101. All-Out War (2)

— CLANG!

A Martial-line Hunter gripping a shield was knocked back several meters. The steel plate gouged inward, the Reinforcement Circuit etched on its inner face crushed, and the shield lost part of its potency.

“Tch. These bastards. Are they really undead?”

The Hunter who’d been flung back steadied his trembling right hand and shouted.

Every Hunter knew that undead came up a notch short of monsters of the same Stellar Rank. A Skeleton Warrior was 3rd Rank, so the Rakshasa Guild Hunters, every one of them fielded at 3rd Rank or above, should have handled them without much trouble.

“You telling me we got muscled out by a pile of bones?”
“Careful. These things. They’re no ordinary lot.”

The Rakshasa Guild Hunters at the vanguard of the massed force were stunned by the Skeleton Warriors’ battle strength, which defied all common sense. The dead outstripped in raw specs even same-Rank Hunters decked out in every manner of item, and one careless moment had nearly buckled the formation on the spot.

“You idiots. Don’t let your guard down! Priests!”

Exposed to the intense light, the Skeleton Warriors faltered for a moment, and a white wall conjured from holy power shielded the Martial-line Hunters whose stances had broken.

“Pull your formation back together.”

At Oh Jeongsu’s order, the Martial-line Hunters reset their broken stances and squared off against the Skeleton Warriors once more. The reinforcement left the dead outstripping same-Rank Hunters in raw specs, yet when they clashed a second time, the Hunters held a slight edge over the pack.

“However strong they are, they’re bones.”
“Their movements are obvious.”

An ordinary Hunter took roughly four years on average to reach 3rd Rank, a Stellar Rank earned only by hunting monsters in the gates by the thousand. The Skeleton Warriors, by contrast, swung their weapons in a few set patterns like AIs, so a gap in combat experience opened up between them.

And there was one more difference besides.

The Martial-line Hunters had mastered a whole range of skills, and they knew how to deploy them right where they were needed.

“Mercenaries, advance too. Bring down the undead.”
“Means it’s time to earn our pay.”
“What we hunting was undead?”

The mercenaries advanced at their employer’s command, even as they let their puzzlement show.

Timing it to when the rear forces linked up, the Rakshasa Guild members put their skills to use and broke the Skeleton Warriors’ formation.

“Kill them!”

— Krrk-crunch.

The mercenaries pressed their numerical advantage and destroyed the undead with little loss. As the Skeleton Warriors’ momentum dropped a notch, the Rakshasa Guild members read the moment and stepped back a pace, and just like that, vanguard and rear traded places. The mercenaries now stood at the front of the massed force, though only a scant few noticed it.

“Advance.”

Oh Jeongsu gave his next order before the mercenaries pushed to the front could notice anything off.

‘Good. So far, all according to plan.’

Aside from the Skeleton Warriors being abnormally strong, it was all unfolding just as they’d discussed beforehand. Trade the mercenaries and the Rakshasa Guild members mid-battle, conserve the allied forces as much as possible, and shift the attrition onto the hired blades.

— Geck. Run.
— Ge-geck. Enemy. Strong.

When about fifty of them had fallen, the remaining Skeleton Warriors turned their backs and fled into the fog.

“Hah. Undead, making a strategic retreat?”

Oh Jeongsu didn’t bother to hide his bewilderment. Same-Rank undead running over-spec had already been news to him, and now low-grade undead were fleeing the field. With common sense crumbling one piece at a time, he could hardly keep his head straight.

‘No. There’s something more important.’

There was the intel handed down in the strictest secrecy from the Arahan Guild.

— Cheon Yujin may be able to control undead.

He’d taken it as strictly a possibility, but at this point it seemed safe to call it certain.

“Advance. We can’t give him time.”

If the over-spec Skeleton Warriors multiplied any further, even the Rakshasa Guild would have to swallow losses; he had to drive the enemy hard before they gathered more strength.

The Rakshasa Guild’s massed force pushed into the whitish currents of air without hesitation.

They had pressed on for some stretch when a three-meter-high wall barred the massed force’s path.

“Bone?”
“What in the world is this place?”

When the Skeleton Warriors stood before the wall of bone, the interlocked bones slid apart to the left and right, opening a path. When the pursuing mercenaries reached the same spot, the parted wall closed back to what it had been.

Oh Jeongsu issued his next order.

“Open a way through.”
“Right you are.”
“You lot with the axes and maces over there, put some muscle into it.”
“The magic-line just lazing about?”

— Boom! Boom!

The wall of bone stretched long, like a partition line from before the Great Cataclysm. They needed to break through only as much as the massed force required to advance. Its resistance to physical attacks ran high, but it reeled badly under magic, and as part of the white wall collapsed, a path opened wide enough for ten to pass abreast.

‘You mean to buy time?’

The reason the bone walls and the swarming undead were stalling them was obvious enough. Oh Jeongsu had no intention of giving Yujin a single spare moment.

After that, too, bone walls raised at fifty-meter intervals barred the massed force’s path twice more, but each gave way in under a minute, opening the road.

“To whoever spots the target, I’ll pay five times the commission fee.”
“But who’s the target?”
“A Hunter.”

The mercenaries muttered, figures.

The whole route was too bizarre to call monster poaching. If a single person was the reason they’d suffered a week, the obsession with secrecy made sense.

“C’mon, let’s at least get a look at whoever it is.”
“We just have to spot ’em, right?”

The instant the mercenaries broke through part of the third wall and pushed inside, a black object cut through the whitish fog and dropped into the very midst of the lead mercenary group.

— KA-BOOOOM!

The earth shook as though a shell had landed. The impact-roar that crashed in half a beat late left the ears of the Hunters near the wall ringing, and red fluid scattered amid the mounds of dirt flung in every direction. The arms and legs of the Hunters caught in the blast radius were torn loose by the shock and went tumbling all over.

“Sh-shiiit!!!!”
“Priest! Priest!!!!”
“Ah, it hurts. It hurts!”
“What was that thing that came flying in?!”

One dead, three gravely wounded, seven lightly wounded. It wasn’t much damage relative to the size of the massed force, but the surprise blow doused the mercenaries’ kindled momentum like cold water.

‘It’d be a problem if they wilted this early, when it’s only just begun.’

Yujin, surveying the battlefield through Ghost Eye, sneered.

Now, now.
I’ve got so much prepared — I’d better savor it slowly.

The bone towers installed across the Necropolis came to six in all. The first batch had numbered three, but with the Rakshasa Guild’s massed force arriving later than expected, he’d managed to raise the extra structures.

‘There’s a chance there’s a Hunter with breakthrough power as good as Kim Mijeong’s, if not quite her equal.’

The Bone Tower of the Dead reached out to five hundred meters. He’d set one near the Black Obelisk and spread the remaining five just far enough apart to keep their ranges overlapping. With no way to predict which direction the Rakshasa Guild would attack from, he’d dispersed the firepower.

‘There was a Black Herb farm.’

The one difference from that time was that this lot stayed wary of corpses.

Well, all as expected.

The Arahan Guild had finished digging into Yujin’s background, so it stood to reason that some of his abilities had come to light.

‘Me? Why.’

Wasn’t it a bit shameless to whine about a crisis after preparing this much? Neither Kronos nor the Rakshasa Guild’s massed force had yet grasped what it meant to fight inside a Necromancer’s domain.

“You fools. Ready your defensive magic and skills!”

As Oh Jeongsu’s sharp-edged voice whipped the massed force’s mercenaries and Rakshasa Hunters along, dark objects came flying in from both sides with a shriek of cleaved air.

— Boom! Bang!

Impact-roars went off one after another, and casualties poured out on both wings of the massed force as well.

“Bone?”
“That’s the power of a 4th-Rank spell.”
“Priests, keep the wards up at all times. Take one of these unprepared and you’re done for.”

Hm.
Composed.

Yujin watched the wings of the Rakshasa Guild’s massed force react faster than the center and fiddled with his chin.

‘They used their heads a little.’

‘They turned their main strength out to the sides on purpose, and shoved the mercenaries into any traps that might be waiting.’

The first attack had produced more than ten casualties, yet the gun-tower he’d activated next had done little. In response speed, in skill, in all of it, the Hunters stationed on the massed force’s outer edge ran a far higher caliber than those at the center.

‘It won’t end in some dull fashion, then.’

He’d worried it might end pointlessly, thanks to the home-ground advantage.

Glad that seems to have been needless fretting.
Otherwise it’d feel like a waste — two weeks of suffering without a moment’s rest.

— You lot go too.

Yujin gave the order to the dead bound to him by soul-cords, and undead emerged from the very direction the bombardment had just come from.

— Master’s enemies. We finish them.
— I’ll roast you all.

Choi Hyeongtae, revived as a Returner, and the undead crafted by the Dark Minion Lee Seungyeon with Dead Rise struck at both wings of the massed force together.

— Ka-boom! Bang!

Black shells fired at ten-second intervals. Spirit-energy condensed to high density within the bone, then loosed by the power of the bone tower, carried force on par with a 4th-Rank spell.

“Spread the formation wide. Push back the undead and advance.”
“W-we’ll fall back, sir.”
“You idiot. You think the undead are going to stand and watch while we break those walls?”

Breaking the walls only enough for the massed force to advance was proving to be poison now. Peeling off a portion of the Hunters to go check the Bone Towers of the Dead was no easy thing, and the moment they tried to advance, undead came swarming from every side, so even that wouldn’t go as he pleased.

“Priests, devote yourselves to defense. Magic-line, sweep away the undead massing on the right wing.”

This was no time to ration mana. He had to pour out the firepower he’d hoarded and force an opening. Even as he barked the command, Oh Jeongsu released the mana he’d painstakingly realigned.

— Kruuurrr!

The lightning the 5th-Rank mage conjured tore through the Skeleton Warriors, and more than ten of them crumbled to dust in a single blow.

“Goddamn it.”

Coarse cursing burst from Oh Jeongsu’s mouth, his pride stung; a Chain Lightning loosed at maximum output, and it still couldn’t sweep away mere 3rd-Rank undead.

‘What in the world are these undead made of!’

— Ka-blooom!

Once again a massive blast shook the ground. The massed force’s magic-line Hunters were locked into something close to a melee and couldn’t bring their full power to bear, while the enemy beyond the fog dealt damage freely. To crack the situation open, he needed to pull something.

“You there, you!”
“Yes, sir.”
“Follow me.”

Oh Jeongsu ground his teeth and hastily set his legs moving.

Kim Mijeong cleared the front line of Bone Walls in a single bound. The Skeleton Warriors scattered about the domain came after her too, but the instant her daggers flashed, skulls split to either side and the bones clattered down to the ground.

“Aw. I went through hell, and now I’ll be annoyed if it ends easy.”

Still griping, she pushed deep into the enemy’s lines, and a fireball came flying, precisely reading Kim Mijeong’s line of movement.

A 3rd-Rank spell, Fireball.

— Whuuum!

The blue current dwelling in her dagger sliced the fireball clean through. Normally the spell detonated the instant it touched anything, but Kim Mijeong’s aura interfered with its realigned mana structure and wiped away every scrap of power packed into the sphere.

“Kihi. You think you can stop me with something like—?”

She swung her dagger again at the fireball that came flying in under a second later. This time, with a ka-boom, she failed to cancel all the force, and the fireball burst.

“Damn. My clothes got dirty.”

Kim Mijeong halted in place and brushed the ash off her gear. She’d been caught in the blast radius and not taken so much as a scratch, and at the sight Jo Seungcheol worked his jawbone in vexation.

— Your opponent is a Hunter at the peak of the 6th Rank. It’d be strange if that had any effect.
— Just so. Don’t go and get yourself killed sticking your neck out for nothing — just provide proper support.

Fafnir and Song Myeongseok stepped to the fore, and the corners of Kim Mijeong’s eyes curved into broad crescents.

“An undead that wields twin swords.”

— Me, you mean?

“You went to that uninhabited island off the East Sea, didn’t you?”

— I did, yes.

“Kihihi, wow. This is seriously incredible!”

Kim Mijeong couldn’t hold back her laughter at the unexpected stroke of luck.

“Do you have any idea how much grief I went through, chasing that bastard’s tail?”

— So you tracked those traces all the way here.

“It’s a coincidence. A coincidence.”

Kim Mijeong brought a dagger close to her lips and gave it a light peck of a touch.

“Heh. There’s a lot I want to ask your master, so this works out great.”

— Heh heh heh. If you want to go ask your questions, you’ll have to bring us down first.

“That’s exactly what I was planning to do.”

Kim Mijeong advanced at a slow, even pace, and Fafnir and Song Myeongseok scattered to either side, then launched their attacks almost in the same instant.