Sub Quest (3)
After Junil received the sub quest.
In the monitoring room of Fairy Corporation, a gloomy voice echoed.
“Hey….”
“…….”
Gulp.
Sam could only break out in a cold sweat, unable to utter a single word in response.
What the hell? Why… how…?
Why had the elf’s sub quest reacted to Julian?
After hearing Kang Hae-il’s story, he was the perfect fit—they had to assign it to him!
“You said sub quests would absolutely never get stolen.”
“Th-this isn’t just one, okay…?”
“You saaaaid they would absolutely never get stolen?”
“I never said none would get stolen…”
Huh?
“K-Kiririri!?”
Ram laughed.
When she got really angry, she laughed.
If Sam hadn’t saved her from corruption twice, she would have fired him on the spot.
“Director Ram, the overall framework of the plan is still intact…”
“There’s a saying in the dimension we bought.”
“?”
Swoosh.
Ram pulled something out.
It was a long silver rod.
“Is that the saying?”
“No, this is a golf club.”
“Then the saying is…”
“Everyone has a plan.”
“Come on. Not everyone does. You barely ever make plans, Director—”
Whoosh!
Ram’s golf club bent like a bow.
“Until they get hit!!!”
Thwack!!
Thwack!
Junil’s fist slammed into the man’s jaw.
“!?”
The man’s head whipped around, his upper body spinning with it.
The impact was strong enough to flip him a full rotation in midair.
“Guh…!”
A choked gasp escaped as blood sprayed.
Spring Flower Sharala Effect
Beautiful light bloomed, scattering flower petals in the air.
Thud—
The man collapsed, slamming face-first into the ground.
- Holy shit lolololol what is that effect
- Feels so refreshing~!
- Lmao it's so pretty when he gets hit?
- Whaaaat lol
- The situation is brutal but the effect is straight rom-com?
- You went easy on him lol he should've had a hole in his head
- Didn't even use mana lol
Just like the Constellations said.
He had gone easy.
Couldn’t let the guy die just yet.
Grab.
Junil seized the man by the collar and hauled him up.
“You.”
“Y-yesh…?! Yes?!”
The man had become extremely polite.
One punch and his mind had cleared right up.
“Do you believe now that ranks are just numbers? Or not?”
“I-I believe it!”
- He was talking about F-rank earlier lol
- Manners-inserted punch whoa
- Is that really that important lol
- Believed it instantly~ lol
The man had definitely been educated.
Though his pronunciation was a little off. His jaw was badly broken.
“You’re a necromancer, right?”
“Ah, ah yesh…”
“What do you mean ‘yesh’? You dumbass. Your face screams necromancer.”
“Wh-where do you shee that in mah fashe?”
- Lmao lololololololol
- Face reading lololol
- Phrenology detective whoa
- Holy shit lol
- He does kinda look like a skeleton.
“Then do you know what this is?”
Junil pointed at the spirit with his finger.
“……?”
The man couldn’t answer.
He couldn’t see it.
Even though the spirit was buzzing around with all its might.
“You can’t see it, can you?”
“……”
The spirit the elf had lent him was the lowest-grade light spirit, Lumion.
These guys only appeared to those they permitted.
It wasn’t that necromancers couldn’t see them.
But Junil was just saying it for the Constellations.
This way it would look like he had deduced it.
“So doesn’t this guy look suspicious at first glance? Why can’t you see him? Huh?”
“Th-that’sh… how would I…”
“Because he’s a bad guy, that’s why you can’t see him!”
Thud!
Junil immediately kicked the man in the shin.
The man’s leg folded neatly.
It looked broken.
He let out quite a severe cry of pain.
“Aaaaaagh! Y-yesh it ish!”
- Holy crap lolololololololol
- Lmao
- Lmaoooo
- Little Mermaid kick lololol
- Agreed, necromancers look like skeletons anyway?
“You’ve got more friends, right? Huh? Where are they?”
“Eh? Ah, ah yesh…”
“Ten.”
“T-ten?”
“Nine.”
“!”
Junil suddenly started counting.
He was almost certain.
Beyond being sure this guy was a necromancer, he was sure there was more than one.
The strange men he mentioned earlier.
That was about himself.
Having killed so many villains during his hero days, he knew the pattern.
The verbal habits they had when they were anxious or acting sly.
They casually blurted out things about themselves.
On the contrary, they kept casually mentioning the very things they should hide most.
That was just how humans were when anxious.
The psychology of wanting to be reassured by constantly talking about themselves to the other party.
I can see right through it.
In truth, deduction wasn’t even necessary.
Just looking at their faces was enough.
If you read two hundred volumes of Detective Conan, you might not know the tricks, but you could tell a criminal just by looking at their face.
Seven hero runs and thirty years of life amounted to thousands of comic book volumes.
The villains have completely different art styles, you know?
He didn’t know exactly what they had done, but in the Fairy Corporation worldview, he had come to roughly recognize the faces of the designated villains.
Conan needed evidence, but all Julian needed was to identify the culprit.
“Six.”
“B-brother? Wh-why are you counting…”
- Lmao lolololololol
- Straight to counting lol
- ???: The truth is just a number.
- What kind of countdown is this lol
- Scary as hell lol
- And the BGM is still that creepy track so it's actually terrifying lol
The man’s face filled with terror.
He couldn’t even hear the BGM.
It just felt like the final countdown of his life.
“Five.”
“P-please! B-but!”
The man raised both hands and begged.
He would talk.
“It hurtsh… it hurtsh… I can’t talk!”
He couldn’t speak because it hurt?
Still, the Earth kept turning.
“Four.”
“W-wait! Wait! Wai—!”
“Three.”
Whoosh!
The man with the broken leg stood up as if by miracle.
- Holy shit lololololol
- Lmao
- Jesus Christ!
- How is he even standing;
“W-wait… wait!”
“Two.”
Crack!
He twisted his own jaw back into place and shouted with perfect pronunciation.
“Over there! It’s over there! If you go that way there’s a cave where our kids stay…! Th-that’s our base, boss!”
“Mm. Lead the way.”
Junil nodded.
“Yes!”
- No way lololol
- Counting numbers actually heals him whoa
- Wow
- Even fixed his jaw lol
- Leadership stats are insane;
- And this guy is supposedly just a college student…?
“Th-this is the place…”
“Is it?”
The man pointed at a cave.
That was originally a goblin den.
From the looks of it, goblins had dug this cave.
The necromancer must have killed the goblins and was living here.
Judging by the traces… about fifteen of them?
At this close range, even Junil could sense the magi quite clearly.
More than that, the fairy right beside him was busily drawing some kind of pattern.
Piiing~ Piiing~!
It made further guesswork easy.
The damp, gloomy atmosphere made the Constellations uncomfortable.
- Whoa what is this place???
- Why do black mages always live like this
- What a bunch of weirdos
- But if they survived to level 10 they probably aren't normal humans
- Fuck there’s more than ten of them???
The sinister aura here seemed unpleasant even to the Constellations, as they all threw out wild guesses.
The thing that surprised Junil most here was the ‘number.’
Not the kind of number Hae-il talked about, but an actual headcount.
If even the Constellations are saying there are more than ten, it must be true.
Why so many?
Junil asked the man beside him.
“Necromancer isn’t exactly a common class. How did you all gather here?”
“Th-there was something like an open chat room. Necromancers… well… we all have our own circumstances, you know.”
- Fuck lololololol
- Open chat room for necromancers holy shit lol
- Lmaoooo
- They gathered in a cuter way than I expected lol
People involved in unpleasant magic always gathered among themselves to scheme.
It seemed the same here.
Only they had done it in a modern way—through an open chat room.
Wait. Isn’t this even more dangerous?
Compared to sending letters back and forth in a cave, this was far too advanced.
“Your circumstances mean killing people to make corpses?”
“Th-that’s… I… I had no choice! At first we just gathered because we were all necromancers! Then someone said if we banded together we’d be a legion… and we fell for it. But the leader here is a crazy bastard…”
That was when it happened.
Maybe because he was about to spill something?
Whoosh!
Suddenly his body caught fire.
“Aaaaaaaaagh!”
- Gasp
- Whoa
- Huh?
- Gasp
- Huh???
- What
The Constellations looked extremely shocked.
But Junil simply took one step back.
He observed the surroundings even faster.
He knew what this was.
He even engraved a mark.
A mark of silence.
It activated if they tried to reveal certain information to outsiders.
“Wh-what is this?! Aaaaagh! What did you do to me?!”
But judging by the man’s reaction, it seemed he hadn’t even known he had such a mark on him.
Did he think it was a fashion tattoo?
Junil sneered in contempt.
It was obvious—they had dug a cave this deep, harbored delusions of building a legion, and felt a sense of belonging by engraving marks on each other.
But who is it? Already this systematic?
The victims were pathetic, but the designer was no ordinary person.
This level of organization made him wonder if it was even possible for modern humans.
Most people in South Korea had never killed anyone.
Yet necromancers had formed an organization, engraved marks like this, and were procuring corpses?
Is the leader not from here?
This so-called leader of the necromancers.
Had he crossed over from somewhere, like the elf?
That was when it happened.
“How dare you set foot in this forbidden zone!”
A booming voice rang out as figures in black robes appeared one by one from all directions.
“And you even burned one of our brothers?! Who the hell are you?”
Clatter.
Beside them stood a considerable number of skeletons.
All of them were skeleton soldiers holding weapons and shields in both hands.
Junil quickly counted their numbers.
This is too many.
It wasn’t a number he could break through with brute force.
The losses on his side would be huge.
Besides, I haven’t even completed the quest yet.
He still needed to find the source of the magi.
He hadn’t even gotten close.
He needed to approach this more intelligently.
Sometimes fools—like first-round Julian—would only charge in with force the moment they gained power.
But the basics of war were deception and strategy.
“N-no! It wasn’t me!? I didn’t burn him… he just suddenly caught fire by himself! Just like those malicious commenters…”
- ?
- ??
- Holy shit lololololololol
- Fuck lololol
- But it's actually true lol
- Fact) All of it.
“What?! What the hell are you saying?! How does a person just catch fire by themselves?!”
Junil glanced at the wrist of the man who was swinging his staff in agitation.
The mark was visible.
A mark…
He didn’t seem to be the leader.
The leader was still hiding somewhere.
I need to infiltrate. First, I have to get out of this crisis…
He had to prove that he hadn’t burned the man to death.
How?
There was one ability that was practically a cheat key in times like this.
“No, I don’t have any ability like that!”
Junil activated the only skill this world had given him.
Ding!
[F]
Coming Out!
“……”
“F… F?”
“Huh…?”
“No way. How is he F…”
“Tsk tsk.”
“Hail Guanyin Bodhisattva.”
The moment they saw the letter F, the entire atmosphere grew solemn.
- Ah
- Gasp
- Lmao lololol
- Holy shit lol
- Even necromancers go solemn at that rank…
- Fuck lololol
- Treated like baldness level
Before the overwhelming presence of an F-rank, they could no longer suspect Junil.
“Well… fine then. What are you here for?”
“I’m a porter. This boss told me to carry some stuff, so I came. But then he suddenly caught fire and I got scared.”
Was it from his fifth hero run?
From then on, lying before a fight had become Julian’s basic strategy.
His acting skills were top-tier.
It was not something people who had just encountered this situation could see through.
Innocent eyes and a voice trembling with fear.
It looked far too genuine.
“Carry things?”
They already believed him.
“Probably… um… it looked like corpses.”
Necromancers had to transport corpses often.
But they usually lacked the strength, so they always summoned zombie-type minions to do the work instead.
There were none visible here right now.
They’ll probably need one.
The necromancers looked at each other and nodded.
“Hmm…”
“What do you think?”
“It makes sense.”
“Indeed.”
The one who seemed to be the leader pointed at the burned man’s corpse.
“Really? Then start by carrying that corpse. Let’s see how strong you are. Even if you are F-rank.”
Junil nodded and picked up the man’s corpse, storing it in his inventory.
Whoosh.
“I’m not really the strong type… but I have this skill. I can just store things like this and take them out when needed.”
It was the perfect skill for necromancers.
“……Oh?”
“Th-this is…”
“What? It’s perfect for us?”
“Then instead of making zombies, should we just use him?”
“Yeah, let’s do that.”
The necromancers, who had been planning to kill any strong-looking porter and turn him into a zombie, gathered together, nodded for a moment, then spoke to Junil.
“Very well. I see why he brought you. Come inside, porter. You’ll have a lot of work to do.”