12. Into The Borderlands (2)

The Orc toppled to the ground. Its muscles, swollen like a balloon at their peak, shriveled away.

An Orc’s vitality is something else, just as I figured.

It held several times the life force of a goblin, and he poured every bit he absorbed straight into reinforcing his body. Hours of hunting without a break had piled up a fair amount of experience besides.

The borderlands have a higher monster spawn rate than a gate.

What made monsters appear in the first place? Of the countless theories, the most convincing one came down to the distribution of mana.

“It’ll be evening soon, so I’ll set up camp.”

Without waiting to be told, Kang Minho set about preparing the bivouac with his teammates.

Haven’t I just?

But of course. The man was a lottery ticket with a hundred-percent payout, which was exactly why Yujin had snapped him up ahead of time. That he was handy with the odd jobs besides only sweetened the deal.

“Boss. Can I ask how long you plan on staying here?”
“It won’t be long. Three days or so.”
“I figured we’d be heading straight for the Orc colony.”
“Do that and we’d make for fine eating, that’s what.”

A head-on fight with an Orc colony was out of the question at Yujin’s level. He knew where the colony lay; he’d have to wear its strength down first, picking off the Orcs that patrolled its fringes at intervals until a frontal clash became worth the attempt. There was one more reason, though.

See it and you’ll know.

Yujin swallowed the rest of his words.

With camp prepared, [the Scraps] team suddenly fell to drawing lots. His curiosity got the better of him, and Yujin stepped closer to ask.

“You lot. What are you doing?”
“Settin’ the night watch.”

So that was what they were up to. Watching Lee Seongmin announce it so proudly, Yujin clicked his tongue. Tsk, tsk.

“And here I was wondering what you were so busy at.”
“I served near the borderlands, so I know ‘em well. We’ll stand watch, so you just rest, Boss.”
“No need. The watch can be left to my underlings.”

Twenty zombies ringed the campsite. Without Yujin’s leave, not a soul would get through.

Kang Minho let out a short little “Ah.”

“Looks like there’s no part left for us,” he said with a sheepish smile.

“Don’t worry about it. You’re all doing better than I expected.”
“Just hearing you say so is thanks enough.”

Yujin gave Kang Minho a light pat on the shoulder and perched himself on a folding stool.

Status window.

The instant he called the word up in his mind, the window answered.

Two days of hunting monsters had borne fruit, all of it laid out at a glance.

Huh—.

The specs were enough to draw an admiring breath on their own.

Tell anyone this is day two of being awakened and not a single soul would believe it.

The stats he’d gained from absorbing life force came to a full one hundred and sixteen. Set against a level-up bonus of forty-five, the figure was staggering, more than double it. An ordinary Hunter could raise their stats only by hunting monsters for levels; even the Yujin of his past life had never reinforced his body this way.

Heh heh.

A laugh spilled out of him on its own.

Nice — apart from not being able to allocate the stat spread however I like.

His physique had shot up dramatically. His Holy Power (Spirit-Power) stat, by contrast, had inched up by the barest margin. Except for the first hunt, when he’d wrung the Goblin Shaman’s life force dry, it had crept up only faintly. The points gained seemed to track a monster’s vitality.

Now that my physical abilities are stronger too, I’ll have to find ways to put them to use.

He’d picked up a few odd tricks before the regression, but nothing he could lean on as a mainstay.

Everything I can use, I should try out.

Yujin twitched his lips, satisfied.

Anyway, I just barely scraped level 10 before nightfall.
Phew—.

He drew one long, deep breath and poured mana into the Ring of Black Darkness.

Hitting level 10 let him inscribe more knowledge into his mind.

The only thing open to me right now is the Necromancy school, though.

Once he climbed to 2nd Rank, knowledge from other schools would open up as well. The higher his standing rose, the more fields he could reach. That was simply how it worked!

“F—uck…”

Knew it’d be like this.

Yujin clamped both hands over his mouth, barely choking back a scream.

Kronos nodded along, intrigued.

Someone here’s hurting like he’s about to drop dead.

Yujin gritted his teeth and bore the pain.

So very moved I could weep, you reminding me again. You little bastard.
I know that already.

His head throbbed from the aftereffects of the knowledge transfer, but it had been worth it.

Come daybreak, I’ll have to bolster my underlings’ strength.
Heh heh.

A sneer slipped out of Yujin’s mouth.

The next day.

[the Scraps] team broke down the camping gear with practiced ease.

“You’ve got a bit of experience camping, have you?”
“Hahaha. I got out of the service not long ago, so this kinda thing’s no trouble.”
“Even so. This is properly done.”
“Camping’s my hobby.”

So he’d learned Lee Seongmin’s hobby, a thing he hadn’t been the least curious about. No wonder, though. The man’s knack for pitching the bivouac gear was no ordinary thing.

Thanks to him, I got some easy rest.

“Today’ll be busier, so brace yourselves a bit.”
“Understood, Boss!”

[the Scraps] members were keyed up and raring to go. With the Orc zombies pushed out in front, the party roamed the ground near the borderlands. Their destination was the resting place of a ‘forgotten hero’s’ soul, and they’d grind down the Orc colony that had settled on that very spot along the way. There was no time to rest, not if he meant to enhance his underlings with the spells he’d just acquired.

“Kurrk?”

They came across a band of Orcs patrolling in twos and threes.

“Grraaaah.”

The Orc zombies lunged at their former kin, the light long since drained from eyes that rolled grotesquely in their sockets. The Orc warriors didn’t so much as flinch at the distinctive reek of the dead.

— Shrrk!

The glaive blades sank into the forearms and torsos of the Orc zombies.

“Grrrrk.”
“Kurk? What’s this. These things. They’re tough.”

Muscle stiffened by rigor mortis clamped down on the glaives. When a strike failed to cut through in one, the zombies held the attackers fast where they stood.

A few Orcs put their backs into it and wrenched their glaives free.

“Gh, uuh. Eating.”

But the ones who had pressed in too far were seized by the zombies and met a wretched end.

The zombies didn’t stop there. In the opening clash they pinned the Orcs’ feet with that rigidity peculiar to the undead, and some, seizing the instant, swung wide to encircle the Orc warriors completely.

Awe shimmered at the corners of Kang Minho’s eyes.

The Boss is reading the flow of the battlefield perfectly.

Orc zombies, with their heavier muscle, moved slower than undead raised from goblin stock. They hit harder, but unable to wield weapons, their combat power tended to fall short of the Orcs they’d been in life. Even cranking the crafting efficiency up to patch the missing specs hadn’t fully made up for their lack of mobility.

To pin the Orcs’ feet in the opening exchange and build an encirclement on top of it.

Pure mercenary’s craft, the battlefield read and seized to perfection. Kang Minho swallowed his admiration down once more.

“Kurr…”

Yujin used Life Drain on the Orc corpses. With their vitality drained off, [the Scraps] team set to harvesting the mana stones, the whole process flowing like water.

“Boss. The work’s all done.”
“Good work.”
“Do we move out right away?”
“Ah. I’ve got something to do, so take a little rest, all of you.”

Yujin walked over to the Orc corpses sprawled across the ground. The number he could command was capped at twenty; raising any more undead was out of the question.

Then I just raise the abilities of each individual.

— Squelch-crunch!

With that eerie sound, five Orc corpses heaved violently, the dead flesh tearing away from bone. The technique’s original purpose was to snag an enemy’s feet in the chaos of battle, but Yujin put it to a slightly different use.

To use Bone Armor, I need bone.

Why pick the bone and flesh of a corpse apart one piece at a time, when a single use of Flesh Control could debone it clean? As all the muscle and skin peeled away, it clumped into a single slime-like mass, and in no time the Orc corpse was nothing but bare bone.

That flesh has its uses too.

Yujin waved his hand, and part of the dark-red mass of flesh fastened itself onto a zombie. With it, the Orc’s already-hefty body swelled to about 1.3 times its size.

White bone fastened itself on top of that.

The flesh binds the bone and the zombie’s body together.

— Clack! Clack!

The Orc flesh stuck on now served as a mana circuit linking the zombie and the bone, and it packed the seams full besides, plugging every last gap. The white bone synchronized and stained itself a deep black.

— Vmmm!

The spirit-power soaked into the Bone Armor met the zombie’s core and set off a chain reaction.

“Grruaaah!!”

Fully sheathed in bone plating now, the zombie let out a shriek.

A blue glow shimmered across the pupils, stained gray. The flesh lay slathered on layer upon layer. With Flesh Control alone it would have stuck like so much paste, but resonating with the zombie, it amplified the creature’s power instead.

Right. This is what makes the remodeling worthwhile, isn’t it?

Yujin let his satisfaction show.

Its specs ran roughly three times higher than the Orc it had been built from. He’d bulked the body out with flesh, then, by resonating the mana of bone and zombie together, strengthened even its physical ability and its wits. The full-body bone plating meant Corpse Poison was off the table now, but the overwhelming jump in specs covered that flaw completely.

So it takes three Orc corpses to upgrade a single zombie.

It came down to wrapping the Orc corpse, enlarged by Flesh Control, entirely in bone. The broader the surface to plate, the more bone it ate up. Bone was the medium, after all.

All told, Yujin could control twenty zombies at once, and Orcs patrolled the colony in plenty. He’d have every last one of his underlings remodeled into an Armored Zombie inside the window he’d set himself.

“Uh, Boss. There’s one thing I’m curious about.”
“What is it?”
“Do you, by chance, only command zombies?”
“Ah. You mean, don’t I make things like skeletons.”

Skeletons. Along with zombies, they were the monster that stood for the undead.

“A bodybuilder and a skin-and-bones fellow. Which one’s stronger?”
“The bodybuilder, obviously.”
“Same thing. Skeletons are nimble and fast, and they’ve got resistance to arrows, too. But in exchange, they’re weak.”

Mass = power. Bring mana into the equation and the math turned complicated, but low-grade undead didn’t call for that kind of accounting. Unless he planned to hunt over a long haul, there was no sense pouring that much effort into any single one.

“They’re not hard to make if I want to. But there’s no need for it.”

Crafting a skeleton was simple. Strip a bone clean of every scrap of flesh, hit it with Raise Undead the way he had a moment ago, and it was done. Raise Undead shaped a zombie or a skeleton to match the state of the dead, so a corpse whose flesh had fallen away came out a skeleton.

“Then crafting a skeleton doesn’t seem to have any upside, does it.”
“Skeletons are better if you want to keep them around a long time.”
“Why’s that?”
“The flesh rots, doesn’t it. And I haven’t even embalmed it properly.”
“Ah. I see.”

Kang Minho nodded in understanding.

Yujin let out a soft snicker and pushed the Armored Zombie out in front.