11. Into The Borderlands (1)

The magical armament was finished, but there was still work left to do.

“Adjust the smelt-fluid ratio for me.”
“You’re going to keep pouring it onto that corpse?”
“It needs to cure one more day.”
“You seem to be putting a fair bit of work into it. This isn’t an ordinary specimen, I take it.”
“To use the mana smelt-fluid as fuel for the formula’s activation, it has to soak it up good and full.”

The crux of crafting an Eldritch Dragon was capturing the dragon race’s essence without losing a single drop of it. Sealing the thing in the Ring of Black Darkness the instant he’d struck it down had been to keep that power from leaking out, too.

Even building the formula is hard, with my abilities as they are now.

Normally an Eldritch Dragon was made when a living dragon separated its own spirit and body of its own will, sealing the essence of its kind into a vessel. The method Yujin had attempted was an irregular one: process the dragon’s essence and torso, then make a different soul dwell within. The success rate was exceedingly low, and the infrastructure wretchedly poor besides.

Everything up to here is according to plan.

Thanks to a capable alchemist named Shin Junseok, the Draconian corpse held in peak condition. The rest came down to the caster, Yujin himself.

After letting it cure one more day, he laid his hand on the Draconian corpse. First, though, he shot a glance back at Shin Junseok, who paced distractingly to and fro behind him.

“If you’re going to watch, watch quietly. That’s more distracting than anything.”
“Is it really all right for me to watch?”
“It’s not as if it’ll wear out from being looked at.”
“Secret arts aren’t meant to be shown to others, are they.”
“An alchemist like you couldn’t copy it anyway.”

Handling spirit-power was something only a Necromancer could do. And even setting that aside.

A bit of this service is nothing to do for a fellow who’ll soon be my business partner.

Swallowing a grin, Yujin studied the Draconian corpse: the bones, the muscles, every last cell. The mana smelt-fluid had soaked in until the whole thing gave off an energy almost like that of a living creature.

Condition’s at its peak.

— Sssssh!

The energy seeping from the Ring of Black Darkness stained the rims of Yujin’s eyes, eyes that could now see the world beyond matter.

The Spirit-Eye.

A Necromancer’s power, it granted the ability to peer into the essence of death and souls, and to meddle with both.

Not a proper skill, just a stopgap, though.

His eyeballs turned stiff and dry; his eyes stung and his focus blurred. He had lodged inside himself a power his body, as it was now, simply couldn’t handle.

Can’t keep it up for long.

Eyes aside, even burning through every last scrap of his paltry mana bought him sixty seconds at most.

Yujin’s gaze turned to the Draconian corpse’s chest, to the heart that had stopped. With the Spirit-Eye, he brought the dragon-race essence dwelling within it under control.

The formula pinned the essence of a soul into a dead body; originally it had been a curse for making a spirit dwell in a particular object or place. Here, he inscribed it with the dragon race’s essence.

I have no skill for it, but inscribing the circuit — that much I can do.

Having once stood at the pinnacle of all Necromancers, he could sketch any halfway-ordinary curse formula with his eyes closed. The formula was complete in an instant.

The mana smelt-fluid the corpse had drunk in over the past three days reacted to the formula and began to feed it power. The mana that had soaked through its whole body funneled toward the chest.

— Ba-dump. Ba-dump.

The heart that should have stopped began to move again.

“Hieek!”

Shin Junseok shrieked and stumbled backward.

“It’s an ordinary corpse. What’s there to be so afraid of, honestly.”
“How is it a corpse when I can hear a heartbeat?”
“It’s just a rather special specimen.”

He had crafted an Eldritch Dragon by the abridged method. Compared to a true undying dragon, it wasn’t worth the dirt beneath such a being’s claws. But with a soul strong enough to control this body, and Yujin’s necromancy honed to its ultimate height, it would grow strong enough to deserve the name of undying dragon.

“Phew. Bloody exhausting.”

Yujin sank straight to the floor and heaved out a ragged breath.

Spirit-power depletion, with the aftereffects of the Spirit-Eye on top of it. Several blood vessels had burst in his overworked eyes, and red blood trickled down.

Well now.

Didn’t expect to be weeping tears of blood.

No. Not in the slightest.

I’m just about able to tell this world from the next.

If he’d known it would come to this, maybe he should have drained some life force ahead of time with Life Drain to top up his mana. But regret always arrives a step too late. He was clicking his tongue at the thought, late to class as ever, when Shin Junseok held out a towel.

“Wipe it off.”
“Blood’s pouring out of someone’s eyes and it doesn’t faze you?”
“A little blood won’t kill a man. More to the point, I had no end of things to mull over.”

Shin Junseok plopped down beside Yujin to match him.

“I’ll accept the offer you made on the first day.”

Now? He’s bringing that up while I’m streaming tears of blood?

“I expect it sounds preposterous, but bear with me. I made up my mind after seeing your handiwork, you see.”

Right. A weirdo genius with no interest in anything but alchemy; for a man like Shin Junseok, it figured.

Yujin promptly brought up the matter of the split once more.

“Sixty-forty work for you?”
“It’s steep, but it’s an amount I can stomach.”
“Oh. Big spender.”
“The owners of the big conglomerates put it this way: time can be bought with money.”

Gripping the Mid-grade Potion he’d finished three days back, Shin Junseok went on in a tone full of conviction.

“And if I can buy time by joining up with you, isn’t it worth a go?”
“That choice. You won’t regret it.”

A sla— no. Now I’ve got a dedicated alchemist, too. All that’s left is to find the spirit to serve as the axis of the Eldritch Dragon I worked so hard to make.

A weirdo, but his skill’s the real thing.

Yujin let Kronos’s grumbling pass as if he hadn’t heard it. Once some strength had returned to his body, he reached straight for his phone.

— Brrr. Brrr.

The moment the dial tone sounded, Yujin opened his mouth without preamble.

“Got any interest in one more job?”

Shin Junseok knit his brow.

“What are these kids?”

The visitors had descended on the Paju workshop right after Yujin.

“My friends. They’ll be staying here a while.”
“Heh heh. We’re in your care.”

Shin Junseok ran his eyes over [the Scraps] team, and then his face went bright red.

“This is a workshop! Not a boarding house!!!”

He bellowed loud enough to make the veins stand out on his neck.

Well now. Young folks do get worked up.

“You’ve got rooms to spare, don’t you.”
“No. That much is true, but—”
“They won’t get in the way of the work. They’ll only be sleeping here.”
“Then why have your fri— no. Why have your acquaintances come to Paju? Sightseeing in the borderlands, are they?”
“Oh. Bingo. Are alchemists all this sharp?”

Haaah. Shin Junseok let out a deep sigh.

The borderlands were what people now called the DMZ, the strip that had once split the Korean peninsula in two.

“Partner. Do you have any idea how dangerous that place is?”
“Don’t worry. I won’t be doing anything dangerous.”
“You don’t seem to notice your friends’ faces have all gone white.”
“The kids are just a bit frail.”
“Just don’t go getting yourself killed. If you die, partner, I’m taking your whole potion income for myself.”

Shin Junseok shot back brusquely and went back into the workshop.

What a man who just can’t be honest with himself, really.

“Drop your bags and we set out at once. We’ll be staying about three days.”
“Boss. But what kind of business takes us to the borderlands…”
“We’re going to pay our respects.”
“Sorry?”

Kang Minho asked reflexively, as if caught off guard.

“You’ll understand when you see.”

Yujin didn’t explain in any depth.

About five kilometers north of the workshop, a single gateway came into view, blocking the road clean across, barbed wire packed thick down either side. Reaching the borderlands meant passing through it.

“There are a lot of Hunters here, too.”
“Anywhere there are monsters, it’s like that, isn’t it?”
“That’s true, but—”
“The borderlands are a place people come and go from as well. No need to fret too much.”

Yujin glanced at his tense [the Scraps] teammates, snorted a soft laugh, and took the lead toward the gateway.

“Are you Hunters?”
“Yes. Besides [the Scraps] team, there’s about one—”
“He’s on the same team.”

Yujin swiftly corrected Kang Minho’s words.

The soldier on guard looked up [the Scraps] team on an electronic device.

“Confirmed. Looks like your party’s grown by one?”
“Ah. A Hunter we recruited recently, you see.”

Behind Kang Minho, [the Scraps] members smiled awkwardly.

— Gugugugugung!

The iron gate slid apart left and right, opening a gap wide enough for a single vehicle to pass through.

“Good luck to you.”

Yujin stepped through the gap in the gate without a moment’s hesitation. Toward the abandoned land that had fallen into the hands of monsters. Toward the borderlands.

He advanced slowly along a footpath that wound between rampantly overgrown, otherworldly plants. Behind him, [the Scraps] team kept a sharp watch on their surroundings, taut with nerves.

“Think of it as a slightly big gate.”
“Even so. I can’t put my mind at ease.”
“The place I used to work was like this too, so it puts me even less at ease.”
“I meant ‘stay reasonably tense.’ I don’t recall telling you to set your mind completely at ease, did I?”

He laughed at Lee Seongmin, who let out a short “Aw—.”

The entry stretch was relatively safe, since military-affiliated Hunters and government agents periodically swept it clear of monsters.

Around here, was it?

Retracing his memory as he walked the footpath, Yujin abruptly stepped off the path and headed into the brush.

— Crunch. Crunch.

Less than a minute after leaving the path, footsteps that weren’t the party’s reached his ears.

— Shrrk!

One of the [Cursed Fang]s fastened at his waist shot into the air, then loosed itself and cleaved through the undergrowth, several times faster than an ordinary bone. With the throwing bonus attached, it was nimbler still.

“Kurk!”

A muscular green monster revealed itself above the brush, making its characteristic nasal grunt.

Kang Minyeong screamed.

“Eek. An Orc’s come out!”
“A 2nd-class monster, no less. This ain’t safe!”
“Boss. An Orc’s the kind of monster the three of us together might just manage to draw even with.”

These brats. Their faith was sorely lacking. If they’d been the type to be scared of a mere Orc, they would never have set foot in the borderlands at all.

Yujin let out a scornful snort, as if the whole thing were laughable, and controlled the Cursed Fang.

“Kurk, kurk!”

The Orc’s arm muscles swelled. Its forearm, thicker than the thigh of Kang Minho, a Martial-line Hunter, gave a creaking drrk, brute strength enough to split a boulder in a single blow. Without taking its eyes off the fast-approaching [Cursed Fang], it drew back the glaive in its hand.

“You looking to play baseball?”
“Kurk!”

The glaive took precise aim at the incoming Cursed Fang’s trajectory. The rusted blade swung for the tip of the black spike.

That’s not going to happen.

— Shrrk!

The magical armament slipped just slightly off the arc the glaive was swinging along. Even after a single launch it remained under Bone Control, so correcting its course was no trouble, a matter of a little mana and concentration. By twisting its forward path at the last second, he robbed the Orc of any time to respond.

— Squelch!

The Cursed Fang split the skin and tore through even the hard muscle beneath. Green blood dripped to the ground, drop after drop.

“Dealing an Orc a critical wound in a single strike!”
“Amazin’!”

Yujin shook his head left and right.

“I was aiming for the heart, and that’s all I managed. Not bad.”

The Orc had wrenched its body aside at the last dramatic instant before impact. As its racial trait [Battle Continuation] kicked in, it shrugged off even the stiffening from the pain and charged straight in.

“Kurk!”

Combat spirit ablaze, the Orc kicked off the ground with force and rushed at Yujin.

“Boss. I’ll buy time, so finish it off, if you would.”

Kang Minho pressed his shield tight to his shoulder, planted himself in front of Yujin, braced the strength into his legs, and held firm.

Bold, even back when his accomplishments were slight.

It was no coincidence that the figure he’d seen in his past life overlapped with the one before him now.

— Sssh!

Four more [Cursed Fang]s floated up, and the Orc, charging at full force through the pain, darkened in expression.

“What. Something not going your way?”

The green-skinned monster was slashed to ribbons by the rushing black spikes. A racial trait counted for something only as long as breath remained in the body; pressing on through an impact past one’s limit was a feat reserved for the undead.

Right. The undead, beings that defied death.

“Answer my call.”

The Orc, holes punched all over its torso, lurched and rose to its feet, its blood already congealed. The wounds torn into it were left as they were, but its combat power had barely diminished.

“Gh, uuh.”

The Orc zombie, its head half-cricked backward, came staggering forward.

Ah. I forgot to steal its vitality with Life Drain.

“Well, there are plenty of Orcs.”

The moment Yujin muttered it without thinking, Kang Minho gave a violent start.

“Boss. Didn’t you come here to pay your respects?”
“Yeah. And the dear departed I came to honor happen to reside in an Orc colony.”
“Ha ha ha…”

A dazed, vacant laugh slipped out of Kang Minho without his meaning it to.

Yujin grinned at him.

“I figured you lot would be pleased too.”

Making good money was a fine thing, after all. Right?