4. This Is Why You Play Necromancer (1)

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

Kronos went on gushing his admiration at the sight of Incheon International Airport. Ruins like the palace of Knossos might have boasted splendid architecture for their age, but they fell well short of anything modern. Sealed away as a Fallen Constellation, he hadn’t laid eyes on the world since the day he fell, so it was no wonder Incheon left him thunderstruck.

“…Can you do just one verse?”

No matter how 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 the district, a dark-blue hole shimmering amid warped, distorted space: a passage into another dimension, a gate.

Just as I remember it.

Yujin tapped his temple lightly with a finger.

Gates came in two types. The Fixed type was permanent; the Fluid type vanished the moment its boss monster died or its core was destroyed. The Garden of Antiquity belonged to the former, and its entry bar of a mere 1st Rank made it a favorite among rookie Hunters.

“Urgently seeking 1 Martial-line Hunter.”

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

They were recruitment ads posted to the Hunters-only app everyone called Hunternet. Around the gate, Hunters clustered in twos and threes, heads cocked, throwing raid parties together on the spot, scrounging up members for what they called a pickup raid.

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

Before the regression, this place had grown popular enough that the ten leading guilds, the country’s Big Three among them, controlled who got in. Watching these 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 the future.

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

The one who’d called out was Kang Inho, a recruiter in his mid-twenties. Yujin flapped 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.”

He let the teammates’ squabbling go in one ear and out the other and pushed through the fissure. A floating sensation, and the scenery changed in an instant.

Flowers in every color. Scenery worthy of the gate’s name spread out before Yujin’s eyes.

The starting point is the center.

The Garden of Antiquity was divided into three sectors: the central flower field, which served as the safe zone and the gate’s starting point; the southern forest, where goblins appeared; and the northern lake region, home to the frogmen.

Yujin looked up at the sky and clicked his tongue.

One day short of a full moon.

The windfall hidden in the Garden of Antiquity could only be drawn out under a full moon, and the moon would be full by tomorrow night. Maybe he ought to count himself lucky.

First quarry’s a goblin, of course.

A Level 1 Hunter’s body was barely a cut above an ordinary person’s. Stumble onto a frogman by the lake and his second life would end before the regression had amounted to anything at all.

How far had he walked? Not long after entering the forest, a rustling caught his ear.

“You mean Life Drain.”

He’d been curious about how the holy spell performed, and about the mechanism behind it, anyway. By its description alone, it was dubious enough to cast doubt on whether it really was a Priest-line skill.

If we’re talking a normal Priest, anyway.

Which healing spells and buffs a Saint received depended on the pantheon he served. So what did the skill hold that Yujin had been granted on becoming a Saint of the Kronos faith?

“Kikikikit!”

The crackle of trampled underbrush was a goblin leaping. It closed to point-blank range, bared its teeth wide, and lunged for Yujin’s thigh, a rusted dagger in its grip, the rust thick enough that a single scratch looked good for a tetanus shot.

“Thanks for coming to me first.”

The idea that mages were weak up close was a stereotype. Yujin in particular hunted solo often, so he had a fair hand at melee himself.

Not that I ever learned it properly.

He calmly fixed his gaze on the goblin barreling in blind. A goblin’s specs ran a notch below a human’s. A beginner might have shrunk from the monster’s bloodthirsty glare.

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 had been enough. The thing had thrown its whole weight into the lunge, and with the blade gone wide it stumbled, off balance. Yujin bent slightly at the waist and shot his right arm out.

“Kek!”

Yujin seized the goblin by the scruff of its neck.

A pale, whitish energy wreathed his hand. A low hoh of admiration slipped from Yujin’s lips.

Feels a lot like spirit-power.

A holy spell, and yet its wavelength ran close to a Necromancer’s spirit arts. The whitish energy bored into the goblin’s body, and green particles came riding back up his hand to be drawn into Yujin’s own.

The goblin’s life force.

The more of its vitality he stole, the more the goblin’s skin shriveled. He drank the life force down fast enough to leave it withered to a husk in seconds.

The goblin’s life force pooled in his dantian.

Absorb it straight away.

“Insane.”

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

Each level handed out five bonus stat points. By simple arithmetic, that made twenty-five goblins worth a single level.

“Yeah. It’s incredible.”

Kronos’s smugness grated, 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.

The spell turned a monster’s life force straight into stats. Of course, leveling up was hardly the only way to make a body stronger.

The most common method is an elixir.

Aside from that, there were title-granting routes too: accepting a blessing, or meeting conditions tucked away here and there inside a gate. The trouble was that not one of them came easy.

Yujin swallowed hard.

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

The holy spell flew in the face of common sense. He’d assumed all he had to do was wring a blessing out of his patron Constellation, and at this unexpected windfall, the corners of his mouth twitched.

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

Yujin broke off his musings and looked down. The goblin’s corpse lay there, dried out from having its life force plundered, but a body whose warmth was still fading had its uses for him yet.

Now then, shall I get started?

Necromancy: the art of making the dead a vessel 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 traveled deep down its throat and settled into the heart, where a blue stone sat lodged. As that spirit-power seeped into the mana stone, a Hunter’s main source of income, it stirred the stopped heart back to life.

— Ba-dump!

Spirit-power, mixed now with the mana held in the stone, began racing along the veins of the goblin’s corpse. Bones hardened. The shriveled skin toughened like rubber, and where the spirit-power stained it, the corpse turned pitch-black.

“Answer my call.”

The goblin’s head, lolling backward, snapped forward with a crack and sprang up like a released coil. Dead eyes. Above the faded pupils, a blue glow flickered.

“Grrk.”

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

Drawing out power beyond a corpse’s inherent abilities meant putting it through a processing step, which was exactly why the Library of Knowledge bundled in alchemy lore. Yujin had skipped all that and nearly doubled the zombie’s stats with spirit-power alone, a corpse-processing technique an ordinary Necromancer couldn’t begin to dream of.

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

The man himself looked anything but satisfied.

— 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 it like this:

“Because you make good money.”

For all that it was a high-risk profession, Hunting stayed popular because of the money in it. The mana stone in a monster’s heart was a Hunter’s main source of income, and Yujin had just thrown that income away for an undead whose numbers weren’t even impressive. No wonder 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. Measured against his pre-regression self, there’d be no end to the complaints.

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. Three of them, this time. 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 the spirit-power processing had given it, it moved faster than the goblins. It pounced on the one running at the front of the pack and opened its maw as wide as it would go.

— Kwadeuk!

Then it tore into the goblin’s neck with its sharp teeth. The goblin shrieked, “Kiret!” and flailed both arms in a struggle to shove it off, but it was no match for a zombie that Yujin’s craft had made twice as strong. When the goblins a step behind stabbed in with their daggers, lumps of rotten flesh tore loose and dropped here and there. The zombie never so much as flinched, even struck somewhere vital.

Meanwhile, the goblins had their attention pulled entirely to it.

“Guess I’m not even on your radar?”

Yujin, who had slipped behind them at some point, seized 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.¹ The goblin’s body trembled like an aspen leaf.

“Kit.”

Then, with a feeble groan, it crumpled to the ground.

Useful for offense, too.

Drain a goblin completely dry of vitality in a matter of seconds? Life Drain’s life-stealing outdid most curses. The notion that Necromancers were weak up close was just prejudice.

And about the time he’d wrung a goblin dry to a mummy’s husk with Life Drain…

“Kiik!”

…the head of the goblin the zombie had bitten wrenched the other way with a death scream.

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

Yujin had long since reached the pinnacle of necromancy, but a holy spell was new ground for him. And the Constellation he served was no ordinary one. He needed to master the abilities he’d gained after the regression down to the last detail.

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

It does work.

Dark magic had its own life-plundering spells, but they only worked on the living. The same went for a vampire’s blood-drinking. And yet Life Drain’s allowance ran much broader than that. What that meant was…

I can crank up the hunting speed.

There was no longer any need to bother sorting the living from the dead while hunting goblins.

“Answer my call.”

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