World-Saving is a Skill

Chapter 83

Chapter 83

Necromancer Tabul felt horribly wronged right now.

“Why here of all places?”

He had done his homework on the humans of this world. He hadn’t been lazy about building up knowledge.

At present, most other countries were half-ruined, and the only nation still functioning properly as a state was the Republic of Korea.

“But the distance!”

He knew exactly where that country lay. Harbin, where he had set up his laboratory, wasn’t that far from Korea, yet it wasn’t exactly close either.

Between Korea and Harbin lay an Erosion Zone they’d have to cross.

“And suddenly they want to cut off the waist?”

Crazy bastards. He had established himself here precisely because he believed the Korean military would never take a strategy this reckless.

They had never done it before, and he thought they never would. It had been that nation’s policy for a long time.

“Did their king change? No, that country doesn’t have a king.”

It was a ridiculous world. Letting idiot commoners choose their own leaders.

It was a stupid method that could only result in electing a con artist who waved an extra piece of candy. Not a competent leader, but a candy-peddling swindler would end up king.

Anyway, that wasn’t the point.

All of a sudden that laughable political system must’ve swallowed some kind of drug, because they suddenly swung their forces around.

Then they ignored the Erosion Zones over their heads and just shoved straight into Harbin. That was the problem.

“Damn it, why are they so strong too?!”

In the countless screens floating in the air, the undead Tabul had created were being hacked apart mercilessly.

Massacre, pest control, cleanup, incineration. Any word fits the scene perfectly.

“I wasn’t expecting much anyway!”

But getting hammered this badly shouldn’t have been possible. In fact, the points where hundreds of troops were pushing in were being held without issue.

There were plenty of corpses, and every one of them was disposable. Garbage to be used and tossed.

“And what are those two!”

What grated on Tabul’s nerves were two individuals operating independently. One female coming down from the north, one male coming up from the south.

It was fine if enemies couldn’t mount proper resistance. This was beyond that. Especially the male.

“…”

Before the undead could even reach him, they froze rigid and shattered on their own. At least the female showed some etiquette now and then by swinging a blade. That male brat didn’t even show the basic courtesy of engaging an enemy.

“Why are they coming here? Damn it all.”

Worse, the male and the female were moving in a perfect straight line toward the island where his laboratory sat.

It was like they were saying, “You’re there, right? You’re dead. Wait right there.”

Tabul felt ice creep up his spine, which was already dried to the marrow. His bare white jawbone rattled.

If they discovered the lab, it would be bad.

He swept his gaze over Research Subjects No. 1 through No. 12. Each was an undead he had crafted with what he considered his best effort. He called them masterpieces.

“This is driving me mad.”

But watching those two beasts sprint straight for his island, he couldn’t believe in them.

Maybe this was how a commoner invited to a nobles’ party felt, looking over the best clothes in his closet.

He had done his best in his own way, but his gut told him it would be nowhere near enough.

“W-What is this now?!”

With a deafening boom, the lab’s ceiling shook as a whole and split with long cracks.

Then, the very male and female he’d been fretting over dropped through the shattered ceiling in a blur.

* * *

I arrived in the basement lab, thick with a musty smell, brushed the dust off my shoulders, and looked at the skull before me.

“Hi.”

“I could’ve sworn you lot still had some distance left!”

I made a sympathetic face at the yammering skull.

“It was a decoy to mislead detection. Don’t you know how to do that?”

It was a trick to fool a mage’s detection magic. Honestly, it didn’t even deserve to be called magic.

“Creatures like you couldn’t possibly do such a thing!”

He was whining a lot. Refusing to believe the result right in front of your face wasn’t a healthy habit.

Even when you wave proof right under their nose, some people insist on ignoring it. As he traced the air and spun up arrays around his body, nearby glass tubes burst, revealing what lay inside.

“Try learning design.”

What had burst from the tubes were undead, and every last one of them was grotesque. Skilled necromancers cared about aesthetics. Even if you stitched corpses together, if you wanted them cool or beautiful, you could absolutely make them that way.

The death knight commanded by a necromancer I fought long ago, good grief, he didn’t even need a runway model.

But the undead that lined up to shield their master were all flops.

Which was decisive proof he didn’t have enough skill to spare any thought for appearance.

“Do they get stronger if they’re good-looking?”

At Han Sang-ah’s question, I nodded.

“Generally, yes.”

Most undead harbored resentment whose root was jealousy of the living. Jealousy meant wanting what the other had.

Undead hated everything alive, which, paradoxically, meant they wanted to look like the very beings they loathed.

“Beasts work, people work too.”

The more perfect the form, the stronger the undead was.

A well-made undead could speak with vocal cords, and aside from relatively pale skin and a faint rotten smell, ordinary people would hardly recognize it as undead.

“In fact, if a well-made undead uses a little perfume and decent makeup, regular folks will never tell.”

“Shut your mouth! I have talent!”

He probably wanted to believe that. I eyed the skull, the necromancer… or whatever it was.

“You’ve got no talent, man. Why say things that even you don’t buy?”

He did have vast reserves of mana. That was how he’d turned every corpse in this city into undead. But his ability to handle mana was lousy.

“Kill them.”

Now completely unhinged, he ignored me and ordered his minions.

Twelve undead charged me and Han Sang-ah with howls. One had a jaw that could swallow a house whole, another had a single arm grotesquely swollen, like one I’d seen before.

Others came with other colorful peculiarities, all hideous.

“What is this, an ice cream sampler?”

Did he want me to enjoy picking flavors? Even so, they were about the level of a core from a grade 2 Erosion Core.

One with hammers instead of hands on both arms swung at me like mad. Hammer and spear collided, and the floor under our feet cracked deep and caved.

“Wow, strong for a youngster.”

While steel met steel, his muscles writhed as he forced power.

I met his timing, turned my wrist just so, and his body flipped up and hurled away to smash into a wall. Meanwhile the others kept busy.

A mass of wet flesh snaked at me, a blade sprouting at the tip like a stinger.

Before it could reach, a flash severed the tendrils, and they writhed on the floor in chunks. They looked like squid legs.

“Deep-fried, they’d be delicious.”

“They’re corpses. They probably aren’t sanitary. You’d die.”

Han Sang-ah batted away six scythes aimed at her and lopped an undead’s legs off.

The master’s face filled with despair as his so-called masterpieces, which he had proudly paraded out, were smashed one by one by our hands.

“This really feels like we’re the bad friends who empty someone else’s liquor cabinet.”

With a thunk, Paradoxical Flame roared back through the spear I’d buried in a skull. That last one was done.

“You little…!”

In the blaze of black fire, I stepped past the fallen body and walked straight for the master of these corpses.

“Do you have any last…”

I accelerated in a blink and crushed his skull.

“Words?”

I floated the headless frame into the air, shattered it to fragments, and burned him completely with Paradoxical Flame.

“Sorry. I’m not going to let you do anything.”

If you gave him a chance, he could introduce variables. If variables arose, we could lose the advantage we’d seized.

No one liked snatching defeat from the jaws of victory. Hear a last will before killing him. What was I, a cleric visiting an ICU.

I had come here to kill him. So all I needed to do was kill him.

“Target eliminated.”

Once I confirmed he was dead, I called the Seagull team and reported that things were wrapped up here.

Now the undead in Harbin were little different from wild animals.

“Let’s link up.”

“Okay.”

Han Sang-ah nodded and stood. At that moment, a chill raced my spine and my face hardened.

“What the hell is that?”

I shot out of the lab with a look of disbelief and stared toward the western sky.

— Report from the lighthouse. Confirmed unknown undead approaching Harbin from the west.

I spoke over the in-ear.

“Jung Oh-hoon, get out of there and run east now, or you’ll die.”

If Jung Oh-hoon had paused now to ask, “What are you talking about?” his death would be guaranteed.

— Got it.

Fortunately, today wasn’t the day he was going to die. The instant he cleared out, a flash from the west swept the top of Harbin Longta where he had been.

There was no explosion and nothing shattered. The top of Harbin Longta, wrapped in the flash, rusted and corroded severely.

Yes, that was magic. Thinking that, I spoke at once.

“As of now, all other Hunters fall back along the designated routes.”

But if everyone retreated, there would be no one to hold them back. Finishing the order, I turned to Han Sang-ah.

“You’re going to have a rough time with me.”

“Okay.”

She thought for a moment, then nodded. Not just her. Jung Oh-hoon, who had just escaped Harbin Longta, needed to link up too.

“We have acquired visual observations from the lighthouse. The total count is fifty entities.”

That was insane. I stared in disbelief.

“Only fifty, and they’re putting out mana like that?”

It was impressive. I gave Seagull a terse evaluation.

— But the other Hunters aren’t sensing anything. It seems hard for them to accept.

Because the enemy was hiding their presence. And not at an ordinary level. Fifty of them, was it. Then at least one of them handled mana at a level equivalent to a state-certified mage in my old world.

Either that, or there were a few fairly skilled mages moving together.

“This is dangerous. Remember what happened when they ignored my warning during the Sohwi incident.”

— Understood. We’ll switch to a withdrawal plan by force if necessary.

Maybe because we already had one precedent, the Seagull team didn’t question me further and moved to carry out my request immediately.