20km's is a hefty distance for my corpses, I had scanned and placed corpses as a warning system within a radius of 5km around the village. Mainly the rats though. The human corpses had specialities and they were occupied with laborious duties.
My plan is to bring the corpses here to Oakhaven and any resource I find on the way. So far I've raised 25 human corpses with 3 leather workers, 5 farmers, 1 Cooper, 1 carpenter, 5 smiths, 7 hunters, 3 herbalists, 8000 rats, 6 cats, 20 birds and 6 oxen... My village is an efficient machine. Inside the village walls is a quagmire of dark mana and it recharges the corpses when they're exposed to it. The dead bodies I can't raise or are too degraded, are buried in shallow Graves around the buildings and in the sides of the road to increase dark mana and theres no live animals within the village and I let rotting food fester in the streets but on the sides so it's not like too untidy.
I just walk around the mulch, it doesn't smell good but I'm used to it now. The land within the village is a field of decay and Graves, except the road, the villages effectiveness is a high priority.
I can control the human corpses manually, and use their bodies as my own. Which means my body sits still until I'm distracted or I lose my connection to the corpse, if the connection is severed the corpse continues doing the last command I gave it. It slowly uses my dark mana reserves, to a manageable degree so I'm fine to use it. My effective control distance is 30km radius, conveniently Thorp of Wyllow falls within this area, so I can go face the wolves and try to capture them...
I had a bird follow the wolves, saw the patterns and habits of the wolves. There is 13 wolves in the pack and the second biggest wolf was the alpha with a large scar on its right side. It was a violent and strong wolf, 3 males and 6 females and 4 puppies. They had nested within a small hole in a hill covered by trees. I could probably steal some puppies using big birds. They wouldn't survive in this place, it was a petrid dish for all sorts of bacteria and viruses... Maybe outside the village walls with the living animals, there was cows, sheep, pigs and goats. Winter had past and they were breeding fiercely.
My plan was to possess a bird and lead a group of rats and human corpses to subdue the pack, luckily it was only one pack functioning in the Thorp of Wyllow. I rounded up 3 human Hunter corpses and 3090 rat corpses they were replaceable and human corpses were a head ache to raise.
The plan was to split up the pack and catch one wolf and inject the dark mana until it became one of my corpses. So I lined up the corpses at the entrance of the village and then ordered them to move off towards Thorp of Wyllow, 20km east.
I possessed the bird and kept watch. The wolves split up during the day. One wolf stayed with the pups and the others moved within a specific range to scavenge and bring food. They weren't split up to a notable distance any movement would alert the other wolves and facing one wolf was different from facing a whole pack.
So we took the trip. We would be there in the afternoon. I stayed in the village and possessed a bird monitoring the wolves. I monitored the wolves and waited for my reinforcement, after 5 hours they were close, so I instructed them to stop and the rats to split up and spread within the area around the wolves, so I told them to keep a distance because the wolves became wary whenever my corpses were near them...
My rats created a perimeter around the wolves territory and they got spooked before the circle was completed, they barked in the direction the rats were moving and turned and left without food and ran back to their den cautiously always looking around. Unfortunately for them the circle was around the den and their hunting grounds so they never went outside the covered perimeter. They allowed it to get tighter around them.
The wolves cautiously went into the den with one wolf outside scanning perimeter and growling. I ordered three rats to nibble on the wolf a little bit... I don't want to degrade the vessel.
So the wolf bit and threw the rat away from itself. The rat circled it at my instruction, the goal was to draw it away from den than a hunter corpse would
Grap it long enough for it to saturate it with the dark mana and and then from there, it's my corpse.