4. This Is Why You Play Necromancer (1)

“Constellation, my foot. It’s an airport.”

Kronos hadn’t stopped gushing in admiration since the sight of Incheon International Airport came into view.
Ruins like the palace of Knossos boasted splendid architecture for their era, but they fell well short of modern buildings.
He was a Fallen Constellation who’d had no way to observe the world since the day he was sealed away.
No wonder Incheon Airport left him stunned.

“…Can you do just the one verse?”

No matter how much Yujin grumbled, Kronos’s marveling didn’t let up until they reached the gate that had opened in Myeongdong.

A great fissure sat in the very heart of Myeongdong.
A dark-blue hole shimmered in the middle of warped, distorted space.
A passage into another dimension. A gate.

Just as I remember it.

Yujin tapped his temple lightly with a finger.

There are two types of gate.
The permanent Fixed type, and the Fluid type, which vanishes once you kill the boss monster or destroy the gate core.
The Garden of Antiquity was the former.
With an entry requirement of only 1st Rank, it was a gate that rookie Hunters favored.

“Urgently seeking 1 Martial-line Hunter.”
“Level 13 (1st Rank) Magic-line, looking for a team.”

Recruitment ads posted on the Hunters-only app, nicknamed Hunternet.
Around the gate, Hunters gathered in twos and threes, cocking their heads.
Raid parties thrown together on the spot, people scrounging up members for a so-called pickup raid.

Right, the gate’s secret hasn’t gotten out yet at this point.

Before the regression, this place had been popular enough that the ten leading guilds, the country’s Big Three included, controlled access to it.
Watching the Hunters scramble for teammates, it really sank in that he’d come back to the past.

Heh heh.
So this was how good it felt, to corner the market on information about the future.

“Hey. If you’re going in alone, want to team up with us?”

Kang Inho, a man in his mid-twenties among the recruiting Hunters, called out to him.
Yujin waved a hand as if he couldn’t care less and headed for the fissure.

“Ah. Looks like he just awakened, too.”
“Big Bro. Why even worry about it? He says he’s got it handled.”

Letting his teammates’ squabbling go in one ear and out the other, Yujin pushed his body through the fissure.
A floating sensation, and the scenery transformed in an instant.

Flowers in every color.
Scenery that matched the gate’s name unfolded before Yujin’s eyes.

The starting point is the center.

The Garden of Antiquity was divided into three sectors.
The central flower field, the safe zone and the gate’s starting point.
The southern forest, where goblins appeared.
And finally the northern lake region, where frogmen appeared.

Yujin looked up at the sky and clicked his tongue.

One day short of a full moon.

The fortuitous encounter hidden in the Garden of Antiquity could only be exploited under a full moon.
The moon would be completely full by tomorrow, so maybe he ought to count himself lucky.

First quarry’s a goblin, of course.

A Level 1 Hunter’s physical abilities aren’t much different from an ordinary person’s.
Run into a frogman near the lake, and his second life would end before regression had even been worth the trouble.

How far had he walked?
Not long after he’d entered the forest, a rustling sound caught his ear.

“You mean Life Drain.”

He’d been curious about how the holy spell performed and the mechanism behind it anyway.
Going by the description alone, it was dubious enough to make you doubt it was really a Priest-line skill.

If we’re talking a normal Priest, anyway.

In this fashion, you receive healing spells and buffs according to the pantheon you serve.
So what kind of ability did the skill he’d received on becoming a Saint of the Kronos faith hold?

“Kikikikit!”

The sound of trampled underbrush was a goblin leaping.
The thing closed to point-blank range, bared its teeth wide, and went for Yujin’s thigh.
A rusted dagger in its hand.
The kind of sight where one touch looked like it would earn you a tetanus shot.

“Thanks for coming to me first.”

That mages are weak in close combat is a stereotype.
Yujin in particular often hunted alone, so he had a fair amount of skill in melee, too.

Not that I ever learned it properly.

He calmly fixed his gaze on the goblin charging in blind.
A goblin’s specs are a notch below a human’s.
A beginner would shrink back at the monster’s bloodthirsty look — but not him.

I’ve been through hell and high water and then some.

— Hwaek!

The dagger in the goblin’s hand slashed through empty air.
A slight twist of his body was enough.
The goblin had lunged with everything it had, and its blade missed, leaving it staggering.
Yujin bent slightly at the waist and shot his right arm out fast.

“Kek!”

Yujin seized the goblin by the scruff of its neck.

A pale, whitish energy wreathed his hand.
A low hm of admiration slipped out of Yujin’s mouth.

Feels a lot like spirit-power.

A holy spell, yet a wavelength close to a Necromancer’s spirit arts.
The whitish energy bored into the goblin’s body, and green particles surged up along his hand and were sucked into Yujin’s body.

The goblin’s life force.

The more its vitality was stolen, the more its skin shriveled.
He absorbed the life force fast enough to leave the thing withered to a husk in seconds.
The goblin’s life force, gathered in his dantian.

Absorb it straight away.

“Insane.”

Eating one goblin bumped my stat points up by a total of 0.2?

The bonus stats granted per level were 5.
By simple math, hunting 25 goblins was the equivalent of gaining one level.

“Yeah. It’s incredible.”

He didn’t much like Kronos’s smug attitude, but he’d let it slide.
Life Drain was a holy spell worth exactly that much.

Right now experience comes fast, but the higher my Stellar Rank climbs, the harder it’ll get.

A holy spell that converts a monster’s life force into stats.
Beyond leveling up, it wasn’t as though there were no other ways to strengthen the body.

The most common method is an elixir.

Aside from that, there were also means of receiving a title, whether by accepting a blessing or by fulfilling conditions hidden here and there throughout a gate.
The problem was that every one of them was no easy feat.

Yujin swallowed hard.

Isn’t this Pope-grade or Saintess-grade holy spell territory?

A holy spell that shattered common sense.
He’d figured all he needed was to wring a blessing out of his patron Constellation.
At the unexpected windfall, the corners of his lips twitched.

I should look into the Priest-side abilities too, when I get the chance.

Yujin cut off his musings and looked down at the ground.
The goblin’s corpse, dried out from having its life force plundered.
A body whose warmth was fading still had its uses for Yujin.

Now then, shall I get started?

Necromancy. The art of making the dead a medium for sorcery.
The whitish energy that bloomed from Yujin’s hand slid into the goblin’s gaping mouth.

I’ll make you serviceable, at least.

The spirit-power that traveled deep down its throat settled into the heart.
A blue stone lodged inside it.
The spirit-power seeped into the ‘mana stone’, a Hunter’s main source of income, and stimulated the stopped heart.

— Ba-dump!

The spirit-power, mixed with the mana the mana stone held, began racing through the goblin’s corpse along its veins.
Bones hardened.
The shriveled skin toughened up like rubber.
The corpse’s skin, stained by spirit-power, turned pitch-black.

“Answer my call.”

The goblin’s head, bent backward, snapped forward with a crack, springing up like a released coil.
Dead eyes.
A blue glow flickered above its faded pupils.

“Grrk.”

The goblin corpse made a phlegmy, rattling sound. Now a zombie, the thing staggered to its feet.

To draw out power greater than a corpse’s inherent abilities, you have to put it through a processing step.
It was the reason the Library of Knowledge included alchemy lore.
Yujin had skipped that and raised the zombie’s stats by nearly double with spirit-power alone.
A corpse-processing technique an ordinary Necromancer couldn’t even dream of.

Only 97 percent? Even after giving up the mana stone, that’s not high.

The man himself looked utterly dissatisfied.

Tsk.

Yujin clicked his tongue and swept his hair back.

Why does a Hunter hunt monsters?
Some would say it’s to grow stronger, but most would answer like this:

“Because you make good money.”

The reason Hunters are popular despite the high risk is the income that comes with it.
The mana stone in a monster’s heart is a Hunter’s main source of income.
He’d given up that income, and the strengthened undead’s numbers weren’t even high, so he wasn’t satisfied.

“Production took a whole second, too. At my peak it’d have been done in under 0.1.”

Yujin shook his head side to side.
Compared to his pre-regression self, there’d be no end to it.

This much, and it’ll at least pull its weight in the Garden of Antiquity.

Yujin pushed forward through the forest with the zombie out in front.

“Kikit!”

A goblin sprang up over the underbrush.
This time, there were three of them.
To test the zombie’s combat ability, Yujin folded his arms and gave the order to attack.

“Grrrk!”

The zombie charged, dragging its legs. Thanks to the specs spirit-power processing had boosted, it moved faster than a goblin.
The zombie pounced on the goblin running at the front of the pack and opened its maw as wide as it would go.

— Kwadeuk!

It tore into the goblin’s neck with its sharp teeth.
The goblin shrieked, “Kiret!”, flailing both arms, trying to shove it off, but it couldn’t overcome a zombie that Yujin’s craft had made twice as strong.
When the goblins arriving a step behind stabbed away with the daggers in their hands, lumps of rotten flesh tore off and dropped here and there.
A zombie that didn’t so much as flinch when struck in a vital spot.

While the goblins had their attention pulled to the zombie.

“Guess I’m not even on your radar?”

Yujin, who had slipped behind them at some point, grabbed the scruff of a goblin clinging to the zombie.
He triggered White Night’s power once more.
He switched spirit-power to holy power and unfurled Life Drain, and the goblin’s body trembled like an aspen leaf.

“Kit.”

With a feeble groan, it crumpled to the ground.

Useful for offense, too.

Suck a goblin completely dry of vitality in a matter of seconds?
Life Drain’s life-stealing ability was superior to most curses.
That Necromancers are weak in close combat is a prejudice.

Just as he finished draining a goblin to a mummy-dry husk with Life Drain —

“Kiik!”

With a death scream, the head of the goblin the zombie had bitten wrenched the opposite way.

Can a thing that’s already dead be a target for Life Drain?

Yujin had already reached the pinnacle in the field of necromancy, but learning a holy spell was a first.
And the Constellation he venerated was no ordinary one.
He had to grasp the abilities he’d newly gained after regression perfectly.

A green energy shimmered at the point of contact. The goblin’s life force.

It does work.

Among dark magics there are spells that plunder life force, but the target is limited to the ‘living.’
The same goes for a vampire’s blood-drinking.
And yet Life Drain’s range of allowance was quite broad.

What this meant was…

I can crank up the hunting speed.

It meant there was no longer any need to bother distinguishing the living from the dead when hunting goblins.

“Answer my call.”

Two goblins joined the ranks of the dead.
The real hunt was only just beginning.