Damn Necromancer - Chapter 31

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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 Wastrel Necromancer (31)
Apprentices
The dwarves gathered in the Smithy stared blankly at the skeletons.
“Chieftain. You mean to use these things as apprentices? No matter how short-handed we are…….”
Obern, the town’s master blacksmith.
At his words, Turon scratched his head.
“I know it sounds absurd. But the man asked me directly. He swore they’d outwork any orc.”
The blacksmiths regarded the skeletons. Wind whistled through the hollow gaps between their bones.
Skeletons were stupid summons.
Their stats were pathetic.
Better than orcs, though?
Whether it was the man who said it or the chieftain who’d believed him enough to bring these bones here, neither had a shred of sense.
‘Damn it. The chieftain’s lost his mind. Orcs would be better. At least they’re stronger…….’
Obern and the other blacksmiths’ faces fell flat with disapproval.
“……I have a favor to ask of you.”
“Huh.”
Obern let out a long sigh and nodded.
Still, for all his title as chieftain, he had to preserve his dignity.
“……Very well. But…… you know as well as I do? Half-measures are worthless.”
“I know. I know full well. Just try working with them for a day. If you still hate it, I’ll tell the man myself. Surely we need some justification to refuse him, wouldn’t you say?”
“……Understood.”
The chieftain’s face brightened at that, and he fled the place as if his life depended on it.
For a moment, the skeletons left behind stood alone.
Then Obern issued his orders.
“Listen! You bones! Split into groups of twenty and attach yourselves to a blacksmith!”
Clack!
The skeletons divided.
“Get that steel and those molds over here! Watch your step on the floor when you do!”
“Move that over there and set it down! Right to this height!”
Clack!
As the skeletons executed his instructions with perfect precision, Obern’s eyes widened.
“Hmm. Well, at least they listen to orders.”
Even so, it’d take twenty of them to match the strength of one or two orcs.
Obern and the other blacksmiths continued issuing instructions.
“Take that out, cool it in cold water, and stamp on it. With your weight…… ten of you moving together should do it. Once per second. Stamp here, here, and here.”
Clack!
“Melt the steel here and pour it into the mold. Thirty seconds. When this stopwatch finishes spinning like this, pull it out.”
Clack!
“That’s it! Just like that! These are smarter than I thought? Well then, try this too. Pour liquid into this mold to about this level, then cool for twenty seconds…….”
As if climbing a staircase one step at a time, the blacksmiths gradually assigned more difficult tasks and watched the skeletons’ eyes light up with intrigue.
“Obern. These really don’t seem like ordinary skeletons, do they?”
“……Well, the chieftain’s words weren’t entirely false, it seems.”
The deafening ring of hammers.
The hot, stifling air and the irritability the blacksmiths gave off.
Any ordinary laborer would collapse after two or three hours of apprentice work.
But the skeletons were different.
Like true and faithful workers, they performed every instruction without complaint or hesitation. And they did it flawlessly.
The skeletons’ performance far exceeded imagination.
‘At this level, we could subdivide the work even more…….’
If the skeletons could handle not just the basic processes but also the more advanced techniques?
Production efficiency would skyrocket.
“……Should I try teaching them properly?”
If the continent had remained at peace as it was before, such a thought would have been unthinkable. Even the most talented apprentices didn’t casually receive instruction in the craft, as such knowledge was jealously guarded.
There was even a running joke that to learn Dwarf Crafting Technique, you had to work an apprenticeship for ten years.
But things were different now.
The world had fallen half to ruin.
What good was hoarding knowledge? It wouldn’t buy them wealth or glory.
This had become an age where efficiency mattered above all else. Without it, survival was impossible.
“You. Try gripping this hammer.”
It had been six hours since the skeletons arrived. That was why, in just that short span of time, one of them was already being given a hammer to hold.
“Listen carefully. Once you pull the mold from over there, tap here, here, and here…… and smooth out this seam….”
* * *
[Skeleton 1 receives the Dwarf Crafting Technique from Obern…….]
[Skeleton 343 receives the Dwarf Crafting Technique from Malcom…….]
[Skeleton 1,102 receives the Dwarf Crafting Technique from Pudal…….]
Four days had passed since sending the skeletons out.
Now they were absorbing not just basic crafting, but the very essence of Dwarf technique in its entirety. As a result, equipment production had exploded.
The target production rate, assuming the smithy was fully staffed with apprentices, had been two hundred sets per day. Yet now they were churning out three hundred sets daily.
The skeletons had grown beyond mere apprentice roles—their share in the actual production work kept expanding.
The stockpiled steel was depleting rapidly; the newly arrived orc recruits were already heading out to mine fresh ore.
In the distance, Turon and a handful of orcs approached, hauling carts behind them.
―”Squeak! Brought more equipment today!”
“Three hundred and twenty sets this time!”
Turon spoke with eyes gleaming, barely containing his excitement.
“You seem quite pleased, sir.”
“Aye! When was the last time I saw our smiths throwing themselves into work like this? We dwarves are the race of craftsmanship, after all! The whole village is buzzing with life again!”
Fair point.
With the dwarven population so much thinner now than before, opportunities for them to work with such urgency had been few and far between.
The flood of orcs had breathed new energy into them as well.
“Your soldiers are performing well, I hope?”
“No need to ask twice! Look at the production numbers climbing every single day—how could I not see it? Even that fussy Obern has been spilling his secrets. Your summons must’ve impressed them quite a bit.”
It was nothing short of universal praise.
“But are you certain about this? You’ve essentially sent me every summon you could raise….”
A Necromancer’s maximum summon capacity was proportional to their maximum Mana.
Once all of it was spent summoning,
‘even potions won’t let me summon anymore.’
All Summoner-type classes shared this limitation.
Currently, every skeleton except Cedric had become a Dwarf apprentice.
Still, it didn’t matter.
“I can manage by directing the orcs instead.”
Kim Min-woo was a remarkably unusual Necromancer—one who could level up without relying on summons at all. If necessary, he could simply wield his blade and move forward.
Leveling up proceeded smoothly even without the skeletons. He had the orcs as a sturdy shield, after all. He’d climbed ten levels in just three days.
‘The gap between me and the skeletons has widened a bit….’
But he could always raise their levels later.
Dwarf craftsmanship, though—that was different.
‘If I miss this chance, I can’t promise when I’ll get another shot at learning this.’
This Gate had excellent circumstances.
Fantasy Type.
And the Gate’s size was vast.
Meeting the dwarves had been fortunate.
In a dying world, they freely shared techniques that would normally be guarded jealously for years.
‘Once I’ve learned it….’
Kim Min-woo smiled to himself, envisioning the future. If he fed the skeletons through the labor, he might equip himself with goods finer than anything in the auction house—all self-sufficient.
For someone who would need to deploy countless summons going forward, this crafting skill was like rain during a drought.
“I see. You’ve been working hard. We’ve eaten our fill for the first time in ages thanks to you.”
“There are quite a lot of monsters. Still plenty to hunt, for now….”
“But it won’t overflow forever. In the end, it comes down to a race against time.”
“Yes. We’ll need to assault the Fortress.”
Turon nodded at those words and gazed out at the orcs.
“The sheer numbers of orcs are staggering. For them to survive in this harsh climate, and in such quantities….”
Turon’s observation was accurate.
The rate at which stragglers were flocking in kept accelerating.
He’d sent orcs in all directions to spread the word.
Join the Resistance, and you’d eat your fill. Better yet, you could take revenge against the Apostles and the Witches.
The slogan had been a rousing success.
Orc numbers had already surpassed two thousand, and the growth curve was climbing even steeper.
That was when it happened.
[Warning!]
[Enemy Alert Level has changed!]
[0 → 5 (Something is wrong—they are aware.)]
‘They figured it out.’
The ones I sent aren’t coming back.
Of course they’d find it suspicious.
And then…….
[The first scout party has been mobilized!]
[Eloom, the Apostle’s subordinate Necromancer, is on the move!]
[Fifty Phantom Knights follow Eloom!]
[One hundred Corpse Collectors follow Eloom!]
A message flashed before me announcing that they had begun their advance.
‘At least for now they’re only sending scouts.’
If it were the main force, I’d be doomed—but if they’re coming in fragments, there was a fighting chance.
I looked out at the two thousand orcs.
It was time to prepare for battle.
* * *
Eloom, the Necromancer.
Right now his mood was deeply unsettled.
He had dispatched forces under his command to deal with a situation.
But there had been no word.
He thought it plausible enough that the Corpse Collectors he’d sent to the orc tribe hadn’t returned.
After all, he’d only sent five of them.
Bad luck aside, they could have run into an accident.
It wouldn’t have been a devastating loss.
But the forces he’d mobilized against the dwarf clan were different.
The scale was entirely different.
These were troops that could not afford to meet with disaster.
‘No report…….’
By all likelihood, they’d been annihilated.
―……Should I send word to the Fortress?
The Phantom Knight posed the question, and Eloom shook his head, then spoke with deliberate calm.
“No. I’ll handle this myself. There’s no need to trouble the Apostle over such a matter. Muster every soldier in this sector.”
―……Understood.
The Phantom Knight withdrew.
‘Damn it. I need to settle this fast.’
Eloom bit at his lip.
All the others were systematically clearing their jurisdictions, yet problems arose only in his sector?
It would take mere moments for the Apostle to mark him as incompetent.
Lost troops could be replenished somehow.
But trust, once shattered, was extraordinarily difficult to restore.
He’d kept the news from traveling upward, but it wouldn’t hold for long. He had to stamp out the spark before it became a roaring flame.
Thus Eloom and his subordinate forces moved forward. Their destination was the Black Rock Tribe.
It was the last place that had sent a report of heading in that direction before all contact was lost.
As they drew closer to the region where the Black Rock Tribe dwelt, strange sights began to unfold.
―……Master Eloom. Something is amiss. These are clearly orc tracks, but…… they keep converging toward where we’re headed.
The footprints pressed into the snow were far too numerous. Moreover, traces of orc excrement and secretions were scattered throughout the terrain without difficulty.
‘Could the orcs have risen in rebellion?’
The orcs struck the dwarves.
If his forces had been drawn into the territory they now occupied…….
‘Then annihilation makes sense.’
When orcs rise up, their numbers run at least a thousand strong. By contrast, the forces he’d sent mustered barely ten Phantom Knights and twenty Corpse Collectors.
There was nothing strange about the forces being swallowed whole.
“Damn…….”
Eloom’s face darkened.
The Witch gnashed her teeth at the mere mention of orcs.
If that was indeed what had happened, he couldn’t hide it from the Apostle.
A report was the absolute priority.
“You, and you—get back to the Fortress this instant…….”
It was then.
Whoosh!
Snow blanketing the ground erupted skyward, and orcs burst forth from all sides.
―Shrieeek! Kill them!
―Orcs! Orcs!
An ambush none had anticipated!
The Phantom Knights managed to respond, barely, but the lesser Corpse Collector fared differently.
Crack!
A savage axe stroke cleaved his torso clean in half.
The disaster didn’t end there.
Moments later, orcs began pouring from all directions.
―Damn it, an ambush!
―These vermin…!
“Don’t panic! Hold formation!”
Eloom barked the command urgently, gathering mana within himself.
Incantation crystallized above his palm.
Corpse Explosion.
If he could complete the casting, he’d annihilate every orc now spilling forth in one devastating wave.
Right then.
Thwack!
A sickening sound, and an arrow lodged in his chest.
“Gasp!”
―Protect Eloom!
A volley of arrows erupted. Shafts aimed at the heads of Corpse Collectors and Phantom Knights alike!
Among the swirling melee of orcs, arrows found their marks with artistic precision.
Only one kind of creature possessed such skill.
‘Elves?!’
Eloom’s eyes widened.
Orcs clad in Dwarf-forged equipment.
And sharpshooters—elves—unleashing their full mastery in the chaos of battle.
The situation had turned dire.
* * *
A frontal assault would cost too much blood. That’s why the ambush had been chosen—some of the orcs had been hidden along the path where the enemy would come.
All of them powerfully built, possessed of brutal stamina.
The result was a complete success.
“Let none escape!”
―Screech!
As the charge order rang out to the orcs.
A strange sight emerged.
From somewhere, arrows came whistling in, assassinating the enemy ranks. Kim Min-woo seized upon the same word Eloom had spoken.
‘Elves?’
Had he witnessed them wandering in combat?
The Witch’s forces being an enemy to the continent itself, it was hardly strange that elves might lend their aid.
‘No harm in it.’
They needed every hand, even a cat’s paw in this hour.
Much less the covering fire of elven archers.
‘Necromancer, was it.’
He observed the human stumbling, an arrow buried in his chest.
‘A commander—clearly a Named, then.’
Named.
Not a boss, but a monster bearing its own identity. Such creatures typically dropped decent loot. Sweet experience points came as a bonus.
‘I’ll land the killing blow.’
Through the chaos of battle, he began moving toward Eloom.

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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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