The Academy’s Deceased Ate It All

"Don't get pulled in. It's a cheap trick — just provocation, nothing more."

At Jin Ye-seul's words from behind, Choi Hyun-woo drew his sword.

"I know. I'm not worked up, so don't worry about it."

"Like I'd worry about you… What I'm worried about is you charging in like an idiot and making things harder for Ji-hyeok."

"Ha…"

As she spoke, Jin Ye-seul kicked away an arrow flying toward her.

Lee Ye-eun was calmly handling the bow she'd brought, moving the branches of the World Tree.

"Should we fall back for now?"

I fiddled with my sword and spear and answered Choi Hyun-woo's question.

The scariest thing about mages, alchemists, and necromancers wasn't their raw power — it was fortification, what people called the workshop, the kind of defensive setup you saw in siege warfare.

When one of them claimed a region as their own and laid down every kind of preparation for invaders, they could turn that area into the equivalent of a fortress. The first rule of fighting a mage who'd entrenched themselves like that was either to draw them out of their territory or to disrupt the territory itself.

A lich… and one who'd lived for centuries at that — the kind of territory he'd build would take serious effort to break through.

But right now, all this thing was doing was sending waves of skeletons mixed with a handful of stronger undead. Nothing else.

That meant this place wasn't his territory yet.

It also meant he hadn't had time to set up properly for a fight.

But why?

He'd had time to position all these undead, so it wasn't like he simply ran short on time to lock the area down as his territory.

"…"

The answer was simple.

The energy the other world's Han Su-yeong had left behind was here.

That energy was so overwhelming that no lich, no matter how powerful, could establish a territory without disturbing it. And even if he'd put in the effort, the death-aura would scatter his work almost immediately — so he must've given up on the idea entirely.

We'd come to the right place.

And if I'd hesitated even a moment longer, we really would've been too late. The thought made my grip tighten around my weapons.

"…A necromancer really is a one-person army. Their biggest strength is in their flexibility — wide-ranging combinations of attacks and a force built for long, grinding battles that wear the enemy down. There's actually a record of an entire country being wiped out by a legion of undead. But look at what he's sending at us."

Mostly skeletons.

The only standouts were the single dullahan holding Choi Hyun-woo's head, and a handful of wights draped in cloth, floating in the air.

"No matter how you slice it, this doesn't look like a necromancer's territory or a prepared ambush. And the entrance we came in through hasn't even been blocked. It almost looks like he's deliberately leaving us a way out, using sheer numbers to pressure us into running. But why? From his angle, the best move would be to kill me the moment he got the chance and recover the corpse."

I started shifting Henir's Shadow.

Thankfully, this time it moved exactly the way I wanted it to.

"It means our assault is something he didn't see coming at all. And the best moment to take down a mage is when that mage is rattled. So right now is the perfect time to finish him off…!"

As always, the right answer was almost always to push straight through with overwhelming force.

The moment I finished speaking, I moved my fingers.

KRRRRRSSH!

In an instant, Henir's Shadow surged up and pulverized dozens of the skeletons standing right in front of us.

"Isn't that right, you brat of Milited's?"

[…Kill them! Kill them, and bring me their corpses!]

That was the signal.

A voice rang out from somewhere, and the skeletons came rushing at us like a flood. Each of us raised our weapons to meet them.

"Hh—!"

Lee Ye-eun stomped hard, and vines erupted from the ground, smashing skeletons apart and breaking up their charge.

She'd clearly been preparing it the whole time I'd been dragging out my explanation.

"Get back!"

Jin Ye-seul knew her role well, so instead of pushing forward, she focused on the skeletons that were going after Lee Ye-eun and Han Su-yeong.

Lee Yu-na murmured to herself and started conjuring dozens of weapons, while Han Su-yeong rapidly formed hand seals and recited an incantation.

"I'll take that one."

Choi Hyun-woo lifted his sword and locked eyes with the dullahan charging at him with terrifying speed.

That left us short a front-liner to hold the back line.

I'd already worked it out, and I immediately reached for one of the items I'd brought along.

"What's that?"

"A gift."

What I'd pulled out was the golem creation kit Kath Ryle had given me.

I took out two of the three I had, dropped the crystal cores into potion bottles like he'd told me to, and quickly hurled them at the skeletons.

One landed in the middle of the pack, and the other smacked into a wall — the glass shattering with two sharp, ringing cracks.

And then—

[GRRROOAAAAAH!!!!]

[KAAARGGHH!!!]

Concrete, pipes, and rebar gathered together as if they had a will of their own, forming a golem that swung its fist hard and sent skeletons flying.

Then the golem charged through them, tackling its way through the pack like a linebacker, slamming bodies aside with the full force of its weight.

Right after that, a second golem appeared — one made from the remains of skeletons, what you might call a skeleton golem — and it started thrashing its body around, breaking apart their formation.

The moment I confirmed we had fewer angles to cover, I plunged into the middle of them with a spear in one hand and a sword in the other.

In the middle of swinging, slashing, stabbing, and bashing without pause, a bone-chilling shriek reached my ears.

[KYAAAAAAH—!]

"Next."

Han Su-yeong muttered the word after picking off only the wights — the ones floating in the air and flinging annoying curses and spells — and erasing them.

She'd formed her hand into the shape of a gun, the same way she had when we first met, and was firing off relentless rounds of mana bullets from her fingertip.

They were no bigger than small marbles, but anything they touched — wight, skeleton, anything — was being blown to pieces.

Lee Yu-na was generating weapons without pause and providing cover, and since they were arms forged from mana, they showed exceptional power against the undead.

Lee Ye-eun, for her part, fired off arrows while moving the World Tree's branches to obstruct them, and never forgot to chant a spell now and then to cast her blessings on us.

Honestly, she was the most valuable presence here.

"Hh—!"

But unexpectedly, Choi Hyun-woo was having a rough time with the dullahan.

Small cuts were appearing all over his body as the two of them traded blows.

[That dullahan's strong.]

Sbeungali's read was correct.

It wasn't that Choi Hyun-woo was weak — it was that the dullahan was stronger than I'd imagined.

The swordplay it used wasn't ordinary swordplay, and more importantly, being undead, it couldn't be put down like a human — its body had to be shattered to take it out of the fight. That was why it could keep pressing Choi Hyun-woo without letting up.

On top of that, the skeletons that kept charging in from the side made it impossible for him to pour everything he had into the dullahan, and I could see it.

An undead at that level couldn't be cobbled together from any old corpse.

The person whose body had been turned into that dullahan must have been a renowned swordsman in life — or at least a hero or hunter of comparable standing.

"…"

I had no intention of just standing by and letting this play out.

I shifted my stance, getting ready to hurl my spear and give Choi Hyun-woo some backup, when—

"Ji-hyeok!"

Jin Ye-seul's urgent shout.

A split second before her warning reached me, I caught the sense of something hurtling toward us at high speed.

"Tch!"

I twisted my stance and swung my sword, and the thing rushing in threw out a fist and slammed it against the blade.

The shock that rang through my wrist told me this one had been pieced together with the same level of care as the dullahan.

"You—!"

In the next instant, Jin Ye-seul was right beside me.

She grabbed my shoulder with one hand, using it as leverage, then launched her body into a vicious kick that sent the thing flying.

[KAAARRGGH!]

"A jiangshi?"

That's exactly what it was — a jiangshi.

Its face was covered with an iron plate, its purple and green skin completely bare, and it took up a strange, fighting-stance pose toward Jin Ye-seul as if it were some kind of martial artist.

I couldn't make out its face beneath the metal plate, but the long, smooth black hair flowing down from behind it stood out.

"…"

Jin Ye-seul stared at the thing's fingernails, then licked the cut on her forearm and spat — a glob of blood-stained saliva hitting the floor.

"Poisoned claws? You raggedy son of a bitch, who the hell do you think you are, going after me with poisoned nails…?"

The moment that low, chilling voice left her, Henir's Shadow crawled up her body and gathered at her hand, forming what looked like a gauntlet.

That was when it happened.

[KYAAAAAAGH!!!]

A bone-chilling scream.

The instant I felt a massive surge of mana, I reflexively yanked Jin Ye-seul back and activated 'Mirror of Counterattack' to throw up an invisible barrier.

But before I could even finish, a wave of mana settled over us like a shield.

A protective spell Han Su-yeong had cast.

KABOOM!

A flame mixed of purple and blue slammed into the invisible wall she'd put up and erupted like a bomb.

It took a while for the flames to die down, and when they finally did, I could see — past the smoke — something hanging in the air. Its form was sharper than the wights that had been drifting around earlier, and a piece of red cloth trailed from behind it, as if to evoke red hair.

"Look at this little bastard…"

If we couldn't catch on at this point, the problem would be on our end.

The thing had openly modified the undead to mock us.

Or rather, it hadn't just changed their appearances — it had matched their fighting styles to us, too.

The dullahan that used a sword — whether it had been surgically altered or shaped with magic, I couldn't tell — was carrying Choi Hyun-woo's head.

The jiangshi that fought hand-to-hand like a martial artist had an iron plate over its face, but it had long, straight black hair swaying behind it, just like Jin Ye-seul's.

And last, the wight floating in the air, spitting out spells and curses, had a strip of red cloth attached to it — like Han Su-yeong's signature red hair.

I wasn't the only one who picked up on it.

The grim looks on Choi Hyun-woo, Jin Ye-seul, and Han Su-yeong's faces were proof enough.

Watching from the side, Lee Ye-eun murmured in a quiet voice.

"That's vile. Sickening, even."

"…I'll kill him."

A chilling voice came from behind me, and I turned to see Lee Yu-na with a grim look on her face.

Her eyes were locked on the jiangshi above all.

In a moment that felt ready to ignite, the other side made the first move.

[They're falling back.]

Just as Sbeungali said, the three undead displayed themselves to us as if showing off, then quickly began retreating.

I caught Jin Ye-seul, who was about to chase after them, and gestured with my chin at the area around us.

"It's exactly what you said earlier — cheap provocation to get us worked up. So calm down, Ye-seul."

"…Oh. Right. Sorry."

Jin Ye-seul nodded as she said it.

Han Su-yeong and Choi Hyun-woo didn't say anything, but they looked just as furious as she did.

…Before long, we'd taken down every skeleton that had packed the building's first floor.

Surrounded by piles of skeletal remains and flanked by the two golems, I felt everyone's eyes settle on me, and I quietly spoke up.

"All right, what now? Keep going? Or pull back and wait for reinforcements?"

"Let's go in."

Choi Hyun-woo answered without hesitation.

I'd been thinking the same thing, and then Lee Ye-eun spoke up.

"I agree. With necromancers, you can never give them time to regroup. Even simple skeletons take effort to put down, so just like you said, Ji-hyeok — if this turns into a war of attrition, the advantage swings to him."

I nodded and looked around at everyone.

"Anyone against it?"

No one was.

Once I'd confirmed it, I pulled out the potions Kath Ryle had given me from the shadow.

"We move in five minutes. I've got mana recovery potions and stamina boosters here. Even if you feel fine, drink one bottle each."

"What about you, Ji-hyeok?"

"I'll handle cleanup first."

With that, I scattered the purification potions I'd brought across the skeletal remains.

No point in leaving resources behind for him to recycle.

Even a lich wouldn't be able to immediately raise corpses that had been purified by purification potions.

"…Did Kath Ryle make this, by any chance?"

"Uh… yeah."

I hesitated at Lee Ye-eun's reluctant expression, then nodded.

She pressed her lips together and stared at the potion before, with apparent resolve, she tipped it back and gulped it down.

"Ugh…"

"Good…"

After a quick reset, we set off in the direction the three undead had fled.

It wasn't long before we found ourselves stopped in front of a massive pit.

Even the most senseless person would've noticed the heavy poison and death-aura pouring out of it.

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