32. Necropolis (3)

Monster carcasses littered the ground around the hill. The ones that had charged in heedless of fear had all toppled over, eyes rolled white.

At this rate, could he push his Rank up within a week? Out here in the borderlands, experience piled up exponentially faster.

“Pick up the pace a little.”
“Hngh, haah. We’re almost done, Boss.”

The Scraps dug the mana stones out of the fallen monsters’ carcasses.

“Good. Set them down over there.”
“Grrwoaaargh.”

The Armored Zombie hauled the mana-stripped carcasses to the center of the hill. Blood spilling from the corpses soaked the hill damp.

That’s right. From here on, I’m going to build a Black Obelisk.

Yujin let out a small, surprised oh.

Correct. Originally it’s the symbol of the Ennead gods, headed by the sun god Ra.

Yujin pointed at the setting sun. The sun brimmed with surging vitality, and it stood for the natural order itself.

With the Black Obelisk, I’m going to overturn that concept.

Of the four elements that made up nature, he would invert water-essence, the one most deeply tied to spiritual power, and let it pour outward. Spread like fog, it would veil the sun and amplify the spirit-energy tangled in the water.

I’ll take that as a compliment.

Yujin let Kronos’s barb slide.

Just sit tight and watch.

Some things were better shown than told. Yujin stopped explaining and began drawing up his spirit-energy, slow and steady.

This was a domain his current attainment had no right to touch. And yet it was open to him, because he had carved the essence of necromancy into his mind through the Library of Knowledge rather than receiving it as some system-granted ability, had won his own enlightenment, and had made it a true power of his own.

First, bone and flesh had to come apart. He lifted the bleached-white bones with Bone Control.

Set the structure’s frame.

The bones, large and small, floated up and began to interlock along the predetermined blueprint.

— Clack, clack.

At the hill’s apex, its highest and central point both, a bone tower some five meters tall rose into the air.

Frame’s in place.

The monsters’ separated flesh came crawling in, squirming, and packed the tower’s interior. Kang Minyeong gagged at the grotesque sight but somehow kept it down.

Of course she did. Travel alongside him long enough and she would witness spectacles far more gruesome than this, so it would hardly do for her to fall apart this early, would it?

“Hm.”

A single groan slipped past his lips. He had wrung his mana out to the very limit, maybe, and now his center of balance swayed one way and then the other.

— Master.

Fafnir slipped in behind Yujin and propped him up before he could fall.

“Hold me up a sec.”

He made up the mana shortfall by breathing vitality into his body, clawing back the energy he’d spent.

“Boss. Is there nothing we can do to help?”
“Just don’t puke on the ground.”
“…”

Once his holy power had recovered enough, he would throw up White Night again and convert it straight back to mana. He moved the flesh once more.

— Squelch, squelch.

With a sound like hide being mashed, the flesh crammed the bone tower full.

“Whew.”

He wiped the beads of sweat from his brow with the back of his hand.

Just shaping the frame of the Black Obelisk had nearly dropped him where he stood, who knew how many times over. This was domain-building no one would dare attempt below the 3rd Rank. Future knowledge and experience be damned, he had taken on work that only made sense to try after clearing two full Ranks, and his head felt ready to split.

It’s just taken shape. The real work hasn’t even started.

He laid his right hand on the structure, slick and gleaming with blended blood and pulped flesh. His brow knit of its own accord at the sticky touch.

Substance matters more than appearance.

Ignoring the clammy sensation, Yujin synced his senses with the obelisk, with the squirming masses of flesh. His spirit-power flowed along the contact surface, seeped into the obelisk, and swelled as it amplified.

— This…?

Spirit-energy pulsed out so ferociously that Fafnir, sensing the ominous force, instinctively sank into a combat stance.

Came out well.

Yujin smiled, pleased his skills hadn’t rusted. Spirit-power amplification, one of the obelisk’s functions, was working exactly as intended.

No stopping here.

A Necropolis. For it to work as a Necromancer’s domain, the water-essence and spirit-energy drawn up from the spirit vein had to soak the surroundings through and through.

Synced with it, Yujin poured the amplified spirit-energy down into the ground without restraint. As it sank into the earth it bored a narrow passage linking the obelisk to the depths, and almost in the same breath it carved a mana circuit.

He could pull it off only because he commanded the control, the comprehension, and the deep knowledge of mana-circuitry. Had an alchemist like Shin Junseok stood there and watched a mana circuit being engraved underground in real time with his own two eyes, he could never have kept his jaw from dropping.

The instant the straight passage struck the spirit vein.

There — a bite right away.

The water-essence pulsed in answer to Yujin’s spirit-energy. The fierce spirit-power threaded through the water’s flow thrashed upward like a fish that had taken the bait.

Not time yet.

He drove the obelisk’s amplified power to its absolute maximum. Holding down the spirit-energy that strained to burst up to the surface, he carved a circuit into the spirit vein as well.

The formation bent the flow of water, which by nature should run from high to low. Yujin took the force of the water-essence coursing through the ground and turned it back on itself, using the formation to drive it upward, reverse-flowing alongside his spirit-power.

Well, it’s a slapdash job, all things considered.

The foundation of any formation is the natural order of yin-yang and the five elements. Forcibly wrenching the flow of water around was something no proper formation-master would ever do. Only a Yujin who had dabbled in every kind of knowledge to push necromancy one more step could pull off so outrageous a trick.

— Zzzng!

The mana circuit, carved as the passage was bored, kept the spirit-energy from leaking and channeled it without loss all the way up to the obelisk.

“Activate.”

The instant Yujin switched on every one of the obelisk’s functions, a pale current welled up from the tower’s tip.

Naturally. Did they know who he was? Having pulled off a feat that left even the System staggered, Yujin gave a low, snickering chuckle.

— Such an abundance of the power of death. My power is swelling.

“Hey, Fafnir. Why are you standing off to the side?”

— Off to the side? You’re the one looking at me all crooked, so why say that?

What was that supposed to mean?

Only then did Yujin realize his head had lolled back. His body didn’t have the strength left to lift so much as a finger. The toll of cranking his concentration to the absolute limit was catching up with him, late and all at once.

“Wait. This seems like a mista—”

His consciousness was already blurring.

Ah. Shit.

Forcibly hauling mana back while running the spell techniques, of course there would be a price to pay. For a moment he had measured his condition against the body he’d had before the regression.

Ah. I’m screwed.

It hadn’t gone as far as the extreme of mana running wild, but a pain that felt like it would split his skull lodged itself deep in the crown of his head.

— Master! Mas—

As his consciousness guttered out, Fafnir’s projected thought rang through him, loud as a thunderclap.

An unfamiliar ceiling. No, a tent.

My head’s ringing, so quit yapping.

Kronos understood perfectly well how remarkable a thing Yujin had pulled off. With the barest minimum of force, he had twisted the order of nature to shape an environment that favored him, something flatly beyond the powers of a mere 1st-Rank Hunter.

Kronos swallowed back his admiration, over and over.

Yujin stepped out of the camp and worked the stiffness out of his body.

“Boss. Are you all right?”
“Just overdid it a bit, is all.”
“Your face is pale as can be. Saying that has zero credibility.”

Yujin waved a rough hand at Kang Minho’s worried words.

“Uh, but, Boss.”
“If you’ve got something you’re curious about, hurry up and ask.”
“This fog. Is it going to stay forever?”

The pale current blanketed the ground around the hill. With the fog pouring out of the obelisk, visibility had dropped to almost nothing.

“Why. Does it bother you.”
“Hahah, can’t say it doesn’t.”
“This is just how a Necromancer’s domain is built.”

The fog blocked the light pouring down from the sky. It amplified yin energy and raised the efficiency of necromancy, and by drastically narrowing a living creature’s field of vision, it made for good defense as well.

“That said, can’t have it inconveniencing you lot.”

Yujin gave the tip of Kang Minho’s finger a light prick with a magical armament.

“Ow.”
“Overreacting over a little sting.”

When he breathed spirit-energy into the blood beading up soft and round, it seeped out into the fog.

He recorded the rest of the party’s blood in the obelisk the same way.

“Whoa. I can see fine now.”
“What kind of sorcery is this. Haven’t the foggiest.”
“I’d believe it even if the Boss told me he made bean paste out of red beans.”

The Scraps chattered, all worked up.

— I see. So the one whose sight gets limited is only living creatures?

“Because it’s a domain of death.”

Yujin returned to the obelisk and linked his mind to it once more.

Well, about as expected, I’d say.

The thickness of the spirit vein, in other words the output of spirit-power, set the density in the air to match. The maximum value was five. For that much spirit-power to bleed out, the place had to be one where a large-scale war had broken out.

This much is just right.

If the spirit-power ran too strong, a Necromancer could find himself dragged around by it while trying to keep it in hand. For a site he’d turned up in under a day, the conditions were excellent.

Even with command authority over the undead handed to the tower, the zombies still answered to Yujin. The obelisk’s owner was Yujin, after all. It would be a different story if the zombies’ ownership were transferred inside another Necromancer’s domain.

Make the obelisk a base, and grow an undead army.

This was a demon-realm where monsters came bursting out without end, drinking down the mana of the surface world. Filling the obelisk’s cap of a hundred would take no time at all.

— So it really is your domain, Master.

“Domain my foot. To function properly, the Black Obelisk alone isn’t enough.”

A blasphemous graveyard. A necromancy laboratory. A dark invocation chamber, and so on down the list. To settle in as a proper Necropolis, there was a mountain of work still to do.

“You’re going to get busy too.”

— Heh heh heh. I’m fine, so work me as hard as you like.

“Since you brought it up, let me ask you a favor.”

Yujin pointed at Kang Minho.

“Train this one for me.”

— Train, as in how you grou— no. As in how you trained me?

“Feel free to grind him harder, too.”
“Uh, um, Boss. What do you mean by that.”
“You think there’s a royal road to getting stronger? Training and real combat are the best there is.”

He had the finest instructor going, one who, with the Eye of the War God trait, could read the flaws in a man’s habits, his movements, his techniques at a single glance.

The borderlands, crawling with monsters! The perfect ground to kill two birds with one stone, training and live combat in the same breath.

“Boss. Then is it all right if we head out?”
“Big Bro, fighting!”

The two of them slunk backward, one step at a time.

“Where do you think you’re running off to. You lot are going to learn from me.”

Yujin grinned wide.

“Don’t worry.”
“I’ll at least keep you alive.”