Chapter 6
Chapter 6
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Translator: Ryuma
Chapter: 6
Chapter Title: Undead (1)
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I let out a hollow laugh as I took stock of the situation.
In truth, there wasn't much to think about.
Hans was dead.
The connection had been completely severed, making it impossible to reverse summon him.
While meditating and experimenting with various skills, I gained a deeper understanding of the Avatar ability.
If an avatar dies, it can be regenerated after a certain period.
The newly created avatar becomes a fresh entity with all prior progress reset to zero.
This time, the dead one had only gone through a few days of intense training, so there wasn't much to regret, but it still left a bitter taste in my mouth.
Now it was time to figure out what had happened.
Why had Hans, who was in a safe village, died?
And that too, without even realizing it, despite being in such a deep sleep?
'Well, it's obvious even without thinking too hard.'
If it had just been some external attack, I would've noticed something midway through.
So what was the problem?
'That old man...'
I ground my teeth without realizing it.
I'd thought my luck was good.
I'd only encountered a single leopard in that dangerous forest and managed to take it down somehow. There was a small village nearby, and the chief I'd met there had been kind to me.
Admittedly, I'd been too complacent.
We were strangers in an unfamiliar land.
He wasn't some harmless NPC from a game just because I'd met him in a village.
But that didn't mean I could stay on guard and keep my edge up forever either.
After all, I'd been the one approaching them and freeloading off their hospitality.
'How did he do it? Did he spike the alcohol with something? A sleeping pill? But I didn't feel anything unusual before falling asleep...'
Moreover, I'd shared that alcohol with the chief, and there'd been no special reaction even after drinking it for a while.
Maybe I was just overthinking it, and some unexpected accident had happened...
Slap!
I slapped my cheek to snap out of it right there.
The loss I'd suffered wasn't that great, honestly.
A few days of Hans's efforts, the food costs from that, and the items I'd sent with him that were now gone—that was it.
On the contrary, losing Hans before a bigger loss allowed me to learn more about Avatar. That was a huge gain.
But I couldn't keep thinking positively and acting carelessly forever.
Didn't the statistic of a mere 20% average return rate prove just how dangerous this otherworld was?
Just this incident alone—if it hadn't been the avatar that got taken out, I would've died less than two days after arriving in the otherworld, and that would've been the end of everything.
Now was the time to think of countermeasures.
Should I send another avatar? The Otherworld Teleportation Circle had a 24-hour cooldown, so not right now.
Besides, I was reluctant to send one back into a place where I didn't even know what dangers remained.
Send it somewhere else? The teleportation circle could only send to places a previous avatar had passed through.
Even if it was far from the village, it'd still be right in the middle of that dangerous forest.
As I paced back and forth, unable to decide, it happened.
...I reconnected with the avatar in the otherworld.
◇◇◇◆◇◇◇ The first thing I heard was the chief's voice.
"Tch... I thought he was useful, but he turned out to be total mush."
"You're telling me. Surviving the monster forest alone, and from the way he worked, I figured he had some real skill."
"An Elite Skeleton at best? Guess I had my hopes up too high. Let's go."
"Yes, Master."
The chief's voice, conversing with someone, gradually faded away, followed by the clank of a door locking.
I tensed up without realizing it, then relaxed my rigid body with a sigh.
"Clack—"
No, it was just my imagination.
Upon realizing it, my rigid body hadn't relaxed at all, and no sigh came out.
It was right then, as I slowly looked down to check my body's condition.
⚙ SYSTEM NOTIFICATION ⚙ The entity's race has been changed to 'Undead'. You have acquired the special skill Corrupted Heart. I stared blankly at the message floating before my eyes, then looked down at my body again.
The human skeletal model I'd seen in the school nurse's office back in my school days was right here.
I examined it more closely. I picked up my arm bone and checked between the ribs from various angles.
And I reached a conclusion.
'No heart...?'
Corrupted Heart?
I grumbled irritably at the generic naming that ignored the entity's traits, then sorted out the situation.
The chief was a necromancer who'd killed me and resurrected my corpse as an undead.
And 'Hans' had become a walking skeleton—an Elite Skeleton.
⚔ STATUS ⚔ Entity Information - Name: Hans - Race: Undead (Elite Skeleton) - Common Traits: Mind Hub, Super Recovery - Entity Traits: Corrupted Heart, Mana Affinity - Notes: Turned undead via forbidden sorcery. Immune to death, poison, curses, illusions, and all negative effects. Mind Hub prevented mental corruption. My head ached. Probably just my imagination since I had no brain.
I quickly stopped lamenting my fate and decided to assess my surroundings first.
I'd only been caught off guard by the sudden situation, but it was an avatar I'd already considered dead anyway, so nothing really changed.
Looking around, I noticed what was different from before.
For starters, even in pitch-black darkness without a shred of light, I could see everything clearly.
No, was this really 'seeing'?
Just to check, I stuck a finger bone into my eye socket.
Hmm, as expected, it was empty.
I pulled out the finger swirling in the socket and looked ahead again.
No eyeballs, yet there was no hindrance to my vision.
Unlike humans limited by eye focus and field of view, my entire frontal area facing the empty sockets came into view at once.
And I could sense life forces around me.
Yeah—a rat scurrying in and out of a hole behind me was crystal clear.
This was probably one of the effects of Corrupted Heart.
From what I could tell, it included standard 'undead' traits like mental attack and cold resistance, undead infection, and hatred toward the living.
'Thanks to Mind Hub, I can shrug off the negative effects anyway.'
The place I was in seemed to be a large underground warehouse.
As I roughly surveyed the rundown basement-like surroundings and approached where I'd sensed the rat...
'Whoa, what the hell are these?!'
There, lined up in rows, were undead just like me.
Piles of junk in the middle had blocked the view, and they stood motionless in the darkness, so I hadn't noticed until now.
From zombies to skeletons armed with bows or clad in armor.
As I observed them for a moment, the rat I'd sensed earlier scurried out toward a zombie.
It bit off a dangling baby toe and darted back into its hole.
'Ugh... disgusting...'
As I shuddered in revulsion, the zombies' appearances somehow stuck in my mind, prompting a closer look.
...There were not just adult men and women, but even elderly folk and children.
'These bastards...'
I recalled my memories.
The village scenery from when I'd first arrived up to wandering around the next day.
...There hadn't been any children anywhere.
And the biggest reason I'd thought it was a pioneer village right away—the fields attached to the village.
While helping out with village chores, I hadn't seen a single person working those fields.
Back then, I'd glossed over it since I knew nothing about farming...
'These bastards wiped out an entire village and took it over!'
A chill ran down my spine at their depravity.
At the same time, a sense of helplessness washed over me about what to do next, drawing out a sigh.
'Not that I can sigh anymore. Whatever, enough of that.'
This entire village was practically an enemy lair occupied by black magic users.
With not just villagers but knight-like undead around, they were probably disguising it as an ordinary pioneer village to fool outsiders while plotting something.
I'd been oblivious prey happily hopping right into the monster's maw.
Looking back now, the chief's questions had seemed aimed at figuring out if I was someone whose sudden disappearance wouldn't cause issues.
The one-day grace period had been him observing whether devouring me would bring any repercussions.
'How can I take these guys down?'
When I'd realized I'd been killed, or even after becoming undead, I'd been annoyed at getting backstabbed, but not this furious.
Even if Mind Hub filtered my emotions to soften the shock, seeing children sacrificed too was impossible to ignore.
These guys had crossed the line—by a mile.
Ignorance would be one thing, but now that I knew, I couldn't just let it slide.
Besides, I was undead now, so what did I have to lose?
It'd be great to screw over the ones who'd stabbed me in the back, and if it didn't work, oh well.
'For now, let's gather some intel.'
I had plenty of time on my hands anyway.
◇◇◇◆◇◇◇ For the next few days, I searched the underground warehouse where I was confined.
Though in Earth time, it was just over a day.
There'd originally been two entrances, but one had completely collapsed and was unusable.
Essentially, only the passage the chief and his disciple used was accessible.
'Whoa, how many are these in total?'
Next, I inspected the other undead present.
The zombies seemed to be ordinary folk like the villagers for the most part, but there were no shortage of heavily armed skeletons with all sorts of weapons.
Over fifty zombies alone. Skeleton soldiers including skeleton knights numbered around three hundred.
Clank, creak—
The door opened with footsteps approaching.
I immediately stopped moving and stood blankly like the other undead.
Since becoming undead and trapped here, I'd learned the chief's disciples came down every 2-3 days, taking turns to check the warehouse.
"Sigh, just how long do we have to stay holed up in this backwater?"
The grumbling guy casually scanning the warehouse was someone I'd seen once while repairing the village palisade.
Zephyr, was it? His name.
I'd thought he was slacking off back then too, but turns out he was a black magic apprentice.
"Hm?"
Sensing something off, he looked my way.
'Did he notice?'
My heart sank.
Not that I had a Corrupted Heart anymore.
"Why is this here? No one does their job right except me. [Move over there.]"
A voice reverberated through my skull, and I felt a force trying to compel my body to move.
I realized right away I could easily ignore it if I wanted.
But it wasn't time yet.
I didn't resist the force trying to move my body and obediently went to join the cluster of other skeletons, lining up.
"Whatever, all clear. But why do we have to check every time when it's just us here? The old man's so picky."
Zephyr, waving his glowing staff half-heartedly as he checked, soon grumbled and left the warehouse.
Creak—clank
Even after the door locked, I stood still for hours before cautiously moving again.
No need to rush.
Better to be cautious and steady than get caught due to carelessness.
'Hans' had time to spare.
And this time, I'd gained something big.
The power I'd felt when Zephyr controlled my body.
It was extremely familiar.
Because it was the exact same force currently moving my own body.
The mechanism for moving this undead flesh differed from ordinary living beings.
There were no muscles to begin with.
The power flowing through my body now—so-called 'black mana'—replaced senses and muscles, causing all sorts of actions.
This had to be a basic effect of Corrupted Heart.
And with my Mana Affinity, I could mimic the new usage of this power I'd felt directly through my body.
'The method to control other undead.'
Conveniently, there were over a few hundred undead loitering right around me.