Gotcha, You Bastard!
"I couldn't sleep a wink after that..."
I rubbed my hollow eyes and sat up in bed. Mana Cores brought by the golems were rolling around haphazardly all over the bed, and the Free Registry window was still open and cluttered.
There was my post about upgrading the golems, a blurry video of the battle filmed from afar, and various information and question posts from other users.
I'd just been too lazy to do it. When prompted to choose a nickname, I had mindlessly typed '187'. Everyone here called me that anyway.
'So the main body is weaker than expected.'
With that in mind, I sought out a certain someone who had dug so deep into teleportation magic that they had ended up becoming an interdimensional delivery boy.
[Video Attachment: Two golems fighting]
I'm planning to send these guys to take it out once I get the coordinates. Recommend some spells to lock onto coordinates.'The e-celeb culture here is crazy.'
Perhaps because it was a small community, everyone knew each other's usernames and generally what everyone did. Sometimes it was hard to get used to. The fact that I was slowly becoming like them was another thing. Anyway, I made a mental note of Mana Detection.
There's a black magic counter called Mark of Justice.
But low-level white magic is absolute garbage, so don't waste your slots and learn it later.
Or wait, is it actually fine since all he has to deal with are zombies anyway?
I wasn't completely uninterested in white magic. In games, it was practically a universal rule that zombies melted to holy magic or a single Turn Undead. Since zombies were all I had to deal with, it did seem like a good option.
However, while black magic was disgusting, it had quite a few decent-looking spells. In contrast, white magic seemed incredibly difficult. Every other spell had three or four Enlightenment conditions masked as "???", and the descriptions of their effects were often vague.
'I guess good people really do have it hard...'
Still, it sounded decent enough, so maybe I should look it up. I shook out my messy, tangled hair, drank a glass of water, and opened the Magic Archive.
I didn't even need a cup to drink water anymore. I could just use the steel attribute to shape a small cup-like vessel in my hand, then use a water attribute chain to pour water into it.
Trickle—
The cup was filled with water. Once I was done drinking, I could just toss the cup aside, and it would naturally decompose back into the environment after some time.
'Forget a zombie apocalypse, even if I were locked in a completely empty solitary cell, I'd never die of dehydration.'
But when I searched for Mark of Justice in the Magic Archive...
Detects individuals or areas with high dark mana in the vicinity. The detected target takes additional damage from the caster's attacks. Detailed tracking conditions vary depending on the caster's beliefs.
Enlightenment Conditions: Mana Element Detection (Satisfied), ???, ???
I couldn't learn it. The Enlightenment conditions were all question marks. That meant my Magic Tower level was too low. Why did he even recommend something I couldn't even learn?
But thinking about it, I could understand why these people occasionally spouted nonsense.
At best, we can distinguish objectively broken spells from trash spells, but even then, opinions differ so much that people fight all day long.
And once School Creation unlocks anyway, everyone goes their own way, so in the end, the Free Registry is just for reference. The decision is up to me.
Seeing how others rarely managed to create beautiful girl golems like mine only proved the point. The individual differences were just that vast.
With a sigh, I closed all the Free Registry windows. It was true that my situation was anxious and dangerous, but browsing the Free Registry for a bit under the pretext of gathering information made me feel like I was back to my old days of doomscrolling in my room, which calmed me down a little.
But doing any more of this would be a waste of time. The zombies, who neither slept nor ate, might be planning to attack me even at this very moment. It was time to learn something and find that bastard.
Detects mana reactions around the caster. The range increases when using the Magic Tower as a medium.
Enlightenment Conditions: Mana Manipulation I (Satisfied), Mana Concentration (Satisfied), Sensory I (Satisfied)
No matter how much I thought about it, this spell seemed like the best option among all the alternatives I'd heard so far. So, I spent my remaining experience points to learn Mana Detection up to Level 5.
'Broke again.'
The experience points I'd managed to scrape together had dwindled back to a single digit, but what was the point of learning a spell if I didn't use it right away?
The Mana Detection I had imagined was a spell where I spread my mana in all directions to catch something, but the reality was different. Rather, it was a spell that enhanced my senses using mana.
"Mana Detection," I whispered softly, focusing mana into a certain part of my small body—my sixth sense that detected mana.
'Wait, is this...?'
With a sudden *pop*, a wave of dizziness washed over me.
"Master! Master!"
My vision flipped upside down, and I heard the golems rushing toward me.
'Ah, am I an idiot...?'
I didn't know how to control my output with this kind of manipulation. In an instant, too much information flooded into my brain, and I couldn't handle it.
"..."
About twenty minutes later.
"Argh—!"
I woke up in bed. It seemed the golems had caught me and laid me down.
Funny enough, despite the blackout, information about every mana-bearing entity in the vicinity was now engraved in my mind. The range was wider than expected; it felt like everything within a distance of about one subway stop was detected.
It was a success, but...
'If I pass out every time I use Mana Detection, I'm in deep trouble.'
I really needed to find a solution to this. A sickly, fragile beautiful girl mage who fainted at the drop of a hat... Just a few days ago, I was a perfectly healthy adult male with zero health issues. I never imagined I'd end up like this.
Anyway.
"Gotcha, you bastard."
Excluding the traces of ordinary zombies crawling all over the city, there was only one thing that stood out. This had to be the location of that warlock zombie.
But that location was...
'Inside the university?'
Just two crosswalks away from here toward the main road—the campus of the university I used to attend. Specifically, the basement reading room of the library.
Moreover, the sports field in front of the physical education building seemed to be teeming with zombies, easily numbering two to three hundred. They were standing in neat ranks, as if they were marching off to war.
'Don't tell me their target is...'
It could be because they had detected us, but even if we weren't their target, it was still a problem. According to what the golems had said earlier, that warlock zombie was trying to capture and kill any living person in the surrounding area indiscriminately.
'Is it because of traces of another survivor group?'
Well, the reason didn't really matter. If I left them alone, that horde of zombies would eventually march right to my house.