The Corpse Fuser

In the dead of night. Solomon began walking through Downtown District 4, the Street of the Wandering in the dark.

A street where mediums, occult shops, and all sorts of professions and guilds that looked tied to necromancy were gathered everywhere. In that chill, skin-crawling air of death, Solomon coolly assessed his situation.

The variety of tools he had newly obtained through Maya. An infiltration Ghost Unit hacking tool, and a Webweaver Kit useful for sneaking in to places.

A cemetery fence was not a structure that was especially hard to infiltrate, so it didn’t look like he’d need the grappling wire right away.

As he crossed the street like that, an open cemetery began to come into view in the distance.

Through the Black Crow Spirits, Solomon checked the positions of the necromancers patrolling the cemetery one by one. A few roamed the area like guards, and two were stationed in place right next to the target.

‘If I activate the mechanism and enter the hidden underground crypt, I can’t just pass them.’

He had to deal with the two as part of the infiltration. And he had to do it without being spotted, without giving them any room to react.

The cemetery, with gravestones stretching endlessly, was, as Violet had said, closer to a warehouse than a graveyard meant to honor the dead.

Even those gravestones were not for honoring anyone, but for showing where countless corpses were buried in bulk…. In other words, where the ‘inventory’ was stacked.

Even the tightly packed writing on them was not names, but only things like sex and age bracket, as if they were categorizing products.

Gravestones that stored that massive inventory stood packed tight, stretching beyond the horizon in numbers too great to count.

‘Just how many are buried here….’

Just imagining it was enough to make his skin crawl.

As he moved along the graves through a black fog so thick it felt ominous, he also took in the destination that had entered the Black Crow Spirits’ view with his own eyes. He stopped for a moment and thought.

‘The invisibility spell uses up one Level 2 spell slot.’

The spell slots he could use were fixed. He had to make the optimal calculation within a fixed cost. So Solomon thought for a moment.

An invisibility spell doesn’t end at simply not being seen. If anything, not being seen wasn’t the core.

The real value of an invisibility spell was that even if the enemy noticed his presence, he could enter an invisible state and drive another ambush in again.

In plain terms—a forced ambush.

‘Stealth.’

Solomon’s Dexterity here were not something ‘ordinary people’ in this world could gain by growing normally.

He was a character whose values had been intentionally tuned from the start through ‘Min-Maxing’.

The character named Solomon here was born solely to become strong. That was his reason for existing.

In the darkness, in the ominously thick black fog that had settled over the graves, Solomon moved. There was no sound.

In silence, the distance closed quickly.

The two necromancers guarding the gravestone where Dr. O’Neill was hiding. Their backs were visible. In their hands, they lit the area with magical-power lanterns that glowed darkly and eerily.

“…That guy. Is there really a reason to go that far?”

It sounded like petty small talk. Solomon’s ears, sharpened to an extreme, didn’t miss their conversation.

“Cut it out. If the higher-ups say dig, we dig. What choice do we have?”

“What I mean is, because of that bastard, a ‘Swordsman’ might be moved personally….”

“I’m sure the guild has thought it through. Besides, I’ve heard something too.”

“What?”

Solomon stopped moving without a word and listened closely to their conversation. A contractor’s virtue was handling the problem. Not digging into why it happened

Even so, he stayed silent out of curiosity, not as a contractor, but as “Player Solomon.”

“That bastard, Dr. O’Neill. Not just him. In the heads of the corpses fused with him… they’ve got some ridiculous information in there.”

“Information?”

“They say it could turn the City Council upside down. It won’t end with just a few assholes in hats stepping down….”

[Clue Acquired! Information that could turn the City Council upside down]

“N-no… then that makes him even more dangerous!”

“Yeah. If they did it knowing that, then the higher-ups in the guild must have their reasons.”

“…So they’ve got a plan or something?”

“How would I know? Still, they wouldn’t do it if they didn’t have something to rely on, right?”

“Tch. So you don’t really know either.”

“No matter how crazy they are, with the Sword Watch’s ‘Swordsman’ glaring like that, they must have set something up.”

The conversation ended there. After that, another meaningless topic started again.

After his silence, Solomon moved as well. A shadow sprinted through the darkness. Soundlessly.

Before long, with the Ghost Whale bone blade fixed inside his sleeve by a thread mechanism in hand, he stood behind one of the two necromancers.

—Solomon was right behind him. Close enough for breath to touch. And yet no one realized he was there. Someone was standing right at their backs. Like a ghost.

In that state, Solomon moved.

Ambush, a strike the enemy doesn’t notice.

Chwaaak!!

The Ghost Whale bone blade drove down through the darkness into the necromancer’s body. Instant death. A killing blow.

“Hey, why haven’t you been saying anyth…”

Only after blood spurted like a fountain did the necromancer beside him realize what had happened. By the time he realized, the one next to him was already dead, pumping blood from the corpse like a fountain.

‘Hide.’

Solomon was no longer there. He had already used the invisibility spell.

In the end, Solomon’s decision was right.

The moment he saw it, a pitch-black veil covered the necromancer’s body. A defensive spell. It was a barrier that couldn’t be easily broken by normal attacks.

But not to Solomon, who used an invisibility spell to drive in the strongest attack the game’s rules allowed.

Kwajik!

A forced ambush from an invisible state. When he drove that strike in, the Ghost Whale bone blade tore through the pitch-black barrier and burrowed toward the necromancer’s flesh. Neither the mage’s armor nor the defensive magic could stop it.

Chwaaak!

It ripped through the barrier and pierced vital points. It was instant death, giving him no time to trigger an alarm.

‘Whew… that was close.’

He could tell by the feel in his fingertips. If it hadn’t been a forced ambush just now, he wouldn’t have been able to push past the barrier and reach the vital points.

And that moment would have been more than enough for the bastard to trigger the alarm.

Barely, by a difference of an instant, he smothered the alarm before it could happen. Without him giving any room to respond.

In the end, using the invisibility spell had been the right call.

“The mechanism should be around here…”

After dealing with the two necromancers, Solomon activated the mechanical device at the gravestone Violet had told him about. A secret passage leading to a hidden underground crypt.

Koong!

A sound rang out. Thankfully, it wasn’t loud enough to carry far.

Even now, the other necromancers he was watching through the Black Crow Spirits still hadn’t realized what was happening.

Solomon didn’t care. He dragged the two dead necromancers’ corpses down with him. If the bodies were discovered now, it would become a headache.

‘<Darkvision>.’

In that state, he activated an indispensable, reliable Level 1 spell. A spell that let him see unimpeded through, and beyond the dense darkness.

The first thing he saw was a door at the end of the passage leading beneath the underground crypt. It was firmly locked.

‘There’s a locked door up ahead.’

When Solomon approached the door, his pupils, out of focus and shining like obsidian, were already seeing the scenery beyond it.

‘That thing beyond… is Dr. O’Neill.’

Picking this lock and opening the door wasn’t something that would get him caught. The target was deeper within. Solomon knelt in place and took out what he’d prepared.

If he clumsily tried to cut it with the portable laser cutter, a spell would trigger an alarm. So Solomon took out the seven automatic Spider Lockpick sets from the Webweaver Kit.

Carefully kneeling, he gripped the automatic Spider Lockpick set in his hand.

It wasn’t something where you assembled hook picks or rake picks by hand for each use. There was no need.

“Spider Lockpicks, activate all at once.”

Kkirik, kkiririk.

The moment he spoke, the ‘seven little spiders’ in Solomon’s hand began to move. With the sound of tiny springs turning, they started up like living creatures, and their eight spider legs slid.

Straight toward the lock in front of him.

And the seven Spider Lockpicks, the seven spiders. Their legs began to dig into the lock like sharp blade mechanisms.

Chalak, chalak, chalak.

Solomon could tell because he could see inside the lock with Darkvision.

This wasn’t just a physical locking device. It was a lock like an iron fortress, mixed with magical effects, magitech, and all kinds of technology of this era, not something you could break through carelessly.

The Spider Lockpicks were assaulting that lock like an army taking an unbreakable fortress.

Seven spiders latched onto a single lock at once, driving their eight legs in like tentacles and beginning to tear through the inside.

They nullified the warding spells set inside, halted the magitech systems’ operation, and assaulted it in every way, like a predator disabling its prey.

Chalak, chalak.

With each sound, a layer inside the lock came undone, and the fortress’s outer walls and inner walls fell one after another. Solomon didn’t even need to do anything in the process.

Chalak!

Before long, the lock sealing the underground crypt was undone. But the Spider Lockpicks, the seven mechanical spiders, still weren’t finished.

The moment the lock opened, they slipped into the gap of the door and began scattering an oil-like liquid. Like oiling hinges to reduce sound, it was to erase the noise of the door opening.

‘Damn. Expensive stuff really is worth it.’

After the seven Spider Lockpicks returned upon finishing their work, Solomon finally stood, unable to hide his admiration. Thanks to the slick oiling, the heavy-looking stone door made no sound as it opened.

Solomon kept moving. With Darkvision still activated, he examined the underground crypt’s layout as he headed toward his target waiting at the far end.

Soundlessly, repeating step after step in silence, he approached the monster that was grotesque beyond measure.

So there was no longer a need to spend a Level 2 spell slot on invisibility just to land the first ambush. Simply approaching ‘quietly’ was enough.

───
Available spell slots
: Level 1 spell slots 4 uses (⚀⚀⚀⚀■)
: Level 2 spell slots 1 use (⚁■)
───

The monster was there. A monster with countless corpses stuck all over it. The Corpse Fuser, the Body Splicer, Dr. O’Neill. In the underground crypt, he had stacked countless books that looked like academic texts, and with countless arms like a centipede’s, he was busy picking up books, opening them, and reading.

Gilbert Graham, attached along with him, was also holding a book in his own hands and reading, like conjoined twins.

Solomon stood behind him and sharply focused his awareness through the disorderly, patchworked flesh.

Every living thing had vital points. Even a monster layered with countless corpses wouldn’t be different. Solomon could see the gaps.

Critical hit, or fatality. The path that led to death.

Before he knew it, Solomon was standing behind Dr. O’Neill. Like a reaper looking down at him from behind.

‘Blade in the Dark, activate.’

A trait that, once per day, guaranteed a strike would be a critical hit, no questions asked. And on top of that, the 「Master of Ambush」 trait that added a flat 6 damage to ambush attacks.

He drove in the single most devastating physical strike the game’s rules allowed, a critical-hit ambush.

The blade in the dark surged in.