Ring, ring.
The sudden peal of alarm magic woke the black mage Winterdale from his sleep.
True to his cautious nature, he hurriedly checked the situation inside the cave. A necromancer of such low ability as himself could only stay alive by being careful in every circumstance.
“An intruder. I wonder who it is.”
Realizing that there was only one opponent, Winterdale fell into thought. It was just one person, but considering that they had made it this far, there was a strong possibility they were stronger than he was. In truth, his level of magic was not particularly high. Though he had trained with all his might, he had only barely reached the Expert level of the 4th Circle. His talent for magic was simply that poor.
That was why Winterdale had set his heart on becoming a necromancer. If he gathered dark magical power over a long period of time, he could summon quite powerful undead monsters, and only then could he become strong.
“For now, caution is the best course.”
He carefully opened the secret door in the floor of his bedroom. If he hid there, no one would be able to detect his presence. The entrance to the secret door was made of steel three inches thick, and since it had no handle at all, once he locked it from the inside, no one could open it.
Moreover, the floor was extremely deep, and a magic circle had even been installed, so there was no danger of his magical power leaking out. If he hid there and waited for the intruder to leave, his world would return once more. Of course, for that he needed a helper. A helper who would report the enemy’s situation to him without missing a single detail.
Click.
After entering the secret room, Winterdale hurriedly called his familiar. A helper who would clearly relay the situation above to him while he remained hidden deep below.
Bzzzz.
Astonishingly, his familiar was a fly. A truly insignificant thing, one of the countless flies even now settled black upon the corpses. This was precisely the scheme Winterdale had in mind when he made a fly his familiar.
“Kekeke. No one will ever imagine that my familiar is hidden among all these flies. At most, they’ll think something like a bat is a familiar and kill it, won’t they?”
Just as Winterdale said, in this situation, a fly was the finest familiar possible. There had to be at least several million flies swarming inside the cave, and discerning his familiar among them would be harder than finding a needle in a sandy beach. Firmly believing that, Winterdale waited for his familiar to ascertain the enemy’s identity. Without even making a sound as he breathed, of course.
“This is really awful…”
As Damon passed through the cave passage, he frowned. The cave was filled entirely with corpses. The stench released by the rotting bodies could almost be called murderous. Flies had settled over them in black masses, and with all sorts of insects devouring them, most of the corpses had their organs plainly exposed.
If he had his way, he would have purified the air at once, but because his identity might be revealed, Damon had no choice but to forcibly endure the stench.
A mage of around the 4th Circle could not possibly cast high-level magic like air purification. At the same time, he could not suppress the hatred welling up in him toward the necromancer who had created this scene.
“Madman. Why did he kill so many people he didn’t even need? With corpses like these, he could make little more than zombies…”
No matter how he thought about it, what the necromancer had done could only be considered pointless murder. Unless he had intended to use the miasma released as the corpses rotted to block his enemies… Damon clicked his tongue.
“Judging by what you’ve done, you’re hopeless as a useful necromancer too.”
Of course, with Damon’s ability, he could summon undead monsters even from these corpses. Zombies and skeletons would be nothing, and ghouls or specters could be handled with a single gesture. Though somewhat more difficult, specters and dullahans were possible as well.
But he did not particularly want to do so. His target was, strictly speaking, a dragon, so he did not want to waste magical power on anything unnecessary.
“All I need are Death Knights. When dealing with a dragon, Death Knights are actually better than Dark Shades.”
Even assuming he extracted only half of Nidelhark’s magical power from the Sealing Orb, the Death Knights he possessed would become truly invincible. Moreover, if he equipped them with the highest-grade magical arms stored inside Increasia, they would be more than sufficient to become powerful Death Knights unlike any that had ever been born before. After all, in life, their ability had been that of top-class Sword Masters.
Splash, splash.
Stepping through the fluids flowing from the corpses, Damon searched every corner of the cave. But the necromancer he sought was nowhere to be seen. Even after he had combed through the entire cave. This cave was fairly large.
It seemed to have formed naturally, but there were many signs of artificial work added to it. The necromancer appeared to have used only part of the cave. Only one stone chamber that seemed to have been used as a bedroom and laboratory, as well as the large central cavern, showed traces of human hands.
“Where did this bastard go?”
Damon frowned and looked around. After casting detection magic, he was certain the man was inside, but where he was remained completely unknown. He was hiding so thoroughly that Damon could not detect his presence at all.
“Should I summon a gnome and have it find him?”
Damon considered calling an earth spirit, but soon gave up on it. The truth might be conveyed to Verkis through the gnome’s mouth. So Damon decided to leisurely wait for the man to appear. Since this was his lair, where else could he go?
“He’ll come eventually, won’t he?”
In the central plaza, which had become a field of corpses, Damon sat cross-legged and leisurely waited for the owner of this place to reveal himself.
“This is driving me mad.”
Watching the intruder through his familiar, Winterdale was consumed by worry. The intruder, who clearly seemed stronger than he was, showed no sign of leaving. There was something Damon had failed to consider here: the necromancer’s ability was far below what he imagined.
Damon was currently emitting the presence of roughly a Master of the 4th Circle. But the necromancer was only an Expert of the 4th Circle, so naturally, he could not discern Damon’s level. Damon’s expectations had gone completely awry at this point. Since he could not determine the other party’s Circle, he had to assume the opponent was stronger than himself, and that was why Winterdale could not rashly step forward.
“Just what Circle is he? 5th Circle? 6th Circle? In the worst case, he could even be a grand mage of the 7th Circle. In any case, this is a fight I can’t win. So I have to endure here no matter what.”
Winterdale was already experienced when it came to waiting things out. When the Crosen Knights came last time, he had endured seven days and nights inside the secret stone chamber. Since the chamber had ample food and drink stored inside, his conditions could be said to be far better than the intruder’s. In that state, Winterdale simply waited for the intruder to leave.
“This is tedious.”
After waiting an entire day, Damon finally began to grow sick of it. He was hungry, and he was sleepy as well. But he could not sleep here. No matter how great a mage one was, if attacked while sleeping, one could only depart this world cleanly.
‘How do I draw him out?’
He thought it over and over, but no sharp solution came to mind. How could he possibly drag out someone hiding so firmly with no intention of fighting? In the end, he sprang to his feet.
“I’ll make him come out, no matter what it takes.”
Damon drew up all the dark magical power he had gathered so far. The magical power he had collected for nearly a hundred years had already been poured entirely into his Death Knights, so there was not much accumulated. But even this was enough to achieve his purpose.
Dark magical power. This was the very foundation of summoning, an element distributed in extremely minute quantities within yin mana. It was also the source of the power wielded by the Demon King, and it was through this very magical power that undead gained life. However, there was a limit to the magical power that could be gathered in the human world, at least for a necromancer.
Looking over the corpses strewn around him, Damon gave a strange laugh. After spending a day there, he had already grasped why the necromancer had killed people and laid them out like this.
“Kekeke. So the bastard has been gathering dark magical power through the corpse energy emitted by the bodies. But that ends now. He’ll never be able to do this again…”
An ordinary necromancer could not easily obtain dark magical power. Since it was arranged in extremely faint traces within yin mana, extracting magical power was a task one could not even dream of unless one was at least 6th Circle. That was precisely the reason Doyle had given Damon that warning.
Necromancers who had not reached that level had no choice but to gather magical power through shortcuts. Using the energy of corpses, as was being done now, was the most common method for low-level necromancers.
But Damon was different. Because he had become a necromancer at the Ninth Class, he could extract dark magical power by his own strength, however faintly. And not the low-quality kind that came from corpses, but magical power of high purity.
“I didn’t want to make anything like zombies, but I suppose I have no choice. I have absolutely no desire to lay my hands on bloody pus and discharge…”
Damon rearranged the mana he had gathered as much as possible, mixing an appropriate amount of dark magical power into it.
“Animate Dead.”
An eerie, grotesque light rose from both his hands.
Flash, flash, flash.
The bluish beams of light instantly covered the scattered corpses. Like chain lightning, the beams spread farther and farther among the bodies.
Kiiiiii.
Astonishingly, the corpses that had been devoured by insects began to tremble violently. As if they had come back to life. The bodies continued to convulse. Before long, they began to rise one by one. Transformed into zombies dripping rotten blood and pus.
As a result, the stench inside the cave could only grow even worse.
“That’s done.”
Pinching his nose shut, Damon shook his head and moved on.
“Honestly, I respect the bastard for being able to live in a place like this.”
Behind Damon as he walked slowly, the zombies followed at a sluggish pace. The corpses inside the cave had already all been turned into zombies. Under Damon’s control, the awakened zombies began to stagger one by one toward the outside of the cave.
The types of zombies varied, from those so completely decayed that only bones remained, reminiscent of skeletons, to those who had not been dead long and still bled red blood. But the zombies all had one thing in common: they were oozing dense corpse poison.
This was the terrifying aspect of zombies. In terms of combat ability, zombies in truth belonged to the lowest rank among undead monsters. There was no way strength could come from rotted, stiffened muscles. But the corpse poison they oozed was an extremely lethal toxin to living beings.
Was corpse poison not said to belong to the highest class of deadly poisons among the ten thousand poisons even in the Central Plains? Because of the virulent toxin that rotted flesh with even a touch, zombies were undead that could never be underestimated. In any case, the zombies Damon had raised were leaving the cave one by one.
“This should be enough.”
Arriving at a sunny spot a little distance from the cave, Damon’s eyes gleamed. The corpses inside the cave had already gathered around him without exception. He gave the zombies a certain command.
“Dig deeply into this place.”
Creak, creak.
Following Damon’s order, the zombies began to dig. With gaunt hands that were nothing but bone, they blindly dug into the ground. Of course, only Damon knew the reason for digging. Because they had no capacity for thought, zombies could only do what they were told, and carrying out complex tasks was impossible from the start.
Since it was an extremely simple task, the zombies dug without rest and, in no time, created a massive pit some ten square meters wide. Damon gauged its depth, and his eyes shone.
“This should be sufficient. Get in and lie down.”
When he gestured, the zombies began throwing themselves into the pit without exception.
Thud. Thud.
Because there were so many zombies, the fairly large and deep pit was filled in an instant.