34. Raising The Stellar Rank

Two weeks had passed since the Necropolis was raised, a domain of death risen in the borderlands. The monsters who’d found an uninvited guest for a neighbor came barreling into the fog without hesitation, eager to give it a fierce welcome.

An explosive surge in level. True to a border region overflowing with monsters, the experience came in staggering amounts, and on top of it all he’d picked up one more spell in the necromancy field.

Why?

Because it’s a prerequisite for learning the next one.

Inheriting knowledge from the Ring of Black Darkness worked like a skill tree. Even within necromancy, some spells could be learned outright with no condition at all, while others passed down only once a few that came before had been mastered.

Raise my Stellar Rank and I can learn that magic.

The attack magic they called the flower of the Necromancer. Master that one spell alone, and the pace of monster hunting would climb dramatically.

Because there’s nothing worth learning at the moment.

Heh heh heh. Yujin laughed, free and easy.

— If you’ve got time to laugh, give some orders.

“Listen to that mouth on him, talking to his master.”

— Can you really say that, watching the monsters swarm out of the fog?

Fafnir’s reproachful gaze turned toward the monsters invading the Necropolis.

“They’re not even a monster coalition army. Why are three whole different species mixed in together?”

— Isn’t this exactly what you’d call the courage to be disliked?

“I don’t want to work up courage just to make myself hated.”

— Fair enough. You’re the type to get yourself hated all on your own.

Now that was a harsh thing to say. Yujin found himself missing the tight-lipped Park Haneul all over again.

“You take the front, like always.”

The order had barely left Yujin’s mouth before Fafnir’s form shot off into the distance and closed on the charging monsters.

— Heh heh heh. Die, all of you!

His martial might bordered on the 3rd Rank. Using the thick fog as a curtain, Fafnir struck and withdrew, over and over, never giving the monsters room to breathe. The undead’s body never tired, and his Demon’s-Eye cut clean through the fog. The monsters had the numbers, but stripped of all initiative, they were hunted down one-sidedly.

“Kuhuhuk. Kuhuk!”

Even so, for all that Fafnir’s might neared the 4th Rank, there was only so much one fighter could do against sheer numbers. Some of the monsters ignored the fog and lunged on pure instinct. Iron-Armored Boars, ranked 2nd.

“You ready?”
“Yes. Boss.”

— KWAANG!

An Iron-Armored Boar that had been charging blindly forward let out a squeal and was flung back the way it had come. Mana and force collided in the same precise instant, and with power past the limits of the 1st Rank, the blow crushed the boar’s skull.

Just as Kang Minho finished his shield-swing and came to a stop, another boar seized the gap, wheeled sharply, and bared its honed teeth at him.

— Thunk!

A bolt loosed down at the crown of the boar’s skull punched clean through the defenselessly exposed hide in a single strike. A crossbow floated ten meters above the ground, hidden in the fog, picking off the monsters’ weak points.

“Not enough firepower.”
“Fire Arrow!”

Lee Seongmin’s casting speed had grown far quicker than before, too. With a former 9th-Rank Necromancer tutoring him one-on-one, his skill was advancing by leaps and bounds. Thanks to Yujin’s encouragement (?) and his own effort, he struck the fast-sprinting Iron-Armored Boar dead on.

“Kkwiek!”

Though all it did was scorch a hide as hard as iron. Set beside the two who would go on to make their name as the Mirror Hunters, he was no more than an ordinary Hunter, and so he couldn’t bridge the gap in Stellar Rank.

“Sorry. My power fell short.”
“No. You did well.”

Just landing a hit on an Iron-Armored Boar at full sprint was a fine result in itself.

When Yujin gave a small nod, one of the cursed fangs hanging at his waist sprang up.

A magical armament burrowed into the spot the Fire Arrow had seared.

“Kkwiiiiet!”

The Iron-Armored Boar twisted its body this way and that to keep the foreign thing from boring deeper, but the weakened patch tore open in no time.

“Boss. The Iron-Armored Boars are ignoring me and charging straight in.”

At Kang Minho’s words, Yujin snapped his fingers.

“Ge-gel, ge-ge-gel.”
“Ge-ge-gel. By the master’s command.”

The Armored Skeleton, a figure clad in pitch-black plate and crafted with Bone Armor and Bone Control, blocked the advance of the remaining Iron-Armored Boars.

Nimbler than a zombie, but lower in Strength and Endurance.

It can’t be helped. Use bone as the medium for channeling spirit-power and it’s less efficient than flesh.

The Armored Skeleton was reinforced differently from a zombie. Between armor woven out of bone, he ran smaller bones that took the place of a mana circuit, which made the crafting difficulty several times that of an Armored Zombie. Even at his current skill, he had to focus more than five minutes on each one.

Skeletons have good staying power.

Even an embalmed corpse couldn’t be kept from rotting entirely. An Armored Zombie clamped flesh tight against bone to reinforce the circuit, which only made it more vulnerable to decay; an Armored Skeleton, by contrast, ran its mana circuit through bone, so it came out far ahead in durability. Having gone so far as to declare a Necropolis, he needed servants he could work for the long haul.

— I held them off on my end, but a fair few still slipped through.

Fafnir, who’d cut freely through the fog and dealt with the monsters, fell on the stragglers from behind, and the horde was cleared away in an instant.

All at once a brimming strength welled up, breathing vitality into every part of his body, power boiling like lava. By reaching the level cap, he’d earned the right to ascend to the next Stellar Rank and step into the realm beyond.

His level reset to 1, but the stats he’d invested up to now didn’t vanish, so it was no loss. If anything, a 20% bonus had been tacked onto every stat, so it came out far more of a gain. The bonus only grew larger the higher the Stellar Rank climbed.

This is why the gap in Stellar Rank is absolute.

I’ll make myself the exception.

Over a hundred servants at the 2nd Rank. A quasi-4th-Rank monster in Fafnir. And magical armaments forged from Necromancer-only gear on top of that.

An ordinary Hunter couldn’t even dream of this.

I’m only stating facts.

Cool it with the grumbling, would you, Mr. Incompetent Constellation.

Yujin channeled spirit-power into the Ring of Black Darkness.

Before the regression, I picked the Curses field.

Curses were something like a Necromancer’s minor concentration, a craft for twisting and dominating every manner of debuff and spirit. Unison, the undead-enhancement formula he’d developed himself, also drew on knowledge of both necromancy and curses.

This time it’s different.

— Tok, tok.

A pitch-black mask covered his face: the Shadow Mask, the curse-medium he’d taken off the Masked Demon-Beast, an item that could hold up to five engraved curses. Whatever formula he needed, he could add by reworking the circuit each time, so it could wait further down the priority list.

I’ll inherit the Alchemy field.

What I need right now is…

Only two spells could pass down at once. Yujin called to mind the alchemy magic he’d settled on in advance.

I’m 2nd Rank now. It doesn’t hurt the way it used to.

Shut it. Incompetent Constellation.

Grumbling, Yujin filed away the knowledge that had entered his head.

A black obelisk stood at the heart of the Necropolis, drinking in the souls of the monsters that had fallen within the domain. Its pitch-black mana circuit writhed like veins, and having drunk down so many souls, its strengthened spirit-power surged violently.

At this rate, the domain’s scale will rise to 2 before long.

Yujin checked the Necropolis information.

A black tomb stood at the foot of the hill, and its first tenant was the corpse of Jo Seungcheol, once the Red Spider’s promising rookie.

Now that I’m 2nd Rank, I should make an undead of him before long.

Magic-type undead like the Skeleton Mage or the Dark Hood could only be crafted at the 2nd Rank or above.

That’s an irregularity. It’s not proper necromancy.

Alchemy, the necromancy field, curses: it had come together only by mobilizing every means at hand, with the aid of Shin Junseok, the future Grand Alchemist. The Draconian corpse, which held the dragon-race’s power whole, had played its part too.

And even so, it remained unfinished.

By the standard of when he died, he’s 3rd Rank.

Even Yujin couldn’t draw out the future potential a corpse held when crafting it into an undead. The Fafnir of before the regression stayed beyond his reach, at least unless he upgraded this one the way he had Park Haneul.

“Fafnir. I’m heading to Paju for a bit.”

— What. Master. Sounds like you’re telling me to mind the house.

“Sharp as ever. Keep the Necropolis guarded for me.”

— Heh heh heh. Leave it to me.

Kang Minho stole a glance at Fafnir, who’d shouted it so confidently.

“Boss. Should the rest of us stay and guard this place too?”
“What are your levels.”
“48.”
“47.”
“45.”

Team [the Scraps] had raised their levels at a steep pace, too. Compared to Yujin, who took even the experience of his subordinate undead as tribute, they were relatively slow, but their growth far outpaced that of the common 1st-Rank Hunter.

“Good. You’re coming along for a bit too.”
“You’re emptying out the whole Necropolis. Is that all right?”
“If it can’t be held, then it’ll just have to be given up.”

As long as the Life Force Vessel remained, Fafnir could be revived even if his body was destroyed. Given the dangers of the borderlands, it wouldn’t be strange for the Necropolis to fall while Yujin’s party was away.

“If you die, I’m not raising you as undead.”
“Normally that sort of thing is called defiling the dead, Boss.”

Oh-ho. So you think you’ve earned the right to crack a joke or two now, is that it?

“When the time comes that you’re really about to die, maybe I’ll change my mind.”
“Somehow that sounds like you saying you’ll do me in yourself, Boss.”

Yujin didn’t answer, only snickering to himself.