Healers Are a Critical Matter (5)
Kyaaah!
“Death Weaver! Now!”
Death Weaver leapt, spraying silk in a wild frenzy from all eight of its legs—an ability that set it apart from the other spider undead, threads streaming from the tips of its limbs.
“A monster, and you still think you matter?! A-rank or whatever—it means nothing to me. I am one who has received Grace!”
Kakakakak!
Pillars of rock thrust up from the ground in long, jagged columns. The horizontal spray of silk slammed into them and was stopped cold—but Leather Jacket had overlooked something.
Kieeeek!
“Wha—!”
Death Weaver’s arsenal was never limited to shooting silk from range. It was a multipurpose undead, once S-rank, with durability to match. Using the very rocks the man had raised, it hooked its threads, yanked itself forward, and shot ahead with sudden acceleration. Then it curled its body tight and drove into him with a body-slam of armored carapace.
“Guh—!”
Completely unprepared for the attack, Leather Jacket took it full-on and helpless.
Kiririk, kyaak!
Death Weaver seized the opening at once. It roared with savage courage and drove a foreleg into the man’s chest.
“You son of a bitch! How dare you—me—!”
A little deeper and that leg would have finished him. Unfortunately, I didn’t get that far.
KWA-BOOM! Hundreds of stone shards burst into existence in an instant and exploded outward. Hit square-on at point-blank range, Death Weaver couldn’t withstand the force and was blasted away.
“…I’ll end it with this.”
In the brief moment Death Weaver toppled backward, the man’s eyes glittered with pure madness. He paid no mind to the blood pouring from his chest as he thrust a hand toward the empty air.
“You’ll pay dearly for raising a hand against me.”
A massive greatsword took shape in midair—no, less a sword than something closer to a pillar. But it never fired.
Grrrr… clack-clack-clack.
“Undead… Hah. Of course. These couldn’t be all of them. Not for a Heroic-rank. Right?”
The rest of my undead had finally arrived. Taking the long way around the chaos inside the fortress had cost them time, but most were still intact. Because the humans had fled from the merciless advance of the undead, nearly four hundred of them had made it here alive.
So even if he dropped Death Weaver with that greatsword, he would immediately find himself surrounded by that swarm of skeletons.
“Don’t celebrate early, thinking I’ll just sit here and take it. My skills don’t end here.”
Crrrack—the colossal stone greatsword split apart. Each fragment became a razor-edged blade that ringed Leather Jacket like a living fence. More than ten swords moved with something like will of their own, swinging out toward the approaching skeletons.
“How many skills does that bastard even have?”
Crack! One skeleton took a hit and its skull went flying. These weren’t weak skills, either. Telekinesis or whatever it was, the power behind them was real—nothing I could ignore.
A skill to create stone, a skill to launch it—those were confirmed—and now one to control them as well. Looking at that monstrous stamina and mental fortitude, still standing with a hole in his chest, he probably had a few related skills on top of that.
At this rate, he’s worse than a boss monster.
I hadn’t spent that many years as a hunter, and I hadn’t cleared a ton of high-difficulty gates either… but I had never heard of a monster this tenacious. Maybe in this apocalypse, the real danger wasn’t the monsters at all—it was the Awakened who had stacked achievement after achievement.
“One swing, one kill. To think a pack of low-grade undead like this could pin me down… that empty little head of yours is almost pitiful.”
The stone blades were far harder than ordinary rock. They whipped through the air at incredible speed without so much as chipping, and every swing put another skeleton down.
Just how many achievements has this guy piled up?
Even I, with a Mythic-rank class and a body and mind remade to match it, still got dizzy sometimes when I used Spirit Possession. This guy was flinging skill after skill and still standing there like it was nothing. That was what it meant to have fought and survived countless times.
But there was one thing he hadn’t accounted for.
“Damn it—how many people did you slaughter to have this many undead?!”
While he was busy dealing with dozens of skeletons at once, more and more kept walking out behind them. One swing kills one? Fine. Try all four hundred. Let’s see how far you can go.
“Kh… Still—you can’t beat me!”
At last Leather Jacket faltered, his blades pausing for a breath from sheer exhaustion—and Death Weaver was already setting up the next attack.
“Now!”
Whirrr!
On my signal, the threads Death Weaver spat reshaped themselves in the air into a net. Silk drawn from countless legs at once, guided by an innate talent for control—that was the attack.
“You bastards!”
The man tried to dodge the net at once, but it was already too late.
Kirik!
The smaller spiders had already blanketed the ground with webbing. If he wanted to keep rolling out new phases like a game boss, I would answer with new undead of my own.
“A net like this? I’ll cut through it in no time.”
In the end the net crashed down over Leather Jacket, and the undead closed in around him. He still talked big, but the edge of his voice had started to tremble. He could feel it too—he was being driven into a corner.
“Don’t rush in. Harass him. Watch for openings.”
Closing to melee like this would only get us the same treatment Death Weaver had taken—a shotgun blast of stone shards dropping everyone at once.
“All of you—spears up.”
This time, though, luck was on our side.
“That’s…! Those are the weapons I made!”
Spears abandoned by people who had fled, or taken from those who had fallen to the spiders—my skeletons had gathered them up. So he had made these? No wonder every spearhead looked identical. Mass-produced with his skill, then.
“Somehow this ended up a little unfair. Sorry about that.”
Spears for safe mid-range attacks plus a net that locked him in place—a famously broken combo. The kind Roman gladiators used until the crowd started booing them for cheesing the fight. And I was even using the spears he’d made himself, so of course he was furious.
“But… why wouldn’t I use them?”
Clack-clack.
The skeletons gripped their spears and closed the distance step by step. Too many of them for a big stone to drop them all, and too far for small stones to do real damage.
“…No. I will not die here!”
The instant the undead weapons came flying, Leather Jacket roared—and hundreds, thousands of fist-sized stones erupted outward in every direction!
Thud! Crash!
Rocks punched into zombie flesh. Skeletons collapsed without resistance. Then he yanked a small multi-tool knife from his coat and sawed through the tattered webbing until, at last, he tore free.
“Hiek—he can still do that much?”
Even so, the man was already a corpse walking. The wound Death Weaver had opened was still bleeding freely, and he had exhausted himself swinging at endless skeletons in a frenzy. All this thrashing would only buy him a few more minutes against the death already closing in.
“Show yourself, Necromancer! Not the undead—you! I’ll snap your neck myself!”
And still only his eyes burned bright with rage. It was almost awe-inspiring. That one person could climb this high—and still fight this hard with death staring him in the face.
With a trembling hand he started to form another cube of stone—then abruptly froze mid-motion.
What followed was… a performance I couldn’t begin to understand.
“Ah—no. That’s not it. I never intended anything of the sort!”
Talking to himself? No. Not to himself. He was clearly speaking to something.
“Absolutely not. Never! I would never have thought such a thing.”
His gaze had drifted somewhere far beyond this place, and he began to shake as if pleading with something that terrified him.
“O Being above the heavens—I never dreamed that was what it was. Please, have mercy…!”
He suddenly threw his head back—and tears began to fall. The arrogant, contemptuous man I had watched until now was gone, replaced by something so opposite that I couldn’t even order my undead. I had no idea what I was looking at.
And then the thing Leather Jacket had feared came to pass.
Light flooded the night sky. From that light, something began to fall.
“Abandoned? Me? No! That can’t—”
Those were his last words.
KRAK.
A spear descended from the heavens. Radiant, warm light poured from it as it punched clean through Leather Jacket’s skull with surgical precision.
“Uh.”
And that was it.
The shining spear flared once, then vanished, leaving only a headless corpse behind.
…What the hell just happened?
“Alright. First, assess the situation…”
I used Spirit Possession on the undead whose leg bones had broken and who hadn’t made it this far, checking how many criminals were still inside Bukhansan. They were all sprinting through the mountain woods in total panic. Luckily, none of them were headed my way.
“We’re pulling out!”
I made the call to withdraw. No more enemies worth fighting, and the healer was rescued. That alone meant the objective was complete—whatever that bizarre phenomenon had been, I could think about it later.
“Death Weaver. Grab that.”
Still, I was taking Leather Jacket’s corpse with me. An undead that could form stone out of thin air? Absolutely.
“Ah—and everyone, pick up any fallen undead or loose body parts you find!”
Couldn’t forget that either. The last fight had wrecked so many of them that the scattered pieces alone looked like enough for another thirty skeletons. They were starting to look like stuffed-animal undead.
Kiririk!
“Ah, Hwanggu’s here.”
“Um… Summoner…?”
“Not a summoner, actually. Necromancer.”
And with that, Hwanggu brought the healer down from Bukhansan, and the healer-rescue operation came to an end.