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With only its core to power, the dragon was a powerful being, but it didn’t pose half the danger it once did. Even his magic wasn’t that powerful anymore, as the zombie dragon drew energy from the dragon core to empower his spells.

“You don’t need to hold him anymore, Treevor. I don’t know why destroying the dragon’s heart weakened him so much, but he won’t be able to fight in his current state.’ Athos spoke and Treevor obeyed, not wanting to waste any more of his amber energy.

The dragon wasn’t resisting anymore, too busy with its own pain to care about anything.

‘Boss, if destroying your heart doesn’t work, we need to destroy your brain.’ Treevor informed Athos, but it was too late.

The bone abominations realized that the dragon had weakened and that they now had enough strength to hurt it, so they decided to kill it themselves. It was the first time a bone abomination had been killed and his brothers were furious.

They pinned the zombified dragon’s body against the ground and grabbed its limbs and neck, before twisting until its bones broke and ripping it off with sheer brute force.

“...” Treevor and Athos were shocked by the brutality of the bone abominations. Not in their wildest dreams did they expect to dismember a dragon like that.

“Is it over? Really? We beat a dragon?” Treevor asked in quick succession, as if confirming he wasn’t dreaming. He even tried to pinch his own arm, only to be reminded that it had no skin.

.....

When reality finally hit him, he started jumping and screaming as loud as he could, celebrating his victory.

Athos on the other hand, was angered by the bone abominations for spoiling such a precious material.

“You know what you just did? Why did you destroy the corpse like that? You don’t know that I can turn corpses into new allies, so why do that?” Athos asked angrily, making the bone abominations grunt sadly.

“Hey, wait. What do you mean turn him into an ally? That dragon is already an undead, how the hell would you turn him into another?” Treevor stopped his celebration to ask confused.

“Well, I thought that just like the white skeletons, I could inject a spark of life force into the dragon’s corpse and turn it into a black skeleton. It worked before, it might work now.” Athos spoke with a shrug and Treevor was forced to admit that it might work.

“We can heal the dragon’s corpse using darkness magic, as long as we have enough food to feed a dragon.” Treevor spoke with a wry smile, wondering how much food it would take to feed something that size.

“We still have the winter rations from the stronghold in addition to the rations the human army brought, so it won’t be a problem.” Athos silenced his worries before a voice sounded in his head.

‘My king, are you alright?? Are you safe??’ Astrus asked after recovering from the roar influx and finding no traces of Athos or the dragon.

‘We’re done here. The dragon is dead.’ Athos spoke as if it was no big deal.

The elite skeletons woke up one by one and were shocked to learn that the dragon was killed while they were passed out, with the exception of Vanilla, who watched the battle. Fortunately, she stayed far enough away from the gates to not get involved in the battle but close enough to watch.

She still had several broken bones and needed her subordinates to carry her, but she was laughing with excitement.

“You should have seen that...the dragon was completely...dismembered. It was hilarious...it’s my little girl dream...killing a dragon like that.” Vanilla spoke while laughing hysterically.

“Damn, I wish I’d seen that.” Emilia complained as she approached Athos and bowed in apology. “I apologize for falling without even a fight. It’s a disgrace to me and all skeletons.”

“It doesn’t matter. But we have even more work to do now. Astrus, I want you to make a count of how many undead were destroyed during the battle. Emilia, gather workers and scavenge the rubble of the enemy base for anything useful. Caio, use your unit to collect the broken bones and scales torn from the dragon. They are valuable materials after all.” Athos ordered the skeletons, eliciting more than a few exasperated sighs.

“You really are going to work us to the bone.” Treevor complained, but Athos pretended not to hear.

“Besides, let’s start preparations to leave the fortress. There’s nothing left for us here.” Athos added and this time it was Emilia who jumped with joy.

***********

The skeletons spent the next few hours working non-stop.

Athos’ priority was to restore the dragon’s corpse, consuming most of the rations he had. He connected all the limbs back into place, including the crushed tail and wings among the wreckage and after falling outside the walls.

Broken tusks and scales scattered around the fortress and in the wreckage were also recovered, although Athos had not used them to restore the dragon. He restored the scales and fangs using darkness, but saved them for later use as crafting materials.

After finishing restoring the dragon’s corpse to a perfect state, Athos fed it a spark of his life force, finding that like Treevor, it wasn’t enough. The dragon core required a spark of your life force, just like an ordinary mana core.

Athos didn’t hesitate and shared a second spark, anticipating that something similar to what happened to him when he raised Treevor would occur again, but there was no noticeable change, except that he was given back twice the life force of an ordinary undead.

He was a little disappointed, but the changes to the dragon’s corpse quickly made him forget.

All of the dragon’s flesh was swallowed as its bones blackened, but things got weird from there. The dragon core was not swallowed by the bones, but turned into a pulsing black mass and released a dark mist that surrounded all of its bones, making the dragon look more like a shadow dragon than a bone dragon.

Athos didn’t understand why the dragon was so different from the other skeletons, but the dark mist seemed to serve to replicate all of the skeleton dragon’s magic organs, so he didn’t complain.

The skeleton dragon raise slowly, the empty sockets in its skull looking around curiously, until it landed on Athos.

Athos feared that the dragon would be enraged by the memory of being killed, but it turned out to be an unnecessary concern. The black chain had an easy time taking over the dragon’s mind, as the ancient had destroyed all of its memories and personality.

He bowed his head until it touched Athos, showing his submission and asking for attention.

“Good boy.” Athos patted what he thought was the nose, discovering that the mist surrounding the dragon was not ethereal but physical. It seemed the organs were made using corrupted mana, rather than pure darkness, giving physical substance to the mist.

Athos was excited to test his newest subordinate’s limits, but reports from the skeletons arrived to interrupt his fun.

‘My king, I have already finished assessing our losses. A total of 5466 skeletons were destroyed, in addition to 10 bone abominations. Many buildings were also destroyed and large-scale spells are useless at the moment.’ Astrus reported.

‘I see, good job. Take a count of how many skeletons we currently have and start removing the mithril plates all over the fortress.’ Athos ordered. He tried to turn his attention back to the dragon, but Emilia stopped him this time.

‘Master, this is a gold mine! Every stone in the rubble is laced with divine mithril, an alloy of magical metals superior to mithril. In addition, we found several pieces of mithril among the rubble, some of them with teleportation crystals embedded.’ Emilia spoke excitedly, her greed obvious in her voice, despite the fact that she knew that whatever they found would be Athos’.

‘We’ve yet to finish evaluating everything we’ve found, but it looks like there were other shipments being transported at the time of the accident, so there’s other stuff besides the mithril.’

‘Any alchemical items or reagents? I could create some interesting alchemical items with the right items.’ Athos asked interested.

‘Master, anything fragile or ingredient has been destroyed beyond recognition within the anomaly. The only reason the dragon survived was its undead nature and the innate physical strength of dragons. Even enchanted weapons would have been destroyed beyond recognition, we’re only looking for the value of the metal rather than looking for undamaged weapons.’

‘I understand, it’s a shame, but all profit is profit. Send me a report when you’re done searching.’ Athos tried to end the conversation, but Emília was not finished.

‘Wait, we still have a problem. How are we going to transport tons of stone mixed with mithril? The carriages we have won’t be enough and even if we send the skeletons to carry the stones, each one will only be able to carry a few kilos at most’. Emilia asked dubiously.

‘Can’t we just build more wagons? There are no trees near here, but with a few hours of walking, we can find trees and build as many carriages as we want.’ Athos suggested something simple, I don’t understand why she didn’t suggest it herself.

‘I wanted to avoid that, as it would delay our departure from the fortress.’ She explained Athos’ silent question.

‘It’s still going to be a few days before we can leave the fortress, so don’t bother and get as many carriages as you can. I won’t leave anything useful behind.’ Athos ordered and ended the communication.