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

The Yongsan Hunter Market was a specialized exchange for Hunter goods, newly raised 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 folk the System had invited and Awakened into what everyone simply called Hunters.

Yujin crossed the lobby and made for the accessories shop, with its rings, necklaces, bracelets, and the like. As he ran his eyes over the enchanted pieces, 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 a “This way, please,” and led Yujin toward the back of the shop.

He brought him to a corner tucked away even within the shop, a spot almost no one ever found. There, the fortuitous encounter Yujin had been hunting for lay hidden: a grimy, blackened ring caked with brown stains.

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

That was the support stipend he’d gotten on leaving the orphanage, along with every won 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 caught the item’s name. Set against the hundred million an ordinary Rare-grade item ran at minimum, this was practically free.

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

More than a hundred Rings of Black Darkness existed, and not only in the Hunter Market but all across the world. Every one of them did the same thing: rained mind-class curses down on whoever wore it.

A whole truckload of Hunters had dug into whether it hid some secret. A few even poured holy power into it, certain the truth would surface once they undid the curse.

Not one of them found the answer, though.

Wash the curse away and it simply reverted to an ordinary ring, useless even as a catalyst for dark-element spells or as crafting material. A cursed trinket good for nothing but pulling a nasty trick on someone: that, as far as the world understood it, was the Ring of Black Darkness’s reputation.

I’m different.

Yujin gripped the blackened ring hard. Not a single soul in the world had ever uncovered its secret: whoever conquered the curse pouring out of it gained the power to defy death, which was to say the knowledge and might of necromancy.

The design on this item is just plain wrong.

Reaching the wellspring of the Necromancer meant overcoming the curse, not resisting it; undoing it was the very same mistake.

That was how he’d managed to become the first Hunter ever to take the class called Necromancer.

He slid the Ring of Black Darkness onto his index finger.

The moment the ring settled on his finger, several curses clawed at his mind, trying to throw it into disarray.

This much is nothing.

The System guaranteed him complete immunity. However powerful the curse buried in the Ring of Black Darkness, it could not slip past Clear Mind.

After spewing curses for a good long while, the ring at last fell quiet.

The grime caked all over it flaked away, and a single ray of light spread softly across its surface.

“Done. It’s done.”

Yujin grinned. In that same instant, the hundred-odd Rings of Black Darkness scattered across the world spat flame and burst into combustion.

Against the weight of the fortuitous encounter Yujin had just laid hands on, though, the whole affair amounted to no more than a very minor bit of trouble.

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

The Library of Knowledge skill let him inherit the necromantic lore of past users. Coffin of the Dead was magic that tucked a single corpse, whatever its size, into the subspace inside the ring.

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

Bringing up the status window with the Ring of Black Darkness on his finger turned up an extra option, a class change available only while holding a special item.

I’ll walk the path of the Necromancer.

It cut the spirit-power spent casting and maintaining summoning-class spells by twenty percent.

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

The trait came only with a Hunter’s very first class selection after Awakening. The Magic group, for its part, got one called Mana Discharge, which stretched the power and range of projectile magic.

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

Yujin himself had only learned of the Guide of Death trait when the ‘Wail of the Dead’ gate that surfaced five years later was finally cleared. Even without the Ring of Black Darkness, clearing a gate tied to a given class group opened a class-change route of its own.

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

In his past life too, Yujin had cracked the secret of the ring he’d come across by chance and turned Necromancer. The one blemish was that he’d done it through the Magic group and never picked up the Guide of Death trait.

This time I’ve gotten the early-class-change perk as well.

The Necromancer was a class that endlessly raised and burned through the dead. With the Guide of Death trait cutting his spirit-power costs and vastly extending how long he could keep fighting, he was starting out far, far ahead of where he’d stood before he turned back time.

Then let’s give the ring a try too.

Yujin poured the spirit-power brimming inside him into the ring.

— Click, click.

The treasure that held the knowledge and wellspring of the Necromancer stirred to its true purpose.

What he needed was already decided.

I’ll peruse the field of Necromancy.

“Kheuuuk!”

A scream tore out of Yujin. It felt like a hot iron pressed hard against his skull, as though his brain might overload on the sheer mass of knowledge, more than cognition could bear, and cook clean through.

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

Clear Mind granted him immunity to mental attacks. Pouring the ring’s knowledge into his head wasn’t an attack, though, so it did nothing to ease the pain.

F—. It hurts more.

The faculty that was supposed to keep his mind clear had, if anything, turned to poison. How long did he grit his teeth and ride out the agony?

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

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

As the folds of his brain stretched smooth, his teeth ground together of their own accord.

Before the regression, Yujin had become the Lord of Death by swallowing every last scrap of knowledge stored in the Ring of Black Darkness, and he remembered most of it.

The trouble 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 the very least, and no amount of plain monster-hunting would carry him there. The System was what made a Hunter strong, but stepping past it took enlightenment and the karma heaped on one’s soul.

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

It’s a road I’ve already walked.

Faster, and stronger. His start came far later than the heads of the Seven Great Families, but he had no doubt he’d surge out ahead of every last one of them.

Oho.

So regressing gets me a correction like this.

Maxing out a skill’s proficiency dropped its cost and raised its potency. And that wasn’t all: meet the acquisition conditions, and the skill could even be handed off to someone else.

At the unexpected windfall, his cheek twitched.

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

Against an Incarnation, mana-based attacks barely worked at all; the thing took no real damage from anything but Divine Power. Hadn’t Dmitri, too, trusted his Incarnation-only skill, Aura, to plant himself at the very front and shrug off everything Yujin threw at him?

I need to secure a patron Constellation.

Turning Necromancer had dropped his odds of winning an ordinary Constellation’s patronage to zero. Before the regression, even when he’d climbed to the 9th Rank, the apex of Hunters, those bastards had sneered that defying the natural order was an ill omen. And it wasn’t as though he could sign his soul over to the evil-god Constellations of the Tower of Babel either.

There’s one more method.

Yujin slid a hand into his pocket. At the cold, unmistakable touch of metal, his nerves went calm and flat.

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

He muttered it while turning the Broken Pocket Watch of Kronos over in his fingers: the one trace left of the parents whose faces he’d never even known, and the artifact that had worked his miracle.

The island of Crete, 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 cropped up the world over, and the skies were no longer entirely safe. A traveler either looped wide around their destination to dodge flying monsters like wyverns and harpies, or brought along a Hunter who could shoot the aerial types down and punched straight through the erosion zone.

The plane Yujin took ran direct, which made the airfare four times steeper.

What a brutal crash diet for his bank account. It was worth it to shave down the travel time, sure, but the sting in his gut wasn’t going anywhere.

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

Why come all the way to a famous tourist spot while wringing a tight budget dry? Yujin had a perfectly good reason.

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

A taxi carried him about twenty minutes south, to the island’s renowned Temple of Knossos. The crowd thickened from the entrance on, and Yujin cut through it with indifferent steps and passed into the ruins.

The Minoans worshipped the Titans.

The Titans were the very race of gods from whom the word ‘Titan,’ that byword for giants, took its name.

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

They were called Fallen Constellations, the ones who had lost their starlight and gone to ruin within the myths.

Not every Titan god had lost their glory. The likes of Themis, goddess of justice, and Helios the sun god, who bowed to Olympus’s victory and entered its service, still moved through the world as Constellations even now.

The owner of this watch is different.

Kronos. He had reigned as ruler over the Titan gods, a cold-hearted being who devoured even his own children to slip free of the downfall foretold for him. In the end the prophecy came true all the same; stripped of everything, the giant toppled into ruin.

If it’s the ruins of the Minoan civilization, which worshipped the Titan gods,

then surely it could draw a response out of the old Constellation.

It was a way to receive a Constellation’s revelation somewhere other than the Pantheon or the Tower of Babel. And that way was…

“…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 rolled out of the pocket watch.

There it was. Exactly the bite he’d been fishing for.

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

Yujin gave a bright smile.