2. If There's No Constellation, Just Make One (1)

The Yongsan Hunter Market.
A specialized exchange for Hunter-related goods, newly built on the site of the old electronics mall.

“You see the sword Magus Corp put out this time?”
“I hear Hanseong launched a brand-new armor line.”
“Ah. The one made from that new material they pulled out of Norie’s Spire…”

People came and went through the Hunter Market.
Most of them were the ones the System had invited and Awakened. Hunters, in a word.

Yujin crossed the lobby and headed for the accessories shop.
Rings, necklaces, bracelets, and the like.
As he ran his eyes over the magically worked accessories, a clerk drifted to his side.

“Pardon me, sir. Is there something in particular you’re looking for?”
“I’d like to see the Ring of Black Darkness.”

The clerk let out a short, dry “Heh—,” then said, “This way, please,” and guided Yujin toward the back of the shop.
A corner tucked away even within the store.
In a spot few people ever found their way to, the fortuitous encounter Yujin had been searching for lay hidden.
A grimy, blackened ring, smeared all over with brown stains.

“The price?”
“Twenty million won, sir.”

The support stipend he’d received when he left the orphanage.
And the entire fortune he’d scraped together over three years of working himself to the bone.

Cutting it close, given what’s next on the schedule.

Without a moment’s hesitation, Yujin bought the Ring of Black Darkness.

That was why the clerk had let out that little laugh the moment he heard the item’s name.
Considering that an ordinary Rare-grade item runs at least a hundred million, it was practically free.

No reason to use it unless you’re out to screw someone over.

There are more than a hundred Rings of Black Darkness, and not just in the Hunter Market, but all across the world.
The effect is uniformly the same on every one of them: it rains down mind-class curses.
A whole truckload of Hunters dug into whether it hid some secret. Some even poured holy power into it, certain the truth would surface once the curse was undone.

Not one of them found the answer, though.

Wash the curse away, and it simply reverted to an ordinary ring.
It couldn’t even be used as a catalyst for dark-element spells or as a crafting material.
A cursed item good for nothing but playing a nasty trick on someone. That was the Ring of Black Darkness’s reputation, as the world understood it.

I’m different.

Yujin gripped the blackened ring hard.
The secret of the Ring of Black Darkness, which not a single soul in the world had ever uncovered.
Whoever overcomes the curse pouring out of the ring gains the power to defy death. In other words, the knowledge and might of necromancy.

The design on this item is just plain wrong.

To obtain the wellspring of the Necromancer, you have to overcome the curse, not resist it.
Undoing the curse is the same mistake.
That was how he’d become the first Hunter ever to obtain the class called Necromancer.

The instant he slid the Ring of Black Darkness onto his index finger.

The moment the ring went on, several curses tried to throw his mind into disarray.

This much is nothing.

A complete immunity, guaranteed by the System.
However powerful the curse embedded in the Ring of Black Darkness might be, it could not get past Clear Mind.

Around the time the ring, which had been spewing curses for a good long while, fell quiet.

The grime caked all over it peeled away.
A single ray of light spread softly over the ring’s surface.

“Done. It’s done.”

Yujin grinned.
In that instant, an incident broke out: the hundred-plus Rings of Black Darkness scattered across the world spat out flames and combusted.

But weighed against the fortuitous encounter Yujin had just gotten his hands on, it was nothing more than a very minor bit of trouble.

A blue-black sheen drifted over the ring, now dyed pitch-black as deepest night.
The language of another world surfaced here and there across its surface.
The Ring of Black Darkness, having reclaimed its true form, scattered a cold light.

The Library of Knowledge skill lets one inherit the necromancy-related knowledge of past users.
Coffin of the Dead is magic that stores a single corpse, whatever its size, within the subspace inside the ring.

First things first: change classes. Can’t use the skills otherwise.

When he brought up the status window with the Ring of Black Darkness on his finger, an extra option had appeared.
A class available for change only while holding a special item.

I’ll walk the path of the Necromancer.

Reduces the spirit-power consumed in casting and maintaining summoning-class spells by 20%.

“So this is the trait I only get after regressing.”

A trait added only when selecting one’s first class after Awakening.
The Magic group gets one called Mana Discharge, which extends the power and range of projectile-type magic.

For me, reduced spirit-power consumption is far better.

Yujin himself hadn’t even learned about the Guide of Death trait until the ‘Wail of the Dead’ gate that appeared five years later was conquered.
Even without the Ring of Black Darkness, conquering a gate tied to a given class group opens a class-change route.

In my case, I’m just changing classes early, thanks to my unique trait.

In the past, too, Yujin had solved the secret of the Ring of Black Darkness, acquired by chance, and changed into a Necromancer.
The only blemish was that he’d changed into the Magic group and missed the Guide of Death trait.

This time I’ve snagged the early-class-change perk on top of it.

The Necromancer is a class that endlessly raises and burns through the dead.
Because the Guide of Death trait lowers spirit-power consumption and greatly extends his combat sustainability, he was starting out far, far ahead of where he had been before he turned back time.

Then let’s give the ring a try too.

Yujin pushed the spirit-power, brimming and full, into the ring.

— Click, click.

The treasure holding the knowledge and wellspring of the Necromancer began to exercise its true function.

What he needed was already decided.

I’ll peruse the field of Necromancy.

“Kheuuuk!”

Yujin wrenched out a scream.
The sensation of a burning brand pressing down hard against his skull.
It felt as though his brain would overload from the sheer volume of knowledge, more than cognition could bear, and cook right through.

Damn it. This doesn’t change even after regressing.

Clear Mind’s effect was to grant immunity to mental attacks.
Transferring the ring’s knowledge into his head wasn’t an attack, so it did nothing to ease the pain.

F—. It hurts more.

The faculty that supposedly kept his mind clear had, if anything, turned to poison.

How long had he endured the agony with his teeth gritted?

It hurt enough to bring tears welling to his eyes. He’d have been better off just passing out.

Damn it. To think I’d be doing this again.

At the feeling of the folds of his brain being stretched smooth, his teeth ground together on their own.
Before the regression, Yujin had become the Lord of Death by taking in every scrap of knowledge stored in the Ring of Black Darkness.
He remembered most of it.
The problem was that his power was grounded in the System.

At my level, I can’t be free of the rules the System sets.

7th Rank, at minimum.
A height you can’t reach by simply hunting monsters.
The System is what makes a Hunter strong, but to step beyond it, you need enlightenment and the karma piled up on your soul.

Until then, I’ll have to lean on this thing.

A road he has already walked.
Faster.
And stronger.

His start was far later than the heads of the Seven Great Families, but he was confident he’d surge ahead of every last one of them.

Oho.
So regressing gets me a correction like this.

Max out a skill’s proficiency and the power cost drops while the potency rises.
And that’s not all.
If someone meets the acquisition conditions, you can even pass the skill on to them.

At the unexpected windfall, his cheek twitched.

The first button’s fastened, but this alone isn’t enough.

Against an Incarnation, attacks grounded in mana barely work at all.
A being that takes no real damage from anything but Divine Power.
Hadn’t Dmitri, too, trusted in his Incarnation-exclusive skill, Aura, to stand at the very front and shrug off Yujin’s offensives?

I need to secure a patron Constellation.

By changing into a Necromancer, the odds of receiving an ordinary Constellation’s patronage had dropped to zero.
Before the regression, even when he’d reached the 9th Rank, the apex of Hunters, those bastards had scoffed that defying the natural order was an ill omen.
And it wasn’t as though he could sell his soul to the evil-god Constellations of the Tower of Babel, either.

There’s one more method.

Yujin slipped a hand into his pocket.
At the cold, metallic touch unique to the thing, his heart settled flat.

“If there’s no Constellation to back me, I’ll just make one myself.”

He muttered it while fiddling with the Broken Pocket Watch of Kronos, the only trace of the parents whose faces he didn’t even know, and the artifact that had wrought his miracle.

The island of Crete.
The birthplace of the Minoan civilization, and one of Europe’s foremost tourist destinations.

Anyway, direct flights are filthy expensive.

Since the Great Cataclysm, erosion zones had sprung up all over the world, and the skies were no longer entirely safe.
Either you took a wide detour around your destination to dodge flying monsters like wyverns and harpies, or you brought along a Hunter who could intercept aerial-type monsters and passed straight through the erosion zone.
The plane Yujin took was a direct flight, so the airfare ran four times higher.

What a brutal crash diet that was.
It was for the sake of cutting travel time, sure, but there was no helping the sting in his gut.

Once I’m back in Korea, I’ll conquer a gate and refill my wallet first thing.

Why come to a famous tourist spot while squeezing every last drop from a tight budget, you ask?
Yujin had a perfectly good reason.

“Take me to the Temple of Knossos, please.”

He rode a taxi about twenty minutes south.
He arrived at the island’s renowned tourist site, the Temple of Knossos.
People were swarming from the entrance onward.
With indifferent steps, Yujin cut through the crowd and entered the ruins.

The Minoans worshipped the Titans.

The Titans.
The race of gods that gave rise to the word ‘Titan,’ the byword for giants.

The old Constellations who were driven out in their struggle with the Olympians, Zeus and his kin, and lost their light.

Fallen Constellations.
A term for Constellations who lost their starlight and fell into ruin within the myths.
Not all of the Titan gods lost their glory.
Titans like Themis, goddess of justice, and Helios, the sun god, who acknowledged Olympus’s victory and entered their service, are still active as Constellations even now.

The owner of this watch is different.

Kronos.
The ruler who reigned over the Titan gods, and the cold-hearted being who devoured even his own children in an attempt to escape his foretold downfall.
In the end, the prophecy came to pass; he was stripped of everything and fell into ruin, a giant brought low.

If it’s the ruins of the Minoan civilization, which worshipped the Titan gods, then surely it can draw out a response from the old Constellation.

A method for receiving a Constellation’s revelation in a place other than the Pantheon and the Tower of Babel.
And that is…

“…to use a Relic as the medium.”

Yujin set the broken Pocket Watch of Kronos down on the floor of the ruins, then struck it hard.

— Claaang!!

A thunderous bellow rang out from the pocket watch.

See? This is exactly how you get a bite.

“A pleasure to meet you. Deposed King of the Titans.”

Yujin smiled brightly.