13. Into The Borderlands (3)

“Grruaaah!”

“Kurrrk!”

One Orc had tried to lock the Armored Zombie into a head-on contest of strength. Their fingers had barely tangled together in midair when, with a crrnch, the Orc’s hand twisted off at a grotesque angle. The Orc glared with bloodshot eyes, straining to wrench its arm back, but the Armored Zombie wouldn’t let the hand go; it dragged the limb inward instead, breaking the Orc’s stance apart.

“Kurk! Monster. Die!”

An Orc in the rear swung its glaive with everything it had, meaning to save its comrade.

— Claaang!

The iron-forged curved blade went dull, and all it had won against the bone plating was the faintest scratch.

“Decent enough.”

Yujin tossed off the appraisal without so much as a flicker. Behind him, Kang Minho stood struck dumb.

“That reinforced zombie. It’d overwhelm a 2nd-Rank Hunter, wouldn’t it?”
“It’s a fellow I went to a lot of trouble making. Naturally it ought to be at least that good.”

A pack of Orcs, infamous as a born race of fighters, was being toyed with by a single bone-clad zombie.

“Kurrrk!”

One Orc brought down a strike with everything it had. As luck would have it, it landed on the very spot that had taken the earlier blow, and under the accumulated force, with a crrk, the bone split a little.

“Graah?”

The price was steep.

Its plating cracked, the Armored Zombie’s head snapped aside from the shock; then it thrust out its right hand. The Orc fought the brutish grip, but the moment the Armored Zombie bore down, its head burst in an instant.

Whoever provoked its temper has only itself to blame.

When most of the Orc pack had fallen, the last one standing turned tail and bolted the other way.

[the Scraps] members marveled.

“Somebody told me Orcs don’t run. That’s a total lie.”
“Fair enough. I’d run too.”
“Run, my foot. I’d’ve pissed myself on the spot.”
“Minyeong. I keep telling you to talk a little softer.”
“What. Did I say something I shouldn’t have?”

The thing carried monstrous strength, unmoved by any ordinary blow, and the moment it seized a foe, an arm was the toll. Going up against that was the height of unreason.

“Boss. Are you really going to let the Orc go? A zombie’s mobility will never catch it.”
“Wait and watch.”

The Armored Zombie sprang with everything it had. In an instant it closed the distance and rammed the Orc, one shoulder raised like a football player’s.

“Kuk!”

The Orc tumbled away, retching out a dry scream. Its back, bared to that explosive force, caved in, and its chest took a blow hard enough to drive bone jutting out.

“Grruaaah!”

The Armored Zombie raised a foot to stamp out the Orc’s life.

“Stop.”

The instant Yujin’s order landed, it drew back the foot that had been about to crush the Orc’s skull.

Its aggression has increased.

Remodeled with Bone Armor and Flesh Control, the Armored Zombie had grown far more savage. As the spirit-power poured into it rose, so too did the dead’s peculiar hatred of the living.

You think I’m going to die because I can’t even control my own minions?

Some Necromancers misjudged their own capacity, crafted high-grade undead, and ended up dead for it. None of that applied to Yujin, yet there was no harm in being careful about anything.

If anything, it’s a good thing.

Just look at the Armored Zombie’s ferocious killing intent. Even an Orc, a creature that treated combat as the whole purpose of its life, had fled at the sight of that savage thing, hadn’t it?

Ignoring Kronos’s lament, he drew his spirit-power up.

When spirit-power flooded the damaged Armored Zombie’s plating as well, it was restored without a single scratch left behind.

“I can’t tell who the monster is anymore.”

Watching the bone plating knit itself whole, Kang Minho muttered, admiration creeping into his voice.

The third day since entering the borderlands.

“Are you all prepared?”

At Yujin’s question, every member of [the Scraps] nodded.

The Orc colony ranked, in gate terms, as a dangerous place at the very tail end of the 2nd-Rank tier. And the land north of Paju was borderlands.

It amounts to clearing a 3rd-Rank gate.

For two days they’d circled the colony, thinning the Orcs’ numbers, and by applying Flesh Control and Bone Armor he’d crafted the Armored Zombie, an undead not recorded in the Library of Knowledge. Raising his level by three more along the way was a bonus.

The one pity was that absorbing the Orcs’ life force no longer raised his stats.

Well, it’d be stranger if there were no limit at all.

Yujin wasn’t disappointed. The residual life force he’d gathered during the hunt he kept stored away for healing, so that if an ally ever took a wound, he could mend them on the spot.

That’s a Priest class’s actual line of work, after all.

Yujin gave a wry smile. Come to think of it, hadn’t there been word that a holy spell had been added?

What a useless Constellation. Once his business in the borderlands was finished, he’d have to drop by the Pantheon.

“Look after your own bodies.”
“We’re Hunters too, in our own way. Don’t you worry.”

He had a means of healing, true, but he’d never tried Life Drain for recovery. There was no telling whether it could mend a grievous wound like a severed arm or leg, and he had no wish to test it in a spot like this.

“Advance.”
“Graah!”

Twenty Armored Zombies pressed forward.

The Orc colony sat beside the river. With no boulders or large trees for cover, the approaching horde of Armored Zombies came into plain view.

“Kurrk. Enemies!”

— Clang. Clang.

A bell rang from the watchtower, and the Orcs scattered across the colony came together at the entrance, fully armed.

The Cursed Fang shot out, splitting the air. It buried itself with a thunk in the nape of the Orc that had been ringing the bell, and the clamor died away.

“Don’t bark so loud.”

Yujin had just moved to retrieve the Cursed Fang.

— Pa-pa-pa-pat!

A few arrows came flying toward the group, tracing parabolas.

“Leave this much to us.”

Kang Minho’s shield took on a green tint, and the arrows raining toward the group’s heads were drawn aside into it. A fireball loosed the instant they bunched together, and with a small blast half of them burned to ash in midair.

— Ti-ti-ting!

A few arrows lodged in the shield.

“It’s fine. I can hold.”

Bracing both legs hard, Kang Minho turned aside every attack without giving an inch.

Told you — a lottery ticket with a hundred-percent chance of winning.

Yujin commanded five Cursed Fangs at once. So long as [the Scraps] blocked the stray arrows, he could throw himself entirely into the offensive; there was no longer any need to keep a reserve back for working the magical armaments.

— Shhhk!

The Cursed Fangs crossed the air again and again, cutting down the Orcs left exposed atop the watchtower and the high ground. The casualties mounted before the colony’s Orcs had even finished assembling, and once that number passed twenty, the Orcs’ patience hit rock bottom as well.

“Kurrk. We just charge!”
“Kurk, intruders. I kill.”

The Orcs came pouring out of the colony, shoving their shoddy gate aside with rough swipes of their hands.

“Go. My underlings.”

“Grruoaaah!!”

The twenty Armored Zombies rammed their shoulders into the front rank of the Orc pack just spilling out of the entrance.

— Kraddk!

The grisly sound of muscle rupturing and bone snapping. Some of the Orcs swung their blades to match the speed of the charging Armored Zombies.

— Kaang!

But a glaive that caught against the bone armor only snapped clean in two, and the Orcs went flying left and right like pins struck by a bowling ball.

“Graaah!!”

Riding the momentum, the twenty Armored Zombies drove the Orc pack back to the entrance.

“Kurk. We have to push through.”
“Ku, kurk. Stinking monsters. Too strong.”
“Kurrk! I’ll make an opening!”

Several Orcs, burning with fight, threw themselves head-on at the Armored Zombies, and scar after scar piled up on the sturdy bone plating, one and two at a time. Some swung so hard their blades snapped, and then they clung bare-handed to the zombies’ arms and legs, fouling their movements.

“Monsters mad for battle, they said. So it’s true.”

Kang Minho clicked his tongue at the sight and muttered as though sickened.

Cracks were carved, several of them, even into the Armored Zombies’ bone plating that had seemed unbreakable.

At the rear, the Orc chieftain threw back his head and roared, veins bulging at his neck.

“Kurk! Fight harder, warriors! Just a little more and the enemy will…”

The cracks in the bone plating filled in an instant. Mending the plating was perfectly possible even from over a hundred meters away.

“Just a little more and what. I’m curious how that ends.”
“Kurk, kurrk!”
“What. Not going the way you wanted?”
“Kurrk. You coward. Fight fair and square.”

The lumps of flesh from the Orcs fallen on the ground clung to the one prattling about fairness.

“Kurk!”
“To a Necromancer, this is fighting fair and square.”

— Squelch! Squelch!

The Orcs clinging to the Armored Zombies turned sluggish as well, gobs of flesh fastened all over them, and with nowhere left to go, the pack fell into confusion.

By now nearly half their number lay toppled near the colony entrance, made fools of by Yujin.

“Kurrk! Smash the flank and open us a path!”

The Orc chieftain moved to bring down the colony’s fence.

“So you’ve finally thought of it?”

Yujin smiled broadly. That’s right. He’d reckoned the only way to break this deadlock would be exactly that.

How delightful it is when they move exactly as I planned.

Once more the Cursed Fangs danced, and the Orcs trying to break the fence dropped, spilling blood.

“Well now. Sticking your heads out, asking to be killed?”
“Kurrrk!!!”

Eyes bloodshot with rage, the Orc chieftain clung to the fence and swung his axe with all his strength. Though he’d brought it down only a few times, the fence wobbled visibly.

The Cursed Fangs shot toward the Orc chieftain.

— Thnk! Th-th-thnk!

His rock-hard hide tore away, and green blood streamed down to stain the ground, but he did not stop.

At last, part of the fence collapsed, opening a second route to Yujin apart from the colony entrance.

“…is what you’re thinking, isn’t it?”
“Kurk!”
“You could’ve just circled back through the entrance facing the river. Why go and wreck a perfectly good palisade?”

This was what Orcs were like. The image of Yujin clicking his tongue, tsk, tsk, reflected in the Orc chieftain’s eyes.

“And don’t go counting on a comrade coming up from behind. I’ve cleared them out in advance.”
“Kurrrk!!”

The Orc chieftain gave himself over to rage once more.

His blood ran into overdrive and his skin flushed red, and the pain-twisted expression went hazy, as if he’d been drugged. By contrast, a killing intent several shades darker spread from the corners of his eyes, reddening pupils and whites alike.

Berserk numbed pain and reason alike, leaving nothing in him but bloodlust for the enemy.

“I was waiting for you to use it.”

The moment after the chieftain triggered Berserk, Yujin waited for the body to seize up from the skill’s after-effect.

“Pin both arms and the legs and even a Berserk state can’t move.”

Not missing that one slim opening, the five Cursed Fangs he’d held on standby pierced the Orc chieftain’s limbs.

Perhaps for the extra spirit-power he’d lent them, the black awls tore through flesh and muscle, punched clean out the far side, and drove deep into the earth, shackling the chieftain’s movements.

“Kurrrrr!”
“What. Something not going right?”

Skewered by the Cursed Fangs, the Orc chieftain thrashed. The wounds gaped wider, and though enough blood ran down to pool into a creek, the chieftain glared at Yujin with eyes full of killing intent.

“You’re not the only one dying, so don’t take it too hard.”

Yujin took the Staff of Resentment into his hand through Bone Control.

When you lacked the right tool, you used what was at hand. If even one Cursed Fang slipped loose the chieftain would tear free, so the staff would do in a pinch.

Finish it fast.

His mana drained away like an ebbing tide. Driving as many as six mediums at once through Bone Control had left his mouth bone-dry.

Letting go of the Staff of Resentment would cost him its mana-assist effect too, and even converting the life force he’d stored up into mana meant invoking the White Night trait once. Do that, and the flow pinning the Orc chieftain down would break.

The target’s the heart. Pierce it in a single blow.

— Shhk!

The Staff of Resentment came flying, spinning ferociously. Its keen tip bored mercilessly into the chieftain’s chest.

The red glow gathered at the corners of the chieftain’s eyes faded.

“Khk.”

Yujin’s vision swam from the excessive mana drain. It was the second time he’d been through this since the Garden of Antiquity, but he didn’t fluster; he deployed White Night and converted the reserve to holy power.

Life Drain was an uncanny holy spell that healed its target with stolen life force. Because it could refill both life force and mana, it was the perfect healing skill for Yujin, who’d just been hit with mana exhaustion.

“Kurk, the chieftain’s fallen.”
“Kurrk. This is bad.”

The Orcs’ spirits broke under the one-sided slaughter. Some among them turned to flee the battlefield.

“Where do you think you’re running off to?”

But before they could, the flesh of their fallen kin reached up and caught the Orcs by the feet.

In an instant the colony became a graveyard.

“Kurk…”

When the last Orc fell, [the Scraps] set to work in short order as well.

“Boss. We’ve picked out all the mana stones.”
“Good work.”

The praise was no empty courtesy. Prying mana stones out of a monster’s heart was considerable labor in its own right.

Blood Axe (Rare)

D-grade mana stone ×1

E-grade mana stones ×427

“If they’re E-grade mana stones, that’s three times the price of F-grade.”
“How much did we rake in over three days.”

Worn out as they were, [the Scraps] tallied the total earnings, unable to close their gaping mouths.

“This is the real prize.”

The axe had been the Orc chieftain’s weapon. Conditions attached or not, it was growth-type equipment, which set its worth far above an ordinary Rare grade.

You don’t know a thing, as usual. It’ll sell high on the market.

The Bloodsucking option drank blood to refill the wielder’s stamina and life force. At its current level the effect would be slight, but since stacking it strengthened the option as well, in practical terms it was a quasi-Unique-grade item.

It’d fetch a staggering price, wouldn’t it?

An item worth the trouble of clearing a whole Orc colony.

The harvest was confirmed, then. Recalling the true purpose he’d come to the borderlands for, he poured spirit-power into the corners of his eyes.

Spirit-Eye.

Eyes that read not only matter but spiritual wavelengths swept swiftly across the Orc colony.

How long had he held his gaze there?

Found it.

Yujin’s steps quickened.