Lilith wiped the sweat from her forehead with the back of her hand, tossing back strands of hair that now shimmered with a deep, almost inky blackness. The color provided a perfect contrast to her amaranth natural armor, lending her an even more majestic and dark presence.
With a loud grunt, she released the last gigantic log, which landed on the ground with a dull thud beside the eighteen others.
Beside her, Lysandra - despite her usually impeccable posture - also looked exhausted. Her breathing was rapid, and beads of sweat pearled on her forehead as she let go of her burden. Both succubi stood at the edge of their designated territory, a short distance from the main altar. Lilith immediately called up her status window, her eyes flashing with satisfaction.
[TERRITORY RESOURCES]
Wood: 20/20 (Met)
"Thank the gods..." Lilith sighed, straightening her aching back. "Fortunately, the System counts the raw materials the moment they're within our borders. If we'd had to lug these logs all the way to the altar, I think I'd have collapsed."
Lysandra nodded. Although her face maintained its typical cool expression, clear physical fatigue was visible in her blue eyes. Lilith looked at her hands - or rather, at the sharp, curved talons she had instead of fingernails.
It's a good thing we have these, she thought, remembering how effortlessly they had sliced through the hard trunks of the black trees. Without them, I don't know how we would have chopped this wood.
Suddenly, the silence was shattered by the rising noise of an argument coming from above. A second later, a gargantuan rock fragment slammed into the earth with a deafening boom, kicking up a cloud of dust just a few meters away.
Perched on the very top of the boulder, looking like a grand lady, sat Mina, fanning herself with her hand.
"I am simply... ex-haus-ted!" Mina wailed in her shrill voice. "This territory is so unkind to my poor muscles..."
"Exhausted?! You little leech!" Kala's roar tore through the air as the warrior landed nearby, panting heavily and shooting daggers from her eyes. "I was the one who had to carry this damn thing on my own back while you sat up there pretending to 'navigate'!"
Mina immediately took a defensive stance, pouting. "I was tired! My energy regeneration didn't go as smoothly as I thought! Besides, I was cheering you up with my company!"
Kala's eyes ignited with a dangerous glare. "Oh, really? Since you're so very tired, I'd be happy to help you... relax!"
Before Mina could react, Kala lunged and grabbed her firmly by her small, firm buttock, beginning to squeeze aggressively.
"Aaaaa! Let go! Let go, you perverted lizard!" Mina squealed, kicking her legs and trying to break free, but Kala held on pitilessly, taking revenge for every second of hauling that boulder.
Lilith didn't even turn her head toward them. She had grown so used to these antics that they had become mere background noise. All her attention was now consumed by the scroll held in her hands. The blueprint for the Bone House pulsed with an intense, golden light, and every required item in the construction menu glowed green.
"We have it," Lilith whispered, her heart beating faster. "We have everything."
[SYSTEM MESSAGE] Construction can begin. Required resource conditions met.
Gold: 5,142/300 (Met)
Undead Gem: 1/1 (Met)
Wood: 20/20 (Met)
Stone: 30/30 (Met)
[Do you wish to construct Building: Bone House?]
Lilith held the scroll in hands trembling with excitement, glancing between the plan and the pile of logs and boulders. Her night-black hair fluttered slightly in the wind as she turned to Lysandra.
"Lysandra, do we really not need any builders? No laborers, nothing like that? This building... it just puts itself up? And how do I know where it's even going to land?" she asked, narrowing her crimson eyes.
Lysandra, ignoring the shrill protests of Mina - whom Kala was still "massaging" in the background - gestured toward the gathered resources.
"Our supplies will be absorbed by the territory in the exact amount required. In our case, that's practically everything we struggled to haul here," she explained with a faint, almost invisible smile.
"When you activate the blueprint, a map of the territory will open before your eyes. You'll be able to place the building wherever you wish, and the System will raise it in the spot you designate. This is the magic of a pure contract with this world."
Lilith took a deep breath and, looking at the system message, practically shouted: "Yes! Activate!"
In that same second, the logs of wood, the gargantuan boulders, and the Undead Gem lying beneath the altar began to tremble. The materials suddenly lost their solid form, dissolving into a thick, pitch-black, tar-like mass. With a hiss, the mass sank into the earth, as if the territory had literally devoured it.
Suddenly, an interface window flared before Lilith's eyes. She saw her domain from a bird's-eye view - the altar, the ruins, the forest wall. Hovering over the map was a translucent blue outline of a building, which shifted to a warning red whenever Lilith tried to hover over an area beyond her borders.
"Hell... this looks exactly like something out of a strategy game!" she blurted out, her talons sliding the virtual model around.
"It would be best to place it near the forest," Lysandra suggested, standing beside her. "Since they're undead, they can lug those logs and stones for us. It'll save us the work in the future."
"You're a hundred percent right!" Lilith agreed.
She slid her talon across the interface, setting the outline right next to them at the forest's edge. The moment she clicked "CONFIRM," the ground beneath their feet shook. The same black mass that had previously absorbed the resources began to well up from cracks in the ground, shaping itself upward like a dark sculpture.
Before their eyes, the Bone House rose.
The structure was medium-sized, but its appearance was bone-chilling. The walls were not made of stone, but of intricately woven, gargantuan ribs and shins that appeared to be fused together with dark, dried blood. The roof was covered in tiles made from flat skull fragments, and the entrance was an arch fashioned from the spines of unknown beasts.
The entire building pulsed with a faint, greenish light, and an aura of cold and hopelessness radiated from it, causing the grass within a few meters to wither.
Lilith stared at it with a mix of disgust and pure awe as golden notifications popped up before her:
[BONE HOUSE SUCCESSFULLY CONSTRUCTED!]
[SUCCESSFULLY UNLOCKED SUMMON: SKELETON SOLDIER]
[UNIT SUMMON LIMIT: 100]
Lilith stood before the newly erected structure, squinting her red eyes and tilting her head. She extended a talon, pointing at a wall that looked as if it had been fashioned from thousands of compressed shins, rather than the logs they had just hauled with such effort.
"Listen..." Lilith began in a strange, slightly bewildered voice. "Why is this building made almost entirely of bones and skulls? We used a massive amount of stone and wood on it. Where are they? I don't see a single knot of wood or a piece of rock in this whole construction. Is this some architectural illusion, or did the system scam us on materials?"
Mina and Kala also approached, looking at the structure - which pulsed with death-light - with a mix of fascination and slight revulsion. Kala poked one of the "bricks" with her finger; it turned out to be a fragment of a pelvis.
Lysandra remained silent for a moment, her gaze sweeping over the skull-tiled roof, and her usually confident expression faltered slightly. She looked at Lilith, then at the empty space where the resources had previously lain.
"I don't know..." Lysandra admitted in a voice that sounded uncharacteristically unconvincing. "I think it's best to accept that the system simply... processed the material energy of the wood and stone, combined it with the power of the gem, and manifested it in a physical form appropriate for necromancy. Or something like that."
Lilith sighed deeply, running her fingers through her pitch-black hair. "A magic world is a magic world, after all... No point looking for logic where there isn't any," she muttered, approaching the dark entrance.
Her attention immediately shifted to the glowing interface hovering in the air before the building. The unit limit counter now displayed a proud one hundred. These weren't just three companions anymore - this was the foundation of a true army.
"A hundred new mouths... or rather, bones to work," Lilith whispered, feeling a new surge of authority welling in her veins.
As a Demon King, she felt a physical bond with this structure, as if the Bone House were an extension of her own will. "Time to see how these new 'employees' of ours work."
She stopped at the threshold, her talon hovering over the [Summon] button.
"Girls, step back a bit," she threw over her shoulder. "Let's see what comes out of this creepy little house."