Damn Necromancer - Chapter 107

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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 Spendthrift Necromancer (107)
Saudi Arabia
Gate Hunter is brutally difficult.
Even if a character advances deep into the late-game story, a single mistake can force you to start fresh.
On top of that, the game had a merciless time ratio: one real-world second equaled one in-game second.
Make one careless error and your character dies?
You have to level them up all over again.
A grind that takes a minimum of one to two years.
‘A nightmare.’
But what could you do about it?
That’s how the developers designed it.
Sure, if you don’t like the temple, you can always leave—except when Gate Hunter first launched, the game’s structure made it nearly impossible to quit.
Graphics a full decade ahead of the competition. A vast, seamless open world.
NPCs that responded like real people.
You could only hop to another game if there was something comparable worth playing.
There wasn’t.
Nothing remotely close to this.
So you had to play, and yet the thought of restarting from scratch every time you died—naked and broke—was utterly demoralizing.
Surely there had to be some kind of speedrun route?
It wasn’t strange that players’ minds converged on this question.
Where there’s demand, there’s supply.
Countless players began hunting for the fastest clear route through Gate Hunter.
What’s the quickest way to beat it?
If you get strong fast enough, that’s the answer, right?
To do that, you’d need to upgrade Skill Books, buy equipment, consume Elixirs….
It all came down to money.
But Park Si-woo, the first character players tackled, was an orphan with a younger sister to support.
All you got was a meager settlement stipend. How were you supposed to make real money fast?
Many methods surfaced, but none fully satisfied the players’ desperate hunger for solutions.
‘Until we found it.’
In the thick of collective brainstorming, someone threw out a brilliant idea.
—If you don’t have money, why not just take it from someone rich?
There happened to be the perfect target.
The King of Saudi Arabia.
In this world’s power rankings, he was consistently ranked number one by wealth.
Yet somehow he hadn’t awakened until well into his mid-forties.
If players could only figure out his Awakening condition….
Numerous Park Si-woos volunteered as the king’s bodyguards and eventually managed to uncover his Awakening requirements.
From that point on, a fixed speedrun route crystallized.
Start the game early. Achieve your Awakening.
Your Achievement Rank will vary depending on your stats, but that hardly mattered.
Once you become an Awakener, loans are easy to secure.
Even a low-rank orphan like Park Si-woo could pull 4,000 to 5,000 from a Tier 1 Financial Institution without blinking.
Max out the credit. Head straight to Saudi Arabia.
Dress decently enough to blend in, then camp stubbornly outside the Royal Palace, waiting for the king’s next public appearance.
If you managed to catch even a distant glimpse of him?
Players unleashed the Arabic they’d memorized by heart.
—Oh, Your Majesty, the Great One! It seems the blessing of Allah upon your person draws ever near!
In Saudi Arabia, an Awakener was a warrior who wielded Mana, the energy that Allah himself commanded. In other words, a warrior blessed by Allah’s grace.
So what the players were really shouting was:
You’re about to Awaken soon, aren’t you?
That was the gist of it.
Saudi Arabia is a monarchy.
Normally, such regimes fear wildcards like Awakeners, but they couldn’t simply suppress everyone either.
That would run counter to the flow of the entire modern age.
Crack down on Awakeners like that and you’d end up like North Korea—overnight.
Besides, even among the royal family, sudden spontaneous Awakenings happened all the time.
So a social consensus had eventually formed in that corner of the world.
Whether royal or commoner, when someone Awakens, celebrate it as a blessing and rejoice.
The strength of that blessing—the Achievement Rank—was never the real issue.
A high Achievement Rank doesn’t mean receiving more of Allah’s blessings, nor does a low rank mean receiving fewer.
What matters is how much you dedicate yourself to society and what role you take on and fulfill.
That was roughly the gist of it.
So when users threw out such words, they amounted to a kind of blessing upon the King himself.
But ordinarily, people didn’t speak so directly or bluntly.
In this world, if you haven’t Awakened by your twenties, you’re considered virtually incapable of ever Awakening.
So to tell a King in his forties that he seems likely to Awaken soon?
It was essentially mockery.
He’d be entirely justified in disposing of such a person on the spot.
Knowing this, the Saudi people didn’t carelessly speak such words.
But then why say them at all?
‘Because you need to grab his attention.’
Ordinary flattery gave the King no reason to listen. You had to strike at what he truly craved—only then would he spare even a drop of interest.
No matter how much wealth one possessed, the desire to live long and healthy was universal.
And Awakening wasn’t merely a health measure—it was a means of transforming a person into a superhuman.
Once Awakened, you could consume Elixirs, gain Ranks, and raise Levels and Ability Scores in a heartbeat.
True, you’d become a hollow Awakener in the process, but a King wouldn’t actually go around smashing Gates anyway.
Simply becoming superhuman was enough.
The Saudi King, now in his mid-forties, had never Awakened.
He could never let such words pass unheeded.
Not long after, a discreet summons would arrive, and the users would reveal their conditions.
The Saudi King, at last achieving his lifelong Awakening, would treat the user as a hero and generously bestow a reward.
Usually in the hundreds of billions of won.
‘That much money—I couldn’t have earned it early on.’
He’d gotten it easily as the eldest son of the Ilseong Group.
Park Si-woo’s crowd, lacking social foundation and ability, ordinarily couldn’t earn such amounts.
Even achieving Achievement Rank S from A wouldn’t change that.
Early on, neither Guilds nor nations doled out money so freely.
Though the amount the King handed over was no burden to him, users considered it enough to lose themselves in ecstasy.
Hundreds of billions of won?
Surely enough to spend lavishly through at least the mid-stage progression.
‘Well, things did go smoothly until that point.’
Once the late-stage, where real skill was demanded, many of them simply collapsed—but that was another matter.
Regardless, that this strategy was quite useful was a fact even Kim Min-woo acknowledged.
‘The Middle Eastern wealth boom started around that time too.’
Finding out the Awakening conditions of not just the Saudi King but wealthy Middle Eastern figures, then extracting payment shrewdly.
It was one of the methods Kim Min-woo had exploited most effectively.
‘Those users received only hundreds of billions, as they say.’
He was different.
Those users, frankly speaking, lacked foundation, talent, and ability—they simply took whatever the King offered.
But the price of goods naturally varies greatly depending on circumstances and timing.
The right to set the price didn’t belong to the King.
‘It belongs to me.’
He had no intention of selling Awakening methods for such pittance.
After all, among the wealthy were countless who would pour their entire fortunes just to return to youth.
And to offer them superhuman transformation for such meager payment?
The picture was entirely unappetizing.
Inside Ilseong’s comfortable private jet, he entered Saudi airspace.
Far ahead, fighter jets came into view, escorting him in.
‘Well, the treatment isn’t bad.’
Before coming, he’d spoken with the King a few times through Chairman Kim’s connections.
The main content had been simple.
Would you like to Awaken?
I can help you.
It would be even better to discuss various business matters as well.
Roughly that.
The King had answered with a suspicious tone, but the treatment was nonetheless nearly at the level of a state guest.
‘He must be desperate.’
Besides, though the King held high station, he himself wasn’t to be taken lightly.
This was a world where successful Awakeners received respect—and that aside, his direct connection to Ilseong Group carried considerable weight.
He’d raised his market value considerably through this Guild War.
Six months into his Awakening, displaying such formidable strength—it would be stranger still if they didn’t show him proper respect.
The plane touched down smoothly.
Kim Min-woo descended the stairs at a leisurely pace.
In the distance, Saudi fighter jets streaked across the sky, trailing red, blue, and white smoke—the colors of Korea’s flag—in welcome.
And as if that weren’t enough, key members of the Royal Family themselves had come to the Airport to receive him in person.
A Foreign Minister speaking fluent English.
“Welcome. We’ve heard much of your reputation even here, Kim Min-woo.”
“Thank you for such generous hospitality.”
“Please. His Majesty was most insistent. Show every courtesy, he said. Shall we? His Majesty is waiting.”
To extend such deference—
it was also a warning, if one were so inclined to read it: make this worth our while, or there’d be consequences.
Not that it mattered.
After all, he’d brought the genuine article as his gift.
“Those journalists over there—they look Korean, don’t they?”
“Yes, they are. They claimed they wanted to film you, so we’ve allowed it for now, but…”
He nodded quietly, then spoke to the Foreign Minister.
“Would it be possible for them to accompany us to the Royal Palace? Just to film from outside?”
“Hmm… well… ordinarily that would be rather difficult…”
“I’d appreciate it if you could arrange it.”
“…Very well. They may follow at a distance. However, they cannot enter the Palace itself.”
“Of course, that’s understood.”
* * *
Saudi Arabia.
Korean journalists were present here as well.
At this moment, they couldn’t tell whether what unfolded before their eyes was dream or reality.
They’d heard the news that Kim Min-woo was departing for Saudi Arabia.
They’d managed to contact the Ilseong Group side and gather some details.
An audience with the King, apparently?
The Saudi King commanded wealth so vast that even Korea’s top conglomerates trembled in his presence.
There were stories that when he’d visited Korea in the past, he’d summoned every chaebol chairman and discussed business with each of them personally—a figure of such magnitude.
Even Chairman Kim of Ilseong found it difficult to secure an appointment with him easily.
That was the Saudi King.
Which was why they tilted their heads in confusion.
Kim Min-woo was meeting with the King?
Why on earth?
And yet… somehow…
‘What is this?’
‘What could they possibly be discussing that warranted this level of protocol?’
‘Isn’t this the kind of ceremony even Korea’s President doesn’t receive?’
However skilled an Awakener Kim Min-woo was, this level of protocol seemed excessive by any measure.
Yet they proceeded anyway.
Which meant there had to be a reason. What that reason was, they were dying to know.
Just then, one of the Saudi personnel approached and whispered something.
The journalists’ faces lit up at once.
“Really? We can film all the way to the Royal Palace?”
They’d barely been allowed to film from a distance at the Airport.
What sudden fortune was this?
“Yes. Kim Min-woo made a special request. However, only the exterior grounds.”
“Of, of course! Everyone, grab your equipment!”
The broadcast crews, their mouths agape as they filmed, began following the vehicle carrying Kim Min-woo from a distance.
* * *
The landscape of ornate streets unfurled before them.
Saudi Arabia.
The world-famous oil nation.
Both in the real world before entering Gate Hunter, and here as well.
‘The wealth here is staggering.’
A world where Mana Stones had established themselves as the new energy resource.
Demand for oil had declined somewhat from its former heights.
But it hadn’t dropped to extremes.
There were many reasons.
‘Mana Stones are commercialized, and oil is essential to the process.’
Using oil in the refinement stage boosted efficiency considerably.
Though Mana Stone Vehicles had emerged and internal combustion engines were declining, they hadn’t yet achieved complete replacement.
The Mana Stone Battery industry remained the sector of the future precisely because growth potential still overflowed from it.
‘Beyond that, there are countless other applications.’
Oil was used across far more diverse fields than most people realized.
It was nearly impossible to find a single everyday item that didn’t contain some petroleum derivative.
The conclusion was simple.
Saudi Arabia, an oil-producing nation, remained wealthy. And in this kingdom lived a money-man of extraordinary caliber.
‘King Abdullah.’
Now came the moment to meet him.
As we entered the Royal Palace, the Saudi royal cavalry encircled our vehicle, beginning their escort.
Shortly after the vehicle came to a halt.
I was able to face the King himself, who had come out to greet us.
“It’s an honor to meet you, Your Majesty.”
“The pleasure is mine. My heart has been so stirred that I scarcely slept last night.”
The King spoke fluent English.
I answered in kind.
“I believe your anticipation will be well rewarded.”
“Let us proceed. To the palace.”
We passed through the honor guard’s ceremonial salute and entered the Royal Palace together.
The time had come to extract wealth from this money-man.

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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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