WeTried Translations
Translator/Editor: Natty
Discord: https://dsc.gg/wetried
◈ The Seven-Time Hero Goes Live ◈
Chapter 40: Department Head Necromancer (1)
──────
The cemetery Jun-il had left behind.
A place that had once been quiet and deserted was now seeing a steady stream of visitors.
“Are you sure the elf is here?”
“Yeah. I’m telling you, she is.”
“But there’s nothing here at all?”
People who had seen photos of the elf on Gaksalbeop compared locations on their phones as they looked around.
They were not causing much of a disturbance, but from the elf’s perspective, they were irritating.
‘I should send them away.’
Hummmmm...!
A strange glint passed through her emerald eyes.
A massive dome-shaped barrier spread out around her.
Flash!
The dome was large enough to cover the entire cemetery and more.
“Uh...?”
“M-maybe this isn’t the place.”
It was magic that impaired the recognition of those without immunity.
They could no longer clearly remember why they had come.
“What? Why did we come here?”
“You said we were going to that good makguksu place.”
“Oh.”
Without realizing it, they left the cemetery.
‘The reason the World Tree called for me seems likely to be resolved anyway.’
From the moment they were born, elves were connected in awareness to the World Tree, their primordial mother. So she instinctively knew.
That she had already sent the right person.
However, that realization was only half right.
It was true that it had sent someone capable of solving the problem, but it had not sent the person originally chosen.
“...Hm?”
The elf had exceptionally good eyesight.
At a grave far off on the hillside, she could still see a man leaning against a gravestone and blankly staring at the sky.
‘My magic... isn’t working on him.’
It was strange.
Any human here should have looked confused and simply walked away.
‘Is he deeply heartbroken?’
Perhaps the emotion overwhelming him was overcoming the recognition impairment.
‘Well. It doesn’t matter.’
The elf did not concern herself with him.
He was staying still and not bothering her, so that was enough.
* * *
“No! You pointy-eared bastard! Him! I called you here to give him the quest! What are you doing?!”
Ram screamed at the top of her lungs.
Naturally, there was no way anyone over there could hear her.
“C-calm down, Ram. It’s not like there’s only one Sub Quest. And today isn’t our only chance.”
“Sam. Want to do more push-ups?”
“N-no...”
Sam was speaking while holding a push-up position.
It was humiliating, but he had no choice.
The first Sub Quest going to Yulian was truly disastrous.
“You think I didn’t notice you flapping your wings while doing push-ups earlier? Huh?”
Gasp. Had she caught him?
Sam desperately searched for an excuse.
“W-well... Anyway! Yulian’s standing is still that of an Extra. He just has a lot of Constellations for an F-rank... He won’t make it past a thousand.”
According to the Storyboard settings, Yulian was an Extra.
That was why the Constellations clearly saw him as one too.
It was as if a roughly sketched filter had been placed over him.
Some Constellations were even betting on when he would die.
They said that, for an Extra, he was acting up too much and would die soon enough.
In other words, no matter how much Yulian accomplished, the Constellations perceived him as an Extra.
It was incredibly difficult to break through the standing determined by the Story setting.
That was why Yulian’s Constellation count kept hovering around nine hundred.
“Hey... Have you never considered that making it to nine hundred in the first place is insane? Huh? What kind of nonsense is that?!”
Ram walked over to Sam and lightly tapped his face with her foot.
“B-but that means things can’t get any worse... Heh... Hehehe...”
“...Ha. Fine. Get up.”
“Yes!”
Whoosh!
Sam flapped his wings and flew up.
Ram felt a complicated mix of affection and resentment as she watched him, but stopped talking.
“Fine, Sam. I’ll admit it. You did what you could. I know it wasn’t your fault.”
“...Th-thank you!”
“And I’ll admit this too. Yulian? You have talent.”
Ram was even acknowledging Yulian.
That was a major concession.
“But this is as far as you go. You’ve come far for an Extra.”
“R-right. It’ll be difficult to expand his influence any further.”
“Yeah.”
There was nowhere lower to fall.
Oddly enough, that thought calmed Ram.
‘From here on, I just need to do well.’
There had been a small disturbance, but this modern fantasy project, equipped with the latest Storyboard 3.0, was an enormous blockbuster made with support from headquarters’ resources.
The number of gathered Constellations was also tremendous.
It was currently racing through the Fairy Corporation branch charts with incredible momentum.
If it could maintain strong results until the end...
Pam?
She could shove that mass-produced Story Fairy straight into a coffin.
‘Huh? A coffin?’
Something suddenly came to Ram’s mind.
“But, Sam?”
“Yes?”
“What happens to Hae-il’s father’s body...?”
Kang Hae-il’s father’s body.
It had been in this cemetery.
“What?”
“No, that... The necromancers took it, right?”
And the necromancers had been robbing this cemetery for bodies.
“So Hae-il has to go there, right? That was the plan, wasn’t it?”
“...R-right.”
“Did you follow the plan?”
“Yes...”
“Then what happens now?”
“...”
* * *
“Here. Put these bodies into that storage space of yours.”
One of the necromancers ordered Jun-il.
Countless bodies were lined up in the underground passage the necromancer casually pointed toward.
-This is crazy
-Holy shit
-Gasp
-What is this??
-Wow... these fucking bastards
-Did they kill them all?
-This is crazy
-What the hell
-Why is Human Body Mysteries here?
-Did they take all of these from the cemetery??
‘Why are there... this many bodies?’
There were enough to shock not only the Constellations but Jun-il as well.
Even when he was a Hero, he had raided the bases of countless Dark Mage types, but there was always an expected number.
There should be about this many bodies in a place like this.
There was a reasonable amount.
‘What is this number?’
This place exceeded that expectation.
They were not mere skeletons either. Bodies with all their flesh still on them were everywhere.
They looked like they had died recently.
There were even children.
‘These sons of...’
How could modern people lay all this out and remain so calm?
Did becoming a necromancer make them lose their conscience as a basic trait?
“You can fit all of this in, right? With your ability.”
“Ah... Yes. I’ve never really felt a limit.”
Thump.
The necromancer placed a hand on Jun-il’s shoulder, delighted.
“Ha ha. We just finished clearing out the cemetery, and then talent like you shows up right on time? Huh?”
That was right. The cemetery.
It was their source of bodies.
Jun-il had expected as much.
Their hideout was located here, after all.
‘But bodies from cemeteries are mostly just bones.’
When they took bodies buried in cemeteries, they were usually white skeletons.
But these bodies?
They belonged to the recently dead.
Jun-il found that strange, but the necromancers’ conversation gave him the answer.
Murmur murmur.
‘Hm?’
Jun-il focused mana into his ears and listened as closely as he could.
“...They said some of the people who died in the Line 4 incident were buried together here. There are so many high-quality bodies...”
Jun-il froze.
‘Line 4?’
-Holy shit
-This is crazy
-Ah...
-That incident where everyone except his car died lol
-T_T
-Chang-hoon almost ended up here lol
The Line 4 incident.
Jun-il’s subway car had survived, but it had caused the most casualties of the first goblin rampage.
It seemed the cemetery had accepted the bodies from the joint funeral.
That was why there were so many recently deceased bodies here.
The necromancers laughed happily.
“Hehehe. We won’t need to rely on those boneheads anymore.”
“Once we sacrifice a few more orphanage kids at the altar, we’re done.”
“Of course. With bodies this high-quality and red mana, we can make even stronger thralls.”
“Moving them was such a pain, but Oh-jin brought us a pack mule. Our lives are finally looking up.”
Oh-jin was probably the man who had burned to death.
As they mentioned Oh-jin, they began whispering.
“But, um... Did you hear the rumor about Oh-jin burning up?”
“What?”
“They say he burned up because he was about to mention our boss.”
“...What?”
“They say there’s some kind of curse.”
“...”
They immediately shut their mouths.
They could disappear in flames too if they said something careless.
“Hey, F-rank! What are you spacing out for?! Huh? Put them all away, from here to there. You said you could do it, didn’t you? What, you can’t touch them because they’re corpses?!”
Tap. Tap.
One necromancer struck their own palm with a skull staff like a club as they berated him.
‘But I still haven’t figured out the cause of the demonic energy.’
He needed more time.
Just a gathering of these pathetic necromancers was not enough for an elf to talk about purification.
There had to be something more.
Jun-il decided to play dumb for now.
“Ah... Well... I, I wasn’t told I’d be moving bodies like this... U-urgh...!”
He pretended to retch to buy time. At the very least, he needed to find out who was in charge here.
He did not know where the true boss was, but he needed to know who held the highest rank at this site.
“What? Is this guy not F-rank, but F-ailure rank? Huh? Wahahaha?!”
A department-head joke.
The other necromancers laughed along.
Jun-il immediately understood the hierarchy.
“Ah... Ahahahahaha!”
“W-wahahaha! Oh, an F-ailure rank! What dazzling wordplay! You crossed the F in F-rank with the first sound of ‘failure’!”
-This is crazy
-The discipline here is brutal
-They have it rough too
-Department Head Necromancer, damn
Then it happened.
Had one of the Constellations been shocked by that department-head joke too?
Ding.
[Hidden Quest Discovered!]
==== ====
Objective: Slaughter all Necromancers
Reward:
==== ====
A clear order, with nothing obscured.
‘Oh?’
Jun-il could not hide his expression at the reward of 300 Feeling.
‘300 Feeling?’
The Narrative Trick Hwando had cost 1 Heart.
This was thirty percent of that price.
‘...What should I do?’
Should he learn more information for the Sub Quest?
Or should this Hidden Quest come first?
Grin.
Jun-il realized it was a pointless concern.
‘Yulian’s way.’
In truth, the Hidden Quest and the Sub Quest were not different.
“What, rookie? Is it funny? You laugh too, punk. Don’t worry about reading the room. Wahahaha.”
The Department Head Necromancer assumed Jun-il’s brightened expression was because of his own wit.
Thump, thump.
He patted Jun-il’s shoulder reassuringly.
“Now that we’re all feeling good after a laugh, you can do it, right? Move the bodies. It’s nothing. Humans are just lumps of meat, you know? The texture differs by age too, right?”
“Um... But my senior promised me compensation.”
“What? Compensation?”
The department head’s face twisted, and the necromancers exchanged glances.
‘Yeah. Let’s just give him something?’
‘We’re mages, so we don’t have much strength... We should add a little money...’
They seemed to share such thoughts between them.
“Fine. How much?”
“Ha... W-well... Three billion won.”
-?
-???
-?
-This is fucking hilarious
-What is this lol
-Fuck, three billion lol
“What? We joked around with you a little, and now you think this is a game? Hey...”
Thump!
The department head put a hand on Jun-il’s shoulder, trying to look intimidating.
“You were kidnapped, you little bastard.”
The atmosphere turned murderous.
“Gasp...”
“Say the amount of your compensation properly. Before you get nothing.”
“Three billion won.”
“...What?”
“A Han River-view apartment, you asshole!”
Shunk!
A goblin dagger that had appeared at some point pierced the Department Head Necromancer’s chin and burst out through the back of his head.
“!?”
“...!”
-This is fucking hilarious
-He actually did it...
-Ahahahahaha
-Finally
-I was wondering when he’d do it lol
-Fuck lol
-L4GS! L4GS! L4GS!
Then music that meant death itself to the necromancers began to play.
[Cool BGM]
[Playing]
“You’re the ones...”
Jun-il spoke indifferently as he shook the blood from his dagger.
Drip drip.
“Who’ve been kidnapped.”
-Hahahahahahahahahaha
-Hahahahaha
-Reverse kidnapping lol
-Damn
-Nice
-“Cool music”
-Let’s give them what they deserve
-I hated these fucking bastards from the start
-Wow T_T Finally!
-Time to teach these corpse-fuckers a lesson
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