the guards, one of them dropped his weapon and ran away, causing a fissure in the formation. A heartbeat later, more of the guards abandoned their posts and ran away.
The undead mowed through the soldiers that tried to resist and ignored the ones that were running.
It didn"t take more than five minutes for the undead to have the entire village surrounded, and have most of its guards killed or captured.
"See if any villagers escaped notifying the main Qin army," Dave asked a nearby captain.
The undead captain gave Dave a hasty salute and ran as fast as he could to get the information.
"I didn"t get to shoot anything," Dante said in a dissatisfied tone.
"Don"t worry, you"ll get your chance, we just started," Dave said.
The undead captain returned, "Sir, no one escaped all the villagers are here. But we can"t keep this from reaching the Qin kingdom. Soon someone will come and investigate," the captain said.
"I know, Bud, come," Dave called.
The giant ghoul appeared out of nowhere and nodded toward Dave, then spoke one word, "Lord."
"This village should be good to make a camp. Round up the villagers and put them in captivity, as for the guards, line them up and get all information you can on the Qin kingdom"s borders, map and any useful information about their forces."
"As you command," Bud disappeared in a flash.
"I need twenty death knight and their retinue to come with me!" Dave shouted.
Almost immediately, twenty Death Knights moved to stand in front of Dave.
"Follow me, there is a nearby village we need to capture it too," Dave said and rushed ahead.
The death knights moved after Dave and his party with haste.
The same scene repeated itself in the second village, all the guards were either killed or captured and the villagers were put in chains and were sent to the first village Dave had conquered.
"What are you planning Dave?" Ralph asked.
"Information," Dave said.
"I don"t get it," Ralph said in a shrug.
"If I capture all the villages on the borders, it will make it hard for the Qin army to know our exact location, they will also be unable to know what hit them. We"ll have information about their forces while they won"t have any idea on what is tearing through their borders." Dave said.
"Ah right," Ralph said nodding his head. Dave doubted that his friend understood what he had in mind but he didn"t press it.
"is the village empty?" Dave asked a captain.
"Yes, we captured everyone."
"There are two more villages nearby we need to capture, don"t waste time and move," Dave said.
His undead brought out torches and began throwing them on the hay made houses. The village caught fire almost instantly but before the smoke rose up high in the sky, Dave"s army had already reached another village.
He repeated the same process several times until he had captured more than ten villages. It took him almost the entire day, and the Qin army was none the wiser of his movement.
Dave rode back to the first village they captured. Hundreds of tents were pitched up. Where undead were rounding up the villagers and surrounding the area. They didn"t let any of the villagers out of their sight. The undead were the best guards, they didn"t tire, and didn"t leave any openings in their formations to let an NPC escape and notify anyone to come causing trouble.
This was one of the reasons the guildies lost the raid. Dave was hogging information and keeping it to himself. The Qin army was not aware of the undead army that was slowly gnawing at its borders.
Soon, Singund arrived to Dave"s presence.
"Singund, tell me you have some good news," Dave said.
"Your lords.h.i.+p, ten dungeons, we captured them with ease. However, they didn"t have powerful monsters."
"It"s not a problem," Dave said in a smile and took the dungeon cores from Singund.
Bud came over and handed Dave a map, "City nearby," Bud grunted.
Dave took the map, read through it and said, "We"ll be sieging this city next, it"s called Nora. Cities are unlike towns; they have walls and defenses that should make them really tough to break." These words, Dave didn"t speak to Singund and bud"s ears only. He was informing his party of the next plan.
"A city"s gonna be really tough to break Skelly, you didn"t even bring siege weapons," Flanker said.
"I know, we won"t need them," Dave said in a smile.
He then looked up, the sky had darkened considerably. "Good, let"s start the second stage."