Chapter 79
Chapter 79
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Translator: Vine
Chapter: 79
Chapter Title: Immortal Legion (3)
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Boom!
A new legion rose up in the center of the front lines, like black mist.
“Grraaaah!”
The sight of a thousand headless knights—Dullahans—howling toward the sky.
Holding various weapons in their right hands and their own heads in their left as they cried out...
‘Grotesque.’
I was fed up.
Dullahans, favored by Hunters with the innate Necromancer ability, were a solid A-rank.
Even one of them wouldn’t take a scratch from the ghouls or specters here.
And now there were a thousand of them?
Way too much for an A-rank dungeon, wasn’t it?
But that wasn’t all.
“Death Knights...”
One of the soldiers muttered.
“D-Death Knights... Fuck, Knights of Death...”
Terror began to fill his eyes.
That terror spread like a contagion, and the soldiers’ faces gradually darkened.
They started to waver one by one.
“Death Knights? For real?”
“I’ve heard about them. They say the city next door got wiped out by just ten of those...”
“And there’s a hundred of them? Crazy, how the hell do we stop this...?”
The fear spread.
“You sure you’re not seeing things?”
“No way. How could anyone mistake something that real?”
“This... This is no good. Even a Divine Warrior couldn’t stop them. We’re... done for. We’re all dead!”
“I can’t fight. Let’s just run! Yeah, we can just hand over the city, right? Why fight a pointless battle?”
“Yeah! Better to live alone in the mountains than cross swords with those things!”
In the end, some even threw down their weapons and fled.
Even the generals who would normally bark orders to stop them.
“......”
They couldn’t rein in the soldiers.
They just stared at the undead legion in stunned silence.
They had completely lost the will to fight against the overwhelming enemy force.
What had appeared before their eyes...
Wasn’t monsters.
It was ‘death’ itself.
In the undead legion swarming with hundreds, thousands, tens of thousands, the soldiers saw death. They saw their graves.
Whoooosh...
That was when the Death Knights, emanating a dark aura, took position at the front lines.
“Neighhh!”
They rode sturdy phantom horses forward, boldly advancing before the Dullahans.
The aura they exuded formed a resonant war cry.
Whoooosh...
Like a rock dropping into a still pond, it drowned out the murmurs of the wavering soldiers.
Their sound was clearly louder than the soldiers’.
“This is...”
Lee Seon-ah muttered, her face darkening.
“A hundred Death Knights isn’t enough—they’ve got ten Liches too... Even for me, that’s an impossible force to handle.”
Lee Seon-ah shook her head.
“Death Knights, I can understand, but those Liches...”
Lich.
Monsters in the absolute top tier of S-rank.
In truth, a single Lich was equivalent to the “Innate Ability, Necromancer.”
An S-rank top-tier Necromancer, at that.
Considering the position Necromancers held in the current world, it was utterly hopeless.
Like facing ten bottom-tier Rankers at once.
“This makes no sense. The intel must be way off.”
“......”
Silence fell over the group at Lee Seon-ah’s despairing words.
The air grew heavy.
“...Man, dungeons really are such twisted things.”
Kang Ji-hoo finally spoke, with difficulty.
Even after saying it, he clamped his mouth shut for a while.
He looked cautious, like someone wondering if he should even say it.
“They put a personnel limit curse on us, then scatter high-grade monsters like that... Isn’t this just telling us to die? And besides.”
He glanced at me.
“You said you reassessed the Necromancer’s level. That’s why the dungeon scaled up...”
“Hmm.”
Lee Seon-ah nodded.
“The Skeleton Lord is B-rank, but its potential rivals a Ranker. A Necromancer who can craft S-rank weapons...”
“Or.”
Thud.
The sub-team leader stepped forward again.
There was clear suspicion in his eyes.
“The Skeleton Lord might be hiding its true power.”
“......”
The air grew even heavier.
The Black Sword Unit members just stared at the ground in silence.
I chewed my lip.
‘Not wrong.’
I was hiding a lot.
The fact that the bones I possessed were on the level of absolute rulers from various worlds.
The fact that my master supporting me from behind could devour all the Rankers of this world.
They didn’t know.
But.
“Let’s calm down first.”
Now wasn’t the time to hash that out.
The dungeon had thrown a problem at us, and we had to solve it immediately.
No room for mistakes in the solution.
The price of error was death.
I opened my mouth.
“Honestly, I don’t know why this is happening either. Like Black Sword said, it could be because my potential is that exceptional. Or like the sub-team leader said, I might be hiding my power.”
“As expected...!”
The sub-team leader’s eyes widened.
“But does that matter right now?”
I put strength into my front paws.
Following the incantation of the Azure Heaven Heart Method, the energy in my heart surged.
“We entered the dungeon, and dungeons are mysterious by nature. What we need now isn’t analyzing the cause—it’s solving the problem. We have to survive first.”
It was strange.
The anxiety I’d felt moments ago melted away like snow.
‘Because the event already happened?’
Like front-running.
Stock prices reflect good or bad news expectations in advance.
The anxiety-inducing event had become reality before my eyes, so there was no more anxiety.
Instead, I felt calm.
‘Honestly.’
Having gone through so many absurd dungeons until now.
[Yeah, dungeon. Just like I thought...]
That was all that came to mind.
“The Skeleton Lord is right.”
Lee Seon-ah nodded.
She turned to Kang Ji-hoo with a serious expression.
“Sub-team leader.”
“...Yes?”
“Blame, blame, blame! Blaming others is bad. You know that, right?”
“...I wasn’t trying to blame. I was just wondering if something was being hidden... If it made you uncomfortable, I apologize.”
Kang Ji-hoo bowed his head toward me.
Well, straightforward, which was nice.
But more than that, people.
This wasn’t the time for this?
- Keeeeek!
At that moment.
The ten Liches simultaneously emitted red glows from their eyes.
“Grraaaah!”
“Kraaaah!”
Rumble rumble rumble!
The undead horde charged toward us all at once.
I shouted.
“Fight for now! We can’t just sit here and take it!”
I looked around at the same time.
Their numbers were vast.
Too vast.
Fighting in this open field wasn’t good.
We could get surrounded and forced into a disadvantageous battle.
‘We need to use the terrain...’
There was only one thing around.
“The gate!”
Thud!
I kicked off the ground.
“Run for the gate!”
“The gate?”
Lee Seon-ah followed, asking.
“Yes! We’ll use the narrow gate as our defensive stronghold! No need to climb up!”
“At least it eliminates the risk of encirclement?”
The soldiers already out in the field were being massacred.
Sorry, but.
We didn’t have the spare capacity to save them.
Cold, but this was a battle where lives were on the line.
A fear-stricken warrior was worse than none.
“Here!”
Arriving at the wall, I quickly took position.
Boom! Boom! Boom!
I summoned Bone Arrow and her subordinates, forming a fan-shaped shield wall around the gate.
“Deployment complete, Master.”
I placed Eldrin and Bone Oh in the rear.
Bone Il and Sun also drew weapons from spots amid the Bone Arrow formation.
Lightning-fast speed.
“Grraaaah!”
But the undead legion was fast too.
A Death Knight already at the front swung a pitch-black sword strike at the Bone Arrows.
Dozens of swift Dullahans followed right behind.
“Hold them off! Use every trick you’ve got!”
I met them with my spear too.
I thrust precisely into the necks of the ones pouring over the Bone Arrows’ shields.
Squelch!
A nauseating sensation traveled up my spear arm.
“Hmm.”
Beside me, Lee Seon-ah lowered her sword.
“At this level of undead, Wall Thunder Flash or Black Wind Sword won’t cut it.”
Thud!
She leaped into the air, hovering about 3 meters up.
At the same time.
Crackle crackle!
She thrust her arm forward in a fan shape toward the front.
Black Sword Flying Art.
Wide-Area Technique.
Third Form.
True Thunder Burst.
Rumble ruuuumble!
Her sword poured down like thunder.
Kaboom!
The Dullahans screamed.
The phantom horses were swept into the sword strikes, their heads burned by the lightning.
Black smoke billowed thickly around them.
“Nice.”
I was impressed.
Her skills all had this refreshingly decisive feel.
Lee Seon-ah smiled sheepishly.
“Oh, come on. It does high damage, but the range is narrow, so it’s lacking. It consumes a lot of energy, so I can’t use it often.”
Thud!
Finishing her words, she leaped straight back into the battlefield.
Twisting lightly like a butterfly, she tore the Dullahans to shreds.
She pushed back the Death Knights.
‘As expected.’
A Ranker was a Ranker.
Incredibly stable even in a crisis.
“Haaah! Die!”
“Urgh! Sub-team leader! The Death Knight’s sword is too strong!”
“Hold! The captain said handle it alone—Jin-su, you take left! Yu-jeong, you take right. Got it?”
“Y-Yes!”
Sub-team leader Kang Ji-hoo and the Black Sword Unit were handling their own fights.
“Whew.”
I regulated my breathing and refocused on the battle.
Lee Seon-ah had cleared a bunch, but it was just the tip of the iceberg.
Enemies still overflowed.
“Come at me all at once!”
The bones would handle their roles anyway.
They’d fight tirelessly until my energy ran out.
What was needed now.
Was for me to add my own strength.
“Grraaah!”
Even if it was just a random ghoul beside it, or a stray specter.
Squelch! Slash!
I’d take out one more to ease the burden on the summons and the Black Sword Unit!
Whoosh, stab!
I drove my spear vigorously into the ghoul’s neck.
Stabbing the heart or other organs on these did nothing.
Had to cleanly separate head from body to keep them down.
I kicked the torso away and at the same time.
Splurt!
Pulled out the spear.
“You trash. That all you got?”
Like the sun of the ancient desert.
Push me to my limits even more!
I’d endure and grow even stronger!
Worst case, what was there to lose besides death?
I kept thrusting my spear.
Occasionally resummoning bones when they were released, otherwise fully immersed in combat.
That was when.
“Kyaaack!”
A shrill scream pierced from the rear.
‘What?’
I whipped my gaze around to see—a Black Sword Unit member, Kang Yu-jeong, was it?
She clutched her left shoulder, rolling on the ground.
“What the hell, man! What happened! You okay?”
I heard the sub-team leader shouting wildly while swinging his sword.
I narrowed my eyes, staring calmly through the rising dust.
Then.
“Kyaaak, kyuuk! It hurts!”
Gushing blood and a severed arm came into view.
Kang Yu-jeong’s left arm had been cut off.
“......”
Damn it.
The first member down.