Demonic Skeleton God

Flain had already accounted for this possibility—the system kept throwing obstacles in his way. In his mind, he was already thinking through all the options for how he could proceed.

"You can't resurrect corpses he has already resurrected once," Flain said.

"Really?" Itai replied, who had tried to resurrect them but found that the necrotic mana wouldn't even touch their bodies.

"Ah~ seriously? That system is it is too

cruel," Itai sighed.

Flain picked up the corpses and tossed them into a sack, which he then placed back into his Inventory.

"Summon A1 and A2," Flain ordered, and moments later, the two mentioned zombies stood before him.

"What you're wearing is an artifact called the Necklace of Deception. You can create an illusion within a radius of three kilometers. Order it to make every Stage 2 zombie within fifteen meters of you appear as they did before their death—you just have to say it in your mind," Flain told A2.

The bodies of A1 and A2 transformed into their pre-death appearances, so now they looked exactly like the two generals who had guarded the gate of Dungeon 31.

According to its description, the Necklace of Deception could only change one thing. Yet it had changed both A1 and A2 into their pre-death appearances—which was two things. It depended on how the command was formatted in its "program." If A2 had ordered it to make both of them appear as they did before their deaths, the Necklace of Deception would not have worked.

But when the command was to make every Stage 2 zombie within fifteen meters appear as they did before death, it worked—because the Necklace of Deception counted that as one thing.

"Alright, from now on you must stay within fifteen meters of each other, or you'll be exposed. Also, I forbid you from having any physical contact—like shaking hands—with soldiers, because the Necklace of Deception only creates illusions and cannot make your hands feel the same as a human's upon touch.

Your mission will be to pretend you are the same two generals as when you were alive. Do not allow any troops into Dungeon 31, even if life appears on the radar. If the Empire of Light wants to send soldiers inside or reassign you from your general positions, you must inform me in advance. Act exactly as you did when you were alive so that the soldiers notice no difference," Flain ordered.

"At your service," A1 and A2 said simultaneously.

Then Flain went and pulled the lever by the gate, opening it. Once both Itai and Flain were inside, the gate closed.

"What's your plan?" Itai asked as they both began walking down.

"It's simple. Since I need 50,000 souls to evolve to Stage 4, I need a passive income of them. A dungeon works in such a way that the more monsters die in it, the more it expands. You'll position soldiers throughout the dungeon so that whenever a monster appears anywhere, it's killed immediately. That will bring a passive income of souls, EXP, and on top of that, the soldiers will grow stronger as they absorb mana from the dead monsters."

"Plus, since every monster that spawns here will be killed instantly, the dungeon will deepen at an extreme rate. So it won't take long before Stage 2s start appearing as well. A1 and A2 will meanwhile pretend nothing is happening here and inform us if the Empire plans to do anything with the dungeon. I'll give you a more detailed description of how the soldiers will operate here once I've cleared it of monsters," Flain explained.

"That's an amazing plan. I wouldn't expect anything less from you," Itai marveled.

A2 didn't know exactly why the Empire guarded the dungeon but did nothing inside it. He suspected they planned to turn it into a training ground in the future.

When they reached the bottom, right at the edge of the valley, they were immediately attacked by a group of Green Lizards, which Flain easily killed.

"I'm going to clear the valley and the dungeon completely of monsters. Wait here for now, and just in case, summon a few soldiers to protect you," Flain said before disappearing.

He ran across the entire valley, killing everything in sight. In the distance, the bone towers of the Green Lizards' settlement loomed over him. Flain easily leapt over them and began slaughtering the Lizards inside.

But he noticed something—there was no Svetloid anywhere. That was strange, because Svetloids rarely left the walls. But he immediately realized why Aran wasn't here, and the system quickly confirmed it.

Beings whose souls Flain had enslaved were bound to him forever. So even if time was shifted to the past, to a point where Flain hadn't yet enslaved their souls, they simply wouldn't exist there.

It was yet another obstacle the system threw in Flain's way, since he couldn't kill them to gain EXP. Still, it wasn't that big of a disadvantage, as Flain had only enslaved the souls of two such beings.

He massacred all the Green Lizards, then went to visit the Black Lizards, whom he also wiped out along with their Svetloid very quickly. He then swept through the entire territory once more to make sure that no one remained alive except himself and Itai.

Next, he entered the dungeon, went through it entirely, and killed every monster he found before returning to Itai. For all that, he gained 140,000 EXP, which was a pretty decent amount for less than an hour.

"I killed all the monsters in both the valley and the dungeon. There were about 300 here, and you've already resurrected around 50 of them. So once you resurrect all of them, the army should have 550 units, including 20 Stage 2s and two Stage 3s. You can get started," Flain ordered.

Itai sighed; this would take at least two days. But since it would expand the army by almost half, he didn't really mind.

Two days later, Itai had resurrected every monster he could, and their army had grown to 550 units, just as Flain had predicted. A1 reported that so far, nothing unusual had happened with the soldiers and that mission "Doppelgänger" was proceeding smoothly.

Itai ordered all the soldiers to be summoned before him, led by Tank, who stepped forward in front of Flain...