The Monarch's Training Camp
The thunderous crack of lightning erupted.
Streaks of electricity unfurled from the Dragon's Wings, piercing straight through the mummies.
In a single instant, all fifty undead exploded into pieces. As they tried to regenerate, a fully formed lightning spell was already aimed at Marco.
“……I surrender.”
Marco raised both hands without hesitation.
“How many times does that make now?”
“The tenth time, sir.”
My arsenal was vast.
I had dismantled the mummy army using countless methods. I broke through with Giga Impact and raw brute strength. I used martial arts to snap each mummy’s neck one by one. I suppressed them with Earth Dragon Out of Water and lightning nets.
“Master, look. He’s controlling the output precisely enough to keep the barrier intact.”
“Truly, just when I think I’ve caught up to Master, he’s already far ahead again.”
Oh.
Maybe because these two had sparred with me the most, they were the first to notice I had placed restrictions on my abilities during the match.
— How long do you plan to keep pushing without saying a word?
Well.
I was thinking this should be enough.
“What did you learn from dying ten times?”
“It felt utterly helpless. Completely one-sided.”
“Did you come up with any solutions?”
“Instead of half-hearted elite units, I need to gather more power or command far more mummies.”
“Only half right.”
I snapped my index and middle fingers together like a V.
“You need to do both.”
Osiris’s Blessing.
It was an incredibly cost-effective ability. It granted divinity to undead servants to strengthen them, and even if they were completely destroyed, they could be restored in mere seconds by pouring in mana.
To call that half-hearted elite enhancement was ridiculous.
“It’s a waste. You should be rolling out both a massive army and a small elite force.”
“It’s possible in theory, but there are no corpses available.”
The downside of the necromancer class.
Their power was severely limited on battlefields without bodies.
“Is that why you used Death Army?”
“Yes. Even though the reduction in necromancy effectiveness hurts, it allows for stable troop acquisition.”
Death Army was a spell that summoned mid-tier undead. It could call up to a hundred designated undead—depending on proficiency—from a specially created magical space.
The drawback was that maintaining the skill partially sealed some of the user’s necromancy abilities.
“In towers or gates, I summon Death Army, and once more corpses appear, I cancel the designation and reuse the skill. That’s how I’ve been applying it.”
“That’s quite the cumbersome workaround.”
“I wracked my brain, but nothing better came to mind.”
Marco let out a hearty laugh.
Despite how damaging this must have been to his pride, he didn’t seem particularly bothered.
He seemed to already understand what I was trying to point out, so there was no need to continue the spar.
“You don’t have to solve everything with skills alone.”
I took the item hanging at my waist.
The grotesque-faced Pocket of Desire appeared in my hand.
“Do you know what this is?”
“It has rather tasteless decorations. It doesn’t seem to match your tastes… so I assume it’s a spatial storage pouch.”
“Correct. It can store inanimate objects inside its subspace.”
Marco stared intently at the Pocket of Desire, then let out an “Ah—” of realization.
“Inanimate objects!”
“Getting the idea now?”
“I can store corpses in there and pull them out whenever a battle starts!”
Necromancy spells hadn’t spread widely across Earth yet.
Unique abilities related to necromancers were extremely rare, rewards involving them rarely appeared in the Tower, and there were clear limits to purchasing them with CP.
Asking other necromancers for guidance wasn’t much help either, since few surpassed Marco’s level.
Given the lacking infrastructure and knowledge, the compromise he had squeezed out was likely this Death Army workaround.
Man. This is exactly what fresh future knowledge looks like.
In ten years, this would be common sense among necromancers.
What harm could there be in releasing it a little early?
— You do not understand the butterfly effect.
Ah.
I don’t care.
If the world is going to be ruined just because I released a tip about storing corpses in subspace a bit early, then it was doomed no matter what I did!
“A bone-deep piece of advice. I’ll engrave it in my heart.”
“Oh, and about necromancer skills. There’s someone I can introduce you to who can pass on some techniques.”
“Really?!”
He wasn’t human, but there was indeed a skeleton who had reached the pinnacle of necromancy.
It was a shame I couldn’t summon him right now.
“Not immediately, but I’ll introduce you when the time comes.”
“Thank you, Master Jinho!”
The slight dejection from losing ten times in a row had vanished completely. Marco’s face lit up as he bowed repeatedly.
Marco had recruited a total of fifteen guild members.
— Are you saying all these children possess the qualities of a High Ranker?
“What are you talking about? High Rankers aren’t like stray dogs on the street. They don’t grow on trees.”
Ranker = a title given by each individual country.
High Ranker = a title granted based on RP across multiple dimensions.
People like Jiyoung or Ping Lei—who became High Rankers despite joining late—were rare.
Most were already affiliated with guilds or had founded their own.
There were probably a few late-bloomers among them with the potential to become High Rankers, but I couldn’t remember every single one.
“I just listed the ones I vaguely remembered.”
Not everyone gathered here had the potential to reach High Ranker level.
However.
They were all players who had survived the era of destruction.
The fact that I remembered their names was proof enough.
If trained properly, there was a high chance they would grow strong enough to make a name for themselves in Europe.
— Until now you showed no interest in other regions. Why the sudden change in attitude?
“The situation has changed a lot. There’s no need to stubbornly stick to the original plan.”
Right after my regression, I had focused solely on growing stronger to slaughter the Old Gods.
Now I had an additional goal: preventing the third Great Erosion and changing the doomed future itself.
Weren’t they the same thing?
The direction was subtly different. To crush the Old Gods, I needed to raise an extremely small number of overwhelmingly powerful elites.
To stop the third Great Erosion, I needed to raise the overall level of players across every country.
Until now, I hadn’t paid much attention to the latter.
— I am curious what caused such a change in your heart.
“The biggest factor was eliminating Rene early.”
Humanity’s worst traitor.
The sellout who handed Earth over to the Klyphoth.
By removing Rene Davis ahead of schedule, I had also gained a massive amount of fame.
I had even turned the future great evils—the Machine Monarch Enrique and Death’s Hand Ping Lei—into allies.
— Even if those adversaries are gone, evil will not disappear from the world.
“I know. Still, it’ll be better than the first round.”
The certainty that I was moving toward a better future.
On top of that, I had gained fame much faster than I expected right after regressing.
William Rockefeller and I were maintaining a mutually beneficial business partnership.
The situation had improved dramatically, so I might as well do everything I could.
Training the talents Marco had recruited was one small attempt at changing the future.
Click— click—
A woman entered the sparring field.
Her striking red hair reached down to her waist, and her expressionless face left a strong impression.
Who was she?
I didn’t recall anyone like her among the players on the European front.
“Helena Meyer. I look forward to working with you.”
Wait.
Uh, so… you’re that Helena.
“What’s your unique ability and class?”
“Great Explosion. My class is Archmage.”
Whoa.
She looked so neat and tidy I hadn’t realized. So you were that person.
— Who is she that you look so surprised?
Hmm.
How should I explain who Helena Meyer was?
She was a player who had made a name for herself on the European front, for better or worse.
“Explosion is art!”
She had shaved her head into a mohawk, leaving only the top untouched. Massive piercings adorned her nose and tongue. The sight of her laughing maniacally while burning Ents and entire cities with explosion magic had left a deep impression on everyone.
She had even earned the nickname “Brussels’ Bomb Maniac,” taken from the name of the battlefield where she had rampaged.
But why are you cosplaying as a normal person right now?
No, wait.
The reason Helena turned into an apocalyptic bomb maniac was probably because of those damned Old Gods.
Why else would such a quiet person have broken so badly?
“Savior of Paris?”
“Ah, sorry. Please fire your most confident spell at full power.”
“The barrier won’t be able to withstand it.”
“I’ll take it, so it’s fine.”
With her usual blank expression, Helena began preparing her magic.
Unique Trait – Great Explosion
Fire Type – Explosion
Great Explosion poured additional mana into explosion-type spells to dramatically increase their power.
It was a spell that could obliterate everything near a designated coordinate the moment it activated.
With the extra mana poured in, the destructive force contained within the spell was enough to reduce the entire area to dust.
Truth Eyes activated.
Blessing of All Things Erosion activated.
Dragon's Wings activated.
Bomb Demon Energy activated.
I read the mana structure with Truth Eyes, interfered to lower the destructive power, then wrapped myself in Dragon's Wings to take the full force of the explosion.
The blast—powerful enough to vaporize not only the barrier but the surrounding buildings and area—vanished without so much as a sound.
“Well observed.”
Helena’s mouth fell open.
“The timing of your magic deployment, your skill in rearranging mana flow… there’s nothing to criticize.”
“Th-thank you.”
“The only flaw is your unique ability. You have a habit of over-injecting mana.”
“I thought the more I put in, the stronger the destructive power would be.”
“Looking at the moment before the Explosion went off, the excess mana was actually suppressing the explosive force.”
“You analyzed all of that in that brief moment?”
“Being the world’s strongest means I have to be able to do at least that much.”
Helena stared at me for a moment, then bowed deeply.
“Thank you for the advice!”
Instead of asking questions, she immediately accepted it and turned away.
— You even managed to analyze it. Impressive.
“Not really. I just repeated what I overheard before the regression.”
All I had really done was read the explosion timing with Truth Eyes, interfere with it, and suppress it using Blessing of All Things Erosion.
If I had focused entirely on analysis, I might have been able to do more, but if I had taken that much time, the entire building would have been blown away.
“Next.”
“I’m Lloyd. My unique ability is……”
Some players, like Helena, looked completely different from how I remembered them before the regression.
But most of them were largely the same as what I had seen on the battlefield.
Sigh.
Really.
I can’t even describe how shocked I was when a normal person showed up instead of that mohawk-wearing lunatic.
“Ah. Try cutting off the mana flow there just 0.1 seconds later.”
“That was a bit too strong, wasn’t it?”
“You put in too little there. Your posture looks awkward in this section.”
“Stronger. You’re not putting in enough mana, so the movement is breaking.”
…….
I couldn’t give them the same level of detailed guidance I gave my guild members.
Raising the combat power of the European players was good, but if I became too obsessed with it, I would lose sight of the main objective.
The best approach was to offer necessary advice based on my pre-regression knowledge and experience, then correct them through sparring and gate clears.
“I’ll be returning to Korea in two weeks, so I’ll teach you everything I can until then.”
In other words.
It meant I was going to work them like dogs for the next fourteen days.
Fortunately, the reinforcements who would help develop the Yeokcheon Guild’s European branch had also arrived.
“It’s been a while, Master.”
“Thomas. Anything unusual happening in Korea?”
“No, sir. Both Mugeuk and Yellow Storm are handling things excellently on their own.”
Analyst Thomas.
I had called in the specialist in skill analysis, mapping, and training.
“You can put these guys through the wringer.”
“As expected of Master’s eye. They really are raw gems.”
As expected of Analyst Thomas.
He grasped their potential the moment he saw them.
Although he was currently focused on guild management, he was originally an expert in player development.
This was practically his main field.
“How intense should I make the training?”
“As long as they’re still breathing.”
“Leave it to me.”
Analyst Thomas grinned.
Why are you smiling like that?
It’s scary.
— That child’s smile resembles yours.
That’s rude.
My smile is much more refreshing, you know?
Nyx simply smiled gently and offered no further reply.
Excuse me.
Goddess? Why are you suddenly silent?