Chapter 13: The Crimson Harvest.
SWISH!
The sound of steel cutting through the stale air was the only warning the reinforcements from the fifth floor received.
The goblins who had been firmly restrained by the spectral hands emerging from the floorboards were caught completely off guard, their eyes bulging as the doors to the nearby apartments were swung open with a bang.
Eight skeleton soldiers, their ivory bones already heavily stained with the drying blood of the previous floor's occupants, lunged out from the shadows of the doorways.
In the blink of an eye, they were all upon the frightened goblins, their scavenged kitchen knives flashing in the dim light as they delivered fatal strikes to the immobilized monsters.
The remaining goblins who hadn't been grabbed by the ghosts watched in paralyzed horror, their green faces twisting into grim expressions of pure dread as they realized the scale of the trap.
However, before a single one of them could draw enough breath to let out a cry of alarm or warn their brethren on the floors below, they felt several cold, intangible arms wrap around their heads from behind.
The resentful spirits, acting as invisible mutes, clamped their misty hands over the goblins' mouths, effectively stopping their frantic blabbering and muffling the gurgling sounds of their impending demise.
"Mmhhhmmm!!!" The goblins thrashed and kicked, their muffled protests echoing uselessly against the cold palms of the specters.
The skeletons took the opportunity and pounced on the remaining stragglers without a shred of hesitation.
They attacked ruthelssly until every single goblin reinforcement lay still on the blood-soaked carpet.
By the time the brief struggle ended, the skeleton soldiers were even more drenched in crimson.
Despite the intensity of the slaughter, they showed no signs of fatigue or weariness; instead, a faint, wispy form of dark energy seemed to be converging around their frames.
It was a thin, flickering evil aura that pulsed with a life of its own, leaving a chilling impression that these mindless tools were slowly transforming into something much more formidable than simple animated bones.
Only after he was absolutely certain that the sixth floor had been purged of every living threat did Jacob personally step out from the stairwell to survey the carnage.
He was accompanied by the lesser ghoul woman, who walked half a step behind him.
******
"There are a total of twenty-four goblin corpses in all," Jacob noted, performing a quick, rough count of the bodies strewn across the floor.
Rather than saying he was indifferent to the killings, Jacob seemed to view it as part of a game, since he was basically forced into one.
He gestured to his blood-stained vanguard, ordering the skeletons to drag the bodies into two distinct, organized piles of twelve each.
Once the grisly task was completed, Jacob turned his gaze toward the lesser ghoul, whose clouded eyes seemed to flicker with a primal, deep-seated hunger.
"Go ahead," he said, his voice soft but carrying a weight of expectation. "The faster you can evolve, the better it will be for the rest of us. We'll need more than just numbers to clear the remaining lobbys."
Although the woman couldn't fully comprehend the complex nuances of his human speech, she understood the core intent behind his command perfectly.
To her, the instruction translated into a single, overwhelming impulse..
EAT.
Her eyes turned fierce as she pounced on the first pile of goblin corpses, but strangely, her behavior differed significantly from her previous feeding frenzy.
Rather than savagely tearing everything apart and goblling it all down in overwhelming mouthfuls like he had witnessed before, she seemed much more composed, this time around, as she began to feast.
She took her time with each kill, and miraculously, not much bloodstains managed to find their way onto the clean athletic clothes Jacob had found for her.
It was as if her control over her own physical form was sharpening with every bite, a subtle sign of the evolution that was taking place within her dead cells.
Jacob unfortunately was unable to witness such an incredible display, because he had already left her to her meal prior and set off to scour the remaining apartments on the sixth floor for any useful supplies.
With the assistance of four skeletons and several resentful spirits acting as his porters and scouts, he moved through the rooms without much hindrance.
One couldn't help but wonder what kind of look he would've had if he had seen the ghouls new way of eating.
*******
After making his rounds and checking every kitchen and pantry on the floor, Jacob returned to the central hallway to find that the lesser ghoul had finished her task.
The first pile was now nothing more than a collection of gnawed bones and scraps, yet the woman stood there looking remarkably pristine.
Jacob gave a satisfied nod, not just because of her progress, but because he had managed to gather another ample amount of canned food and bottled water to add to his stockpile.
"Come forth," he uttered, standing before the second pile of goblin corpses and the remnants of the ghoul's feast.
Just like the previous times, no exotic or special breeds of undead were born from the ritual, but the results were no less impressive.
Twelve new resentful spirits drifted up from the shadows, their red eyes glowing like dying embers, while twelve fresh skeleton soldiers rattled as they stood upright, their bones clicking into place with a sound like falling dice.
Even though the variety of his minions hadn't changed, Jacob was more than happy with the outcome, as his sheer numbers were beginning to look like a true horde.
He now possessed a formidable force of twenty skeletons, twenty resentful spirits, and his one lesser ghoul.
As he stared at the woman, who seemed to stand taller and more alert than before, a strong gut feeling told him that she was right on the cusp of a major transformation.
Though he didn't know what exactly, he could feel something different about her, suggesting that it wouldn't be long before she shed her "lesser" status for something far more powerful.
After spending the next hour stashing his newly gathered food in his personal studio on the ninth floor, Jacob continued his relentless expedition through the vertical dungeon of the apartment complex.
With forty minions at his back, the momentum was becoming nearly unstoppable.
In what felt like no time at all, his forces successfully conquered the fifth floor.
The resistance there had been surprisingly thin, likely due to the fact that their primary fighting force had already been decimated when they sent reinforcements up to the sixth floor earlier.