Damn Necromancer - Chapter 90

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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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Spendthrift Necromancer (90)
There had been purpose in waiting at the mansion. From the moment that unfamiliar face emerged, the shadow had already begun to move.
He’d tailed the creature this way and witnessed it attempting entry into a B-rank Gate.
The Demon Castle in Incheon.
Conquest difficulty: eighty points.
Even B-rank Awakeners approached it in groups, yet the creature meant to enter alone.
That alone spoke to its confidence.
‘Kim Min-woo…….’
Han Baek-gil’s eyes narrowed.
He’d pursued the creature all this way without a single hindrance. If it entered now, the intrusion would succeed without complication. And yet he couldn’t help but pause, head tilted slightly.
It was too easy.
Far too easy.
‘It has to be one of two things.’
Perhaps the creature was so at ease it hadn’t even considered the possibility of intrusion.
But if not that…….
‘Could it have been intentional?’
Han Baek-gil surveyed his surroundings.
Operatives One through Seven.
All of them wore eyes ablaze with hunger.
“Captain. We’re going in, yes?”
They had been prepared to accept losses of more than half their force to capture Kim Min-woo.
But the situation had unfolded flawlessly.
Enter the Gate in disguise?
It was as good as advertising itself for slaughter. An opportunity like this might never come again, and their eagerness sharpened with each passing moment. Han Baek-gil, for all his suspicion, felt it too.
So would he abstain?
No.
In the end, there was no choice but to enter.
They had already decided to take the creature. Withdrawal now would be the worst move imaginable.
“……Once he enters, we move immediately.”
Everyone nodded.
The assassins activated their Stealth Skills, while the rest concealed themselves through magic or items from their treasuries.
They approached the Gate.
Two B-rank Awakeners and one A-rank Awakener stood guard at the entrance, but it made no difference.
[Sense Distortion (S) activated!]
[Dream Breath (S) activated!]
[Gentle Oblivion (S) activated!]
.
.
The cascade of S-rank skills scrambled their senses, erased their memories, and left their eyes vacant and glassy.
The Awakeners transformed into wooden dolls in an instant. It would take several minutes before their minds returned to themselves. Then they would resume their watch, feeling nothing amiss.
The soldiers stationed nearby were equally helpless.
[Party formed!]
[Han Baek-gil and 18 others are entering the B-rank Gate, Demon Castle!]
[Intrusion status active!]
[Party member locations are now scrambled!]
Entry as a party was possible, but the intrusion penalty took hold.
Everyone’s positions scattered.
It didn’t matter.
Han Baek-gil withdrew the Crystal Orb.
[Eye of Darkness marks party member locations!]
A special-grade item.
One of several bestowed through prayer in times past. Han Baek-gil was not alone in possessing it. All nineteen of his party members carried one.
It allowed them to pinpoint each other’s positions even within the Gate—invaluable in any circumstance.
Especially now, during an intrusion.
But what made it truly remarkable
was that it could display not merely position markers, but color codes for priority members as well.
Han Baek-gil’s color was deep black.
Operatives One through Seven, and the two S-rank reinforcements who’d arrived, glowed red.
The remaining trainees shone blue.
Colors of every hue filled the surface of the Crystal Orb. The shadow’s operatives had already synchronized their signals beforehand.
They decided to gather around Han Baek-gil.
Soon, the members of the party began arriving one by one.
Then.
Pop!
One of the blue lights above the Crystal Orb flickered out.
‘……Dead?’
A light extinguishing meant death. One of the trainees had just met their end.
Immediately after.
Pop!
Pop!
Pop!
Pop!
The blue lights that had been scattered further away began winking out in rapid succession.
And as they did, the remaining lights moved faster and faster across the orb’s surface.
The hastily assembled group stared at the Crystal Orb in stunned silence.
“Damn it.”
“What kind of speed is that?”
“This bastard’s an absolute monster.”
The Awakeners who had come as reinforcements from Japan and China felt the blood drain from their faces as well. They knew who Kim Min-woo was. He’d made a name for himself overseas with his audacious exploits.
And yet.
They hadn’t expected this hunt to be quite so difficult.
In fact, they’d even thought the Korea branch was being somewhat dramatic about it all.
After all, the Korean branch alone had eight S-rank Awakeners who weren’t participating in this hunt—Awakeners whose levels had climbed so quickly that they far exceeded the typical S-rank in raw power.
By comparison, Kim Min-woo’s level should be roughly 200 at best, even being generous.
Level is the skeleton of any fight.
So it wasn’t strange that they’d thought the Korea branch was overreacting to what should have been an easy suppression.
But now…….
‘Hell.’
‘This isn’t going to be simple, is it?’
Five trainees were dead. Just from one man.
And these trainees had been carrying items related to stealth.
‘But he’s supposed to be a Necromancer, right?’
How was he killing every stealthy trainee in sight?
An A-rank Awakener who’d proven competent on the outside had been cut down in mere seconds.
Even accounting for the fact that Demon Castle was a small-scale Gate, it made no sense.
Only after six trainees lay dead could the entire party finally regroup in one place.
From nineteen to thirteen.
The majority were already gone before they’d even truly begun.
“……I’ll kill him. I swear it.”
Han Baek-gil spoke through gritted teeth.
The air grew heavy with resolve.
The group, now deadly serious, began moving to hunt down Kim Min-woo.
* * *
He’d killed the six men who’d been moving in hiding.
Land of Death.
This skill was practically a natural predator to anyone relying on stealth. Normally, stealth breaks when you take damage. Even S-rank stealth was no exception. It simply held out longer before breaking. But Land of Death?
It worked entirely differently.
It deployed wide-area damage across a massive radius.
The Gate itself was small to begin with.
The moment he was summoned, he’d spread his skeletal minions in all directions and activated Land of Death. Each time he cast it, two or three enemies got caught.
Of course, the demon-type monsters that lived in this Gate caught it too.
[Stolen Vulcan’s Eye activates!]
[The demons feel an overwhelming sense of dread!]
[They dare not approach!]
The thin damage they could manage seemed unable to overcome that dread—instead of attacking, they scattered and fled in all directions. He’d probably need to dish out far more damage before they’d dare to engage him.
And Kim Min-woo had more than just countless skeletal minions at his disposal.
He had Hayangyi.
This clever creature excelled not only in speed and stealth, but possessed intelligence high enough to exchange signals with him. Finding prey was effortless.
After that came Merhen’s contribution.
When he’d asked if there was any magic that could cripple an enemy’s legs, she’d conjured one on the spot.
[Aquatic Prison activates!]
[Terrestrial Binding activates!]
The ones who’d been rushing to escape found their feet locked in the sunken earth, trapped in water prisons materialized from thin air, thrashing desperately. They were decent enough—somewhere between B-rank and A-rank Awakeners—so a single spell wouldn’t kill them outright.
They bought themselves time, flailing about with their own skills deployed.
‘For what it’s worth.’
Once Cedric and I closed in, the game was over. They couldn’t even coordinate properly against our seamless combination before their necks came clean off. Each one I dropped bumped my level up by at least one.
Absurd experience points.
My current level was now 188.
I’d leveled up eight times from just this brief hunt. If I’d been grinding on monsters, I’d have needed to kill far more to gain the same amount.
After hunting for a while longer.
I entered the Reception Hall inside the castle. Once I’d killed every demon lurking within, I shut the door behind me.
‘This is why I love the Demon Castle.’
The map’s name says it all—a castle.
A castle naturally comes with countless rooms.
There’s no risk of being surrounded like in some sprawling plain, and it’s difficult terrain for launching ambushes.
Once you close the door inside a room, an Assassin has no way to slip in undetected.
Especially the Reception Hall—it was nearly a perfect blank space, not a single window to its name.
‘Only one entrance—the main gate.’
To get in, you either destroy the door entirely or grasp the handle and open it normally.
Assassins don’t have space-warping skills to vault over walls.
Mages do, though.
But for one person to solo space-warp through a door would be practically begging to be killed.
‘Usually they’d just open the door.’
There are seven Reception Halls generated within the castle interior. If I smashed through each one because I thought it was dangerous, I’d run dry on Mana fast.
The doors are quite sturdy.
I suspected Han Baek-gil’s party would probably just open the doors and check what’s inside.
‘Four left to go.’
I recalled the activation condition for the Hidden Piece. One person kills a total of ten. Simple enough in concept, but difficult in practice. Most of the time, it’s genuinely hard to trigger.
‘It was still unclaimed years down the line.’
For one thing, this is a B-rank Gate.
The Awakeners who enter are high-caliber.
They’re veterans who’ve ground through the ranking boards endlessly. Since there’s a ceiling to solo play, ninety percent of them move in formations—Guilds or fellowship groups.
Experienced hunters who work well together, moving as teams. Even an S-rank Assassin feels tremendous pressure intruding alone into such a Gate.
You’d need two or three moving together, but then you usually don’t rack up ten kills.
You split the kills among yourselves.
And if you betray from within.
‘You get caught in the investigation.’
Ten kills means you basically wiped everyone and crawled out alone. Does anyone actually believe you just got lucky and happened to survive?
Awakeners aren’t that naive.
An investigation naturally follows.
Since Gate hunting has countless professions, there are just as many Awakeners with bizarre skills in their arsenal.
Keep investigating like that and eventually you slip up.
Slip up and?
Your life’s over.
You might be a warrior god inside a Gate, but society’s vast and wide. Once you hit B-rank, almost no one stakes their life on some quick score. That’s why this condition’s lingered unclaimed.
‘I didn’t know the activation condition either.’
Not until I’d beaten down all the Assassins who’d come in. By chance, after getting it once, I figured out the requirement.
If I were to catch all thirteen remaining ones, that’d be one thing. But just four of them?
‘Easy.’
Especially with weaklings scattered throughout like the ones I just devoured, it’d be that much easier.
I drained a Mana Potion in one gulp.
Then I looked toward Merhen and Cedric.
“Prepare yourselves.”
Both legion commanders nodded.
Dolsoe, the skeletal warriors, and the Specter battalion had long since finished their combat preparations.
[Merhen begins commanding all Mages!]
[One hundred Mages attempt Magic Circle Construction!]
[Success!]
[A mid-scale magic circle is complete!]
[Four hundred Mages begin channeling Corpse Explosion into the magic circle!]
[Merhen begins gathering mana!]
Demon corpses lay scattered before the door in strategic clusters.
The moment it opens and a face appears, they’ll take a slap before anything else—that was the plan.
And then.
Screeeeak.
The Reception Hall door swung open.
Through the gap, just a single Awakener was visible—one unlucky enough to draw the short straw and open the door.
Useless effort on their part.
I’d already accounted for this.
[Land of Death (S) is activated!]
[All allied Undead gain a 20% boost to their ability scores!]
[Merhen uses Cyclone (SS)!]
Time for a taste of SS-rank magic.
A tremendous wind roared forward through the doorway, gaining strength.
Whoooosh!
The door became a vacuum in an instant, sucking everything inside.
“Wha—?”
“What the hell!”
The Awakeners were dragged forward by the sheer pressure, tumbling helplessly.
[Corpse Explosion activates!]
Kaboom-kaboom-kaboom-kaboom-kaboom!
The demon corpses I’d gathered erupted in sequence toward the Awakeners being pulled through the doorway.

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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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