14. The Forgotten Hero

— Trudge. Trudge.

Yujin made his way across the desolate Orc colony and stopped before an old tree, only a few leaves still clinging to its branches. The blue spirit-fire burning behind his eyes fixed on the soul lodged in the tree with perfect precision.

Just as I remembered.

A pale, whitish mist hung there, two black specks embedded in it staring back at him.

— You look at me as though you can actually see me.

“That’s because I really can see you.”

— What?!

Had it honestly never occurred to the thing that an answer might come back? Startled, the ghost ducked behind the old tree.

Yujin scratched the back of his head.

“You’ll hurt my feelings, getting that spooked by a person.”

“Is there someone over there, Boss?”

At Kang Minho’s question, Yujin gestured carelessly toward the tree.

“A ghost.”
“…Huh?”
“An earthbound spirit. And one carrying quite a grudge, at that.”

— Hmph. I’d thank you not to treat me like some petty wraith!

The ghost flared up in irritation, and the leaves on the old tree thrashed from side to side.

“Hiik!”

Kang Minho stumbled backward.

“You felt nothing at the sight of a walking corpse, and now you overreact to this?”
“That one’s right there in plain sight, and at least I can fight it. An earthbound spirit you can’t even see.”

Ghost-type monsters were, in fact, the natural predators of Martial-line Hunters. A blow wouldn’t land without mana channeled into the weapon, and they specialized in mental debuffs, which by all accounts made them no ordinary nuisance.

As for me…

Yujin, fully immune to mind-interference debuffs, was unbothered. The moment [the Scraps] team heard the words “earthbound spirit,” though, they edged back from the old tree.

“Now it finally feels like the right mood for paying respects.”

— Paying respects?

“I wiped out the Orc colony so I could come see you.”

— What interest could anyone have in a common earthbound spirit chained to this land?

“Park Haneul. Martial-Mage.”

The two black specks embedded in the whitish mist went still. Surprise, then confusion.

— H-how do you know my name?

“I told you, didn’t I? I came to pay my respects.”

An earthbound spirit who could never leave the borderlands, Park Haneul the Martial-Mage looked Yujin over with a startled air.¹

— Well now. Hearing my name for the first time since I died — it’s a strange feeling.

“The Orcs would have no way of knowing your name.”

— True. I can’t even remember how long it’s been since I last held a conversation.

“About thirty-five years, I’d say?”

The ghost fell silent a moment, then let out a long, low “Ahh.”

— So it’s been about that long since I died.

“It’s been roughly that long since the first monster wave hit the old North Korean territory.”

— Hold on. The first?!

“Ah. I suppose you wouldn’t know. Two more surges of about the same scale came down after that.”

— Insane. It’s the end of days. It’s a wonder the country didn’t fall.

Was this how it felt to spoil the ending of a movie or a drama? Watching Park Haneul marvel over and over, Yujin found it secretly entertaining.

“It didn’t fall, thanks to people like you.”

— Heh heh heh. I know it’s flattery, but it feels good all the same.

“Those are no empty words.”

Yujin recited, word for word, what he’d learned from his social studies textbook. A flood of monsters had once poured down from the old North Korean territory, and had Hunters burning with duty, like Park Haneul, not stepped forward, even Seoul would have been laid to ruin.

“There’s a memorial stone, too. For everyone sacrificed in the first monster wave.”

— So my sacrifice wasn’t in vain after all.

Relief colored the ghost’s voice. Had those words granted it some measure of salvation? For an earthbound spirit that couldn’t move on out of sheer resentment, there was even a touch of grace about it now.

Well. With a soul that pure, no wonder it had thrown its very life away trying to save people while it still lived.

“Not everyone’s name was recorded, though. Unlike yours.”

— …What do you mean by that?

“I’m the only one who remembers your name. Even if you searched this whole world over.”

Of the countless Hunters who had given their lives in the first monster wave, the name Park Haneul survived on no list of the fallen anywhere.

The spirit flickering over the old tree churned violently.

— Explain exactly what you mean.

“There’s someone who deliberately erased your record.”

Yujin let the pause hang a moment. The whitish current churned hard, as if pressing him for an answer.

“The vice-president of the Arahan Guild. Baek Seonghyeon.”

— Whoooosh!

A gust tore through the colony, where not a breath of wind had stirred a moment before. Yujin’s hair whipped about in the sudden rush of air, and even [the Scraps] team, hanging back at a distance, felt the chill. This was no spectral pressure an ordinary vengeful soul could produce.

“He’s also the one you ought to take your revenge on.”

— I never gave any thought to revenge.

“An earthbound spirit doesn’t just happen. There’s a reason you had to remain on this land, isn’t there.”

That’s right. Just like you, Park Haneul.

“They drove the Hunters into a death trap with false information, didn’t they.”

In the early days of the Great Cataclysm, Park Haneul had won renown as one of its foremost talents. His unique ability, Martial-Mage, gifted him in both the Martial and Magic lines, and paired with an outstanding combat sense it had carried his fame high among the first generation of the awakened. Had he only lived, he might well have made it into the Seven Star.

I heard it from the dead who perished in the first monster wave.

That a man so strong had died on a nameless stretch of the borderlands, without leaving behind so much as a common record, hid a story of its own.

— You said all the records were erased. Then how is it you know?

“While I was searching for a soul strong in spirit-power, I happened to hear a rumor.”

It wasn’t a lie. Half of it, anyway.

Before the regression.

While searching for a powerful soul to amplify his Necromancer abilities, he’d caught a rumor of an earthbound spirit dwelling near an Orc colony. What he’d found there was the very soul now before his eyes.

I heard the rest of the story from this one directly, though.

The Arahan Guild’s betrayal. They had driven Park Haneul into a death trap and ridden out the monster wave from safe, advantageous ground.

If. Had Park Haneul pulled back from that battlefield, Arahan too would have taken heavy losses.

Because he wasn’t the sort of man to do that.

In his past life Yujin had taken Park Haneul on as an underling, and he understood the man’s nature better than anyone, as intimately as Baek Seonghyeon, who had used that very nature to spring the trap.

“Take my hand. I’ll let you have your revenge.”

— You’re telling me to become undead?

“That’s right.”

— Heh. My body rotted away decades ago. It’s long since become fertilizer for this tree.

“I’ve prepared a body to house your soul, too. No need to worry.”

Yujin smiled softly.

“Will you make a contract with me and become undead?”

Park Haneul fell silent, as though lost in thought. A moment passed.

— If I make a contract with you, I’ll be able to take my revenge?

“Of course.”

— I have one condition. How you put me to use is your own affair, but…

“Revenge on Baek Seonghyeon won’t be the condition, surely.”

— I refuse to harm the innocent.

Yujin let out a small chuckle. He’d set the very same contract condition before the regression. Seeing Park Haneul unchanged as ever, even his stained heart lifted a little.

“That won’t happen.”

Naturally. With so many wicked people left to kill, where would I find the time to lay a hand on the innocent?

A bond forged through soul and spirit. An invisible thread now ran between Yujin and Park Haneul.

The contract was sealed. But the real “work” began here.

With a heavy thud, the Draconian corpse appeared abruptly before the old tree.

— What is this?

“Park Haneul’s new body.”

— I thought I’d be turned into something like a zombie.

“You’re a hero in name, so you ought to be treated like one. And that thing won’t last long.”

Hidden behind the bone armor, it couldn’t be seen, but the zombie’s body was rotting in real time. The spirit-power infused into it slowed the decay, yet leave it a week or so and most of the flesh clinging to it would rot away, its combat power plummeting with it.

In my past life, I possessed it into the body of a Skeleton Knight.

Lodging a soul into an undead was a technique all its own. Done right, the synchronization could more than double an undead’s combat power, and like the Armored Zombie, it was Yujin’s own original necromancy.

Park Haneul had piled up deeds as a Skeleton Knight and risen to Death Knight by his own strength, then, with Yujin’s remodeling and a stack of added items, been promoted to Doom Knight. In the end he attained an ultimate enlightenment and became a Hell Knight, a top-tier undead not even recorded in the Library of Knowledge.

What if I’d given Park Haneul a strong body to begin with?

He’d had that stray thought often in his past life. Infusing Park Haneul’s soul into a Skeleton Knight from the start had been a grave mistake; once a dead body and a soul finished synchronizing, prying them apart again was extraordinarily difficult.

A soul that had climbed to the ultimate height, housed in the flesh of a nameless Skeleton Knight. Had it been lodged in the corpse of some powerful dead one instead, how much stronger might it have grown? He couldn’t begin to guess.

That’s right.

From the moment he laid hands on the Draconian corpse, its owner had already been decided. A soul gifted in both combat and magic, and what better one to anchor an Eldritch Dragon!

“Well then, shall we get started?”

— Sssssh!

The whitish energy coiled around his right hand, then jabbed rapidly here and there across the Draconian corpse.

The smelted mana-stone fluid began to respond to Yujin’s power. Strange emblems surfaced here and there across the scales as the enhancement and curse formulae inscribed back at Shin Junseok’s alchemy workshop took hold.

Park Haneul watched from a little distance.

Yujin reached out and seized a fistful of the mist-like spirit-body.

“This’ll sting a bit.”

— Owww!

What an exaggerated fuss.

He fed a portion of the spirit-power drawn from Park Haneul into the Draconian corpse. The energy rose through the nostrils and up into the skull, and the dragon-race essence he’d pinned in place with the formulae stirred at its touch, beginning to writhe like a bear waking from hibernation.

— What is this. It feels strange.

“Don’t resist. Take in my power.”

Then Yujin’s finger touched the Draconian corpse’s forehead.

The curse he’d inscribed earlier triggered, fed by the mana smelted from the fluid. Its targets were Park Haneul’s soul and the Draconian corpse.

Normally you’d have to use a necromancy spell, but that’s beyond my level.

The only necromancy spell he had worth the name was Raise Undead, and the most it could do was turn the Draconian corpse into a zombie.

It’s not as if it’s the power to turn gold into dung.

Drawing on his past-life experience, Yujin crafted the undead by an irregular method.

Park Haneul’s soul was sucked in through the nostrils.

— Ssshaaaa!

— Th… is… fee… l… i… ng…

Park Haneul’s thoughts came through, slowed beyond all measure.

And why would I do that? That’s exactly the situation I set up for it.

The dragon-race corpse heaved without pause. With his paltry mana, there was nothing Yujin could do to help the crafting along, nothing but hope that the mana-stone fluid he’d pickled into the corpse beforehand would do its work.

Should I pray, maybe?

Would the useless Constellation please be quiet for a moment.

How much time had passed? The corpse’s violent trembling gradually subsided.

— Flash!

The closed retinas lifted, and the blue spirit-fire pooling into the pupils scattered an eerie light.

— What’s this. I have senses?

The Draconian corpse. No. A tone edged with surprise now spilled from the mouth of the corpse synchronized with Park Haneul. To be precise, it was a dead thing’s thought mimicking a living voice.

A great achievement? In all my years, that’s the first time I’ve heard that.

The Library of Knowledge was an information network that inherited the wisdom of countless Necromancers. It had no ego of its own, exactly, yet it did keep its own rough criteria for grading knowledge. And for it to call the Eldritch Dragon Yujin had crafted “great” meant that not even the Necromancers who’d fed into the Library had ever conceived of the concept.

The one thing that nagged at him was the “incomplete” part.

Well, no surprise there. I made it completely jury-rigged.

Crafting a proper Eldritch Dragon demanded an astronomical sum of money: the process inscribed onto each and every scale, costly alchemical catalysts and materials poured in to reinforce the corpse, and most crucial of all, the dragon-race essence joined to the soul.

Yujin had used the curse formula to barely mimic the bare concept of an Eldritch Dragon, and nothing more.

— Incomplete, you say.

“Don’t worry. All it needs is time.”

— Heh. I’m rather pleased that a task has been set before me as well.

“A task?”

— It means I won’t be complete until I learn to handle this body properly, doesn’t it.

A pointlessly positive way of looking at it. With a small chuckle, Yujin examined Park Haneul’s stats.

Then Yujin took in the full specs of Park Haneul, reborn as an Eldritch Dragon.

“Insane.”

His mouth fell open, and the word burst out of him.