The Necromancer
67.
"I love you. I love you, Jungmin!"
"I love you too. I love you, Elena."
...Elena? Who the hell is Elena? That housekeeper's name was Junghye, wasn't it? Did he already give her a pet name?
Park Sena was monitoring the situation from outside the utility room. Not that there was much to monitor.
They were mating like animals.
End of report.
Yesterday had been the same. The day before that, too. And the day before that.
Her current observation target, Lee Jungmin, spent the entire day having sex. Well — she'd heard that in the basement lab, which she couldn't access, he helped with Shinyongsan research. But from where she stood, that was all a smokescreen. Otherwise there was no way he'd come back upstairs every single time with his dick hard as a steel rod.
So that already makes three women just in this house...
Two housekeepers, plus Woo Suyeon. By any measure, Lee Jungmin was a complete lecher.
So the girlfriend really is just a cover?
The Keeper Association had information on the blue-haired mage. Jungmin was a mage himself, sure — but looking at the footage from that day, the real mage had clearly been the blue-haired woman. The magic she'd used to erase a Summoner's Gate had looked formidable even on video. The Association wanted that blue-haired mage on their side, and to get her, they naturally had to go through Lee Jungmin.
Why Jungmin and GGC were hiding the blue-haired woman, Sena didn't know. But whatever the reason, once she cracked Jungmin, she'd find out everything.
That was her objective. By any means necessary — pull Lee Jungmin over to the Association.
She'd thought it would be easy work. There was no way she couldn't seduce a man living under the same roof. Her dynamite body had a gravitational pull all its own; she didn't even have to try. A soft-looking guy who clearly didn't have much experience would be crying under her ass within a few days.
But her seduction hadn't worked.
Men who were truly, deeply in love with their girlfriends could sometimes resist her — but Jungmin wasn't that type. Whether they'd just met or had already been fuck buddies, he was already glued to two housekeepers in the house and showed no interest in peeling himself off. There seemed to be some kind of something going on with Woo Suyeon, too.
So why?
The more of a lecher a man was, the less he should have been able to just walk past Park Sena.
Am I not attractive enough?
She entertained a thought she'd never had in her entire life. But honestly, she couldn't bring herself to believe it. She might lose to Suyeon's youth and energy — fine. But losing to a bland-bodied ajumma in her mid-thirties, or a late-twenties woman whose only selling point was slightly larger breasts? That was impossible. If she walked outside and asked a hundred random people, a hundred of them would rank her first in that matchup.
And a man already going after three women who felt that different from each other wasn't the type to leave Park Sena alone just because she "wasn't his type."
...GGC must have warned him, then.
That was the only conclusion that made sense. Someone had told him in advance not to get involved with Association people.
"Hngh — ah — Jungmin...!"
Come on, though. That's that and this is this. He could at least let me have a taste once, right?
Park Sena was obligated to report Jungmin's every move. Which meant she had to sit nearby all day and watch him have sex. Which meant she had to listen to two housekeepers moaning, over and over, from right next door — while she herself had been cooped up in a room for a full week with no man in sight.
And those housekeepers made such delicious-sounding moans.
"Hngh... haah... ah!"
They tried to muffle themselves because other people were in the house, but clearly they didn't have the presence of mind to succeed. Sena instinctively knew that Jungmin's equipment was extraordinary, or his technique was. Nothing else produced moans like that.
...I could cry just as sweetly for him. I could make him feel even better...
She was an agent thoroughly trained in bedroom work. She wasn't only that kind of agent anymore — but bedroom work was what had gotten her this far. The body heaven had given her, and the techniques she'd poured her soul into, were things she took real pride in.
God, maybe I should just force it.
She shook the thought out of her head as soon as it formed. No matter how frustrated she was, you didn't do that to a recruitment target. But if she was left to rot in this house for even one more week, she honestly didn't know what she might do.
Bzz. Bzz. Bzz.
A very quiet vibration ran through her body.
Three buzzes?
Sensing something wrong, she pulled out her phone. The only team that hadn't sent a regular check-in was Team A. She hit the call button immediately.
Beep. Beep.
No one answered.
She opened the CCTV feed from Team A's base. The screen was empty of people. Instead, there was only a completely wrecked office.
Shit!
She knew something had gone wrong. She sent a signal ordering the remaining three teams back to the house, then raised her hand to knock on the utility room door.
But the door opened before she could knock.
"Enemy, right? Front gate. Follow me."
"What? Ah—"
Jungmin and the housekeeper looked completely put-together, as if the sex had never happened.
What? When? And more importantly — I didn't even tell him anything yet.
Sena followed Jungmin as he took the lead. She had never given him the information that the front gate was involved, but he moved as if he already knew Team A's base was on that side.
They arrived at the second-floor living room overlooking the front gate. Another housekeeper was already there. Like her, Jungmin and Sena pressed flat against the wall so their faces wouldn't be visible through the window.
"He's out there."
"How many?"
"One. But I'm not certain. Definitely a top-tier mage. The second we stick our heads out, he'll teleport straight here."
"So what do we do?"
"Elena goes out first. We support from here."
Sena couldn't keep up with the conversation at all. What top-tier mage? And what was with this housekeeper casually trading countermeasures like it was nothing?
"Hold on. Who the hell are you?"
"Ah. I was still in this form, wasn't I."
Whoosh.
The housekeeper's hair shifted from black to blue. The unremarkable mid-thirties face transformed into a beauty that could rival any actress.
"Wh— what..."
It was a face that, frankly, outclassed even Park Sena. And she recognized the housekeeper instantly.
"...Shinyongsan's mage!"
"Yes. Shinyongsan's mage — Jungmin's girlfriend. This is an emergency, so would you mind following our lead? You said long-range attacks were your specialty, right? Watch from here and strike the moment you see an opening. Have the other Association personnel set up a perimeter for now."
"No, wait, that's—"
Even a blue-haired mage had no authority to give her orders. But before Sena could argue, the fight started.
BOOM!
At the sound of the explosion she peeked carefully — a man and a woman were facing off. The man wore a suit. The woman, incongruously, wore white armor.
...What the hell is even going on?
Everything was a question mark, but Sena knew this wasn't the time to demand answers. She opened her pager and issued orders to each team.
"Enemy at the front gate. B and C, surround. D, evacuate civilians near the gate."
"A mage tried to teleport. I blocked the spatial transfer, but he'll be here soon."
I stopped mid-sex with Elena the moment Keira's message hit me. We threw our clothes back on roughly, and her next message rang through my head.
"Massive mana surge at the building where the Association people are. A mage stronger than me. Elena, put on your armor."
"Yes!"
Elena answered a voice she couldn't have heard, and a knock came at the utility room door. I grabbed a startled Park Sena and headed for the second-floor living room where Keira was waiting.
I carefully peeked out the window. A pale-skinned man was approaching the front gate — walking out in the open like he had nothing in the world to fear, practically daring us to stop him.
Elena answered that dare. The moment the man stopped in front of the gate, she burst out through the entrance and opened with a slash of sword aura.
CRASH.
The front gate shattered. The man did not. He raised a mana shield and blocked the attack clean.
Startled civilians stuck their heads out nearby windows, but they'd be fine. Most of the area around this house was empty lots, and the nearest occupied homes were a decent distance away.
"...Team D, evacuate the civilians."
The Association would handle that on their own. More important was Elena.
CLANG! CLANG! CLANG!
This was nothing like the orcs and goblins that went flying with a single swing of her blade. The man's barrier held firm. Maintaining it the whole way, he pushed into the garden.
"...Is that okay?"
"Elena will decide that. Any S-ranks in Korea who look like that? Or other countries?"
"Not that I know of."
"You?"
"Not that I know of either."
Sena answered quickly. She'd been dazed earlier, but she seemed to have her head back on straight.
"Then odds are he's from another dimension."
"A demon?"
"Probably. His goal... Adamantium."
The line had a weird sense of déjà vu. Keira had said the exact same thing back at Shinyongsan.
"...This again?"
"We tried to summon a Summoner and ended up calling something completely wrong."
"So we can't use Mjolnir?"
"No. If it falls into enemy hands, we're in real trouble."
That stung a little. Thanks to the realization I'd had that morning, I'd finally been ready to use Mjolnir in actual combat.
"I'll go tell Suyeon to hide. She stays underground with Mjolnir and doesn't come out."
"Oppa!"
Huh?
Why was Suyeon — who was supposed to be underground — standing right here? Holding Mjolnir, no less.
"I saw it on the CCTV! I thought we might need this—"
"Suyeon!"
I sprinted toward her. She was standing in a spot visible from outside. Mjolnir would be visible too.
"Ah—!"
I shoved her against the wall and wrenched Mjolnir out of her hands. I was about to bolt for the first floor when a dangerous feeling hit me and I rolled sideways instead.
ZZZT.
My left arm — the left side that had just grabbed Mjolnir — felt empty.
I stopped rolling and looked left. No arm. The pale man, who had somehow already appeared on the second floor, was holding it.
The pain arrived a beat later.
"AAAAARGH!"
"Yes — this is it! This is all I need!"
The man tossed my arm aside and seized Mjolnir himself. Yellow light gathered into the hammer, and a translucent white barrier wrapped around him.
RATATATATATAT.
A hail of gunfire hammered the barrier. While Keira dragged me clear, I saw it was Sena's work — dozens of guns of every kind, from god knows where, floating in a swarm around her.
Click. Click.
Even after every last bullet was spent, the barrier stood untouched.
"Pathetic."
The man's voice was as pale as his face. He was speaking Korean, and somehow it didn't feel like Korean at all.
"My turn, then?"
WHOOSH.
The white barrier flipped to black, and a deathly aura began to coil around it. Something like black fog started seeping out of the shield.
"Everyone get back! If that touches you, it'll drain your life force!"
Elena, already back on the second floor, threw herself in front of me and Keira and raised her shield. The glowing shield held the fog at bay — but the fog simply flowed around it, flooding the living room floor until there was nowhere left to stand.
"...What the hell is this?!"
"How is this even—"
Sena scrambled up onto the sofa to escape the fog. Suyeon, though, brushed against it and crumpled where she stood. And from my arm — the one Keira had roughly bound with cloth —
Whoosh.
"...Elena. Jungmin's arm—"
"Kh—"
Black smoke was already trickling out of the stump, drifting toward the barrier that had turned white again.
"The method is simple. Pierce this barrier, and victory is yours."
The man smiled coldly.
"Of course, don't expect me to stand still and let you."
Snap.
He flicked his fingers. Space tore open around him and spat out five people.
Sena took one look and shouted.
"...Team A!"
Jang Gumin — the man who'd introduced himself as leader of Association Team 1 — and four others in similar gear. All of them had the same pale skin as the man.
"Come on. Let's play for a while."
At his word, the five of them came for us.