67. So Who Rules The Island Now?

Apply just enough pressure on Yujin.

The five Reric brothers waited at their leisure for the reinforcements still to come.

“All we have to watch out for is that pitch-black one.”
“Keep feeding him Rerics and he’ll hit his limit eventually.”
“Karak. When a ship comes, that’s when we pounce.”

While they merrily eyed the moment the next vessel would dock, Yujin, who’d done nothing but hold a defensive line anchored on the Black Obelisk, suddenly burst out of the fog. His route ran straight for the island’s center, right where the five Reric brothers were holed up.

“Karak. Has the wretch lost his mind?”
“Karararak. Youngest. Go find out. If it comes to it, you may drive him off yourself.”
“Understood.”

A single mutant Reric strode off to the south.

How much time passed?

— Splatch. Splatch.

The sound of waterlogged footsteps pricked at the five Reric brothers’ hearing.

“Karak. You drove the human off awfully ear—”
“Hey. Came a little early, didn’t I?”

— Korrrrr.

The blood-drained head of a Reric rolled across the ground. As if torn off by sheer force, what little blood remained in the shredded muscle sprayed in every direction. Fafnir, a headless torso slung over one shoulder, dumped it down roughly.

“Five mutants — no, you’re only four? My, what a crowd.”
“Karararak. You killed our little brother!”
“What brotherly love. You’re nothing but half-baked things a gate spat out.”
“You wretchhhhhh!!!”

The five Reric brothers were down to four now. Two of the mutants exploded with rage and leapt high.

“See? It’s effective, isn’t it?”

— Master. Even so, there’s a limit. Defiling the dead is a bit much.

“‘The dead’ is too fine a word to waste on a monster.”

Yujin replied without batting an eye.

‘And what’s gotten into you, oh great Constellation? Weren’t you the one who liked my heroic exploits?’

‘It’s all for a reason.’

Yujin shot Fafnir a sidelong glance.

— I’ll move according to the original plan, then.

“If something unexpected comes up, I’ll adjust to match, so don’t worry. Just go wild.”

— In that case.

Fafnir advanced. He crooked a finger at the Blood Golem standing behind him, too.

“You go too.”
“Executing command.”

— Thud. Thud.

The Blood Golem lumbered forward, heavier than before, its footfalls ponderous. Gorged on Reric blood, it had grown stronger, its specs climbing to the very edge of the 4th Rank. And its bulk, swollen to some five meters, gave up nothing to a mutant Reric.

— Wuuuung—!

Blue energy shimmered on the claws of the two Reric brothers. It was an aura, the power of intent granted only to those who had crossed the wall.

“Karararak! Die!”

The mutant Rerics were certain of their victory. Even with the gap closed this far, no aura had begun to form around Fafnir or the Blood Golem, and unfolding one took even a 5th-Rank Reric intense concentration. So the pair, they were sure, had no way to answer the blow.

A gray ward formed an instant before impact. They could have pulled their hands back, but the mutant Rerics didn’t stop.

‘The energy isn’t even that strong. We’ll rip right through it!’

The blue current thickened another shade. Let the enemy throw up a defensive spell; they would simply punch through it with greater force, and that would be that.

— Cleaaaang!

“Karak?!”

…or so the mutant Reric had thought, until its eyes flooded with bewilderment. Its mana was flowing backward. The aura gathered on its claws shook violently.

“My aura!”
“What’s the matter. Something not working out?”

Yujin smirked.

An aura belonged to anyone who had crossed the wall, yet the wavelength of that materialized mana differed from wielder to wielder. It was shaped by combat style, temperament, a hundred other things. Naturally, then, its proficiency and destructive power swung wildly from one user to the next, according to strength of will and skill at mana control.

‘Have these 3rd-Rank-level brutes ever once had cause to unfurl an aura at full power?’

He had torn the heads off the mutant Rerics, and he had flung them back at the brothers so pointedly for exactly this moment. Aura at maximum output? These were monsters that had never grasped the depth of an aura, that had plainly only ever swung the thing around however they liked.

‘If I bounce their aura back with the Negation Shock Shield, they won’t be able to respond properly.’

‘I told you it was all for a reason.’

The harder they hauled their aura up, the more the Negation Shock Shield drove the backflowing mana past any hope of control.

The mutant Reric backpedaled. The claws shimmering with the blue current trembled, and at their tips droplets of blood fell, drip-drip, proof enough of it.

‘He gave me an incredible holy spell.’

For all his spirited bellowing, Kronos couldn’t shake his own astonishment. The holy spell he had labored to shape was Memento, and he had painstakingly modified the pocket watch as well, on the premise that the two would be used together with the Relic.

‘And yet — to think he’s making such brilliant use of a spell I tossed in as an afterthought.’

Such a tiny human, and yet he let not a single skill go to waste. Kronos strained with everything he had to keep the thought, brimming with astonishment, from leaking through to Yujin.

— Moving to phase two.

— Tupat—!

Fafnir blew past the mutant Reric as it faltered, still steadying its mana, and charged the two behind it.

“Karak. You’re coming after us?”
“How laughable. You think being in the rear makes us weak in close quarters!”

The ground split left and right into a wide fissure, and a shockwave, propagated through the air as its medium, sought to pin Fafnir’s movement and shove him down into the crevice.

— The two of them coordinate well enough.

A black current coiled around both of his arms. Fafnir canceled the shockwave with his Dark Fighting-Aura, then crushed the boulders jutting up inside the fissure as he pressed on.

— Just about that good. Not bad, not great.

Fafnir’s hands moved dazzlingly as he closed in. A body shored up by triple buffs and the Dragon-Scale Armor put his physique on par with a 5th-Rank Hunter, and the mutant Rerics, outmatched in raw combat experience, flailed their arms in a panic.

“Karak, you two pounce on that one as well!”
“This thing. It’s a summon. Kill the human and it’s all over.”

Both were 5th-Rank monsters. They were simply more at home with magic than with auras; their physical capabilities lagged little behind. So while the pair kept Fafnir pinned down, they reckoned that a strike at Yujin would let them seize the advantage.

— Grrooot.

— Grrooooo.

That is, until they saw the corpse cloaked in Reric scales, the Revenant, come lunging in.

Before its remodeling into a Revenant, this undead had been a Returner. A Returner is an undead built for tanking: slow on its feet for a 3rd-Rank creature, but with a hardy body and brute strength that make it ideal for grappling enemies and holding the front line. Upgraded from that base, its Endurance alone was formidable.

“Kararakrak. An aura, you say?”
“It’s a Dark Fighting-Aura. The way it manifests is the same, so you can call it an aura if you like.”
“Kararak. It’s weaker than my aura. I can handle a thing like this easily eno—?”

He knew the Revenant’s Dark Fighting-Aura ran weaker. He had also predicted the mutant Rerics would be 5th Rank. So in the course of hunting them, hadn’t he already accounted for that too?

— Grrooooo.

— Grroo. The living.

The Revenants emerged in a line from behind the underbrush. Twelve of them seized the mutant Reric while it was still wrestling its backflowing mana under control.

“Kararak!!”
“They say one hand can’t fend off ten.”

The Blood Golem turned both arms into a net through Blood Conversion. It snared the mutant Rerics, and even at thirty percent short on output, the Revenants’ attacks, each wrapped in a Dark Fighting-Aura, stacked up damage little by little.

“Karararak!”

With a rage-laced shriek, the mutant Reric hauled its aura up to the maximum.

— Cleaaaang!

“Karak!”
“This is exactly the problem with monsters. No capacity to learn.”

A mutant Reric pours out an aura at full power? All the better. Timing it to perfection, he threw up the Negation Shock Shield and turned the wretch’s own strength against it. Had his opponent been a Hunter who had mastered the use of auras, it would have been another story. Or a monster with real combat experience to draw on.

‘Like the Eye-Patch in the borderlands.’

Now that had been a genuine monster. A mutant that had survived all the way from the monster wave to reign as king of the borderlands. These Rerics weren’t fit to be named in the same breath.

‘Fafnir… just needs a little help.’

Even pitted against two magic-specialized Rerics, Fafnir never lost the initiative. It was a far cry from his struggle during the spider hunt. His opponents might be two 5th-Rank monsters, but they had less combat experience than Choi Hyeongtae, a Red Spider officer. They kept reshuffling their mana, doing everything they could to dodge a head-on clash, yet with all that physical power poured into nothing but evasion, Fafnir’s furious assault dragged the whole flow of the fight his way.

‘This is the moment.’

— Pwong—!

A shockwave erupted outward with Fafnir at its center, rattling the mutant Rerics hard. The buff swelled in proportion to all the impact piled up over the course of the battle, and the Wedge of Retribution unloads that stored energy in a single burst of shockwave.

…

On Yujin’s signal, Jo Seungcheol hurled flame orbs at the mutant Reric whose stance had already crumbled, and the amplified magic, making the gap in Stellar Rank meaningless, melted its scales.

“Karak!”

— Now you’ve shown an opening.

A Dark Fighting-Aura spun ferociously up along his forearm. It shattered the melted scales, tore through the muscle and flesh hidden beneath, then burst the mutant Reric’s heart with a pop.

Just like a mutant, it hands over a staggering amount of experience.

“Second brother!”
“Don’t worry. You’ll follow him soon enough.”
“Damn you! Human!”

— Hwuung—.

A Dark Fighting-Aura grazed past the mutant Reric. Fafnir didn’t miss the instant it spat its curse, and pressed in all the harder.

“Will you! Talk to me!”

— In the time you’ve spent yammering, the Master would’ve killed another fifty-three Rerics.

Look at him, taunting it.

Before the regression, Park Haneul had been so taciturn he bored me. For his gift at provocation to be this sharp now, was he even the same man?

‘Is it because we contracted a little earlier?’

’…’

Something about it felt awfully strange.

Shoving Kronos’s laughter to the back of his mind, he fixed his attention on the battle. The role he had taken on in this fight was support. There were no corpses to detonate, and Bone Control couldn’t so much as scratch a 5th-Rank monster. A Bone Spear packed with concentrated spirit-power, perhaps, but that was about the ceiling of it.

‘In that case, faithfully playing the Priest’s role is the right call.’

His holy spells were plainly alien next to those of other stellar fields, and Yujin wrung every drop from that strangeness, putting on a display that overwhelmed Priests of his own Stellar Rank.

“M-Me, brought down by mere dead things…”

Buried under the swarm of Revenants, the mutant Reric took a baptism of Dark Fighting-Auras and toppled over. Before long the remaining two joined their brothers.

— I never imagined we’d win a sweeping victory against four 5th-Rank monsters.

Fafnir muttered with a sour look. Yujin snickered.

“Idiot. I told you I don’t fight battles I can’t win.”

— That the Master, barely a 3rd Rank, would even gauge the odds of victory is bizarre in itself.

Naturally. The bloodbaths he had waded through on his climb to the 9th Stellar Rank ran past any count. Mutants that had only clumsily woken to a flicker of intellect were no match for him.

— Hah. Truly. Had there been a Hunter like the Master in my day, Korea would be far more stable than it is now.

Fafnir even reached for the past, something he wouldn’t ordinarily touch. It was proof of just how hard the fight had shaken him. Surprised already, was he? There was plenty more ahead to surprise him; he’d do well to keep some heart-soothing tonic on hand.

— Buuuung—!

The pocket watch swung left and right. Kronos spoke up in a tone laced with urgency.

‘Beneath the cathedral.’

For a king of the Titan gods, he was awfully chicken-hearted underneath.

After a short laugh, Yujin turned his gaze on the mutant Rerics with their heads buried in the dirt. Whatever lay hidden beneath the cathedral was tempting, sure, but to a Necromancer, the corpse of a powerful being was the real treasure, wasn’t it?

“Lesser dragon-race has plenty of uses.”

— Slurrrp.

Yujin licked his lips.

— Master. There’s one thing I’d like to ask of you.

“Out with it.”

— That…

When Fafnir hesitated, Yujin barked at him.

“It doesn’t suit you at all — why start talking and then stop?”

— Those corpses. Can you give them to me.

— Blink. Blink.

For once, Yujin had no reply ready. He only closed both eyes, then opened them again.