The forest had long grown used to the unnatural silence.
Two months had passed since Vanthelis claimed dominion over the gnolls and established the Haunted Gold Mine. What was once a patch of untouched earth now echoed faintly with whispers of death magic and the scraping sounds of unseen forces working beneath the soil.
The mine didn't function like a traditional one. No pickaxes, no heavy carts, no clumsy gnoll labor. The true work was done by Acolytes—Haben and the newly christened Bane, the former gnoll leader now turned into a loyal servant of darkness. The two stood atop the blackened mouth of the mine each day, conjuring strange sigils beneath their feet and raising raw gold ore straight from the earth using dark magic.
Black tendrils crawled into the soil, searching, gripping, and ripping golden veins out from the stone. Sometimes the ore came out raw and steaming, other times already broken into smaller chunks. The pair moved in perfect rhythm—silent, efficient, and inhuman.
Nearby, the cub—once a small, wide-eyed creature—had grown significantly. Faster than expected, as if Vanthelis's necromantic domain twisted its very nature. It wasn't aggressive, just incredibly obedient. It carried things on its back, fetched items with its jaws, and had recently been taught to haul wood gathered from the deeper parts of the forest. Not only that, but it served as the delivery beast—picking up sacks of refined gold coins and carrying them all the way from the mine to the Necropolis.
The gold was not ordinary.
Each night, after extraction, Haben and Bane gathered the ore beneath the Necropolis. There, they performed their ritual. No fire. No furnace. Only darkness.
With murmured chants, they concentrated their necrotic aura onto the golden chunks. The ore hissed as impurities were stripped, melting away like rotting flesh. The purified gold shimmered unnaturally, pulsing slightly as if aware. Then, with a press of shadow energy and cold will, the molten material cooled and took shape—perfect refined gold coins, each marked with the crescent symbol of Vanthelis's growing domain.
The coins were stacked into bone sacks—stitched together by some skeletal hands—and handed to the cub, who ran them back to the vault behind the Necropolis.
The system had recorded every transaction. Every coin. Every log of wood. Every silent moment of growth.
From a scared group of survivors, they had become something else—builders of the dead.
Kristine had taken charge of counting the coins every few days, her tiny hands sorting stacks with careful precision. Dorothy, still in her wooden wheelchair, took over organizing rationing, writing schedules, and tending to the younger children. Even Jayson, after some hesitation, had become a hunter of the forest, gathering meat from birds and small animals using crude traps.
Their base, once shrouded in fear, now felt like the first whispers of an empire.
Vanthelis stood alone at the edge of the forest, looking down toward the Necropolis and its surrounding buildings. The Ziggurat's glow pulsed softly, and the cold wind carried the distant sound of metal—probably a skeleton tripping over the wood pile again.
He raised a hand and whispered.
"System."
A familiar ding echoed in his mind as the transparent blue interface appeared before him.
[SYSTEM STATUS]
Gold: 2348
Wood: 400
He exhaled, slowly curling his fingers into a tight fist. It had taken months, careful manipulation, labor, and death. But now they had the foundation.
Dorothy approached, wheeling herself up beside him. Her eyes locked on the floating numbers.
"You've saved enough," she said.
"Barely," Vanthelis replied. "We'll need more. A lot more. But this is a start."
"What now?"
He lowered his hand, letting the system fade.
"…Now we build. And then we take over this island."