Of course, the demon wasn't aware that everything that Baron Zwein had said was done by the system.
The system was something that was created by a god, so not to mention the demon king, even a dragon wouldn't be able to resist the powers of the system.
Since he wasn't able to command the undead, the duke just handed the orb back to Zwein.
For a brief moment, he had thought that he would be able to become a necromancer like he had dreamed about in the past.
When he was younger, the duke had quite the wild period where he had dreamed about being the dark master of the world…Of course, that had been sealed now, but there were still dreams in his heart.
Still, that was all in the past.
Since he wasn't able to use it, he handed it to the person that was able to use it.
But I didn't do anything after taking this orb from the duke.
Instead, I just looked at the orb carefully, as if I was looking at something.
The knights and soldiers were all confused when they saw this, but they also had traces of admiration in their eyes as they looked at me.
Even if they were fools, they were able to tell that I had been the one who had stopped the undead.
So it could be said that I was the one who had saved their lives.
But I didn't care about any of that as I focused on one line that I had missed earlier when I had looked at the description of the orb. This was a line that was at the very bottom and was in small print, almost as if it was an afterthought.
"Requires a large amount of mana to activate."
That was why I had felt that draining sensation just now, that was the sensation of the orb absorbing my mana to activate.
Not to mention, it was a very powerful draining sensation that went along with the 'large amount' part. So powerful that I was even surprised that I had that much mana.
In this game, mana was something that developed as one leveled up or did other things and so far…I hadn't done any leveling up or any of the side quests that would give me an increase in this stat.
Most of the monsters had been taken down by my subordinates after all, so I only received a minimum amount of EXP from just being nearby.
There was no way that I should have had enough mana to activate this orb.
In fact, it should have been more likely that this orb drained me of all my mana and left me as a corpse.
But that didn't happen.
Why?
I looked around my body to the confused looks of everyone around me who thought I had gone crazy, trying to find anything that would explain this.
In the end, I found it.
It was a thing that was on the back of my hand that was releasing a faint glow.
If one didn't look at it closely, they wouldn't have noticed it. But when looking at it now, I could feel some kind of power that was coming from it.
It was most likely because of this Mark of God that I had received from Solista back then that I had been able to use this orb in the first place.
For the first time, I was grateful towards Solista for giving me this thing.
At the same time, I couldn't help envying the demons for their mana capacity that allowed them to use this orb so freely. It must really be great being demons if they had this kind of power…
But now I was facing another problem…
What should I do with these undead?
The easy solution was to have the knights and soldiers kill them one by one while they were unable to move.
As long as we did that, the undead problem would be easily solved…but for some reason, I didn't want to do that.
I could see that there were human corpses among the undead, which were most likely the corpses that had been robbed from those human villages. These were innocent people whose graves had been defiled and their bodies had been tainted with dark magic, turning them into undead.
I wanted to find some way to comfort them as they were put back to rest, but I really couldn't think of anything.
Seeing that I wasn't saying anything, the duke slowly said, "Should we start putting these undead to rest?"
He was worried that the magic holding the undead wouldn't last and once it broke, they would be in the same dangerous situation as before. So before that happens, they should take care of the undead around them.
I knew what he was worried about, so I gave a sigh before opening my mouth to speak.
But before I could say anything, there was a notification from the system that made me swallow these words.
I was very confused about this notification at first since normally the system wouldn't do this kind of thing, but then I couldn't help knitting my brows when I saw what the system had written.
"The host still has enough mana for one more command. It is recommended that the host gives the 'release' command."
The system had never given me advice like this before, so I couldn't help feeling doubtful.
But then that doubt quickly disappeared.
This system was something that was created for me, so it would never betray me as far as I could tell.
At the same time, the system took the initiative to give me advice that it had never done before.
So the least I could do was take this advice.
On the system's advice, I raised the orb and said in a clear voice, "Release."
The moment that I did, I felt the same sucking sensation as before and then I felt the world around me turning black.
I felt very tired and it was clear that I had overdrawn my powers using this orb this one last time. So I fell face forward without a single care about the surprised cries that came from around me.
But as I was falling forward, I could see something from in front of me.
It was only one undead at first, but it suddenly started to crumble away. There were bits of this undead that broke off from the undead's body before it started to crumble into ashes.
Following this undead, the rest of the undead also started to crumble away.
It was like a chain reaction where if one undead started to crumble, all of the undead around this one also started to crumble away until there were no more undead left.
The knights and soldiers looked around in shock when they saw this, but there was one thing that they didn't see.
From the undead that crumbled away, there were blue wisps of light that were released. These blue wisps of light floated there in the air where the undead had been before suddenly flying up into the sky.
As they disappeared and as my consciousness faded, I could have sworn that I heard something.
It was a soft voice that said, "Thank you."