A new Power is Rising (6/13)
[DAY 76]
After Neo binded his Soul with Annabelle's Soul, he decided to add the other women in the gym to his Soulless Myriad.
It would take far too much effort to form a Soul Bond with other human, instead it is much easier to absorb their Souls and turn them into Soulless ones.
After that, a small Soul fragment is enough and the same Bond would be achieved.
He didn't turn Annabelle into Soulless, because he wanted to experiment with her and see whether he could also make a Soul connection with a human being. But after he has bonded with her, he is relatively underwhelmed by the results.
Neo senses Annabelle's emotions and some of her thoughts, but is otherwise unable to do anything with her like he is able to do with his Undead. He cannot transmit information to her telepathically or share his senses with her. Moreover, she also can sense some of his emotions.
Although Neo initially decided after Annabelle surrendered and he saw his mother's similarities she had, he decided not to kill Annabelle, however after the bond was formed he was playing with the idea of killing and eating her after all.
The thought that Annabelle is not devoted to him and yet has her free will bothers him greatly.
In the end however, Neo decided to let her live for now, especially since he still has control over her Soul Core.
If he wants he could order her Soul to destroy itself immediately, so she shouldn't be an issue, however Neo decided to always keep some Soulless around her to monitor her behavior and in case anything suspicious should happen report to him.
...
Neo was done with the procedure after a few hours and all 4,000 plus survivors joined his Soulless Myriad.
Without his Miasma Tower creating Soulless and giving them a Soul Shard takes much longer, if Neo ever decice to expand his territory in the future he will devenetly need the help of more Miasma Towers.
He has a basic idea how to create further Miasma Towers, but he isn't completely sure about everything he would need to do, further experiments are needed in the future to gather more data.
While Neo turned the survivors into Soulless, little did Annabelle know that the Souls of her fighters were being absorbed and destroyed by Neo. To her it looked like Neo did the same thing to them as he did to her.
After the woman all joined the Soulless Myriad, Neo ordered them to behave as they always have, and to continue to see Annabelle as their leader, but also to secretly send him reports of her behavior.
Afterwards, he appointed Annabelle as a new Legate and ordered her to appoint a few Centurions among her soldiers, under her command.
Following this, Neo ordered Annabelle to further expand the position in this location towards the few factories in the city.
Neo also ordered the Myriad in Abeus to send reinforcements to help build defence facilities here.
Neo will use this place mainly for the production of ammunition, especially since near the gymnasium there is an abandoned small ammunition factory, which is worth real gold for any faction in the apocalpse.
The ammunition that Neos Soulless are already producing could improve significantly in quality if they could use the right tools available in the factory.
Neo planed to explore the nearby area for more survivors and ressources which could improv his Legion, therefore Annabelle gave him a rough overview of the nearby towns and the survivors inside of them.
Altogether there are six small cities here in the north of Abeus, in which small groups of survivors fought against each other and the undead for the few supplies still remaining.
But when the Orbital bombardment happened all over the world and the huge Plasma Beams did major damage to Earth's environment, most of the survivors already knew about it and some of them also learned about the military Safezones, that were build on every continent.
Therefore, hundreds of thousands of survivors which are divided into separate hundreds of small groups, are currently preparing to traverse the devastated and with undead infested cities to get to any Safezone near them, as fast as possible.
The only problem is that the positions of the Safezones are not known to all survivors as communication with the military and the many small scattered groups of survivors is not easy to accomplish.
This communication problems with the military, Neo plans to use as efficiently as possible for himself.
He will capture all groups of survivors in the six surrounding towns and add them to his myriad.
What Neo currently lacks are heavy mechanized weapons.
He needs tanks, mechs, battle armor and if possible planetary fighters or spacecraft.
Abeus does have three spaceports, but by the time the apocalypse broke out, all of them had already been stormed and had flown away a long time ago.
While Neos Myriad has been able to salvage a few here and there, these are for the most part ships that are faulty and in need of repair and some rare spare parts that his Myriad has no knowledge of.
And although Neo was trained as a fighter pilot for two years, he can only maintain and easily repair smaller military fighter planes, but he has never learned to build a larger work or even an entire spaceship and can therefore not help further.
The main problem, however, is that spaceships can fly and traverse the atmospheres of planets and go at the speed of light, allowing for a very expensive and rare fuel.
The fuel is called Xeon II and can only be produced at certain refineries and requires a number of rare and expensive raw materials.
Xeon II is so difficult to produce and requires so many different raw materials that even the entire solar system, Sol, can only afford three of them.
One of these is located on Earth and is distributed directly to the various spaceports on Earth worldwide.
So Neo not only needs a working spaceship to leave Earth, but also enough Xeon II.
The only good thing about Xeon II is that it takes decades to deplete, depending on the lightspeed engines and the Xeon core powering the entire starship. If Neo could travel quite a few star systems.
But all this is no longer a big problem for Neo, especially since the Safezones should have spaceships and enough Xeon II.
...
Neo is currently flying over one of the six cities which Annabelle told him about.
The city is completely devastated and one can see bullet holes, blast marks and even some dead people with their heads missing everywhere on the streets.
Countless buildings were completely devastated and debris could be seen everywhere.
According to Annabelle, since the beginning of the Apocalypse, there has been countless tremendous battle between three factions in this City, all were fighting for the last resources still available.
In the end however, neither of the powers won and they ended up in the total annihilation of each other and all the resources alongside the city.
"Humans, they would rather destroy each other themselves than share the resources and power they represent." said Neo.
Afterwards, as Neo saw no reason why he should examine the city more closely he decided to fly on to the next one.
...
The second city had a few small groups of survivors, each barricaded separately in smaller supermarkets, schools and apartment buildings.
There wasn't a large leading survivor group and it seems that each decided to fight for themselves rather than unite and face the undead together.
More than half of those people who decided to survive for themselves were already starving or chose to take the quick salvation with a bullet in their head.
"Standing alone and hiding from danger will never be a solution I'll pursue." said Neo.
Afterwards, Neo again decided to continue flying to the next city, especially since the work of turning the small groups of survivors into his Undead just wasn't worth it.
However, he still sent some orders to his Myriad to bring in a small Cohort of his Legion here to add the humans here to his Undead.
...
[DAY 77]
The third city was gigantic, not as big as Abeus, but there was a larger collection of gigantic skyscraper in this city.
In the meantime, however, the city was enveloped in a sea of fire and one could literally taste the ashes of the former city and its residents in the dark air.
The skyscrapers offer such good fuel that they have probably been blazing since the beginning of the Apocalypse.
Also, like in the other cities, countless undead were gathered on the streets everywhere.
But at the same time, Neo was able to sense some survivors who seem to have barricaded themselves inside a hospital in town.
The survivors completely barricaded the roads leading to the hospital with wrecked cars, and everywhere people could be seen on top of the cars, firing machine guns and pistols at the Horde of Undead below them.
The entire scenery would leave most people feeling hopeless, especially since there were just too many undead compared to the people shooting at them.
Neo speculates that around 5 million undead are besieging the hospital at the barricades currently.
The people, on the other hand, were said to number no more than 100,000 and only half or so were not armed at all.
The group of survivors must have been under siege for several days now, judging from the scars of the battle, they must have been trying to resist the ever growing Horde of Undead ever since, but it seems that this resistance is nearing its end.
However, Neo saw the potential of the still resisting humans and was interested in adding them to his Soulless Myriad.
In the end, however, he decided to turn the people into undead, especially since making them all Soulless would be too exhausting and time consuming.
...
Said and done. Neo lowered himself onto the roof´of the hospital and bit the few soldiers on it, turning them into undead after some time.
But to his regret, one of the soldiers was still able to react quickly and raise an alarm before Neo could bite him.
The group seems to have some ex-military soldiers among them, so the soldier was able to react quicker then the others.
For Neo, however, it made relatively little difference as the human resistance don't really have the means to harm him and therefore he decided to proceed with his endeavour to create more Undead.
The Undead that Neo has recently transformed stormed the hospital from the roof and ran into one room after another.
Screams and cries for help could be heard everywhere, others barricaded themselves in their rooms only to end up being destroyed by Neos wings and afterwards the people inside would end up eaten by the undead.
Following this, Neo and his new undead made their way down to the lower floors and were quickly confronted by a group of soldiers firing at the undead and Neo with their automatic weapons.
But Neo simply used his wings as a shield and was able to fend off the bullets.
When he got close enough, his wings spread wide and cut the weapons from the soldiers' hands.
Afterwards, Neo's Miasma then manifested and shot in all directions, along with parts of Neos blood it had in it, the Misama infected all humans and after a short time the dead began to rise again.
"Rise my Legion and eat until you're full!" Neo said as he looked at his Undead Legion who ran towards the lower floors after he spoke.
After some more brutal fighting to the last man, the human resistance was finally crushed and around 80,000 undead joined Neo's Legion.
In addition, Neo absorbed the Souls of some of the camp's leaders, making them Soulless of his Myriad.
He then ordered his Soulless to bring the Undead towards Abeus and help build up the defenses.
The Undead in particular turned out to be really useful as construction workers, especially since they never lose their energy or get tired. They don't even need to eat anything, but they would lose some of their strength in return.
While Neo doesn't plan on inhabiting Abeus for too long, because he was set on conquering Safezone 9 and the rest anytime soon, a good position is still useful in the meantime while he strengthens his army.
Who knows, maybe one of the military commanders is planning an invasion of Neos terretorium? Or maybe another undead similar to Neo is plotting to take over his forces?
Neo is a paranoid man and would rather be prepared for the worst than see everything he built until now, destroyed once again.
After issuing his orders, Neo went to the fourth city that he would like to take a closer look at.
...
[DAY 78]
Arriving in the fourth city, the scenery looked the same as in the third city.
Burning destroyed skyscrapers, countless undead on the streets and only a few people here and there. But one thing was different for Neo.
He could feel the presence of someone he already knew. The presence of an old fiery acquaintance.
It was Luma the Stage 2 Mutant Undead, who has a Stage 1 Soul and an affinity for.
Neo can sense her presence getting stronger the nearer he got to an old administration building.
In this old administration building, which already has a wall all around it and an natural elevated position, there are currently a few thousand survivors inside who are fighting against a large horde of undead that are approaching and attacking them from every side.
Neo could sense several Stage 1s under the Horde and even some Stage 2s, but all of them had a Stage 0 Soul.
Neo, otherwise speculated that the Horde should consisted of up to 200,000 Undead.
It was obvious that the people in the administration building has bad chances of successfully defending themselves against the oncoming Horde.
One couldn see a few shots coming from the windows of the higher floors of the building and a few Undead died here and there but overall the Horde is already so large that the casualties won't do them any significant damage.
Meanwhile, the Undead on the other side have already overcome the walls of the building and surrounded all sides of it.
It won't be long before the barricades on the windows and entrances will be breached by the Horde of the Undead as well and the humans inside will meet their death.
"Luma the fiery woman must have retreated to this town after burning down the Stage 2 Undead Tree and created her own Horde of Undead in this city. Hmm... So others with a Stage 1 Soul can subjugate other Undead just like me." Neo thought out loud.
"However, she don't seem to be able to control her Undead that effectively, given that there are many gaps in her formation. Any capable army could use these gaps to their advantage and break through the Undead Horde." Neo added as he looked at the Undead Horde at various points.
"She's too hasty and too arrogant, sending her Stage 1s in the wrong compositions at the wrong time to the front line of battle. This costs her unnecessary valuable casualties for the slim chance of penetrating the enemy faster." Neo realized as he watched four Attacker Stage 1 being completely riddled with a salvo of machine guns.
"She also has some Stage 1s with the trait: Agility, which I will declare as ASSASSINS from now on , that she isn't unsing really effectively. Assassins should be used as a means of distraction or should operate in secret to lay traps." explained Neo.
Afterwards, Neo watched the fight through to the end, seeing Luma herself fighting a bunch of soldiers.
Luma looked as demonic as the day Neo saw her last.
Only her control of her fire was different, she could control it better and so could accurately hit and burn some distant targets.
But it seems like her temperament was the same as it was the day Neo met her.
Luma's fire spread around her without any restraint, burning everything around her evern her own Undead and even if she eats a human, she does it quickly while the other half of the human is already burned and continues to burn.
"She shows no restraint, her instincts must have taken control of her by the time she's been killing and eating, the same almost happened to me the first time I ate." Neo concluded as he watched Luma from afar.
He used his Miasma to make him appear like a dark cloud in the sky and so far, Luma should not have found his position until now.
This gives Neo time to further assess Luma's character.
He's toying with the idea of adding her to his Legion, as her potential to serve as one of Neo's weapons would be to his adventage.
At the same time, Neo also hesitates, especially since Luma is obviously not a rational person at the moment. Neo will probably have to fight hard to conquer Luma, while she is not alone, she still has her Horde of Undead under her control.
If Neo acts too quickly it could mean his end, even with a Stage 2 Soul and a strong body, he'll have a hard time fighting a 200,000 strong Horde of Undead alone.
In the end, Neo decided to use the Soulless that followed him in subduing Luma.
They will serve as a diversion and lure the Horde away, while Neo will engage Luma at a distance, weakening her and making her Soul's submission easier.
For the first time, Neo will subdue a being with a Stage 1 Soul and he is sure that the process will take a longer time then usually and will cost Neo a lot of energy too.
But he is willing to make these efforts, as long as he can subdue Luma it would still be worth the effort for him...
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UMI CHANGES:
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NEW: WEAPON FORM: PURPLE EYE BROADSWORD (Explanation:The new broadsword increases Neo's precision and allows Neo to move the sword like an extended arm. In return, the sword demands a portion of the souls from its victims, but gives most of them to Neo)
NEW: WEAPON FORM: RED EYE MACE (Explanation: Neo's weapon forms into a Mace that hungers for blood and battle. The mace increases Neo's power many times over, but requires blood to strengthen itself)
NEW: SOUL PATH ACTIVE ABILITY: SOUL BOND (Explanation: Neo can connect his Soul to other beings, besides Undead, but for this Neo has to use a lot of Soul Energy and needs time to break through the defensive of the other living being's Soul Core.
DANGER: If Neo does not manage to subdue the Soul of the other being, then his Soul will be damaged or he even will be subdued himself)
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UNDEAD LEGION & SOULLESS MYRIAD STRENGTH:
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LEGIONNAIRES: 1,352,213 -> 1,437,853
UNDEAD LEGION COUNT: 109,401 -> 191,522
SOULLESS COUNT: 1,242,942 -> 1,246,331
COHORTS: 400 -> 402
CENTURIONS : 110 -> 124
LEGATES: 20 -> 21
PREFECT: 1 (Aaron)