Damn Necromancer - Chapter 19

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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 (19)
A vast forest unfurled before his eyes.
Woooo!
Screech!
Animal cries echoed from a distance.
Time to slaughter those gorilla bastards…….
[Warning!]
[An outsider (1) currently exists within the Gate!]
“Huh?”
He wasn’t particularly alarmed.
Playing as a Gate Hunter long enough meant you encountered this sort of event with considerable frequency.
‘Someone’s forced their way in.’
Every time you entered a Gate, it divided into separate Sections.
Section 1, Section 2, Section 3…….
Each Section contained an identical boss—easier to think of it as parallel worlds running in parallel.
Parties formed to tackle them one at a time in sequence.
‘They probably slipped in before the Sections branched off.’
Nine times out of ten, it was an Assassin.
They had concealment skills and were masters at hiding—their class practically defined it.
The reason they slipped in like this was straightforward.
‘Because murder pays.’
Common monsters, no matter how many you killed, barely dropped decent gear.
But Awakeners?
Kill one and you stripped them bare from head to toe.
They’d be lower-ranked than you, making them easy prey—and some killers just loved murdering humans anyway.
This was one of the main reasons Awakeners in this game formed Parties at all.
D-rank Gates and below had a maximum entry cap of five people per Section.
When five formed a Party and the Party leader stood before the Gate, an entry notification triggered for every member.
It was meant to block Assassins from slipping in undetected beforehand.
Of course, both the Association and the state took this problem seriously, stationing Awakeners to guard popular Gates.
‘But determined ones? They still get through.’
Assassin stealth was nearly impossible to detect even at the same level.
To catch an intruder with certainty, the defenders needed significantly higher power.
As if that were realistic.
The world was vast, and Gates were countless.
Between the hire costs and the simple shortage of high-tier Awakeners——
Intrusion was fundamentally impossible to prevent.
‘Probably C-rank minimum.’
If an Assassin was D-rank or below, the real problem came on exit.
When you cleared the Gate or left mid-run, light burst from the entrance.
A signal: “We’re heading out now.”
But nobody emerged?
That meant the Assassin had slaughtered everyone, used stealth, and escaped clean.
Then came immediate investigation.
D-rank intruders had a very high chance of getting caught.
Levels 101 to 150.
At that tier, almost no one had Trace Erasure.
‘C-rank was different.’
Levels 151 to 250.
The tier where you genuinely settled into the mid-ranks, past the lower echelon.
That’s where Assassins learned their signature move—Trace Erasure.
Once they had that, most conventional methods couldn’t track them anymore.
He had a rough idea why this one had followed him into the Gate.
Entering a Gate alone?
Unless you had a death wish, that meant high-tier power—which meant good gear.
That would’ve caught their eye.
Min-woo let out a soft chuckle.
“I get why you came, but…….”
Did this one know?
How many Assassins he’d killed in Gates so far—thousands upon thousands.
I’ve grown quite familiar with dealing with these creatures.
[Activating Cedric Summon!]
[Activating Skeleton Summon +9!]
After summoning the undead.
[Consuming Detection Potion (Superior Grade)!]
[Effect active for one hour!]
[Consuming Strength Enhancement Potion (Superior Grade)!]
[Strength increased by 50 for one hour!]
[Agility Enhancement…….]
.
.
I consumed the potions I’d purchased at the auction house. Now it was time to hunt.
* * *
Woooo!
Ooh-kee! Ooh-kee!
A massive gorilla and a pack of monkeys charged forward in a frenzy of excitement.
Yet the moment a small dagger swept through the air, they collapsed one after another in sprays of blood.
“Mmm.”
Clearly delighted.
Lee Seo-yoon moved through the monsters with a soft smile, cutting them down as she went.
She was a skilled assassin.
An Awakener who had reached B-rank in Korea, a nation long considered weak in Awakener strength.
What’s more, she ranked among the higher levels even within that B-rank tier.
251 to 350.
That was the range for B-rank Awakeners.
She stood in the early 300s—among the highest.
She even had an alias.
Shadow Whisper.
A name earned for the way she moved with such uncanny grace during every hunt.
Beautiful features.
An air of refined intellect and quiet dignity.
She was remarkably popular.
One might say she rivaled Geomfeng in fame. Yet beneath that active, outward life lay a ruthless killer.
Stabbing, slaying, dismembering.
It was pure joy.
Monsters, though—they’d grown tedious.
She’d killed far too many.
‘But people are different.’
That rush when she severed the tendons of all four limbs, watching them crawl helplessly forward—there was nothing like it.
Her pupils contracted sharply as she recalled memories from the past.
It was a thrill that could only be felt through direct action.
Like pouring carbonated soda directly into one’s veins—a sensation of pure pleasure.
So she made a point of killing at least once a month without fail.
“I’ve been far too busy lately.”
She hadn’t felt that joy in some time, consumed with work for the Gathering.
It had taken her this long to carve out time.
An E-rank Gate.
The perfect place to play with her prey.
And she’d found suitable quarry.
A man entering the Gate alone.
Entering an E-rank solo meant he was probably D-rank.
He might even be C-rank at best.
Even B-rank would pose no problem.
She had full confidence in her abilities.
Since they weren’t in a party, spawn locations within the Gate would be randomized for each of them.
There was no inherent advantage like one being spawned closer to the center.
By now a notification would have appeared for him, sending him rushing forward in desperation to reach the central zone first. She could only hope she’d arrive there before him.
That was when.
[Humanoid Tracking activated!]
Her skill came online.
It was a signal that her quarry was in this vicinity.
She smiled wickedly and activated a skill.
[Shadow Hide (B) activated!]
[The skill may deactivate if you are attacked or collide with an object!]
Her body blurred instantly, fading from sight.
She hadn’t activated the skill out of caution for a careful ambush.
The level difference was overwhelming.
Unless her prey was an A-rank Awakener or higher, there was no reason to move carefully. None whatsoever.
Simply put—
‘I’m going to give them the scare of their life.’
It was purely for entertainment.
Normally, when she revealed herself right before someone’s eyes, they didn’t just startle—they trembled as if seized by convulsions.
The process of driving prey into terror.
That was why she had come here in person.
Step.
Step.
Her body, hidden in the darkness, melted into the forest.
And the moment she found her prey—
‘Huh?’
Her eyes went wide.
She had encountered a sight she’d never even imagined.
A pack of fallen gorillas.
Up to that point, nothing seemed particularly strange.
But the creatures that had brought them down were skeletons.
At a glance, well over four hundred skulls.
‘A Necromancer?’
She’d assumed he was a swordsman when she saw him enter carrying just a single blade.
A profession that defied her expectations.
But that wasn’t the most shocking part.
‘Could that be…him?’
The hottest super rookie in Korea right now!
Min-woo Kim.
There was only one reason she could instantly recognize his name.
The skeletons were uniformly armed. And not with cheap gear—each one carried equipment worth hundreds of millions.
If it were mere dozens, perhaps.
But there was no other Necromancer in Korea capable of equipping hundreds of skeletons like that except Min-woo.
‘Jackpot!’
Lee Seo-yoon’s eyes gleamed with wild excitement. Now that she thought about it, it made perfect sense that Min-woo would come here in disguise.
He clearly hadn’t wanted to stand out.
So he must have forged his identification.
With his status, that would be child’s play.
‘There it is!’
Cedric.
That skeleton that had been featured on broadcasts and in countless articles.
It was positioned among the other skeletons as part of the set.
She’d come here just for fun, never expecting to land such a prize catch.
Like a cat spotting a mouse, her eyes filled with curiosity and sadistic glee.
And as she stepped forward in her excitement—
Click.
‘What?’
[You have stepped on an Explosive Shrapnel Trap.]
Boom!
A massive explosion erupted.
* * *
‘Found her.’
Min-woo’s eyes flashed.
Even drinking the highest-grade Detection Potion, there was an inherent level gap to contend with.
It would help with detection, certainly, but catching an assassin closing in under concealment was devilishly difficult. In the end, whether he could find them before they got close enough to strike was the deciding factor.
If he couldn’t find them, he’d take a blade through the back of the skull and be done for.
So he’d set traps.
That would only be true if they were a Rogue—a class specializing in trap detection and disarming.
‘Assassins are vulnerable to traps.’
And she hadn’t set just one or two. She’d scattered them everywhere using the skeletons, ringed them about thickly.
Assassins fundamentally possessed a wealth of tracking skills—thermal sensing, Humanoid Tracking, and the like.
‘Which meant they’d engage first, inevitably.’
Especially in a lower-tier Gate like this one.
It wasn’t even hunting monsters of equal level—it was culling prey far beneath her own.
Nine times out of ten, carelessness crept in.
The mindset took over: kill quickly, strip the items, and get out.
And since traps were inherently expensive, most wouldn’t bother flooding a low-tier Gate with anti-assassin defenses anyway.
‘They’d never think to watch for traps.’
Besides, looking at the skeletons—wasn’t the prey that wealthy Min-woo?
His gear alone was worth hundreds of billions.
And his level publicly circulated as some twenty-something novice.
Would any assassin hold back from that?
If so, they’d be a saint, not an assassin.
Her prediction hit perfectly.
Just as countless assassins had before, this one rushed in like a moth to flame and triggered the trap.
‘The damage itself is negligible, though…’
The Explosive Shrapnel Trap had one excellent property: once the shrapnel stuck to skin, it didn’t come off easily.
The way the assassin’s body now gleamed and sparkled before her eyes made that clear.
With that coating, stealth became useless.
Now she could see perfectly clearly.
“Glad to see you?”
“……Ha.”
At the greeting, the assassin let out a scoff of disbelief.
The moment the assassin lifted her head, Min-woo’s eyes widened in shock.
‘What?’
A familiar face. A woman he knew well.
He knew her very well indeed.
‘Lee Seo-yoon?’
One of the fairly famous villains in Gate Hunter.
A character who appeared regularly in media feigning kindness, but concealed a psychopath’s nature beneath.
Left unchecked, she’d continue growing until reaching S-rank Awakener status, and she’d become a cursed obstacle to the game’s progression.
‘I’m meeting her now?’
Naturally, she was one of the characters players most wanted to grind into dust.
The problem was that killing her in reality would be difficult. As something of a public figure, disposing of her would be extraordinarily messy.
So if he was going to kill her, it had to be during that random appearance window in a Gate.
But the word “random” wasn’t there for nothing.
For Awakener hunts, when she’d appear and which Gate she’d enter were completely arbitrary.
And he’d just run into her now, of all times?
‘Jackpot.’
Then.
Lee Seo-yoon’s eyes glinted with malice.
“Min-woo, you’ve got some nerve, haven’t you? I thought you’d run, but instead you’re just laying traps everywhere.”
Poison dripped steadily from the Dagger in her grip.
“And you’ve got nerve too? Coming at me like that?”
“Ha……”
Lee Seo-yoon let out a cold, sardonic laugh at the absurdity.
And no wonder—the gap in levels between them alone exceeded two hundred.
With a disparity that large, it was normal to flee without even looking back.
“You don’t know who I am? I’m something of a celebrity.”
“Let’s see… right now you’re what, a level-three-hundred hack of an assassin?”
“In all my life, I’ve never met a madman like this.”

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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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