Chapter 107
Chapter 107
-----------------------------------------------------------------
Translator: penny
Chapter: 107
Chapter Title: Ambush (3)
-----------------------------------------------------------------
“Keep two on standby in the first-floor living room, and have one stick by Mr. Heo Sang-hyun. The rest of you, all come out and intercept.”
Keeeiiing!!
A light dizziness washed over me, along with the sensation of a massive amount of mana being sucked away.
‘Ugh, the transmission efficiency drops because it’s so far away.’
I’d think about improvements later.
“If you’ve eaten your fill of mana, get out here quick!”
Kkirik-kkirik-kkirik-kkirik!!! Kadududuk!! Kkatduk! Kyagak!!
The mansion’s windows flew open all at once, and shadows of grotesque shapes poured out.
Monsters formed from tangled messes of toys, decorations, furniture, tools, tableware, and all sorts of junk scattered into the darkness.
I remembered the workers proudly swinging brooms, mops, and riding crops to dust the building interior. But they weren’t like that now.
Saws, hammers, kitchen knives, shattered vases, sickles, hand axes, and massive lumps of iron from who-knows-where.
They were functional and dangerous forms prepared for a unified purpose.
Screams rang out alongside the horrific noises from the necrogolems in motion.
“Uwaaaah!!”
“W-what is that!”
“Monsters! They’re monsters!”
“Don’t fall back! They’re just dolls!”
“The living flames bless us!”
These weren’t the necrogolems that had been managed in such irrational ways before.
They moved with astonishing intelligence and agility, pushing back cultists who outnumbered them three to one.
Among the necrogolems were some I’d put extra effort into modifying—for example—.
Kkiririk, kaduduk, kaduk-kaduk. Kaduk-kaduk. Kaduk-kaduk.
One necrogolem ground its teeth, opening its massive jaws fashioned from a bear trap.
Its mouth was lined with three layers of vicious teeth made from bone fragments scattered around the mansion.
A panicked cultist swung a huge axe at it, but the thing chomped down and tore off the entire blade.
Grurrrruk!!
Keeeiing!!
At the same time, the iron hook and vicious chainsaw on its right arm spun ferociously.
“Uwaaaak!”
A massive necrogolem hurled its entire body forward, crashing into the cultists’ ranks.
This one was on another level from the others, starting with its sheer size and weight.
It stood nearly 3.5 meters tall. Its shoulders—if you could call them that—spanned a good 3 meters across, a hulking brute.
Kwaaaang!!!
True to a haunted house that had stood for 150 years, the starving mansion’s warehouse was stuffed with all sorts of junk.
I’d found several large stone balls in the warehouse behind the mansion and attached them all to its arms.
Kwaang! Kwang! Kwang!
Every swing of its arms sent one person flying.
“Shoot! Don’t get close—shoot them down!”
I could see cultists in the rear ranks raising rifles and aiming at the necrogolems. But we had sharpshooters too.
Tang! Tang! Tang! Drdrdruk! Dudududada!!
“Uwaak!! Get down!”
Kkiririk, kkirik-kkirik….
A necrogolem with four spider-like legs.
It had taken position in the dark forest, perched atop a tree.
I’d crammed every gun I’d collected into that one.
Three submachine guns. Two assault rifles. One sniper rifle. Seven pistols.
Most were firearms from the mutants on Gamak Mountain.
I’d even stuck grenades and claymores to its chest.
“Quit screwing around, you bastards!”
But there were oddballs among the enemy too. They weren’t just street thugs—they were cultists backed by abyssal entities, after all.
A burly giant, head and shoulders taller than the others, stepped forward and thrust his arms skyward.
“Bless me!”
Hwarururuk!!
A massive green flame engulfed him like a cape. And then….
Bududududuk!!
With tremendous strength, he uprooted a nearby tree!
The tree caught the green flames, turning into a giant torch, and charged straight at the large necrogolem in an instant.
Bauuuuung!!
Against the dark night sky, an explosion of embers and debris scattered spectacularly in all directions.
“Ooooh!!”
“Vice-captain!”
It was quite the showy demonstration.
The cultists briefly regained their morale at that heroic counterattack straight out of myth.
But.
Hwiriririk!
A strange whirring noise approached rapidly from afar. Some cultists looked up in confusion.
Kung!
What landed in the midst of the cultists was a bizarre necrogolem with a gleaming golden body.
Despite plummeting at tremendous speed, it stood tall and rigid.
“W-what is that!?”
The cultists instinctively sensed that this new necrogolem was completely different from the others before them.
Chik.
Its—or her—mouth opened.
“Kyahahaahahaaa!!!”
I’d put a lot of work into making that one.
A necrogolem pieced together from the broken, disassembled parts of the golden dancer and the fully intact head of the living one. It was no longer something you could call a mere necrogolem.
Hwiriririk!
The dancer necrogolem spun in a dazzling motion reminiscent of ballet.
The silk ribbons on its arms billowed, scattering beautiful light everywhere. At the same time, they became blades that could slice steel, slashing in all directions.
Seulung, seureuk. Seusuk….
“Guk……?”
“Ah……?”
The cultists collapsed, spurting blood, without even grasping what had happened to them.
“You heretical scarecrow!!”
The hulking giant called vice-captain charged at the dancer necrogolem, his flame cloak billowing.
“Kyaaaaaaaah!!!”
Rather than countering his attack, the dancer necrogolem unleashed a mana-infused scream. A horrific cry laced with the subtleties of necromancy, shattering the human mind.
The vice-captain, struck by the impact, bled from every orifice on his face and staggered.
Kkaduk-kkaduk-kkaduk-kkaduk-kkaduk….
At the same time, the toothy necrogolem approached from behind and clamped onto the back of his neck.
There was no stopping it now.
Several standard necrogolems surrounded him and unleashed merciless attacks.
“H-help…… me……!!”
It was a horrific scene where you couldn’t tell who were the heroes and who the villains. Amid the grotesque wrongness and alien terror the necrogolems evoked, something odd caught my eye.
“U-uwaaak! Monsters, they’re monsters!”
“I-I was wrong!!”
“Run!”
The cultists were fleeing.
‘Huh? They’re running?’
Sure, civilians might, but these were cultists.
Fanatics impossible to subdue or persuade from the start. Lunatics who’d long since sold their humanity for alien ideals.
‘Come to think of it, their reactions were a bit off here and there.’
I’d wondered why these monster-summoning freaks were making such a fuss about monsters.
Ah, so that’s why there were so many of them. They’d hired some mercenary thugs?
Why would cultists do that? The Fomalhaut descendants weren’t a small sect.
“Eh, I’ll just ask them later.”
Either way, it was a one-sided beatdown.
I ordered the necrogolems to just scatter the fleeing ones and turned away.
“Keuugh…….”
The [Net of Withered Branches] stretched between the dense trees.
A person hung upside down in the massive net woven from mist and dew.
“That big guy earlier was called vice-captain, so you must be the captain, right?”
“You monster…….”
While the necrogolems rampaged, I’d captured the Torchbearer Company’s commander—the staff-wielding guy who summoned the flaming ones.
He looked pretty strong, but he wasn’t anyone memorable.
The magical flames dangling from his staff’s tip had vanished, blood gushed from his abdomen and legs, and his limbs were bound, making movement difficult. Yet the madness and resolve in the captain’s(?) expression hadn’t diminished at all.
Yeah, that’s a cultist for you.
“You the captain? If not, just say so.”
“Does that even matter……?”
“Fair enough, doesn’t really. But your friends are all down or running, and you’re still gonna fight?”
As I replied, he bit his lip until it bled. Reacting to that, magical flames reignited at the tip of his extinguished staff.
Hwarururuk!!
In the end, a new fireball came flying.
“Jeez.”
[Eruption]
An enormous volume of water gushed from the bare ground.
Chwajajajaja!!
The high-pressure jet, strong enough to rip an arm clean off on a direct hit, intercepted the fireball.
“You monster…… How can you cast magic like that back-to-back?”
“I took a lot of tonics as a kid. You, on the other hand, seem to get worse every time you use your power.”
From some point on, he’d been rapidly withering with each spell.
He looked like he was on some crash diet. The staff must be squeezing life force out of him to compensate for his lack of mana.
“Keuk, why are you interfering with us like this!”
“What’re you talking about? Who threw the first punch?”
Wait, did I? But they moved to attack first, so I’m in the clear.
‘Actually, did I steal the ring from their sanctuary first?’
Thinking back, yeah, I threw the first punch.
But that didn’t mean I could give up the ring.
“Sorry, but I can’t give up this ring. Find something else.”
No artifact in Pau gives +3 strength, no questions asked.
“Ring? What nonsense are you spouting!”
“Huh? It’s not a ring?”
“Youuuu……!! Cunning heretic! Trying to delude me with lies! I don’t know why you’re helping the starving mansion’s master, but our sect’s tens of millions of believers will hunt you down!”
“What’re you……?”
Ah, aaaah! I get it now.
I thought Park Kwang-rim betrayed me and they came, but nope. Misunderstanding. Whew, sorry, Mr. Park.
“You came because of the starving mansion? Fellow cultist nutjobs should get along.”
“Get along? Nonsense! That worthless skeleton without a scrap of flesh attacked us first! And stole our sacred relic to boot!”
“Sheesh. Did the old bag of bones do that? Naughty skeleton.”
That belligerent lunatic skull. Guess it went around beating up other sects before I dealt with it.
“That’s right! So the Red Torch Covenant came to settle the grudge! We’ll destroy the starving mansion and seize the Clock of T!”
“Clock of T? What’s that?”
T? Clock?
An artifact I didn’t know. Ah, why does new info keep popping up? Cut it out, you guys.
The captain(?) rolled his eyes anxiously, then suddenly screamed in a random direction.
“Living flames! Master of Fomalhaut! Grant me the power to smite this cunning heretic! I offer my life—.”
Ah, damn! These crazy cultist bastards—I tried talking it out nice!
“H-hey, don’t die!”