My Disciples Became Scoundrels - Chapter 21

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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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I may have nudged them a little to keep the fighting from happening, but I had no real desire to shatter this young man’s illusions.
“My father taught me that way.”
“……Indeed.”
I’d sensed it before, but he seemed to hold a peculiar respect for me. As far as I was concerned, it was no loss.
“Then everyone proceed inside. Let’s move.”
Cassian composed himself and stepped away. I brought up the rear, following them at a leisurely pace.
Skeletons began appearing one by one. The Guild members shook as they each drew their weapons.
“I’ll take the lead, so cover me with ranged fire!”
“They’re coming from the side too!”
The Guild members roared as they clashed with the creatures.
Cassian fretted like a man watching children play at the water’s edge, yet somehow they pressed forward without serious casualties.
“This is easier than I thought. We just need to collect the bodies properly. Though I haven’t seen any yet.”
“According to the records, seventy bodies were never found.”
“But this Dungeon has been conquered so many times already. If there were any bodies visible, they’d have been collected long ago.”
We soon reached a narrow corridor. There was not a single body to be found.
One or two bodies wouldn’t have been strange, but seventy missing entirely—that was odd.
If that was the case, one possibility remained: a hidden chamber of some kind.
I pressed my hand against the stone wall blocking our path. As I focused my senses, a faint aura emanated from beyond the thick barrier.
“Dein Balanus? What are you doing?”
I didn’t answer Cassian’s question. I needed my concentration right now.
I forced my stuttering Mana Circuit to activate. A few drops of mana pooled at the blade’s tip. Gathering all my focus, I swung the sword.
—Scritch!
Vertical, diagonal, horizontal, cross-diagonal. The blade traced countless lines.
Blue mana lingered along the blade’s path like an afterimage, as if the stone wall were bleeding azure blood.
Before that blue stain faded, I sheathed the sword.
—Boom……!
In that instant, the fragmented stone wall collapsed. The Guild members stood dumbfounded, watching.
The empty space beyond the wall opened to reveal what it held: countless human silhouettes.
Corpses in robes and armor, rotting away yet still recognizable by their features.
Someone screamed.
“The fallen!”
With that cry, the corpses’ heads snapped toward us. Empty eye sockets burned with a strange, murderous intent. The fallen surged forward with savage roars.
Normally these would have been erased during the Dungeon’s regeneration cycle, but here in Bitan, some curse transforms the dead into Undead—and so these too had been reborn as monsters.
—Gaaahhh!
The first corpse to charge forward, shrieking, wielded a Longsword. The Guild member who met its blade went flying backward, skidding across the floor.
This corpse moved in a completely different way than the other monsters we’d faced so far. And rightly so—these were the ones who’d died early in the original conquest.
Weakened or rotted though they were, they had been warriors of strength. The Guild members locked in combat cried out in terror.
“No, we can’t—! This is too much……!”
I supposed I should help. That moment, Cassian rushed forward.
“They’re not quite that strong! I’ll provide support—everyone, keep fighting!”
While the chaotic battle raged with horrible sounds, one of the fallen charged straight at me. As a dull blade flashed, our eyes met.
I knew that face. Someone I’d occasionally crossed swords with and shared drinks with.
He seemed to recognize me too, for he froze for an instant. I used that moment to sever his arm.
—Scritch!
After he fell, another Guild member finished him off. When the fighting ended, the exhausted members spoke among themselves.
“Something felt strange. I think one of those corpses hesitated when it saw me…….”
“Maybe you two knew each other? I’ve heard that sometimes, even when Undead, people retain memories from their living days.”
Those words rang true. Even in death, even as monsters wandering the dark, something remains within the human soul. The stronger one’s will, the more it endures.
After we finished collecting the bodies, Cassian looked out at his Guild members. Light kindled in his eyes.
“After twenty years, we found them at last. The families will be overjoyed. And all of you fought so well. No one flinched.”
“Vice-Captain……!”
“I am proud of you all.”
The Guild members embraced each other, overcome with emotion. It was a moving scene.
But I wasn’t a Guild member, so I only watched from a distance. I found myself missing my disciples.
Cassian felt my gaze and cleared his throat awkwardly, releasing his people.
“Then let’s head back to the gathering point.”
When we returned to the designated place, everyone else had already arrived. My disciples came rushing out to greet me.
“Master. Did everything go well?”
“Yes. We found the bodies of the fallen. About twenty of them.”
At those words, the guild members turned toward Cassian with startled eyes.
“You found the corpse, Cassian? Where on earth did you discover it?”
“I located a hollow space beyond the stone wall.”
“Just as expected of you, Cassian.”
“No. It was my associate who noticed the hollow space. My associate also destroyed the stone wall.”
The guild members turned their gaze toward me. There was something akin to reverent awe in their eyes.
Meanwhile, Cesare was shrugging his shoulders with a smug expression. His face was brimming with pride.
“Of course my master could slice through a stone wall like that. Though if he’s the type who breaks promises, I suppose that’s asking too much.”
Cassian did not so much as glance at Cesare. His deliberate indifference was unmistakable.
“Now we need only slay the boss and this will be finished. Take the vanguard, Dein Balanus.”
So they’re entrusting the boss to me. That suits us fine.
I pushed open the tightly sealed door. Something massive loomed in the darkness.
A reek and rasping breath washed over me—a dragon, its flesh rotting and sloughing away in places, bone beginning to show through.
It was the Corpse Dragon, the boss of Bitan.
Was it really twenty years since I last faced it?
I could feel the guild members falter at the overwhelming stench and oppressive presence. But my disciples gazed upon the Corpse Dragon with eyes burning for battle.
The Corpse Dragon twisted its body and fixed its gaze upon the intruders. Though its eye sockets were hollow, somehow it felt as though it were looking directly at me.
The Corpse Dragon’s maw opened, and a voice like phlegm rattling in a throat emerged.
“[Dein Balanus, first of the slaughterers. I have been waiting for you all this long time.]”
First of the slaughterers?
Looking at the faces of those around me, it seemed none of them could hear the voice. The Corpse Dragon spoke as though cursing.
“[Despair. This place shall become your grave.]”
And with those words, black light erupted beneath my feet.
In an instant, I began plummeting downward. I caught sight of the shocked faces of Cesare and Jenia.
“Master!”
Before I could even assure my disciples that I was fine, my body was sucked down into the depths below. Darkness enveloped me.
* * *
Falling. Wind surged up from below in the darkness. Dein’s pale blonde hair whipped mercilessly, and it was difficult to open his eyes against the howling gale.
Even as he plummeted endlessly, Dein was piecing together what was happening.
‘First of the slaughterers. So the magic triggers when whoever killed the Corpse Dragon the first time returns?’
A faint light began to appear far below. At this rate, he would fall to his death. Dein adjusted his grip on the blade he held.
Boom!
Just before impact, Dein channeled his mana and swung his sword downward. A powerful Sword Wind erupted upward, and his body halted in mid-air.
He landed gently on the ground. He had been prepared to fall among monsters, but to his surprise, the interior was eerily still.
A monastic chamber like Underground Level 2, yet with an air far more thick and putrid.
‘Could this place actually be a third level Dungeon?’
An unsettling pressure emanated from beyond a sealed door. Dein opened it.
Creak…
Rusted hinges shrieked as the door swung wide. As both panels opened, what lay within became clear.
A space as vast as where the Corpse Dragon had dwelt. But what lay within was not a dead dragon.
Around fifty corpses, clad in ornate Armor. The Armor that should once have gleamed pristine now had lost its luster—much like the light that had faded from their eyes.
Upon their regalia was embossed an emblem: the mark of the Kingdom Knights, those who had first breached Bitan.
Slam!
The door behind him shut of its own accord. In that same instant, the knights raised their blades. An onslaught poured in from all sides.
Clang, clang!
Each time he parried a knight’s strike, his arm tingled with the impact. Though bereft of life, their sword work remained sharp and vicious.
‘These are truly knights.’
Even in death, they fight like knights. But the enemy was not the knights alone.
Dozens of skeletons bore down upon Dein as well. He severed their limbs to disable them, but they kept coming.
Squelch…!
The severed limbs of the creatures began reattaching themselves. Powerful Restoration Magic. To regenerate such vast numbers…
Dein’s eyes swept the chamber rapidly. There—far above on the second-level balcony—stood a figure. A corpse draped in robes, clutching a long Staff.
One who had chosen to become an Immortal Undead of its own will. An entity that could command the dead at whim. A Lich.
The moment he saw it, Dein understood.
Bitan had not one boss, but two.
‘So that’s why Bitan never weakened all this time?’
The Lich would need to fall for all this to end, but the corpses flooding the chamber gave him no passage forward.
Dein fell back, fending off the onslaught of undead. A knight’s Greatsword came flying at him.
Dein fixed his gaze not on the blade hurtling toward his head, but on the knight wielding it.
The knight was weeping.
He flicked the blade away and surveyed the scene around him. Every knight wept in silence, tears streaming down their faces.
These were the men who had guarded the kingdom. Those who had sworn the oath of knighthood with unshakeable conviction.
They would never have wanted this—to end not in honorable death, but to wander for decades as thralls of the Lich.
Yet they could not stop. Weeping even as they swung their weapons without pause, the corpses around him suddenly parted—and the sole knight clad in a Red Mantle lunged toward Dein.
The royal crest emblazoned on that Red Mantle. The insignia of the Knight Captain.
Clang!
Dein caught the blow and moved to cleave the Captain’s arm clean off. But in that instant, another knight thrust himself between them.
‘They’re protecting the Captain.’
So loyalty to their leader still lingered in them. The moment Dein grasped this, a possibility crystallized in his mind.
Screech!
Dein’s blade grew sharper, more savage, tearing through his enemies with renewed ferocity. He hacked at the legs of those shielding the Captain, forcing them to collapse and immobilize.
The Captain roared and swung his sword. Even as a corpse, the weight of his strikes remained formidable.
The blade he wielded was unusually heavy. Not from the steel alone. It carried the weight of duty, of oaths sworn, of promises made.
Crack!
The moment Dein parried the Captain’s strike, he drove his blade deep into the Captain’s chest. The solid breastplate buckled and gave way, pierced clean through.
As the core shattered, Dein felt a sensation bloom in his mind—like a flame kindling in the darkness.
Each time he felled something, it felt as though a dying ember caught fire once more. Dein dwelled on that sensation as he draped the Captain’s Red Mantle over his shoulders.
In that moment, the knights ceased. They were Undead—loyalty remained within them, but not the intellect or selfhood of men.
They recognized Dein as one of their own, now that he wore the Captain’s mantle. The assault halted abruptly, though no true relief came.
Screech-screech-screech…!
The skeletons did not stop, mantle or no mantle. The path to the Lich ahead remained utterly barred.
But the situation had shifted nonetheless.
Clang!
One of the knights moved to block Dein’s path, throwing himself into the skeleton’s onslaught.
The worn, decaying Red Mantle stirred gently. Dein, sword leveled toward the Lich standing high above, turned to address the knights before him.
“The Captain commands. Clear my path forward.”

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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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