“-the sieglviet god of the black flag?” Cordelia complained upon hearing my choice of deity. She wasn’t the only one who wasn’t happy.

  “You make peace with goblins!” I grumbled. The dream quest had lasted almost two days, despite feeling like much less time had passed. In my absence, Cordelia had diverted Ghost from exploring the forest to go find goblins.

  “Not killing each other is the first stage of any negotiation. We moved into their territory, and I got their chief to agree to let us stay here with no concessions. Didn’t you agree with me that we should avoid unnecessary conflict?”

  “Changed my mind, I need experience.”

  “Zed, we’ve talked about this. Hurting sentient creatures is wrong. There are better ways to get experience than killing innocent demi-humans.”

  “They give blood?” I asked.

  “What? No.” She put her foot down. There was a pause as I stopped to think.

  “What if I say please?” I asked. Cordelia had been nagging me for a while to say please and thank you. It seemed bit pointless to me, but it was not worth it to argue.

  “Kunya! No.”

  “So why not kill for blood? Take blood and get experience?”

  “It would be wrong. Why do you even want blood?”

  “For blood baths!”

  “Ew. When your levels reset, didn't you lose that ghastly ability?” Her essence briefly bubbled a sickly green.

  “Yes.”

  “So, why do you need blood?”

  “For a bath, it is relaxing, and being king is stress. Only need kill one or two.”

  “Zed! No!” She said.

  Cordelia's essence bubbled over with a crimson red for a moment, but then as she paused and shuffled from one foot to another it took on a murky green. “Even if it wasn’t morally wrong, you can’t kill any of them; I signed a non-aggression pact.”

  “What?”

  “It’s a [Contract], and the best work around I have for our lack of proper diplomatic tools. You mustn’t attack them, or you will spawn another angel coming for your head.”

  “You sign it. Why my head?”

  “I’m the clan’s [Messenger]. Handling the diplomatic side of our kingdom is my job, but you are still the named signatory in any agreements.”

  “My clan!”

  “Just leave this to me, please Zed. I’m going to meet another nearby goblin tribe today; give me a year and I can have the entire mountain united under your flag. It should be easy for someone of my skills.” She said.

  As living creatures, we couldn’t recruit goblins to the clan directly. I had found that out when I was interrogating the system and trying to figure out what our [Neural Limit] was. The system boxes that used to explain things so nicely were remarkably unhelpful these days. What Cordelia was proposing was a [Defensive Pact], which would first need Hans to research [Writing], and then [Diplomacy I].

  I considered the pros and cons of letting Cordelia loose on the rest of the goblins. She was busy explaining that her long-term plan was to form a pseudo-empire of goblin vassal tribes. It wasn’t as good as having more zombies in the horde, but would let us boss the goblins, assuming she succeeded. The vassal tribes would have to pay tribute to me, which I could then use to pay tribute to Tiyanon. Even if we just only made defensive pacts with a few tribes, I could hide behind them if the [Enforcer] attacked.

  On the other hand, I really wanted to just kill the goblins and didn’t want to wait around for a year. I wanted their experience, their blood, and maybe their brains.

  “Half.” I offered once I had finished weighing the arguments for and against her proposal.

  “Half?” She asked.

  “Half make vassal, half kill.” I explained. Another one of Cordelia’s lessons in good manners and decency was the importance of compromise.

  “Ti chien… No Zed! These goblins might be savages, but they aren’t animals. Tykosia had an entire guild of goblin crafters for Baalknir’s sake.”

  “So?”

  “Their needlework was amongst the best in the empire. They are living, breathing, and thinking creatures.” She said, her voice was creeping up in volume.

  “So?” I said, doing my best Ghost impression.

  “So, slaughtering them would be evil!” Ghost, Hans, and Bob had come closer to listen, but she was practically shouting by this point.

  “I am evil.” I replied, a little confused.

  Cordelia looked like she was preparing a retort when the words died on her lips. She stood stock-still and watched me with an undecipherable look in her eyes. “When we first met, you said that you weren’t evil, that you didn’t chose to be a zombie, and that I shouldn’t judge you for being an undead abomination.” She spoke quietly, and I could feel her gaze on me, watching closely for my reaction.

  “I was new when I said that. You teach me what is good and evil. You are good, and you my friend, so I act good for you. But, I am evil, why you not act evil for me? Why not compromise?” I asked. She flinched at the words, which only deepened my confusion.

  “I… need to think.” She said, and her essence drained back into her flask.

  After my conversation with Cordelia, I felt like I had somehow lost something. It was strange because I was certain that I hadn’t misplaced any items. Now that Hans had organised our junk, it was easy to keep track of everything. I hadn’t lost any zombies either: I counted and there were still thirty-five zombies in the cave, not including myself, or the screamer lurking outside.

  If I figured out how to recruit the skittish screamer, I could hire it to replace my big hulk as [Shaman]. My experience in the dream quest confirmed for me that Pecs was not a good choice and I couldn’t leave the big guy in charge of something so important as a whole religion. We could have ended up getting bossed about by a bonehead death knight, or licking cat feet.

  The screamer’s cautious nature might be a good thing when dealing with a powerful deity, but I needed to work out how to get it to stop scampering away like a mouse every time I tried to talk to it. It didn’t seem to have any issues with the other zombies, so the problem was something to do with me.

  In the meanwhile, I would have to keep an eye on my [Shaman] and limit him to mundane jobs. I would have to deal with anything important that popped up personally, but in the council screen it said that his next objective was just to bless a place of worship. I opened the kingdom interface and focused on the religion subsystem.

  Why were there no bonuses for undead? What was with all the boats? How did Deadbeard know about Voulos? Oh Zed, you stupid gompta. Deadbeard was Bishop-Captain Dreadbeard; he had tricked me! How could someone as smart as me fall for such deceptions?

  The spirit had maliciously bent the truth, and played into my trusting nature. Most of the religious bonuses were useless, and then there was the religious quest he gave us. He wanted us to kill, defile and loot Voulos. What was it he had said as we parted? “If ye truly be a free zombie of t’ black flag it won’t be hard, and t’ reward be priceless."

  When my thoughts turned to my former master, everything clicked into place. I knew I had recognised that heavy accent, and I finally remembered where I had heard it before. Before Cordelia, there was that pirate captain. I had forgotten his name but remembered the fuss he caused. Voulos had summoned him to teach me the clicks, and they spent the entire time arguing.

  I still had a few jigsaw pieces to put together, but I was beginning to see the whole picture. Dreadbeard was a friend of the pirate captain and wanted revenge for whatever they had been arguing about. Did Dreadbeard know I killed Voulos before he gave me the quest? I definitely wouldn’t have described killing my master as anything other than a fluke, and certainly not easy, free zombie or not. To complete the quest, I needed to loot Voulos’ vault, and that wasn’t going to happen until I knew the tower was safe.

  It had been almost a week since the [Enforcer] spawned. Whilst it was possible that the angel had moved on, it could still be tearing the tower apart floor by floor. Ghost was the obvious choice, being the only zombie that was unlikely to get lost in the woods, but I wasn’t willing to risk her. She could be annoying, but she was an important part of the clan. She was my friend and I had named her.

  Ghost had done well in my absence. Despite getting side-tracked by Cordelia she had completed her mission already to find three points of interest. At first I thought she had explored most of the map already, but when I unfolded it to its full size, I saw that the revealed area was barely a speck on the map.

  The kingdom map’s sheer size made the minimap look puny by comparison, but the information it showed was less specific. For example, it didn’t show the location of nearby creatures or party members, only points of interest and general terrain. The system considered the nearby goblin villages interesting enough to put on the map but labelled both as simply [Barbarian Villages].

  Coincidentally, Ghost’s next mission was to find us a good place to establish a village of our own. There were a bunch of requirements listed, but many of them were crossed out. For example, access to water was normally a requirement, but it was crossed out and labelled as not applicable.

  I had already decided to build our kingdom underground like goblins, but the cave we were in was too small. We would have to take over a bigger cave, or somehow expand the one we were living in at the moment. [Mining I] was a relatively low fruit on the technology bush, and only the only other technology it needed was [Stone Tools]. It had a non-technological requirement for us to have discovered a minable resource, which had me a bit stumped.

  ‘Ghost can you look for shiny rocks?’ I asked over our party chat. ‘Please.’ I added as an afterthought.

  ‘Why?’ Ghost replied with a slight delay. She was still up the mountain searching for more goblin caves for Cordelia.

  ‘So we can get [Mining I].’ I explained.

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Think about it.’

  ‘For moneys?’

  ‘No, but good guess. Is for digging, for growing cave.’

  ‘Ok.’ Ghost replied. I was a little surprised at her sudden co-operation but thought better than to question it

  Taking over goblin caves would probably be much easier than growing our own. Ghost could smell levels with [Aroma Specialist] so we could attack one of the weaker tribes. So why was I hesitating? Thanks to Cordelia, we couldn’t attack the nearest tribe, but the next tribe she had been planning to meet wasn’t much further into the mountains. So why was I hesitating?

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  I've been reading , a book that needs no shout out but I'm going to anyway because I really enjoyed it :)