Healers Are a Critical Matter (1)
“Ugh… Nothing beats being home.”
We returned from the mixed-use complex back to the house. The spiders and the odds and ends we’d scavenged went into the truck bed; whatever space remained got stuffed full of skeletons. Mari and I took the passenger seat. The rest of the skeletons we simply left behind—there was no way to haul them all.
Instead, I ordered them to clean up around the apartment complex and gather the corpses of the dead into one place. Later I’d come back, turn them all into undead at once, and use the site as a kind of outpost.
“Wow, thank you!”
And the greatest prize I’d brought back from that place was, without question, the Death Weaver. Maybe it was because she’d been S-rank in life. Even after losing most of her body and becoming a Death Weaver, her unique abilities had stayed intact.
“How do you even know a design like this?”
Chirik.
The Death Weaver laughed. Having inherited Arachne’s powers wholesale, she was extraordinarily skilled with spider silk—skilled enough, in fact, to weave fabric.
So when I asked her to make me some clothes, she produced a full dress! Strictly speaking, it sat somewhere between a one-piece and a proper gown. The ornamentation was sparse, but just being able to wear something like this in an apocalyptic world was already pure luxury.
And the material itself was overwhelming—stretchy as spandex, soft as silk. Right now she was maybe A-rank at best, yet she still seemed to retain the craftsmanship she’d had in her S-rank days.
“It’s kind of like a gothic dress. Thanks.”
The dress, dominated by a matte black, was incredibly comfortable—easy enough to move around in. Hmm. I’d forgive her for smashing a few of my undead friends. She was one of my subordinates now, after all.
And then I threw myself back into the work I’d been doing.
“Hold still a second.”
That work was fixing Ttacttac-i’s rattling rib cage—a glorious wound earned in the bloodbath against the spiders. The method of repair was simple. I just wrapped it in tape. Riiip. Snap! The ribs ended up about twice as thick, but the treatment was done.
—Clack…
“Quiet. This is the only option we’ve got.”
Thank goodness I’d stocked up on duct tape after watching that movie about surviving on Mars. There had to be a skill for restoring undead somewhere, but I had no idea what achievement I’d need to unlock it. Maybe necromancers were just a class that burned through undead, so nothing like that existed?
But my undead don’t die.
They had egos, they had memories, and they were loyal to me. Leaving them to die like consumables left me with a guilty conscience. Still, fretting got me nowhere, and in the end I had to treat the other injured skeletons and spiders with nothing but tape as well.
Kii…
The spiders in particular had taken a lot of damage to their legs and seemed uncomfortable, but there was nothing I could do about it.
“Hmm. Now what?”
I spent the next few days like that, patching everyone up at a leisurely pace. The last expedition had been a little too dangerous, so I felt entitled to loaf around. As expected, I didn’t feel hunger, and after sleeping just once I stopped getting sleepy. On top of that, becoming a Mythic-rank necromancer meant I didn’t even age anymore—so there was no need to rush.
“But I’m bored.”
While I rested, I had the undead wipe down the solar panels until the electricity came back on, and after that there was genuinely nothing left to do. I rolled around on the bed for a while, then finally couldn’t stand the boredom and got up.
“We’re going out! I should at least start claiming this neighborhood as my territory.”
If I kept sitting around like this, I’d lose my mind first. So I made some simple preparations and headed outside. The lineup: Woofy, the Death Weaver, Ttacttac-i, and Mari. I climbed onto Woofy’s back, left the house, and began circling the surrounding homes one by one.
Most of the houses sat abandoned, just as they’d been left. Only the bleached bones of people who’d died on the day of the collapse remained. So I revived them, ordered them to clean the houses, and repeated the process.
…And I kept at it for another three days.
“Okay, now this is getting old!”
I was starting to think about calling it quits. Even knowing the whole point was to grow my forces, boring was still boring. Maybe I should just tell the undead I’d already made to go gather more on their own, the way they had at the mixed-use complex? It would take a while, but still.
I was mulling it over when, out of nowhere, I heard voices. Not the inorganic clatter of undead, not the grotesque noises of monsters—actual voices.
“…not… I’m against…”
“…have to… no choice…”
Humans!
A surge of pure delight hit me so hard I shoved every undead into the nearest house in sight and slipped myself into cover. This was a chance to get the information I hadn’t managed to pick up last time.
The ones approaching looked like a couple, a man and a woman, bickering over some difference of opinion.
“Are you sure it’s actually safe?”
“I told you it is! The Special Safety Department’s been focusing hard on this area lately.”
“I’m just worried. We’re only C-rank.”
“What era are you living in? We both class-changed into Advanced jobs.”
I eavesdropped from the back of the alley. The Special Safety Department—the agency that managed hunters and oversaw gate containment. So the Special Safety Department had survived after all.
“That’s exactly why I’m worried! It’s not Heroic, not even Rare—just the next step up from Common.”
Time to say hello? I stepped out where they could see me and deliberately cleared my throat.
“Ahem. Hello there.”
“Kya—kyaaaaaah!”
“Aaaagh! It’s a banshee! A-a ghost?!”
“Does that matter? Run!”
What, being mistaken for an undead again? No—more importantly, they were running?
“Not happening! Stop them!”
At my order the Death Weaver appeared in a flash and fired a strand of silk. Whoosh—the thread spun a full loop through the air, then wrapped tight around both of their waists and bound them fast!
Whoa. So a Death Weaver could pull off tricks like that.
I walked up to the two of them and spoke.
“Why are you running?”
“A banshee! It’s a banshee! Help! Aaaagh!”
“No, it’s a ghost! Banshees are ugly, and this one’s pretty.”
Twitch. A little vein popped up on my forehead. I flicked a knuckle against the man’s skull for calling me a banshee. The woman got a pass for saying I was pretty.
“Ow!”
“Huh. Not the ghost type, then.”
“…Maybe she’s not a monster?”
Having finally arrived at the right answer, the couple looked at each other, then started thrashing and shouting.
“Sorry, we’re sorry! We were wrong, just let us go!”
“A monster tamer? We’re sorry for the misunderstanding.”
They seemed to think I’d tamed the Death Weaver. Fair enough—spider undead didn’t look undead from the outside.
“Ttacttac-i. Mari. Come here.”
—Clack-clack!
At my call, Mari, Ttacttac-i, and even Woofy stepped into view. The couple’s faces went white all over again.
“Undead?! A necromancer! A maniac!”
“Mom… I’m sorry. I promised I’d survive to the end…”
Sigh. They were making such a production of it that I didn’t even have the energy to get angry.
“I’m not planning to turn you into undead, so calm down.”
“Th-then… live experiments…?”
“Not that either! What do you take people for?”
At that, the man asked with a face full of genuine confusion.
“I mean… aren’t all necros psychos?”
“Why would you think that?!”
“Well, you’d have to be pretty far gone to complete the class-change achievement for necromancer, right?”
“That’s…”
He had a point! I’d become a necromancer by pure accident, but how had other people managed the achievement? The only things that came to mind were doing something with corpses, or reducing people to a state no different from death.
“I just happened to become a necro by chance.”
“I… see? Um, if you’d be more comfortable speaking casually, please go ahead.”
“Alright, then I will.”
The guy had decent instincts. The woman still looked terrified, though.
“Mari, cut them loose.”
“Gii.”
Mari sliced through the spider silk with a blade, and even after being freed the two of them still looked uneasy. Only now did their suspicion finally seem to drain away, leaving them a little embarrassed.
“Sorry about the binding. But you did try to bolt without warning.”
I pulled a calorie bar and a bottle of water from my coat and held them out as I asked my questions.
“Ohhh! Food—actual food!”
“I’ve got a few things I want to ask. First off, who are you two?”
“Uh, I’m Kim Do-jin, and this is Park Ji-a. We’re both warrior-type classes.”
Right—they’d mentioned Advanced jobs.
“Is class-changing common?”
“Unless you died the second the world ended, nine out of ten people class-changed. This district had the most gates open, so there weren’t many left here, but…”
Ohh. So that was why there were no monsters in the residential area. Monsters hunted living people, so when the gates opened there’d been a massacre—and once no one was left alive, the place had paradoxically become a safe zone.
Thinking of Arachne, it’s not like monsters are completely gone.
Still, these two clearly had a lot of information. They’d lived through the collapse and survived into this apocalyptic age, so maybe that was only natural.
“How badly has the world fallen apart? Fill me in properly and I’ll give you more calorie bars.”
“Ah—in South Korea, public authority is pretty much wiped out except for the Special Safety Department and a few military units on the northern front lines.”
“The military units are only looking out for themselves, so they’re better off not existing…”
“Still, I heard the Special Safety Department is trying to reclaim this area.”
I see. So that boy who’d one-shot Arachne back then was from the Special Safety Department? They must have been slowly clearing out threats like her.
“Do you two have other companions?”
“There’s a survivor group over in Gangnam-gu. One of the more moderate ones.”
“That’s nowhere near here.”
“Everything around there has already been stripped bare… so we came this way on a scouting run.”
Ah. With the Special Safety Department marking this area, they’d come to check it out. And while they were at it, do a little recon in advance.
“So this whole neighborhood doesn’t have an owner, then?”
“Technically it belongs to the Special Safety Department, but… since nobody actually recognizes that claim, everything past Choeun Mountain is ownerless in practice.”
Great. So this district was mine, then?
“Any dangerous factions nearby?”
“Up around Bukhansan there’s a bunch of people who escaped from prison, plus other criminals, all living together.”
Ohh. That was genuinely useful intel. I handed over every calorie bar and bottle of water I’d brought with me.
“Thanks. If you ever want to live around here, come find me.”
“We’re the ones who should be thanking you. Food this precious…”
“It’s not even that much.”
“Most of what we eat is monster meat or wild greens. It tastes awful and gives you a stomachache, so something like this is desperately needed.”
Another important piece of information. Infrastructure had been completely wrecked, then. It was winter now, and with a constitution close to the undead I was fine—but the summer heat might be rough.
“Alright. Heading out now?”
“The sun’s going down, and we’ve got food now… If we want to sleep in a safe zone, we need to move.”
Kim Do-jin said it with a clear edge of urgency. A shame—if they’d wanted to stay the night, I would have invited them home. They didn’t seem dangerous, and I’d considered keeping them around for conversation, but apparently they had no interest in overnighting in unfamiliar territory.
“Please be careful for real. The ones at Bukhansan are genuine scum.”
With that, the two of them hurried off, and I turned away with a lonely feeling.
“Bukhansan, huh.”
I didn’t particularly want a fight. But… if they were that rotten, a clash was only a matter of time.
I should keep an eye on them in advance.
They were close enough that some recon would probably be wise. They might expand this way later. Alright—next order of business decided: recon of Bukhansan!
“Maybe I should try turning a sparrow into an undead or something.”
With my next task set, I turned my steps toward home.