King of Dobong-gu (2)

My house sits in Dobong-gu.

Dobong 1-dong, the northernmost tip of Seoul — a place with no people left, only a scattering of monsters still hanging around.

"The reason folks don't come this way much is because the monsters throng below Choansan. And until recently, the Bukhansan faction was preying on civilians, so people steered clear of the whole area."

I listened to Lahan fill me in on Seoul's situation while mass-producing undead.

Honestly, he had only ever lived up in Bukhansan himself, so I doubted he knew all that much either.

"Ugh, this work never ends."

The job was converting the corpses I'd ordered the other undead to gather into more undead. A little tedious, sure — but if I just batch-raised them all as skeletons, I might miss some hidden gem tucked among them. So I was going through them one by one.

"Ohh!"

As expected, there were special variants that had formed after being eroded by supernatural energy for one reason or another. Just the word "Cursed" slapped on, sure — but still. And though they were few, I was also pulling up the bare bones of people who'd been awakened hunters. Those ones had been dead so long they were all pretty stupid, so I just dumped them under Ttacttac-i and told him to handle it.

The real haul, though, was these:

"Of course there wouldn't be zero monsters."

Monster corpses were mixed in here and there. Even if gates had erupted in droves at the start, people wouldn't have gone down without any fight at all. I handed those ones off to Ttacttac-i too. Absolutely not because I was too lazy to deal with them myself.

I was churning out undead like a woman possessed when a welcome notification popped up.

"So the next checkpoint was a thousand after all!"

A Common skill had climbed all the way up to Heroic. Next would be Regimental Commander, right? How many undead would I need for that? Hmm — ten thousand, probably. No idea if there was something after that, but ten thousand felt doable. There were still mountains of corpses piled in front of me that hadn't become undead yet.

"Alright — let's knock this out!"

I worked at it for nearly a full week. Once I had a clear motive and a real goal instead of some vague plan, even the dull, repetitive labor became bearable. And it wasn't only that — it was actually pretty fun, too.

"Ohh… it's starting to look the part."

"Dobong 1-dong is nearly fully cleared, my lady."

Thanks to the environmental cleanup and wall-expansion project led by Lahan and Ttacttac-i, the surroundings were growing remarkably pleasant. I was quite satisfied. For one thing, countless undead were sweeping through houses and buildings, and the area had cleaned up enough that walking around felt good again.

"The wall should be finished before long as well."

"Nice."

More important than any of that, though, was the wall. I'd started the fortification because I'd decided we needed a proper stronghold, the way Bukhansanseong Fortress had been. I'd gone and acquired a Heroic-rank undead with the Architect class — I couldn't exactly let him sit around idle, could I?

Lahan took the zombies I'd assigned him and launched a massive construction project, executing it at blistering speed.

"Lucky your skill is specialized for building."

"This manner of application is far more fitting than combat ever was. That said, I, Lahan, do not stop there — I also excel in battle, and—"

"Yeah, yeah, got it."

Lahan and the zombies' first mission was to fully clear Dobong 1-dong — the northernmost tip of Dobong-gu — and raise a wall around it. Dobong 1-dong would become the ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠heart of our territory. We weren't following the exact administrative boundary; the wall would be more of a rounded shape. After that, I planned to expand farther and farther outward.

"We'll call them Wall Dobong, Wall Gangbuk, and Wall Nowon."

— Clack! Clack-clack-clack.

"Senior says that sounds like you plagiarized a Japanese manga."

"Give him a noogie."

Bonk! Ttacttac-i launched a full-power kick at Lahan, who had actually gone through with the noogie — but Lahan didn't so much as flinch.

— Clack-clack-clack-clack!

"I merely carried out the order to strike my senior. That command was issued because Master places her full trust in me, and as such, it may also be taken as a measure of my, Lahan's, proven capability."

Ttacttac-i and Lahan seemed to have gotten fairly close in the meantime — calling each other senior and junior and getting along well. Lahan had even handed over the leather jacket he'd originally been wearing to Ttacttac-i.

"You sure about that? Didn't you say it was an artifact?"

"It is of no consequence. I am already quite durable."

The jacket Lahan had worn in ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠life turned out to be an artifact. Artifacts were objects steeped in supernatural energy that occasionally dropped from gates. They were said to turn up more often now that the world had gone apocalyptic, but they were still precious. That jacket, when worn, toughened the entire body. For Lahan, whose whole frame had already transformed into armor, it was pretty much unnecessary.

— Clack-clack!

"If you are grateful, kindly stop kicking me now."

"Having Lahan around is great — now I can actually understand what the ones who can't talk are saying."

Anyway, Wall Dobong had gone up solid. Over three meters thick and roughly ten meters high — an overwhelming fortification. Stacking it brick by brick by hand would have taken years, but for us, Lahan just waved his hands a few times and the wall unfurled itself in a rush.

"And that is not all. The bricks used are each interlocked so that none may shift, and by blending stones of differing properties—"

"Okay, okay. Enough."

That chatterbox quality of his was enough to make me sick of it. The extreme honorifics stretched every sentence ending out so long that he talked even more now than when he'd been alive. Haa… I put up with it because he was useful.

"If it would not be an imposition, there is one thing I should like to ask."

"Sure, go ahead."

"Might I be permitted to know your honored name?"

Honored name? Ah — he was asking for my name.

I opened my mouth to say it, and then, suddenly, the words wouldn't come. I should have been able to just say it. So why?

"Uh… just call me Master. Or since I'm the King of the Underworld, Myungwang works too."

"Yes, understood. Should anyone demand your honored name, I shall tell them to address you as Myungwang."

What was this? Why couldn't I remember my own name? It was as if someone had wiped it clean out of my mind…

"…No way."

Something that wouldn't come to mind at all, like the memory itself had been erased — the same phenomenon as with Lahan. If this, too, had been scrubbed by some "being from above"…

"Ugh, I don't know."

Forget it. My name wasn't that important. All that mattered was surviving well and living well with the others, right?

"Just know me as the King of the Underworld."

"Yes. Should anyone inquire, I shall answer thus."

"Ah, Necromancer-nim!"

When I finished surveying the construction site and headed back, Se-a greeted me with a bright smile. She was currently repairing the parts of my house that had fallen into disrepair after more than two years of neglect. ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠Come to think of it, she'd been calling me Necromancer-nim this whole time — she'd just never known my name.

"How much have you fixed?"

"The water purification system is all done. The air circulation will take a little longer — the structure is pretty complicated."

"A little longer" here meant maybe half an hour at most. As long as she had the blueprints, she could restore things in a snap with almost no stamina cost. It was genuinely amazing.

"You don't want to go back to where you came from?"

"That place has already been completely looted… I miss the people a little, but anyone who survived has probably moved somewhere else. Going back wouldn't mean much."

She said it with a bitter little smile. I'd saved her and made her one of my people, so I wanted to treat her well where I could — but parts like this were hard.

"Food okay?"

"Yes. There are plenty of canned goods. Calorie bars, too."

Dobong-gu was supposed to be a relatively untouched district, but people had still come and gone, and the nearby Bukhansan criminals had raided it often enough that there wasn't much useful left. Still, the undead cleaning house by house had been turning up the occasional find, so we had a modest stockpile of canned food. I cracked one open myself every now and then. I didn't need to eat, but my sense of taste hadn't vanished.

We'll have to shore up the food situation later.

If I kept adding ordinary humans like Se-a to the group, food was a problem I'd have to solve for real.

"Come to think of it, where did the Bukhansan guys go?"

"Gangbuk or Eunpyeong-gu, maybe?"

"I thought those were monster danger zones."

"But they don't really have anywhere else to go."

After we'd finished our business, a few of the Bukhansan criminals had wandered into Dobong-gu. Naturally, I killed every one I saw and turned them into zombies. After that, word must have gotten around, because they stopped coming.

I left the house in Lee Se-a's hands and stepped outside. The air felt just a touch warmer. It was still winter… but was spring starting to creep in?

"Huh? What's that?"

I happened to glance up and spotted a strangely shaped bird.

"Wait — that's not a bird."

A drone! A drone was flying overhead, surveilling us!

My mood took a sharp dive. I called in the crows waiting nearby and ordered them to attack. The drone tried to bolt, but it couldn't break through the crows' encirclement.

Caw!

"Good work."

A crow's talons snagged the drone and brought it straight to me. Who had sent it? I leaned in for a closer look—

—Bzzzt! BOOM!

"Aaagh!"

The drone exploded!

I managed to fling it away in the split second before it blew. The Grim Reaper from my Grim Reaper's Blessing skill materialized to intercept — then looked thoroughly awkward and vanished again, having arrived for nothing.

"Are they insane?!"

I seethed as I picked up the shattered drone fragments. Electronics that absolutely could not have come from inside Dobong-gu. An outside force had sent this.

"This is an attack!"

Some shameless faction was trying to strike at Dobong 1-dong!