87. Giant's Burial Chamber (1)

Yujin stared fixedly at the newly buildable structures.

‘An all-out war’s all but certain now, so we’ll need to secure forces enough to match.’

The man-hunters’ main strength lay in large monsters like Ogres and Trolls. Low-grade undead were no match for them. Even once Yujin’s Stellar Rank rose to 4th and mid-grade undead production became possible, they’d remain a burdensome foe to take head-on.

‘Revenants aren’t enough.’

The Revenant was the strongest single unit among the undead he could currently mass-produce. Imperfect, yes, but able to wield Aura, and with stats on par with a large monster, it could handle a Troll one-on-one without much trouble. The problem was that Ogres were mixed in among the man-hunters’ main force.

‘Generously rated, a quasi-5th Rank. Against a true 5th-Rank Ogre, it’s no contest.’

During the Yeonpyeong naval battle, those fellows had shoved not just Trolls but Ogres into the sea without a moment’s hesitation. Revenants had been a great help against the mutant Rerics and in the defense of Yeonpyeong, but in an all-out war, as opposed to a coastal engagement, they fell short.

‘With more materials I can reinforce the Revenants too.’
‘If only I could get hold of a catalyst to strengthen their draconic attributes, they could put out power approaching 6th Rank.’

Well.

‘It’s not something that’s possible right now, so let’s set it aside.’

‘Ask away, then. Most exalted Constellation, my lord.’

‘Oh. You remembered that.’

‘Because to stand against Ogres, I’ve got to make large undead.’

Large undead are extremely difficult to craft with necromancy spells alone. They demand a staggering amount of hands-on labor: bone-carving, spirit-power injection, and the like. And the process itself drags on, a terrible waste of manpower.

‘You’d need at least 4th Rank to even attempt it. On my own, it’s a waste of time.’

‘Quick on the uptake. I like it.’

Yujin looked at Fafnir, who stood there blankly.

“Think you could fetch me just three tons of bone?”

— I don’t have my master’s knack for separating bone and flesh.

“Then just haul over whatever monster corpses you can manage.”

— Understood.

The bone itself would do fine for bone broth, too. Out in the borderlands, without a scrap of infrastructure anywhere, anything needed had to be prepared in advance or scrounged together piece by piece.

A pain, but it can’t be helped.

— I’ll be off, then.

Fafnir set out, leading the forces bound to the Black Obelisk.

How long had he waited?

The welcome announcement reached him, and a little while later the Armored Zombies returned, monster carcasses slung over their shoulders.

— I came. I saw. I conquered.

“That’s not the sort of thing you use that line for.”

Monster corpses piled up like a small hill. For an ordinary Necromancer, even using Flesh Control and Bone Control to strip them down, it was a quantity that would take all day.

“A pain, but it can’t be helped.”

Yujin rolled up his sleeves and deftly separated bone from flesh. The deboning proceeded swiftly. Anyone watching would have thought he was making boneless chicken.

After hauling in all the bone the structure needed, he drew up the spirit-power accumulated in the Black Obelisk.

— Ka-chak— ka-chak—.

The spirit-power stored in the Black Obelisk moved the materials into their designated positions, exactly as recorded in the Ring of Black Darkness, doing in moments what would have taken several days at minimum with a crew of laborers. Thick bones laid out the structure’s frame; smaller monsters’ bones and spirit-power-steeped soil fleshed out the skeleton, and the building swiftly took shape.

The whole structure stood finished in mere hours. The size of an abandoned country schoolhouse, it looked like a coffin scaled up dozens of times over.

— Master. You’re not planning to bury someone, are you?

“I’m not burying anyone.”

If that were the purpose, there was the Profane Graveyard for it. This great coffin wasn’t meant to hold a corpse; it was a giant mold for crafting large undead.

“Jo Seungcheol. Get into the Giant’s Burial Chamber.”

— As you command, Master.

The Giant’s Burial Chamber began operating from the moment Jo Seungcheol was assigned to it. The efficiency was abysmal, but it met the minimum conditions to set the structure in motion.

— So anyone who’s learned necromancy can run that thing?

“Yeah. You’d get even better efficiency.”

— Then why send that fellow in?

“Stick you in the Giant’s Burial Chamber and my forces take a hit, don’t they.”

This man. No, this undead. Trying to weasel his way onto a free ride!

Assign someone to a structure and they couldn’t be deployed in battle. Just putting Jo Seungcheol in the Giant’s Burial Chamber had already shaved down Yujin’s fighting strength, and he could hardly plant Fafnir, the strongest minion on his side, into a box.

— Heh heh heh. It can’t be helped, then.

Fafnir didn’t bother to hide his smug satisfaction.

No, really.

Never mind that pile of bones — why are you fanning your competitive streak too?
If I brought Song Myeongseok into this, it’d turn into an utter circus.

As he shook his head back and forth, Kronos let a thought slip over to him.

‘I’ve got to get the materials first.’

The byproducts from the large monsters obtained during the Yeonpyeong naval battle had all been used up building the structures. And even if there’d been more, the Bag of Infinity’s capacity limits meant he couldn’t have hauled them along anyway.

‘Why would it be useless? I just have to get the materials.’

This was the borderlands. If there was one thing in overflowing supply, it was monsters.

‘Where’s it written that only the man-hunters get to hunt monsters?’

On a whim, Yujin resolved to hunt large monsters.

— Swish— swish—.

The party pressed forward, parting grass grown waist-high. At the lead, Song Myeongseok swung the blade in his right hand without pause, and the weeds sliced clean through. Yujin strolled along at his ease, treading down the undergrowth now trodden below his knees.

— Observe. My swordsmanship is incomparably more refined than that of the other minions.

Song Myeongseok, having just sheathed his blade, preened.

Fafnir watched, glowering sullenly.

— Wooong—!

He loaded a measure of dark fighting-aura and drove it forward. A fist-wind shot out more than ten meters, the black aura ripping apart everything it touched and carving a path through the undergrowth.

— Easy.
— Eeyaagh! Isn’t using dark fighting-aura cheating?!
— Where’s the rule against using it to clear a path?
— We ought to contend in pure martial discipline. Such trickery is—!
— Get a load of this one. Since when is dark fighting-aura trickery?

— Krrrrgh!

Song Myeongseok growled, indignant.

Hey, you.
Back when I first revived you as undead, you wouldn’t submit — you fought back.

Yujin’s dominion over the dead was absolute. Every skill he passed down came in at 100% proficiency, and having reached 9th Stellar Rank before the regression, he left most of the dead barely able to express a will of their own in his presence. That Song Myeongseok had managed to resist at all spoke to his remarkable mental fortitude. And now that very fellow had been reduced to bragging about the thickness of the chain shackled to his own ankle.

‘If he did, it’d show.’

The Skeleton Knight was mid-grade undead. Even with Unison applied, the limits of its origin were clear, which meant it didn’t possess enough self-awareness to harbor impure thoughts.

‘A Death Knight, now, I couldn’t say.’

Glancing back and forth between the quietly delighted Fafnir and the indignantly seething Song Myeongseok, he set his thoughts in order.

— But do you even know where the prey is?

“No need to go looking.”

— Hm?

“It’s about time one showed up.”

Yujin answered, unhurried.

“Kroooooo—!!”

A monster’s bloodthirsty roar set the forest trembling.

When Yujin murmured, low, “There it is,” Fafnir asked, puzzled.

— How’d you guess?

“Look over there. The branches are snapped.”

Ogres stood as tall as a two-story building, yet moved with springy, agile grace. A thick branch snapped clean off was the signature trace of an Ogre, which climbs trees like a monkey.

— How do you even know things like that? You’re just like a veteran Hunter.

“Isn’t it about time you took that for granted?”

— Heh heh.

Fafnir laughed low and let Yujin’s playful remark slide.

A green monster came rushing fast from where the shriek had erupted: an Ogre, charging at the fearless intruders who’d entered its territory.

— My liege. The vanguard, I beg you, leave to me.

“You were 3rd Rank when you were alive, weren’t you?”

— Thanks to this cur— no, thanks to the new body bestowed upon me by my liege, have I not transcended my limits? I can manage it well enough.

As he spoke, Song Myeongseok glanced sidelong, and Fafnir cocked his head.

“All right. Run as wild as you like.”

— By your command.

When was he going to drop that martial-arts-novel way of talking? Even at the start he’d had a chuunibyou streak, and after dying once, he showed no intention of hiding it.

Pushing off the ground with dark fighting-aura, he leapt, closing the distance to the Ogre’s side with a movement skill and swinging his sword straight and true. A pitch-black current wound around the blade; where he’d once had to gather his focus against the Seagull Faction, now he kindled the dark fighting-aura in an instant.

‘His skill’s improved.’

Tsk. That was geniuses for you.

Seeing the dark fighting-aura bearing down, the Ogre, far from pulling back, angled its arm and brought it up close to Song Myeongseok’s blade.

— You wretch! You dare meet my dark fighting-aura head-on?!

— Sssk—.

The instant the steel-hard hide met the dark fighting-aura, it split open in a long gash, and green blood sprayed from the wound in a spurt.

The strike landed clean, yet what rose in Song Myeongseok’s blue spirit-flame eyes was bewilderment. Too shallow.

He registered it and moved to draw his blade back.

— Thwack!

A heavy impact slammed Song Myeongseok into a tree.

“Kroooo!!”

The forest’s overlord let out a victor’s roar. Fafnir gave a short, admiring “Hoh.”

— Angling its arm to deflect the force of the strike. It gave up flesh to take bone.
— I don’t need you spelling it out! Stay out of it.

His armor was crumpled. He had taken an impact that would have churned a man’s insides to pulp, and still Song Myeongseok shouted aloud.

“Can you keep going?”

— My liege. So long as my bones aren’t completely shattered, I have no thought of retreating.

“In that case, let me lend a hand.”

The buffs came as naturally as breathing now. Song Myeongseok closed for melee with the Ogre once more.

— Kwang—! Kwang!

— It won’t work twice. Monster!

“Kroooo!”

The dark fighting-aura moved in dazzling sweeps, tracing the blade’s path. Rather than force a head-on contest, Song Myeongseok crossed his twin blades and bewildered the Ogre’s eyes. Wounds multiplied fast. Shallower than the first strike, true, but as the damage piled up, weariness began to settle around the Ogre’s eyes.

The Ogre sensed by instinct that things couldn’t go on like this, and explosive force burst from muscles that swelled to nearly double their size.

— This is the moment I’ve been waiting for.

What the Ogre struck with all its might was only Song Myeongseok’s afterimage. He had waited for the cornered beast to thrash out its death throes; now he moved by skill and carved the Ogre’s heart open with dark fighting-aura.

“Fifteen minutes, twenty-seven seconds. Well done.”

— A man who, once he sets to a thing— no. An undead. My liege.

“Next is two of them. This time it’s Fafnir’s turn.”

— Just right for a warm-up.

Drawn by the din of the fight, more Ogres came running. Suspending a wraith in midair and using Ghost Eye on it, Yujin relayed the scene in real time.

“Want me to cast a buff?”

— No need. I’ll try it without one.

Fafnir stepped forward, bold. Having just snuffed out his own Ogre’s life, Song Myeongseok muttered, discontented.

— There’s a sort who only learns the taste once he’s tried it.
— True. That’s exactly my style.
— I wish you the best of luck.

Saying things he didn’t mean in the slightest.

“Kroooooo!!”

Two Ogres burst out from the undergrowth. The time it took Fafnir to bring both of them down was…

“Eleven minutes, twenty-four seconds.”

— Y-you didn’t miscount, did you?

“Unless my phone’s lying, that’d be right.”

He’d obtained three Ogre corpses faster than expected. Store one in the Ring of Black Darkness, the rest in subspace, and it would all fit just right.

“All right, let’s head back.”

— Ah, not yet. I can still do more!

“Hunting wasn’t the main goal.”

Song Myeongseok. Big bro here isn’t kind enough to coddle your pride.

Turning his back on the dejected Skeleton Knight, Yujin set off back the way he’d come.