Being a Hunter Is Too Easy for a Former Necromancer - Chapter 12

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This chapter was translated by Lunox Novels. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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The Necromancer from My Past Life Finds Hunting Too Easy — Episode 12
“So you stripped another one yesterday?”
Lee Ho-gyu, a pawnbroker and black-market dealer, examined the Cybernetic Arm that Park Il-sang had torn free and said as much.
“A thug came charging at me. I couldn’t just let him have his way, could I?”
“Fair point. Still, you got it off cleanly. You’ve got the touch, Park.”
Cybernetic Arms fetch a decent price. The minimum starts around ten million won.
Of course, ten million for a man’s arm or leg might seem cheap, depending on how you look at it.
“I’ll give you one hundred for it. Two of them, so two hundred total.”
New ones go for around ten million, naturally, but used ones are cheaper. They typically lose more than half their value as a baseline, depending on condition.
For goods from a Rank 5 Residential District like this, they drop even further.
So one hundred was a fair price, all things considered.
He’d patch them up roughly and flip them for two or three hundred. Park Il-sang actually knew someone who’d bought used Cybernetic Arms and legs for three hundred, so he was well aware of the margins.
“Sounds good.”
“Here’s your cash.”
Lee Ho-gyu, the pawnshop owner, handed over the bills.
Park Il-sang took them and pocketed them.
“So what exactly is your line of work that you’re out doing this?”
“I’m a Necromancer — it’s a new occupation.”
It’d been registered when he got his Hunter License issued, and wasn’t personal information public record these days anyway?
It was cheap information you could dig up in any back alley, so there was no reason to hide it.
“A new occupation? Well, I’ve heard they’ve been popping up left and right lately.”
“That’s certainly the case. Well then, best of luck with business.”
“Come back soon.”
Park Il-sang stepped out of the pawnshop with noticeably lighter steps.
* * *
Today he meant to make some real money.
Hunters only grow stronger by entering Dungeons, but truthfully, Dungeons weren’t exactly lucrative.
The real money for Hunters came from the Field.
Venturing beyond the Great Barrier Wall into the Demon Realm, where monsters swarmed thick as flies, and hunting them down.
Dead monsters turned into cash.
The catch, however.
Field hunting offered no growth. Kill monsters until your fingers fell off and you wouldn’t gain a single point of experience.
‘But I’m different.’
Park Il-sang wasn’t just any Hunter.
He’d been an Arch Lich in his past life!
He knew methods that others didn’t — quite a few of them.
‘Let’s see. We’re far enough from the city now. Might as well begin.’
“Come out.”
Thunk.
Something massive and bone-white erupted from the Corpse Box strapped to his back.
A skeletal beast.
Yaong-i.
The creature, now the size of a large freight truck, planted itself on the ground.
Why larger than before? He’d fused more bones into it!
He climbed onto the makeshift saddle on its back and fastened the belt securely.
Then.
He summoned all the skeletal centaurs.
Yaong-i was currently consuming twenty points’ worth of Control Power.
Expanding its mass required the sacrifice.
Each skeletal centaur consumed four points of Control Power.
So he had exactly five of them.
Two points of Control Power remained as scrap, but he left them be. They’d grow again eventually anyway.
“Let’s go.”
“Grrrowwww.”
Yaong-i and the skeletal centaurs bolted forward.
They raced eastward, leaving Seoul behind. Where Gimpo City should have been, the land had long since transformed into a Demon Realm.
Half the apartment buildings had collapsed, and the rest were overgrown with plants that had crossed over from another world.
This was the primary hunting ground for Rank F Hunters.
Goblins, Kobolds, Ratmen, Blade Spiders, Armored Centipedes — all manner of creatures coexisted in their own ecosystem.
It wasn’t terribly far either. As he rode atop Yaong-i, he spotted Hunters in the distance, operating specialized trucks meant for their use.
They’re heading to Gimpo as well.
The car was indeed fast, and it soon vanished from sight.
* * *
The moment Park Il-sang stepped into the Gimpo Demon Realm, the atmosphere shifted.
He’d come here countless times during his days as a grunt laborer, so the place was already familiar to him.
Gunfire echoed in the distance.
Screams rang out, the death rattle of humans, the death cries of monsters.
In the midst of that chaos.
He pulled items from a bag he’d brought separately—not the Corpse Box.
A burner. A grill plate. And meat.
Sizzle, sizzle, sizzle!
Yaong perched on his back, grilling the meat.
You might think this was a waste of time.
But it was a traditional hunting method.
Do this long enough, and monsters would come charging.
They go absolutely mad for the smell of grilled meat!
As he continued grilling, sure enough, a monster came bounding out.
“Ugh. A mushroom?”
A walking mushroom.
Literally a mushroom that walked around. And these things didn’t pay.
Beyond being edible, there was nothing remarkable about them.
The world was half-destroyed, but in an age where cybernetic technology and cultured meat were manufactured, was there any real reason to hunt down creatures like that for food?
No matter how poor you were.
There were artificially produced foods available.
Thud! Thud! Thud!
The walking mushroom approached with its peculiar footsteps.
Yaong raised a foreleg.
And brought it down.
Crunch!
What had been a mushroom ceased to be.
“This… is a terrible start.”
If a mushroom appeared as the first kill, that was considered bad luck.
There was such a superstition.
Because this creature didn’t bring in money.
It doesn’t even cover the fuel costs. Are your ancestors supposed to pay the price of hiring grunt laborers? It’s all money in the end.
Hunters earned substantial sums, but in this half-destroyed dystopian world, a Hunter’s earnings were their life’s worth.
In old-fashioned terms, they lived by the blade.
Grunt laborers were no different, of course.
If the Hunters all died, why would the grunt laborers survive? There were times when Hunters threw their own laborers to the wolves to save themselves.
Nevertheless, in the end, grunt labor was still a fairly high-paying profession—if not quite as lucrative as Hunting.
So Raid Leaders had to think constantly about profit, which made the work rather headache-inducing.
But the first monster to appear was a walking mushroom?
This wasn’t going to end well! Nooooo!
That was the feeling.
“Sigh. Well, what can you do? Bad luck in my past life, bad luck in this one—it’s the default setting.”
He shook his head and let out a long breath.
Then he went back to grilling the meat.
And gradually, other things began to appear.
The first to show up was what people commonly called a bean beetle.
It looked much like an actual bean beetle, except the problem was that it was the size of a human.
If you had a bug phobia, just seeing one would make your spine crawl with terror!
Whoosh! Crunch!
Right. The skeleton beast couldn’t care less about that sort of thing.
“So today’s really shaping up to be a disaster, huh?”
And.
Bean beetles didn’t pay either.
After that, weak, worthless creatures just kept appearing in droves. Of course, with the sheer volume, an average F-Rank Hunter would’ve struggled.
But against Yaong the skeleton beast, they stood no chance!
Undead had their advantages.
Once you had the bones, there were no maintenance costs involved!
But there was a problem.
“What? Not a single skeleton in sight? Are you serious?”
Park Il-sang’s composure cracked, his frustration plain on his face.
Money was one thing, but the truth was he’d come out hunting this far for a reason.
He needed to find bones.
Another trick up the Necromancer’s sleeve.
Mass-producing Corpse Boxes!
That’s right.
A Corpse Box didn’t have to be carried around by him personally.
Once crafted, he could equip it on the Undead and still use it.
Think of it like a backup battery.
You might think it sounds absurdly broken.
But the Necromancer class was broken by design—the floor was incredibly high, and the ceiling was even higher.
The catch was that once you reached the absolute peak, it was slightly weaker than other magical classes.
Space Mages could transcend space itself and collapse it; Time Mages could toy with time at will.
But a Necromancer’s ultimate achievement was essentially “undying.” The destructive power and versatility were somewhat lacking.
That’s why higher-level Necromancers typically dabbled in other schools of magic as well.
In any case.
A high floor was a huge advantage. In his past life, Necromancers had performed brilliantly in battles against the Demon Lord’s forces.
Demonic zombies were really something special.
But that was then.
Now the situation was grim. He’d been roasting meat for an hour straight.
At this point the meat was charred black with nothing left to cook.
So he’d tossed it aside and surveyed the surroundings—there were corpses everywhere, but the problem was they had no bones.
Nothing but insect and plant-type monsters!
“Did goblins and kobolds or whatever just get wiped out completely? This is ridiculous….”
Sighs tumbled from his lips. They weren’t worth money, wouldn’t help him grow, and were useless as materials.
Bones! I need bones!
Of course, flesh could work too, if necessary.
Grotesque, hideous lumps of it.
Or those undead created by stitching together what people called Abominations—flesh-scraps bound together.
But using such things openly wasn’t practical in his current situation.
Zombies reek something fierce, after all!
An Arch Lich had no sense of smell, so it didn’t matter then, but now he inhabited a living body, didn’t he?
He had no desire to share space with the stench of rot.
This expedition had been a complete waste of time—no materials, no progress, nothing.
That was when it happened.
“I came out here wondering who’s still using outdated hunting methods like that… but what’s this? A Summoner?”
A figure in a sleek black combat suit appeared.
* * *
Kim Hun-chul was an ordinary Hunter. His Rank was D+.
A few tiers above F-Rank—naturally experienced and earning decent money.
Once Hunters reached D-Rank, they could scrape by with half-hearted work. They stopped venturing into Dungeons and earned a comfortable living just from hunting monsters in the Field.
With his earnings, he could afford a Rank 2 Residential District. Not quite enough to retire and live off leisurely for life, but comfortable enough for an easy living.
And most Hunters stopped there.
D-Rank was called the barrier of the novice for a reason.
Because—
To advance from D to C required completing special quests, and the mortality rate exceeded 50 percent.
When your life was on the line, of course people hesitated.
Among such Hunters, some inevitably sought shortcuts.
Kim Hun-chul was one of them.
He offered sacrifice to an Evil Constellation!
That was how he intended to cross into C-Rank.

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This chapter was translated by Lunox Novels. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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