Dark Wizard: Rise! My undead army!

"My lord, my name is Jim, and I am the ship's messenger." The little goblin bowed to Anri.

He wore a protective suit that was cleaner than the others from the goblins, and his mask was polished to a shine, revealing a pointed face and a pair of darting eyes.

"If there's anything you want to know, sir, just ask me. I know everything about the goblin world."

Anli glanced at him.

I was bored anyway, so I thought I'd take a look at the lives of these kids.

What do you usually do?

Jim opened his notebook and picked up his pen. "Was the adult asking about work or play?"

"Speak up, everyone."

Jim cleared his throat.

"We goblins work eight hours a day, building machines in factories, growing crops in fields, and conducting scientific research in research institutes."

"After get off work, I go home and watch TV. There are many good programs on TV, including news, dramas, variety shows, and cartoons."

Anli's eyes lit up.

What is television?

Jim paused for a moment.

"A television is... a box that can play images and sound."

"News shows you what's happening all over the world, TV dramas show actors acting, and variety shows show goblins playing games."

"What about cartoons?"

"Cartoons are stories from fairy tales, and children like to watch them."

Anli's mouth opened slightly.

"You goblins are amazing. You can invent such interesting things."

Jim scratched his head.

"You flatter me, sir. This is all thanks to the power of technology. It is through the research of generations of scientists that we have the life we ​​have today."

Anri crouched down to be at Jim's eye level.

"What do you goblins eat? What's good to eat?"

Jim's eyes lit up.

"We goblins have so much to eat: bread, noodles, rice, stir-fries, stews, grilled fish, and desserts like cakes, cookies, and ice cream."

"ice cream?"

"It's made with milk and sugar, frozen into ice cubes, and tastes sweet and cool."

Anli swallowed hard. "I definitely want to try it sometime."

Jim wrote the word "ice cream" in his notebook and circled it.

Anri asked many more questions, and Jim answered them one by one.

Goblin technology, goblin history, goblin customs, goblin festivals...

Anli listened with great interest, occasionally exclaiming "Wow!"

Clearly, the wonderful world of the goblins fascinated her.

Just then, the group that had been searching for food returned.

The scientists arrived empty-handed, their faces grim.

The team leader walked up to the captain, head bowed.

"Captain, we found nothing to eat on the island. There were no plants, no animals, and even the fresh water was polluted."

"There were only skeletons and some moving corpses, and some ghosts flying in the sky. Those things... didn't look like they were edible."

The captain's face darkened. "Not even a little?"

The team leader shook his head. "No."

The captain remained silent.

The ship's food and fuel will last for two more days, and it will take at least five days to repair the ship.

Without food, they won't survive until the boat is repaired.

Moreover... we don't know how many days the return trip will take, how much fuel we'll need, or how much food we'll need to prepare.

We can't just rely on drinking water, can we?

Anli, who was standing nearby, overheard their conversation, stood up, and ran back to the church.

Her footsteps thumped on the wooden stairs.

After a while, she came running out carrying a large box, which was bigger than her body. She ran with great difficulty, and her face turned bright red.

She placed the box in front of the goblins and opened the lid.

It was piled high with food: bread, roast meat, sausages, fruit pies, cheese, honey, nuts...

Anli was panting. "You guys eat this first, I'll get more if it's not enough."

The goblins gathered around, looking at the food in the box.

These foods are also available in the goblin world, so they are not surprised by them. What surprises them is that these things are all warm.

It looks like it's fresh out of the oven.

Is there a chef in the cathedral constantly making such fresh food?

The captain picked up a piece of bread, took a bite, and his eyes lit up.

After drifting at sea for so long, it's been a long time since I've had such hot and fluffy bread.

"tasty."

The captain took another bite, tears streaming down his face. He swallowed the bread in his mouth and bowed to Anri.

"Thank you, sir."

The goblins grabbed the food and devoured it.

Jim stood next to Anri, holding a piece of cheese and eating it in small bites.

He ate while writing in his notebook.

"The gods' food is similar to what we goblins eat, but it tastes much better."

Anli watched the goblins eat, a smile playing on her lips, as if she were watching a group of small animals wolfing down their food.

"Eat slowly, no one's going to take it from you."

The captain swallowed the bread in his mouth and stood up.

"Sir, our ship still needs repairs, but there are no materials on the island. Steel plates, welding rods, pipes... we lack everything. Without these, the ship cannot be repaired."

Anli frowned. "What should we do? I don't have any of those things either."

The captain gave a wry smile. "Let's fix the most important parts first. Whether we can get back is up to fate."

Anli nodded and didn't ask any more questions.

The goblins began repairing the ship.

Some people used hammers to strike the deformed steel plates, some used welding torches to weld the cracks, and some used tape to wrap the damaged pipes.

The tools were rudimentary, materials were scarce, and progress was very slow.

The captain stood at the bow, watching the busy figures, and remained silent for a long time.

Jim stood beside Anri, continuing to record everything that was happening here in his notebook.

Anli sat on the steps at the church entrance, resting her chin on her hands, watching the little green scoundrels work.

The bone dragon lay behind her, its eyes closed, like a mountain.

A greyish-white sky, black scorched earth, dilapidated ships, busy goblins, and a quiet girl.

The Island of Death welcomed its first guests.

...

In the following days, the goblins began the long process of repairing the ship.

The bottom of the boat was riddled with holes by squid tentacles, the largest of which could fit a fist.

The sailors patched the holes with hammers and steel plates. When they ran out of welding rods, they dismantled unimportant parts of the ship and melted them down to use as welding rods.

If the pipeline breaks, wrap it with tape. If you don't have enough tape, tear off the sealing strip from your protective suit and use that instead.

Even so, materials are still in short supply.

There are no ship repair materials on Death Island, but it has always been an attraction for all kinds of pollutants and waste.

The goblins could only rummage through industrial waste that had been piled up for hundreds of years.

The black sand beach was littered with rusty iron barrels, broken glass bottles, and rotting fishing nets.

The sailors dug through the sand with their hands, dragged out the iron buckets, knocked off the rust, and cut them into sheet metal to repair the ship.

A young sailor's hand was cut by broken glass, and the blood dripped onto the black sand, where it was quickly corroded by the power of death and turned black.

He gritted his teeth, wrapped the wound with the sleeve of his protective suit, and continued working.

Pollutants and garbage on the island became their only source of materials.

The sailors rummaged through the rubble for usable parts: screws, nuts, washers, and springs.

An old sailor found a section of copper pipe, picked it up and held it up to the light, and saw that it was filled with black sludge.

He poked around with a wire for a long time, cleaning out the sludge, but the inside of the copper pipe was still rusty.

He sighed, put the copper pipe aside, and continued searching.

The fuel is almost gone.

Engineers are trying to extract fuel from pollutants on the island.

They collected the black sludge, poured it into an iron bucket, and heated it. The sludge emitted black, pungent smoke that made the engineers cough.

After being heated for several hours, a layer of viscous liquid settled at the bottom of the iron bucket. The liquid was black in color and contained small particles.

The engineer filtered the mixture through a rag, poured it into the engine, and tested it. The engine coughed a few times, emitted a plume of black smoke, and then stalled.

The engineer shook his head, poured out the liquid, and continued trying to find a solution.