Damn Necromancer

Chapter 396: Galaxy (15)

Pitch-black outer space.

In a virtual hologram conference room located at the heart of the Galaxy Alliance, five massive shadows gathered in a circle.

They were the leaders of the 5 great megacorps maintaining absolute power, dividing and ruling Galaxy in five.

In the center of the table, Viper's body cam footage transmitted by Arthur and data on the Death Lord Kim Minwoo floated, emitting a red light.

“……The Death Lord, you say. To think that out-of-standard disaster said to ravage dimensions has fallen upon our Galaxy of all places.”

The leader of the weapon manufacturing corporation Ares muttered while stroking his chin.

A thick wariness was saturated in that voice, but the eyes flashing beyond the hologram were gleaming with greed.

“But if that disaster is the finished product of the Artificial God Project we have clung to for decades, the story is different. If we can only figure out how it filters the noise of that fatal divine pollution…….”

“We might be able to ascend to true divinity.”

The leaders' breaths became rough for an instant.

The military power possessed by the Death Lord was certainly terrible.

Zenith's elite unit, the Annihilators, were entirely slaughtered in just 10 minutes.

But it did not matter.

A physical universe ruled solely by ignorant capital and overwhelming firepower.

If the 5 megacorps united and poured out their entire space fleets, there was no way they could not capture him, no matter if he was the Death Lord.

‘A goose that lays golden eggs…….’

The leader of Ares narrowed his eyes.

The minds of the other leaders were also spinning quickly.

‘That greedy old man Arthur is meekly sharing this massive treasure? That can't be.’

‘If he could have completely chewed and swallowed it with Zenith's strength alone, he would have gulped it down by himself long ago.’

‘Even so, to convene an emergency meeting and release information like this…… it must mean the monster called the Death Lord is so dangerous that he cannot handle him alone.’

Just like beasts that had been growling at each other temporarily joining their pack to hunt a massive mammoth, an unspoken agreement that no one could be allowed to monopolize that goose that lays golden eggs was formed solely through their gazes beyond the holograms.

“We will fully draft the most elite stellar fleets and execution units belonging to each group. The goal is the capture and vivisection of the Death Lord in the Under City. Do you agree?”

The moment Arthur chillingly declared, the leader of Hermes, which monopolized communications and logistics, raised an objection while tapping his hologram pad tok-tok.

“Wait, Arthur. Must we ignorantly see blood? The Death Lord's combat power is beyond imagination. Even if our fleets win, astronomical capital might be shattered just on damage recovery.”

“Then……?”

“It means we should rather negotiate. In exchange for legally handing over infinite lower-class chips and the ruling authority of the Under City to him, on the condition of sharing that pollution filtering technology. From what I hear, he likes money too; if we hand him money and power, wouldn't he hand over one such paltry technology?”

A very rational entrepreneurial idea.

In fact, the eyes of several leaders wavered.

Because rather than paying a massive war cost, becoming partners and only extracting the technology was far better in cost-effectiveness.

However, Arthur let out a sneer and exhaled a long puff of cigar smoke.

“Stupid talk. Did you read the Death Lord's track record data just for show? That guy is not the type to do partnerships. Can't you tell just by looking at the Heavenly City?”

“…….”

“He was invited to the banquet of the Seven Lords and divided the territories, they said. Even so, he is a guy who came up and stubbornly stepped foot there not even two months after the agreement. We supply him chips and raise him? Then he will grow stronger even faster with that faith. And after that? Our megacorps will have to crawl at his feet and bow as believers. There cannot be two rulers in Galaxy.”

At Arthur's chilling sharp remark, the temperature of the conference room cooled down rapidly.

“Above all, the principle by which that guy withstands divine pollution has a high probability of not being something like a mechanical blueprint. There must be a secret within the soul or physical structure itself unique to a Necromancer. Do you think sitting at a negotiation table will make him meekly slice his own belly open and take out his brainstem to show us?”

It hit the nail on the head.

To learn the technology, they ultimately had to tear apart and dissect the Death Lord's living body.

What transcendent would step onto an operating table on their own two feet and slice their own belly open?

Ultimately, the option of coexistence did not exist on this chessboard from the very beginning.

Whether we dissect that monster to become gods, or that monster becomes a god and swallows us.

The only method was that cruel zero-sum game.

At Arthur's logic, even the leader of Hermes kept his mouth firmly shut. There were no further dissenting opinions.

“It seems everyone has finished grasping the situation now. Before the monster swallows the entire Under City, right now, when he is most vulnerable, is the only opportunity.”

A thick murderous intent lingered in Arthur's eyes.

“The goal is the capture and vivisection of the Death Lord in the Under City. Do you agree?”

“……I agree.”

“I agree.”

The heads of the 5 megacorps nodded their heads in unison. Finally, the absolute powers of the galaxy began to move to hunt a single Necromancer.

“It is time to set out on a hunt for the rat gnawing at the universe.”

At the same time.

Around the time the 5 great groups were spewing grim resolve while forming a united fleet on the scale of a space war. The Death Lord Kim Minwoo, whom they called their prey, was putting on a very pleased smile in an abandoned factory full of exhaust fumes in the Under City.

“Hey! Aren't you speeding up Line 2? Why is the chip insertion speed so slow! Can't you move quicker?!”

Dalgeureok! Dalgeudeok!

At Kim Minwoo's yell, pure white bones frantically bent their joints to turn the conveyor belt.

The inside of the abandoned factory was truly turning as if bizarre cogwheels were moving.

The mechanical torsos of the cyborgs smashed in the battle with the Annihilator unit.

Kim Minwoo had remodeled those scrap metals into main servers and lined them up in a row.

And he was endlessly inserting the defective personality chips that the Dragon Tooth Soldiers had swept up by the boxes into the cyborgs' slots.

[Faith data is being transmitted!]

[Prayers directed toward the great savior are being received!]

[Divinity rises!]

[Divinity rises!]

System messages plastering a corner of his vision. A fantastic collaboration between machine tin cans that endlessly pumped out faith as long as mana was injected, and the undead pulling 24-hour all-night shifts without demanding a single penny of wages.

A heinous automated faith mining farm combining capitalism and necromancy was completed.

Yoo Honbi, who was watching that scene of labor exploitation, clicked her tongue as if fed up.

“Is it not enough to work the bones of the dead, are you now treating even machine tin cans as slaves?”

It was a wickedness enough to appall even her, who was the apex of the Demonic Cult.

However, Kim Minwoo snorted and smoothly scanned her.

“Slaves. It is a very productive and wholesome religious activity. By the way, about you.”

Kim Minwoo pointed with his chin at the bizarre Mana Neural Network of the Dragon Tooth Soldiers floating in the empty air.

“That neural network procedure, do you have any thoughts of getting it once too?”

“……What?”

Yoo Honbi's smooth brow furrowed deeply.

“It connects the brain and mana circuits directly. If you engrave one of those too, your reaction speed and calculation power will jump by at least 3 times?”

At that proposal, Yoo Honbi swallowed a hollow breath and gripped the hilt of her demonic sword.

“Shut up! As a martial artist, I would rather bite my tongue than entrust my body to such a bizarre evil art!”

It was a natural reaction.

As the pride of the martial arts world and the head of the Demonic Cult, it was an absolutely uncompromising line.

However, Kim Minwoo smiled without any sign of regret.

“Is that so? Keeping your pride is fine, but wasn't your goal to snap that Mutakta's neck?”

“……!”

“Do you think you can kill that monster with your current skills? Rather than dying unable to ever get your revenge while trying to protect your pride, wouldn't it be more beneficial to just connect the neural network and grow stronger quickly and certainly?”

At Kim Minwoo's words, her pupils wavered minutely.

The pride of a martial artist, or certain revenge using any means and methods necessary.

Looking at the conflicted Yoo Honbi, Kim Minwoo added as if driving a wedge.

“Well, I'm not telling you to do it right now. Think about it slowly. I'll do the first procedure for free.”

Yoo Honbi bit her lip tightly and whipped her head around. She avoided a definite answer right away, but Kim Minwoo, knowing her anger toward Mutakta, thought she might willingly stick her neck out sooner or later.

It was that time.

Dalgeureok! Dalgeok!

In front of the conveyor belt that had been running endlessly, one Dragon Tooth Soldier urgently clacked its jaw joints.

“Huh? Why did you stop?”

Kim Minwoo furrowed his brow and approached to check.

The inventory of millions of defective chips scraped together by the boxes in the back alleys of the Under City was still piled up like a mountain. The problem was that the hardware to insert those chips into had run out.

Even if he just floated the chips in the empty air and injected mana, what came out from there was merely pain-filled screams or mechanical noise.

But what if he transplanted those chips into physical bodies they could move?

The blind joy of being saved from eternal darkness and gaining a new body.

The genuine emotion and explosive faith bursting out from there was exactly the true sweet taste of maximized efficiency.

To simultaneously run millions and tens of millions of chips to explode his divinity in a single breath, he needed that much hardware.

For an instant, a flashing thought brushed past Kim Minwoo's mind.

‘Ah. That company called Zenith or whatever that just attacked to kill me.’

If it was a megacorp holding the galaxy in its grasp, wouldn't those impressive combat machine humans or cyborg bodies be piled up like mountains in their warehouses?

There was no need to go out of his way to search the warehouses either.

He just had to slaughter all the employees of that company who attacked first and insert the chips into their torsos, and that would be it.

Was it not perfect self-defense and resource recycling!

Ah, what an eco-friendly and wholesome mindset this was.

“Hey. Where is the place that runs the most top-grade mechanical bodies or cyborgs worth inserting chips into in this neighborhood?”

The thug boss bound at his feet trembled and opened his mouth.

“Th-that's naturally the headquarters of the megacorps in the stratosphere above the clouds over there, isn't it……. It's a fortress swarming with top-grade cyborg troops worth hundreds of billions and state-of-the-art security machines that can't even be compared to the lower-class district.”

The moment he heard that answer, Kim Minwoo's gaze pierced through the distant ceiling and headed toward space.

A short while ago, right before cutting off communications, he had clearly warned that guy who was the Chairman of Zenith Headquarters or whatever.

That he would come to repay him as much as he had received.

While the space allied forces were grimly assembling an allied fleet claiming they would erase the Under City from the map, Kim Minwoo was forming an invasion plan to strike them first and completely loot their headquarters, putting on the most wicked smile in the world.

“I have to definitely return what I received. I'm going to collect the receipt.”

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