The Martial God Becomes a Necromancer and Conquers the Tower - Chapter 56

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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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Episode 56
56
This was that gambling den—the one I’d meant to tackle last time when Cheok Cheok-seok had reminded me, but somehow never got around to.
This time, I wasn’t about to forget. I’d do this properly.
But then a message popped up in the chat that threw cold water on the whole thing.
-Obviously you’re gonna Clear it. I’m just gonna bet on Clear.
“Huh. How do you know whether I’ll Clear it or not?”
Here was a viewer getting ahead of himself, counting his chickens before they hatched.
Sure, I’d Cleared everything so far, but gambling’s only fun when there’s real tension, you know?
“Tell you what—let’s run a poll first, no money on it yet. I Clear it, or I don’t. Go!”
I threw up a casual survey.
The results tallied instantly.
[Clear: 99%]
[Fail to Clear: 1%]
“Ugh. That’s not fun at all.”
Ninety-nine percent? This wasn’t gambling—this was a straight-up donation drive.
The overwhelming confidence meant no odds to speak of.
“I haven’t even seen the map yet! It could be totally different when I do! Who knows what kind of nightmare the Dimensional Tower’s gonna throw at me?”
-Last time you said you absolutely couldn’t beat it, but you did
-Remember the Defense Stage when 91% bet on loss ㅋㅋ
-All those profit-chasers lost money that day
-Yeah let’s just see the map first
-Let’s go to floor 4
“Yeah, let’s check it out. Come on, let’s go~”
I headed straight for the entrance to the fourth floor.
[Will you enter a floor with higher difficulty?]
The same Hard Mode confirmation message appeared as before.
“Okay. Accept!”
I hit accept without hesitation.
Light burst forth, and my vision went stark white.
And in the next moment, a new message unfolded before my eyes.
[You have entered Dimensional Tower, Floor 4: Guardian of the Village.]
[Protect the village.]
[The trial fails if the Awakened One dies or the village falls into ruin.]
[Your time limit is one month.]
[May fortune favor you.]
“Huh? Guardian of the Village is showing up on floor 4?”
I read the message and was left speechless.
This wasn’t supposed to appear on floor 4 at all.
-????? Guardian of the Village???
-Isn’t that supposed to show up on floor 30+??
-The Dimensional Tower’s gone insane ㄷㄷㄷㄷ
-Why’s a month-long limit showing up on floor 4
-Did the devs not come in today
My viewers were just as baffled as I was, the chat exploding with messages.
“No, seriously—this is a stage you’re not supposed to see until you break through floor 30.”
Even though I’d spent most of my time diving into melee-dealer videos, I’d been watching the tower long enough to have picked up a pretty solid sense of what kinds of stages existed out there.
And this Guardian of the Village stage?
It was a real pain in the neck.
“Even if it looks kind of like the Defense Stage, it’s actually way more annoying than that.”
The Defense Stage was just about stopping waves of enemies. Guardian of the Village took it further.
Because—
It was half Territory Management simulation.
The moment a Hunter arrives here, they’re recognized as the new lord of the village.
As the new lord, the Hunter has to repel the monsters pouring into the village and protect it.
But that’s not the trap.
The village itself was in a state of total crisis on multiple fronts.
The main problems were food shortages and disease.
You had to solve both to get a Clear.
Keep the monsters back, feed the starving townspeople, cure the plague.
This was basically asking a hunter to simultaneously serve as a general, a farmer, and a physician.
And if the village population dropped below 50%?
The village would collapse, resulting in an automatic failure.
Even this stage was subject to Random Matching, naturally.
If you’d formed a party beforehand, you’d enter as a party, but usually close to a hundred hunters who’d never met each other would be thrown together.
The outcome was predictable.
It would blow up like an uncontrolled group project.
Damn group projects.
No leader, free-riders everywhere, trolls running wild.
The Dimensional Tower had faithfully recreated exactly why group projects were humanity’s eternal curse.
People were the problem. They should’ve screened for character before matching anyone.
And they threw this stage at me as Hard Mode?
I let out a hollow laugh.
Who else could even enter this Hard Mode besides me?
Hard Mode was an exclusive zone only for those maintaining a consecutive Clear streak from the first attempt.
In other words, I had to manage Territory Management alone—something a hundred people would struggle with together.
This was insane. They were asking me to do a group project by myself.
I was genuinely curious what dimension the Dimensional Tower had left its conscience in.
But.
There was one silver lining.
“Oh. Guys. There’s no cap on Undead Summoning here?”
Looking at the stage information, I found there was no numerical limit on how many undead I could summon.
The last stage had restricted the number of undead, which was inconvenient as hell, but not here.
“Wait. So if….”
A lightbulb flickered on in my mind.
Undead—unlimited.
Territory Management.
The moment those two keywords collided, the picture began to take shape.
“What if I unleash my entire twelve thousand Zombie Army here?”
Farming? I’d have the zombies do it.
Defense? I’d create a human barricade of zombies.
Labor? I’d have twelve thousand tireless workers who never sleep or rest.
“This is actually insanely good, isn’t it?”
While everyone else struggled with labor shortages across a hundred people, I was the CEO of a megacorporation with twelve thousand zombie employees.
The previous stage had restricted undead numbers, which was a pain. This one didn’t.
So… I could do this.
I could.
* * *
“Oh! Your Excellency!”
The moment I stepped into the village entrance, an elderly man came scurrying out.
“What an honor to meet you! I am Tomi, the village headman of this settlement!”
The way he bowed so deeply his back seemed ready to break screamed NPC questgiver.
Anyone who’d played even one RPG knew this archetype.
The fellow standing at the village entrance, a question mark floating above their head.
“Good to meet you, Tomi.”
I switched into lord mode and spoke with measured grace.
In my past life I’d commanded martial sect disciples and retainers by the dozen—mastering this kind of authority came as naturally as eating cold porridge.
“How many subjects does this village have? Are there any among the ill? What does it currently need?”
This was, in fact, the standard protocol for the Guardian of the Village stage.
Upon arrival, you grabbed the headman and extracted the situation report—that was Strategy 101.
I’d seen enough broadcasts to rattle off the lines smoothly.
“Your Excellency, our village currently….”
Village headman Tomi clasped his hands respectfully and was about to begin his report.
Pop!
A game UI-like status window materialized before my eyes.
[Subjects: 3,212]
[Health: 12]
[Safety: 0]
[Food: 23]
[Prosperity: 11]
[Administrative Order: Conscription]
Oh. Numbers laid out cleanly like this makes a difference.
Hearing it all explained in words was one thing, but seeing it in figures like this, the situation snapped into focus.
But looking closer, there wasn’t a single thing in good condition.
Safety at zero was particularly striking.
“Safety is zero? That means the defense line is completely blank slate.”
Right now, if a single goblin outside the village so much as breathed on us, we’d be finished.
Health at twelve and food at twenty-three were barely scraping bottom too.
“This is basically like inheriting a doomed save file from a ruined game, right before bankruptcy.”
Maybe this is what it feels like for a newly appointed CEO taking over a company on the verge of collapse the moment the tutorial ends.
Either way, I had to push all four of those stats upward to get a Clear.
The method was up to me.
As long as I got results, it didn’t matter how.
“Understood. Call me if you have other matters to attend to. For now, step back.”
I’d gathered enough information and was about to dismiss the village chief when Tomi spoke up again.
“Ah, there is something I should mention first, if I may, esteemed one.”
“What is it?”
Tomi raised a finger and pointed across the way.
“That is the manor where the previous lord used to reside. Would it not be fitting for your lordship to make it your residence?”
Following where his finger pointed, I could see a stone manor standing alone—the only building in the village that looked intact.
“Yes. That will do.”
Since I was going to play lord anyway, I might as well do it from a proper house.
I couldn’t exactly pitch a tent in the middle of a slum and rule as a lord.
“I shall make the arrangements at once.”
Village Chief Tomi bowed once more and hurried away with quick steps.
All right, the formal entry was complete.
-NPCs are smooth as hell lol
-Yeah, the lord knows how to lord it up ㄷㄷ
-But safety 0 for real? Hardcore from the start
-Health 12 food 23 do we gotta max all this?
-Solo run and the pace is fast, that’s wild
The chat erupted with chatter.
“Yeah, well. Running solo like me does make the picture a little different.”
Normally on this stage, a hundred people flood in at once and it’s chaos from the starting gun.
“Most hunters fight tooth and nail over the lord’s seat right from the beginning.”
There’s only one seat for lord but a hundred candidates, so you get an instant political melodrama—scheming, betrayal, the whole collapse-of-civilization arc from frame one.
But me?
I was the only one who entered, so the lord’s seat was mine without question or contest.
With no competition, there was no politics to play, and the village chief had eyes only for me—pure loyalty mode.
-This is solo’s secret honey lmao
It’s like doing a group project alone—at least you don’t have slacker teammates making your blood pressure spike.
“But whether this counts as normal progress, I honestly have no idea.”
There’s probably no precedent for anyone clearing Guardian of the Village on Hard Mode solo.
With no comparison group, how do I even judge if this is smooth or rough?
“Well, I’ll just run and see. As long as I hit that Clear stamp by the deadline, that’s what matters.”
The most important thing is safety.
The deadline is one month.
So how do I raise safety in one month?
From what I’ve seen in other hunters’ videos, the usual approach is to train the villagers into a militia, or use skills to build earth walls, or clear nearby monsters.
Or sometimes all three.
So what will I do?
Everything.
What can’t I do? I’ll just do it all.

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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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