Dark Fantasy Guide for the Summoner - Chapter 68

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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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Chapter 68.
The Fairy King Lukbara Ⅰ
A massive gate, easily dozens of meters tall, stood wide open.
Beyond it, a vast chamber reeked with a stench so overpowering that……
……on the right, iron bars stretched in long rows like a prison, and on the left, all manner of experimental materials and chemicals I couldn’t identify lay piled high.
Woof!
With a bark, the iron bars shook.
Something imprisoned behind them.
The moment it caught sight of me, it lunged forward, pressing itself against the bars and gnashing its teeth.
[Lv.40 ‘Royal Tomb Ghoul’]
A Royal Tomb Ghoul.
But there wasn’t just one.
Beyond the iron bars, Royal Tomb Ghouls writhed in numbers beyond counting.
And on top of that……
[Lv.40 ‘Royal Tomb Skeleton’]
[Lv.40 ‘Royal Tomb Banshee’]
It wasn’t only the ghouls.
……Skeletons, fine enough, but how in the world did she cage a banshee?
It was then that I finally understood why I’d encountered not a single monster in the Royal Tomb corridors.
‘That crazy woman caught them all and locked them up here.’
This chamber, too, appeared to have been refashioned by her directly into a kind of laboratory……
So where is the Fairy King?
What’s become of the boss?
“Who is it……?”
Then I heard a faint voice.
Where was it coming from?
“Over here……”
Staying alert, I crossed through this place—whether laboratory or prison, I couldn’t say.
Soon I reached a secluded corner where the owner of the voice awaited me.
“……”
Not locked behind bars, yet the sight of it made me think bars might’ve been kinder.
A restraint suit—the kind a violent criminal might wear—swaddled the entire body, and as if that weren’t enough, iron chains wound around it tightly.
‘Those chains……’
They gleamed with a bluish tint that struck me as oddly familiar.
I think the chains bound to the Awl Sword had looked exactly like that.
I didn’t know what sort of creature this was, but one fact became clear the instant we met.
‘Undead.’
Though only the mouth was exposed among the skin, the reek of corpse-rot and that distinctive aura proved it.
“……Are you human?”
The Unknown Undead spoke in a fractured voice.
Was it mimicking human speech? Or did it retain some fragment of reason?
Unclear, but seeing how it looked so distinctly different from those I’d met before, a single word flashed through my mind.
‘Living Undead.’
Having reached my judgment, I opened my mouth.
“I am human. Also a Delver.”
“A Delver……. I see…….”
“Who are you? Why are you bound in a place like this?”
“I am…… I am……”
The man spoke in his fractured voice.
“I am Lukbara……”
“……”
The Fairy King’s name had spilled out.
As gooseflesh crawled up my forearms, the man continued.
“……a being merged with the corpse of……”
“What?”
“That is…… I am not Lukbara……. That much is clear……. Then what am I……? Why am I bound in this place……?”
“……”
“Hh, hhh…… So cold…… and dark……”
“Listen. Stay with me. Are you all right?”
“Delver…… This place is dangerous…… You must flee before she returns……”
His voice cut off abruptly.
Had he lost consciousness?
I clicked my tongue and tried to piece together what was happening.
‘If this man really is Lukbara….’
Would it all end the moment I slit his throat?
Would the exit hidden behind the King’s Chamber open up—the place where the Awl Sword was lodged?
“…….”
The odds didn’t look unfavorable, but I couldn’t claim certainty either. I couldn’t deny that my reasoning was wishful thinking.
I looked around the space.
The vast King’s Chamber had been completely transformed into a hybrid of laboratory and prison.
‘Is this her workshop?’
If so, there might be clues scattered about that could hint at the Necromancer’s history, temperament, and ideology.
I spotted a memo pad lying nearby, picked it up, and examined it.
‘……This handwriting is abysmal.’
Beyond merely terrible penmanship, the predominance of numbers suggested less a record than some sort of calculation formula.
“I doubt a layman could make sense of that.”
A voice reached me from nowhere. I turned to see the Necromancer standing in the shadows.
Had she undergone some kind of body modification?
Her eyes gleamed like those of a nocturnal creature.
‘Why is her presence so faint?’
Her existence felt strangely diminished, almost ethereal.
Even now, facing her directly, it felt like I was staring at a phantom.
The Necromancer casually gathered the scattered memo pads, organized them, then turned to me and spoke.
“You escaped the Entombment Ritual Chamber? Leaving your comrades as sacrifices and surviving alone—truly impressive.”
“They’re still alive.”
“Ah. So while they buy time, you slip out alone, then take down Lukbara by yourself. After that, you pull the Awl Sword, the Royal Tomb collapses, and all the Undead vanish.”
“…….”
Should I have answered at all?
I hadn’t expected her to deduce the entire situation from a single reply.
‘Unless she was watching from the start.’
Either way, it was infuriating.
“Well. You certainly know this Royal Tomb intimately.”
“What?”
“You knew the mechanism of the Entombment Ritual Chamber—that High-Tier Undead would pour out in number equal to the coffins in the room. You judged your full party couldn’t handle it, so you risked an escape alone.”
The Necromancer laughed, a thin, rattling sound.
“All for nothing, as it turned out.”
“What do you mean?”
“That’s just where I stored the coffins. The number of Undead that emerge doesn’t match the number of coffins at all.”
As my words caught in my throat, the Necromancer continued.
“But perhaps it was wise, after all.”
“Why.”
“Some of those coffins contain specially modified Undead of my own design. If you’d been unlucky enough to trigger one…… hehehehe. My 107th test subjects wouldn’t have been able to handle it.”
The Necromancer’s laughter, which had been cheerfully bubbling forth, stopped abruptly.
“Shall we have a proper conversation, Kaindel?”
How does she know my name?
The thought flickered through my mind, but then I remembered—Laurent had called it out a few times.
“I don’t have time.”
“That’s about your comrades, isn’t it? Fine. If you talk with me, I’ll dispose of those specially modified Undead in the Entombment Ritual Chamber.”
It was a tempting offer, but how could I trust her?
The words rose to my throat……
“…….”
I sat down in front of the Necromancer.
She then spoke with an interested expression.
“I didn’t ask you to sit.”
“If we’re going to have this conversation anyway, I’d rather conserve what strength I have left. Would you prefer I stand?”
“No. Good. I like that. Though I shouldn’t be the one saying this—do you trust me?”
I studied the Necromancer’s oddly colored face before answering.
“No.”
“Then?”
“You’re clearly capable of killing me. I trust that fact.”
Seeing her in person, I understand now.
This woman is like Haitan.
She operates on a level I’m not equipped to handle at present.
Yet she isn’t moving against me immediately.
‘She might be toying with a cornered rat, but that doesn’t mean I should provoke her unnecessarily.’
Still, there’s no point in deliberately baiting her.
“What? Ahahaha!”
Whatever she found so amusing.
The Necromancer laughed so hard her shoulders trembled at my words, then made a show of wiping away tears.
“Ah, your words really do carry weight. Anyway, how was it?”
“How was what?”
“You just had a conversation with him, didn’t you?”
The Necromancer gestured toward Lukbara.
“He’s been refusing to speak with me lately, which is terribly frustrating. So tell me—did he seem human? Did his speech flow naturally? Did he say anything strange?”
“What exactly is that thing?”
My question made the Necromancer’s expression flatten instantly.
“Answering a question with a question… well, I’ll let it pass this time.”
The Necromancer flicked her fingers.
Black smoke-like wisps seeped from beneath her fingernails, coalescing in the air to form letters.
Undead.
“A walking corpse, in other words. You know this much, surely?”
“……”
“But if it can move, possesses emotions, and can even communicate with others, why shouldn’t we call it a living being?”
The Necromancer looked at me.
She seemed curious about my answer, though for a contemporary mind such as mine, it’s a question I’ve never dwelled on particularly deeply.
“Are you saying Undead are alive?”
“Not immediately, but once certain conditions are met, that boundary becomes far more blurred.”
“No matter what, biological function has ceased. If you’re calling something with a beating heart ‘Undead,’ that’s a contradiction in itself.”
“I expected such a mundane answer~ But then, spirits that require no biological function—are they not alive? What about the Golems in vogue these days? I’ve heard several scholars call them ‘mechanical life-forms’ or ‘artificial life.’ The superior models apparently possess knowledge and self-awareness rivaling humanity itself.”
“……”
“If a soul dwelling in a blade and a vegetative human both exist, which is the true living being?”
“The vegetative one. They’re still alive, after all.”
“Is that so? Then if you could completely halt a corpse’s biological function and send electrical signals through it to make it chew, digest, and excrete food—would that be alive? Since biological processes would be functioning?”
The Necromancer tittered.
“Forgive me. I’m not trying to engage in paradoxes for their own sake. What I’m saying is… who can ever perfectly define what constitutes a living being? No one but a god—and perhaps not even then.”
The Necromancer spoke with sudden seriousness.
“That’s why it falls to us.”
“……”
“Did you know? The Undead have no tomorrow. No matter how sophisticated an Undead becomes, it cannot form new memories. They consist only of what they possessed in life, and even that varies by individual. Some call the Undead ‘those eternally bound to the past.'”
“First I’m hearing of it.”
“True. I just thought of that phrase.”
“……”
I regarded the Necromancer for a moment with quieted eyes, then spoke.
“If they can’t form new memories, they shouldn’t be able to follow the orders of the Necromancer who resurrected them, should they?”
“Oh.”
The Necromancer’s eyes brightened—my counterargument had caught her off guard.
“You seem quite knowledgeable in Necromancy, I see.”
“……”
“A valid question. But the kind of memory I’m referring to is somewhat different. Do you know there are two types of memory?”
“Short-term memory and long-term memory.”
“Exactly! Communication truly flows between us!”
The Necromancer spoke rapidly, seeming oddly excited.
“Of course, if we were to categorize memory types exhaustively, there would be far more—but that’s not essential right now, so I’ll skip that… In any case, my hypothesis was that the Undead cannot form long-term memories, and I’ve only recently proven it. The curious thing is that even when I restored the hippocampus and cerebral cortex—the very centers of long-term memory formation—the ability never returned. It was as if the soul, not the flesh, was rejecting it.”
“……”
As I’d suspected, the Necromancer was an incredible talker.
Moreover, her mind seemed to flit about; her explanations were scattered, and her topics jumped around according to her whims.
Still, the thrust of what she meant came through clearly enough.
“So this Living Undead you speak of…”
“Yes.”
The Necromancer nodded.
“A being that has recovered the ability of long-term memory.”
“If the soul refuses it, then isn’t it an impossible attempt?”
“That can’t be! I’ve achieved meaningful results recently! Do you want to hear?”
“…….”
I quietly checked the time remaining.
Around ten minutes now, if that.
“I’m afraid there’s no more time to talk…….”
“It’s inside Lukbara. The being with the greatest potential I’ve ever encountered.”
“…….”
Damned creature. Should’ve kept her mouth shut.
“It seizes human bodies. Once it’s taken one, it can perfectly mimic that person until it reveals its true nature.”
Yet as I listened to what the Necromancer said next, my irritation dissolved.
“How is such a thing possible? The mechanism is simple. Those creatures read memories from the target’s central nervous system, and based on that, they can completely replicate the being that seized the body. What’s fascinating and astounding is that what they acquire in the process isn’t merely memory—they can feel the emotions that accompany the target’s recollection of those memories. In other words, they can mimic even the human heart itself. So I’m certain: their imitation isn’t something that can be dismissed as mere acting.”

“That being must be…….”
“Yes.”
The Necromancer looked at Lukbara with a proud smile.
“I’ve succeeded in an experiment grafting a Shadow with Undead.”

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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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