After adding one hundred slaves to his arsenal, Clayton rushed into battle, and his new slaves followed suit.
He understood that they had to be taught when to attack, how, and who. As he ran into battle, butt-naked as he was, his slaves followed suit!
As he clashed with the enemy, either punching some of them senseless with his bare hands, or draining the life out of them one at a time using The Demon's Kiss ability, his slaves mimicked his actions by attacking in the best way they knew how!
Either with their swords or their magic, they punched through the enemy without the slightest sense of fear in their eyes!
Comrades the enemy used to know, had turned on them and were cutting heads off, or burning bodies all together, which was nothing short of terrifying! It was hard to get used to fighting the undead, nearly skinless version of the men and women they used to know.
Anyway, paired with the slaves he used to have prior to getting the new ones, Clayton had a total of one-hundred and twenty slaves fighting for him! They were effective against what remained of the enemy brigade, and were cutting through the tired, albeit traumatized soldiers like a knife through butter! The enemy numbers were already below three-hundred, so at this point, the battle felt more like a game to him, and he was even having fun!
He knew he'd win, he knew the enemy was doomed. They were all going to die today, so he took his time, and didn't initiate step two of his plan for a while. He waited five minutes, just to see how long the enemy could hold his slaves off.
"Heroes… hah!" He scoffed, as he drained yet another man's life. "Nothing heroic about dying like old, tired dogs!"
As he kept his killing spree going, he shouted, "You should've just left us to pray in peace! Now look at you! Hahahaha!"
The enemy numbers kept getting thinner. His slaves managed to mow down a hundred of them, while losing as little as forty comrades on their side! It was clear that the system had picked good skeletons to resurrect.
The undead woman that looked like a princess, kept raging across the battlefield. The magic she bore was interesting. She could shoot spikes out of her hands, or nails, basically, and these nails were quite effective against heavy armor when she shot twenty of them at a time! She dropped twenty bodies by herself, and it didn't look like she intended to stop.
Clayton smiled as he saw her fight, and then he slowly backed away from the battlefield. He let his slaves carry on, so he could finally initiate step two of his plan.
The second step was rather simple. He distanced himself from the battlefield, and walked around them, so he could attack them from behind, essentially squeezing the enemy between what he liked to call The Sandwich Of Doom!
His slaves were dead set to keep the frontline. They were so focused on the battle that they didn't even follow him around anymore. They were simple creatures, and once they got tunnel vision, dead-set on a goal, it was hard to snap them out of it.
This served the Sandwich.
Clayton snuck behind the enemy brigade, and started unleashing the Life Draining Mist on them, sandwiching the soldiers between the raging undead, and the deadly red mist!
As the mist expanded, the enemy numbers dwindled quickly. Some tried to run away, some even swung at him, but inevitably, the mist grew so big that it swallowed half of the brigade in no time, and every man and woman who found themselves in the mist, died within seconds no matter what they did.
Mere cuts did not bother him at all. They could cut his head off several times, for all he cared, and he'd still be able to grow a new one. The abilities of a Fleshmancer, under the right conditions, were truly overpowered! It did not matter what man faced him, it didn't matter what their ranks were amongst society, because as long as they were vulnerable to his mist, or even The Devil's Kiss, they were going to die one way or the other!
Clayton figured that the only way he could die in battle was if his Life Essence Points ran out, or if a Mage hit him so hard to the point where he'd lose all of his Life Essence in one or two blows. Judging from how easily he ate through what used to be a brigade of thirteen-hundred, he was yet to meet a Mage who could take him down.
The brigade was wiped out minutes after he unleashed the mist. The mist took out more than half of them, and his slaves did the rest of the work. His points went up every other second, and once he absorbed the mist, his statistics were looking better than ever!
[Soul Points = 6,820]
[Life Essence Points = 4,950]
Clayton was happy with those results. He knew that he spent a few hundred Life Essence Points while he sandwiched the brigade with the mist he unleashed, so he was happy to see those numbers bounce up again.
The brigade was wiped out, he reaped the benefits of their death as much as he possibly could, and even had fifty undead slaves to his command. Slaves that had survived both the battle, and had been too far away from the red mist to be affected by it.
As the forest finally became silent, the song of birds followed suit. Birds could finally sing again, as the battle that was supposed to take out the Followers of Thaleena, ended up with over thirteen-hundred casualties, and with only one winner, Clayton. He almost thought that the birds sang on behalf of him, celebrating his victory!
Clayton walked across the dried up skeletons, and as he slowly calmed his nerves down, he began to come to terms with all the death he had caused today. He even started feeling bad for them, as he believed that whoever ordered them to come here, had sent them to a death trap. Those men and women were just following orders, and yet he had yanked out sons, daughters, husbands, and wives out of hundreds of families!
He grew more and more aware of what he did today, and even though he remained maddened by power, he silently mourned the deaths of the enemy. A lot of them could've survived today if they grew half a mind and abandoned the battle.
Clayton squatted, zoned out for a little bit, and spoke to the hundreds of lifeless skeletons of the former brigade, as if they had ears to listen to him.
He lowered his voice, and said, "I'm sorry you had to die this way. You fought the best way you knew how, and you were surely following orders, but… you lost, and I'm alive, more than alive, standing on your bodies that even maggots wouldn't want to touch. I hope you know that your death served little purpose, and as of today, it will send many other men and women to their doom, because you opened a door, a room that you couldn't afford to step into. Wherever your path may take you from this point onwards, either Heaven or Hell, let them know that your deaths served little purpose, and only aided destruction, as you failed to stop me, a man that you didn't even know was a threat. Tell my tale, spread my sorrow, let the afterlife know that I will exact my revenge, no matter how many other families I have to destroy."
Then he stood up, sighed, and raised his voice, chanting, "When the Gods mourn the Fall of Man, let them know that all I wanted in life was to be left alone! If that doesn't buy me a spot in Paradise, let the Gods know that I'm coming for them next!"