Damn Necromancer - Chapter 126

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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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Wasteful Necromancer (126)
While he entrusted the Awakeners’ training to the Guild members and legion commanders.
In the Black Mages’ research laboratory within the Temple, Kim Min-woo was absorbed in alchemy.
Or rather, to be precise, it wasn’t him doing the absorbing.
[Apprentice Alchemist 234 uses Elven Alchemy (D)…….]
[Apprentice Alchemist 342 uses Elven Alchemy…….]
[Critical Failure!]
[An impossible combination! This will never form a potion! Proficiency is not increasing!]
[Critical Failure!]
.
.
Skeletons were simply rolling about in utter failure.
Ifrax’s Mental Attack.
To begin with, touching another’s mind was an exceedingly high-level domain.
Creating a potion that could block such a thing with merely D-grade alchemy was nearly impossible. One would need at least S-grade to produce something of that caliber.
So he changed his approach.
Did he really need a potion that defended the mind to counter a Mental Attack?
Kim Min-woo didn’t think so.
A Mental Attack, fundamentally, wasn’t the kind of ability that enslaved you the moment you heard it, like some mind control.
That would be Divine Power close to godhood itself.
‘Gods don’t mess around like that.’
If someone actually possessed that caliber of power?
The High Priest and every Black Mage would already be treated as slaves.
‘If they’re bound by the Sealing Formation…….’
At best, it was an ability that turned one into a puppet given enough time.
Which meant there was a window—a lag between the mind being shaken and it being fully ensnared.
If one exploited that gap skillfully, a Mental Attack could absolutely be disrupted. Which was why the skeletons were rolling about relentlessly.
Three days of grinding labor, nonstop.
“About time something came together…….”
That was when it happened.
[Success!]
[The Potion of Unbearable Stench and Taste is created!]
[A new alchemy recipe has been discovered! It has been added to your list!]
[The apprentice alchemists gain invaluable experience!]
[Knowledge Explosion!]
[Success!]
[The Potion of Overwhelming Itching is created…….]
[Success!]
[The Potion of Catastrophic Sneezing is…….]
[New alchemy recipes have been discovered! They have been added to your list!]
[Elven Alchemy (D) proficiency increases.]
“Did they work?”
The skeletons reverently offered up the potions. He took them and examined the details.
[Potion of Unbearable Stench and Taste]
[Grade: Unique+]
[The mad creator’s first masterpiece. It feels as though every foul taste and putrid smell in existence has been crammed into a single potion.]
[Effect 1. Intensely spicy, salty, sour, bitter, and nauseating all at once. Then comes an explosion of umami.]
[Effect 2. Upon consumption, it inflicts indescribable agony upon the taste buds and sense of smell for the duration. (2 hours)]
[Potion of Overwhelming Itching]
[Grade: Rare+]
[The mad creator’s second tour de force. Drinking it is not recommended.]
[Effect 1. Upon consumption, the entire body feels as though ants are crawling across it in unbearable itching. (1 hour 30 minutes)]
[Potion of Catastrophic Sneezing]
[Grade: Magic+]
[The mad creator’s third work. This one is at least somewhat humane.]
[Effect 1. Upon consumption, uncontrollable sneezing ensues. (1 hour)]
“Oh.”
Kim Min-woo let out a small sound of admiration upon reading the details. The Elven recipes didn’t include these sorts of creations, so he’d simply dumped every remotely related ingredient he could find into the brewing attempts.
“A Unique came out?”
Three days of sweat-soaked effort.
It was a relief that the effort hadn’t gone to waste. With the recipe registered, infinite copies were now possible as long as he supplied the materials.
‘And one of them is Rare grade.’
The destructive power might be even more terrible than he’d anticipated.
‘I think I need to run a test…….’
Lives were on the line.
Verification of potency was essential.
There was no peace of mind without direct experimentation. He picked up the Potion of Unbearable Stench and Taste, and swallowed hard.
“……Here goes.”
Eyes squeezed shut, he gulped down the contents.
Gulp.
The moment the liquid touched his tongue, a explosive symphony of flavor erupted across his mouth.
As for the stench—it was suffocating, like food scraps that had been festering in a sewer for decades.
“Blech!”
His spine convulsed in an involuntary heave.
The only reason he didn’t collapse was the hardening of experience; he’d been through worse.
“Ugggh. Ugggh.”
He fumbled in his inventory and pulled out a Peppermint Candy.
Even after stuffing ten of them into his mouth at once, the vile taste and stench lingered.
If anything, the mint’s cool fragrance mixing with it made it worse. He grasped, in that instant, what indescribable agony truly meant.
“It works.”
There’s a saying: even in a tiger’s den, if you keep your wits about you, you survive.
Mental Attack was no different.
If the victim could maintain perfect mental clarity, the effect could be prolonged significantly.
Pain was one of the best tools for keeping the mind sharp and alert.
He downed the Rare and Magic grade potions too, each one a single gulp.
Not quite as potent as Unique grade, but this much was sufficient for his purposes.
‘I’m not even hoping to shut it down completely.’
Eleven Light Bombs.
This wasn’t meant to be a war of attrition. When all the bombs detonated, either the thing died or he did—one or the other, nothing in between.
“Achoo! Now, make these. As many as possible.”
Clatter!
His loyal skulls got to work with fervent efficiency.
* * *
Kim Min-woo had been holed up inside the Temple Research Laboratory for three days without a break.
No one could approach him.
From dawn to dusk, the training regimen was so grueling there was barely time to visit anyway.
Between night and dawn, the two legion commanders, unable to sleep, kept watch at the entrance.
Only Guild members came and went. That much, at least. And so curiosity only mounted.
‘What is he doing in there that he won’t come out?’
The leader of all the Awakeners gathered here was Kim Min-woo—no one had to say it.
The four strongest instructors already saw him that way without question.
But here, at this crucial moment when they needed to synchronize, their leader was locked away doing… what, exactly?
By the time curiosity had grown unbearable.
At last Kim Min-woo emerged. And he brought with him a procession of skulls carrying crates brimming with peculiar potions.
“Stop training for a moment, everyone. Gather around.”
Forty-two Awakeners assembled before him.
Kim Min-woo laid out everything he’d gathered about Ifrax for them.
“So… a creature that controls the mind, casts Curses, and possesses special abilities on top of that?”
“Yes. I reviewed the archives whenever I had a moment, and that’s what they indicated.”
The Elven Alchemy wasn’t something he performed—the skulls did that.
Which gave him time to flip through the texts here and there. Finding the hidden chamber in the High Priest’s Chamber had been a bonus.
Inside were records documenting Ifrax’s abilities.
Carefully analyzed and dissected by successive High Priests.
‘They prepared for it in their own way, then.’
Their very perception had been shaped by it from the start.
Not a god.
A dangerous monster. Recognize it as such.
Feel fear. And so on and so forth…….
Despite their title as High Priests, they had clearly regarded Ifrax with caution. Their thorough analysis of the creature’s powers and strength surely stemmed from that wariness.
And so Kim Min-woo had benefited from their work.
After all, he could grasp the enemy’s power and authority in detailed before the raid even began.
“The Curse can be countered with the priests’ Blessing. For the Mental Attack, use this.”
The skeletons that followed handed three potions to the Awakeners.
Horror flickered across the Awakeners’ faces as they read the detailed descriptions.
“……Potion of Unbearable Stench and Taste?”
“……Potion of Overwhelming Itching?”
The one descriptor that seemed halfway decent was “Catastrophic.”
Of course, they were seasoned veterans with their own experience, so they roughly understood why he was handing out these potions.
A Mental Attack—the monster’s primary authority. Trying to endure it with the mental fortitude of an A-grade Awakener clearly had problems written all over it.
‘That’s why he gave us the potions.’
The only issue was that the descriptors were far too ominous. Why else would a piece of trash equipment with no special merits be stamped with Unique and Rare grades?
‘Now that I think about it, that alchemist in Il-sung was selling + potions…….’
‘Did that alchemist make these too? His taste really is peculiar.’
The detailed description seemed to agree, helpfully labeling it “the work of a madness-tainted crafter.”
Even Kim Min-woo, who’d crammed so many of these strange creations into the Preliminary Contest, found it difficult to comprehend.
No matter how plentiful Subspace Rings were, it was hard to believe actual space was overflowing like this.
“You’ve all grasped the basics by now, so from here on, you’ll move into the advanced stage—drinking the potion and practicing with it. Understood?”
“Wait…… shouldn’t we drink it when we actually fight the monster?”
“Why would someone of your caliber ask such a thing? You need to get used to it now so you can drink it and move well then. Isn’t that right?”
“Yes, that’s true.”
“Drink up. This costs more than health tonic.”
Just the material costs for finding the Recipe ran into the hundreds of billions. It was indeed more expensive than ordinary health tonics.
Gulp.
Awakeners stared at the potion with tense faces.
One brave Awakener stepped forward first.
“Here goes!”
Thompson, his burly arms flexing, uncapped the potion and chugged it down.
“……Blehhhh!”
“Ah! Turn your head away!”
“Blehhhh! Can’t stop…… Blehhhh!”
The Awakeners’ complexions turned ashen.
The moment the lid came off, a smell spread—one beyond description.
One thing was certain: just catching a whiff from a distance was enough to make you retch.
‘This is bad.’
Four days left.
Hell seemed about to descend upon Inse.
* * *
When four days had passed.
As soon as morning came, the Awakeners gathered in one place.
“As you all know, we’re conquering that thing today. As I said, we’ll be throwing Light Bombs. One each. It’ll probably be a process of taking him down step by step.”
Everyone nodded.
They’d already heard information about Ifrax.
In addition to Mental Attack and Curse.
‘He has Pain Reduction too, if I remember right. He’s more troublesome than I thought.’
Pain Reduction.
Only a few A-Rank Gate bosses possessed such an ability.
The effect was simple.
When taking large damage from a single hit, a certain portion of that damage was negated.
The larger the single-hit damage, the greater the damage negation scaled proportionally. That way, you couldn’t throw all the bombs at once. The damage reduction would be far too great.
Then.
Kim Min-woo smiled and spoke.
“There’s no need to be so tense. Haven’t you all worked hard?”
“That’s…… true. Though I thought I’d die getting used to that potion the leader gave us.”
Thompson spoke with a bitter smile.
By now, even after drinking the potion, he no longer collapsed unconscious and retching.
Just deeply, terribly nauseated.
“Let’s go.”
He moved with the Awakeners into the Temple Underground.
Between the sprawling magic formations, Black Mages could be seen bound.
‘The condition for appearance is…….’
Not offering a sacrifice to the Sealing Formation.
Until now, they had been dutifully feeding Black Mages to it.
But now that preparations were complete.
There was no need for that anymore.
Undead legions filled the underground, interspersed with Awakeners gripping their weapons with apprehension. Tension hung heavy in the air.
A raid attempted by many naturally carried high difficulty.
Usually, a single mistake meant death. Casualties were inevitable.
Of course they would be tense.
Kim Min-woo turned and spoke.
“Just move as you practiced beforehand. I can’t promise there won’t be casualties, but there’s one thing I can tell you.”
He paused a beat, then smiled broadly.
“The reward will be worth risking your lives for. Now then, let’s begin.”
Immediately after.
Five blue arrows pierced through the foreheads of the bound Black Mages.
Clean, instant death.
Rumble…!
The entire Temple began to shake as if struck by an earthquake.
[No sacrifice has been offered to the Sealing Formation!]
[Ifrax grows greatly enraged!]
[Warning!]
[If no sacrifice is offered to the Sealing Formation within ten minutes, Ifrax will manifest directly upon the land!]
On the first day, the ground had trembled loudly.
It had quieted soon after—apparently because they’d offered a new sacrifice within those ten minutes.
But now they had no intention of doing so. As time passed, the ground shook harder and harder.
Crack…!
Crack…!
Soon, cracks began spreading from the hole where souls had been drawn in.
A chasm like an enormous well opened up. Its depth was such that the bottom seemed to extend endlessly.
[Warning!]
[Ten minutes have passed!]
[Ifrax, the true master of the Cursed Land, now appears!]
Something began floating up from the depths of the chasm. A grotesque creature formed of hundreds of eyeballs clustered together like grapes.
The Awakeners drank the potions they had prepared.
Blink.
Ifrax blinked.
The strategy was beginning.
A Light Bomb was hurled toward it.
Boom!
A pure white explosion erupted across its eyeballs.

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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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