Damn Necromancer

Chapter 428: The Blood Lord (2)

[The 1st wave has ended.]

[The 2nd wave will begin shortly!]

As soon as the red system messages flashed in the empty air, a heavy vibration shaking the ground echoed from deep within the Blood Swamp.

Kugugugugung—!

The bloody water of the swamp boiled, and massive figures that could not even be compared to before began to rise.

Bizarrely swollen muscles.

Bat wings sprouting from their backs.

And ferocious blood-red armor covering their entire bodies.

The True Blood vampires, called the direct elite soldiers of the Blood Lord, were deployed onto the battlefield in earnest.

"Kiaaaaak—!"

The True Blood vampires, having lost their reason to hunger, covered the sky pitch-black and poured down toward the challengers' formation.

If it were the usual Ascension Ritual, the ranks of the challengers should have naturally crumbled like sandcastles in the face of that overwhelming and terrifying majesty.

Even during the 1st wave, weren't they busy backing away and pushing each other as meat shields.

But right now.

The atmosphere of the swamp welcoming the 2nd wave had changed perfectly, and chillingly, from the 1st wave.

"Ohhh! Oh great God of Deathhh!"

"Everyone move aside! It's my sacrifice!"

"I will prove my belieeeef!"

Vampires starving because they couldn't drink blood?

The eye glints emitted by the 30,000 challengers who had suddenly turned into fanatics at this moment were flashing ten, twenty times more hungrily and ferociously than those vampires.

They no longer formed defensive lines.

Throwing away their shields and gripping only their weapons, they began to rush like mad dogs toward the monsters pouring from the sky.

"Keukeureureureuk?!"

The True Blood vampires, who had been rushing in to enjoy the slaughter, were instead so flustered that they hesitated in the empty air.

Because the prey, far from being terrified, were rushing at them foaming at the mouth, trying to tear off and eat their blood and flesh.

Kwaaaaang—!

Right in the middle of the front lines.

A lion beastkin warrior roared and struck down with a massive two-handed axe.

Puaaaak!

"Kiaaaak!"

The ignorant axe blade smashed the True Blood vampire's shoulder bone and tore apart its blood-red armor.

A dark red blood fountain surged from the vampire's shoulder.

However, true to being a True Blood monster, the vampire tenaciously counterattacked even in pain.

Sagak!

"Keoheok—!"

The vampire's sharp claws dug deep into the beastkin warrior's nape.

It was a fatal wound where blood vessels burst and the back of the head was torn off.

In a normal situation, it was a terrible wound that would have caused instant death on the spot or sent him rolling around screaming.

However, the beastkin warrior did not step back even while blood poured profusely from his neck.

No. Rather, a crazed laughter filled with joy spread across his lips.

'With this level of wound, I definitely fought bravely and died!'

He opened his two arms and tightly hugged the vampire that was tearing him apart.

"Eoheueueung—! God of Death! Please look after this Nasar!"

Along with a lion's roar, the beastkin warrior cruelly bit into the vampire's nape with his wide-open maw.

Udeudeuk!

Kkadeuk!

"Keuaaaaak! Th-this crazy mortallll!"

A bizarre farce where a monster screamed while being bitten by a monster.

Such madness-filled dogfights were breaking out simultaneously all over the swamp.

"Step back! My dedication to the God of Death comes first!"

"Priest! Do not waste divine power on me! Because this scar will soon be the proof of my belief!"

"Great God of Death! Please look after my end!"

They threw away defense.

They didn't even evade.

A blind competition to die in battle faster and more grandly than anyone else and securely catch the eye of the God of Death.

On one side, a massive Minotaur warrior, not even caring that his chest was being pierced, tightly hugged a True Blood vampire and plummeted to the ground.

"Great Oneeee! I will burn this one body!"

Ujikkeun! Even amidst the pain of bones breaking and intestines bursting, the Minotaur giggled and bit off the detonator of the bomb tied to his waist.

Kwaaaaang—!

It was a grand mutual destruction where blood and flesh splattered everywhere.

Not only that, a Lizardman whose entire arm was torn off instead used his broken arm bone fragment as a weapon and ruthlessly stabbed it into a vampire's heart, and a half-elf mage who was cornered having run out of mana just jumped into the enemy's embrace and self-destructed his mana circuit.

Peobeobeong!

"My spot comes first! Godddd!"

The challengers were elites who had reached the apex in their respective dimensions and come up.

There were those who purely gave themselves over to madness, but the majority were analyzing the current situation with extremely cold reason.

No matter if it is the authority of a god, he probably couldn't revive tens of thousands of people infinitely all at once.

Even miracles inevitably have mana limits or a capacity for salvation.

What if they cherished their lives and only read the room, then died in battle late, but the resurrection benefits happened to be exhausted by then?

That was a confirmed dog's death where no excuses would work.

'So right now while the god's gaze lingers, in the early stages when miracles are abundant, I must die the most dedicatedly and flashily!'

The most irrational conclusion reached by extreme rational calculation.

The sight of challengers bursting into bloodshot, crazed laughter filled with the joy of preempting the priority for salvation even amidst fatal wounds where their flesh was torn off and their intestines spilled out.

This terrible and desperate sight of willingly pushing themselves to the brink of death to meet their end was enough to make even the vampires, who had lost their reason and were crazy for blood, feel an instinctive terror and back away.

But not every living creature in the world can share the same mind.

While tens of thousands of challengers were engaging in a blood-splattering, madness-filled dogfight at the front.

A group positioned at the rear was carefully backing away.

The so-called freeloaders.

Watching the terrible bloody battle at the front, they were snorting inwardly.

'Stupid bastards. Even if he revives them, throwing away their lives like old shoes like that?'

A highly suspicious bat-kin mage hid at the back of the formation and muttered while fingering his staff.

'There's nothing free in the world. Giving bread and water, tutoring, and even reviving them? That guy called the God of Death. His actions seem like a worldly angel and a pushover, but there's definitely a trap.'

The goblin rogue hiding next to him also nodded his head.

'Right. The guys who just revived look perfectly fine on the outside, but are they really fine on the inside? Their souls might have been mortgaged in exchange for resurrection, or terrible side effects might erupt later.'

'Anyway, those psychos at the front are grinding up the vampires on their own. We just need to appropriately save our mana here and ride the bus.'

'Yeah. There's no need to step forward and take risks. Just quietly suck up the honey and move to the next tier…….'

After all, the goal of the Ascension Ritual is to climb the tiers.

An extremely realistic and selfish calculation that if the fools ahead shed blood for them, they would suck up the honey with a free ride.

However, they were forgetting one crucial fact.

That this was not the benevolent summer training retreat of the Death Cult, but the middle of the Ascension Ritual hosted by a system riddled with malice.

Bogeul-bogeul……!

It was that time.

The bloody water puddles at the rear of the swamp, where the freeloaders had hidden believing it was a safe zone, began to boil making bizarre sounds.

"……Uh?"

"Wh-why is the floor like this? Kkik?"

The moment the off-guard freeloaders looked down at their feet.

Kwaaaaang—!

The bloody water puddles exploded, and hundreds of special assassin-type vampires that had been ambushing beneath the swamp simultaneously surged up.

It was a vicious trap prepared by the system and the Blood Lord to strike the rear where the freeloaders were gathered.

"Keuhihihit! Blood! The blood of weaklings!"

"Keo, keoheok—!"

"Kyaaaaaak!"

The ranks of the freeloaders, who were giggling and watching the front instead of putting up defenses, were literally torn apart like sheets of paper.

The sharp claws of the vampires that surged from the floor pierced the heart of the sneaky bat-kin mage, and the nape of the shrewd goblin rogue was torn off by the leech-like teeth of a vampire.

"S-save……! Kkeueek!"

"Aaaaak! E-enemies at the rear……!"

Pandemonium.

The fanatics fighting at the front smiled and counterattacked because they didn't fear death, but the freeloaders trying to suck honey from the back were merely thoroughly trampled in the face of the fear of death.

There was no time to form a formation.

Nor time to chant a spell.

Puk!

Jjiiik!

The mage, who dropped his staff with his bat wings torn, collapsed onto the bloody floor.

A vampire trampling his chest was greedily trying to tear out his heart.

In the split second as his breath was stopping.

A lightning-like regret brushed past the bat-kin mage's mind.

'Ah…….'

Right. The Ascension Ritual could not have been a comfortable bus in the first place.

The cruel system never allows free rides.

Hiding at the back was not a place where safety was guaranteed.

'Damn it…… If I knew this would happen…….'

If this was a hellish stage where one would die either way.

If his life was going to be torn apart by a monster's hands anyway!

'I should have rather…… rather charged like those guys! Closed my eyes tightly, risked my life, and rushed in!'

'If I did…… if I did, at least I could have gotten a chance for resurrection……!'

Regret and bitterness making him cry tears of blood.

But his vision was already blinking pitch-black.

Amidst the terrible pain of his heart being torn out, the bat-kin mage squeezed out his last remaining strength, squeezed his bloodshot eyes shut, and screamed desperately toward the empty air.

"G-great God of Death……! I too…… I too will bury my bones and believe……! Please…… please save me…… Keoheok!"

With that scream ending, the bat-kin mage's breath was perfectly cut off.

At the front, the roars of fanatics running wild believing in resurrection.

At the rear, the desperate screams of other-race freeloaders being torn apart along with belated regret intersected.

The stage of the 2nd trial, where benevolent miracles and cruel bloody slaughter were entangled, was transforming into a perfect pandemonium that literally not even the system could control.

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