Damn Necromancer - Chapter 48
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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 (48)
“Where can I check on those assignments?”
“There’s a board posted. But… even if you were aiming for tenth place, I don’t think there’s a single mission that would award that many points at once.”
“Still, I’d better take a look.”
“Then come along with me.”
Jang Sam opened the door.
We stepped out of the room.
A row of imposing buildings came into view.
“Quite impressive.”
“It’s Sapha’s largest organization, after all.”
That’s when it happened.
Boom!
An explosion erupted from the adjacent building.
Moments later, a section of wall burst open, and a man came flying out with blood trickling from the corner of his mouth.
Jang Sam’s eyes widened at the sight.
“That… that person is….”
“Someone you know?”
“……Isn’t that Sa Gong-ja? He’s… he’s the master’s half-brother!”
A figure emerged from the shattered wall.
A woman striding forward with clenched fists and a menacing aura.
“What the hell do you think you’re touching, you perverted bastard?”
“……Huh?”
Kim Min-woo tilted his head.
That voice was familiar.
He looked at her face.
“……Seo Ye-rim?”
At the sound of her name, her eyes widened.
“Kim Min-woo! You were nearby?”
She brightened immediately.
Now he understood who had burst in.
The Sword Saint Seo Ye-rim.
It was her.
“What brings you here?”
“To rescue you.”
“Why?”
“If you died, I thought your grandfather would be sad.”
Wow.
He’d known she admired the Sword Saint, but he hadn’t realized it ran this deep.
He found himself genuinely impressed.
That’s when it happened.
Sa Gong-ja, staggering to his feet, began looking back and forth between Kim Min-woo and Seo Ye-rim.
“Ha. Baek So-cheon, you scoundrel—surely you haven’t been laying hands on my newly arrived maidservant?”
“Maidservant?”
“Don’t play dumb. You worm….”
Sa Gong-ja glared at them both with blazing eyes, clearly laboring under some grave misunderstanding.
It seemed a whole melodrama of infidelity was playing out in his head. Moments later, warriors came rushing over.
“Sa Gong-ja!”
“Are you alright?”
“……Leave me be! I’m fine. Do you think this body would crumble from a mere slap by a maidservant?”
Ah, so she’d slapped him and sent him flying.
Seo Ye-rim’s strength must have reached truly fearsome levels.
‘Come to think of it.’
As an Awakener called a Class A talent, her stats would be no laughing matter.
The ability points she’d accumulated through training alone must be beyond imagination.
“Ye-rim, are you really a maidservant?”
“Ha. I don’t know either. That’s apparently become my role, but they assigned me under some pervert, so….”
“Since you’re going to do it anyway, why not become my maidservant? That would be better.”
“……Wait, isn’t there an option to not be a maidservant at all?”
“Positions are difficult to escape from in the first place. Especially in times like these.”
At that, Sa Gong-ja nodded vigorously in agreement.
“You filthy insect, well spoken indeed! How dare you, a mere maidservant, strike this face? Impertinent wretch! I’ll twist your limbs from their sockets!”
Sa Gong-ja’s eyes blazed as he drew his blade.
The warriors’ spirits grew vicious.
Kim Min-woo stepped forward.
“But you’ve been calling her an insect this whole time. Don’t you find it tiresome?”
“What’s wrong with calling a lowborn wretch an insect when we don’t even know her parents? Doesn’t everyone think the same?”
The warriors fell silent.
He was descended from the Sadoryeon’s line, after all.
While bloodkin might insult one another, it was unseemly for these men to voice direct agreement.
They were hardly first-rate warriors—at best, second-rate mercenaries.
Still, they could show their tacit approval.
A subtle sneer here and there would suffice.
Sa Gong-ja was merely a bungler who’d never demonstrated a shred of genuine Martial Arts—a libertine who drank and solicited courtesans day after day.
His standing within the Sadoryeon was so negligible as to be nonexistent; at this level, they need not fear repercussions.
Sa Gong-ja would protect them.
It was then.
Kim Min-woo turned to his servant.
“Hey, Jang Sam.”
“Yes, Master?”
“You saw it, didn’t you? They were laughing at me.”
“Well… that is…”
Jang Sam’s eyes darted about frantically.
A touch of brutal honesty seemed necessary.
Kim Min-woo’s grip tightened on the man’s shoulder—a pressure Jang Sam had never imagined possible—and the servant’s face flushed crimson.
“You saw it?”
“Yes! Yes, I did! These two eyes of mine saw it plain as day!”
“Good.”
He released Jang Sam’s shoulder.
Witness secured.
He drew his blade.
“When underlings mock their master, they deserve death, don’t they?”
“Is this wretch mad…”
He extended his hand toward Sa Gong-ja, who was now laughing coldly.
That was the moment.
“What?”
“What is this!”
Nearly thirty warriors cried out in horror. Hundreds of bleached bones were seizing their legs, clawing at them savagely.
Squelch!
“Aaagh!”
Weapons thrust in from all sides, and five or six warriors fell dead in an instant.
“Stop them! Block!”
Mana bloomed atop the warriors’ blades, their weapons flailing in multiple arcs.
Martial Arts.
‘Around Level 200, I’d wager.’
There was nothing supernatural about these Murim fighters, no transcendent power.
They wielded Mana and steel just as these warriors did—merely with more refinement.
‘Then they can’t win.’
The skeleton mob averaged Level 51, and beyond the Magic Set Items he’d crafted and equipped them with, their average stats had ballooned through bone grafting.
Not to mention they’d accumulated some combat experience.
With hundreds of such creatures launching an ambush from below, barely thirty unremarkable warriors stood no chance whatsoever.
Wounds multiplied across the warriors’ bodies. Their counterattacks against the skeletons proved futile.
Even when destroyed, the creatures reformed and struck back without fail.
Sa Gong-ja pointed toward Kim Min-woo in panic, shouting urgently.
“Necromancy! Strike down the caster first! That bastard Baek Socheon! Stop him!”
The warriors who’d been fending off the skeletons charged forward with vicious faces.
In that instant, Cedric, who had been waiting quietly at the side, swung his spear.
The warriors sneered as they raised their weapons.
Burst!
The heads of the five warriors who’d charged exploded like fireworks.
The remaining warriors who’d been about to advance skidded to a halt in sudden terror.
Just one move.
That alone was enough to tell roughly what he was.
“Good heavens…….”
“A, a master!”
A bone creature wielding a spear.
That individual—half again larger than the other bone creatures—was an extraordinarily skilled master.
A master of such overwhelming power that they stood no chance whatsoever!
The second-rate warriors fell one after another.
[Your level has increased by 1!]
Only one remained alive: Sa Gong-ja.
“Jang Sam.”
“Y, yes!”
Jang Sam stared at the sea of blood before him, his eyes glazed with shock.
I turned to him.
“Can I kill him?”
“Ah, well…… the Sadoryeon Lord wouldn’t be pleased, I think…….”
“Is that so?”
“Yes. Killing warriors of that caliber is no great matter, but having you directly kill his own son Sa Gong-ja would be…… problematic.”
“Understood.”
I nodded and moved toward Sa Gong-ja. His body was already shredded like a rag, pierced by countless weapons.
“Kneel.”
The disarmed skeletal creatures forced him to his knees.
I seized him by the hair and locked eyes with him.
“Hey.”
“H, h-hyiek……!”
The reek of urine wafted up.
I could see the floor was soaked wet.
“Do you understand why we fought?”
His eyes rolled about wildly.
I backhanded him across the face.
I watched several of his teeth skitter across the floor. The shock of such tremendous force made Sa Gong-ja’s eyes bulge wide open.
“Did you hear me?”
“Y, yes! I, I did wrong! I didn’t know my place!”
“You won’t mouth off again, will you?”
Nod!
Sa Gong-ja nodded urgently.
“But look at this bastard—just nodding his head? No manners.”
Crack!
I struck his face once more.
Several more teeth rolled across the floor.
“No, no more! For real!”
Tears streamed down his face.
At last he seemed to have reached a state of genuine contrition.
“That maidservant—I’m taking her into my service. You have no objection, yes?”
“Y, yes, of course! Take her! She’s yours!”
I had his consent.
Now it was time to settle accounts precisely.
“Right. But your older brother was in a foul mood earlier? Called me vermin, he did.”
“I, I’m sorry!”
“I know, I know. Still, debts must be paid. How about we just cripple your legs and call it even? You should be grateful you’re not dead, after all.”
“P, please!”
“Hmm. Or would you rather I cripple your arms too?”
“Nooo……!”
“Hold still. Or you’ll get hurt more.”
I arranged both his ankles carefully together.
That was when.
“Sa Gong-ja, are you really going to crush him?”
A voice came from behind.
I turned my head.
An old man was staring at me intently.
“Who might you be?”
“Heh heh. Have you forgotten this old woman’s face already? I’m Oe Da, Second Elder. You’ve made quite the spectacle here.”
Considerable Mana rose behind the chuckling elder.
You could tell at a glance she was no ordinary fighter.
‘A master, then?’
Level-wise, at least 400 or higher.
The real deal.
“Elder. If I don’t crush his ankles, what will you give me?”
“What? Why would I?”
“Then I’ll crush them.”
Crunch!
Both ankles were crushed thoroughly.
The bones must have shattered completely—his ankles dangled grotesquely.
Sa Gong-ja’s face went slack as if he’d lost consciousness.
He hurled the man’s face against the floor.
“Huh…….”
He watched the Second Elder blink in bewilderment.
“What’s wrong? This isn’t some stuffy orthodox sect, is it?”
“Well, that’s true, but…… never mind. The point is something else. Sa Gong-ja. You’ll need to come with me.”
“Why?”
“The Master of Sadoryeon is calling for you.”
“Let’s go.”
He’d needed to meet the Master of Sadoryeon eventually anyway.
He moved toward the elder’s side.
“Follow me.”
The elder’s figure glided smoothly away.
Without any Divine Movement Technique to speak of, he couldn’t keep pace that way. So he had no choice but to pursue through sheer effort.
Fortunately, he managed to keep up reasonably well.
And so Kim Min-woo and the elder departed.
Seo Ye-rim, left alone, stared blankly ahead.
The situation had ended before she could even attempt anything.
Which was why she found it absurd.
‘…… How is he that strong?’
Those warriors from before.
And Sa Gong-ja too.
For a C-rank Gate, they possessed strength befitting a boss and its minions—yet Kim Min-woo had crushed them with a single gesture. The skeletons alone had been beyond imagination. Ordinary summons had some notion of how to fight.
And that one called Cedric…….
‘Even I would need time to subdue him.’
If their physical abilities were comparable, she would lose without question.
His Spear Mastery was that refined.
A monstrous summon.
Which made suspicion inevitable. The scenario was supposed to be an ordinary citizen forcibly pulled into a Gate and then rescued.
‘Was this all planned from the start?’
From loitering at the Gate entrance, to possessing such power while pretending to be confused, to being conveniently pushed forward—it all felt orchestrated.
Like he’d deliberately engineered the entire setup to enter.
“…… But why did he leave me here alone?”
That was when it happened.
The servant called Jang Sam appeared beside her and cleared his throat loudly.
“Ahem! How delightful to be working together. I’m Jang Sam. As the only loyal servant to Sa Gong-ja, I’ve always been relied upon most heavily by him.”
“…… Yes.”
“You were called a maidservant, yes? Our stations are similar enough, though seniority exists depending on when we entered service. Senior, or rather—that sounds too stiff. How about I call you ‘brother’? If you’d call me Jang-brother…….”
“Excuse me.”
“Yes?”
“Can you drop the affected tone? And what’s this ‘brother’ business. How old are you anyway?”
“I’m, well, twenty years old?”
“Twenty, not forty?”
“F-forty? What do you mean——”
“I’m twenty-two, so just call me noona. You’ve got no skill to speak of anyway, so what’s this about deserving seniority…….”
“W-what? What are you saying…….”
Jang Sam’s eyes flew wide open.
Somehow her hand had already reached his throat, and above that hand he felt a keen sharpness that made his skin prickle.
His heart seized.
‘She’s… holding sword energy in her bare hand?’
This maidservant was a master.
A master of a caliber that someone ordinary like him couldn’t even begin to imagine!
“Am I wrong? In the Murim, isn’t the strongest one always the senior, the older brother or sister?”
“……Yes, you’re right, Miss.”
Now that he thought about it, she’d sent Sa Gong-ja flying with just one slap across the face.
Jang Sam’s demeanor became deferential of its own accord.
“Guide me, then. I don’t know where we’re going.”
Though I don’t know either, come to think of it…….
Jang Sam swallowed his unspoken words and moved forward. It seemed he’d have to go wherever his feet took him.
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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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