The Lich Becomes a Hunter! Episode 3
Earth (2)
“He really caught them all……”
Contrary to Jeong Cheolsik, who had been gripping his sword and shield tightly even while seated, ready to charge out the moment it looked like Choe Jinhyeok might be pushed back, Choe Jinhyeok dealt with every Hound and Hell Hound cleanly, without so much as a scratch.
‘Whew…… My mana was cutting it close. And I’d lost too much blood on top of that.’
When he had been a lich, it had not mattered much, but a human body needed blood.
Even though Choe Jinhyeok had bled enough to kill a person, he had still managed to fight without much difficulty. But now that he was not a lich, but a human, there was nothing he could do about the pounding in his head.
‘Still…… whew, a living body really is better. The hardest thing after becoming a lich was eating, after all.’
Arman, who had once been known as something of a gourmet, had suffered for quite a long time after becoming a lich.
No matter how delicious a delicacy he ate, his rotten tongue could not taste it, and in the end, with only bones left of his body, he could not even properly swallow food, let alone savor it.
That was why, even with his expressionless face, the corners of Choe Jinhyeok’s mouth rose slightly at the thought of eating something delicious already.
“Um……”
“What is it?”
Flinch!
When Choe Jinhyeok gave a faint smile, Jeong Cheolsik, who had been waiting for the right timing, approached him.
But the moment he faced that cold expression, he flinched and continued speaking.
“The…… mana stones…… You told me to give them to you, didn’t you?”
“Ah…… I did.”
Mana stones that came out of monsters at a certain probability. The moment he recalled this knowledge, Choe Jinhyeok realized a way to replenish his insufficient magical power.
Through these mana stones, that was. That method was also why he had gone out of his way to tell Jeong Cheolsik in advance that the mana stones were his.
“May I…… begin harvesting them?”
“I’ll help as well. What should I do?”
“Pardon? You don’t have to……”
“I’m doing it because I want to. Show me first.”
At Choe Jinhyeok’s firm words, Jeong Cheolsik, who had been waving his hands in refusal, sighed and began butchering and harvesting the mana stones.
The method of harvesting mana stones was simple.
All they had to do was cut open the bellies of the Hounds and Hell Hounds one by one and check whether there was a mana stone inside.
Strangely, the mana stones were located where the heart should be. Hounds or Hell Hounds that had mana stones did not have hearts; instead, blood vessels were densely attached to the mana stones.
It was a sight that would make most people retch, but to Choe Jinhyeok, who had once reached the pinnacle even in the field of necromancy, this much was nothing.
Dissecting corpses was no different from everyday life for him.
“Whew…… You do it like this.”
“Quite simple, isn’t it?”
“Yes…… Well, it’s easy. Of course, that’s on the condition that you have mana.”
Mana.
When the world was overturned, the mana that appeared in the process strengthened the bodies of certain compatible individuals.
Thanks to that, humanity was able to wage war against the monsters.
After all, weapons like guns only worked on F-rank monsters, and even weapons like missiles could not so much as scratch monsters from C-rank onward.
The mana-compatible individuals who appeared amid all that were no different from saviors for humanity. The mana people handled differed from person to person.
There were enhancement types, who strengthened their bodies with mana or coated their weapons in it; magic types, who handled magic and performed miracles; spirit types, who used various powers of spirits through contracts with the spirits of nature; and finally healing types, who performed miracles such as healing wounds.
There were also those who used unique abilities of their own besides these, but broadly speaking, these were the four types.
And regardless of what type they were, mana-compatible individuals knew how to handle mana. Though there were differences between individuals.
“Mana…… You mean this?”
“Oh! Yes, that’s right. But…… it’s a bit black……?”
Jeong Cheolsik clapped his hands as he spoke, seeing the mana burning on Choe Jinhyeok’s finger, but soon looked slightly flustered at the color of the mana.
Most mana handled by mana-compatible individuals up until now had been blue, and Jeong Cheolsik was no exception. Unusually, many magic-type compatible individuals handled colorless mana.
However, Jeong Cheolsik had heard that among other compatible individuals, colors other than blue, including red, sometimes appeared. He soon dismissed it as nothing important, then took out a small knife and handed it to Choe Jinhyeok.
Choe Jinhyeok gripped the small knife he had been given and infused it with mana, just as Jeong Cheolsik had demonstrated.
Then black mana flared up around the small knife. At the sight, Choe Jinhyeok smiled in satisfaction, drove the knife into a Hound’s corpse, and smoothly drew it downward.
Then, inside the corpse, a mana stone still shining with a brilliant color greeted Choe Jinhyeok.
“Hmph……!”
Crack, crack, crack.
Without paying any mind to the blood vessels attached to the mana stone, he tore it out by force, and the blood vessels came up with it.
After casually ripping those blood vessels off and putting the mana stone into his pocket, Choe Jinhyeok said to Jeong Cheolsik,
“Let’s hurry. I’m starting to get hungry.”
“Y-…… Yes!”
And so the tedious labor of harvesting mana stones began.
* * *
It was around the time the mana stone harvesting was nearly finished.
Rumble—
“What is that sound?”
“Th…… This couldn’t be……”
When Choe Jinhyeok asked in confusion at the sudden loud noise, Jeong Cheolsik answered in a panic, stammering.
“A B-…… Boss monster!!”
“Boss monster? And what is that……”
Boom!
Before Choe Jinhyeok could even finish speaking, the source of his curiosity appeared.
—Bark, bark, bark!!
At the appearance of a dog with three heads and a knight in red armor riding atop it, Jeong Cheolsik’s body began to tremble like an aspen leaf.
“A C-…… Cerberus…… and a Hell Knight?”
At Jeong Cheolsik’s words, Choe Jinhyeok began searching through his memories. And before long, he was able to obtain meaningful information.
‘Cerberus refers to that three-headed dog. The ability it uses is the same flame breath as the Hell Hound from earlier. Beware the breath spewed from its three heads. And the Hell Knight is the master of that Cerberus, as well as a monster that wields high-level swordsmanship.’
And there was something attached before the descriptions of this Cerberus and Hell Knight.
‘C-rank, huh……’
They were C-rank monsters.
Considering he had just fought a desperate battle against D-rank monsters, this was clearly bad news for Choe Jinhyeok, but……
“This should be fun.”
“Pardon? What did you just say……”
Faced with such a crisis, a smile had formed on Choe Jinhyeok’s lips.
And along with that, Choe Jinhyeok tightly gripped the mana stone he had just harvested in his hand.
“W-w-w-wait!!”
At the sight of Choe Jinhyeok doing that, Jeong Cheolsik forgot that death was right in front of him and was horrified, but Choe Jinhyeok did not stop and squeezed even harder.
With that, the mana stone crumbled with a dry crackle and scattered into powder. And the mana contained within the stone was absorbed into Choe Jinhyeok’s body.
“Haaah……”
Feeling the mana fill every part of his body, Choe Jinhyeok exhaled.
Toward Choe Jinhyeok, the boss monsters, the Cerberus and Hell Knight, charged.
—Bark, bark, bark!
But even as he watched the bull-sized Cerberus rushing toward him, the smile on Choe Jinhyeok’s lips did not disappear.
And soon, when only about fifty meters remained between the Cerberus and Choe Jinhyeok, Choe Jinhyeok swung his hand.
At the same time, the mana within Choe Jinhyeok’s body flew through the air and seeped into the corpses of the Hounds and Hell Hounds.
And then……
—Bark, bark, bark!!!
The Hounds and Hell Hounds that had become corpses were reborn as skeletons, with only bones remaining.
And those skeletons, now following the orders of Choe Jinhyeok, their new master, charged at the Cerberus and Hell Knight while howling.
Watching that dogfight(?), Choe Jinhyeok licked his lips with his tongue.
“Not bad for a first time. And…… if I turn those things into undead, I’ll get some fairly decent undead out of them.”
Where Choe Jinhyeok’s gaze was directed as he said that were the Cerberus and Hell Knight, surrounded by dozens of Skeleton Hounds and struggling.
—Yelp!
However, after becoming skeletons, their abilities from life had fallen by about half a rank. On top of that, they had originally been weaker than the Cerberus and Hell Knight, so no matter how numerous the skeletons were, it was nearly impossible for them to cut off the Cerberus and Hell Knight’s breath.
That was why Choe Jinhyeok personally began striding toward the battlefield where blood—no, bone dust—was flying, and around him, Bone Arrows were spinning in circles.