Nobody could figure out how the Germans intended to reach Greece through all those inconveniently located foreign countries, several of which were NATO members. Nevertheless, the Greeks panicked, and tensions rose.Eventually, Papandreou backed down, and the whole affair was quietly swept under the rug.For a couple of months, though, the man had practically lived on the news. That's why I'd remembered him.Ah, those were the days. I was just a kid back then, completely uninterested in politics. But watching the evening news had been mandatory at the orphanage. Our caretaker, Tamara Stepanovna, always said it was part of the routine, just like in the army.There were two other names, too. What were they again?Lucas Papademos and Tina Birbili.The former was Greece's foreign minister under Papandreou, while the latter had absolutely no business getting involved in international affairs. She was the environment minister, for crying out loud. What the hell was she doing anywhere near a

CHAPTER 84 (22)“You’re wrong,” the necromancer said disapprovingly. “That one you named Lucas Papademos is clearly Syrian. And the one you called Georgios Papandreou definitely has roots somewhere in Italy. They aren’t Greeks. There aren’t that many Greeks in the Roman Empire. Their emperor is Justinian I, and if what I’ve heard about him is correct, he was born in Dardania and his native language is Latin. Only an uneducated person would assume everyone in the Roman Empire is Greek.”“They’re my dead men,” I reminded her irritably. “I’ll call them whatever I damn well please.”“Suit yourself,” Astrid said, deciding not to argue.“Help me get them into their armor,” I asked.For the next ten minutes, we dressed the undead in their respective armor.Papandreou wore mail that was basically one giant chainmail stocking, pulled on from the feet all the way up to the neck. Awkward, difficult to repair, but what the owner wanted, the owner got.Artemios, who had recently succumbed to the c

Grey Lands, Near the Ruins of the Hut, June 14, 2021Our initial inspection confirmed that we’d been transported to some godforsaken corner of nowhere. And not just that. We’d brought along a chunk of desert measuring, oh, roughly a thousand square meters.I had absolutely no idea how teleportation was supposed to work, but that was definitely what had happened. And if I hadn’t been running when the transfer occurred, I probably wouldn’t have ended up with my head planted in the sand. My jaw was still aching.M-motherfucker…The moment we stepped beyond the sandy zone, the landscape changed dramatically. I mean, completely changed. The sand was gone, replaced by fields of withered grass, groves of long-dead trees, rolling hills, and a mountain range in the distance to the south.We carefully examined the local map through the Menu, but it shed absolutely no light on our situation. At the smallest scale, all we could see were patches indicating the locations of various cities and small

The warrior returned. This time, he wasn't alone. He was accompanied by several burly men wearing expensive scale armor. Their armor was noticeably better than that worn by my undead.Unlike our scale armor, with its overlapping scales, these men wore plates fitted tightly together over a chainmail backing. It was a variation on the traditional design that eliminated most of its weaknesses. You'd have a hell of a time piercing armor like that with an upward thrust of a spear, and hacking through it with a battle-axe wouldn't be easy, either.Against that backdrop, my dushnilium chainmail looked downright pathetic. Cheap, even. I'd have to give some serious thought to upgrading my own defenses in the near future. After all, I already had a retinue. What I lacked was the sort of armor that went with the status.“What business do you have on the lands of Strategos Alexei Komnenos?” one of the elite warriors asked.His face was unmistakably Caucasoid, but not Greek, Slavic, or Anatolian.

But the most impressive feature was a massive double bed.At a table covered with parchment maps sat a woman of about thirty, dressed in an elegant, expensive gown.She was undeniably beautiful. Her brown eyes were expressive, medium-sized, and framed by long eyelashes. There was a sadness in her gaze. Her nose was straight, a textbook example of the Greek ideal. Her mouth was medium-sized, with richly red lips. A sharp chin complemented the contours of her face. Her skin was snow-white, without a single visible blemish. Her long hair fell in soft waves.It was difficult to estimate her height while she remained seated. Her build was average, and her breasts looked to be approximately a B cup. Objectively speaking, she was a beautiful woman, possessing a distinctive Mediterranean charm.If I'd encountered someone like her on the streets of Vladivostok, I'd have immediately become painfully self-conscious and never dared approach her, let alone strike up a conversation.Still, standing