73. Once You Know It's A Trap, It's No Longer A Trap (3)

The first battle ended in a crushing victory. Not one of them had taken so much as a scratch, and forty monsters lay slaughtered. Yujin and Jang Miseon aside, the rest were low in Stellar Rank, yet each played to his specialty and never once let the initiative slip the whole fight through.

“The werewolves are strong, huh.”
“My attacks barely even land on them.”
“You’re using silver bolts at least, Senior, so you’re fine. Me, I ain’t.”

The three of them rehashed the fight they’d just had while Jang Miseon watched, dazed, then turned her gaze on Yujin.

“The orders you gave just now. What were those?”
“What do you think. I just told them how to fight efficiently, that’s all.”
“Master Yujin, your command ability wasn’t at the level of a rising star — it was better than even the Phoenix first-team seniors.”
“You’ve got the eye to make that comparison, at least.”

It’s an important virtue for a Necromancer — there are a few of them, if I sort through it.

Yujin counted the ‘eye’ for reading a battlefield as the first. The dead had poorer judgment than they’d had in life. The reanimated bolstered with Unison, or higher-grade undead, were one thing, but lower- and mid-grade ones, the moment command slipped, were all too prone to bumbling off into nonsense.

Directing a mere five people is no effort at all.

Before the regression, he’d commanded armies in the tens of thousands single-handed, without so much as an adjutant. He’d grasped the Scraps’ individual traits long ago, and thanks to getting pummeled at the Paju workshop, he’d more or less worked out Jang Miseon’s specialties and her three skills too.

Factor in the stats from her climb to 3rd Rank and it’s about wrapped up.

A double gate. A trap laid with House Romanov’s help. An Arahan strike force.

Strength enough to break through.

Every estimate drawn up, a smile spread across Yujin’s lips.

“Well? Think you can trust me?”
“I handed you command from the start because I trusted you. Now I’m certain of it.”
“No sense dragging this out. Let’s go straight in.”
“Uh, Boss. You’re just leaving the corpses behind?”
“You don’t show the card in your hand right away.”

The Arahan strike force didn’t know Yujin’s true specialty, because when they’d captured those three gates, most everything had been cleaned up at Fafnir’s hands.

Only Jang Miseon, not knowing why, hung a question mark over her head.

From the rooftop of the three-story antique mansion, Song Myeongseok looked down.

“They really are working hard.”

Yujin’s group, their battle finished, played out before his eyes. The blood-colored mist that fouled the line of sight meant nothing to him.

A spiral of red crystal rested in his right hand, the gate core that should have fused with the boss monster now clutched in his grip.

“Send another forty werewolves and thirty vampires.”
“Yes. My Lord.”
“Grrrrr.”

The sharp-fanged man at his side, a monster a full head taller than any ordinary werewolf, bowed to Song Myeongseok’s order.

The two boss monsters of the double gate: the Mad Werewolf and the Famished Vampire.

“You truly are remarkable, Vice President. To prepare even something like this.”

Binding the two gate cores together had produced a control device with several functions built in: issuing commands to the boss monsters, altering the gate’s structure, and the like. The instant he’d entered the double gate, Song Myeongseok had switched its structure to series-linked, gathering the monsters split across its two branches to welcome Yujin’s group.

“Team Leader. Is it really all right to do this?”
“So what, you’re saying we should just let them go?”

Song Myeongseok’s retort came out cold, and the team member who’d raised the question went pale. All the while, Song’s right hand kept fiddling with the red crystal. Gripped by the dread that one wrong answer might cost him his life, the man only worked his mouth in silence, unable to force out his next words.

“Every last one of us swore the Oath of Silence.”

The oath bound them to breathe not a word of anything that happened inside this gate, a contract sworn before a mage of House Romanov, the great magical house. The power to bend a gate to one’s will was not a thing the world could be allowed to learn; if it got out, the repercussions would be enormous. And beyond that, the ‘accident’ set to take place in here could never reach anyone outside.

“Those people there didn’t swear the oath.”
“That’s right.”
“And we can’t have the secret slipping out, now can we?”

Song Myeongseok left unsaid the part about the double gate itself being a trap. Even so, the team member couldn’t muster the courage to point it out.

“Uh, Team Leader Song Myeongseok. But is there really a need to send the monsters in waves?”
“There’s no need to rush the hunt.”

Behind the gate’s entrance there was no open ground. With one flank walled off, the numerical edge he’d gained by dominating the monsters was hard to bring to bear.

“Set up that golem we saw before, front and center, and it gets rather troublesome.”

Rage had not clouded Song Myeongseok’s eyes. To bury the two who had stoked his inferiority complex, he needed to give this everything. And there was a reason, too, for parceling the monsters out in waves.

“To investigate a mutated gate, you’ve no choice but to move slowly.”
“Ah. So by wearing down their stamina…”
“Glad you understand even now. Saves me saying it twice.”

A gate regenerates its monsters at fixed intervals. Feed them in piecemeal and burn through them, and reinforcements would top the ranks back up before long. Yujin’s group, by contrast, had only so much strength to spend.

“Fight battle after battle, and their stamina and mana will whittle down.”
“And once they’re spent, we attack. I see.”

Song Myeongseok’s logic held. With the prior capture team’s intel rendered worthless, a group in this situation was bound to play it by the book. Cloaking the mansion in blood-colored mist sealed off any bold move on Yujin’s part, too.

“They can’t peer inside, so they won’t go charging out blindly.”

A glistening killing intent welled up around his eyes. The Arahan strike force read the shift in mood and fell silent, gnawed by the fear that if sparks happened to fly their way, they too might end up dog food like Yujin’s group.

Jang Miseon, and Cheon Yujin. You two especially, I’ll kill nice and slow.

They were the two who had wrecked the smooth, open road that should have been his.

Cre-eak—.

His grip on the red crystal tightened.

A single shaft of light split the air. The bone spear drove into a werewolf’s gaping mouth, ripped through the soft flesh, and gouged clear into its brain.

“Kk, kkrrgh.”

The werewolf, head run clean through, writhed a few times and then slumped limp.

“Damn thing. Disgustingly heavy.”

Recovering the bone spear, Yujin grumbled, lips jutting out.

One pair of hands can’t hold off ten. With only two on the vanguard, there was no covering every werewolf that came swarming in. That was when Yujin stepped up.

With catalysts he’d quietly stockpiled, he walled off the werewolves’ path, and any that broke through the bone wall he welcomed warmly with Verdian-Style Basic Spearmanship. The stats he’d pumped up with Life Drain rivaled a Martial-line Hunter’s, and Unholy Blessing, a debuff on living things, did nothing to him. Slathered in a triple buff as he was, no werewolf posed a danger unless several piled on at once.

“Master Yujin. What on earth is your class?”
“You know I’m a Priest. Why ask.”
“What kind of Priest handles bone, wields a spear so well, and commands on top of it.”

Jang Miseon grumbled, lips pushed out.

“Boss. That’s the seventh wave already.”
“It means I won’t give them a moment to catch their breath.”

Yujin shot back placidly, then turned Life Drain on the werewolf and vampire corpses. Draining a foe whose breath had already stopped was less efficient, but after five straight assaults the corpses were overflowing, and he sucked up life force to his heart’s content.

A total of 134.4. Since reaching 3rd Rank, his level-up bonus had risen to 20, so on life-force absorption alone he’d gained the stats of six levels.

The stronger the monster, the more stats it gives.

Hunters lose their minds over elixirs precisely because they raise stats by a route other than leveling. Life Drain did the same thing, only it let him keep pushing his stats up with no elixirs at all.

Think it over again and it really is one outrageous holy spell.

Even after all his stats were maxed, the life force he’d drained was put to good use.

“Phew. Thanks to you, I’ve got my strength back.”

Kang Minho said it, relief washing over his face.

Life Drain was a holy spell whose stored life force could be converted however he pleased: stamina, recovery, mana. The post-battle fatigue, too, he swept away with the life force wrung from the corpses.

“Mental fatigue I can’t do anything about. Manage your condition well.”
“Yessir.”

Yujin saw thoroughly to the group’s stamina and morale. In a war of attrition, nothing matters more than holding focus. On a battlefield, one small slip leads to a fatal end. The undead never let their focus scatter, so they needed no worry; humans were the ones who needed constant minding.

It’ll hold up plenty until we finish the capture.

The gate was Small in scale. The number of monsters it could station inside had a ceiling, and though the gate conjured them anew, it couldn’t spawn hundreds all at once.

They’ve got a limit to their strength as well.

Once the monster count fell below a certain threshold, the enemy would have no choice but to commit to all-out battle. Waiting for that moment, Yujin steadily cut them down.

“He ought to be worn out by now. Why does he look so completely fine?”
“Cheon Yujin. Is he really even a Priest? His spear work is straight Martial-line.”
“And what about the rest of his team? I thought we only had to watch out for that Fafnir summon — he’s fighting way better than during the last capture.”
“Team Leader. There are only about a hundred monsters left now.”

Song Myeongseok’s brow furrowed. He’d hurled the monsters at Yujin’s group without a moment’s breather, yet all he could feel was their teamwork tightening with every clash. Fight after fight, and not a trace of exhaustion showed.

“What do we do?”

The team member’s question reached his ears, and on impulse Song Myeongseok’s hand settled on his sword hilt, seized by the urge to vent his boiling rage somehow.

Grit—.

Song Myeongseok ground his teeth and forced the anger back down.

“One way or another, they’ll have spent a fair bit of stamina and mana. Let’s go at them head-on.”
“How about we hold the mansion and defend?”
“You’re saying we cower and hide like cowards, with the name of Arahan on our backs?”

At the edge in his voice, the team member clamped his mouth shut.

You’re the one who fed the monsters in piecemeal — why are you blowing up at me!

It was like taking a slap in the face from one man and rounding on a bystander to vent the sting. Swallowing the injustice, he was on the verge of letting a word slip, but then he caught sight of the hand resting on the sword hilt and shut his mouth tight.

“Everyone, get ready.”

At the frost-laced order, the Arahan strike force reluctantly checked their gear. Song Myeongseok could feel their displeasure, but he played blind to it and went on fiddling with the red crystal.

“Gather the remaining monsters.”

Fifty-one vampires. Fifty-three werewolves. Two boss monsters. And five of the Arahan strike force.

Having raked together every last bit of his remaining force, Song Myeongseok stepped forward with confidence.

Cre-e-e-eak—!

The mansion’s firmly shut doors swung open, and the blood-colored mist that had fogged every eye scattered. A horde of monsters came pouring out through them.

Jang Miseon spotted the Arahan strike force mixed in among the monsters and let out a short sigh.

“What you said earlier. I didn’t want to believe it, but it was true after all.”
“It’s a matter of possibility.”

Song Myeongseok caught the two of them talking and laughed grandly.

“Hahaha. So you’d already guessed?”
“That Arahan was behind it, more or less. The method, no idea.”
“Sharp instincts, Hunter Cheon Yujin.”
“Asking where Fafnir was. You were laying it on way too thick.”

Heh heh heh.

A faintly bloody smile surfaced on Yujin’s lips.

Honestly, even if I wanted to play dumb and let it pass — reeking of something fishy that openly, how could I?

“If you knew, you should have backed out right then. Walking into a trap on your own two feet. How foolish.”
“Once you know it’s a trap, it’s no longer a problem.”
“With a mere five, you think you can take on a hundred monsters, two bosses, and us?”

The gap in numbers was overwhelming. Feeding the monsters in by turns had thinned their ranks, yet the disparity in strength still looked plain as day.

“…is what you’d think.”

Yujin snickered and raised the Oak Staff Harboring Lightning high.

Shhhk—!

An immense torrent of spirit-energy condensed into the Shard of the Void.

“Answer my call.”

A murky light surged up from the gray ore and swept across the battlefield.

“Gwuhuhhhkk!”

Anguished groans, as though the last air were being wrung from their lungs, burst out here and there.