8. The Ancient Proving Ground (2)

— Fwoosh!

Magic flames flickered across the walls, lighting the interior bright. Yujin’s eyes flicked left and right a few times.

Just like I heard.

Then they curved into a smile, bending like crescent moons.

A cavern some fifty meters across, a magic circle inscribed in a ring at its center.

A trial hidden in a specific gate.

Places this rare numbered only a handful in all the world.

“Guoooh.”

The zombies had been swept along by the flash of light and carried over too. Mouths half-agape and drooling, they looked around at their surroundings.

Summoned beasts count as part of my own ability, so they don’t trip the headcount limit.

Heh heh.

It matched the information he’d heard in his past life exactly.

By the time this gate’s secret came to light, I’d already passed the 2nd Rank.

He couldn’t begin to say how bitterly he’d regretted it when he first learned of the secret hidden in the Garden of Antiquity. A gate only 1st-Rank Hunters could enter. With his skill, he could have claimed the windfall waiting inside, but what good was that when he couldn’t even get in?

There’s an Ancient Proving Ground in France, too.

But that one was already caught up in ownership disputes among powerful guilds, and in another country besides, which put it out of the question, not even worth dreaming about. For Yujin, this counted as his first attempt at one, in either life.

A Draconian.

A half-human, half-dragon monster carrying the blood of the dragon race. The trial’s quarry ranked 6th at minimum, a being that could loose aura freely from any part of its body and knew its way around magic besides.

Dragon race it may be, but I heard it gets adjusted to suit a 1st-Rank gate.

This was a gate with a 1st-Rank entry restriction. Drop a 6th-Rank monster into it out of nowhere and the balance would tip. The Draconian summoned as the trial’s quarry took a stat penalty under the gate’s influence.

That doesn’t mean I can take it lightly, though.

If the pre-regression information held, the Draconian’s combat power sat at the tail end of the 2nd Rank. Still a formidable foe, one Yujin’s abilities would struggle to handle.

All right, shall I get ready.

He rubbed his palms together and called a nearby zombie over.

“Greuuuh?”
“Hold still.”

He laid his right hand on the zombie’s forehead and surveyed every nook of its body with the essence of death.

Let’s put that enhancement value to use.

Yujin was a master of undead structure. By redirecting the spirit-power that had seeped into a body during reinforcement, he could remodel even a finished undead.

Let’s start by converting some strength.

He swapped the zombie’s doubled strength stat into Corpse Poison.

— Crrk. Crrrk.

The zombie’s flesh shuddered.

“I said hold still. Bro’s trying to concentrate.”

After needlessly scolding the zombie, he poured its boosted agility stat into Corpse Poison as well. Sunken spores bubbled up all over its skin, and its flesh turned a shade more hideous.

Its strength and agility had dropped, but it carried a far stronger poison now. His trump card for bringing the Draconian down.

The pocket watch let out a loud vmmm.

Don’t get worked up over every little thing. I was a 9th-Rank Necromancer, you know.

The remodeling consumed little essence of death. What it demanded instead was a thorough knowledge of undead structure, and since that essence had to be controlled flawlessly to keep any strength from bleeding away in the process, it called for extreme concentration. An ordinary Necromancer would have needed a full ten minutes or more to remodel a single body.

“Extreme” my foot, over remodeling a measly zombie.

Yujin finished the difficult task in twenty-five seconds. He remodeled one more body with ten seconds to spare. Once he’d arranged the zombie horde at even intervals, light leaked from the ring at the cavern’s center.

— Fwooaaah!

Radiance surged from the summoning circle, and a three-meter Draconian came tearing through the pure-white shaft of light.

“Kraaaa!”

The Draconian spat out a monstrous shriek.

The Ancient Proving Ground.

A space the Constellations of the Pantheon had ordered the dragon legions to create, the better to handpick exceptional Hunters. Those who oversaw the trial were members of the dragon legions, sworn to the Dragon Lord.

The dragonkin Zerkaden flared his nostrils the instant his descent finished, then furrowed his brow.

“You command a foul-smelling breed.”

Ancient Proving Ground I had opened for only the second time, after France’s. Zerkaden had faced scores of Hunters by now, but a caster who commanded the dead was a first.

“I’d rather not hear about smelling foul from a breed that never washes its whole life.”

Yujin shot back with a grin. A single thread of derision slipped from his lips and rang through the cavern.

Was he making it up? Hardly. It was a useless scrap of trivia he’d picked up while hunting the dragon race that turned up in higher-tier gates. And sure enough, the dragonkin couldn’t muster a word in reply.

“Not content with handling the dead, and frivolous to boot.”

Zerkaden ground his teeth, fury surging up in him. But as a member of the dragon race, who could speak no falsehood, he could not refute Yujin’s jab.

“The basest creature I have seen among all who have come to this proving ground.”

Ancient Proving Ground I connected to the same place no matter which gate one entered through, and the Hunters Zerkaden had tested there numbered in the scores. All were promising talents from powerful guilds, among them figures like Germany’s ranker Michael Dreist and France’s rising star Guillaume Schneider.

“I shall watch with my own eyes whether you can endure ten minutes as they did.”

Though it would likely prove impossible. Tacking on those last words, Zerkaden stepped forward.

— Boom. Boom.

A weighty noise rang out with every lift of his foot.

Matching that pace, Yujin set the zombies into a U-shape with himself at the axis, a formation like wings spread to either side.

Zerkaden narrowed his eyes.

I’ll play along with your little scheme.

Walk in a straight line and the zombies ranged along either flank would latch on, the very picture of strolling into an encirclement on one’s own two feet. It was a far too transparent ploy, but Zerkaden gave no thought to turning back. However many of them there were, they were only 1st-Rank zombies, and a Draconian’s solid scales were harder than a finely forged suit of iron armor.

“Your pain will not be long, mortal.”
“Yours is gonna be a little long, though. My apologies.”
“I shall watch and see how long that mouth of yours keeps flapping.”

The moment Zerkaden stepped into the center of the U-shaped horde, a finger snapped, thwack, and the zombies pounced on him all at once.

— Crrrk, crrk.

He clenched his fist, his muscles swelling, his forearm bulging to its limit. He swung his right arm hard, and the upper body of a lunging zombie burst, pow!

“Mere zombies…?”

Strange. The strike had felt too light. For having shattered a rigor-stiffened zombie in a single blow, precious little shock had traveled back into his fist.

An ominous premonition was only beginning to flicker across Zerkaden’s mind.

“It’s already too late.”

— Splrrtch!

The venom packed inside the plague zombie’s body erupted, splashing across his forearm, his shoulder, and part of his torso. A toxic substance leaching from the corpse, an acidic fluid wrung from corpse poison pushed to its limit, began to eat through the Draconian’s solid scales.

“Hngh.”

His right arm trembled in fits and starts.

The strength won’t go into it properly.

An attack that would have meant nothing to his true body. Right now his physical abilities were weakened to match the proving ground’s trial level.

Pale smoke wisped up from the spot the acidic fluid had touched.

— Zzzt.

The scales melted away one by one.

“Greuuuuh!”
“You play petty tricks!”

With his right arm dulled by the corpse poison, he drew his left arm far back and drove it forward with all his might, crushing a zombie’s body. Part of him paralyzed now, his movements had grown that much larger.

— Thwack!

Yujin didn’t miss the opening, pressing the zombies in fast and close.

“What do you intend to do once you’ve spent all your zombies?”
“Beats me. I never said anything about enduring.”

Yujin gave his zombies their orders, then kicked off the ground and sprinted with everything he had.

“Mortal. Don’t tell me…”
“You only just caught on?”
“You—you dare entertain the absurd notion of bringing me down?!”

Zerkaden raised his left foot and stamped it down with all his strength. The instant it met the ground, he discharged mana, and a shockwave spread out, rocking the zombies where they stood.

“I, Zerkaden, am not so weak as to fall to mere zombies like these.”
“Yeah. You’re not.”

Zerkaden twisted his body with all his might, trying to fling the zombies off. Reinforced to twice their strength though they were, the zombies still fell short of the descended Draconian’s stats.

A little more and I can break free.

The instant a glimmer of hope shimmered in Zerkaden’s eyes.

— Boooom!

The second plague zombie Yujin had prepared detonated at point-blank range. Venom poured over Zerkaden’s body. His scales, robbed of their natural color and gone a murky black, had softened past the point of protecting him any longer.

“What. Something not working out?”

A whitish current wound around the Staff of Resentment.

— Crack!

Yujin raised the staff’s sharp tip and drove it wildly into the softened scales.

Weakened by the restriction it may be — yet to overwhelm a dragonkin.

Kronos swallowed a gasp of admiration. A divine king who had once reigned at the summit of the Titan race, he needed no explanation from Yujin to grasp how unreasonable this fight was.

Set the two of them side by side: their mana reserves, the gap in physical power. In not one of these did Yujin hold the lead.

Crude undead like those should have a hard time harming a dragonkin’s body.

Kronos’s warning to Yujin had been sincere. He may have carved out a domain no one else presided over and become a Constellation, but having never registered with the Pantheon, he had no constellation to his name. If Yujin died for nothing, it would not stop at a fallen Constellation; the very existence called Kronos would be snuffed out along with him.

Only moments ago he’d laid out that long-winded speech, all from needless worry.

Wasted words, it seems.

Kronos watched the rest of the battle with an easier mind.

“Gwaaaaah!”

Zerkaden writhed, eyes bloodshot. Half his body would no longer obey him after the repeated venom exposure, yet he summoned a superhuman effort of will and lunged for Yujin, only to meet the staff boring into his blind spot.

“Keuhk.”

Cracking the scales and dealing further damage drained Zerkaden’s vitality at a rapid clip. Seeing the creature’s movements dull, Yujin pulled the Staff of Resentment back and reached out without hesitation.

The Draconian’s life force was drawn in. Yujin meant to wring every last drop out of Zerkaden. The sensation of his life force being torn out whole.

“Gh, ghhh.”

Zerkaden’s movements grew duller and duller, until at last his head dropped low.

A permanent buff of a different order from a Constellation’s blessing or an auxiliary spell. Because both Martial- and Magic-line Hunters could benefit from it, it ranked among the very highest of emblems, a powerful ability indeed.

It’s the System’s blessing.

Kronos muttered in a puzzled tone. Rather than answer, Yujin slid a sidelong glance at the fallen Draconian’s corpse.

The real reward is something else.

A dragonkin’s corpse. For a Necromancer, a material so potent he couldn’t help going wild-eyed over it.

A dragonkin’s corpse with hardly any damage.

Truly… I can’t hold myself back.

Yujin’s eyes glistened with greed.