The Wizard Who Endured the World of Murim - Chapter 3

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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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Surviving in the Martial Realm as a Mage: Episode 3
I was absorbed in the fierce clash between two organizations locked in combat.
Mansizong in their gray robes.
And the Heavenly Blood Sect in their crimson garments.
While they remained fixated on their battle, unable to spare attention elsewhere.
I carefully stepped into the corridor.
‘I’ll head in the opposite direction first.’
The fighting was erupting down the right corridor.
So I moved swiftly along the shadowed passage of the left corridor instead.
All the while, I focused on gathering information.
The stone floor beneath my feet was polished smooth, utterly devoid of any irregularities.
Along both sides of the wide, elongated corridor, chambers identical to the Prison Chamber I’d escaped from were constructed at regular intervals.
‘This structure is quite expansive.’
Only after stepping into the corridor could I begin to estimate the true scale of this Unknown Structure.
It appeared capable of housing several thousand people with ease.
I’d already passed more than twenty doors since entering.
‘Surely they didn’t carve all of this from solid rock by hand?’
Unlikely.
They must have employed magic.
There’s no way a construction of this magnitude was achieved through manual labor alone.
As I entertained these tangential thoughts.
I began to tense as the corridor’s end drew near.
Strangely, I’d encountered no obstacles whatsoever thus far.
That meant at the corridor’s turning point.
Something was almost certainly waiting there.
‘They wouldn’t have left themselves unprepared.’
Reviewing the situation as I understood it.
Mansizong had been ambushed by the Heavenly Blood Sect.
Facing a disadvantageous position, Mansizong would need to rapidly secure their base.
They’d either claimed or stored whatever resources they could carry immediately.
Anything impossible to take had been burned or destroyed.
Opening those numerous doors I’d passed would likely reveal the wreckage left behind.
Indeed, several chambers stood open.
Inside, traces of destroyed objects and burned remnants were scattered everywhere.
‘But there must be things they couldn’t take with them. They wouldn’t simply abandon valuable resources.’
It was obvious.
They wouldn’t abandon their base’s resources like this.
And they certainly wouldn’t hand them over to their enemies.
So they’d definitely set up some kind of trap.
‘I would have done the same in their position.’
Trevallion smiled faintly, his memories of the distant past surfacing unbidden.
Before the Mage Factions across the Seven Continents had been firmly consolidated.
An era of profound chaos.
Mages had spared no effort to ensure their magical resources and knowledge
would never fall into the hands of others or rival factions.
It was during that turbulent period that countless Dungeons created by mages had emerged.
‘This place has a similar feel to those days.’
Of course, the scale of a mage’s Dungeon and This Place differed overwhelmingly, but the underlying concept was quite similar.
So when one was forced to abandon resources and depart,
laying such traps was elementary knowledge.
Tap—
As I reached the end of the Corridor,
I heightened my vigilance.
Perhaps I would encounter Mansizong’s Disciples at the end of this Corridor.
Yet surprisingly, I detected no signs of presence until reaching the Corridor’s terminus.
‘What is this?’
An inexplicable unease forced me to halt my hurried steps without thinking.
And then—
“This is….”
Before a Prison Chamber whose door lay completely shattered.
It was the final chamber at the end of the Corridor.
Yet it differed slightly from the chambers I had passed through until now.
Within it lay an ‘object’ that remained undestroyed.
Thump—!
Whether medicinal or blood—
An indescribable, mysterious odor emanated from within the chamber.
There lay a trap I had never anticipated.
No.
To be more precise, corpses were arranged within.
Upon witnessing this sight, realization struck me like lightning.
“Ah… so Mansizong was a necromancer faction?”
Only then could I fathom why I had sensed no presence from Mansizong until now.
They had no need to construct additional traps.
Instead, they had left behind a single, lethal trap.
Creak—! Crack-crack-crack—!
The corpses, meeting my gaze, streamed crimson blood-light from their eyes
and rose from the coffins in which they had been propped, lunging savagely toward me in the Corridor.
* * *
“Surely those blood corpses weren’t wasted, Senior Chang? They were on the verge of perfecting ten bodies—wouldn’t it have been better to take at least a few with us?”
“A waste, yes, but unavoidable. We lacked the capacity to carry them. Still, we couldn’t leave them for those fools, so driving them berserk before our escape was the best option.”
“Sigh, the more I think about it, the more wasteful it feels. We spent nearly thirty years’ worth of our sect’s time and resources to create that… and now we’re throwing away all that tremendous investment. The thought of it still makes my teeth grind. To use it only to kill those Heavenly Blood Sect bastards and then discard it.”
“Don’t worry about it. Look on the bright side. From what I saw earlier, at least two masters of the Grand Lord rank came. If we take them down along with us, then we’re at least breaking even.”
Senior Chang.
Jang Won-ik, an inspector of Mansizong, answered while climbing over a boulder on the Small Hill. The junior inspectors following behind him responded with startled expressions.
“A Grand Lord rank inspector came personally? Then they’d be at least rank six inspectors. If we truly achieve mutual destruction with them, then there’s nothing wasteful about this.”
As the disciples of Mansizong fleeing rapidly nodded their heads in understanding.
Jang Won-ik gazed at the Manshizong Secret Base, now vanishing from sight, and let out a quiet chuckle.
“Heh heh, those fools from the Heavenly Blood Sect probably thought this was just our resource warehouse. That’s why they attacked with such a small force. They never predicted this place would become their grave.”
“Still, the sacrifice of the Baiguduan brothers is somewhat regrettable.”
Thinking of the Baiguduan brothers who had held the rear guard until the end and entangled the Heavenly Blood Sect’s pursuers.
The disciples of Mansizong wore solemn expressions.
Jang Won-ik, running at the very front, opened his mouth.
“Tsk, it’s unavoidable since their role was to lure the enemies all the way into the base’s traps. Still, as promised, the families of the Baiguduan brothers will receive special care within our sect’s inner circle.”
“That’s a relief.”
The sorcerers of Mansizong who had been here were preparing to form new master-servant relationships with the Blood Corpses.
So they had left all the Iron Corpses they previously possessed in the sect’s custody.
As corpses grew stronger in rank, their self-awareness intensified.
Returning the existing Iron Corpses to the sect was an unavoidable choice.
“Ah, I really thought we’d finally obtain a Blood Corpse this time. It’s such a shame.”
“And they said this would be a new-model Blood Corpse with tremendous performance improvements.”
“Ugh, that’s true.”
Excluding the Living Corpse that existed only in legends.
The Blood Corpse was effectively the highest rank.
A single Blood Corpse could face three peak masters of the Murim simultaneously.
Truly overwhelming military strength.
“If we’d just obtained one completed Blood Corpse, my position in the sect would have risen tremendously…”
“Sigh, it’s too late to regret now.”
“You’re right, there’s no point in complaining like this in front of Senior Chang. You’ve already turned in twenty Iron Corpses…”
The sorcerers of Mansizong chatted among themselves.
And hurried along their way.
They believed that all the incidents that had occurred today.
Would end here.
After all, they had thrown ten incomplete Blood Corpses into the traps.
For them.
The one who had stolen the Blood Corpse midway.
Never imagined that such an unforeseen variable would be in motion.
* * *
Trevallion sensed that a windfall from heaven had fallen upon him.
Those ten corpses rushing toward him, drooling and snarling.
These were creations that a fairly high-ranking Lich or Necromancer had expended tremendous time and effort to produce.
It was because I had instinctively recognized it as a supreme-tier ghoul.
“Heavens, they say even if you fall into hell itself, you can claw your way back out if you keep your wits about you.”
Such extraordinary fortune had come knocking at my door.
Indeed, the old saying had not steered me wrong.
Trevallion wove a hand seal with casual grace toward the rampaging fortune bearing down upon me.
Without mana, it was unavoidable—cumbersome though it might be.
By weaving the hand seal.
I had no choice but to resonate with the mana of heaven and earth and draw it forth by any means necessary.
‘Moreover, I deliberately refrained from establishing a master-servant bond to provoke the ghouls into a rampage!’
A double blessing, truly.
The final trap that Mansizong had laid.
Against an opponent with no knowledge of necromancy, it would have been a fatal blow.
Yet the problem was that with even a modicum of specialized knowledge in necromancy, this trap could be breached far too easily.
Grrr—
I gazed upon the ten ghouls frozen before me like statues and smiled broadly.
Was this not a gift far greater than the artifact I had picked up moments ago?
Even the ghouls’ characteristic acrid stench seemed fragrant to me now.
A contented hum naturally escaped my lips.
“Now then, what shall I do first~”
I bit the tip of my finger to draw blood.
Then flicked a droplet lightly onto the forehead of the immobilized ghoul.
The ghouls’ entire bodies trembled softly in response.
Their eyes, which had glowed crimson moments before, dimmed as they bowed their heads in silence.
I swiftly established a temporary master-servant bond with the ghouls.
Then, approaching one of them, I carefully guided the dark mana that churned within like molten lava to stability.
I had completely quelled the force that had been externally induced into a rampage.
“Hmm, they used quite a peculiar method to induce the rampage, didn’t they? There’s something to learn here.”
I, who had been called the God of Magic in the Lower Dimension.
Not only orthodox elemental magic.
But necromancy and spirit magic as well—even dragon language magic and holy magic, the exclusive domain of dragons.
A monster who had mastered every form of magic that existed in that world.
Yet even to me, the necromancy of this world held a peculiar flavor.
Crude, yet somewhat primal in nature, one might say?
Lacking refinement, yet possessing a raw, untamed vitality.
“This place is dangerous. Let’s leave and deliberate elsewhere.”
What was somewhat disappointing while controlling the ghouls.
These creatures appeared to be incomplete—their vital essence fell short relative to the size of their vessels.
“Could it be that what they called ‘sacrifices’ were prepared to complete these ghouls?”
The efficiency would have been overwhelmingly poor.
But if all the children in the Prison Chamber were consumed to generate energy?
Trevallion quickly unfolded the calculations in his mind, then folded them away with a nod.
“Well, that makes a certain amount of sense. Terribly inefficient, though.”
Horrifying as it was, if they sacrificed all those children from that chamber earlier as offerings.
In other words, accounting for roughly a hundredfold energy loss.
They could have filled the vessels of all the ghouls here.
‘This is certainly a barbaric approach to magic.’
It was rather intriguing.
I wondered if only the ancient shamans would have attempted something so crude.
As one who walks the path of magic, I hadn’t avoided the heretical arts entirely.
But this particular approach held no appeal for me.
It lacked refinement.
“In any case, we need to escape this place. Come here for a moment.”
Trevallion called forward the most robust of the ghouls, climbed onto its back, and spoke.
“From now on, your name is Ilho. Let’s head outside first.”
“….”
The ghoul made no response, likely because its vocal cords had been damaged during the chemical treatment process that elevated it to a superior ghoul.
But it nodded as if understanding the command and began to move.

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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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