Damn Necromancer - Chapter 55

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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 (55)
[Detailed rules are provided below.]
[Please refer to the ‘Map’ at the top of the screen.]
[You are marked with a red circle.]
Right corner.
A map resembling a minimap appeared, with the red circle marking his position.
[Current Points: 1]
His points were displayed as well.
[When you eliminate an opponent, all of their points are transferred to you.]
[For every 1 point you hold, all your ability scores increase by 10%.]
[The higher your points, the greater the probability that your location will be revealed on your opponent’s map.]
[Certain zones become Uninhabitable Zones at regular intervals. These will be marked on your map.]
[Rankings will be tabulated and displayed every thirty minutes.]
[Then, good luck.]
“This is amusing.”
The rules were remarkably malicious.
The stronger you grew through killing, the more your location would be exposed, and the greater the risk of being swarmed by others—that was the structure of it.
‘But…’
Even if he swept up points, it didn’t seem like it would be as dangerous as expected.
Because the candidates were weak?
No.
The thirty strongest candidates from the martial world had been gathered here. If even five of them coordinated an assault, victory would be far from assured.
But…
‘The rules will hold me back.’
Human greed carried far greater ripples than one could imagine.
When you killed an opponent, you took all their points.
There was no equal distribution.
Under these conditions, when someone exceptionally strong stood out, could those attempting coordinated strikes truly move as one?
Especially when only three could survive?
‘They absolutely couldn’t.’
All scrambling to secure the killing blow, eyes rolling back, limbs tangling, only to be devoured by the lion.
That exact image was painted in his mind.
‘Then there’s only one thing to do.’
Sweep up all the kills.
Kill everyone and grow the fastest. The goal was set.
With Sedrick summoned, he began to move.
Whether to find Seo Ye-rim.
Or seek out any candidate wandering the path.
Anything would do.
After walking for about ten minutes.
He encountered a familiar face.
Second-rank, Baek Cheol-yong.
The candidate who had achieved fourth place with 9,700 points. For but a moment their gazes locked directly.
Baek Cheol-yong spoke first.
“Baek So-cheon! Thank goodness you’re alive. Surely in times like these, brothers must stick together, don’t you agree?”
“Do you think so?”
They closed the distance, both smiling.
In the next instant, Baek Cheol-yong charged forward with eyes blazing. He drew his blade with a sudden twist.
The strike aimed precisely at the head.
Kim Min-woo tilted his head back.
Baek Cheol-yong’s eyes flashed with intensity.
He tried to bring the blade down in one continuous motion.
At that moment, Sedrick beside him thrust his spear forward with a sharp motion.
Baek Cheol-yong twisted his body urgently, and both Kim Min-woo and Sedrick launched a coordinated assault.
Two swords and a spear clashed, scattering sparks.
Swordsmanship of some sort, perhaps.
This second-rank was far superior to the fourth-rank.
He had mastered the fundamentals.
But he hadn’t progressed to advanced techniques.
‘Then he must die.’
Before even twenty exchanges could pass.
A sword plunged deep into Baek Cheol-yong’s chest.
A moment’s paralysis.
Crack-thwack!
Sedrick’s spear pierced through his entire body.
Spurt!
Baek Cheol-yong coughed blood.
The man stared at Sedrick and then at himself in disbelief, his lips twitching.
“Mon… ster……”
His throat was severed.
[Your Level has increased by 2!]
[Someone has died.]
[Remaining participants: 29]
Messages appeared on the map.
[Current Points: 2]
His body felt noticeably lighter.
* * *
[30 minutes have elapsed. Rankings are being calculated.]
[1st place: Baek So-cheon, 4 points]
[2nd place: Choe Aeng-aeng, Seok Won-cho, 3 points]
[3rd place: Namgung Hye-ji, Baek Mu-han, Choe Mu-baek, 2 points]
.
.
“Amitabha Buddha……”
Gong-sim, a Buddhist monk of Shaolin Temple, chanted a prayer. A contest where one must kill and be killed until only three remained.
This trial was particularly cruel.
The saving grace was that the members of the Murim Alliance gathered here had managed to form a cohesive group.
Four in number.
Few though they were, simply staying together was something to be grateful for in this situation.
If they hadn’t, the top-ranked participants might have accumulated even more points by now.
“…Don’t we need to accumulate points more quickly as well?”
At Jin Cheon-myeong’s question, all fell silent.
Fortune had blessed them with encounters only among the Murim Alliance members, allowing them to band together. Which meant all four had but a single point each.
Ten had died in merely thirty minutes.
If time continued at this pace, the outcome was painfully obvious.
They would be consumed by those who had accumulated points.
“…You’re right, Jin. We need to move quickly as well.”
Then it happened.
[‘Baek So-cheon’ has been marked on the map.]
[Duration: 5 minutes]
A red circle appeared on the diagram called the map.
With brisk running, it was a distance they could cover within five minutes.
Moreover, he wasn’t even an ally who shared rice from the same bowl as the Murim Alliance.
There would be no hesitation in disposing of him.
Their eyes gleamed.
“Four points……”
“With this, we could make up our score in one strike.”
“Indeed. But this man’s skill will be considerable. He may well rank among the very top of our candidates.”
All nodded in agreement.
A man who had killed three within merely thirty minutes.
He surely possessed formidable strength.
“Will you go?”
At Jin Cheon-myeong’s question, the faces of the other three deepened with contemplation.
Then.
Gong-sim raised his hand as he spoke.
“We must face the strong. Coordination is more important than anything else. So we must decide beforehand—who among us will kill him.”
“……”
A sound argument.
Intellectually, it was perfectly reasonable. Yet somehow their hearts thrummed with an ominous flutter.
A suffocating silence stretched on.
Only three people could survive.
But there were four gathered here. In the end, if they went all the way, someone had to die.
Still, whoever killed Baek So-cheon would almost certainly live through the test.
For that reason, none of them could open their mouths easily.
“……Amitabha Buddha. I’ll step aside. Please decide among the three of you.”
The three remaining exchanged opinions.
Only after drawing lots in haste was the fortunate one decided.
Jin Cheon-myeong of the Huashan Sect.
He would take the points.
“We’re simply taking a detour. After this, with the strength of Cheon-myeong’s donor, we too can raise our points quickly.”
The other two nodded at Gong-sim’s words.
But the unease lurking beneath couldn’t be fully dispelled.
‘……There’s no help for it.’
Gong-sim sighed inwardly.
He’d originally planned to take only three for precisely this reason.
Three was the maximum number who could move forward while trusting each other completely.
But he kept meeting Murim Alliance members.
He couldn’t simply abandon the remaining person and leave once the three slots were filled.
Eventually there were four, and the unsettling current was unavoidable. Even if everyone here survived to the end, one of them would absolutely have to die.
It was a cruel reality.
And so the four began moving toward where Baek So-cheon was.
Soon they caught sight of his figure.
The Murim Alliance members, seeing the undead standing around him, narrowed their eyes.
‘A Necromancer?’
Necromancers who dealt primarily with the undead were vulnerable in close combat. If they closed the distance, it was a fight they couldn’t lose.
The killing intent of four people flooded the surroundings.
Then.
Baek So-cheon, turning around, grinned wickedly.
“Four? Who were you planning to kill later, gathering like that?”
“Roar!”
Gong-sim, invoking Lion’s Roar, rushed forward like lightning.
His pure internal energy gathered in both palms, and shortly after, the Shaolin martial arts he’d trained his whole life to master rained down like a deluge.
The other three also rushed in.
Each of their ultimate techniques poured forth, pressing Baek So-cheon.
Then.
The undead holding the spear began to move brilliantly.
‘A master!’
Wariness lit the eyes of all four. They’d thought the undead wouldn’t warrant much attention, but they were entirely wrong.
“Geum, donor! Please take on that undead!”
Geum Nak-cheol, whose expression was grim, nodded and began a one-on-one duel with the spear-wielding undead.
The remaining three unleashed a barrage of attacks on Baek So-cheon.
Against the coordinated assault of three masters, Baek So-cheon was slowly pushed back. Small wounds bloomed across his body as a bonus.
Then.
Baek So-cheon, watching Jin Cheon-myeong boldly launch the Plum Blossom Strike, smiled slyly.
Seeing the plum blossom pattern embroidered on his clothes, he spoke.
“Ah, so the Huashan Sect over there decided to take the points? How nice.”
“Don’t let anyone be swayed by his cunning words!”
Gong-sim cried out urgently.
He’d intended to finish this as quickly as possible.
The problem was that Baek So-cheon endured far too well.
Well enough that he had room to move his mouth even under their coordinated assault.
“It’s not ending as fast as you thought, is it? This is the power of points. But you’re giving that up? Really?”
No matter how hard they tried to ignore it, they couldn’t shut their ears.
Greed began to slowly kindle in the eyes of those executing the coordinated assault. Since everyone was at just 1 point so far, they hadn’t grasped precisely how potent points were.
But watching Baek So-cheon, they were beginning to understand. If he could withstand the combined assault of the Murim Alliance’s top candidates like this……
“If you catch me, the Huashan Sect is guaranteed to survive. So who dies? The gloomy-looking one? Or you, the one who looks older?”
Two would feint, and one would aim for an opening and launch the Plum Blossom Strike.
The coordinated assault, which had been so precise, began to grow ragged. Baek So-cheon, now with far more breathing room, kept talking.
“Neither? Then you there, Buddhist monk! So you’re the one who agreed to be sacrificed?”
……
Gong-sim’s words caught in his throat.
Sacrifice?
What kind of nonsense was that?
He was a martial artist, not a monk. He’d trained in martial arts to gain fame and enjoy wealth and glory.
He hadn’t spent his whole life training just to die a dog’s death in this godforsaken place.
Yet he couldn’t openly deny it either. If he did, morale would shatter in an instant.
But…….
Sometimes silence itself was an answer. All three began subtly shifting their attacks toward the Plum Blossom Strike.
All three grew increasingly desperate.
Slightly more lethal strikes.
Slightly sharper attacks.
Attacks that could kill in a single blow.
All of these necessarily became wider, more pronounced in their movements.
In that instant, every careful feint vanished.
The price for leaving an opening was brutal.
In the blink of an eye, a head flew.
Lee Je-hyeong—the older-looking one.
The master who had served as the pillar of the Lee Clan fell dead in an instant.
“……!”
“Ah, now I can actually breathe.”
Baek So-cheon’s points jumped to 5 in a heartbeat.
Gong-sim and Jin Cheon-myeong.
A chill ran down both their spines.
Even with three of them attacking together, they’d managed only to push him back slightly.
But now there were only two of them left.
And their opponent had become far stronger than before.
Geum Nak-cheol, with his grim expression, was still locked in fierce combat with the undead—and losing ground steadily.
A chance to win?
None whatsoever.
Their judgment was swift, as befitted masters.
The speed of their pivot was an art form.
But regrettably, the 5-point Baek So-cheon was far faster.
Jin Cheon-myeong’s head flew skyward.
A blade pierced through Gong-sim’s heart.
“Kh—hck…….”
“That’s what you get for traveling with men you couldn’t trust. Foolish.”
“You… devil…….”
The blade withdrew with a sound.
Gong-sim crumpled to the ground.
Geum Nak-cheol, the last one standing, fell just the same.
[Your Level has increased by 3!]
Levels rising by 2 or 3 with each battle.
It was insane progression.
It was also proof of just how high the average level was among those participating in the Dragon Phoenix Gathering. Kim Min-woo turned away from their corpses.
If those three had pressed their coordinated assault with unwavering unity, the corpse lying here now might well have been his own.
‘But if the structure had been like that, we wouldn’t have fought in the first place.’
Points distributed equally among all participants.
Or maybe killing someone with more points still only nets you 1 point.
With a system like that, he would have just gathered a decent kill count and hidden away.
Now that he’d accumulated 8 points, he realized something delightful.
Kim Min-woo examined his own body. The speed at which he grew stronger with each opponent killed was beyond imagination.
8 points.
By simple addition, his Ability Scores should have increased roughly 1.8 times, but it didn’t feel that way at all.
‘It feels more like 2.1 times.’
When he checked his status window, the numbers confirmed it.
“This is exponential growth.”
This was something else.
It was practically pushing him to go on a rampage.

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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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