12. Into The Borderlands (2)

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

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

A quantity of life force several times that of a goblin.
The vitality he’d absorbed he spent at once on reinforcing his body.
And thanks to hours of hunting without rest, he’d racked up a good deal of experience, too.

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

How is it that monsters appear at all?
Of the countless hypotheses, the most credible is mana distribution.

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

Without even being told, Kang Minho started in on the bivouac alongside his teammates.

Haven’t I just?

But of course.
He was a lottery ticket with a hundred-percent winning rate, which was exactly why he’d snapped him up ahead of time.
That he was good at the odd jobs too only made it better.

“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 impossible at Yujin’s level.
He knew where the colony lay.
He’d have to whittle their strength down first, picking off the Orcs that patrolled its outskirts at intervals. Only then would a frontal clash be worth attempting.

There was one more reason, though.

See it and you’ll know.

Yujin swallowed the rest of his words.

Camp prepared, [the Scraps] team suddenly started drawing lots.
His curiosity got the better of him.
Yujin stepped closer and asked.

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

So that was what they were up to.
Watching Lee Seongmin call it out 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—,” and then a sheepish smile crossed his face.

“Looks like there’s no part left for us.”

“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 the word sounded in his mind, it spread open before him.

The fruits of two days spent hunting monsters laid themselves out at a glance.

Huh—.

Specs that drew an admiring breath all on their own.

Tell anyone this is my second day 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 the level-up bonus of forty-five, it was a staggering figure, more than double.
The only way an ordinary Hunter raises their stats is by hunting monsters to gain levels.
Even the Yujin of his past life couldn’t reinforce 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.

A drastically heightened physique.
His holy power, on the other hand, had risen by only the slightest margin.
Aside from the first hunt, when he’d wrung the Goblin Shaman’s life force dry, the holy power stat crept up only faintly.
The points gained seemed to vary with 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—.

After one long, deep breath, he poured mana into the Ring of Black Darkness.

By reaching level 10, he could 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, he’d be able to draw knowledge from other schools as well.
The higher the standing he attained, the more fields he could access. That was simply the fact of it.

“F—uck…”

Knew it’d be like this.

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

Kronos nodded along, intrigued.

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

Yujin gritted his teeth and rode out 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 kind of thing’s no trouble.”
“Even so. This is properly done.”
“Camping’s my hobby.”

So Yujin learned Lee Seongmin’s hobby, which he hadn’t been the least bit curious about.
No wonder.
His knack for setting up the bivouac gear was no ordinary thing.
Thanks to him, Yujin got some easy rest.

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

[the Scraps] members, all keyed up and raring to go.
With the Orc zombies pushed out front, they roamed the area near the borderlands.

The destination: the resting place of a ‘forgotten hero’s’ soul.
And on the way, the whittling-down of the Orc colony that had settled in that very spot.

There was no time to rest, not if he meant to enhance his underlings with the newly acquired spells.

“Kurrk?”

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

“Grraaaah.”

The Orc zombies, the light long gone from their eyes, their gazes rolling grotesquely in their sockets, lunged at their former kin.
The Orc warriors didn’t so much as flinch at the distinctive stench of corpses.

— 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 harder by rigor mortis, clamped down on the glaives.
If a single blow couldn’t sever them, the zombies pinned the weapons in place.

A few Orcs managed to wrench their glaives free by pouring more strength into it, but the ones that had pressed in too far were seized by the zombies and met a wretched end.

“Gh, uuh. Eating.”

The zombies’ movements didn’t stop there.
In the opening clash, they pinned the Orcs’ feet with the rigid bodies peculiar to zombies, and some of them, not letting that opening slip, swung wide around and closed a full ring on the Orc warriors.

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

The Boss is reading the flow of the battlefield perfectly.

Orc zombies, with their greater bulk of muscle, were slower than undead made from goblin stock.
Their destructive power was greater, but unable to wield weapons, their combat power tended to fall short of the Orcs in life.
Even after cranking up the crafting efficiency to fill in the missing specs, it 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.

A mercenary’s craft, seizing the battlefield to perfection.
Kang Minho swallowed his admiration down inside once more.

“Kurr…”

Yujin used Life Drain on the Orc corpses.
[the Scraps] team harvested the mana stones from the corpses he’d robbed of their vitality.
A process that flowed 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 approached the Orc corpses sprawled about.
The number he could command was twenty.
Creating additional undead was impossible.

Then I just raise the abilities of each individual.

— Squelch-crunch!

With an eerie sound, five Orc corpses heaved violently.
The flesh of the dead, separating from bone.
Its original use was an auxiliary technique to snag an opponent’s feet amid the chaos of battle, but Yujin worked it a little differently.

To use Bone Armor, I need bone.

When would he ever pry the bone and flesh of a corpse apart one piece at a time?
Not when a single use of Flesh Control could debone it clean.

As all the muscle and skin sloughed away, it clumped into a single mass like slime, and in no time the Orc corpse was left as nothing but bare bone.

That flesh has its uses too.

When Yujin waved his hand, part of the dark-red mass of flesh fastened itself onto a zombie.
The Orc’s already-hefty body grew about 1.3 times larger with the flesh stuck to it.

And white bone fastened itself on top of that.

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

— Clack! Clack!

The Orc flesh became a mana circuit linking the zombie and the bone.
It packed the seams full as well, plugging every last gap.
The white bone synchronized and stained itself a deep black.

— Vmmm!

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

“Grruaaah!!”

The zombie, now fully armored in bone plating, let out a shriek.

A blue glow shimmered over the pupils stained gray.
The flesh slathered on layer upon layer.
With Flesh Control alone, it would have glued on like paste at best, but resonating with the zombie, it amplified the creature’s power.

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

Yujin let his satisfaction show.

Specs roughly three times higher than the Orc the zombie was based on.
He’d swelled the body with flesh, and by resonating the mana of the bone and the zombie, strengthened even its physical ability and intellect.
The bone plating covering its whole body meant Corpse Poison could no longer be used, but the overwhelmingly heightened specs covered that flaw completely.

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

It was a matter of wrapping the Orc corpse, enlarged by Flesh Control, entirely in bone.
The wider the area for forming the plating, the more bone — the medium — it took.

The zombies Yujin could control at once came to twenty in all.
There were plenty of Orcs patrolling around the colony.
He’d be able to remodel every one of his underlings into Armored Zombies within the period he’d set out for.

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

Skeletons.
Along with zombies, the monster that stands 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 on top of it. But in exchange, they’re weak.”

Mass equals power.
Factor in mana and the arithmetic gets complicated, but there was no need to weigh that much with low-grade undead.
Unless he meant to hunt over a long stretch, there was no need to pour that much effort into each individual.

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

Crafting a skeleton is simple.
Just like a moment ago, you use Raise Undead on bone stripped clean of all its flesh, and you’re done.
The Raise Undead spell crafts a zombie or a skeleton reflecting the state of the dead, so you make undead from a corpse whose flesh has fallen away.

“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.