Chapter 11: Broom and the Bones

The morning after the village received its coal, Jack woke up feeling something he hadn’t experienced since transmigrating: a distinct lack of pain.

He lay in his bed, staring up at the roof. The fire in his hearth was still crackling, radiating a deep warmth through the room. When he took a breath, his lungs expanded smoothly. The sharp, tearing sensation of the mana-burn was completely gone.

He sat up, swinging his legs over the edge of the mattress. He still felt weak—his arms were painfully thin, and his legs trembled slightly but the core in his chest felt much better.

“Time to push the limits,” Jack muttered.

He grabbed his brass-headed cane, locked his bedroom door, and descended the secret trapdoor into the crypts.

Down in the subterranean vault, Rusty, Dusty, and Bones were standing exactly where they had retreated the day before, waiting in perfect silence. Jack walked past them, his cane tapping against the stone, and moved toward the long rows of the guards’ resting niches.

He needed to expand the crew. The coal mine was essential, but it wasn’t their only problem.

Jack knew basic human biology. The grain and dried peas they had bought from Merchant Gary would provide enough calories to keep the villagers from starving, but a diet consisting entirely of starch and dried legumes for months would lead to a disaster. Within eight weeks, the villagers would start developing scurvy. To survive the winter, they needed fresh food. They needed vegetables and meat.

And to grow vegetables in a frozen wasteland, Jack needed to build a greenhouse.

He stopped in front of three open niches containing the scattered bones of past guardsmen.

Jack closed his eyes, tapping into the cold, swirling pool of energy in his chest. He pushed the mana outward, guiding three separate streams of pale blue-grey vapor toward the shelves.

Clack. Rattle. Snap.

The crypt echoed with the sound of bones sliding across stone. Within seconds, three new skeletons stood up, stepping down from their niches to stand before him.

Jack felt the mental weight hit his brain once again.

Going from three active links to six was a massive leap. It felt as though someone had suddenly handed him the reins to six different draft horses, all pulling in slightly different directions. His vision blurred for a moment, and a ache blossomed behind his eyes. He planted his cane firmly on the floor, gritting his teeth until his Grey Core spun faster, compensating for the strain. The ache finally became somewhat manageable.

He looked at his three new workers.

One of them was holding an old, dried-out wooden bucket that had been left in the tomb decades ago.

“You will be Bucket,” Jack said, pointing at the skeleton. It gave a jerky nod.

He looked at the other two. “You are Spade, and you are Scrap. Join the others.”

He now had a crew of six. Jack quickly divided his labor force. He commanded Bones, Dusty, Rusty, Spade, and Scrap to head to the sealed, collapsed inner courtyard of the castle. Their task was simple but grueling: clear the stone rubble, and dig out the dirt to prepare a flat foundation for the runic greenhouse.

But he kept Bucket with him.

Jack needed to test the fine motor skills of his undead. Mining and lifting heavy rocks was one thing, but if he was going to build an empire, he needed workers who could perform delicate, precise tasks without accidentally destroying the castle.

He led Bucket up the stairs, bypassing his bedroom entirely, and guided the skeleton up to the sealed third-floor corridors.

This section of the castle had been closed off for years. The stone walls were thick with decades of black soot from old, poorly vented oil lamps, and the floorboards were covered in a thick layer of dust.

Jack stopped in the middle of the hallway. He handed Bucket a wet rag and pointed to the bucket of soapy water the skeleton was already holding.

“Scrub the wall,” Jack commanded mentally. “Remove the black soot. Make the stone clean.”

Bucket immediately dropped to its bony knees. It dipped the rag into the soapy water, pressed it against the stone wall, and began to scrub.

Scrape. Scrape. Scrape.

The skeleton moved with precision. However, Jack quickly noticed a problem. Bucket was scrubbing the exact same six-inch patch of stone over and over again. The soot was gone, but Bucket didn’t stop. Skeletons had absolutely no judgment. If Jack didn’t intervene, Bucket would keep scrubbing that single spot until it wore a hole straight through the masonry.

“Move your hand to the dirty spots,” Jack corrected mentally, refining the command. “Once a spot is clean, move to the next.”

Bucket adjusted its grip. It finished a patch, then dragged the rag a few inches to the left, scrubbing away the next layer of grime.

“Perfect,” Jack whispered, feeling a sense of immense satisfaction.

His legs were beginning to ache from standing on the floor, so Jack decided to step into the adjacent, empty drawing-room to sit in a dust-covered chair for a few minutes while Bucket worked. He left the corridor door open so he could keep an eye on the skeleton.

Downstairs, Karen was on a mission.

Armed with her wooden sweeping broom and a massive ring of iron master keys, the maid was determined to make the castle presentable. The arrival of the coal had filled her with a renewed, frantic energy. Her lord was recovering, the hearths were burning, and she felt it was her absolute duty to clean the floors.

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She marched up the central staircase, her oversized boots clacking against the stone.

As she reached the third-floor landing, she stopped. Her ears perked up. From down the sealed hallway, she could hear a strange noise.

Scrape. Scrape. Splash.

Karen frowned. It sounded like someone washing the floors. But she was the only maid in the castle, and Giles and his men were outside sorting the coal.

She gripped her wooden broom tightly in both hands, tiptoeing down the corridor. She slid her master key into the lock of the hallway door and turned it quietly.

She pushed the door open.

There, kneeling on the floor, was a literal human skeleton. It had no eyes, no skin, and no organs. It was simply a pile of moving, ivory bones. And it was currently holding a soapy rag, vigorously scrubbing the soot off the stone wall.

For a normal person, this would be the moment to faint, or perhaps turn and run screaming for the hills.

But Karen was not normal. She had spent the last three years watching the Frost-Grip family wither away, fighting a desperate, losing battle against cold, and starvation. The sight of a skeleton didn’t trigger her survival instinct; it triggered her fierce, protective, territorial rage.

“Demons!” Karen shrieked at the top of her lungs. “Demons dirtying my Lord’s halls!”