7. The Ancient Proving Ground (1)

The next day.

Yujin and the members of the Scraps kept 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 lull after a storm had swept through. 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 against a horde of zombies that never tired, prying mana stones out of goblin corpses one after another. Inside a gate, deep in enemy territory, conserving stamina was everything; but matching 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. Their portable bags were packed with mana stones to the brim; hunt any more, and there’d be nowhere to put it.

“Some excuse. You lot head back first.”

“You’re going to hunt more monsters?”

“These guys. They’re 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 a slip of paper out 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, 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 came next was not something to be done in front of anyone. This was knowledge from before the regression, information about a future still years from surfacing, dredged up early and put to use. Not out of some highbrow notion like the butterfly effect; he simply had no intention of sharing a stroke of good fortune with anyone else. That was why he’d kept the Scraps grinding long after he’d already felled the forest’s boss, 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, this unpopular gate would step into the spotlight, all on account of a hidden element buried inside it. Set the catalysts in their designated spots, and a secret space opened up, the Ancient Proving Ground itself. Clear the trial within, and an “emblem” was branded onto whoever passed, a permanent buff so rare that a sweep through every gate open across the world would scarcely turn up its equal. Before the regression, the Hunters hailed as rising stars had lined up to pay the Garden of Antiquity a visit.

Shall we have a look.

Sending the zombies out ahead, he made for the lakeside in the northern reaches of the Garden of Antiquity. Frogmen were posted around the water, blue-skinned amphibian monsters; or rather, they lurked beneath the surface, 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, like a throat wrenched into a wail, went up from every direction. The placid surface buckled into ripples here and there, and several frogmen came bursting out.

— Crunch!

A trident skewered the zombie’s nape.

“Arrr!”

“Gurk, gurrrk.”

A zombie didn’t vanish unless its head was destroyed, and this one, crafted with Yujin’s painstaking care, carried defenses too high for a single blow to break. Trident still lodged in its nape, it closed 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 hurled the remaining zombies into the fray one after another. In the blink of an eye the fight collapsed into a melee, frogmen surfacing all across the lake and tearing the zombies down one by one.

“Arr. Smelly thing. Weak.”

Naturally. Frogmen had better than three times a goblin’s physical power, a gap in specs that even Yujin’s skill-enhanced zombies 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, vivid now enough to look as though he could close a fist around it. He’d strengthened it by pouring still more of the essence of death into the staff.

— Whrrrrsh!

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

A slick, slippery oil sheeted across its skin, the frogman’s racial skill, blunting the force of a thrust.

“Arrk, that won’t do any— guk!”

Just before the tip reached its chest, the Staff of Resentment slowed, and in exchange it began to spin at high speed. The far end served as its axis; the tip sloughed off the frogman’s oil and tore its skin to ribbons, boring without much trouble through the wall of skin and muscle.

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 frogman’s skewered heart came dragging out right along with it. Green blood gushed from the wound like a waterfall, fierce and heavy, and the frogman toppled to the ground.

Its unfocused pupils trembled faintly. Granted a second life by the essence of death, the frogman zombie loosed a short uuugh.

Its frame was nearly twice a goblin’s, and since the original had been the stronger creature, its specs came out markedly higher too.

“Grrooaaar!”

“Arrr.”

The trident held the frogman zombie at bay, but the zombie lunged in heedless of whether its bones snapped. A goblin, small-framed and short on strength, would have been one thing; but Yujin had reinforced this one’s bone and flesh with the essence of death, and 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 forced out a labored grunt.

— 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.

Oil Shower, the frogman racial skill. Its one weakness was that it left them vulnerable to fire; otherwise it was an exceptionally troublesome thing. Far from slowing them, it sharpened their agility, and it dramatically raised their resistance to bladed weapons like swords and spears. Ordinary bone would have struggled to tear through the slick hide of an Oil-Showered frogman.

Lucky.

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

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

Ngh.

His vision blurred; in the wake of the spirit-power drain, his hands and feet trembled faintly.

This much is nothing.

He could weather the penalty for overusing spirit-power. And he had already prepared a way to top up what he ran short on. Down in his dantian sat a reserve of energy, the goblin life force he’d banked through Life Drain, and he converted it now into spirit-power.

“Hah. This is the flavor.”

The more his focus wavered and his stomach churned, the more an inexplicable exhilaration came boiling up, and it settled Yujin’s mind.

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!”

Before he knew it, the once-quiet lakeside was 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 even a single blow on that bastard the Sorcerer King, he had to grow stronger, a day sooner if he could manage it. Nor could he ignore the Seven Great Families looming as a potential threat. Yujin tamped down the heat rising in his chest and went on hunting.

“Arrrrk…”

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

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

Yujin dropped to the ground and caught his breath. His head throbbed; the backlash of pushing far past his spirit-power limit raged through him like a storm.

Inverting spirit-power and holy power through White Night, he drew life force from the frogman corpses 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, so on the occasions he’d rather not flash his Necromancer abilities, Life Drain let him disguise his identity (?). And purely as a healing tool, it ran far more efficiently than a basic heal, besides.

I’ve gathered plenty of hearts, as well.

Carving frogman hearts out one by one in the thick of combat and working them into undead was a painstaking business, the kind of precise work that demanded a wide field of view and a flawless read on the flow of the battlefield. Anyone but Yujin would have struggled even to attempt it.

Only once the backlash of the overuse had eased somewhat did he climb to his feet.

Preparations are complete.

A Constellation’s blessing, the thing he’d craved so desperately before the regression and never once managed to grasp. This time would be different. Strength surged into Yujin’s stride.

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

“Grrooaaar.”

Or rather, the attention was pouring down on the zombies and their deflated groans.

Even summoning-school mages, one branch of magic among many, were a rare sight, and a Hunter who commanded undead simply didn’t exist in this era, so their shock made sense.

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

In answer to the raining stares, Yujin widened his own eyes and glared right back.

Real power never stayed hidden for long. It had been so in his past life, and in this second one, growing stronger faster than ever, he could hardly expect otherwise.

When Yujin glared, the Hunters looked away.

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

Heh.

A short laugh slipped out.

Leading the zombies as they lurched along, whole bodies stiff with rigor mortis, he made his way to the center of the garden. The stares thinned out little by little. Curiosity about a Hunter who kept undead for summons didn’t put food on anyone’s table, so the others drifted back to whatever they’d come to do.

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 gone still.

— 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 would keep the heart beating only for a little while; 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 was a low-grade undead, a backward thing whose one stray impulse was appetite. Slacken his control for even a moment and it would cram the blue heart in its hands straight into its mouth.

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

— Fwoosh!

An intense flash of light came down over the center of the garden. For less than a tenth of a second it blazed, and then Yujin and the zombies were gone from the Garden of Antiquity in a dazzling burst of light.