77. The Relic

“Haaap!”

Kang Minho braced his shield against his shoulder and threw the full strength of his body behind it. A shockwave erupted in a blue flash, bearing down on the whole of Song Myeongseok’s body.

— Too slow.

Song Myeongseok’s blade had been forged from a Lump of Iron Steeped in Obsession. Barely worked into the shape of a sword, it had nonetheless carried a chill, keen edge ever since it passed into his grip, like a famed blade fresh from a master smith’s hands.

It was keen enough to prickle the skin, and all without so much as loading the edge with Dark Fighting-Aura.

Revived as a Skeleton Knight, Song Myeongseok sheared through the center of the shockwave and split its force to either side. He didn’t miss the gap that opened along the seam, and pressed forward.

“Like hell I’ll let you!”

An arrow plunged straight down toward the crown of his head. The crossbows, floated aloft by Sync and Telekinesis, loosed their strings all at once. Fired from angles no one could ordinarily aim from, they tried to hem Song Myeongseok’s movements in.

— This is exactly what I mean by mediocrities. What do you expect to accomplish with such trifling attacks?

CLANG-CLANG!

Song Myeongseok knocked all three arrows aside in a single stroke, his tone bored.

Kang Minyeong let out a short laugh, pfft.

“Thanks for caring so much about the trifling stuff.”

The instant the blue ghost-fire chased the arrows’ trajectories, streams of flame surged up one after another from the sub-space conjured at point-blank range.

“Eat this!”

Lee Seongmin had stashed the 2nd-Rank fire spell, freshly bought at the Hunter market, inside the sub-space ahead of time, then loosed it the instant Song Myeongseok bared an opening. Pulling it off meant braving the danger of closing in to pin down the discharge point.

— Like I told you. Mediocrities are utterly predictable.

His left hand moved at the speed of a beam of light. Without so much as a glance downward, he cut through the flames rushing in at his flank, and again he never loaded the blade with Dark Fighting-Aura. Reading the subtle artistry and force packed into the stroke along with the flow of the flames, he sheared the magic apart with the barest minimum of motion.

Fwap-fwap!

When Song Myeongseok kicked off the ground and closed the distance, Kang Minho hoisted his shield once more, trying to plant it tight against his shoulder. A glint of derision flickered in Song Myeongseok’s blue ghost-fire.

— Slow.

The blade wormed in just before Kang Minho could throw his strength behind the shield. With little resistance it pried the shield down, and with a touch more force pushed its edge up to the front of his throat. In that instant, winner and loser were decided.

— Your level. I’ve taken its full measure.

“…”

— It’s so dull I want to die.

Even after submitting to Yujin, Song Myeongseok’s arrogance hadn’t changed. If anything, being revived as one of the dead had let him cast off the mask he’d worn all this time and lay his true nature bare without reserve.

But hold on — “It’s so dull I want to die”… didn’t Fafnir use that line first?

“How much of your strength did you use, huh.”

— Forty percent. My liege.

“Bullshit. There’s no way you didn’t use forty percent.”

— H-how did you—!

“Do I look like I’ve got knotholes for eyes to you?”

At Yujin’s grumbling, the blue ghost-fire swayed left and right without pause, like a flame buffeted by the wind.

— It isn’t so. My liege!

“That just now. I can trust it, am I right?”

— Your servant momentarily misspoke. I used sixty percent of my ability.

“A guy who’s all of 4th Rank. Using more than half your strength against three 2nd-Rankers and then strutting around — does that fly with you?”

— …

“Next sparring match, use thirty percent.”

— Do that, and your servant may yet drink the bitter cup of defeat!

“Ah. If you don’t like it, get reconditioned, then.”

He pressed his thumb and middle finger together, and just as he tensed them to snap…

— Your servant has committed a crime deserving of death!

Spreading a stray thought laced with urgency, he set one knee to the ground, the submission posture peculiar to a Skeleton Knight.

“By the way, what’s with the way you talk?”

— It seems to be the influence of having loved martial-arts dramas in my childhood.

“A manifestation of the unconscious, then.”

In life he’d spoken with such polished courtesy; Yujin would never have guessed the gulf between that and his after-death self could run this wide.

So this is the true face of Song Myeong— well, “true face” is putting it grandly. The man’s got a real touch of chuunibyou to him.¹
‘So long as the ability’s good, that’s all that matters.’

Yujin chose to look on the bright side.

Hmm. No — maybe it is a little embarrassing after all.

“Hold that thirty percent good and steady. The second you don’t keep to thirty like just now, I won’t let it slide.”

— I’ll engrave it on my heart.

While Song Myeongseok and the Scraps team sparred, Yujin slipped a hand into his pocket. A small crystal met his grasp. He gripped the red crystal, twisted into a spiral, and let out a low sigh, his expression turning brooding.

‘To be precise, it’s a Catalyst holding the gate core I extracted.’

‘No way I could break something this precious.’

‘That’s because it was wrought with Divine Power.’

At Yujin’s unruffled reply, Kronos gave a start.

‘Yeah. It was made by binding Divine Power with runic letters.’

Odin was the Constellation who had first founded the very concept of magic. Up close, his Rune letters showed through the red crystal: the power to seize a gate’s core and even command its monsters, a force nearer to a miracle than to magic.

‘House Romanov called it a keystone.’

‘I heard the name was given in the sense of “drawing out the very foundation of a gate.”’

‘Well, the origin of the name is no concern of mine.’

Yujin furrowed his brow. The mere thought of House Romanov sent fury surging up in him.

‘Where could I put this keystone to use so that word spreads of how well I used it.’

‘And use it for what?’

A Constellation’s symbol. In other words, Kronos was broaching the crafting of a Relic.

Yujin blinked.

‘But you’re of a different lineage than that, Constellation.’

If he was this confident, he presumably had grounds for it. Unable to shake a sour look, Yujin gave a reluctant nod, as if he had no choice.

‘What is it I need to do?’

‘How about this.’

He drew out the Staff of Resentment, the first rare item he’d obtained after the regression, and Kronos laughed heartily.

The energy seeping into both the keystone and the Staff of Resentment carried a wavelength much like the Aureole that had once wreathed Dmitri’s whole body.

‘What’s the next step?’

‘An image that matches the Giant of Defiance, then.’
Hold on. The man claims he’s making a Relic, of all things, and he hasn’t given a single thought to what it looks like?
‘It has to suit your taste, Constellation. What good would my brooding over it do.’

‘Don’t say it like it’s something to be proud of. You think it through with me.’

‘That’s just passing the buck!’

He pressed his right hand hard against his temple and turned over the task Kronos had set him. The timing had simply come out of left field, that was all. The crafting of a Relic, in itself, was a staggering opportunity.

‘Build the temple and craft the Relic. Complete both, and Kronos settles in as a full Constellation — that’s what he said.’

Once that happened, a Constellation’s blessing would surely follow before long. The power he’d longed for since before the regression; a fang that could reach the Seven Great Families, House Romanov among them. The last piece Yujin had never managed to fill in was now within his grasp.

‘And the Relic’s own performance won’t be anything to scoff at, either.’

He didn’t even hope for it to work miracles on the order of the Pocket Watch of Kronos. A Relic’s strength was bound up with a Constellation’s great deeds. On the grade-classification chart it ranked higher than Unique, yet not every Relic matched a Transcendent- or Unique-grade artifact for power, and the Kronos Relic crafted this time would be no different.

‘Right. The problem is the form of the Relic.’
Back to the main point.

A mark symbolizing the Giant of Defiance, and at the same time a practical artifact that would actually serve Yujin. Something that satisfied both conditions at once…

‘Just wing it. How long are you going to agonize over something like this?’

‘Just play support, Constellation. I’ve no intention of dragging this out.’

An idea flashed through his head. The keystone in his right hand, the Staff of Resentment in his left. Just as Kronos, aghast at the sheer boldness of the move, scrambled to stop him, Yujin, a step quicker, fixed the Relic’s form in his mind and slammed the two objects together.

The Staff of Resentment struck the keystone. By rights the blow should have rung out with a great crash, yet only a rippling sensation answered it; no sound came at all. The red crystal soaked into the bone staff without the slightest resistance.

The skull mounted at the tip of the Staff of Resentment went soft and pulpy, then stretched out long. The drawn-out bone soon curved into an arc and took on an edge. And where the skull had been, a keystone settled into place.

‘Ah. Odin was a descendant of the giants as well, wasn’t he?’

Odin had been a descendant of the primordial giant Ymir, yet he had annihilated the elder giants and founded Asgard; so he had drawn on the concept of the giant running in that very blood. Kronos was king of the Titans, the name that in this age had become the byword for “giant.” Even if his aptitude for magic fell short of Odin’s, in the sheer origin of being a giant he surpassed him.

‘No wonder he was so cocky about the keystone.’

‘When you think of death, it’s the scythe, of course.’
What comes to mind when you picture the grim reaper, the way the West commonly conceives him? A black robe and a skull. And the scythe.
‘A tool for reaping wheat or barley. And by that token, it carries the meaning of harvesting human lives, too.’

The domain Kronos governed was the defiance of death. It ran counter to the natural order, yet it was also a concept shaped in later ages, built up from the longing and bitter regret of the dying, their one wish: to live.

Which meant it had to be seen as two sides of one body: a defiance of death that was, at the same time, inseparable from death.

‘This is the realization I came to in completing my 9th Stellar Rank.’

Necromancers had never created a power that defied death. They had merely championed a method for systematically wielding spirit-power, the power of souls that already existed in the world.

‘Well? Doesn’t it have a nice ring to it.’

Kronos roared with laughter, clapping his hands. He seemed pleased with the answer Yujin had given, and laughed for a good long while.

‘You’ve got to toss me the topic before I can know it or not.’

A scythe forged of adamantium. Scythe. With it Kronos had reaped countless lives, and by the same token had aided mortals in their harvests.

‘Glad you’re satisfied.’

I just had the grim reaper’s scythe in mind, that’s all. This is what they mean when the reading of a dream beats the dream itself.
‘Let’s check whether it turned out well — its performance, that is.’

Yujin took the bone scythe in hand, then checked its stats.

“Insane.”

A cry of praise spilled from his lips.

A constant buff, active even without gripping and wielding the Relic directly?!

Even if its specs fell short of the staff he’d socketed the Shard of the Void into, that hardly mattered.

‘How much better will it get once the Relic shows its proper performance?’
This one, well — I can’t even begin to guess.

Kuhehehe. Yujin laughed aloud.