Chapter 58: Anti-Necromancy

Two hours later, I found myself in Shinwa’s S-2 Training Room, a space easily exceeding several hundred square meters.

I set down my duffel bag and checked the training room’s environment settings.

“Let’s see… snowfield, lava field, desert, underwater.”

As I scrolled through the various elemental fields that could be materialized with Mana, I selected the perfect environment for today’s ‘protagonist.’

Rumble!

The moment the notification sounded, a damp, dark mist began to envelop the training room.

And in an instant, the space where I stood transformed into a swamp teeming with rotting corpses and thick, oozing mud.

The Commander’s Field, typically populated by undead creatures like zombies and skeletons, reeked of decay.

“Honestly, I don’t think they needed to simulate the smell,” I muttered, grimacing at the putrid odor that stung my nostrils.

As expected of the Myth Training Ground, a pinnacle of Korea’s subspace technology.

Well, this should suffice. It’ll give him the mental fortitude he needs to endure today’s training.

Nodding, I activated the skill:

Swoosh.

A pitch-black dimensional gate materialized, and a skeleton with brightly glowing blue eye sockets emerged.

I waved at the creature as it rotated its skull to survey the surroundings.

“Iratu, how have you been?”

“Answer.”

”…I haven’t been doing too well,” Iratu replied, flinching and lowering his head. “Master has been treating me rather harshly, so my bones ache all over, and I haven’t been able to sleep properly.”

Click. The Skeleton grabbed my shoulder and turned me around.

Was this spitefulness? His expression was clearly filled with resentment.

I nodded, adopting a deliberately bitter tone. “I was too harsh last time. I’m sorry, Iratu.”

”…?”

The blue light in his eyes, which had been narrowed to a thin line, widened suddenly at my words.

“Master…?”

“I never wanted to misuse you, my precious Summoned Beast, as a trap detector. But at the time, it was the only way. Even so, I know it must have been a traumatic experience for you.”

The Skeleton’s wide-eyed gaze flickered, as if on the verge of tears.

“No, Master! I’m the one who should apologize for harboring such resentment!”

Just as I’d anticipated. The innocent Skeleton, now embodying Iratu, quickly relented.

“After all, I’m just a Skeleton who can’t truly die. It was my disloyalty not to understand your intentions!”

“No, you don’t have to go that far. Even if it was unavoidable, the fact remains that I sacrificed you.”

“Hic… Master…”

“That’s why I brought you a gift as a token of my apology.”

“E-eh? A g-gift?!”

Iratu twisted his bony frame awkwardly, flustered.

“I didn’t do anything particularly noteworthy… You really didn’t have to go to such lengths.”

Even as he said this, he didn’t vehemently refuse. It seemed that despite his demotion, the Lich’s innate fondness for gold and jewels lingered.

I handed him the duffel bag. “Check it out.”

Iratu eagerly seized the zipper, his body trembling with anticipation.

“Master, to be honest, after your last summons, I locked myself away, stewing in bitterness all night. I wondered, ‘Is this all I’m worth?’”

“Hmm.”

“But no! It seems I was wrong. You truly do care for me…”

He trailed off mid-sentence, his babbling cut short by the sound of a zipper.

Zzzip.

“Huh?”

The duffel bag opened, revealing its contents.

“W-wait… What is this?!”

He recoiled as if he’d seen a ghost, staggering backward in shock.

A gleaming metallic sphere rolled out of the duffel bag, which had been carelessly tossed onto the damp earth.

It was one of the hundred Holy Attribute Mana Grenades I had acquired from the Precious Artifact Hall.

The skeleton, having landed on its bony rear, frantically scuttled away from the grenade with a crab-like shuffle, shouting, “M-Master?! What is this?!”

“I told you,” I replied. “It’s a gift for you.”

“This filthy thing is a gift?! Are you trying to kill me?!”

The Holy Attribute was the most effective weapon against the Undead. Even a C-Class Skill possessed enough destructive power to effortlessly annihilate several skeletons.

Iratu, being fundamentally an Undead skeleton, likely perceived these Holy Attribute items as lethal chunks of radiation.

And indeed, the duffel bag itself had been saturated with so much Holy Attribute Mana that even a lowly skeleton wouldn’t dare touch it.

But…

“I know you’re fine, Iratu. Stop exaggerating and get up.”

“No, Master! My body’s fine, but mentally, I can barely cope.”

At my urging, he reluctantly rose, brushing dust from his hip bones with a sullen expression.

That’s right.

Despite being instantly exposed to a massive amount of Holy Attribute Mana, Iratu remained unscathed.

The reason?

It was all thanks to his previous Summon, where he was trampled, crushed, incinerated, and frozen to death in every imaginable elemental and physical trap.

These were the two additional traits he had acquired.

While the active taunt skill was useful, the passive ability was the true gem.

Thanks to that passive skill, Iratu boasted a durability far surpassing that of most Undead. He could withstand mere exposure to Holy Attribute items without any issues.

“Are you feeling alright?”

“For now, Master. My bones are a bit sore, though…”

“That’s a relief. Iratu, I have a fun training session planned for us today.”

I picked up the duffel bag and kindly slung it over his shoulder.

The skeleton shuddered violently as the bag touched his bones, as if experiencing a bone-chilling sensation.

“U-um, what kind of training do you have in mind, Master?”

Instead of answering, I activated the Training Room’s monster generation function.

The automated announcement echoed through the room.

Thud! Thud! Thud!

From the putrid, swampy ground, grotesque zombies, skeletons, corpse golems, and other monstrosities burst from the earth and crawled forth.

I pointed at the undead monsters stumbling toward us.

“Take them on, Iratu.”

“Oho, finally, some practical training! Excellent! This time, I, Iratu, shall truly demonstrate my prowess!”

The skeleton reached for the battered shield and rusty sword I had left on the ground earlier.

“Not those,” I said, stopping him with a wave of my hand. I grinned at his bewildered expression. “Use the gifts I gave you.”

“Gifts? Surely you don’t mean those hideous things in this sack?!”

I nodded and pulled a Holy Attribute Mana Grenade from my bag, pressing it into his bony hand.

Its use was simple: pull the pin, throw it at the target, and after a short delay, it would detonate, scattering dense Holy Attribute mana across the area.

Iratu stood motionless, clutching the Mana Grenade that pulsed with a brilliant light.

I watched him intently.

This was the second gateway.

Normally, Skeleton Soldiers—the lowest tier of Undead—could only use the weapons they were equipped with upon summoning.

Theoretically, it was possible to equip them with different weapons instead of their default ‘Rusty Longsword’ or ‘Old Crossbow.’

But a Skeleton equipped with anything other than its default weapon would become a completely broken bone puppet.

Ultimately, the summoner would have to infuse the Skeleton with Mana and directly control every action, like a marionette.

In other words, it was an exercise in futility, more trouble than it was worth.

However…

Iratu wasn’t like that.

He wasn’t just an ordinary Skeleton Soldier. He was an independent entity with his own will, capable of communication.

Therefore…

If I gave him an item, he had the intelligence to assess the situation and use it accordingly.

Iratu stood frozen, clutching the Mana Grenade like a stone statue.

Groooooo!

The Mana-formed Undead closed in relentlessly, yet he remained motionless.

“Master,” Iratu said, his posture stiff as a board, as he turned his head. “Even though they aren’t truly alive, slaughtering my own kind with such a heinous weapon… it feels wrong.”

I had worried that I’d misjudged him. Fortunately, that wasn’t the case. He was simply hesitant, troubled by the act of annihilating his brethren with a Holy Attribute Item.

Indeed, for him, a Holy Attribute weapon was akin to an inhumane instrument of war.

No, anti-undead would be more accurate.

Well, overcoming such moral qualms was precisely one of the objectives of this training.

Therefore…

“Stop dawdling and throw it, or…” I continued with a cold smile, “do you plan to keep crawling around with that trap detector forever?”

And then…

Click.

The skeleton’s bony fingers deftly pulled the pin from a Mana Grenade.

Whoosh!

The grenade soared in a perfect arc, landing amidst the shambling horde of zombies.

Poof!

Graaah?!

With a flash as blinding as a flashbang, dozens of zombies disintegrated into ash.

I nodded and issued another command.

“Nice throw. Keep going.”

As the vanished undead were replenished, Iratu automatically retrieved another grenade from his duffel bag and asked,

“Uh, Master? How long do I have to keep this up?”

“Until I tell you to stop. And if you complete this training exceptionally well…”

I grinned. ”…I’ll give you a reward. So do your best.”

“What on earth is going on here?” Lee Gwangmin, the team leader in charge of managing Shinwa’s training rooms, muttered as he monitored a CCTV feed.

He wasn’t alone; his entire team was gathered around the monitor, staring in stunned silence.

The reason for their dumbfounded gazes?

”…Seriously, who uses a training room on this scale?”

The CCTV feed showed the S-2 Training Room. Inside, a ‘simulation’ of unprecedented magnitude was unfolding.

The room’s Commander’s Field had been activated, transforming it into a fetid swamp.

But the real problem wasn’t the terrain itself.

It was the horde of undead monsters teeming within the swamp, numbering well over a hundred.

“T-Team Leader,” one of the team members stammered, “even for an S-2 room, wouldn’t pushing the system this hard cause problems?”

“The system isn’t my only concern…”

How could he continuously conjure such a vast number of undead for hours on end?

The S-Rank Training Room only provided field and monster creation capabilities. The mana required to power these functions had to be entirely supplied by the user. Normally, attempting such a large-scale simulation would have exhausted the user’s mana long before the Training Room’s system reached its limits.

Yet, Lee Taejun, the outsider currently using the Training Room, showed no signs of fatigue. He remained perfectly fine, even after summoning hundreds of monsters with his mana for hours.

And that wasn’t the only mystery.

“I have no idea what he’s trying to accomplish,” Lee Gwangmin muttered.

The purpose of this massive simulation remained utterly incomprehensible. The CCTV footage showed Taejun standing still with his arms crossed from the very beginning. Meanwhile, a single skeleton he had conjured, equipped with a Holy Attribute item, was battling the rest of the undead horde.

Lee Gwangmin was certain that the skeleton was not a real summoned beast, but another monster Taejun had conjured with mana. He hadn’t even known Taejun had awakened the art of necromancy and could summon skeletons in the first place.

Even if he had known, he would have scoffed. A skeleton wielding a Holy Attribute item to fight undead? Even a passing dog would laugh at that absurdity. The entire scenario defied logic.

That’s why he couldn’t grasp Taejun’s purpose. Why on earth was Taejun running a simulation based on such an utterly unrealistic scenario?

But one thing was clear: thanks to Taejun’s unfathomable, massive simulation…

“Looks like I won’t be getting off work on time today,” Lee Gwangmin muttered.

It was only a matter of time before the system in the S-2 Training Room crashed.