I Became a Veteran Who Has to Stir Up Trouble to Survive - Chapter 6

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

[006] Undead Transformation
[Disguise]
A skill from Antagon’s Rune that temporarily alters one’s appearance by consuming mana.
As the skill level increased, I gained the ability to transform into monsters.
I could only transform into monsters I had defeated at least once, and there were stat restrictions, so reckless skill spam like polymorphing into a Golden Dragon and going on a rampage was impossible, but….
In a situation like this, it could prove quite useful.
“This is my first time transforming into a monster….”
I recalled the appearance of the Skeleton I had defeated.
Yellowed bones stained with grime, pathetically gaunt arms and legs, a jaw that clicked and clattered ceaselessly.
Yet for some reason, my body underwent no change whatsoever.
‘That’s strange… it was definitely on the transformation list.’
Perhaps transforming into a monster required some additional condition?
Like having to project one’s consciousness fully into the creature.
If it were Belheim—that obsessive perfectionist who fixated on trivial details—such a requirement would be entirely plausible.
I endeavored to move beyond merely mimicking appearance and instead manifest a complete Skeleton.
The driving force behind a Skeleton resurrected from the despair of death’s sentence.
The endless yearning and desire toward living creatures, the envy.
I sought to comprehend the obsession and madness for warm flesh and blood, and to accept it wholly as my own.
That cold gaze staring through the empty eye sockets.
The moment I understood that hideous desire and thirst intermingled in that gaze―.
“Thou who walkest within death, rise again and walk forth.”
Shwaaaack…!!
As the incantation that surfaced in my mind spilled from my lips, my flesh rotted and crumbled away in an instant, and I had become nothing but bone.
A feeble Skeleton, yet with eyes that burned with ambitious light despite their hollowness.
I slowly clenched my hand and marveled.
Oh… this is quite fascinating….
Such words never left my lips.
From the oral cavity of a Skeleton whose vocal cords had long since withered, only the voice of a third-rate monster emerged: “Kuhel-kel-kel-keh―”
Whenever I watched monsters in games emit such clichéd cries, I had thought the developers were being lazy, but experiencing it firsthand, perhaps it was actually historically accurate.
｢You have transformed into a Low-Rank Sailor Skeleton!｣
｢The fisherman Narhgal, who once peacefully cast his nets for fish, was kidnapped by pirates and caught in the assault of the Lich, becoming an unfortunate Skeleton.｣
｢Your current level and stats are too low to draw out the Skeleton’s full power. Agility decreases. You become extremely vulnerable to holy power. Insight is fixed at its minimum.｣
｢Due to the Low-Rank Skeleton’s traits, your strength decreases.｣
｢You can gather bone fragments to strengthen your body!｣
‘…I see.’
So this is what happens when I transform into a monster with my current specs.
Despite becoming merely a low-rank Skeleton, the debuffs were this severe.
I removed the Captain’s clothes and slowly made my way toward the door.
My body felt heavy and sluggish.
As if I were walking along the ocean floor.
I had thought that transforming into a Skeleton would make me swift and light, but perhaps this weightless form without muscle and cartilage was the natural state after all.
I felt the unexpected hardship that lesser undead must endure, confirmed there was no one around, then slowly opened the Captain’s Quarters door and stepped out.
There was something I needed to do before confronting Orgillian and departing the Ghost Ship Fleet.
And that was….
‘Raiding the Lich’s treasure vault!’
I clicked my jaw bones together and smiled darkly.
A plan so audacious that the Pirates who had just been brought back from death would collapse in shock if they overheard it!
It was only because I had tempered my courage through countless misfortunes that such an idea could even occur to me.
But this wasn’t purely driven by greed.
‘Belheim is not a forgiving world.’
Even if I commandeered this ship and escaped right now, I could barely scrape by.
Using my game knowledge to hunt small fry like Kobolds and Goblins and sell their materials would provide enough to keep food on the table.
But that wouldn’t be enough.
In Belheim, gold and silver coins drain away for every conceivable reason.
For mercenaries, there are equipment and maintenance fees.
For merchants, there are tariffs and tolls.
For bakers, there are mill taxes and oven taxes.
For mages, there are reagents and dignity maintenance costs.
Even if I carefully saved and managed to acquire my own home, taxes were levied on the number of windows, fireplaces, and staircases.
Even breathing itself was taxed.
This wasn’t metaphorical—fail to pay the quarterly tributes and you’d be reduced to serfdom or expelled from the city.
Expelled from the city, and while you might survive briefly, only a miserable fate awaited.
Without sturdy walls, you’d be swallowed whole by monsters that came in the night, or exposed to periodic disasters like floods, droughts, and meteors hurled by some senile, mad terrorist mage.
In other words, survival in this world required money.
And this plunder would become my first stepping stone to adapting to this world.
All so I could spend my remaining years in leisurely comfort within a mansion blessed with cooling magic.
‘Let me think… The sailing ships where the Lich hoarded treasure were definitely Spanish galleons and caracks, weren’t they?’
Even in the game, the Lich was programmed to act according to remarkably sophisticated algorithms and artificial intelligence.
A cunning Lich would naturally distribute precious treasures and artifacts across multiple vessels in preparation for the flagship’s potential destruction.
And identifying these vessels wasn’t difficult.
Death Knights, Dullahans, Doom Knights, and so forth….
Large sailing ships teeming with high-tier undead whose very sight made your bones rattle!
Plundering even one of these ships’ treasure vaults would make me fabulously wealthy, but for now it was nothing but a pipe dream.
A mere Skeleton like me skulking around a treasure vault would be kicked straight into the sea without a second thought.
The Lich’s flagship and treasure ships, where even the lowest ranks consisted of elite boss-tier forces, went without saying.
Moreover, getting too close to the Lich’s aura, which had magic nullification properties, risked exposing my disguise skill.
So should I simply give up and suck my finger bones in resignation?
‘Not a chance.’
The Mary Celeste Fleet had several vessels where plundered spoils were stored.
Trinkets too worthless to call treasure, yet too good to discard.
These antiques are typically distributed to lower-tier undead who distinguished themselves in combat, or used as currency in trades with other monsters, but among them lie items whose true value remains undiscovered.
The item I’m after is precisely one of those hidden gems.
And one of the ships hoarding such junk is….
‘…here!’
I scurried across the mooring rope connecting the vessels, my bones creaking with effort, until I reached a medium-sized caravel.
As I trudged toward the Ship’s Hold entrance, two Skeletons stood guard, their weathered spears raised in alert.
I skirted toward the stern where their vision couldn’t reach and scanned the Deck.
Creak—.
‘Just as I thought.’
Wooden planks rotted and warped by wind and rain, their gaps gaping wide.
I immediately seized the board and pulled, but my weakened Skeleton frame lacked the strength to tear it free.
I wished I had something to leverage with….
‘…why not use this?’
I wedged Barbo’s cutlass—which I’d taken from the Captain’s Quarters—into the gap like a crowbar and pulled.
My bones rattled from the strain of my diminished strength, but as I heaved with all my might, the plank snapped free along with its rusted nails.
I confirmed the sentinel Skeleton wasn’t approaching, then squeezed my body through the gap unseen.
‘I never expected such minor details to be implemented so faithfully….’
I’d once been on this very ship offering magical counsel to Lich Mortemius when my foot got stuck—an unfortunate incident I’d cursed the negligent undead for.
Back then I’d resented their poor maintenance, but who knew it would prove useful in the distant future like this!
I surveyed the interior of the Ship’s Cabin cautiously.
The interior was dim but not pitch-black, and plundered goods bearing the marks of time and battle lay scattered haphazardly.
It resembled nothing so much as a garbage heap.
I detached an oil lantern hanging on the wall and illuminated the items before me.
Shattered helmets, corroded longswords, dust-covered plate armor left to rot….
Antiques so rare you’d struggle to find them in a museum, and you could guess why they’d been dumped here.
The odds of salvaging anything worthwhile from this mountain of refuse were abysmal, but if you knew what to look for, it wasn’t particularly difficult.
As I carefully sifted through the junk pile….
‘…found it.’
Beneath a thick plate armor, I unearthed a single worn greave.
A metal greave scarred and dented all over, utterly unremarkable to the eye.
No matter how I examined it, it appeared to be common trash, but this item’s true worth reveals itself only when specific conditions are met.
I bound the greave to my ribcage and secured it, then climbed over the junk pile toward the ceiling hole through which I’d entered.
There was nothing else worth taking from this place.
No point risking danger for one or two more trash items.
Satisfied with my acquisition, I was about to exit the Warehouse when—.
‘Huh…? Was something like that here originally?’
With only one step remaining to the exit, a wooden chest sitting alone in the center of the cabin caught my eye.
There was no such thing when I came here in the game’s late stages?
Curiosity overwhelmed me, and I approached as if entranced.
The chest was locked, but when I extracted the lacrimal bone from inside the eye socket and split it thin like tweezers to probe the mechanism, it opened easily.
And within it lay something entirely unexpected.
“You have discovered a Supreme Cursed Orb!!”
“An artifact of the Andira Sect, capable of casting powerful curses or greatly enhancing the undead.”
“As an undead, you will not suffer debuffs from it.”
“Exercise caution—it can shatter easily from even minor impacts!”
‘Insane… insane! Why is this here…?’
I gazed at the black sphere, the size of a clenched fist, humming and vibrating with intense power.
A treasure of the Andira Sect—the divine order that governs death in the Belheim cosmology.
Considering its rarity and the difficulty of acquisition, it deserved to be called a sacred relic.
A chilling object that accumulated debuffs merely from being touched.
The problem was that its color indicated it had already been activated once, and someone was currently under its curse….
‘Should I… take it for now…?’
This orb’s applications were limited, but if I found the right buyer, I could sell it for an exorbitant price.
Despite being an artifact of that sinister evil sect, it was still a quasi-sacred treasure.
The probability was vanishingly slim, but if I somehow found the person cursed by it and negotiated a trade, I might exchange it for an enormous fortune.
One thing was certain—this was no object that belonged hidden among such shabby junk.
I slipped the orb into my eye socket and wrapped it with cloth, disguising it like an eye patch.
Now I would simply look like an ordinary one-eyed Skeleton pirate.
Just then, voices of the undead echoed from above.
―Hey! Are you keeping watch properly?
―Y-yes, Imarit! I-I was watching diligently as ordered…!
―Then go inside and bring back the coffin that Mortemius entrusted to us.
―B-but our shift is ending now….
―Would you prefer to become a ship’s figurehead? Bring it here.
―Y-yes, sir!
‘Tch….’
So they came looking for this orb.
I quickly improvised, removing iron balls from a nearby sling and placing them in the coffin before slipping out of the warehouse.
They wouldn’t notice until they actually opened the box and checked its contents.
It would buy me enough time to escape the Ghost Ship Fleet.
‘…They’ll be furious when they realize the sacred relic was swapped later!’
With a wicked grin, I descended the mooring rope and departed the Junk Ship when a notification suddenly updated.
“Orgillian is searching for you.”
“Before the Death Knight releases wraiths to pursue you, go to his Ship’s Cabin!”

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