86. Tentacle-Style Expansion (3)

“Th-this is… Black Herb, isn’t it!”
“That’s right. It was the flagship product the Red Spider — one of Ground Zero’s Three Powers — built their business on.”
“‘Was’ one of them, you say.”
“It’s mine now, isn’t it.”

Yujin’s words were perfectly unruffled, and Shin Junseok shook his head from side to side as though he’d given up trying to make sense of it. By now he simply took it for granted that his business partner’s skill and capacity had no limits.

His bewilderment lasted only a moment. He laid a hand on the Black Herb and let out a sound of admiration.

“To think this precious medicinal herb is in such abundance.”
“Looks like the Red Spider was supplying it as a raw material for Black Moon.”
“Isn’t Black Moon a narcotic?”
“You know your stuff. You haven’t, by any chance, tried it yourself?”
“Whatever else, drugs I cannot stand.”

Disgust stained Shin Junseok’s face. He believed that a cool head, unshaken under any circumstances, was the single most important quality an alchemist could have.

“Alchemy is a discipline that permits not the slightest margin of error.”
“True enough.”
“How could anyone hit a delicate blending ratio with a brain pickled in narcotics?”

Yujin just smiled and heard him out.

‘Truth be told, there’s a fellow on the other side of the planet who pulls off that very same difficult work even while high as a kite.’
‘I’ll have to do something about that one.’

Wiping away the stray thought that had surfaced in his mind, he plucked a single leaf from the Black Herb.

“What if there were a blending formula other than Black Moon?”
“So that was your aim.”
“The mass-produced mid-grade potion was a hit too. Time to prep the next product.”
“Seeing as Black Herb is the main ingredient, the value would be astronomical.”
“Correct, alchemist.”

A single Black Herb leaf reflected in eyes that had gone utterly still. His breathing had turned so ragged you might have mistaken it for sobbing, and though he clapped a hand over his mouth to smother his excitement, he seemed not to notice his own heaving shoulders.

“Um, er, it’s not a narcotic, is it?”
“Ordering a fellow who hates drugs to make one — that’d be a nasty hobby, wouldn’t it?”
“Showing visions through high-density mana. When I consider the nature of the catalyst, nothing but a drug comes to mind, you see.”
“It’s the second ambitious piece you’ll make in your workshop, partner. A narcotic won’t do.”

Yujin drew the line clearly.

The Heavenly Pill was an elixir built around Black Herb as its main ingredient. Unlike an ordinary elixir, it didn’t strengthen the body or mana; instead it raised mental fortitude and induced enlightenment.

‘It shows you a thousand possible outcomes — hence the Heavenly Pill¹.’

‘It lets you experience all manner of situations through illusion.’

A person’s latent potential blazed up when they were driven to the very brink. There was that famous anecdote, after all: a non-Awakened security guard who caught a student falling from a twentieth-floor apartment, the two of them coming away without a scratch between them. So, then.

‘Correct.’

‘In the future it was a thing you couldn’t get even at a premium.’

Quite so. The best route, of course, was to win enlightenment in real combat. But that was easier said than done. How many people were there, really, who reached enlightenment the way Song Myeongseok had, off the sight of a few iron scraps rolling around?

‘In any case, that one’s a no-go. I don’t have the materials, and his skill falls short.’

To brew the Heavenly Pill, Shin Junseok would have to reach at least 4th Rank, since it called for the 4th-Rank alchemy skill [Recombination].

By way of compensation, then, the black leaves could be put to good use in other products as well.

“The recipe I’ll teach you this time is something called the Heart-Strengthening Pill.”
“What’s its effect?”
“Boosting concentration.”
“There’s plenty of that to be had through buffs.”
“Even concentration enough to rearrange mana while you’re moving it?”
“Whoa.”

Shin Junseok’s mouth fell wide open.

The Heart-Strengthening Pill raised resistance to mental attacks and let Magic-line users keep their concentration from scattering even while rearranging mana mid-motion.

“To gain the moving-cast trait off a single pill.”
“It won’t be quite that effective. Since it only raises concentration, the rearrangement speed drops sharply.”
“In an emergency, even that much is no small thing!”
“Right. So it’ll fetch a fine price, won’t it?”

Gulp.

Shin Junseok’s throat bobbed hard.

“Please, do teach me the method of making it.”
“Depends on how you perform, partner.”
“Am I not serving you with the loyalty of a faithful hound?! Out here in the wilds, slaving away like a dog!!”
“It’s all so my partner can do well, isn’t it? Or am I doing it for my own sake?”

Shin Junseok’s words choked off, and his face went bright red. How many people were there who thought of their partner this much? He ought to be grateful.

What. What is it.

There wasn’t a shred of shame in that heart of his. And Yujin even had the nerve to repeat back to Shin Junseok the very thing he’d just been thinking.

It was a rare sight, Kronos tucking tail first.

But why, then. Why did winning feel so much like losing…

Im Jaebaek joined the Scraps team and set out to hunt monsters in the borderlands.

“Junior! Over there!”
“I’ll burn through a scroll!”

The ground caved in deep, without a single sign of any advance preparation. The earth-attribute spell [Dig] yawned open right under the nose of an Iron-Armored Boar that had come charging in full of fight, and the monster, unable to kill its own momentum, plunged straight into the pit. From above, the crossbows that had been lying in wait for their prey loosed all at once.

— Thunk! Thuthunk—!

The bolts struck home, dead on the vital points. The boar in the pit writhed once, then breathed its last.

“Kkwiiiiek!”

The rearguard vaulted over the sunken ground. Light burst from a shield, and the boars that had come bounding up in a swarm were sent ricocheting backward with a clatter-bang.

‘Astonishing teamwork.’

Gulp.

Im Jaebaek’s throat moved hard.

Wildly inventive use of their skills. A linkage so seamless there wasn’t a single gap to be found, the three of them moving like one body. One engagement was all it took for him to understand why Yujin had told him to hunt monsters alongside the Scraps.

‘I’ll have plenty to learn.’

Shing—.

Drawing the greatsword slung across his back, he passed by Kang Minho’s side and butchered an Iron-Armored Boar in a single stroke.

“Wow. Just what you’d expect of 3rd Rank.”
“That was amazing.”
“We’re counting on you, Director Im.”

The Scraps team’s reaction was warm. He was a talent Yujin himself had hand-picked, after all, and there was no reason to put on airs. These were clearly people he’d be toughing it out beside in the borderlands from here on, and he’d decided the smart thing was to get close fast.

“I’m the one who’ll be counting on you.”

While the four of them threw themselves into the hunt in high spirits, Shin Junseok was off by the Black Herb farm, battling tooth and nail at the makeshift workshop he’d thrown together.

— Fwooom—!

The cauldron bucked violently with an explosive blast, and the brew inside, caught up in the shock, came surging back up.

“Gwaah!! Why won’t it work!!”

The future Grand Alchemist tore at his hair, then melted down a mana stone.

A short while later.

“Why in the world does it work this time?!!”

Frustrated in an altogether different way, the alchemist seized his hair once more.

And while everyone who’d come out to the borderlands was absorbed in work of their own…

“Well then, shall we get started.”

Yujin had moved to the riverside where he’d raised the first Black Obelisk, and he rolled his neck from side to side. Something cracked, and a little of the stiffness in his shoulders eased.

— Shall I give you a massage?

“Put the wrong amount of force into it and my shoulder’s liable to vanish.”

— I’m not so clumsy as to make a rookie mistake like that.

Fafnir lightly brushed a tree standing beside him.

— Crrrrrack—.

The tree split clean in two.

“That’s a warning that you’ll do the same to my shoulder?”

— Hmm. I’d forgotten your Stellar Rank had gone up.

“If you’ve got that much energy to spare, then lend me a hand with the work.”

— Hmph. Understood.

Still wearing his displeasure openly, Fafnir came to stand at Yujin’s side. A flicker of flame settled at his shoulder. Even after that little disgrace a moment ago, he hadn’t given up his lingering attachment to the massage.

‘Spare me, would you, please.’

Grumbling inwardly, Yujin laid a hand on the Black Obelisk.

Domain Scale was still 1. The structures had barely increased, so there was no way for the domain to grow either. The original plan had been to build up his forces at a leisurely pace around the first Black Obelisk and let the domain expand slowly, but…

‘The spider hunt knocked that off course.’

Not that it had been a loss. In the course of preparing for the spider hunt he’d raised any number of Black Obelisks, and by linking them all together he’d spread the territory itself out wide. Now his influence reached directly over Ground Zero.

‘A plan ought to be revised flexibly to suit the situation.’

‘Don’t go popping up out of nowhere, would you.’

‘It’s the kind of nagging anyone could manage.’

Taking credit for nothing much.

Coming down to the flat ground at the foot of the hill, Yujin slid a hand into the Bag of Infinity at his waist, a Unique-grade tool that could swallow up to ten tons. Normally he left it in Lee Seongmin’s keeping, both to develop the man’s unique ability and to handle inventory, but with the Im Jaebaek rescue operation likely to run long, he’d taken it back.

‘That came in plenty handy.’

Otherwise he’d very nearly let all those precious materials slip away into the sea.

The moment he settled on what he meant to draw out and aimed the bag’s mouth at the ground…

— Kuh-dada-dang—.

Bones thick as logs came pouring out of the pitch-black hole.

Ogre bones.

He’d fished them out of the carcasses the man-hunters had dumped, or rather deployed, into the sea during the Yeonpyeong naval battle.

‘Do you know how useful Ogre bones are? No way I’m letting them go.’

‘That’s not it.’

Large monsters like Ogres were hard to bring to their full strength even when raised with necromancy. That was why, even when he’d come by a Troll’s corpse in the borderlands, he’d taken only the parts he needed.

‘Watch and you’ll find out.’

As though sizing something up, Yujin gazed steadily at the empty clearing.

“Fafnir. Can you level the ground all the way over to there for me?”

— That much is nothing.

— Kwaaang—!

Dark Fighting-Aura smashed into the earth. Level as the ground already was, what unevenness remained was driven out as the force sank beneath the surface, packing it down flat.

‘Is that really 5th Rank? Honestly.’

Yujin smiled wryly.

The sheer power of it was monstrous. That single ground-stomp had burned through a fifth of his stored spirit-power; an ordinary 5th-Rank Hunter would have had their own mana flow into reverse before they could even release Aura on that scale. It was proof of just how superb Fafnir’s spirit-power control really was.

— Shall I push it back further?

“No. It’s just right.”

Yujin breathed spirit-power into [the Ring of Black Darkness].

What he was about to do lay beyond his own innate strength and knowledge alone. For it he needed the aid of the ring, an artifact in which the knowledge of generations of Necromancers had been gathered.

‘Show me the knowledge of the Hall of Death.’

By rights, at his level, this was knowledge he had no business obtaining. He’d connected his mind to a Black Obelisk; it was only possible at all because he’d forcibly dredged up the knowledge bound to the Necropolis.

‘Looks like I’ll have to do that whole song and dance again.’

He laid mid-grade potions out across the ground and drew a deep breath. Then he inscribed the knowledge he’d called up with the Ring of Black Darkness straight onto the Black Obelisk.

‘I’ll just build it on the spot.’

Syncing his own spirit-power with the power pooled in the Necropolis, he set to raising the structure exactly to the blueprint recorded in [the Ring of Black Darkness]. The Ogre bones, wreathed in a hazy white smoke, drifted up into the air. As though an unseen hand were at work, they stacked themselves neatly up from the ground and, in the blink of an eye, began to take the shape of a building.

‘The spirit-power drain is something else.’

It wasn’t that the Necropolis was short on spirit-power. This was a structure that could be raised at a density of merely 2 to begin with. What fell short was Yujin’s own level, and his own spirit-power.

How long did he go on guzzling mid-grade potions without pause, playing spirit-power shuttle?

A building thrust up sharp as a pyramid. A structure as tall as a three-story house now stood in the very heart of the Necropolis.

By raising a structure essential to the Necropolis’s territorial expansion, he’d reaped tremendous benefits all at once. A sleight of hand worked with [the Ring of Black Darkness]!

‘It’s not over yet.’

Yujin pressed his thumbs hard against his temples. Shaking off the headache that had recoiled back on him from the strain of handling all that spirit-power, he ran his eye over the structures he could newly build.

‘Why did I push so hard to expand the domain?’

‘To build the structure I need for an all-out war with the man-hunters, that’s why.’

His gaze stayed riveted to one item on the Necropolis construction list, refusing to budge.