Naruan, Of A Different Calber

Shumix was riding a carriage west again with Hugo and Naruan.

They suggested preparing for any possible threat, but Kim Han had only the three of them travel, as before.

Naruan smiled and nodded as usual; the other two nodded with stern faces.

The only one unchanged was Naruan; the two who’d been at the center of the incident had become completely different people.

Hugo had changed in three days. He was no longer the slick, smiling man who always joked about ladies.

He trained so intensely it could be called hard labor—he even asked Talis and Bioss for sparring and requested sessions with Kim Han, too.

Surprisingly, Talis and Bioss—and Kim Han, of course—had willingly accepted.

For those three days Hugo spoke only when addressed.

Shumix changed in a different way.

She stopped being the silent observer and began proactively involving herself in matters that concerned her.

Of course, it was nothing beyond what an ordinary person would do, but for her it was certainly a big change.

Her most assertive display came on this outing.

She insisted that she, Hugo, and Naruan would be enough, and Kim Han agreed.

No one knew what they had talked about; as a result, only the three went out.

A few members watched with worried eyes, but there was much to prepare, so they soon dispersed.

The atmosphere inside the carriage heading west toward Exorsus was better than expected.

Above all, Naruan—the biggest victim of the previous incident—was excited, Hugo wasn’t showing off, and Shumix chimed in with Naruan, so things felt improved.

“Naruan,” Hugo said, breaking his silence.

“Huh? Why?”

“…I’m sorry.”

“Huh? For what? I didn’t—!”

“…”

“You ate the chocolate cake I hid to eat later?!” Naruan said, dead serious. Whether or not Shumix and Hugo flinched at the accusation, Naruan was completely earnest. Her gaze clearly said: If you did that, I won’t forgive you!

Hugo sighed deeply and then shouted, “How the hell would I know where you hid your chocolate cake?!”

“Really?”

“Yes!!”

“…Pft.”

Hugo answered irritably and Shumix burst into the laughter she’d been holding back. Relieved, Naruan smiled again and then, curious, asked Hugo, “But what were you apologizing for?”

“Because I couldn’t protect you.”

“Huh? What are you talking about? How could you protect me? Hugo, you’re weaker than me. It’s the strong who protect the weak. How could you, no matter how dumb, not know that?”

Naruan scolded Hugo as if it were obvious and shook her head at his ignorance. Shumix gave a motherly smile at the sight of the small Naruan lecturing the big Hugo, and Hugo snorted a laugh.

In a way Naruan was right: the strong protect the weak.

“More importantly, you really didn’t touch the chocolate cake, right? Not even a little poke with your finger to taste it!”

“I didn’t!!”

“Pft!”

To say it again, Naruan was more serious than anyone when it came to chocolate cake.

Shumix returned successfully after using the registration card.

Hugo seemed back to his usual self socially, but in training he remained serious and fierce.

It felt less like a genius polishing his edge and more like a clumsy knight straining to catch up to one.

The skill Shumix had learned belatedly with the registration card—the one that had set everything in motion—was a crafting technique, though not ordinary equipment crafting.

“How is it?”

Kim Han asked. Shumix made an unreadable expression, tilted her head, and after a long pause cautiously answered, “I’m not sure. I’ll know when I actually make it.”

“Is that so? Don’t worry. We have plenty of materials.”

The training ground was packed, despite the Rebound Legion having just over seventy members.

Most of the space was taken up by representatives that looked so corpse-like they might as well have been corpses. They had a few peculiar things in common: they were representatives; none could speak, only emitting ‘uurgh!’ noises; and each was missing at least one limb.

Those bad enough to be treated like corpses writhed individually like piles of cut octopus.

“Are you ready? Preparations are complete,” Lee Hyo-ju told Kim Han as she approached.

Kim Han stared at a representative flopping on the floor, then called Naruan. “How do you want to do this?”

“You said we’d ‘absorb’ them, so we should share.”

“Are you sure that’s okay?”

“Yeah. That day Hugo, Shumix, and I absorbed a few. Ice-Tag and Hazel unni said the same: if something’s tasty, you share it.”

“Is that so…”

I wondered how ‘sharing something tasty’ applied to representatives we were going to absorb, but decided not to ask—no proper answer was likely to come from Naruan.

“Right. I’d like to give everything to the hard-working captain, but that would make the weak ones weaker, so the captain is excluded.”

“Okay.”

Naruan, surprisingly decisive, excluded me, Hazel, Lee Hyo-ju, Proy Rium, and herself from the absorption targets.

Surprisingly, she didn’t exclude Arun; Naruan apparently thought he looked even weaker than Proy Rium.

“Lee Hyo-ju, start.”

“Yes. Begin.”

At the sound of her voice filled with divine power, members approached the writhing representatives with daggers and swords.

It wasn’t literal, but Naruan’s suggestion made sense: absorb in the order members joined the legion, letting the most recent recruits take more.

“By the way, be careful with the draws,” Lee Hyo-ju muttered, genuinely worried.

She might have been annoyed at being excluded, but Lee Hyo-ju, Proi, and Hazel showed no such emotion; Proi in particular was proud to have been excluded with me.

The more you absorb, the better—at least in theory—but it’s gambling. Absorbing a representative with 100 stamina could, through bad luck, yield only a single point; conversely, one with 50 could, through good luck, give you all 50.

Luck isn’t everything, but it matters.

Maybe that’s why those smiling as they pulled hearts from the writhing representatives had been rolling luck dice with serious faces since morning.

After about an hour, only bodies and pools of blood littered the training ground.

“Shumix, start.”

“Yes!”

Sparkling after absorbing hearts, Shumix answered immediately and gathered the mages.

The five magic tower elders stepped forward and cast preservation spells on each corpse. Beside them, Shumix placed empty crystals in the pools of blood.

After wandering a bit, Shumix wiped her brow, walked to the center, murmured, and began chanting.

As her chanting rose, the air turned eerily cold, as if the temperature had dropped. The training ground felt like a place where ghostly energy gathered; at its center stood Shumix in pure white robes.

“…Gather!”

Sshhhhhhhhhh—like a sudden downpour, the training ground filled with wind, and a concretized white energy flowed into the surrounding crystals.

It resembled infusing mana into a mana stone or divine power into a sacred stone—if not for the shudder-inducing ghostly energy.

When the transparent crystals finished filling with pure white light, Shumix, exhausted by the power, collapsed to the ground.

The strange thing was that all the blood that had soaked the training ground, including where she had been, had disappeared.

Mae Young-ryeong cast healing magic. Shumix smiled, thanked her, then carefully picked up the now-white crystals and placed them into a magic pouch one by one.

Shumix didn’t stop there; she inspected the corpses laid to one side and selected about twenty bodies.

She put the selected corpses into the pouch as well, then, smiling, approached the group.

Merus, who played the dunce alongside Arun, flinched and took an exaggerated step back.

“Could you not touch the corpses so much and give that motherly smile?” Arun said.

Arun’s remark made Shumix smile even wider; she lit up and replied, “If by any chance Arun is interested, let me know. There’s the benefit of living forever.”

“No, I’m fine!”

Truly frightened, Arun dashed back to the mansion. Shumix greeted me and entered the workshop.

The representatives who’d finished absorbing gathered in small groups to spar and test their changed abilities.

“Is that really what she learned?”

“Yes. It suits the expedition site’s characteristics.”

Hazel approached with concern and asked about Shumix’s technique.

“Is it okay?” she asked.

“Yes. Death knights created by crafting, rather than born of vengeful spirits, are stable. And Shumix is an expert on souls.”

Distrust of the undead is common. Hazel, having lived with high elves and being half high elf herself, couldn’t easily view the undead kindly.

Across cultures, the original idea of undead was to transport bodies from the battlefield back home. From there it developed into using them for labor in harsh environments, then into histories of ostracism, revenge, and grudges.

Anyway, regardless of those reasons, the death knights Shumix learned to make are high-tier undead. Since they can communicate, they can be used for various purposes.

They may be weaker than those born of vengeance, but those made by her are much more stable.

Moreover, combining her soul-purification specialty with death-knight crafting could produce a pairing that might conflict with Jul.

Sure enough, unlike the others, Jul went straight after Shumix into the workshop.

While everyone tested their new bodies through sparring, Lee Hyo-ju reported the expedition preparations to me.

“We’re prepared. With our increased numbers we’ve focused on food and potions. Given the area’s environment you mentioned, we wouldn’t attempt to forage or cook there.”

“Good, well done.”

“Is there anything else you want me to do?”

“Hmm… did Aetas say anything this time?”

“What do you mean…”

“No—it’s fine if he didn’t say anything.”

“Yes.”

I watched Lee Hyo-ju’s retreating back and glanced at her status window.