Chapter 82: The Corpse-Puppet of the Tirishifa Family (13/26)

Luther first introduced O’Lulu and the others to Schmidt, then explained everything that had happened that day.

When he heard that something had gone wrong with the undead servants of his household, Schmidt also grew anxious. He ordered his men to wheel him back to the manor, and had Luther explain everything here to O’Lulu and the others.

Only after his father had left did Luther say, “My father is going to gather the undead. Please wait here a moment. I’ll explain the situation with our family’s servants so it will be easier for you to deal with them.”

With Luther’s explanation, O’Lulu quickly gained a rough understanding of the undead servants.

Aside from the fellows who had been circling the tree outside, the Terisifa family’s undead still included four other ranks.

These undead were distinguished by the strength and intelligence they had possessed in life, rather than by cultivation level as with zombies.

The finest among them had been true villains in life, each with more than ten lives on their hands, and they retained both intelligence and combat ability.

All of them had been carefully refined by the Terisifa family, and every one of them served as bodyguard and important subordinate to the clan.

Beyond them were two remaining categories.

One consisted of fighters; the other, of intelligent ones. The fighters were stationed throughout the island according to their strength, serving as defense and guards, and these were also the ones dispatched from the island to fight.

The intelligent ones served in the manor as attendants, advisors, and stewards, handling all manner of miscellaneous affairs on the island.

Finally, there was a batch of failed products, some of them not even complete in body; all of these were simply thrown into the sea.

There, on the ocean floor, they wandered about, forming the island’s outermost line of defense.

As for these undead, the Red Queen’s demand was that all of them be assembled, whether intelligent or warlike, even including the most elite among them.

Luther agreed to this request.

Soon, all the undead had been gathered. Schmidt even summoned a few old relics hidden underground, said to be beings who had come to the island together with the family from Europe.

The Red Queen used a size-altering spell on each undead one by one, and in the end truly uncovered more than a dozen enemies hiding among the undead throng.

Each time an undead grew larger, O’Lulu would always rush to the front, draw his sword, and unleash sharks or lions, forcibly chopping every undead creature to pieces.

At first Luther thought O’Lulu was rather strange. Shouldn’t this sort of monster-slaying be left to the underlings? The undead had all been prepared for it already, only to be reduced to bones in the end; what a waste. But by then he no longer bothered himself with the matter.

Meanwhile, the White Queen was carefully tallying the number of undead that had been uncovered.

At last she said with some concern, “That makes fifteen already.”

O’Lulu asked in confusion, “What does that mean?”

“Spades, including the queen and king, only have thirteen cards in all. Add the one we killed earlier, and that makes sixteen. In other words, aside from spades, clubs and diamonds may also have been activated.”

“They’ve only activated clubs. Diamonds haven’t been activated yet,” the Red Queen said from the side.

The White Queen asked curiously, “Sis, how do you know that?”

The White Queen said proudly, “I’m slowly approaching the domain of diamonds.”

“Then that means there are at least ten cards left,” O’Lulu said after some thought.

“Not necessarily. If the other side considers themselves to be the queen, then there won’t be a king. And if they’ve stepped beyond the limits of playing cards, there may even be jokers,” said the Red Queen. Her understanding of the card soldiers was extremely thorough, and her grasp of the numbers was the most precise of all.

“But all of our undead are here,” Luther said.

“No, perhaps there are still some that were never properly finished, or were failures thrown into the sea.”

“In that case, checking them all will be troublesome.”

“You don’t want to be blindsided in the end, do you?”

By then Schmidt, who had already seen the effect, nodded and said, “Luther, open the family laboratory. There are still some unfinished ones stored there.”

Luther nodded and, bringing along the undead that had already been proven harmless, opened the family laboratory.

O’Lulu and the others followed him inside.

The moment he entered the Terisifa family laboratory, O’Lulu’s first impression was that it looked like a gigantic slaughterhouse.

Countless corpses were soaking at random in liquids that looked yellowish-green. Pointing at the fluids, Luther said, “Be careful. This is an old brew we brought from Europe. Over all these years we’ve kept adding all sorts of ingredients to it, and now its toxicity is beyond what humans can withstand. So much as touching a drop by accident means certain death. If you force your way through, you’ll only end up becoming undead in the end.

“So make absolutely sure not to touch the liquid. Our family has never made a habit of using living people to create undead, but we also have no way to turn undead back into living people.”

O’Lulu and the others nodded. The Red Queen pointed at the corpses soaking in the poison and asked, “Do these all count as undead?”

“No. Only those that can be soaked without rotting away count,” Luther said. “The ones that rot into mush simply become nourishment for the poison.”

The Red Queen nodded and cast a size-altering spell on every visible corpse.

Luther had been about to say that these had not even been refined yet, so there was no way enemies could be among them, when three of the corpses suddenly swelled up.

O’Lulu had no intention this time of jumping down to hack the bodies into pieces. He had no way to guarantee that he wouldn’t get contaminated by the poison.

So he drew his revolver and fired three shots straight into the three corpses’ heads.

After those three shots, the corpses actually climbed out of the toxic liquid, baring teeth and claws as they lunged at O’Lulu.

At that moment, the undead following behind Luther rushed forward and pinned the three corpses down. Only then did O’Lulu draw his longsword and cleave them cleanly in half.

Watching the three bodies finally fall still, Luther’s expression also turned grave. He led O’Lulu and the others deeper inside. Farther in was the area where corpses judged to have potential were refined into undead. There, the members of the Terisifa family would reclassify the bodies according to the dead’s original constitutions.

The worst were naturally just hung up at random. The better ones would begin having materials like mercury infused into their bodies, while the finest corpses would be soaked in specially prepared potions.

This would often take three to five years of soaking before the final stage of undead creation even began.

Of course, Luther would only ever explain things as far as this. He could take everyone to see the laboratory where the final undead were produced, but he would never say how the process was actually done.