40. Reinforcing Combat Power (2)

“Ge-gel!! Chaos, destruction, des—!!”

— Ptoomp!

Stripped to bare bone, the skull was shoved down hard by some outside force and bowed low.

“What’s it babbling about?”

“Ge-gel. I. Came back to life. I thank the master. And so, the enemy, I destroy.”

Jo Seungcheol’s jawbone worked as stray thoughts spilled out. A Skeleton Mage made of nothing but bone had no vocal organs to speak of; he was probably running his jaw out of habit from when he’d been alive.

It’s a low-grade undead. How much are you expecting?

Big dreamer, aren’t you.

Yujin chided Kronos and opened the status window.

The stats skewed hard to one extreme, everything piled into Magic.

Not necessarily.

A typical magic-line Hunter sank a share of their stats into Agility or Stamina, for reaction speed and to haul gear. In a clash between high Stellar Ranks, the outcome could turn on a hundredth of a second.

Factor in the bonus stats from Unison and the total came to 751, a touch above a magic-line Hunter at the tail end of the 2nd Rank.

Came out just as I intended.

I shaved its Endurance down to reinforce the skull. That’s why the Magic came out high.

A Skeleton stayed restorable as long as its head was intact. It was no spare life like a Lich’s, but short of total destruction, he could keep putting it back to work.

He gets to serve me, so it ought to be an honor.

Who cares.

For all that, it was still a low-grade undead. Even with soul and body in sync, there was a limit to how far it could voice its own intentions, unless he kept reworking it. Fafnir, or to be exact, Park Haneul before the regression, had started out as a Skeleton Knight too, and had climbed all the way to Doom Knight only because Yujin reworked him whenever the chance came.

Who’s to say this one won’t make it to Lich if it survives?

A Skeleton Mage is 2nd Rank to begin with. The fate of a low-grade undead.

Grind its bones down and fit it with gear and it would get a bit stronger. Even so, drawing out the fellow’s full potential took materials, and Yujin’s level wasn’t there yet.

It needs to be at least 3rd Rank before I can modify it.

Yes, yes.

The Blood Golem, and now the Skeleton Mage too, had joined his forces. And he’d found a way to draw out more of Fafnir’s power.

It’s time to expand the Necropolis.

Yujin’s gaze turned toward the lower reaches of the riverbank.

The party gathered before the Black Obelisk.

“From here, we head south.”
“Boss. So we’re going back to the checkpoint?”

Yujin shook his head, then spread out a map of the area around Paju.

“When did you even….”
“It’s a pre-Cataclysm map. You can pull it up with a simple internet search.”

The Necropolis sat in the north of Paju. Follow the watercourse south and it meets the Imjin River; go further southwest from there, and….

“Bro. Isn’t that Ground Zero?”
“It is.”
“But that place is a lawless zone.”

He let out a short laugh at the sight of Kang Minyeong shrinking back.

“You got around the borderlands just fine, and now you’re scared?”
“People are scarier than monsters.”
“As long as we don’t cross the line, we’ll be fine. And if anything, when we’re in danger, we can flee that way.”

Yujin set Kang Minyeong at ease.

Does it show?

Kronos, who had been listening in silence, suddenly put weight behind his thoughts.

Here’s the thing. Before the regression, I worked alone.

A one-man legion. The Undying King. The title had pointed to Yujin, who had stood at the very summit as a Necromancer.

But one hand couldn’t block ten.

House Romanov had no shortage of formidable foes beyond Dmitri. Five Hunters of the 8th-Rank class alone, and below the 7th Rank, more than he could count.

This time, I mean to build up a faction.

Before the regression, the Necropolis’s domain had amounted to a city’s worth of land at most. A single city was nothing to scoff at, of course, but the scale was too small to stand as a faction in its own right.

And while I’m at it, I’ll have to turn a backwater stray spirit into a proper Constellation.

I told you I’d use everything I could, didn’t I.

— Grit.

The memory of Dmitri’s loathsome face set Yujin’s teeth grinding.

“Boss?”
“Ah. Just lost in thought a moment.”

He marked the route in red pen, then rose to his feet.

“Minho. How much food have we got?”
“Two weeks, counting combat rations. Boss.”
“That’s cutting it close.”

The eyes of the Scraps team quivered like leaves in the wind.

Two weeks is cutting it close?
Please, please tell us that includes the trip back!
Gotta pitch the tent right this time.

With their thoughts all tangled together, the southward push into the borderlands was settled.

Before leaving the Necropolis, Yujin crafted the corpses Fafnir had gathered into undead.

For a short campaign, Armored Zombies were the better bet. Suitable corpses for Skeleton Mages were scarce, so he couldn’t make many; compared to Jo Seungcheol, who had finished his Unison, they ran at about two-thirds the spec.

You don’t know what you’re talking about. See it for yourself and you’ll understand.

Taking point, Fafnir glanced at Kang Minho beside him and sneered.

— Getting a feel for the timing yet?

“Thanks to you, we held out in the Ancient Proving Ground.”

— Good. I’m counting on you.

Coming down off the hill, the party slowly headed south along the riverside.

The Black Obelisk’s range reached one kilometer. They pressed on down the riverbank, wrapped in thick fog.

— Master. There’s a Troll up ahead.

“Can’t we go around?”

— No good. It’ll have come tracking our scent.

“So unless we double back, there’s no shaking it.”

Kang Minyeong’s face went deathly pale.

“Bro. A Troll’s a monster that comes out of 4th-Rank gates.”
“Its regeneration makes it a pain to deal with.”

It wasn’t something a Hunter who’d only just reached the 2nd Rank should know to say, yet coming from Yujin’s mouth, not one of the party felt anything off about it.

— Speaking of which, it’s been circling around the Necropolis lately.

“So it caught the scent of corpses.”

— There’s a good chance there are more Trolls nearby.

“How many did you say you saw?”

— Four.

Four Trolls, then. As Yujin rubbed at his chin, Fafnir asked again.

— What do we do?

“Straight through the front.”

If I were the sort to turn back over a mere four Trolls, I’d never have set out in the first place.

The instant the party emerged from the gray drift of mist, a Troll lingering near the riverbank whipped its head around.

“Kraaaah! Food!”

Four meters tall, on average. When the monster, tall as a two-story building, stamped its feet, gravel sprayed in every direction with a thunderous boom, boom.

“Looks like getting hit would hurt.”
“It’d be about like standing in front of a four-ton truck.”
“…I’ll take that as ‘don’t try to meet it head-on.’”

This kid. Honest, isn’t he.

— Hu-hu-hu. So it’s my turn to step in!

“No. I’ll make a stage for the Great Warrior to take next time.”

When Yujin crooked a finger, a black sphere rose above the eyes of the Blood Golem, which had stood motionless until now.

“It’s your debut match. Show me what you’ve got.”
“I obey your command.”

The Blood Golem, two heads shorter in build than the Troll, charged straight ahead.

The instant the two monsters collided.

— Pwoong!

“Uh, Boss. The summon’s arm got blown off.”
“It’s not a summon, it’s a golem.”

The golem’s arm shattered to pieces in a single blow. It reeled hard but braced both feet and kept from toppling.

“Kraaaah. Stinking monster. I smash!”

Just as the delighted Troll swung its arm once more to knock the Blood Golem down, the shattered right arm latched back into place as though time were rewinding, and seized the monster’s arm.

“Damage. Minor. Combat can continue.”
“Kraaaah?”

Strange. It had definitely torn that arm clean off. For a moment the Troll felt a flicker of doubt, but it didn’t dwell on it long; it hadn’t the intelligence to ponder much of anything.

“Kraaah. I tear it off again.”

— Pwoong! Pa-pa-pa-poong!

The Blood Golem’s two arms scattered into droplets of blood in every direction, but within seconds they re-formed.

A mana circuit had been carved into it using the Masked Demon-Beast’s corpse as its foundation. The mana surging up from that engine held a firm dominion over the blood imprinted on it, so even when the arms were destroyed they swiftly returned to their proper shape.

— Still, you won’t seize the upper hand fighting like that.

“Watch and you’ll see.”

A Troll ranked high among 4th-Rank monsters for sheer strength. In a straight contest of force, the tail end of the 3rd Rank had no business standing up to it.

The instant the Troll tore off the Blood Golem’s right arm yet again.

— Shra-ra-rak.

The Blood Golem’s left arm swirled, and from the elbow down it became a sharp sword, while the scattering droplets of blood blinded the Troll.

“Commencing attack.”

In that flat, emotionless tone, the crimson blade tore the Troll’s belly wide open with a shrk.

“Krooh?”

“Damage minor. Continuing the attack.”

It reshaped its reconstructed right arm into a sharp awl, drove it into the wound it had just torn open, and gouged around wildly.

“Kroh, get off!”

The Troll flailed its arms and shoved the Blood Golem away. It was startled, but no more than that; a wound like this it could close in five seconds with its kind’s regeneration, and the golem’s strength had fallen short of a fatal blow.

“Krooh?”

Or so it should have gone. Far from closing, the gaping wound kept pouring blood in steady gushes.

The Blood Golem’s poison stalled regeneration. The Troll’s greatest strength had been rendered useless.

— Master. The Blood Golem seems to have grown a bit bigger?

“Oh. Sharp eye, as expected.”

A golem that swelled in size by absorbing blood. As it cut the wound and as it drove in the needle, it had been drinking down the Troll’s blood all the while.

— Sealing off its recovery, and bloodsucking on top of that. A natural-born bane of Trolls.

“An ordinary 4th Rank would’ve had a hard fight on its hands.”

The matchup favored it. There was a reason he had sent the 3rd-Rank-spec Blood Golem out on its own.

The Blood Golem swelled larger the longer the fight dragged on. The Troll’s eyes, by contrast, deepened to a dusky black.

“Krooooh!”

The Troll bore the pain and grabbed at the golem’s bladed arm, but…

By the property of blood that hardens when struck, the blade held its shape and drove in deep.

“Kroh….”

Having paid out far too much of its blood, the Troll finally sank to one knee.

The Blood Golem, now with the upper hand, turned both arms to swords and sliced clean through the collapsed Troll’s neck with a shrk.

Tch. Everything about it’s great except the experience loss.

That was the very reason Yujin hadn’t made golems his mainstay before the regression. They didn’t eat into the undead capacity limit, but they came at a loss in production cost, time, and experience income.

“Krooooh! Brother. We got beaten.”
“Krooh. We eat them.”
“Krok. Kill them. Eat them.”

Three Trolls came shoving out through the undergrowth, drawn, it seemed, by the noise of the fight just now.

“So there were more nearby.”

— See? I wasn’t seeing things.

A good thing they hadn’t come into the Necropolis. Fafnir alone would have had a hard time with them; even making full use of the heavy fog, the most he could have managed was to drive them off.

Yujin looked over at the Scraps team.

“One of the three of you. Think you can hunt alongside me?”
“A single Troll….”
“Just pin its feet down. I’ll make up the firepower you lack.”

Three 2nd-Rank Hunters, holding down a Troll’s feet? It was an absurd order, yet the Scraps team felt an inexplicable fighting spirit boil up inside them.

Boss is putting his trust in us.
A Troll. Scary as it is, he wouldn’t have handed it to us if there weren’t a chance of winning.
I’ll pull my weight!

At the Scraps members’ surge of competitive fire, Yujin chuckled.

“Troll hunt. Let’s begin.”