He wasn’t the only one who had ideas to bring to the table; and there was quite a bit of hesitation about his own. But the potential was staggeringly obvious; and the desire for a test immediate. While people went out to start preparing for the mass-production of enchanted wards that would influence the emotions of approaching creatures, Grey, among others, was diverted to a meeting with the Secretary; a much smaller meeting, just himself, the secretary, and a general Higgins.

  As the three settled down in the office, the secretary focused on Grey, studying him. “I’ve reviewed your records. Listened to the reports from Mexico. And now I’ve heard your idea. Frankly, Sergeant, I’m impressed. The President has asked me to create organizations to handle these things. As you may already know, we’re creating a Necromancy Control Agency, and it needs a Director. You want the job?”

  Grey leaned forward. “It appears to be something I could handle. In the event I’m not based out of the El Paso area going forward, I could use someone else for a separate task; I’ve encountered and befriended a species of sentient giant jumping spiders which I’d like to try to develop into an asset. They can’t speak english, but they understand it, and can read and write it. If I remain in the area I can work with them to use them to help curb the local monster population.”

  “..Sentient jumping spiders.”

  “Yes, sir. Intelligent, strong, extremely agile, capable of understanding english, and while not speaking it, reading and writing it. They were also able to understand ‘humans are not food’, and are able to loot corpses; though mostly they eat anything that isn’t human.”

  Owenson just stared at him for a few seconds. “That…. Obviously aracnophobia is a problem, but… thats a potentially game-changing asset, Grey.”

  “I would recommend sending a few people there to negotiate; with some food. I suspect if we offer safe nesting grounds and food, they’ll supply.. ‘Soldiers’ as it were. And the food can be the corpses of the monsters they help kill, so long as we don’t use poison or toxins.”

  “....Well. Give us the address, coordinates, whatever you’ve got. We’ll check into it. First, though. Do you accept the job?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Well then. Congratulations, Director Grey. We’re going to start recruiting a staff for you… we might want to base you out of some office building near Fort Bliss, under the circumstances. In the meantime. You’ll be accompanying one of our clearance teams to get a few levels in a few minutes, then we’ll be sending you up north to test out your cold-vulnerable undead idea. I hope you got plenty of sleep last night… you’re gonna have a busy few days.”

  ***

  It wasn’t fifteen minutes later that he was walking out to a helicopter, accompanied by a young blond woman wearing what seemed the stereotypical secretary outfit, complete with hose and heels; except she’d put an armored vest on over her blouse.

  As he climbed aboard; and started strapping the harness to himself; she did the same, the three soldiers inside looking him, and her, over for a moment.

  The first nodded at him… and he saluted back. The man blinked.. Before hesitantly returning the salute. “Sergeant Brinks, at your service, Director. We’re going to be making a clearance sweep over the West Virginia dead zone, then returning to base once we’re out of ammo. These are usually safe, but we need to stay low or we won’t absorb the mana from the kills, so there’s always a bit of risk. Anything we should know?”

  He nodded. “I’ve got a rifle and a pistol that don’t run out of ammo, use ambient energy for them, and I’m a Necromancer. I’ve also got the Ranged Slayer title at rank two, so that should boost how high you can fly and still help me out. Not much good from midair, but if something does go wrong, I can help get us back safe. You can call me Grey, or Sergeant. I’ll just hang out at the door shooting, and when you run out of ammo, you can borrow my gun; I may have gotten back into practice with shooting recently, but its been quite a few decades since Korea.”

  Brinks blinked. “.... Could use more guns like that. Mind if I take a look?” The motor started up… and he offered Grey a headset, which he immediately settled on; the flight was going to get loud.

  After all of them were set, he pulled out the Multi-Rifle. “Rare quality. Can launch grenades or other projectiles up to a set size, or fire bursts of kinetic or thermal energy. Right now its set to all kinetic; if I turn this dial to red… it’ll light what I shoot at on fire.”

  Brinks studied it closely, nodding. “Alright. If you keep shooting rapid-fire on this trip, you should gain a few levels, and the Ranged-Slayer tier above; nobody has tier 4, most of us get the third one on our second flight. I think 4 needs a million kills, and 3 is ten thousand, or something similar. You’ve probably never leveled multiple times at once before?”

  Grey shook his head. “Level 11 now, haven’t had that, no.”

  “Well, then. You’re probably going to get at least two, maybe as many as four, levels on this trip. Be ready to spend what you gain and keep going, or the system will do it for you automatically.”

  He needed the Infectious Undead ability, and the one that let him make a venom cloud around himself so he could give it to the zombies. If he got a third level… perhaps the ranged control? Being able to control a zombie ten miles away could be useful, especially for this experiment. If by some miracle he got four levels, he could toss on that one ‘Bullet with a Name on it’ so he could start building charges.

  “Understood. I might be a director now, but this is your mission. Whether its in the sky or on the ground if it hits the fan.”

  Brinks nodded. “Good to hear.”

  The woman who’d strapped in beside him gently tapped his shoulder.

  “Director Grey. Natalie Reynolds. I’m going to be your personal assistant going forward. The Secretary has started the ball rolling, but we need to get security, people to track down Necromancers, and start training them as well; you’re essentially going to be in charge of handling Undead issues from now on, and he’s giving you authority to hire hundreds of people and issue orders to standing military units. He’s giving you a fair amount of latitude, though he’s taken the liberty of already hiring every necromancer he could get hold of.”

  She grimaced. “Right now we’re taking people who were drafted and agreed to become Necromancers on clearance missions like this one all throughout the south. We’d like to be able to stomp on the next infectious undead outbreak so thoroughly that nobody is dumb enough to pull it again.”

  Grey nodded. “Understood. Dealing with a horde is best handled with one or two necromancers who can get the undead to either just stand there helpless, or deliberately block or even attack their allies. Necromancers can obviously be useful handling just random monster hordes… but against hordes of undead they’re worth substantially more than most. So. We want to train them to operate in pairs, working with squads of regular troops, to handle large-scale Undead incidents.”

  He looked thoughtful. “We’re going to be able to take out monster swarms with heavy artillery for a couple months while we chew through hundreds of billions of dollars worth of ordinance, then its going to turn into a standard slog to handle it. When that happens, a large number of competent necromancers will be invaluable to help keep casualties low. So. We need to figure out optimized power selection for helping a team kill monsters, make sure all the ones we’re leveling up follow it, and train them in deployments in the low-level, easy areas.”

  Grey glanced out the window at the city flying beneath them. “When we run out of artillery shells… we need to have something else to throw at them instead, or accept an unacceptable level of attrition. I’d prefer that we throw something cheap, disposable, but still dangerous.

  “Zombies.”

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  ***

  As they reached the forest, Grey began to understand just what they were up against.

  The forest was filled with burnt, smoking craters, the smell of fire and rotting flesh rose around them… and he could see more in every direction. An explosion here. A burst of blue light there. Everywhere he looked was like a warzone.

  And the chopper was no exception. They were flying low; probably just low enough for his ‘Ranged Slayer II’ perk to get him mana… because he could feel it surging into him as he and the other soldiers opened fire on the swarms below.

  Their weapons were definitely deadlier than the TK-rifle; each round from the Uncommon-grade weapons set a massive crater into the flesh of what looked like a swarm of giant squirrels rampaging through the forest… currently battling against some sort of massive scaly beast, which killed dozens of the squirrels with each lash of its tail.

  If he didn’t know any better, he’d think it was an Ankylosaurus; it was at least thirty feet long, had an armored back, and a massive spiked ball at the end of its tail.

  Still; when one of the soldiers put a burst of fire through its skull, it lashed about madly for a few seconds, and went limp. Grey was impressed; no way in hell he could make that shot from a moving helicopter, much less put six rounds all through the same head, even if it was a 5-foot-long head.

  When he felt the first level-up, and received the notice…

  He didn’t even look at his status; he just chose the Infectious Animation option, a split between Agility, Mind, and Power, and swiveled the Multi-Rifle to aim at a cluster of… birds!?

  He opened fire as the swarm headed his way. “Birds, incoming, three-oclock!”

  The helicopter suddenly jerked to the right, making his aim shaky; but after a few seconds; and a sudden loud burst of cannon-fire…. There was nothing but blood and feathers drifting down in the air.

  Grey blinked, staring for a moment. Those things were at least ten feet across. Hundreds of them. And the chopper had swept them out of the air with less than a second of fire.

  He shouldn’t have bothered with any of this necromancy nonsense, or the Assassin class. He should’ve just learned to fly a chopper, stolen one, chased her down and gunned her out of the sky.

  He shook his head, and turned, focusing on the next target; pumping a venom grenade into a pack of what looked like armored groundhogs; and felt himself jerked in his chair, as the chopper moved with astounding grace to dodge a gout of fire from the ground… and twisted to bring its cannons to bear on what appeared to be a giant, vivid gold praying mantis with a series of spiked arms each dozens of feet long… already fighting off several giant squirrels crawling across its body as it tried to spit fire at them in the helicopter.

  He knew that it could easily get out of the mantis’s reach and take it out… but then he and the other crew wouldn’t be getting levels. They were putting themselves at risk to get him stronger.

  Hopefully, it would be enough. He’d ensure they got their time’s worth; after all, he needed to get high enough level to have a chance against Nightfire, and keeping the government happy was a key to that.

  It took less than three hours for the flight; heading out into the woods, through the craters and ongoing fire, hitting the densest pockets of monsters, and then back; and in that time he scaled up from 11 to 14; and could feel that 15 wasn’t that far off.

  He’d gained and upgraded a few titles, and become a bit confused when ‘Rat Slayer’ had merged with ‘Squirrel Slayer’ to become ‘Rodent Slayer’ sometime during the flight back; he had no idea it worked like that. Would Human, Minoan, and Elf slayers all merge to become ‘Humanoid Slayer’ if he got them high enough?

  Most of them were obvious enough. But he wanted a bit more of an in-depth on the third version of Ranged Slayer, and whatever Omni-Slayer was.

  Well then. Level 14, and he had both Undead Control and Animation at 4 each. Add 1 more point to them, and he’d be ready to take the more advanced, tier 6 powers when he reached level 21. Assuming he did. He was reasonably certain that, with the powers and tools he now had access to, he could get the job done.

  He glanced at the secretary.

  “Natalie. I’ve been giving it some consideration.” He closed his eyes, thinking of deployments.

  “A starting Necromancer gets 1 each of Curse, Control, and Animation. Supporting a team would best be served with Horde and Awareness for the Control power. If we make sure every Necromancer in our teams has those two powers, they’ll be able to handle their core job of feeling out and using enemy undead to protect our teams. Pass along that all Necromancers working for the Agency need those two skills, and a single Support power of some description; something to weaken or slow enemies, or buff their allies. And make it explicit that promotions in the Agency will be highly dependent on the ability to support a team successfully, rather than through the use of Undead alone.”

  He leaned back in his chair. “Anyone not willing to get the powers needed to properly support a team isn’t welcome in the agency, and can go wherever their draft orders would send them. We’ll need to setup policies and plans for supporting outsiders as well. And…. as absurd as it might sound, if we can find a way to get Mutagens that let us heal injuries, it’d be a good idea for all of them to get one.Especially if we can find one that works on both living and undead flesh.”

  She gave a nod. “I’ll get it put together. I’ll pass those requirements along immediately, though; some of the people who will be on your team are being leveled up by other choppers as we speak.”

  “Good. I’ll take another flight or two myself…” He glanced at one of the soldiers for a moment.

  “But first we have an experiment to run. We have a plan there?”

  “Greenland, sir. We’re taking a jet straight north to Thule military base. There’s a pack of horse-sized Arctic Foxes that butchered a village up there, that they’ve got tranq’d and are dragging up, as well as a few other random beasties.”

  “Huh. Why the foxes?”

  “They’re resistant to cold. If we’re going to test what adding a cold vulnerability does…”

  “Might as well test both what it does to a normal creature, as well as one that resists it. Good. Would be useful to know.”

  And possibly make his suggestion completely worthless.