7. The Ancient Proving Ground (1)

The next day.
Yujin and the members of the Scraps carried on hunting in the Garden of Antiquity.

“With the shaman gone, the goblins will have turned vicious.”
“All the better.”
“Sorry?”
“That means they won’t run the moment they see my zombies.”

Do you have any idea how annoying it is to chase a goblin down?

Kang Minho caught the tail end of Yujin’s muttering and gave an awkward laugh.

The forest had gone quiet, like the calm after a storm.
He’d hunted every goblin in sight until the species was wiped clean from the place.

The three of the Scraps were drenched in sweat.

“Huff, huff.”
“At this rate I’m gonna keel over.”

They’d been pacing themselves to keep up with a horde of zombies that never tired, digging mana stones out of goblin corpses the whole while.
Inside a gate, enemy territory through and through, managing your stamina mattered. But trying to match Yujin’s murderous hunting pace had left them dead on their feet.

“Can you keep going?”
“Yujin, sir. I think this is as far as we go.”
“It’s a problem if you’re tapping out already.”
“Our bags are stuffed full.”

Kang Minho smiled, a troubled look on his face.
Mana stones packed their portable bags to the brim. Even if they hunted more, there’d be nowhere to put it.

“Some excuse. You lot head back first.”
“You’re going to hunt more monsters?”
“These guys are still spry. They could go all night.”

— Gurgle.

At the phlegmy, rattling sound, the members of the Scraps shuddered in revulsion.
Kang Minho managed to school his expression and held out a slip of paper to Yujin.

“My number.”
“I’ve got no interest in a man’s contact info.”
“You’ll need the account number to wire us our settlement, won’t you.”

…

Right.
What a pointlessly honest fellow.
He’s the kind of upright soul who’d qualify as Slave Number One.

“I’ll contact you on the way out.”
“We’ll go take care of the disposal, then.”

Yujin watched the Scraps walk off, and the look in his eyes settled into something cold.

Was it that obvious?

What he had to do from here was not something to be done in front of anyone.

Knowledge from before the regression.
Information about a future that wouldn’t come to light for years yet, dredged up early and put to use.
Not because of some highbrow notion like the butterfly effect.
He simply didn’t want to share a fortuitous encounter with anyone else.

That was why he’d kept the Scraps grinding for a good while even after he’d brought down the forest’s boss monster, the Goblin Shaman.

A frogman’s heart, and the Goblin Shaman’s blood.

Yujin traced back through his old memories.

A few years from now, the reason an unpopular gate like the Garden of Antiquity came into the spotlight was thanks to a hidden element.
Place the catalysts in their designated spots, and you were transported to a secret space: the Ancient Proving Ground.
Overcome the trial, and an “emblem” was engraved on you, granting a permanent buff.
A reward of such rarity that you could comb through the countless gates open across the whole world and barely find its like.

Before the regression, Hunters hailed as rising stars had lined up to drop by the Garden of Antiquity.

Shall we have a look.

Sending the zombies out ahead, he moved toward the lakeside.

The northern region of the Garden of Antiquity.
Around the lake were stationed frogmen, blue-skinned amphibian monsters. More precisely, they lurked beneath the water, lying in wait for prey.

“Gurk.”

One zombie, taking Yujin’s command, approached the edge of the lake.
In that instant.

“Arrrrrr!”

A bizarre cry — raw and wailing, as if wrenched from the throat — spread out from every direction.
The placid lake warped with ripples here and there, and several frogmen came bursting out.

— Crunch!

A trident skewered the zombie’s nape.

“Arrr!”
“Gurk, gurrrk.”

A zombie doesn’t vanish unless its head is destroyed. This one, crafted with Yujin’s painstaking care, had its defense raised high enough that a single blow couldn’t break it.
Trident lodged in its nape and all, it closed in on the frogman without a care.
And bit clean into it.

“Arrrrr!”

The frogman frothed at the mouth. When the first kill ended in failure, the kin that had answered earlier leapt up one after another.

If only I’d learned Corpse Explosion, I could mop these up in one shot.

Yujin clicked his tongue, tsk, and threw the remaining zombies into the fray one after another.
The battle turned into a melee in the blink of an eye.
The frogmen, surfacing all across the lake, destroyed the zombies one by one.

“Arrr. Smelly thing. Weak.”

Of course they would.
Frogmen have over three times the physical capability of goblins, a gap in specs that even zombies enhanced by Yujin’s skill couldn’t bridge.

“You think I didn’t know that?”

The Staff of Resentment shot up into the air.
The whitish aura clinging to it had thickened several times over from before, vivid enough to seem graspable. It was the look of a staff fed still more of the essence of death.

— Whrrrrsh!

The sharp tip of the inverted bone staff shot toward the frogman that had been jeering.

A slick, slippery oil bathed its skin.
The frogman’s racial skill, mitigating the force of a thrust.

“Arrk, that won’t do any— guk!”

Just before the tip reached its chest, the Staff of Resentment slowed slightly, but in exchange it began to spin at high speed.
The end of the staff, serving as the axis of rotation, sloughed off the frogman’s oil and tore its skin to ribbons.
It bored through without much trouble, past the skin and muscle, into the soft interior beneath.

Right.
All the way to where the heart sat.

Damage it too much and the altar won’t accept it, so — carefully.

— Splrrtch!

As the Staff of Resentment came back out, the skewered frogman’s heart was dragged out right along with it.
Green blood gushed from the hole like a waterfall, fierce and heavy.
One frogman went tumbling to the ground.

Its unfocused pupils trembled faintly.
The frogman zombie, granted a second life by the essence of death, groaned a short uuugh.
A frame nearly twice the size of a goblin’s. Since the original was stronger, the specs rose noticeably higher too.

“Grrooaaar!”
“Arrr.”

The trident held the frogman zombie at bay, but it lunged in without a care for whether its bones broke or not.
If it were a goblin, small-framed and lacking in strength, that would be one thing. But thanks to Yujin reinforcing its bone and flesh with the essence of death, holding back a frogman stronger than its original self was no easy task.

“Ark, m-my strength.”

The trident wobbled. The frogman gripping the zombie strained out a labored sound.

— Whrrrrsh!

Once more the bone staff cleaved through empty air.

“What. Did you think I’d just watch?”

Yujin’s sneering voice flickered at the frogmen’s ears.
A second heart was torn free, and the zombies grew in number too.

If not for the Staff of Resentment, this would’ve been a hard one to crack.

The frogman racial skill, Oil Shower.
Aside from the drawback of weakening them to fire-element attacks, it was an extremely troublesome skill. Far from hindering their movement, it raised their agility, and it dramatically boosted their resistance to bladed weapons like swords and spears.
With ordinary bone, tearing through the slick hide of an Oil-Showered frogman would have been difficult.

Lucky.
The spirit-power drain is brutal, but I can hold out.

Raising frogman zombies and overcharging the staff with the essence of death, the spirit-power poured out of him in a flood.

Ngh.

His vision blurred. From the aftereffect of spirit-power depletion, his hands and feet trembled faintly.

This much is nothing.

He could endure the penalty of overusing spirit-power. And he’d already prepared a way to recover what he lacked.
The energy nestled in his dantian. He converted the goblin life force accumulated through Life Drain into spirit-power.

“Hah. This is the flavor.”

The more his focus wavered and his stomach churned, the more an inexplicable exhilaration boiled up, steadying him.

I won’t collapse. Such a coward.

Since when did we make a contract like that?

Don’t worry. This much doesn’t even count as pushing myself.

“Arrk!”
“Arr!”

The once-quiet lakeside was, before he knew it, blanketed in the frogmen’s screams, and green blood soaked the ground.

Keep going at this pace and I’ll be treading my pre-regression heights before long.

To land a single blow on that bastard the Sorcerer King’s face, he had to grow stronger even a day sooner. And he couldn’t ignore the looming threat of the Seven Great Families, a potential menace, either.
Yujin pressed down the boiling in his heart and carried on hunting.

“Arrrrk…”

The last frogman near the lake toppled over with a groan.
The goblin zombies winked out.
The twenty newly crafted frogman zombies stared at Yujin with unfocused eyes, awaiting their next command.

I should rest a little. I’m only human.

Yujin plopped down on the ground and caught his breath.
His head throbbed. The aftereffect of handling far past his permitted spirit-power capacity raged like a storm.

Inverting spirit-power and holy power through White Night, he extracted life force from the frogman corpses that were still relatively intact and turned it into healing power.

Stockpile some spare life force and I could play the healer role too.

Holy power was the exclusive province of the Priest class.
When he didn’t want to reveal his Necromancer abilities, he could disguise his identity with Life Drain. Purely in terms of healing ability, it was far more efficient than a basic healing spell, too.

I’ve gathered plenty of hearts, as well.

Excising frogman hearts one by one mid-combat and crafting them into undead was a tedious affair. It was precise work, possible only if you could read the flow of the battlefield flawlessly with a wide field of view.
Anyone but Yujin would have struggled to even attempt it.

Only once he’d shaken off the spirit-power-overuse aftereffect to some degree did he rise to his feet.

Preparations are complete.

The blessing of a Constellation, the thing he’d wanted so desperately before the regression, yet never managed to grasp.
This time would be different.
Strength surged into Yujin’s stride.

On the way back to the garden, Hunters who’d entered in parties watched Yujin with a strange light in their eyes.

“Grrooaaar.”

To be precise, it was the zombies drawing all that attention — their hollow, rattling groans unsettling everyone who heard them.
Even summoning-school mages, one of the branches of magic, were uncommon. And a Hunter who handled undead didn’t exist in this era, so their shock was understandable.

A bit of a hassle, but I’ll have to put up with it.

In answer to the pouring stares, Yujin glared his eyes wide right back at them.

You can’t keep something sharp hidden forever, as they say.
A being with power will always stand out.
It was so in his past life, and in his second life he’d grow stronger faster still, so it was an unavoidable outcome.

When Yujin glared, the Hunters averted their gazes.

It’s not as if hiding it would keep it hidden, anyway.
Heh.

A short laugh slipped out.
Leading the zombies that lurched awkwardly, their whole bodies wracked by rigor mortis, he came all the way to the center of the garden.

The stares dropped away little by little.
Curiosity about a Hunter who handled undead as summoned beasts didn’t put food on the table, so they left to pursue their original purposes.

About time I got things ready.

Yujin took out one of the frogman hearts he’d bundled up in a cloth.
He let a single drop of the Goblin Shaman’s blood fall onto the blue lump of flesh, long since stilled.

— Ba-dump. Ba-dump. Ba-dump!

The frogman’s stopped heart pulsed hard and began to throb.

A fortuitous encounter that’ll come to light in the future.

I need to concentrate, so keep quiet.

The shaman’s blood setting the heart beating again was only temporary.
He had to finish the setup within two minutes.
After feeding blood to the rest of the hearts to set them moving as well, he placed them into the zombies’ hands.

“Don’t drop them, whatever you do. Stand over there.”

Yujin put force into his voice.

A zombie. A low-grade undead.
A backward undead whose only stray thought was appetite.
Loosen his control for even a moment and it would shove the blue heart in its hands straight into its mouth.

After confirming that nine zombies had reached their designated spots, he dropped a single drop of blood onto the last heart.

— Fwoosh!

An intense flash of light dropped onto the center of the garden.
For a span shorter than a tenth of a second, light blazed, and then Yujin and the zombies vanished from the Garden of Antiquity in a dazzling flash.