Murim Login

Chapter 381

381 · 12 min read

Swoooosh.

I couldn’t see it. But I could feel it. Centered on me—or rather, flowing from the Skeleton Warlord inside the subspace called my inventory—a sticky energy spread in every direction.

The change was instantaneous.

The movements of the utterly savage monsters abruptly stopped.

Orcs, trolls, goblins, lycanthropes, every kind of monster I had only ever seen in monster encyclopedias, and even the fallen Hunters.

They had just one thing in common: they had already died once and been resurrected as undead.

Gulp.

I swallowed dryly and muttered, “It actually worked.”

“……?”

Wait, what did you just say?

My brain froze for a moment. Then I whispered, “What kind of boneheaded nonsense was that? Didn’t you do it because you knew it would work?”

The Skeleton Warlord answered sheepishly.

“You said your control was much stronger.”

“What?”

“……”

Is this guy completely insane?

It was absurd, but the result was undeniable.

When all the undead monsters within a radius of several dozen meters stopped moving at once, the fierce battle raging around us briefly fell into a lull.

“Th-The monsters have stopped moving!”

“What the hell is going on?”

“Don’t let your guard down! Some of them are still moving!”

As someone shouted, it was still too soon to relax.

The Skeleton Warlord had only taken control of some of the nearby undead monsters. Those farther away, as well as the ordinary monsters that were not undead, were the exception.

“Haaaaah!”

Clang-clang-clang! Stab-stab!

The uncontrolled monsters were bewildered by the sudden change in their own kind, but only for a moment. Once they began rampaging again, the battle resumed.

The two sides’ numbers had been incomparable. From this moment on, though, that was about to change.

I shouted in a hushed voice.

“Go, Warlordmon!”

Warlordmon—no, the Skeleton Warlord—flared up and shouted.

“Then how about Warlordmon Who’s Dying to Be Annihilated?”

Despite being a skeleton that couldn’t even breathe, he let out a deep sigh before chanting a spell.

That bastard had clearly gotten hooked on “skeleton skeleton.” The incantation wasn’t even funny, but its effect was undeniable.

At the Skeleton Warlord’s command, the eyes of the undead monsters that had been staring blankly into space filled with savagery.

Then, in the next moment—

Crunch!

An undead ogre’s iron club crushed a troll’s skull.

That was the beginning.

The undead monsters who now served a new master charged at their former allies.

Crack! Slash! Stab-stab-stab!

It was an unexpected ambush from behind by their own allies.

One flank of the monster army surrounding the Chinese Hunters collapsed helplessly.

“What the hell?!”

“Why are they suddenly…?”

The monsters betrayed by their own kind weren’t the only ones thrown into confusion.

The Chinese Hunters were just as bewildered by the sudden turn of events. I shouted at the young Hunter who had been darting across the front line, swinging his spear all over the battlefield.

“Shao Shen!”

“T-Teacher Jin?”

His widened eyes turned toward me.

“How do you know my name?”

I had just checked his Level window using Qi Sense, but that wasn’t important right now.

“What are you doing? Why haven’t you switched to an all-out attack?”

“But what exactly is happening…?”

“Are you really that curious right now? Do you want to grab an undead monster and make it explain why it’s helping us according to the five Ws and one H?”

“Ah, no, sir!”

“Then what should we do now?”

Shao Shen snapped back to his senses and raised his spear high.

“Attack formation! All Public Security Armed Forces personnel, attack everything except the undead monsters from this moment on!”

“Yes, sir!”

An excellent example of sound judgment.

With one unified shout, the momentum of the five hundred or so Hunters who had been cornered changed.

“Kill them!”

“Avenge our fallen comrades!”

Swish-swish-swish! Slash!

A lycanthrope charged at a Hunter who had just severed an orc’s neck.

Its jaws opened, yellow fangs poised to tear out the Hunter’s throat—but a massive fist slammed into its maw.

Crunch!

The ogre that had crushed the lycanthrope’s skull let out a savage roar.

At that moment, the sharp claws of a griffin diving toward the ogre flashed above its head.

The griffin shrieked. Its claws, charged with the mana of an A-rank monster, were about to rake across the ogre’s eyes when—

“Ice Ball!”

“Lightning Bolt!”

The griffin convulsed from the electric shock in midair after being struck by the spells of the ranged Hunters waiting nearby.

Right then, a figure launched himself upward after stepping on a troll’s shoulder and swung his weapon at the griffin.

“Specially made by J Company, widely regarded as one of Germany’s finest weapon workshops…!”

Slash!

A clean, no-frills strike split the griffin’s head in two.

Team Leader Choi landed gracefully and gazed at the transparent blade, not a single drop of blood staining it. He smiled with satisfaction.

“The longsword I won at auction for 5.2 billion won. It really was worth the price.”

“……”

He looks like an idiot, but he’s cool.

He’s cool, but he looks like an idiot.

The Skeleton Warlord watched the scene, then asked dubiously:

“Technically, yes, in terms of internal Guild positions, but…”

“Raise your hand if you’re a Skeleton Warlord who wants to be annihilated for running his mouth.”

After a brief silence, the Skeleton Warlord answered by chanting another spell.

After three years at a village school, even a dog could recite poetry. By now, he did it well without being told.

Tuk. Tuk-tuk-tuk.

The griffin killed by Team Leader Choi, along with the monsters brought down by the combined attacks of the Hunters and the undead, gained new life and hauled their dead bodies back to their feet.

There were two hundred of them.

The range also seemed to have grown even wider compared to his first attempt. Even the undead monsters far away had come under the Skeleton Warlord’s control and begun attacking their former allies.

“Wow. You were this strong?”

“……”

“Uh-huh. Good for you.”

I gave up trying to understand this bizarre named monster.

The result was all that mattered. Trying to figure it out right now would only give me a headache.

I couldn’t see him because he was inside my inventory, but I was certain his skull—which had nothing left but bones—was trembling with excitement.

I sighed and tightened my grip on my spear.

“I was already planning to.”

“There is.”

The method for increasing the number of undead was simple.

“You just have to kill every last one of them.”

Arrogant bastard.

Still, this time, I couldn’t help agreeing with part of what he said.

As the Skeleton Warlord’s mad laughter echoed through my head, I took a step forward.

Flamefire Path.

Whoooooosh!

A path of flame opened along my footsteps.

Black robes. Staffs hung with dangling skulls.

The places where their pupils should have been were empty, and pieces of flesh that had not yet rotted still clung to their bodies.

The three beings looked as though they had stepped out of a nightmare. They exchanged thoughts with one another.

They were not asking how the undead had escaped their control.

The three beings already knew the answer to that question.

All monsters had a hierarchy, but the undead in particular were ruled absolutely by strength.

If control had been taken away as it had now, it was undoubtedly the work of a superior being.

None of the three beings could answer.

How could an existence more powerful than them be here? How could it steal control of the undead and use them to help the humans?

The three beings fell into momentary confusion as they recalled the order.

If it was not Him—the Arch Lich—then who could possibly surpass their control?

The reason unmistakable hostility could be felt in their thoughts was that they, too, had once been necromancers who had borne the full weight of human rejection and contempt.

But that had been in the distant past, in another dimension.

They had drifted across the boundless sea of death until they encountered a ferryman named the Arch Lich. They gained new power and were now trying to become the Liches they had long yearned to be.

However…

The three beings could not hide their regret.

They had been great necromancers in life, but they had not yet fully transformed into Liches.

They had been reborn by borrowing the bodies of dead mages, but one week was far too short to absorb the death energy needed to transform into Liches.

That was what the three beings feared most.

They had to overcome this crisis somehow if they wanted to earn the Arch Lich’s trust—even if it meant expending a tremendous amount of power.

The three beings, who had been competing for the Arch Lich’s favor, finally found common ground.

Without hesitation, they began chanting a necromantic spell.

The energy of death flowed from the three beings and spread through the air.

Green grass turned black. Soldiers of the People’s Liberation Army caught within its range clutched their throats and collapsed.

“Urk!”

“Ghhurk!”

Ssshhhhhh.

The death energy flowing from the bodies of the humans who had died with those final cries seeped into every inch of the monsters.

The air shook beneath the powerful mana carried in their savage cries. Their strength was beyond comparison with that of ordinary monsters.

Only after sensing their strengthened control and the increased power of the monsters under their command did the three beings stop chanting.

The three beings were smiling with satisfaction at their strengthened legion when—

BOOM!

In the distance, a monster’s limbs went flying with a thunderous explosion.

The three beings looked toward the flames surging into the sky.

A short while later, flames surged into the sky once again.

The three beings looked at one another.

Three minutes later, a grim atmosphere hung over the three beings’ skulls.

Watching the twenty or so Dullahans they had selected as an escort troop rush off as a group, the three beings furtively began searching for another point of agreement.

But the three beings’ plan to create a Death Knight was shattered into pieces before even ten minutes had passed.

Fwoosh! Kaaaa-boom!

Even their bodies made of nothing but bones could feel the scorching heat.

“Fucking bastards. There are a shitload of them.”

Crack-crack-crack!

The three beings saw the figure tearing through the monster legion with a spear engulfed in hellfire and hurriedly began chanting.

Their slow voices had become as fast as rap.

But before the spell could be completed, the young human—whose identity as either a fire mage or a warrior was impossible to determine—had already arrived right in front of them.

“Uh, nice to meet you.”

The young man, Jin Taekyung, cocked his head to one side.

“Hello. Entertainment Weekly?2 Are you idiots?”

Footnotes

  1. The pseudo-incantation mangles the names Valencia, Madrid, Bayern Munich, and Stoke City. ↩

  2. The incantations sound like mangled versions of annyeonghaseyo (“hello”) and Yeonye-ga Junggye, the Korean title of the TV program Entertainment Weekly. ↩

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