Chapter 2
Chapter 2
Episode 2
[You have acquired the class 'Necromancer.']
[You have acquired the basic skills of the class 'Necromancer.']
It was a pure white space with nothing in it.
In my hand was a piece of the chicken I had been eating. Nothing else.
"Haa... couldn't I have awakened after finishing my chicken...."
I hadn't even eaten half of it yet. What a waste.
With that thought, I put the rest of the chicken into my mouth. The crispy, savory taste spread through my mouth.
As I savored the flavor, I glared at the message window that kept appearing before my eyes.
I roughly knew what a Necromancer was. In my previous life, I'd seen them command things similar to the Jiangshi used by those bastards from the Jinju Eon family.
I'd lived quite a while in this life and played my share of games, so it wasn't as if I didn't know what one was.
But in the end, isn't a Necromancer just a corpse-handler?
Me? This body—the former Martial God—is supposed to be a corpse-handler!? No. What is the meaning of this, Mister System!? Me, a corpse-handler!?
To become one of those cowards who just point fingers from behind while sending out corpses!
"Hoo... No. Fine. What's the point of getting angry? Check skills."
Thanks to the many channels on GodTube, the tutorial process had already been fully revealed to the public. Even though each tutorial was said to be entirely random, I basically knew all the fundamental things one had to do after awakening.
When I checked my skills, the skills I had acquired appeared.
[Skill: Corpse Control]
Turns corpses into undead and controls them.
[Skill: Small Undead Subdimension]
Creates and maintains a Subdimension for storing undead.
[Skill: Necromantic Mana Arrow]
Forms Necromantic Mana into the shape of an arrow to attack enemies.
[Skill: Necromantic Mana Manipulation]
Grants the ability to manipulate Necromantic Mana.
The descriptions were almost absurdly concise. I'd watched enough Dimensional Tower videos to understand them immediately.
The problem was that I mainly watched melee-DPS videos, so I didn't know much about Necromancers.
[The awakened has checked their skills.]
[You are an awakened with the class 'Necromancer'.]
[Three basic corpses are provided.]
"Damn it. Instead of this kind of service, just let me change my class."
With a flash of light, three corpses appeared in front of me.
Each was about 180 centimeters tall, shorter than me, with little muscle or fat and a build that looked to weigh around 80 kilograms.
In other words, they were a bit tall but otherwise had utterly ordinary builds—and all three looked exactly alike.
In other words, they were male triplets.
Black T-shirts and shorts.
This... did it create them rather than bringing corpses from somewhere?
As expected of the Dimensional Tower.
Even the way it handed out corpses was something else.
[Create undead.]
[The tutorial will begin once you create undead.]
[Even if you die inside the tower, you will be revived.]
[If you die 100 times inside the tower, you will lose the right to climb the tower.]
[May luck be with you.]
The messages ended. Nothing more appeared.
It was giving me time to prepare before the tutorial started.
I'd seen this on plenty of broadcasts already, so I knew what it was.
So, once I enter the tutorial, the broadcast will start too?
That's right.
For whatever reason, the tower seemed to put a lot of weight on entertainment.
It broadcasts everyone who enters the tower.
In other words, anyone could watch it on GodTube.
Supposedly that was why almost nobody went completely off the rails and did vile things in the tower.
Well... that's that.
"Let's see...."
Ssssss.
"Hmm...."
Passive skills supposedly activated without a spoken command.
Intent alone was enough.
So I tried it.
This... really did feel familiar.
It felt similar to the Corpse-Spirit True Qi used by that bastard, the Corpse-Spirit Demon Lord.
Corpse-Spirit True Qi. Corpse-Spirit True Qi, huh....
Wait. Then could it be?
I sat cross-legged and steadied my breathing for a moment.
I tried circulating the Corpse-Spirit Heavenly Jiangshi Whole-Body Art, the peerless divine art I'd taken from the Corpse-Spirit Demon Lord after cleaning him out.
If I could circulate the Necromantic Mana around my body according to the Corpse-Spirit Heavenly Jiangshi Whole-Body Art and absorb it into myself....
[An improper method incompatible with your class has been attempted.]
[You cannot accumulate power through this method.]
And then.
The Necromantic Mana that had been about to accumulate in my dantian scattered in an instant.
Oho.
So it wasn't that it was impossible. It just failed because it didn't match my class.
Is that it?
Somehow... this is interesting?
"Heh... well, would you look at that. I was planning to take this bonus life easy like a sloth... and now you're making things interesting?"
I had been enjoying life quite a bit since it was a bonus life.
And now it's making things even more enjoyable for me.
Tower. I really like you!
Heh!
I sprang up from my seat.
Then I focused my will.
The instant I acquired a skill, the knowledge of how to use it had popped straight into my head.
It was like having knowledge forcibly jammed into my brain. So I immediately held out a hand and used the skill.
"Corpse Control."
Ssssss.
[Undead 'Walking Corpse' has been created.]
[Undead 'Walking Corpse' is controlled by spiritual force.]
The corpse sprang up.
It felt quite different from a Jiangshi. Its posture was hunched, it gave a low, drawn-out groan and harbored hatred for the living. Most importantly, though, its body was flexible rather than stiff.
Normally, a corpse should be stiff due to rigor mortis, but I could see it moving smoothly despite being a corpse.
So this was a zombie—one type of undead?
"Check info."
[Creation: Walking Corpse]
Classification: Undead
The lowest-grade undead, even lower than a zombie.
It is literally a Walking Corpse.
It possesses abilities inferior to those it had in life.
A fragment of its shattered soul remains and moves the body.
A fragment of its shattered soul remains, giving it an animal-level sense of self.
The Necromancer controls it through spiritual force.
The description was detailed. It was weaker than it had been in life... and it did possess a vengeful spirit's sense of self and hatred for the living.
Well, micromanaging every corpse would be a miserable chore.
[Use of the skill Corpse Control has been confirmed.]
[The first tutorial begins.]
[The more tutorials you complete, the higher the reward you can obtain.]
[The tutorial broadcast begins.]
[May luck be with you.]
With the clichéd message, something materialized in a flash of light in the otherwise empty space.
A rat about the size of a small dog.
"First up is one monster rat."
The tutorial was also known as the placement test. A good performance here supposedly let you snowball into much greater growth once you became a top ranker.
And there was one way to get a good score on this placement exam.
You just had to keep clearing tutorial trials without limit.
The current world record was the 8th trial.
I wondered how far I could make it.
[Enemies will be summoned shortly.]
[The broadcast of your tower climb has begun.]
The broadcast started automatically.
I could instinctively tell where the camera was.
The tower was feeding the camera's location directly into my awareness.
Convenient, isn't it?
And then.
-A newbie? What? A Necromancer? Necro is good. Its floor is high. Its ceiling is a bit meh though....
One person entered my broadcast.
Anyway, Necro's ceiling was meh? Well, corpse-handlers are like that, I guess. People who rely on external things instead of trying to become strong themselves are all like that.
And at the same time.
[Combat begins.]
"Skreee!"
The monster rat charged.
-You got this, newbie!
Still, the viewer seemed nice enough. I'd heard there were plenty of people who actively rooted for newbies to die.
While I was thinking that.
The Walking Corpse also bared its hostility and tried to lunge.
"Whoa there."
But I used spiritual force to pull the Walking Corpses back to either side.
Then I gripped the chicken leg bone I had been holding since earlier.
The Sichuan Tang Clan's hidden-weapon art, Single Leaf Dagger.
Even without internal energy, it was plenty effective if you knew the right wrist and arm motion.
Whoosh!
Thunk!
"Screee!"
The chicken leg bone pierced its eye in one go.
The charging monster rat convulsed and flipped over in front of me.
-Huh? Wha, what? What's that? What did you throw? Weren't you a Necro?
I could feel the viewer's bewilderment.
Welcome. Never seen the hidden-weapon arts of a martial artist from another life before?
"Become... a star!"
I approached and delivered a soccer kick!
Wham!
"Skreee!"
Shrieking, the monster rat was sent flying far away.
Ooh. Nice.
And then it landed and died.
It soon vanished with light.
Crack crack.
I rolled my neck and loosened up a bit.
Man. Maybe because it had been a while since I killed something, my body was heating up.
Actually, in this present life, I had never killed anything other than mosquitoes or cockroaches.
After all, there wasn't much reason to kill anyone in 21st-century Korea.
-Wha, what!? How did you do that?
There was only one viewer. Since they stood out, I answered them.
"The Sichuan Tang Clan's secret hidden weapon art. Single Leaf Dagger. Hehehe. Viewer. You are fortunate."
-This is making my head spin... what kind of bit is this...? Wait, old-timer. Weren't you a Necro?
"I am. I just added martial arts to the mix. What, never seen martial arts before?"
-What kind of hybrid is this?
Whether the viewer was surprised or not, confused or not, the clock kept ticking.
[The next enemy is being summoned.]
This time, something bigger than the monster rat appeared.
A Ratman.
In Korea, they were usually called rat-bastards.
And the thing was holding a crude knife.
Man. A knife shows up right at stage 2? Am I unlucky?
I say this because I often watched tutorial videos, but weapon-wielding ones usually appeared at stage 4.
The majority were goblins.
But a knife-wielding rat-bastard appearing? Isn't this a bit harsh?
-Whoa, shit. A knife already? Is this the 4th one?
"No, this is only the 2nd one, and it already sent out something with a knife. Is it because I killed the first one too easily?"
[Combat begins.]
The rat-bastard's eyes rolled back as it charged.
Its build was about 1.2 meters. The knife was short, about the size of a fruit knife.