Damn Necromancer - Chapter 66

—————
This chapter was translated by Lunox Novels. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
—————

Wasteful Spender Necromancer (66)
Ability scores locked at 100.
‘At this rate, I won’t even get the title effect.’
I turned my attention to Idrik.
[Law of Victory activates!]
[All ability scores increase by 30%.]
[All damage increases by 30%!]
‘Roughly a 300-level gap, then.’
Which meant Idrik was at least level 400.
I checked my status window.
Just as I thought.
Despite the ability score increase message, all my stats remained locked at 100.
‘Three minutes.’
It’s not impossible to endure.
I’ve fought enemies with even greater stat gaps than this before, haven’t I?
Mutakta, whom I’d faced at level 1.
That thing was a true monster.
And yet I survived.
My stats now are higher than they were then, no less.
‘It’s worth trying.’
Then.
Idrik began closing the distance between us.
[Time Remaining: 03:00]
[Curse of Fatigue applied!]
[Curse of Frailty applied!]
An unpleasant numbness spread across my entire body.
The bad news didn’t stop there.
As if struck by a severe illness, my vision blurred.
The sword suddenly felt heavier in my grip.
I could see dark energy coiling around Idrik’s blade.
The weapon itself looked unmistakably ancient and ornate.
Mine, by contrast, was nothing but a basic sword handed out to novices.
‘I can’t meet him head-on.’
Raw power and speed.
And the quality of the weapon on top of that.
I had to deflect everything, dispersing his force—otherwise I’d fail to parry properly and my blade would shatter.
Idrik closed the distance in an instant, sweeping his sword toward my face.
I twisted my neck to evade.
His blade immediately carved upward.
I bent sharply at the waist.
A straight downward slash.
I rolled across the ground to avoid it.
As I rolled, Idrik’s blade was suddenly right at my nose.
‘I can’t dodge this one.’
Under normal circumstances, I could have.
The curses hanging on my body were the problem.
My reaction time was shot.
A hair’s-breadth difference, but when it accumulated, even if I predicted my opponent’s moves, there came moments when I simply couldn’t escape.
Like now.
I twisted the flat of my blade and deflected Idrik’s sword.
Clang!
A single impact, and the blade let out an ominous screech. My palm split open, and blood began to pour.
‘Ten times?’
The calculation came instinctively.
No matter how well I deflected, after about ten clashes my sword would shatter.
That’s why I’d been evading this whole time.
‘No choice, then.’
Staying on defense would get me nowhere.
I twisted my wrist and swung my blade upward. Idrik chose to press his attack instead. His sword flashed toward my head—having the stronger stats meant he had the initiative. He must have been confident he’d land the first strike.
I had confidence I could cut him down first.
‘I knew it.’
He arched his back, dropping low.
The dark blade whistled past his head.
Then it struck downward like a thunderbolt, a perfect vertical line.
His torso still bent backward.
He pushed off with his heels and spun his body like a top.
Slice!
Blood erupted from Idrik’s waist.
He stumbled backward two paces, clutching at the wound.
Behind the mask, his eyes were scrunched tight with confusion.
‘Well, that’s a relief.’
A Black Knight.
High Level, high Stats, flashy skills deployed left and right.
‘But the actual technique—lacking.’
At best, a knight who’d stand out in a city. Nothing more.
If he’d possessed captain-level skill, Kim Min-woo would’ve been forced to give up a limb or two in this exchange.
‘And… there’s that inexperience.’
His mind couldn’t keep pace with his body’s sudden surge in ability—a first for him, caught off guard by the inflated Stats.
This makes it easy.
In the worst case, he’d resigned himself to losing all four limbs, prepared to deploy the Indomitable Spirit and face whatever tears came with it. This exchange had given him the angle he needed.
‘I’ll just give up both arms.’
The sword would break during the fight anyway. There’d come a moment when he had to let it go. Once that happened, with nothing to wield, the arms were worthless.
Remaining time: 2 minutes 45 seconds.
After a brief two-second pause, Idrik pressed on.
The Black Knight bared a vicious grin and came at him again.
[01:45]
Cracks began spreading across the blade.
[01:00]
He figured he could block maybe three more strikes.
[00:30]
He gave up his left arm.
In exchange, he protected his neck—a magnificent trade.
[0:15]
The sword shattered into fragments.
[0:02]
While dodging, he surrendered another arm. Ideally, he’d have given it up a second earlier, but that curse was interfering.
[0:01]
As he evaded the blade meant for his neck, it flew toward his heart instead. He twisted slightly to one side, barely skirting instant death.
The moment the blade pierced his side.
[‘Entrance Class – Homicidal’ difficulty examination has ended.]
[Your body is fully restored!]
[Settlement commencing.]
Time froze.
[Challenge Difficulty: Homicidal]
[Achievement Rank: Supreme]
[You have obtained the Title: Monster of the Entrance Class!]
[You have passed the Entrance Exam!]
[Insufficient Level! You cannot challenge the Trainee Exam! (Minimum Required Level: 300)]
[You have obtained the Celestial City Transit Permit.]
[New entries have been added to Beginning of Legend – Part I!]
[‘Homicidal’ difficulty. Special rewards have been granted.]
[You have obtained the Achievement Vending Machine.]
“……?”
Achievement Vending Machine?
A small toy-like vending machine suddenly appeared in his newly restored hand.
He checked the information.
[Achievement Vending Machine]
[Rank: Special]
[A cute vending machine.]
[Effect: Doubles all Achievement Points gained.]
“……?”
I rubbed my eyes.
Then looked again.
‘It duplicates Achievement Points by two times?’
What could you do with Achievement Points?
You could do countless things with them—raise your level cap, buy skill books, purchase equipment, and more. A resource far more precious than money.
Hundreds of times more valuable than currency.
And this was an item that could duplicate them?
On top of that, it wasn’t even a one-time use item.
‘This is insane.’
Kim Min-woo stuffed the cute vending machine into his inventory, then pulled out the Celestial City Transit Permit to examine it.
[Celestial City Transit Permit]
[Grade: Special]
[An item granted to those who pass the Entrance Exam. You may travel to the Celestial City and take the test there. It can be activated once every six months.]
[Effect 1. Upon use, you are transported to the Celestial City.]
[Effect 2. Each journey grants you one month of active time in the city.]
‘The Celestial City…….’
He pictured Zipael.
Was it perhaps a city where angels like that lived?
* * *
Seo Ye-rim.
She, too, was taking an exam. The moment Popo snapped his fingers, a bow materialized in her hands.
―I shall now conduct your Reexamination. There is one subject: “Balloon Precision.”
“Where are the balloons?”
The instant she asked,
like bubbles rising from boiling water, balloons began filling the pristine white space. At a glance, tens of thousands of balloons floated in every direction.
―Do you see the balloons before you?
“Yes.”
Seo Ye-rim narrowed her eyes.
Red balloons were most abundant, followed by orange, then green, yellow, blue—and so forth.
‘A rainbow?’
The arrangement of colors evoked the image of a rainbow.
―Red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, violet—in that order. Among them, there are only five violet balloons. Indigo numbers two hundred. Blue numbers one thousand. And so on. Naturally, red will be the most numerous.
“And?”
―You are given five arrows. Pop the balloons. Preferably, shoot the ones with fewer numbers.
[Reexamination, “Rainbow Balloon,” begins!]
[Your average ability score is fixed at 10!]
[You cannot use skills!]
[You cannot move beyond a 10-meter radius!]
Whoooosh!
Along with the notification, a fierce wind swept through, sending her hair flying violently. Countless balloons trembled and jostled in the turbulence.
[Rules are as follows.]
[You begin with 100 points.]
[You must use all five arrows to pop balloons.]
[All balloons except violet will incur point deductions when popped.]
[The lower the tier of balloon, the greater the deduction.]
[If an arrow misses and fails to pop a balloon, you will receive a severe point deduction!]
Seo Ye-rim read the messages with narrowed eyes and nodded.
She was beginning to grasp the nature of this test.
“So if I cleanly pop only the five violet balloons with five arrows, I get a perfect score?”
―Correct. However, it is no simple matter. In my thousand years of observation, not a single archer has ever achieved a perfect score.
Looking at it, that seemed likely enough.
Finding five violet balloons among tens of thousands was challenge enough.
And even if you managed that, the wind caused balloons to overlap and shift positions constantly.
Even if you shot for the violet and hit it, there was a high risk that balloons in the arrow’s path would burst alongside it.
‘And I have to account for the wind too…….’
This was an exceedingly difficult test.
“Then what’s the highest score ever recorded?”
―Ninety-nine points. Unfortunately, the archer popped an indigo balloon along with the violet. Hence the one-point deduction.
“And the Achievement Rank?”
―I recall it was SS-rank.
“……Are there ranks higher than S?”
―The world is vast, and ranks vary widely. There are SS and SSS, and I’ve even heard there are grades beyond those.
“……Beyond that too?”
―Yes. I’ve never witnessed one myself, but Zipael mentioned it, so it’s likely true.
‘……I was a frog in a well.’
She had harbored suspicions that ranks beyond S existed.
It made sense—Kim Min-woo’s strength at the last Gate had exceeded her wildest expectations. Yet she couldn’t be certain until now. This conversation had confirmed it.
That there was a world beyond what she’d known.
Perhaps not just herself, but every Awakener on Earth had been frogs in a well.
They would never have imagined ranks above S could exist.
‘This place isn’t just some ordinary parallel world. It operates on an entirely different scale…….’
How had Kim Min-woo managed to forge a connection to such a space?
He was truly an onion of a man—layer upon layer.
“Popo.”
―Yes?
“If I pop all of these, could I possibly achieve a rank above SSS?”
―To aim for beyond that, one would need to accumulate achievements that transform the very world itself. That’s a stage that cannot be set even in this examination venue.
Popo was a doll who took pride in his station.
Yet the fact that even he called it impossible suggested it truly was.
It was disappointing, but there was nothing to be done about it.
She nodded and studied the balloons before her.
“There’s no time limit, correct?”
―That’s right.
Seo Ye-rim examined the balloons carefully.
‘……So that’s why the navy balloon was stuck on too.’
The construction was devious.
The red balloons were large.
In contrast, the purple balloons were exceptionally small.
They appeared to be roughly the size of a tangerine.
Navy balloons were clustered onto those purple ones like tumors, leaving only the smallest gaps.
One had to pierce through those gaps and land the shot precisely to burst the purple balloon.
Having identified the five purple balloons, she closed her eyes and exhaled slowly.
“Breathe……”
Her ability scores were locked at 10.
She couldn’t use skills.
All she had to rely on was her own talent.
‘I can do this.’
The range a sword could never reach.
But with a bow…….
Twang!
One arrow flew forth.
It wove through the countless balloons, threading the needle.
Pop!
One balloon burst.
Without pausing to breathe, she fired three more arrows in rapid succession.
Three balloons exploded.
‘One left.’
The balloon with the most navy ones clinging to it.
―In my judgment, you were born to achieve greatness with the bow.
Suddenly, words from their conversation in the hospital came back to her.
‘That’s right. I was…….’
born to achieve greatness with the bow.
The final arrow took flight.
Pop!
This time too, only one balloon burst. Popo, who had been watching with bated breath, began clapping with delight.
―Wow, wooow! Perfect score! Congratulations!
[The examination has concluded.]
[Your score is 100 points.]
[You have been awarded the SSS-rank Archer Skill Book!]
‘SSS-rank…….’
Seo Ye-rim’s fingers curled into a fist.
Kim Min-woo had been right.
She was meant to wield the bow.

—————
This chapter was translated by Lunox Novels. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
—————