Toasts and Tomb Dust
The night of the rank-up examination.
“To Hunter Park’s S-rank promotion!”
President Baek led the cheer.
“To the promotion!”
The support team friends raised their glasses high and shouted with gusto.
Clink!
Glasses met in midair. A few drops of liquor splashed free, but no one called anyone out for it.
It was a private-room barbecue place.
“This looks ridiculously expensive.”
Sitting down to eat in a high-end restaurant I’d only ever seen on dramas made me feel undeserving.
“Don’t worry about it. Tonight’s on me.”
“President’s the best!”
Mijeong from the support team shouted at the top of her lungs.
“You know, there was a time I was a director at the Seven Stars Guild.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Do you know when I first felt like I’d made it?”
President Baek picked up the menu.
“It was the day I ordered whatever cut I wanted without looking at the prices.”
Oh.
A metaphor that hit right in the gut.
But, uh.
Boss, you’re a venture entrepreneur now.
I fretted about his finances, but I kept my mouth shut.
“It’s fine. I can cover this much.”
Yikes.
He’d read my mind completely.
Honestly.
“Mind if I call one more person?”
“Your summon, I take it. Make yourself comfortable.”
Adding another mouth felt a little burdensome, but the desire to feed her something delicious won out. I called Ingrid out of the Death Space.
A woman’s figure rose abruptly from the floor.
“Huk.”
“Hwaek.”
“Holy—”
“Kyaak!”
Exclamations burst out all around. The support team’s eyes went round as saucers.
“Oh my. What’s with all of you? It’s not like this is the first time you’ve seen me.”
“W-who… who is that?”
“Mijeong. Hearing that from you actually hurts a little. Should I raise the training intensity?”
At the word training, Mijeong startled violently.
“I-Ingrid?”
“Then the person who called him Master during the interview was…”
“She was a Skeleton Mage?”
“No way.”
Close your mouths, people.
You’re going to get splattered grease in them.
Whether the support team was shocked or not, Ingrid sat down naturally beside me.
“That’s my seat.”
“Mm. I need to be at Master’s side, so why don’t you take that one over there?”
Seongsu, the support team leader, moved to the empty seat without another word.
“Can an undead become a person?”
“She looks human, but she’s still undead.”
Technically she had dual attributes—both human and undead—but I doubted a long explanation would help them understand. The very idea of an undead becoming a person was so outrageous that I kept it short.
“Aha.”
They didn’t understand, but they accepted it on the spot.
“Master. Please, have a bite.”
“I’m fine. You eat first.”
Hwaaaaal.
The support team friends let out a collective sigh.
“When the skeleton said ‘Master’ I didn’t think much of it…”
“But when someone who looks like a celebrity says it, the vibe gets weird, doesn’t it?”
“Right?”
“Um, can I start calling you Unnie from now on?”
For crying out loud.
What did appearance matter that much?
Ingrid was Ingrid.
Whether she was nothing but bones or had regained her living appearance, she was the same retainer of mine.
“Master. Say ah~”
Hm.
Now that I thought about it, maybe there was a little difference after all.
“Please eat plenty.”
President Baek wore a contented smile.
The air that had grown briefly awkward after Ingrid appeared loosened as the drinks went around.
【To think one can taste meat. How truly enviable.】
This…
was sincere.
Dame Isra’s thoughts dripped with naked envy.
Ingrid, who had been chewing on a piece of chuck flap, curved her lips into a crescent.
“It’s really delicious! The moment it hits your mouth it just melts!”
【Y-you… you mage!!!】
Dame Isra trembled.
Chew, chew—
Ingrid pointedly picked up another piece of meat and popped it into her mouth with relish.
Ugh.
Even the way she ate meat looked like a magazine shoot.
“Truly. Being able to taste a delicacy like this is a blessing.”
“Please eat your fill.”
President Baek was using honorifics with a retainer.
Honestly.
If I’d been in his position I probably wouldn’t have been able to speak casually to her the way I did with the support team either.
“Mmm~ It’s so good!”
【Ugggghhh!!】
Yeah.
As long as it tastes good.
I’ll buy Dame something separately later, so don’t get too upset.
I had completed my promotion to C-rank.
But my life didn’t change dramatically the way it had before.
“B-rank gates are hard to win at auction.”
President Baek cut straight to it.
Up through C-rank there were plenty of gates you could enter with an over-grade. But for B-rank, gates that lower ranks could enter simply didn’t appear very often.
“Even A-rank isn’t like that. It’s only B-rank that’s peculiar this way.”
“It’s fine. It’s not like I urgently need to raise my level.”
My current pace was already too fast.
You could ask whether being fast was really a problem, and the answer was yes—there was one problem.
I wasn’t properly building my foundations.
【You have us at your side, Master. You needn’t worry.】
【Hahah. No matter how strong the foe, they shall kneel before my blade.】
I’m not doubting you people.
“Most of my skills are growth-type.”
“Both the undead crafting and blacksmithing-related skills, you mean?”
“Yes.”
When I promoted to D-rank, both Corpse Crafting and Corpse Processing had been reinforced. I’d already been sitting at 100% comprehension for years by then.
The C-rank promotion had been different.
Comprehension on both skills hadn’t even reached 50%.
Part of that was the triple-speed comprehension penalty, but it was also a side effect of leveling up too quickly.
“Will you take a break from gate raids for a while, then?”
“I still have gates I’ve already won at auction.”
The karmic debt (?) I’d stuck my fingers into all over the place because of Mir’s schemes.
I’d been clearing one a day like a stamp-collection challenge and had cut the pile roughly in half…
Which, flipped around, meant half still remained.
Not “only half left,” but “as much as half left.”
Heh.
I’m such a positive adult.
“All of them still have plenty of time before the break period, so it’s fine.”
A silver lining, at least.
And.
President Baek was under one misunderstanding I needed to correct.
“I have no intention of resting from raids.”
“Don’t you need to stay in the workshop to raise skill comprehension?”
“That’s true for the bone metallurgy side.”
Analyzing undead remains whose crafting methods I didn’t know was the fastest way to raise comprehension of Corpse Crafting and Corpse Processing.
“I’ll look into gates that spawn undead, mainly C- and D-rank.”
“I’ll take care of it.”
And starting the next day, I entered only undead-focused gates.
Crunch!
A monster whose entire body was made of something like dust.
The D-rank undead Dustman collapsed.
Corpse Processing
A new form of undead. Analyzing structure.
Ugh.
The texture was not pleasant.
Corpse Crafting comprehension has increased.
Corpse Processing comprehension has increased.
An undead formed when dust clung to a corpse that had been completely dried of moisture.
Its regenerative ability was excellent, but its specs lagged behind even a bare-bones Skeleton Soldier, so it looked hard to use in actual combat.
Still, knowing how to make one might come in handy someday.
“Krrt, ptew!”
Draco coughed up the Dustman corpse like he was choking.
Powder clung to the dry body and billowed into the air.
Ingrid, thoroughly disgusted, converted the nature of Wind Cutter and whipped up a gust that blasted every speck of dust away.
“Ugh. Be a little more selective about what you eat.”
She’d even used her unique formula.
She must have really hated the dust.
In another gate we ran into an undead whose whole body was grotesquely swollen—a Putrefier.
【Mage. Put your back into it.】
【Why are you just watching?】
【Is it not filthy?】
Pus streamed from its form. Bubbles studding its body would pop with the slightest impact, spraying acid that melted whatever it touched. It even carried corpse poison, making close combat deeply unappealing.
“Iron-head. With your skill you could take it down without splashing a single drop, couldn’t you?”
【That may be so, yet I am somewhat reluctant to cut down that abomination.】
I’d felt it the first time we met as well.
Dame Isra was surprisingly fastidious.
Weren’t knights the sort of people who drenched themselves in sweat during training as a matter of course?
【I am of a constitution that sweats little.】
Ah.
Is that so.
Squelch!
I touched the rotten skin without hesitation.
Corpse Crafting comprehension has risen.
Corpse Processing comprehension has risen.
Putrefier crafting method acquired.
【Urgh.】
“Dame, you can’t even throw up even if you want to, so what’s the point?”
【It is a matter of feeling.】
I’m the one touching the Putrefier’s skin, so why are you making a fuss?
Ingrid sneered.
“Hoho. The Lord’s First Sword goes on about this and that, yet she’s afraid of a rotting corpse?”
【Silence! To insult chivalry itself—this means a duel!】
In yet another gate—
“Ehehehehehi.”
—we encountered spirit-type Wraiths, and—
“Who am I?”
“Where is this place?”
—Returners, undead that looked relatively human.
“Anyone can see they’re corpses.”
“Compared to zombies, aren’t they better?”
“Hoho. Next to a maiden who received a body from Master, they look like plain corpses.”
The point of comparison was awfully delicate.
They spoke with human voices, but they were still undead.
“If you get bitten or scratched by their nails, you absolutely have to get treatment, hyung-nim.”
Returners were basically the monsters from zombie movies, he said. Specs a step above ordinary zombies. The real terror was the infection curse.
You either had to use Cure on the wound or pour holy water on it to shake the infection off.
【Hahahah. They cannot turn one who is already dead into a zombie, so it is meaningless.】
“Oh my. You’re going to let brats like that lay hands on you? How pathetic.”
【Hmph! I shall demonstrate my skill.】
Every time her sword danced, a Returner’s body was carved apart.
As for the Wraiths, which were immune to physical strikes—
“Be quiet now.”
—they fell silent after taking hits from flame shards.
Hmm.
“So spirit bodies can’t be analyzed.”
The moment they died they scattered. No corpse meant no analysis—I’d expected that much.
Corpse Processing comprehension has risen.
Corpse Crafting comprehension has risen.
Returner crafting method acquired.
For several days I deliberately left the gates unfinished, waited for the undead to respawn, and hunted them again.
Seongsu shook his head left and right.
“Undead don’t drop anything worth money.”
Magic stone drop rates were low. Byproducts and equipment that were actually usable almost never appeared. Even when something decent showed up, its durability was wrecked beyond use.
That was why undead-main gates were unpopular.
After a full week of that grinding—