I sat on a large rock in the middle of the courtyard, holding a clipboard I had mentally projected onto my HUD.
The morning sun was trying to burn through the eternal gray mist of the graveyard. It wasn't succeeding.
"Status report," I said.
Kob, the goblin elder who had appointed himself my executive assistant, shuffled forward. He was wearing a tunic made from a potato sack he'd found in the adventurer's loot bag.
"My Lord," Kob squeaked. "We have inventory."
"Go ahead."
"Assets," Kob read from a scrap of parchment. "One hundred skeleton warriors. One ruined castle. Twenty mana crystals. And..." He hesitated. "Five rusted swords. Three broken shields. And one dead rat."
I rubbed my nasal cavity. Clack.
"Liabilities?" I asked.
"Six hungry goblins," Kob said softly. "The children... they haven't eaten in two days. The beetles were not enough."
I looked over at the castle wall. The four goblin children were sitting there, watching us with large, watery eyes. They looked like wilting house plants.
If I didn't feed them, they would die. And if they died, my sacrifice of 40% of my bone density was a bad investment.
I looked at my army.
One hundred skeletons stood in perfect formation. They were terrifying. They were silent. They were ready to slaughter nations at my command.
"System," I thought. "Can skeletons cook?"
[ANSWER: MINION INTELLIGENCE IS LOW. COMPLEX TASKS REQUIRE 'NAMED' STATUS OR DIRECT CONTROL.]
"Great," I muttered. "I have a hundred interns and no middle management."
I stood up. My knee joint made a popping sound.
"Listen up!" I shouted. The skeletons snapped to attention.
"We are pivoting," I announced. My voice boomed across the graveyard. "Our core competency is no longer murder. It is turnips."
The skeletons didn't move. They didn't have brains, so they couldn't be confused, but the air around them felt perplexed.
"Kob," I said. "Do we have seeds?"
The elder nodded enthusiastically. He dug into his pouch and pulled out a handful of shriveled, purple beans.
"Ghost Peppers, My Lord. And some Grave-Root. We found them growing near the crypts. They are... hardy."
"Excellent." I pointed to a patch of gray dirt near the castle wall. "That is now Sector A. The Agriculture Division."
I turned to the nearest skeleton. It was holding a rusted longsword.
"You," I said. "Give me your weapon."
The skeleton handed it over.
I held the sword. It was heavy, unbalanced, and covered in tetanus.
"From this day forth," I said, handing it back, "this is not a sword. This is a hoe. Dig."
The skeleton stared at me. Then, slowly, it turned to the dirt.
WHAM.
It brought the sword down with enough force to decapitate a horse. The blade buried itself three feet into the ground.
"Gently!" I rubbed my temples. "We are tilling the soil, not executing it!"
I walked over. I grabbed the skeleton's bony arm. It felt cold and lifeless.
"Like this," I said. I guided its arm. "Scrape. Turn. Scrape. Turn."
The skeleton mimicked the motion. It was stiff, robotic.
Scrape. Clink. Scrape. Clink.
I stepped back. "Next!"
For the next hour, I micromanaged the undead. I turned a phalanx of death machines into a gardening club.
Ten skeletons were assigned to digging. Ten were assigned to water duty (using cracked helmets as buckets). Five were assigned to "Pest Control" (staring at the dirt and waiting for worms).
It was the most stressful thing I had ever done. And I used to manage IT rollouts.
"Careful!" I yelled at a skeleton who was about to stomp on a seedling. "That is a future salad! Show some respect!"
By noon, we had a small plot of land tilled. It looked terrible—uneven, rocky, and sad—but it was a start.
Kob knelt by the furrows. He placed the purple beans into the soil with reverence.
"Water," I commanded.
A skeleton walked up and dumped a helmet full of stagnant graveyard water onto the seeds. Splash.
"Good enough," I sighed.
I sat back on my rock. I was exhausted. Even though I didn't have muscles, the mental strain of controlling the "Sanctuary" and the minions was draining my mana.
[MANA: 180/200]
I had burned 20 mana just yelling at them.
"How long until harvest?" I asked Kob.
The goblin looked at the dirt. "In the wild? Three months. Maybe four."
My heart sank.
"We don't have four months," I said. "We have maybe four days before the Guild sends a real army."
I looked at the System window.
[SANCTUARY TERRITORY: ACTIVE][TRAIT: LIFE-DEATH CYCLE][DESCRIPTION: DEATH MANA ACCELERATES DECAY AND REBIRTH.]
Wait.
I was a walking battery of Death Mana. And in this world, Death wasn't just "the end." It was part of the cycle. Fertilizer is just dead stuff, right?
"System," I asked. "Can I inject mana into the soil?"
[AFFIRMATIVE. MANA CAN STIMULATE ORGANIC GROWTH. WARNING: MUTATION RISK HIGH.]
"Define 'Mutation'," I thought.
[UNPREDICTABLE RESULTS.]
I looked at the hungry goblin children. I looked at the patch of dirt.
I didn't have a choice. I needed a Minimum Viable Product, and I needed it now.
"Stand back," I told Kob.
I walked to the edge of the garden. I raised my hand. I didn't know any spells. I didn't know any incantations. I just imagined the blue energy inside my bones flowing out like water from a hose.
"Grow," I commanded.
A pulse of blue mist shot from my palm. It hit the soil.
The ground hissed.
It sounded like bacon hitting a hot pan. Sizzle.
The gray dirt turned black. A low vibration shook the courtyard.
"My Lord?" Kob stepped back, his ears flattening against his skull.
"It's fine," I said, though I wasn't sure. "It's just... rapid prototyping."
CRACK.
The soil exploded upward.
A vine, thick as my arm and purple as a bruise, shot out of the ground. It didn't grow slowly. It writhed. It twisted like a snake in pain.
In seconds, it was three feet tall. Then six. Then ten.
Leaves unfurled with a wet slap sound. They weren't green. They were a deep, veins-bulging violet.
And then, the fruit appeared.
They weren't turnips. They looked like pumpkins, but pale and bony. They throbbed.
Thump-thump. Thump-thump.
The plants had a heartbeat.
"Glorious!" Kob shouted, falling to his knees. "The Lord grants us miracle food!"
He reached out to grab one of the pulsing bone-pumpkins.
"Wait!" I shouted.
The pumpkin split open.
It didn't have seeds inside. It had teeth.
A mouth, filled with jagged, needle-like thorns, snapped shut inches from Kob's hand.
SNAP.
The goblin fell backward, screaming.
The "Agriculture Division" immediately drew their rusty swords. They surrounded the vegetable.
"Hostile flora detected," the lead skeleton rasped.
I stared at the garden. It was a writhing mass of carnivorous pumpkins and aggressive vines. One of the vines was currently trying to strangle a skeleton's leg.
[SYSTEM ALERT][CROP HARVESTED: GRAVE-MAW PUMPKINS][QUALITY: CURSED (EDIBLE IF COOKED)][SIDE EFFECT: MILD HALLUCINATIONS AND AGGRESSION]
"Edible," I read aloud. "If cooked."
I looked at the chaos. My skeletons were literally fighting the salad.
"Kob!" I yelled over the noise of battle.
"Yes, My Lord?!" The goblin was hiding behind my cloak.
"Get the fire ready," I said, watching a skeleton decapitate a pumpkin that hissed at him. "Tonight, we feast. But first..."
I pointed at the aggressive vegetables.
"...we have to kill dinner."