Healers Are a Critical Matter (2)

For the scouting run on Bukhansan, I picked crows as my recon unit.

Sparrows were too small to trust, and pigeons stuck out like sore thumbs, so I went with carefully selected specimens.

"Caw! Caaaaw!"

"That's right. You're adorable."

Death Weaver had brought them in within thirty minutes, and once I converted them straight into Necro Ravens they looked surprisingly sharp. Their feathers had lost their sheen, but they'd toughened up a little and grown lighter, which meant more speed. And since they'd been animals to begin with, they were still pretty cute.

—Clack! Clack-clack!

"Grr, grrr."

"Well, if you're jealous, you should've been born cute."

Ignoring the undead's protests, I stood in my backyard and cast a light Possession on every crow I'd trained.

"Whoa… feels like I've turned into a spider."

Six crow viewpoints, plus my own, made seven total. A little dizzying, but not bad.

"Possession is more useful than I thought."

Cast at a very low intensity on my undead, it only shared their senses. From there I could still issue orders through thought, which made it excellent for everything from long-range commands to recon.

"Alright. Shall we take them for a spin?"

With my own eyes on a battered old map I'd bought ages ago, I launched the flight. From Crow Unit One through Six, the whole flock reached Bukhansan in under fifteen minutes. Once they knew the route, a ten-minute cut wouldn't be out of the question.

If I ever got a giant flying monster, it would make a hell of a mount. Hwanggu was fast, sure, but nothing beat an aerial ride.

"Oh, something's showing up."

For the record, I could also share any view under Possession with another target. Meaning I could pipe the crows' vision to Ttacttac-i or Mari and still hand out orders.

The moment they hit Bukhansan I linked every crow's sight and started the sweep. People turned up almost immediately.

The criminals had dug in around the Bukhansan Fortress. Buildings like the Bukhansan Police Station and the national park office had long since been smashed to rubble.

"People living in a fortress… really does feel like we went back to the Middle Ages."

No internet either, which sealed the medieval vibe. Even the satellite connection I'd set up was dead. Something—base stations, maybe—had gone down and taken the whole network with it.

"Unit One, get a little closer."

The crows' feathers were still fixed to their bones, so from a distance they didn't look off. The empty eye sockets used to give them away, but I'd scavenged glass beads from the residential streets and plugged the holes, so they shouldn't get spotted.

"So I was saying…"

The crow drifted near enough to eavesdrop.

"I beat the crap out of that bastard and cleaned him out, right? But not a damn thing on him."

"C'mon, you really expect to find anything these days? You dig through everything and you're lucky to turn up one damp cigarette."

"No, they took over the neighborhood mart and drank every last drop of the booze? There's no way they didn't stash some. But it wasn't inside the store."

"Tomorrow we take the boys and hit it again? There's a bigger place farther up, yeah?"

Yikes. An actual den of criminals.

Robbery was everyday life in the apocalypse, but the way they talked, this was organized work.

"We'll hit that place if we can. Problem is, no gas."

"Think those oil-eating monsters'll show up again? We made some nice cash last time."

"Hell if I know. And cars you fill with that stuff fall apart pretty quick."

They traded a few more lines, then disappeared inside the walls.

Looking closer, the fortifications were more substantial than I'd thought. The stone colors varied in places, and the clean, even sections looked like recent additions. A fortress built for criminals.

Bukhansan had become one giant gang.

"So I kill the guy right in front of him and he starts bawling. Hah! Can't even read the room, huh?"

"Honestly, I'm glad the world ended. I was about to rot in a cell for twenty years."

"How about a raid on Gangbuk this time? No factions over there. We can kill whoever we want."

The crows wheeled overhead, snatching scraps of conversation. There were far more people on Bukhansan than I'd imagined, and every last one of them was as rotten as the talk suggested. Rough estimate: about seven hundred.

"Hey! Grab that one. We'll roast it."

"That crow?"

Crap—I snapped out an evade order and barely dodged the flying rock. Unit Four had almost gotten taken.

Time to head back.

I was just about to recall the flock when, inside a crude building of squared stone, I locked eyes with a woman.

"…A person?"

Clean clothes. Clear skin. You weren't supposed to judge by looks, but she didn't have a scrap of muscle on her—nothing like the Bukhansan gang types. And the building was basically a prison. On a hunch, I sent the rest of the crows home and flew only Unit One inside.

"A crow… this is a summon, right? You're listening to me, aren't you? Right?"

She'd sensed something. She knew this wasn't an ordinary bird.

I took direct control of the crow and scratched letters into the dirt. The place was just an earthen floor with stone walls, so communication was possible.

"For real? Please save me! I'm a healer—they dragged me here!"

"W-well, more like restoration, technically. But I'm useful, I swear. Just trust me once. Please… please. If I stay here any longer, I don't know what'll happen to me."

I flicked my attention back to my real body for a second and looked around. Mari, shredded from her escape attempt. Ttacttac-i, still wrapped head to toe in tape. A spider still rolling around, unable to walk.

Not healing—restoration.

I wrote in the dirt again.

"Yes! That's actually my specialty. People are harder for me."

"W-wait, seriously? I'm Lee Se-a. There are a lot of Awakened here, so you have to be careful…"

I sent that, then turned to every undead standing around me.

"Kids, let's go pick up a doctor who can fix you!"

Seven hundred criminals?

From what I could tell, there weren't many truly strong ones among them. Most would lose to Hwanggu. They only looked tough because of the numbers—organized looting made them seem bigger than they were.

And if it was a numbers game…

"That's my specialty."

Time to go get her.

A healer just for undead!

It started quiet.

Late at night, someone came back to the barracks grumbling, and that was the first ripple.

"Damn it, there was a skeleton out front."

"What? Annoying. Once undead start showing up, they just keep coming."

Undead cropped up on their own fairly often. Ever since the gates opened, supernatural energy had been pooling on Earth. The longer time went on, the more of them there were, and two years ago on Doomsday—when hundreds or thousands of gates tore open—the numbers had exploded.

Naturally spawned undead were usually weak enough for ordinary people to handle, but…

"Nah, the ones I saw were pretty tough."

"What? Is there a necromancer?"

Fear of necromancers had been a constant since the apocalypse began. They would appear now and then, massacre people, and grow their ranks. Most of them eventually got their heads cut off by the Special Safety Department… but the dead never came back. So the terror never fully faded either.

"Dunno. They barely reacted—just ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠kept walking. Used to be you could knock them apart with one hit, but these took a few."

"Bullshit. Send the boys out and check."

So people spilled out from inside the walls to search, and then—

"Aaaagh! Undead! Watch out, everyone! Kuh—ghhk…"

Someone took a hit and screamed. The same cry rose from every direction.

"Shit, it's a real raid! Get to the walls!"

Everyone started running. But some of them never made it.

"Spiderwebs…?"

The trap was already laid.

Thick, tough strands snared the ones who stumbled, and sticky webbing plastered across the ground wrapped them up. They wasted precious seconds thrashing to peel it off their clothes—and then a greater horror arrived.

Clack. Clack.

Skeletons were coming. Countless white bones, all advancing with a single purpose.

"D-don't come near me—aaagh!"

A skeleton casually picked up a rock and brought ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠it down.

Even skill-reinforced, skeletons made from bones that had been dead more than two years weren't strong. Which only made the despair worse for the ones who were caught.

The more they struggled, the tighter the webs held. Limbs bound, they could only lie there ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠and wait for a rock to cave in their skulls.

"No, aah! Help me! Please don't leave me!"

"I-I have to live!"

Not that many had died yet, but the ones who saw it were already terrified, scrambling away on all fours. And so the fear spread.

"Nice, nice. Keep it just like this!"

Hidden in a safe zone below Bukhansan, I watched the whole show and grinned.

Everything according to plan.

I'd waited until night, then pulled in the intact skeletons from the ones scattered everywhere—about a hundred fifty from the mixed-use complex, ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠another three hundred from the residential streets around my house. Then, when their defenses were at their thinnest, I strung the webs in advance and hit them.

It wasn't hard. With an insider feeding me intel through the crows, how was I supposed to fail?

"Healer extraction—begin!"