Chương 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. 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. 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 sometime now.

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.

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 ring of iron master keys, the maid was determined to make the castle presentable.

The arrival of the coal had filled her with a frantic energy. Her lord was recovering, the hearths were burning, and she felt it was her absolute duty to clean the floors. 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. Unauthorized content usage: if you discover this narrative on Amazon, report the violation. Scrape. Scrape. Splash.

Karen frowned. It sounded like someone washing the floors. But she was the only maid in the castle. 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 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 outside. 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!" Jack, sitting in the drawing-room just a few feet away, practically jumped out of his chair. He rushed to the doorway just in time to see Karen raise her wooden broom high above her head like an executioner's axe. THWACK! The wooden block of the broom slammed directly into the side of Bucket's skull. The skeleton's head jerked violently to the side with a loud clack. Soapy water flew from the rag, splashing across the floorboards. Bucket didn't fight back.

Because Jack had only commanded it to clean the wall, the skeleton simply dipped its rag back into the bucket, and prepared to continue scrubbing as if nothing had happened.

"Get out!" Karen screamed, winding up for a second swing, tears of panic and fury streaming down her red face.

"Leave Lord Jack alone!"

"Karen, stop!" Jack yelled, hobbling out into the hallway as fast as his stiff legs would carry him. He threw himself between the maid and the skeleton, grabbing the wooden handle of the broom with both hands.

"My Lord, get back!" Karen sobbed, trying to pull the broom away from him.

"It's a monster! It came from the dark! It's going to curse the castle!"

"It is not cursing the castle, Karen, it is cleaning the wall!" Jack shouted over her hysterics.

"Look at it!" Karen froze, still holding the broom. She blinked, her chest heaving as she finally looked closely at the terrifying undead monster. Bucket was kneeling politely on the floorboards. Soap suds were dripping comically off its smooth skull and trickling down its ribcage. It held the wet rag in one hand, looking completely non-threatening and entirely confused by the interruption.

"It's… it's washing the stone?" Karen whispered, her voice cracking in utter bewilderment.

"Yes," Jack said, gently prying the broom from her trembling hands.

"It is washing the stone. Now, please, come with me to my room. Sit down. I will explain everything." In truth, a small part of Jack felt relieved. He had already been trying to figure out how and when to tell her the truth. Running a secret undead workforce was going to be impossible right under the nose of a maid who lived in the same castle and checked on him every few hours. Since Karen already knew the dark history and specialties of his bloodline, he had just been waiting for the right moment to explain.

Bucket had simply forced his hand. Karen looked from the soapy skeleton to her pale, calm lord. Her legs suddenly lost all their strength, and she leaned heavily against the wall, her face burying itself in her hands as she let out a long, shaky breath. Ten minutes later, Jack and Karen were sitting in his bedchamber. The fire in the hearth was roaring, casting a warm, bright light across the room.

Karen sat on the rickety three-legged stool, her hands wrapped tightly around a mug of hot water, staring into the flames. She was trembling, but she was no longer screaming. Jack sat in his high-backed chair, leaning on his cane. He had just finished explaining everything. He told her about the Grey Core, the dormant death mana that had been burning his lungs, and the ancient crypts beneath his floorboards.

"So… the family reserves," Karen whispered, her eyes wide as she looked up at him.

"The coal. The two tons of coals in the cellar…"

"There was no reserve," Jack said softly.

"The skeletons dug it out of the mine. They hauled it up the stairs, and I delivered it to Barnaby." Karen stared at him, trying to process the magnitude of the lie. The heretical magic. The undead. The fact that the entire survival of their village was currently resting on the bony shoulders of the castle's ancient, dead guards.

"The church in the south…" Karen stammered, her knuckles turning white around her mug.

"If the holy inquisitors find out, they will burn you at the stake, Lord Jack. They call necromancy the ultimate evil. They say it corrupts the soul and brings ruin to the living." Jack remained quiet for a moment. The inherited memories of the original John Frost-Grip flared in his mind, painting a dark and bloody picture of the past. Centuries ago, the Frost-Grip family had not lived in this freezing wasteland. They had been a powerful, influential house in the lush eastern part of the continent.

They had openly used their necromancy to protect their lands and build their power, though they always operated with strict rules and limitations. But when the imperial church began its rise to power, everything changed. The church declared the Grey Arts an unforgivable sin. They overthrew the Frost-Grips, launching a long crusade that killed almost all of Jack's ancestors.

When the broken family finally surrendered after years of battle, the church stripped them of their wealth and banished the survivors to this frozen northern region, fully expecting the harsh winter to finish the job. And it almost had. Jack was probably the very last of his bloodline.

"Do I look corrupted to you, Karen?" Jack asked smoothly, pushing the dark history aside for now. Karen hesitated. She looked at his face. For the first time in two years, his cheeks had a faint touch of color. He wasn't coughing up blood. He wasn't shivering helplessly under blankets. The magic hadn't ruined him, it had cured him.

"And the village," Jack continued, pointing toward the window where the smoke from the chimneys was rising into the sky.

"Are they ruined? Or are they warm?" Karen looked toward the window. She thought about Old Miller's wife weeping with joy over the coal. She thought about the hot porridge in the Great Hall, and the children laughing near the blacksmith's forge. The imperial church called it evil. But the church had abandoned them to freeze to death. The dead guards in the crypt had kept them alive. Karen slowly set her mug down on the floor. The fear in her eyes began to fade, replaced by a fierce, and incredibly stubborn loyalty.

"Giles cannot know," Karen said, her voice suddenly dropping to a serious, conspiratorial whisper.

"He is a good man, but he is superstitious. If he sees the skeletons, he will smash it to pieces with his wood-axe." Jack raised an eyebrow, slightly surprised by her rapid shift in tone.

"I agree. We must keep them hidden."

"The castle is too big for you to watch them all the time," Karen said, her mind already racing with logistics. She wiped the last tear from her cheek and stood up, smoothing down her apron.

"If they are going to mine and clean, they need a schedule. Night shifts for the heavy hauling. Day shifts for the deep cellars where the villagers never go. I will lock the doors to the upper corridors so no one wanders up here." Jack couldn't help but smile. He had expected to spend the next week trying to calm her down. Instead, she was already organizing his labor force.

"You are not afraid of them?" Jack asked.

"I am terrified of them, My Lord," Karen corrected him, her chin held high.

"They are creepy, and their bones clatter too loudly. But they are helping you to live. They saved the village. So, if the dead are working for the Frost-Grips now, then I suppose I am their manager." She walked over to the door, picking up her heavy wooden broom.

"I am going to go lock the lower cellar doors to make sure Giles's men don't wander into the crypt tunnels," Karen said firmly.

"And Lord Jack?"

"Yes, Karen?"

"Tell your skeleton to use less soap," she instructed, her nose wrinkling slightly.

"It leaves streaks on the stone if it isn't rinsed properly." With that, she opened the door and marched out into the hallway, firmly closing it behind her. Jack let out a long, quiet laugh, shaking his head.