66. The 3rd Stellar Rank

The Negation Shock Shield had two properties: it reflected close-range attacks and gave perfect defense against anything ranged. He’d already put the perfect-defense side to the test back during the landing.

‘The key question is how much it returns when it takes a close-range hit.’

The effect was outstanding. When he fused the Bone Wall and the Negation Shock Shield into one and baited a Reric into striking, the spirit-reinforced defense gained a synergy effect, and the reflected impact snapped the creature’s arm clean back.

“Karararak!”

“Karak!”

Screams erupted here and there. The Rerics, who had come surging in so boldly, faltered in alarm.

‘The Bone Wall has two forms too.’

There were two kinds: defensive and reflective. The one he’d deployed this time was the reflective kind, a structure that, when struck, jutted bone outward to return the damage to its attacker. The tradeoff was that it bled the Bone Wall’s own durability instead.

‘But overlay the Negation Shock Shield, and the reflective type’s strengths are maximized.’

The Bone Wall on its own couldn’t have generated enough force to pierce an arm, and the reverse held just as true: the Negation Shock Shield alone would have managed nothing more than a sliver of returned damage.

‘The synergy’s even better than my calculations.’

Even without Fafnir, it was more than enough.

— Die. You filthy little vermin.

…

The Skeleton Mages flung their spells without restraint, using the Bone Wall as cover. Jo Seungcheol in particular, his mana fully recovered from the landing, once more poured out a tremendous barrage of firepower.

“Karak. We break through one side.”

The Rerics weren’t simply standing there and taking it. The Bone Wall ringed the Black Obelisk in a dense circle, and the wider that perimeter stretched, the more thin spots were bound to open in the Skeleton Mages’ web of fire. The Rerics that could attack at range slipped to the back of the horde.

They spat out balls of flame, just as they had during the landing.

A low hit rate only matters when the target is small or distant. There was no chance they’d miss a Bone Wall thrust high into the air from less than forty meters out.

Hammered by dozens of flame-balls, the ward shattered. The Bone Wall didn’t last much longer; one side of it caved in.

“Karak! Charge!”

The Rerics swarmed the breach. A giant of red mucus moved to seal the gap in the collapsed wall.

“You. Shall not pass.”

Both arms shifting into blades, it swept them left and right, cutting the Rerics down.

— Chwarak.

A Reric sat at the 3rd Stellar Rank, a notch below the Troll he’d absorbed earlier; but the rare blood of a lesser dragon-race creature had pushed the Blood Golem’s abilities up a full step further.

“What. Something not going your way?”

A force beyond even the Skeleton Mages’ magic! As explosions burst all across the battlefield, Reric arms and legs and beads of blood scattered through the air.

The Rerics at the rear punched a hole in the far wall.

— Gureok.

— Geok.

But they lacked the strength to break past the Armored Zombies packed into the collapsed section. In an open melee it might have gone differently, but in such a cramped space the Armored Zombies threw themselves entirely into defense, and the Rerics couldn’t shove them aside.

Bone Wall and Negation Shock Shield in synergy; the Armored Zombies and the Blood Golem channeling their Endurance into defense. Every element meshed together like cogwheels, perfectly neutralizing the Reric horde’s assault.

Things were calm enough now that he could skewer the spent Rerics with his magic armament, drag them in close, and plunder their life force. All three hundred fell in the fog without landing a single worthwhile blow.

The defensive battle anchored on the Black Obelisk erupted again and again after that. By the time roughly a day had passed, the number of Rerics dead in the fog had reached a staggering four thousand.

“A war of attrition against a Necromancer, huh.”

Yujin muttered it in a dry, flat tone as he shoveled food into his mouth. The reek of death pricked at his nose; the acrid smoke and the smell of blood threatened to deaden his sense of smell, but he paid them no mind and scraped down every last grain of rice in his field ration.

— I suppose I’ll have to say your stomach is needlessly strong.

Fafnir spoke in a flabbergasted tone, watching Yujin’s unfazed composure.

Don’t worry, Great Warrior.
Before regressing, I saw far worse than this plenty of times.
If I’d fussed over things like a queasy stomach or hygiene, I’d have died long ago — never mind reaching the 9th Stellar Rank.

At Kronos’s jab, Yujin shrugged.

‘There are a fair few variables in this capture.’

’…’
Backwater go— no.

He’d decided not to spit that nickname out anymore, so he had to hold it in.

I’d better come up with a new nickname as fast as I can.

‘There are at least three mutant Rerics. And they’re monsters I’m guessing are at the 5th Rank.’

‘The number of commands issued to the Rerics.’

Fafnir, whom he’d sent toward the island’s center, had been unable to push any farther against the Rerics’ assault and had fallen back to the Black Obelisk. By his account, the return trip hadn’t been smooth either.

‘They blocked me front and back, so it gave me a fair bit of trouble, he said.’

A Reric wasn’t a creature clever enough to form an encirclement, which meant at least two mutants were giving orders. And since another group had come around by way of the shoreline, the count came to three or more.

‘A working assumption is supposed to keep the worst-case scenario in mind.’

The more thorough the preparation, the better. And a Reric with that kind of judgment was very likely something that had reached the peak of the 4th Rank, if not the 5th.

‘You’re right. Back then I at least had the luxury of being on the defensive.’

Yujin didn’t deny it. The spider hunt had mobilized something like a hundred Hunters, and only two of them, the officers, had stood at the 5th Rank.

‘There are at least several thousand Rerics on Yeonpyeong Island. And on top of that, at least three monsters I’m guessing are 5th Rank.’

‘And what is it you want, oh great Constellation?’

Kronos declared it flatly.

‘Figured you’d say that.’

Yujin let out a short laugh.

But you know what.
Those things are mistaken about one thing.
That they’re not the only ones strong in a war of attrition.

They seemed to be studying Yujin’s combat strength, feeding him bait without pause; but thanks to that, he stood just one step short of the cap he’d been aiming for.

“Fafnir. Go clear out the shoreline one more time.”

— Aren’t you working me too hard?

“It’s almost level 50.”

— Can’t be helped, then. Serving an inadequate master is a servant’s duty, after all.

How much time passed after he sent Fafnir out?

— Wuuung—!

It felt like climbing a full step with the System’s help. Yujin smiled faintly at the power that brimmed up and overflowed within him.

‘Well, sure.’

Unlocking the Poison field would let him fold Corpse Poison into Corpse Explosion or lace his undead minions with venom, dovetailing neatly with his necromancy. The Darkness field would give a Necromancer, otherwise left twiddling his thumbs without a medium of bone or corpse, the means to strike at mid and long range. Curses, meanwhile, would let him heap all manner of debuffs on a target or bend souls to his will.

‘Stat boosts are good, but the higher my Stellar Rank climbs, the wider my range of responses gets.’

Yujin had once stood at the very summit of Necromancers. One step at a time, the higher his Stellar Rank climbed, the more inexhaustible the power within his reach became.

‘But right now, there’s something more important.’

‘The very fact that my realm has risen to the 3rd Stellar Rank is the crux of it.’

— Seuuuuuu—!

A pitch-black current poured out of Jo Seungcheol’s body. The blue ghost-fire kindled in his empty eye sockets deepened a shade.

— My power has risen, Master.

“Right. Now work yourself to the bone all the harder.”

— I shall serve you with all my loyalty, Master.

See that. The instant Yujin reached the 3rd Rank, hadn’t Jo Seungcheol’s standing climbed a full step too?

‘There’s a limit on how many spells I can learn. Right now I need to be selective and focused.’

Poison or curses or the Darkness field would all be fine, but in the end a Necromancer’s main line was the necromantic arts that used corpses as their medium.

He’d held those skill slots open for the moment he reached the 3rd Rank. Two of them had gone to defending the Black Obelisk, but the level reset had grown them back, leaving him four spells to learn in all.

‘I’ve already decided what to learn.’

“There we go.”

Now I can finally breathe a little easier.

At Yujin’s self-assured manner, Kronos let his doubt show.

‘Of course. It’s a shame I’m short on materials, but I can make it work well enough.’

‘You’ll see when you look.’

Yujin called out toward a Reric corpse.

“Answer my call.”

The toppled Reric corpse sprang upright and loosed an eerie shriek, the final death-cry a corpse gives. Its light-snuffed eyeballs dropped to the ground with a plunk, and blue ghost-fire began to flicker in the empty sockets.

The Returner was a low-grade undead, low-grade like the Skeleton or the zombie, but its combat power was a world apart.

‘Even at the same low grade, a Returner is born a 3rd-Rank creature.’

Its only real strength was its tough hide, yet one-on-one even an Armored Zombie or a Skeleton was no match for a Returner.

‘It’s not over yet, you know.’

Yujin stepped over to a corpse sprawled beside the Returner. Mana shimmered before his eyes as the basic alchemy skill, Analysis, took hold.

He read the grain of the mana through Analysis, then peeled the scales away with Flesh Control so they wouldn’t be damaged. Soon the Returner’s body was sheathed in Reric scales.

Onto the densely layered scales, Yujin engraved Reinforcement Circuits.

‘I’m glad the monster that took over Yeonpyeong Island was a Reric.’

With Flesh Control again, he drew out every last sinew from the pulped corpse; thanks to Analysis, he could handle the delicate work from a distance. He gathered the sinews where they jutted from the flesh, carved a Reinforcement Circuit into each, and packed them all over the Returner’s body.

“Open your eyes once more.”

— Seuseuseut—!

The moment he breathed spirit-power into the Returner, the sinews planted through its body and the Reinforcement Circuits engraved on its scales answered. Round and round the power spun, multiplying with every turn.

— Geuoooooo!!!

The name meant ‘one who has returned from death.’ Put plainly, it sat close to ‘Returner,’ but the gap in raw combat power between the two was immense.

‘It’s 4th Rank. That much is standard.’

‘That’s why “Immature” is attached to the trait.’

Jo Seungcheol had never carried that trait. A needless thing, it weakened the Dark Fighting-Aura whenever the aura surfaced, the penalty a creature paid for crossing the wall by a back-door trick.

‘Putting him to work eats up a lot of mental strength, too.’

Reaching the 3rd Rank had doubled the number of undead he could command, but the Revenant had forced its way across the wall by raw strength, and it loathed the living, its master Yujin included, so it devoured a full ten of his command slots.

‘It’s a penalty that’ll vanish once I hit the 4th Rank, but it can’t be helped.’

To deal with Yeonpyeong Island’s mutant Rerics, he needed one creature stronger than some half-baked dead thing.

Yujin could command eighty undead in all.

‘Did you forget? Jo Seungcheol has command authority too.’

Jo Seungcheol could dominate fifty on his own. Slotting the Revenant under Jo’s command would do little more than keep it from turning on Yujin, never mind actually steering it.

‘There are plenty of living beings besides me, aren’t there.’

Was there really any need to control the Revenant at all? Slip the mad dog off its leash and it would tear into them on its own.

‘You think I reached the 9th Stellar Rank for nothing?’

Yujin smirked and preened.

Now then. He’d loosened up well enough, and he’d shored up his fighting strength.

Let’s go settle this before the Kaesong man-hunters arrive.