Chapter 3
Chapter 3
Episode 3
I was waiting for it to come at me when it jumped right in front of me.
Hah. First Park Kang-chan, and now this thing too.
Do none of them know how to vary their moves?
They all telegraphed their attacks.
I twisted my body slightly to dodge the attack and reached out.
Smack!
I slapped the rat bastard's cheek with a nice, satisfying crack while he was still in midair.
The bastard's body spun round and round and dropped to the ground.
I had a big frame, and this body had trained in external arts, after all.
The rat bastard's body spun round and round in the air before falling.
Thud.
That was the sound of it hitting the ground.
It was trembling all over, apparently dazed senseless.
-Insane!!!!! You won with a slap?
I smirked at the viewer reaction and walked over to the rat bastard.
It had somehow survived.
I picked up the crude dagger the bastard had dropped.
From broadcasts I'd seen before, if you acquired a monster's weapon and then killed it, you could keep using that weapon afterward.
Now that I'd acquired a dagger, there was only one thing left to do.
Kill it.
Crunch.
I stomped on its neck and snapped it, killing it.
-Wow. What a real man... Hey, what exactly did you do before this?
I'm a present-life sloth who was the Martial God in a past life.
Would they just tell me my whole shtick was even more confusing if I answered that?
* * *
The user known as Park Il-chim spent his free time watching videos of newly awakened climbers and enjoying the moment their morale broke.
He had a real name, but on GodTube and related communities he always used Park Il-chim. Today, as usual, he was prowling like a ghost in search of a new newbie whose spirit he could crush.
And then.
The moment he spotted a fresh newbie, he settled in to watch.
But.
Far from breaking the other person's spirit, he was too busy being impressed.
The first thing he saw.
He threw something white at the charging monster rat, and it pierced its eye dead-on.
What kind of ridiculous feat was that? It was impressive enough to leave him stunned.
-Wha, what!? How did you do that?
Of course he couldn't help reacting like that.
The next sight was also the very definition of shock.
One resounding slap sent the rat bastard spinning through the air before it slammed into the ground.
For a moment, Park Il-chim wondered if he'd seen it wrong.
Was spinning like that even possible?
Then he finished it by stomping on its neck and snapping it, his face utterly indifferent.
As if he'd done this sort of thing countless times before.
He looked completely at ease.
Brrr!
No wonder goosebumps rose along his skin.
"F-X-k, I've got chills...."
So he typed this in chat.
-Wow. What a real man... Hey, what exactly did you do before this?
A viewer whose speech style kept shifting!
Indeed. He was in shock.
He was a Necromancer, yet he was boldly killing monsters with his bare hands.
Is... is this really a Necromancer?
Why was a Necromancer's undead just standing around like props?
"This won't do. I can't keep this to myself."
He clipped the video he'd been watching—he was recording it to use as mockery material later—and immediately started posting it to a forum he knew.
The most famous one was, of course, the [Tower Climbing Gallery].
So he posted it there.
[Wanna see a god-tier newbie Necro killing monsters bare-handed without using his undead?]
And it was inevitable that other forum-dwelling ghosts like Park Il-chim would see it.
* * *
The third enemy was a rat bastard warrior.
A longsword and shield. And it was wearing a helmet and armor too.
Unlike the one before it, the bastard didn't charge in clumsily like crazy but crept closer with its shield raised.
But.
But in the end, a rat bastard was still a rat bastard.
The timing of the bastard's sword thrust was still completely telegraphed.
Its thrust was so obvious and slow it practically made me yawn.
As expected, I slipped aside easily.
I struck its sword hand to make it drop the sword, and that was the end of it.
A rat bastard that could only bite or scratch was no match for me.
Its neck broke from a single low kick.
Before the corpse dissolved into light, I quickly snatched up its shield and longsword.
With this, I acquired a longsword and shield!
I armed myself with the shield and longsword and tossed the dagger on the ground.
-No way! Why's a Necro fighting like that? Are the undead just props?
The viewer who'd come in first said something, but I ignored it.
Come on. Let me relive my past life a little.
Of course, from that viewer's perspective, I must look like a lunatic.
But there's a deep meaning behind everything I do.
Back in my day, I was the Martial God!
Still, it felt good to have a life-or-death duel again after so long, but....
The enemies have no fight in them at all.
It's the kind of feeling where the excitement starts to build and then fizzles out.
They're too weak, so it's a bit disappointing.
I was thinking that when the fourth enemy appeared: a rat bastard spearman.
And this time, three of them jumped out.
Oh. Will this be a little more worth doing?
Just as I thought that—
-Is this where the real-man Necro is?
-What the? Are the undead still folding screens?
-LOL, this guy's whole shtick is seriously confusing lol.
New viewers had come in.
"Hm? What's this?"
-What do you mean, what's this?
"I was wondering how you all found the stream."
GodTube, amazingly enough, has a universal translation feature, so even foreigners can watch.
But thousands of people awakened every day, so watching any particular newbie's stream was rare.
One or two would be one thing.
If three suddenly came in, that would be strange.
-Someone posted that your stream is fun.
-That someone is me!
-Nice job lol
-So why is a Necro playing melee DPS?
-Now now! Let's respect people's tastes!
-That's a suspicious hobby, isn't it?
-But what is this? Which trial are we on that three spear-wielders spawned?
-4th one.
-But three spear guys? That's insane;;;
-Looks like he rolled a high-difficulty tutorial. Does he die on the next one?
Aha, so someone had promoted the stream. I was thinking that explained the new arrivals when—
Viewers poured in.
The concurrent viewer count was already 82.
Well, now.
Is a Necromancer beating up monsters with his bare hands really that amazing?
There were all sorts of weirdos in the world.
From the strange awakened-climber videos I'd seen before, there was a guy doing a mukbang in front of monsters, a guy stuffing Fire-X stir-fried noodles into a monster's mouth, and a guy who went in carrying alcohol and did Yoga Fire.
The world had some truly colorful characters.
Compared to those guys, I'm just an ordinary nobody.
Even if I had been the Martial God in my previous life, I wasn't one of those people whose common sense and thought processes ran on a completely different track.
[Combat begins.]
"Anyway, nice to meet you all. But let's end the conversation here."
The three rat bastard spearmen charged.
* * *
"Spear-wielders on the 4th trial? Isn't that crossing the line?"
Park Il-chim muttered as he watched the rat bastard spearmen.
Indeed.
Enemies with long-reach weapons weren't supposed to appear until the sixth trial.
That infamous Gnollberd—the harbinger of despair—was the classic example.
Gnolls might be a weaker species than orcs, but three of them showing up with decent equipment?
How was anyone supposed to beat that?
Sure, every awakened climber had a class and skills, but....
Awakeners with no combat experience can die before they even get to use their skills a few times.
As someone who had watched videos for a long time, Park Il-chim thought the only way to win in this case was hit-and-run.
Running away while using ranged attack skills!
Cheap but effective!
In fact, quite a few people had broken through that way.
For Wizard-type classes, the standard strategy was to run away while firing things like mana arrows.
There was even a joke that Wizards had to be good at running.
Of course, Necromancers have a high floor. First, if he used those undead to pin down the spears, he could win.
They're corpses, so they won't die just because their flesh gets pierced, right?
If they deliberately got stabbed by the spears and then grabbed onto them and hung on, the rat bastards would lose their spear weapons.
In fact, Necromancers breaking through the tutorial that way was the standard rule.
So far he'd only shown himself beating rat bastards bare-handed, but surely this time he'd actively use the undead. That was what Park Il-chim expected.
And that thought was right.
It was right, but... something was strange.
[Three-Star Fist Formation is deployed.]
Park Il-chim simply couldn't hold back.
-Sensei, why are the undead deploying a formation?
* * *
"Huh. The system can actually recognize this? Interesting."
Three-Star Fist Formation.
A martial formation used by three unarmed fighters.
Formations are divided into martial formations and terrain formations.
Martial formations are formations deployed among people, such as the Wudang Sect's Taiji Sword Formation or the Shaolin Temple's One Hundred Eight Arhat Formation.
Terrain formations refer to formations installed using terrain features, such as the Eight Gates Golden Lock Formation or the Eight Trigrams Bewildering Soul Formation.
They could summon fog, suppress the minds of those caught in the formation, or even be used during pill refinement.
In contrast, martial formations have the effect of mutually supplementing the energy of the martial artists forming the formation and strengthening the martial prowess of those deploying it.
However, since the coordination has to be good, the drawback is that it can only be used after training together for a long time.
So I tried it out as a test.
I wanted to see whether I could make my undead perform a martial formation under my control.
Honestly... even if they were spear-wielding rat bastards, three of them weren't particularly difficult opponents.
Throw a dagger to kill one.
Block the second one's spear thrust with the shield, and that's that.
For the third rat bastard, I could knock its spear aside with my sword, drive inside its reach, and stab it. Done.
They weren't exactly master spearmen. What was there to be afraid of?
Still, I'd warmed up my body by now.
So this time, I thought I'd experiment a little with my abilities as a Necromancer... and gave the undead an order.
I wanted to know exactly what my Walking Corpses could do.
As a result.
I learned that if I controlled them through spiritual force, they could use martial arts.
How astonishing.
This actually works?
So while I was at it, I had them deploy a martial formation used by fist fighters, and....
This.
It produces a system effect?
That's incredibly novel.
As a result.
"Graaah!"
"Gruuuh!"
"Graaah!"
The Walking Corpses traced circles with both arms and knocked the incoming spear thrusts aside.
It was a Taiji Fist technique.
Even though I was seeing it with my own eyes, I couldn't help being surprised.
After deflecting the spears, the Walking Corpses drove both fists out in a steady rhythm and smashed the rat bastards in the jaw.
Pow! Crunch! Crack!
The Walking Corpses' hands became covered in blood because of the helmets, but they were corpses anyway.
They felt no pain and had no concept of it.
They had no internal energy, but....
Their forms were correct.
That was because my spiritual force controlled them.
That wasn't all.
I could also tell the system effect had raised their attack and defense.
Whoa... this is really amazing and fascinating, isn't it?
On top of that, these bastards.
They could use martial arts properly too.
Rather than me controlling every detail, it felt as though they were reproducing the martial arts buried in my subconscious.
Auto-pilot? Automatic? Something like that?
Hmm. Interesting, isn't it?
It would be nice if these bastards could use internal energy too.
Is there any way to make Walking Corpses use internal energy?
Then it suddenly came to mind.
Necromantic Mana Manipulation.
What if I tried using this on the undead?
Would something happen?