novelraw Chapter 123: The Angler
Chapter 123: The Angler
Actually obtaining the Magic Book was a pleasant surprise. Loren put the Magic Book away and prepared to focus on dealing with the necromancer.
From this distance Loren fired a single shot that blew the corpse’s heart apart, then began listening carefully to the surrounding sounds.
Creatures inside the blood fog die instantly, so this place was now filled with deathly silence, very quiet. If anything made a sound, Loren would know immediately.
Most of the corpses had been destroyed when they exploded just now, but that didn’t rule out the necromancer having reserves.
“What is this?”
After a few steps Loren saw a thin fishing line, about as fine as a spider web. One end of the line was buried in the ground, the other stretched far off toward the sea.
“...”
Loren felt certain he had found the necromancer’s location. Ordinarily this thin line should have been invisible, but the observer’s authority helped Loren once more.
As Loren approached the thread, movement suddenly came from behind him. A figure in a black robe broke through the ground and crawled out. Loren didn’t panic;
instead, it confirmed his guess.
Given the necromancer’s nature, she would never come out on her own unless Loren had found the right direction.The moment Loren turned his head, a hand sprang up from the ground and grabbed his ankle.
The hand was extremely withered, devoid of any sign of life. Loren was sure there was no corpse under the ground he was standing on, so this was magic.
A third-tier spell, Ghost Hand.
“By the way, here’s a secret for you: you’re already dead.”
Loren swung his staff. In an instant the newly surfaced Robed Figure was decapitated. The speed of the Crimson Blade was beyond ordinary reaction—too fast to dodge unless one had Loren’s Void-walking.
Loren’s words were not a threat but a statement of fact. After seeing the fishing line, he understood the necromancer’s present condition.
She had died long ago. Now she was only a wandering soul, preserved by some force.
There is a deep-sea monster called an Angler. It looks like a giant teardrop and moves very slowly, but its body is covered with countless fine fishing lines.
Those lines aren’t used for catching fish, they catch souls. If someone dies with lingering regret, they can be drawn to an Angler’s lines, then controlled by them and forced to serve the Angler, helping it hunt. The Angler can even grant those resentful souls new physical form.
Many controlled wandering souls don’t realize they’re dead—just like this necromancer. That explained why Loren couldn’t hear a heartbeat.
When Loren’s substitute was slain instantly, the necromancer didn’t react strongly;
she treated Loren’s words as a threat.
“Think about it. How long have you been in the sea? Could a living person survive that long in the sea? Try checking your own pulse, see if it still beats.”
Loren moved toward the fishing line with his hand already on his blade’s hilt, speaking as he walked.
If he hadn’t suddenly seen that line, he would never have guessed. The lines should have been completely invisible.
Now that he knew what was going on, the problem became much easier.
“Do you realize you’ve been helping something feed? Something you never even noticed existed.”
If a controlled wraith realized it was being manipulated, two outcomes were possible: either it would become a soul fully dominated by the Angler, or it would dissipate immediately after losing the Angler’s power.
Either result would be fine for Loren.
At Loren’s words, the fishing lines began to tremble violently. The necromancer was clever;
she needed only Loren’s prompt to react.
The fishing lines then yanked her out. She struggled desperately, trying to pull the line from her mouth. Loren finally saw the necromancer’s true face.
She was indeed a woman, but no longer human. Her skin was deathly pale and her eye sockets were hollow.
Not only the eye sockets—her entire body was like a black void. The line in her mouth seemed to enter empty space.
“Rest in peace... Throat-Severing Slash...”
Now in soul form, physical attacks and ordinary magic were useless. Loren directly used the Requiem.
“I can’t die!”
The necromancer’s struggle abruptly stopped. She sacrificed both her arms to avoid being finished by a single throat-severing stroke.
She stumbled back several paces. The fishing line still hung from her mouth, but she showed no sign of being controlled or dissipating.
“My parents’ revenge—someone must pay! They were executed by the Kingdom of Anselm, and I was exiled. For vengeance, I’d do anything!”
She roared and hurled all the magic she knew at Loren in a single breath: burning skulls, withered ghost hands, invisible claws... one thing after another.
“Why do you irrelevant villains always like to spam attacks?”
“The Kingdom of Anselm’s laws don’t slander the innocent. Your sentence only proves you were guilty, you don’t deserve revenge.”
Holding the scabbard like a violin, Loren rested the blade’s edge against the red thread on the scabbard and began to draw.
A stirring, solemn melody burst forth. Countless Crimson Blades wove a huge net in the air. As they shredded the necromancer’s magic, her soul was cut into pieces.
“As the first soul to die under the Requiem, you should feel honored.”
When the piece finished, Loren sheathed his blade and the blood fog began to dissipate. Loren could see the blood moon again.
[Level up successful, attribute point +1, current level 26, 90% to next level]
“Job done.”
Loren hadn’t expected to have to handle it himself in the end, but obtaining necromancy was worth the effort.
After the necromancer died, the fishing lines slowly retracted. The Angler itself was cumbersome, even retracting its lines was slow.
Without resentful souls, it could be killed even by a turtle.
An Angler in the sea wasn’t good news for Loren. Its floor was low, but its ceiling was absurdly high—among the souls it could control could be a ninth-tier mage.
However, Anglers avoid danger. They won’t provoke threats, and they’re quite passive. Mostly they eat small fish and shrimps;
sometimes resentful souls have their own agendas and the Angler doesn’t care. It had little intelligence, but it knew freeing souls to act on their own was the best choice.
Not long after Loren reunited with the children, new Wind Messengers arrived and saw the scene of carnage.
But Loren was unharmed, and that was enough. The Wind Messengers agreed.