The Heavenly Demon Reborn
"Do-ha, give me some Mi-ta-seong-su."
"?"
Having just finished lunch and about to clear the dishes, Do-ha froze at Canteas's sudden demand, his expression going blank with shock.
The skeleton had stuck out his hand out of nowhere, so Do-ha had wondered what he wanted—only for it to be this.
Mi-ta-seong-su??
For a second he had almost said "sure," thinking it was something he'd left in his care.
"You said you'd give me some Mi-ta-seong-su last time too!"
Seeing the look in Do-ha's eyes, Canteas leapt to his feet.
Why are you staring at me like that?!
We only found the Mi-ta-seong-su thanks to my information in the first place!
"You're right. I did say I'd give you some."
"So give it to me!"
"But back then you said you didn't need it!"
He had offered two drops, and Canteas had refused, claiming he had no particular use for it. And now he was demanding Mi-ta-seong-su?
"I drank it all."
"Don't lie. You've got five hundred milliliters left—how could you have drunk it all?"
A single drop of that supreme elixir was already monstrous. Five hundred milliliters? If Do-ha had truly downed that much, pure energy would be pouring out of him with every breath by now. Anyone else would have exploded and died, but this monster was never going to die from something like that.
"Fine. I'll give you two drops."
In the end Do-ha nodded. Finding the Mi-ta-seong-su had been thanks to Canteas as well; two drops was fair enough.
"No."
"?"
"Give me ten drops…"
Even Canteas trailed off, looking embarrassed by his own words.
"…Not one drop. Not five drops. Ten drops?"
Crack!
Do-ha smacked Canteas's skull with a spoon.
"Ow!"
"Have you lost your mind? Ten drops would buy two small territories—no, three, with change left over."
Mi-ta-seong-su was on the same tier as Gong-cheong-seok-yu; the price was whatever the seller asked. Of course no one actually paid the full asking price, but a single drop still went for roughly five wagons loaded with gold bars. Ten drops?
"I'm not just asking for free!"
"?"
Zwaaaang.
Thud!
Smiling, Canteas formed a magic circle, and a large wooden chest dropped out of the air. It looked big, yet somehow light, as if empty.
"I'll give you this."
Creak.
Canteas opened the lid. Inside, dull ore that still held a silvery gleam filled the chest to the brim.
"This is… Orichalcum?"
"That's right. I told you before—I had fifty kilos of Orichalcum."
Back then the connection to Belhart had been cut, so he hadn't been able to bring it. Now that was no longer a problem. He had cleaned out every scrap of Orichalcum from his old laboratory.
"You know what this is worth, right? In Belhart this much would buy one or two small territories."
Orichalcum was another mineral whose price was "whatever the seller named." Compared to Mi-ta-seong-su the elixir was rarer and more expensive, but Orichalcum came close enough.
"You actually had it?"
"Of course!"
"I figured you were lying since there was no way to check."
"So you'll give me ten drops?"
"Ten drops?"
Swoosh.
Whoosh!
Do-ha flicked his fingers lightly. The chest full of Orichalcum vanished in an instant.
"What exactly are you trying to trade ten drops for?"
"You damn thief! Spit it out! Put it back right now!"
Canteas grabbed Do-ha by the collar.
What kind of robber is this?!
Who said you could just take the Orichalcum?!
I was offering this much money so you'd sell me ten drops!
"I didn't steal it."
"Ah… so you are giving me the ten drops?"
Hearing that, the excited Canteas calmed down and sat again.
You should've said so earlier. I got worked up for nothing.
"The Orichalcum I just took is payment for everything you've spent so far."
"…What?"
"You stole my mana stones, used my card, I even got you a studio apartment and I've been paying the utilities. Consider that debt settled."
"I… I haven't spent that much!"
Flustered, Canteas stammered. No matter how hard he calculated, he had never burned through the value of fifty kilos of Orichalcum.
"You forget interest? I told you—fifty percent daily interest."
"In… interest…"
Canteas trembled with pure injustice and rage, yet he still didn't dare attack Do-ha.
Swoosh.
Thud!
Seeing the look on Canteas's face, Do-ha snorted and summoned the Orichalcum chest again.
"I was kidding. And…"
Zwaaang.
Clink.
He held out a small vial of Mi-ta-seong-su he had portioned days earlier—ten drops carefully measured into a tiny glass bottle.
"What are you planning to use this for?"
"You're just giving it to me?! And you're not even taking the Orichalcum??"
"Tell me what you're going to use it for."
He had no immediate need for Orichalcum anyway. Before recovering Un-jeop-bi-jang he might have forged a sword from it, but he already had his weapon back. The metal was surplus.
"Keep the Orichalcum. If I ever need it I'll ask."
"Ooooh."
Canteas picked up the bottle of Mi-ta-seong-su and smiled.
He's just handing over something this precious!
What a magnificent bastard.
"I'm going to make a Death Knight."
"A Death Knight? Using an elixir??"
Do-ha had never heard of crafting a Death Knight with an elixir. Jiangshi were sometimes made with elixirs or poisons, but he hadn't known Death Knights required the same.
"Eheheh. Looks like I'll have to lecture the ignorant Do-ha again."
The moment he realized there was something Do-ha didn't know, Canteas burst into delighted laughter.
The great Baek Do-ha doesn't know something!
And I get to teach him!
"There are normally two ways to manufacture a Death Knight."
One used a corpse. The other inscribed spells into armor and imprinted a soul into it. Both were powerful; if forced to choose which was superior, the corpse version edged out slightly in durability.
"And then there's my own secret method the world doesn't know about."
"Which is?"
"I take a corpse—no, more precisely, an artificial body I create myself—and imprint a soul into it."
"An artificial body?"
Do-ha tilted his head. Not a corpse, but a body made artificially?
"Don't tell me you're stitching skins together."
"No. That would just be a zombie… The artificial body I make is closer to a golem."
It had eyes, a nose, a mouth, ears, fingers and toes like a human. But the materials were minerals and dragon remains. The flesh was Orichalcum, mithril, and Ten-Thousand-Year Cold Iron; everything else came from a single dragon.
"Embed mana stones and you get an ordinary golem. Imprint a soul and it becomes a Canteas-brand Death Knight."
"Is that even possible?"
Canteas wasn't the first to try. Countless other necromancers had attempted to imprint souls into golems. None had ever succeeded. Anchoring a soul to something as lifeless as stone had always been impossible.
"I can do it."
Canteas pointed at himself with supreme confidence.
Comparing me to those second-rate necromancers?
"How?"
"You know the Dark Spirit spell, right?"
"Yeah. The one that drives a summoned soul berserk."
Dark Spirit. A 7-Circle black magic spell that even high-ranking black mages rarely used. Once cast, the soul went completely feral—unable to distinguish friend from foe. It attacked enemies, allies, and even the caster. That was why Dark Spirit was shunned even among black mages.
"Do you know the principle behind Dark Spirit?"
"I heard it scrambles the memories."
"It doesn't scramble them. It amplifies the saddest, most painful memories until the soul goes berserk."
"What does that have to do with a Death Knight?"
"I thought about it a long time ago. What if I tweaked Dark Spirit just a little and used it to manipulate memories instead? The reason a soul can't attach to an inorganic mineral is the memories it carries—the image of itself as a human. Try to imprint it onto something lifeless and the alien, awkward sensation flings it right back out."
"Then why not just use ordinary memory-manipulation magic?"
"Doesn't work. Memory magic only functions on living humans. It can't touch a soul. But if you modify Dark Spirit even slightly, you can rewrite a soul's memories."
"Do you even have the minerals to build that artificial body?"
Orichalcum, mithril, Ten-Thousand-Year Cold Iron—every one of them was priceless. Building a body the size of a Death Knight would require staggering quantities. And he had mentioned dragon remains as well.
"Orichalcum we have right here, but…"
"That's fine. The artificial body is already finished. The magic is prepared too."
Decades earlier, while still in Belhart, he had built the artificial body in his laboratory. The 7-Circle Dark Spirit spell was already inscribed. All that remained was to activate the magic and the targeted soul would transfer straight into the body.
"Then why do you need Mi-ta-seong-su?"
"I needed a massive amount of yin energy."
If the elixir Do-ha had obtained had been Gong-cheong-seok-yu, Canteas would never have asked. But this was Mi-ta-seong-su, steeped in yin energy.
"Plus the soul I'm targeting needs an enormous amount of power to be usable. Otherwise even if I call it, it won't be able to fight properly."
"What kind of soul is it?"
Canteas grinned.
"Curious? Want me to show you?"
Zwaaaang.
Tszzzzzt.
Smiling, Canteas swept his hand. A coffin of his own making slid out of a magic circle. Calling it a coffin was a stretch—it was covered in strange devices—but at a glance it looked like one.
"This is it?"
"What do you think?"
"Oh…"
Seeing the mineral-crafted artificial body, Do-ha let out a genuine sound of admiration. It was far more refined than the description had suggested. It looked exactly like a human of a different skin tone lying with eyes closed.
"It even has wrinkles. The skin is so thin you'd never guess it was mineral."
"Heh heh. I do have this much talent."
"Looking at it, Tunrad made this for you."
"…"
Canteas turned his head slightly.
How did he know…?
This ghost of a man.
"If this had been bone and corpse I might have believed you made it yourself. But this is mineral. The only dwarf who can work metal this finely is Tunrad."
"Tch! The rest of it was all me!"
Canteas snorted and immediately pulled out a syringe, drawing up the Mi-ta-seong-su.
"You even built blood vessels?"
"Of course. Internal organs, veins—everything is fully realized."
That was what the dragon remains had been for.
Press.
Tszzzzzzzz.
The moment the Mi-ta-seong-su in the syringe was injected, tremendous energy began to surge through the artificial body.
Then—
Zwaaaaaaaaaang!
The inscribed Dark Spirit magic activated. The raging energy gradually gathered into a single point.
"So which soul is it?"
"A soul you know as well."
"One I know?"
In that instant—
Tszzzzzzzzzzzz.
The gathering energy shifted to a deep violet.
"Wh… what? The memory manipulation hasn't even started yet—how is the soul settling into the artificial body…?"
Something was wrong. Dark Spirit had not yet reached the memory-manipulation stage. Yet the soul had already anchored itself to the artificial body—perfectly.
"That means it settled while still carrying its human memories… How is that even…"
"Hey, Canteas… this soul—don't tell me…"
As the violet energy slowly took the form of a dantian, Do-ha's face hardened.
This energy.
This sensation.
Once the yin energy transformed into internal energy, he recognized it instantly.
Swoosh.
The artificial body slowly opened its eyes.
Excluding the Demon God, the only being who had ever stood as Baek Do-ha's equal—
Heavenly Demon Cheon Seol-gyeong had returned to the world once more.