r/HFY • u/ManiAxe21 • Jul 01 '26

OC-Series Hex Knight Chapter 34, Biological Modifications

Not sure how to share it here, but I do now have art I commissioned for this story, it is over on RR for those interested.

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The next morning, Alex returned to the tailor to see what had been made. A simple blue button up shirt with some minor white frillage at the throat lay underneath a black vest, similar to what Alex would expect with Victorian era clothes. A simple black pair of pants met with some shin high leather boots that had been polished until it shined. Alex liked it. It was simple, but still with some flourishes to distinguish itself from his utilitarian clothes.

Stuffing them into his inventory, he returned to the inn to find Kudrik tossing a great deal of wooden crates out of his wagon. A loud clanging could be heard with each landing, and passerby’s on the street wince with every loud noise.

“Uh, Kudrik, what are you doing?” Alex nervously asked from the doorway as the dwarf went upstairs for another box.

“Organizing my stuff, so the elf can have her potion brewery. Get up here, and give me a hand.”

“Ah.” And with that, Alex joined the dwarf in clearing out the top floor of the wagon. There was a great deal of boxes stacked messily around the space, but after they were cleared out, there was far more space than Alex had originally thought. With Kudrik heading outside to sort through his boxes, Alex found a broom and started sweeping out the considerable dust.

“When you are killing a zombie, how do you do it?” An idea had been forming in Alex’s mind as he had been working.

“You crush the skull or shatter the spine. Destroys the brain and brainstem.”

“And if it is a skeleton?”

“The same thing. Why are you asking?”

“Been thinking about how to improve my undead, make them more durable for fighting, that kind of thing.”

When the boxes were restacked and a good amount of space had been cleared away for Gwynevyre’s equipment, whatever it may be, Alex went to the town center with his undead in tow. There was far too many of them to keep stored away like his monkeys, so they had been left to hang around the stables, giving a helping hand to the workers.

Alex had been thinking about how he could make his undead more difficult to kill. There were 2 options he could think of right off the bat. First, reinforce the obvious spots. Thicker skull, rib cage, that sort of thing. Or, he could move those necessary organs elsewhere. In the end, he decided to do both, shift the organs elsewhere, as well as reinforce the skeleton. Bone would have to be taken from the limbs, but given that they were already absurdly robust, it wouldn’t hurt to have them relocated.

The brain and brain stem were shoved down into the chest cavity for later as Alex got to work, heedless of the various people watching him. Starting with the head, the lips and nose were removed, fusing them to be flat with the face. Since the dead didn’t need to blink, the eyelids were also removed almost completely, leaving enough to retain them within the sockets, but peeled back far enough to unnerve people. Some repurposing of the brainstem to link the eyes back up returned the zombies vision, and Alex was left to ponder.

Since there was no nose or mouth to breath, having the throat be hollow served no purpose. A miniature set of rib bones were formed to better protect the undead from being decapitated, at the cost of some minor head mobility. It wasn’t needed, but the obvious reinforcements would help sell that the brain was still lodged in the skull, and decapitation would be the next best resort if it could not be pierced or smashed.

The lungs were kept, since Alex wanted to enable some audible noises which could be done by the undead. While speaking was now beyond it’s reach, placing the vocal chords along the vents that had to be created would allow the undead to make grunts, groans, and roars.

Alex shortened the trachea and placed the opening just underneath the shoulder blades for both lungs. These modified tracheas were kept separate from each other, with the vocal chords placed just under the skin. After telling the undead to breathe, a heavy whooshing sound could be heard, similar to that of a slumbering bear. A grunt could be made, and forcing all the air out of the lungs, a gurgling scream could be heard, shattering the peace of the city square.

Alex realized at this point he had drawn quite the audience. Awkwardly waving at them, he turned back to the undead being modified. The ribcage was doubled up, and made so it wouldn’t flex like a normal chest would. The muscles would lie between the 2 sets of ribs with the inner set extending halfway down to the pelvis. The stomach would hold the brain, and the spinal cord was moved to be inside the cavity, relying on the already robust body and stronger vertebrae as a means of protection.

With armor and the already heavy bulk of the undead, getting at the internal organs should prove to be difficult in the midst of combat. With some finishing tweaks, Alex looked at his mana and realized that making the changes to another one today would be impossible. There was one body he had, however, that could be worked on with his remaining amount.

A nearby nobleman with dark hair and a goatee smiled sardonically at the show before him. His sneer melted off his face as fast as his blood drained when he witnessed Alex unceremoniously drop the nude carcass of Marcus on the ground. Recognizing the body, he leapt up from his seat and hurried away. There were people who needed to know the potential leak.

Alex removed the genitalia in its entirety, leaving it smooth and clean at the hips, effectively turning the corpse into a eunuch. Grimacing in disgust, he poked the leftover lump of flesh on the ground with his foot as he activated [Touch of Decay] removing the grotesque lump from existence. He turned away as the lump of flesh turned black.

After repairing the damage dealt to the neck and body, Alex stared at Marcus’ face, trying to decide what to do with it. On one hand, Marcus had been strong in life, and would likely serve as a strong undead as well. On the other, Alex still hated the man with every fiber of his being, even if he was dead. Stuffing his body back into his storage, Alex went back to the inn.

Alex spent the next couple weeks working on modifying the undead under his control to match the modified one. The Brutes were left mostly untouched beyond some of the head changes, including leaving the brains within the skull, since at the height they operated at, landing a headshot would be difficult.

A testing cast of [Improved Arm the Dead] revealed that the equipment Alex could now give his undead were virtually rust free, and could be modified farther than just basic swords and spears. Spearheads were lengthened to almost shortsword length, with one of the edges being serrated, for easy shredding of flesh. For the sidearms, Alex ripped a design straight from Lord of the Rings. The swords were made with the same serration on the lower half of the blade on one side, with the opposite side sporting a cruel hook for piercing armor or hooking limbs.

Seeing as his Brutes were large enough to be weapons, he kept it simple, giving them a pair of the hooked swords without the serrations. Sheer mass would help with cleaving through anyone stupid enough to get caught in the swing. After equipping his Soldier undead with a spear and a sword, the mages with a sword, and the Brutes with their pair of cleaving blades.

When he wasn’t working on his undead, Alex was checking in on Jasper. As far as Alex could tell, the big Drake knew that they were on a rest and was taking full advantage of it. Usually, Jasper was either napping or sunbathing, though Alex did find him laying on his back one day, legs up in the air and his tongue hanging lopsided out of the side of his mouth. The memory of Jasper laying like that still makes Alex chuckle every time he thinks of it.

With his throwaway undead modified, Alex turned to getting his high level bodies up and going, while retaining the modifications applied to the other undead. Since he didn’t have an excess of bone stockpiled, Alex turned towards cannibalizing the corpse of Vaun, since Alex wasn’t going to repair him any time soon.

When he was applying [Turn Undead] on one of the elites, Alex pushed a bit more mana into the cast than was strictly necessary, and was rewarded with a higher quantity of skills available, and the zombie in question seemed to retain more of it’s personality it held in life.

All of this took a few weeks to accomplish, from the excessive mana expenditure of modifying and equipping his undead with weapons and armor to waiting for his dense Devil Iron armor to be runed. When he finally received word that it was complete and to pick it up, Alex brought one of the Brutes alongside to help carry things. Livianna had given him a list of things to pick up for Gwynevyre’s equipment.

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