The Bone Broth Platoon
"Kyaaaaah!"
"Hey, Canteas! Stop half-assing the monster lure! They're all spilling off to the sides!"
From atop the truck that had already been reduced to scrap, Doha barked orders at Canteas with full force.
"Huff… huff… You damn emperor bastard… J-just kill the monsters already! I'm dying here!"
Canteas gasped for breath as he squeezed out the shout. He had been running for hours now, continuously luring monsters after him.
"Seriously, how the hell did a guy like you ever reach the Eighth Circle? Are you saving your magic to boil soup with later?! Just use Haste already!"
"…Ah?"
Only then did Canteas snap back to his senses and cast First-Circle Haste and Strength on his own body. He had been dragged out of bed and forced to start luring monsters before he was even fully awake, so the thought simply had not occurred to him.
"Haha! Now you lot will never catch—"
"Uwaaagh!"
The moment he gained a little breathing room and glanced back, Canteas let out a scream. He had expected a decent crowd, but the numbers far exceeded anything he had imagined. Even a quick look put them at well over a hundred.
Just as I thought.
Watching the scene, Doha narrowed his eyes. The vibrations kept drawing out every monster that had been hiding.
On the day he returned to Earth, Paju had shown barely a single noll. But people kept saying the place was crawling with monsters, so I found it strange. He himself had walked out without spotting anything else.
"They all nested inside the buildings, every last one of them."
That was why none of them had been visible on the streets. Now the growing tremors were flushing them out in droves.
Thud-thud-thud-thud-thud!
Pew!
"Ugh!"
One of the monsters being diligently lured suddenly fired a venomous stinger from its tail, and Canteas nearly jumped out of his skin. The creatures had clearly grown irritated; they stopped charging and began attacking instead.
"Sh… Shield!!"
Zwaaaang!
"Oh!"
When Canteas deployed the Second-Circle spell Shield, Doha actually clapped. Only a few hours earlier the lich had still been stuck at the First Circle. Look at him now—he had already climbed to the Second.
"See? If you want to get stronger, you've got to roll around in the dirt."
"Uwaaaaah!"
"Ugh, noisy bastard."
Taat!
As the monsters continued to multiply, Doha launched himself high into the sky from the truck.
Baek-bo Myeol-hwang Gong
Third Step — Heavenly Manifestation of the Vajra
Wooooong!
Shwaaaaaah!
Two enormous, hazy arms of pure qi took shape behind Doha's back. They were so massive that each one rivaled a full-sized sedan.
"Get clear, Canteas."
"Uwaaagh!"
Kwaaaaaang!
The instant the words left his mouth, one of the giant arms clenched into a fist and plummeted straight down onto the monsters. It was not a punch so much as a crushing overhead smash.
Shuuuu.
Crunch.
"Ugh…"
Half the monsters were flattened beyond recognition, crushed into paste, and Canteas shuddered. He had seen this technique before. Right after his seal had been broken, those same arms had pulverized dozens of Death Knights.
"Back then they were far bigger than this."
Now each arm was only the size of a car; back then a single arm had been the size of a building. And there had not been two of them—there had been six.
"Ah, wait—I saw that online! You created this martial art after seeing Asura, didn't you?!"
"That's right."
While he was still in Belhart, he had come across an ancient temple that housed a colossal yaksha statue resembling Asura. Right there on the spot he had attained enlightenment and spent several days lost in a state of no-self. The technique born from that trance was precisely this Heavenly Manifestation of the Vajra.
"Kyaaaaah!"
With half their number wiped out in a single blow, the remaining monsters hesitated, then fixed their gazes on Canteas once more.
"Do… Doha! There's still half of them left!"
"I've still got one arm left."
Chak.
Kugugugugugu!
The remaining arm that had been waiting behind him spread its palm wide and swatted the rest of the monsters aside, exactly as if it were swatting flies or mosquitoes.
"Huu… From now on, just hunt with those arms. Don't make me do it…"
Once every monster was gone, Canteas dropped onto a rusted bench nearby. To think that this wretched body of his had reduced him to being chased around by such trash-tier monsters.
"I can't keep that technique up continuously."
Heavenly Manifestation of the Vajra consumed more internal energy than any other martial art he possessed. Condensing qi into solid form and then materializing it required so much power that ordinary reserves could not even maintain it.
"You used to keep those arms attached permanently when you were thrashing demons."
"That was different from now."
By the time he had started slaughtering demons, his realm had already reached the Tenth Circle and the Life-or-Death Realm. And now? He was only Fifth Circle, merely Peak level.
"Still, thanks to your hard work, we found the nests."
Zwaaaang.
View Mana Force
Jureureuk.
The moment Doha finished the chant, a blue mist of mana spread outward in every direction.
Twinkle, twinkle.
"Every building that's glittering right now is a nest belonging to the monsters we just killed."
That was why they had needed to lure as many as possible. One or two had to emerge from each nest.
"You… there are way too many…"
As the mana mist sparkled on all sides, Canteas gulped. It was not one or two locations—there were easily more than fifteen.
"This area is actually one of the lighter ones."
If they headed toward Paju City Hall, far more monsters would be entrenched. This neighborhood was relatively close to the barricades, so a fair number had already been cleared out.
"How many skeletons can you summon right now?"
"For combat? About twenty."
"What if you just make them walk around?"
"Then fifty would be doable."
"We collected a mountain of corpses last time, remember?"
Had he sold off the Brown Bear Gang corpses or something? Only fifty?
"Summon fifty for walking duty."
"What for? They'll just shuffle around slowly. They can't even run."
"That's fine. All I need is for them to walk to the places I designate."
"?"
Canteas tilted his head and moved his hands, summoning dozens of skeletons.
Clack-clack-clack.
Fifty skeletons rose from the magic circle, teeth chattering as they stared up at Canteas.
"This feeling… it's been a while."
With all fifty gazing up at him in reverence, Canteas smiled.
"All right, from this day forward you are the Bone Broth Legion. No—too few for a legion. Let's call you the Bone Broth Platoon."
"Bone Broth? Why are you giving my kids weird nicknames!"
Sseuk.
Leaving the fuming Canteas behind, Doha approached one of the skeletons.
Tok.
Time Explosion
Zwaaaang.
Clack?
"Wh… what are you doing!"
The moment Doha inscribed a delayed-detonation spell onto the skeleton, Canteas nearly had a heart attack—if he still had one.
"Tell every last one of them to move to the locations I mark."
He intended to send them into the glittering monster nests and destroy the centers of the buildings. Facing that many creatures one by one would take far too long and be far too dangerous.
"Most of them are high-rises, so the moment they collapse, everything inside will be crushed to death."
"Nooo! My children!"
Canteas threw his arms around a skeleton and wailed. They had only just stepped into the world, and already they were being turned into disposable suicide dummies.
"They can't do anything except walk anyway—what's there to feel sorry about!"
"Why are you crushing my kids' spirits!"
"…Then would you rather carve Time Explosion onto your own body and go running in?"
"Haha. Go on, my boys. Explode in glory. I will never forget your sacrifice."
Tok-tok.
At Doha's words, Canteas immediately switched to a warm smile and patted the skeleton on the shoulder.
Kwaaaaaaaaaaaaaang!
"Whoa."
"Wow…"
A colossal explosion erupted in an instant, sending a massive plume of smoke rocketing into the sky. Both Doha and Canteas let out awed exclamations. They had expected a big blast, but this was on a scale that could almost be mistaken for a volcanic eruption.
Kugugugugugu!
Crash… rumble…
"Khh, nice and clean."
As the buildings collapsed and monster screams rose from every direction, Doha clapped his hands. A handful of sacrificed skeletons had effortlessly thinned the monster population.
"Khuk… Holt, Duncan, Bill… I will never forget your sacrifice…"
"Give me a break… You already gave them names?"
Watching the sniffling Canteas, Doha let out a long sigh. Why did this guy get weirder by the day? Had he beaten him too hard back in Belhart…?
"Enough clowning around. Summon the skeletons again and hurry up collecting the mana stones—put them in here."
Doha held out a subspace bag. Even the smallest internal capacity model had cost him five hundred million won.
"You should be able to gather every mana stone in the immediate area. We need to move fast."
"This whole neighborhood is already cleaned out—what's the rush?"
"Any minute now, hundreds… no, more than a thousand monsters are going to come pouring in."
"Huh?? Why!"
"Because they just heard that explosion."
Creatures that reacted to mere vibrations were not going to sit still after witnessing a blast like that. Fortunately it was still daylight and they had a little time left to think clearly.
"Hurry up and grab the mana stones."
"Fine! I've got money to make, so of course I'm grabbing them."
Selling just the stones around here would buy an ordinary house without breaking a sweat.
"We're not collecting these to make money."
"Then what?"
Canteas tilted his head at the remark. If they were not converting them into cash, why gather so many mana stones? It was not as if they were conducting research.
"I'm going to convert them into your power."
"Convert them into my power? What does that even…"
The moment Canteas understood what Doha meant, his expression froze solid. How did that bastard know about that…? He had never told a single soul.
"You… how did you find out about…"
"I went looking for you in your lab once and found a journal lying open. So I read it."
It had been a mana-conversion technique that allowed one to accumulate power through mana stones. Of course, it was a forbidden art that must never be used on living creatures with blood in their veins. When applied to a living being, the blood would boil, bringing unimaginable agony; the body would either explode outright or, if it somehow endured, the victim would go completely mad.
But Canteas was a skeleton—no blood, no muscle. He was the perfect subject.
"Ah, no way!"
In the end Canteas shrieked. That bastard had seen it and kept his mouth shut for decades?
"That thing hurts like hell!"
"You're nothing but bones—you won't die."
"I won't die, sure! But it hurts enough to make me wish I would!!"
He still possessed a sense of pain. Using the mana-conversion technique was genuinely, excruciatingly painful. When he had first developed it he was already Eighth Circle, so he had never really needed it. More precisely, he had tried it once during the experimental phase, found it unbearably agonizing, and never touched it again.
"But it does actually build power, right?"
"It does. I turned one ordinary skeleton into a Death Knight with it."
"Whoa… then that's an incredible technique!"
A pathetic skeleton into a Death Knight??
"It's not as easy as it sounds. Regular skeletons can't withstand the mana—their bones just shatter."
The energy extracted from mana stones damaged bone. Even his one success had been a single case out of more than fifty thousand skeletons he had tested. Every last one had died except that solitary success.
"If the success rate had been high, I would have turned my entire army into Death Knights!"
"It's fine. You're not an ordinary skeleton. You can endure it."
"I don't waaant to!"
"You've got to earn your keep, don't you? The sooner you get stronger, the better you can actually help me."
"…"
"If you don't like it, then pack your bags and move out. Where are you going to play games after that~?"
"Ah, damn it, fine! Fine, I said!"
In the end Canteas stomped around, seething, and began diligently gathering mana stones. Everything else he could abandon—but a computer and the internet? Those he could never give up.