Chapter 28: That Day, at the Cemetery (3)

When I first arrived at the scene, I was so shocked I nearly passed out.

“What the hell are these guys doing here?”

The scream sounded similar to Karina’s, so I had a bad feeling.

But when I saw it with my own eyes, all I could think was that these idiots had truly lost their minds collectively.

Not just one person.

The protagonist Ivan, along with two other main characters, were here and even Yuria, whom I’d been painstakingly raising…

“I’m gonna lose it, damn it.”

In the end, a curse slipped out of my mouth after a long time.

Now that I thought about it, Roitz must’ve left his post because of these guys.

It was obvious without even looking.

How did just the four of them end up here together?

I was curious about the circumstances.

But satisfying that curiosity could wait.

The situation in the Cemetery Core was spiraling into something really bad right now.

“Yeah, no matter how strong you guys are, it’s not like you’re facing the Ghost Knight this early in the game.”

What should I do?

I pondered briefly, but the answer was already clear.

Save them.

Even if they got lucky and defeated the Ghost Knight, the situation wouldn’t change.

The boss of this field dungeon wasn’t actually the Ghost Knight.

“Necromancer.”

The Ghost Knight was just a mid-boss, an undead controlled by him.

I knew he was hiding somewhere, watching this whole situation unfold.

“And that party can’t possibly beat the Necromancer.”

They were already struggling against the Ghost Knight right in front of them.

What about me, then?

I weighed my options for a moment before shaking my head.

Thinking about it, calculating win rates was pointless.

I had to win anyway.

If those guys died here, this continent’s future would be doomed.

“I’ve got to prevent that.”

Yeah, this is all my fault for changing the main storyline.

I had to accept it.

But I did take a moment to consider the odds of them figuring out my identity.

The leather suit altered my body shape, the skull mask hid my appearance, and it distorted my voice.

“The only thing that might give me away is my speech…”

I’d never acted before, but I’d been practicing another persona in my spare time for situations like this.

A cold, stoic loner.

The persona of a thief.

Having made all my decisions, I looked down at the scene.

At that moment, the Ghost Knight was lunging at Karina.

“Noooo!”

Yuria’s scream echoed through the cemetery.

I hurriedly cast [Telekinesis], yanking Karina’s collar back forcefully.

The Ghost Knight’s blade sliced through empty air.

Immediately after, I cast [Flame Surge], a spell I’d learned at the Vault.

Kwaaaang!

[Flame Surge] swallowed the Ghost Knight in one go.

Thanks to the nature of fire-attribute magic, which heavily relied on the caster’s mental strength, my [Flame Surge], enhanced by an elixir, was on a level far beyond a 4th-circle mage’s.

I stood up.

Four pairs of eyes turned toward me.

Curiosity, suspicion, and wary gazes tinged with a faint trace of fear.

In response, I spoke in a voice stripped of as much emotion as possible.

“Get lost. Unless you want to die here.”

Did it work?

The kids flinched, visibly shaken.

Yeah, it seemed to have worked.

Thankfully, they didn’t seem to have figured out who I was either.

I waited for them to quietly leave.

But, of course, things in this world never went according to my plans.

“I’m grateful you saved my classmate, but your words are too harsh.”

Gwyn stepped forward.

As expected of the poster boy for the “Heroes of Frey” goody-two-shoes archetype.

If you looked closely, this guy had zero situational awareness and was so rigid he’d have been a Confucian scholar if he’d been born in Joseon.

Why didn’t he do something about that blood dripping from his right arm?

It’s always the clueless ones in a party who make things worse.

“We’re cadets from the 890th class of Frey Heroes Academy. We came here because we heard rumors of undead in this cemetery…”

“Who asked?”

“…I’m explaining why we’re here.”

“I don’t care who you are or why you’re here. I said it clearly. Get lost. This isn’t a place for rookies like you.”

Gwyn, momentarily stunned, soon began breathing heavily.

His expression showed the deep wound to his noble pride.

Well, he was the heir of a duke’s family, precarious as his position might be.

If Karina hadn’t stepped in, he probably would’ve challenged me to a duel.

“Then what about you? Did someone beg you to save us?”

Karina, jumping to her feet, crossed her arms and tilted her chin up.

If Gwyn was the ultimate scholar archetype, this girl was the epitome of self-centeredness, with her nose so high it touched the heavens.

A Pinocchio-like brat.

“You saved us on your own and now you’re acting all high and mighty, showing off? You picked the wrong people to mess with. We’re not that easy to push around.”

“…”

“Apologize and reveal your identity right now. Then I’ll forgive your rudeness.”

At that moment, the common-sense circuit in my brain shorted out.

Normally, people would say thank you first.

…Or maybe not?

How was she demanding an apology instead?

“Still, Karina, he’s our savior…”

“Shut up, Ivan. Didn’t you hear him? Who asked him to save us? And even without him, I could’ve taken down that Ghost Knight myself. Yeah, that’s right. It was a setup! A setup!”

“A setup? What do you mean?”

“It means it was my plan, you idiot! I had that Ghost Knight right where I wanted it, and this guy stole it from me. Hey, you! That Ghost Knight was actually part of our bet, okay? You ruined my event, so you owe me an apology for that too.”

Halfway through, I stopped listening and let her words go in one ear and out the other.

When I blatantly ignored her, Karina swung her staff, throwing a tantrum.

Yuria, Ivan, and even Gwyn, who’d been fuming alongside her, tried to calm her down.

It was absolute chaos.

I shifted my gaze to the surroundings.

The scattered fog was starting to creep back in, slowly gathering around us.

“Too late.”

Yuria, who’d been trying to calm Karina while keeping her focus on me, spoke up.

“Too late? What do you mean?”

“It means you’ve run out of time to escape.”

“So what does that…!”

“Get ready. The real attack is coming.”

The fog grew thicker.

The Necromancer, who’d been hiding and watching this entire situation, had finally made his decision.

To kill all the intruders who’d entered his lair.

The first to understand my words was, as expected, Yuria.

She raised her sword with one hand while preparing a spell with the other.

Then Ivan and Gwyn followed.

Finally, Pinocchio, sensing something was off, took a combat stance.

“…Unbelievable. It’s still alive after that attack.”

I tossed a vial to Gwyn, who was muttering to himself.

Gwyn, catching it reflexively, tilted his head.

“Sprinkle it on your wound. It’ll numb the pain for a while.”

“Ah. Th-thank you.”

“And it’s not the Ghost Knight. It’s something far more dangerous.”

No sooner had I finished speaking than an eerie laugh echoed through the Cemetery Core.

Hehehe…

At the same time, the ground and soil around us began to writhe.

Corroded tombstones cracked, and dirt, gravel, and rubble shot up in all directions.

And then,

Fwoosh!

The earth’s surface surged upward.

“What are these disgusting things!”

Karina shouted.

Emerging from the upheaved piles of dirt were rotting corpses.

Ghouls.

Vicious undead driven by endless hatred and hunger, tearing apart and devouring any living being in their path.

There were a whopping twenty of them.

I quickly glanced at the kids.

But they were already moving.

As if they’d gained some critical insight from the earlier battle, they exchanged glances and formed a formation.

When a small group faces a larger force, formation and positioning are crucial.

And in this battle, the most important person was none other than Karina, with her devastating single-shot magical firepower.

So the kids positioned Karina at the center, with the three of them forming a defensive perimeter around her.

Simple, but in a situation where enemies surrounded them on all sides, there was no formation more effective.

Good, they’re handling it well.

That put my mind at ease.

Now I could focus entirely on the Necromancer.

I cast my gaze forward.

Among the massive ghouls, a figure in a black robe was slowly walking forward.

The boss of this field dungeon, the Necromancer.

Beneath the fluttering robe, his body was nothing but stark white bones.

“…That’s a corpse too.”

Ivan muttered, his face full of shock.

[Hehehe. What fine specimens after so long!]

The Necromancer raised his bony arms in a triumphant gesture.

His empty eye sockets were fixed on Ivan, glinting with greed.

As a Necromancer, he knew just how valuable their bodies were as materials.

[For such high-quality materials to walk right into my hands! It seems the God of Death hasn’t abandoned this Kerdo yet. Keke!]

“What’s he babbling about? This creepy pile of bones!”

At that moment, three fireballs conjured by Karina shot toward the Necromancer.

Pinocchio’s bold and flashy preemptive strike.

But,

Boom!

The fireballs were sliced in half before they could reach the Necromancer.

Black smoke rose in front of him, and another undead revealed itself.

Another Ghost Knight.

As expected, there was one more.

[Hehe. I’ve been watching you. You, girl, I’ll keep you alive and pamper you for a long time.]

“This…!”

[Go. Kill them all except that insolent girl.]

Kiaaa!

The ghouls charged at the kids in unison.

Perhaps due to their magically enhanced size, the ground trembled momentarily under their momentum.

But Ivan and the others faced the ghouls calmly.

Clang!

The good news was that, unlike the Ghost Knight, ghouls were undead that could be harmed by physical attacks.

Thanks to that, the kids could unleash their full potential, and Karina, switching from support magic to her specialty—fire-attribute magic—began taking down ghouls.

Kwaaang!

And I,

Step, step…

Descended the hill.

[I’ve been waiting.]

The Necromancer had already turned his attention from the battlefield and was staring at me.

His jaw clattered.

[I closely observed the magic you used to annihilate the Ghost Knight. Not bad for a young one, eh?]

In truth, the person the Necromancer was most wary of here was me.

A mage who’d destroyed his precious Ghost Knight with a single spell and that power was more than enough to reduce his own frail, bony body to dust.

Knowing that, I felt confident.

“Scared of me?”

[Hehe. Scared? A mere mortal who hasn’t even escaped the chains of death dares to think I, who’ve conquered death, would be afraid?]

At that moment, my [Sharp Perception] trait picked up something.

The mana in the ground was surging.

I subtly stepped back.

Sharpened bone fragments shot up from the ground.

If I’d reacted even a fraction slower, I’d have been in serious trouble.

But that was a feint.

The real attack came from the front.

A Ghost Knight, having closed the distance unnoticed, raised its sword.

I drew Raven from my back and swung.

[Keke! Are mages these days all trying to play swordsman? That girl was the same. Why do you keep swinging staves like swords…]

But the Necromancer’s clattering jaw snapped shut at the sight that followed.

Clang!

Raven perfectly blocked the Ghost Knight’s sword.

I tilted it diagonally.

The Ghost Knight’s blade slid along Raven’s surface like a snake, rushing toward me.

Just as the blade was about to reach me, I used a Vision.

“Dagger Shift.”

My body teleported.

To the dagger I’d secretly dropped on the ground earlier.

And that position was right behind the Ghost Knight.

[Behind! Watch out!]

Too late.

No, even if he’d noticed, he couldn’t have stopped this.

The surrounding mana surged, gathering in my hand.

In an instant, a spell matrix formed, and the mana went through the process of concentration, alignment, application, and manifestation, completing a Vision.

Blue lightning crackled from my hand.

Crackle──

It pierced straight through the Ghost Knight’s body.

A blue flash sparked within the dark, ethereal form.

Zzzzt!

The Ghost Knight dissolved into smoke and vanished.

[…Who are you?]

I turned around.

The Necromancer was staring at me, his jaw dropped so wide it reached his chest.

Without facial skin, I couldn’t read his expression, but if he had one, it’d probably be a ridiculously dumbfounded look.

I tilted my head at his sudden change in attitude.

“What’s your game?”

[Th-that’s what I want to say! What’s your purpose here? Why is a mage like you in this place?!]

What nonsense.

Mage? Who?

“Me?”

[[Spatial Leap] is the exclusive domain of master mages, is it not? And you even chained it with [Lightning Slash]. That’s a magical synergy only those who’ve reached the pinnacle of magic can achieve… Don’t try to fool me. I’m not an idiot.]

“…”

No matter how I looked at it, he seemed like an idiot.

I had no idea what he was rambling about.

Sure, I’d used [Lightning Slash].

But [Spatial Leap]? That was out of nowhere.

That’s a top-tier Vision that requires at least 6th-circle mastery to cast.

Then, a thought flashed through my mind.

This guy… is he mistaking my [Dagger Shift] for [Spatial Leap]?

[Where are you from? The Royal Palace? Or the Special Magic Corps? Have those fiends discovered my existence? T-tell me your affiliation. No, it doesn’t matter where you’re from. What do you plan to do with me? What’s your purpose here?]

Judging by his behavior, it seemed I was right.

[I-if I’m not your target, please let me go. I’m begging you. Oh, right! I’ll even apologize for attacking you. Please, be merciful.]

So, for now, I said nothing and just stared at him.

I figured I’d see how this played out.

But my silence seemed to come off as an unspoken pressure to the Necromancer.

He started spilling everything on his own.

[I’ll compensate for damages. I have some materials in my lab that might be useful, modest though they are…]

And suddenly, he made me think.

How could I make the most of this misunderstanding?

Oh, of course, my plans didn’t include letting this skeleton live.

No way.

The experience points from this guy were too valuable.

From the moment I decided to save the kids, I’d planned to claim all the experience points from every ghoul here.

What I was pondering now was something extra I could squeeze out of him—call it a bonus.

I wondered.

Could you squeeze water out of a skeleton?

Suddenly, I was curious.

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