Lord of the Dead

Dragon Jade and Dragon Star Stone.

Both materials still carried the raw, overwhelming power of a dragon sealed inside them. Jinwoo ran his hands over the two byproducts.

Shaaaa—.

The sensation under his palms was unmistakable. Shadow Wing's power was still there, undiluted.

"So it was holding both a gem and a mineral at the same time."

Only now did he truly grasp how formidable a monster Shadow Wing had been.

"You all did well."

Jinwoo gestured to his minions, then went to each of them in turn, clapping their backs and offering praise.

"I gave it my all!"

Pur snapped to attention.

"You were excellent, Pur. I'm counting on you from here on out."

Pur bowed his head. That single line was enough. Everything he had endured against Shadow Wing was paid for in full by those words.

Jinwoo dismissed every minion, then checked the materials he had expected to find.

Bone, hide, claw, fang. Not a single one fell short of UR-grade.

And among them, one thing shone brighter than the rest.

Shaaaa—.

A pitch-black soul.

"Heh."

A dragon was a dragon, after all.

"Even the soul came out UR-grade."

It was the most overwhelming rank of any soul he had ever obtained.

A new achievement and a new skill.

"For all that work, we're walking away with quite a haul."

His minions had suffered a great deal in this fight.

"The rewards are solid."

And he was collecting them in full right now.

"This…"

Jinwoo examined the achievement more carefully.

"It's a first-clear achievement?"

The word FIRST was stamped on it as clear as day. He had seen that mark once before—when he received the Steel Beast quest in Ryuten.

It meant no one else had ever achieved it.

"Looks like nobody but me has managed this."

There were plenty of necromancers out there, surely.

"But none of them build their own minions and command them the way I do."

Jinwoo grinned, then tried the new skill at once.

"Death Mist."

Shaaaaaa—.

Fog rolled out across the surroundings.

"This will have great synergy with Sanctuary Declaration."

It wasn't ordinary fog.

"My body feels lighter."

It seemed to raise various stats for Jinwoo—Lord of the Dead—and for his minions as well.

"Speed looks like the biggest boost."

The new achievement and skill both sat very well with him.

Next, he checked the condition of the materials.

They were corrupted, after all.

"The ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠flame is perfectly purified and clean."

But fully purifying a creature the size of Shadow Wing had never been easy.

"Of course."

Just as expected, corruption still clung to the byproducts.

"There are a few tainted spots."

Patches of green corruption and pitch-black stain remained here and there.

"But it doesn't matter."

At this point, Jinwoo already had a skill that could wipe away that much corruption without a trace.

"I can raise my Deep Smithing proficiency while I'm at it. Two birds with one stone."

After inspecting every last byproduct of Shadow Wing, something else caught the light.

"Right. There was that, too."

Rewards still remained.

"The nest."

Dragons were monsters that built lairs to live in. A so-called dragon's lair had a high chance of holding treasures asleep inside it.

"They pile treasure in their lairs. Even corrupted, it would've stashed away everything worth keeping."

Shadow Wing had been bound here for a long time. Its lair was bound to hold all manner of precious things.

The moment Jinwoo approached the dragon's lair, the magic layered over it began to unravel.

Shaaaa—.

"What I couldn't see before…"

…began to appear.

The quest he had received from the Great God of the Dwarves had just been refreshed.

"So that's what was hidden."

Jinwoo looked at the tower rising tall before his eyes.

"And that's the location of the quest the Great God of the Dwarves gave me."

The newly updated quest marker pointed straight at that tower.

"Don't tell me that tower is the temple?"

Another notification chimed.

Difficulty adjusted.

The rank was a full UR.

I've never seen a quest at this grade before.

But the higher the difficulty, the more substantial the promised extra rewards.

"Great God of the Dwarves."

Jinwoo spoke.

"What kind of rewards are we talking about, exactly?"

"Then how about one more on top of that?"

Extra rewards on top of extra rewards.

That's the only way the numbers work out.

"Then that works for me."

"Let's do this."

"…A dragon?"

Dragons sat near the top of the ladder even among powerful monsters. Of course, dragon strength varied wildly—there were weak ones that still wore the name—but as a baseline, dragons were formidable.

"That's not a monster a level 200 can take…"

Then again, it wasn't entirely shocking either.

"This is the same person who took down the Steel Beast of Ryuten."

GM Kim Nayoon clapped her hands as the thought clicked.

There was no way Jinwoo had simply killed a dragon and left it at that.

"Could this be Part Two? Is he filming a sequel?"

The ratings war currently raging among the broadcast stations was so fierce no one could see a single step ahead. The reason was Jinwoo—the man no one had expected—surging upward on the strength of his tower-clear ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠footage.

Originally, only KBC and OBC had planned to produce sequels.

"I heard JBS is making one too, though."

Maybe this footage was exactly that sequel.

"But what does it mean, that he purified it and then killed it?"

Kim Nayoon scanned the Logical Message and every scrap of information she was cleared to view.

"He killed a corrupted dragon."

A corrupted dragon would have been ferociously strong—its base dragon magic compounded by the power of corruption itself.

"And he tanked all of that while purifying it? Wait—wait. To get the flame…?"

Even Logical's shock was justified. Killing a dragon was hard enough; purifying one first and then killing it was something else entirely.

And he had done it for a dragon's flame to feed his forge!

"I thought nothing Jin did could surprise me anymore…"

This one was significant.

"I've still got a long way to go."

The range of what "Jin can do it" covered was wider than she had ever imagined. For a moment, Kim Nayoon felt she wasn't a true fan of Jin after all.

"The Vice President is going to love this when he hears it."

She could already picture his face lighting up—Right? Amazing, isn't it? Completely insane, right?

The dragon's lair.

Inside Shadow Wing's nest, Jinwoo first sorted out anything useful.

"There's a ridiculous amount of gold."

The first thing that leapt out in a dragon's lair was always the gold. Treasures of every kind filled the space, and for practical purposes they all counted as gold.

"A hundred thousand gold in pocket money."

Next, Jinwoo turned to the materials gathered in one corner of the lair.

"This is the real prize."

All manner of glittering gems lay there.

Every gem looked to be of excellent quality. Among them, one in particular caught Jinwoo's eye, and he lifted it in his hand.

"This pearl feels like something the elves made."

With the power of the elves already residing in him, he recognized the force sealed inside the gem at ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠once.

"Figures."

The gems ranged across many grades—from S all the way to SSS.

"Nothing above SR, though."

Even SSS-grade gems were nothing to dismiss.

"And the Elven Pearl is SR. No wonder it was set apart."

Jinwoo claimed every gem, then immediately prepared to work. The dragon's lair was surprisingly cozy.

A good environment for crafting.

Not that Jinwoo needed the right environment—he could craft anywhere.

"Summon."

His summoning workshop opened.

"Hoooo."

Jinwoo drew a long breath. This work was critical. The slightest lapse in concentration could waste the flame he had worked so hard to obtain.

He set the bottle into the furnace, then opened it from inside. Smashing the bottle from a distance had been an option, but the Magma Bottle itself was extremely durable—tough enough to contain a dragon's flame—and it would have been a shame to destroy it.

Click—.

Fwoooooooosh—!

The moment the bottle opened, Shadow Wing's flame surged in a frenzy, thrashing as if it were a living thing intent on devouring Jinwoo.

"Yes. That's how it should be."

Jinwoo smiled as he faced Shadow Wing's fire. He spread both hands and stirred the rolling blaze.

The countless runes he carried answered in kind.

Kwaaak—!

Crushed beneath Jinwoo's aura, the flame sank into Hepales's Furnace and went still.

Jinwoo let out a long breath.

"Done."

The instant the dragon's flame entered Hepales's Furnace, Jinwoo's Workshop—stuck at LV1 for a long time—finally rose.

"I kept wondering why it wouldn't go up."

Apparently there had been a separate condition.

"So that's why the level took so long to rise."

Beginner, Intermediate, Advanced. Each level band seemed to carry its own rank.

"Additional furnaces… that's better than I expected."

Just as he moved to check the new function, a fresh notification window bloomed before him.

A new god taking notice of him was no longer anything special for Jinwoo.

But this one felt different.

"You know Hepales?"

Not a crafting god, then.

From those ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠words alone, Jinwoo pinned down the domain of the god watching him. Hepales had become a Necromayster through his own path.

Necromancer side.

The god who would have sponsored Hepales—if he hadn't been consumed by regret and had kept his mind intact.

"Soul… Forge?"

Until now, Jinwoo had always used souls as they were. But thinking about it—

"Why shouldn't a soul be something you can refine?"

An entirely new way of seeing.