Chapter 49
#049
1.
Yiming raged like an angry bull.
Compared to him, Rowen was feeble, but he did his best to fill in the gaps.
We took on the jiangshi with our backs against each other like Zhang Fei and Guan Yu.
Of course, I’m Guan Yu. Just the more timid and weaker one.
“At the far east end of F Sector, there’s a cargo lift connected to Aden. Go there and get us out of Necropolis.”
“Sure thing, big bro! Let’s head to the Blue House!”
One goal.
Escape to Aden.
Uh, yeah, I know.
This run is already fucked anyway.
Arbel was said to be taken care of by Ceres mama, so I wasn’t too worried about being forcibly cleared....
Even if we somehow made it to Aden after all kinds of trouble, it’d be Dormammu in a few days.
If I thought about it rationally, like a regressor should.
'Hah, did this run fail? (bitter smile)'
'Next time will be different. (grim resolve)'
All I had to do was stick a cigarette in my mouth, strike a pose, and die.
But.
“Rowen! I’ll take the lead!”
“Yes, big bro! I’ll follow you!”
How could I give up!
Yiming big bro still hasn’t given up, and you want me to say, 'Let’s just move on to the next game'?
Could I still call myself a man with two balls after that!
I didn’t want to be such a pathetic bastard.
Even if a reset was waiting for me.
I would burn my life to the very end and stay with Yiming in this run.
And so I surged forward, and forward again, and onward.
From Butcher Street to a residential district crammed with chicken-coop houses.
From the residential district to Pawnshop Alley, where pawnshops lined up in a row.
From Pawnshop Alley to Iron Cauldron Street, where apothecaries made elixirs.
We’d made it from Iron Cauldron Street to the C Sector square.
But.
-Jingle jingle jingle jingle
As if to prove they were chinks, the Golden Carp family’s trash were throwing sheer numbers at us like the Red Army.
“Big Bro Yiming! More are coming!”
“Damn—again? Shit. The fifth wave’s a bit much.”
“No, was it really necessary to go this far?”
“Those Golden Carp brats hit the jackpot. They’ve got their pretext now too. It’s a chance for Hyeon-gwi to legally wipe out Hyangju, isn’t it?”
I don’t know what mechanism makes those jiangshi move, or who’s controlling them.
But by now, I could feel a definite purpose behind those meat shields.
“Huff...! Huff...!”
A war of attrition.
More precisely, Yiming’s attrition.
Yiming, who had been rampaging like a runaway train, was already breathing as ragged as it could get.
Sweat poured from his forehead like rain, and his speed had also clearly slowed compared to before.
“Big bro, are you okay?!”
“You little shit! I’m not having a hard time. I haven’t even shown everything I’ve got yet. I’m still cruising, damn it!”
“Krr...! As expected of Big Bro Yiming! But tell me honestly!”
“Actually, it is a little hard!”
The matchup was bad.
No matter how gently Yiming hit them one by one, it was like trying to kill mosquitoes with a cannon.
Like a fortune slowly melting away on trivial casino fees.
He was getting worn down, little by little, by forced attrition.
-Jingle jingle jingle jingle jingle
I looked at the jiangshi, showing no sign that their numbers were even decreasing.
I looked at the carp heads still watching us from all over the stagnant water.
Is this the terror of Necropolis?
Can even a Tier 2 mage really not defy a city in the end?
It felt like falling into an antlion pit.
Hmm, honestly....
Yiming big bro seems to be struggling pretty hard for a Tier 2....
“Gasp!”
I quickly cut off that line of thought.
How could I have such blasphemous thoughts while looking at Yiming big bro burning with fighting spirit!
No choice.
Yiming gave his life for me.
Then it is only right, only proper, that I also offer my life.
The relic 'Burning Life,' which grants three minutes of power in exchange for the lifespan I got last time.
Still, it’s SR grade, right?
I should at least try using it once.
“Equivalent exchange!”
.
.
.
My vision shifted, as if someone had changed the TV channel.
There were no jiangshi, and no chaotic, dizzying Chinese-style buildings of C Sector.
“...What.”
A world with all color drained away.
Profound silence.
All I could see was black and white.
White ash falls from the sky like snow.
I looked around.
On top of an endless hill formed by gathered ash.
Countless candles were stuck into it like gravestones.
“Whose birthday is it?”
The candles were all in different states.
Some had burned down to blackened stubs, some had melted halfway and gone cold, some were only giving off thin wisps of smoke.
They differed in length and thickness, but they all had one thing in common.
None of the candles were lit.
Except for one candle.
-Whoosh!
At the very center of this gray graveyard.
There was only one thing shining brightly in this colorless world.
A candle blazing atop a golden candlestick.
-Ding!
======
『Burning Life』 is activating.
Checking remaining lifespan.
▶Remaining lifespan: 58 years.
[Please select how much lifespan to burn]
【 Burn 7 years 】
- Surpass your limits for an instant.
【 Burn 17 years 】
- Gain the power to bridge the gap in rank.
【 Burn 57 years 】
- Burn everything left and bring about a miracle.
※Warning※
- The lifespan consumed will be permanently deducted from the base lifespan of the next run.
- The consumed lifespan will be afflicted with the status ailment: 'Soul Ash'.
======
The notes for 'Burning Life' included a 'Cannot be removed' option.
I hadn’t expected it to give separate lifespan for each run in the first place.
But I wasn’t too worried.
“I can just earn it back and pay it off!”
Because with Omnification, mages can replenish lifespan.
But anyway.
“What’s with the Soul Ash, then?”
I’d know once I tried it.
Besides, I had to use it once anyway if I wanted to use it again later.
Might as well use this chance to estimate my future build.
There were three choices: 7 years, 17 years, 57 years.
“57 years is too much, and 7 years is too little, so let’s go with 17 years.”
I chose a number worthy of Yiming’s fiery brotherhood.
-Whoooosh!
The candle burns as hot as the brotherhood between Yiming and me, melting away fast.
Seventeen years of lifespan vanish in an instant.
In exchange, into my flesh.
“Ooh! Ooooooh!!!!!”
Divinity descends.
Mana.
An indescribably overwhelming amount of mana.
Sticky, tar-like mana floods into my mana circuits, which had been drying up as if in a drought.
The 'Death Sentence' inscription heats up like it’s been seared with a branding iron and spreads as if taking root.
When the entire process was over.
-Jingle jingle jingle
“Ro, Rowen? What was that? What did you do? Mana, all of a sudden?”
Both my body and mind were back in reality.
“Huu....”
When I exhaled, gray ash fluttered through my pale breath.
Mana carrying 'death' bubbled and boiled without pause, as if a massive core had formed inside me.
I realized it instinctively.
Ah.
So this is it?
Is this the view a Tier 1 mage sees?
I also realized something.
What I could do now.
“Big bro, take a short break.”
I took a step forward.
Death Sentence is the act of pronouncing the death I imagine onto a target.
At first glance it seems like a cheat skill, but the process isn’t simple enough to call it a cheat.
How to kill them, what shape to cut them in, how deep to stab them.
I had to squeeze out each of those images one by one and paint them over reality.
But now I don’t need to do that.
All I need to prepare is the 'result'.
I formed a hand seal.
The sticky mana surging from my body scattered toward the sky.
The mana condensed like dew on a ceiling and soon took on the shape of a plate.
Seen from below, it also looked like a black surface reflecting the earth.
Only one thing was needed.
A damn cool incantation.
I lowered my voice into a low baritone.
“Ah, O God. What a vile city this is. On this colorless land, only sin hangs heavy.”
“Ignorant lambs, behold. The weight of the crimes you have piled up.”
Whether Yiming stared at me with shocked eyes or not.
I kept reciting the incantation with the solemnity of an undertaker chanting a requiem.
“I am the one who brings the rain.”
Because.
In a man’s life, days when he can recite a line this boldly and coolly are few and far between.
“Your frivolous souls cannot even bear the weight of a single drop.”
“Accept it. And be crushed—.”
“——Heavenly Wail.”
When my freestyle incantation ended,
the sky wept.
Sticky, pitch-black droplets fell to the ground like tar.
-Plip, plip-plip
At first, just a few drops.
A black liquid that didn’t even look very dangerous, like it might just make your hair fall out.
But the moment those raindrops touched the jiangshi’s bodies.
The sign embedded within the mana was forcibly executed.
-Crack! Thud!
The death that was executed was my first cause of death: a fall.
The densely packed jiangshi were blown apart, flattened like they’d been hurled from a high-rise onto asphalt.
-Sshhhhh!
Then came a black downpour that seemed ready to erase the world’s color.
-Thud! Crack! Crunch!
The wave of jiangshi filling the alley collapsed like dominoes.
The cracking of flesh and bone mixed with the sound of rain, making a bizarre harmony.
A grotesque chain of death.
Red flowers blooming vividly in the gaps between the black raindrops.
Unfurl, bloom, and wither again.
The ear-splitting jingle was no longer heard.
Not the jiangshi, not the rats crawling on the floor, not even a single baby cockroach.
None of them could escape.
On the land swept by the black shower, only death remained.
All clear.
It was my doing, but my chest swelled like crazy.
Even grander than Ceres mama’s H-cups.
“This... a real mage?”
Is this truly the power of a mere human?
After three minutes passed, the godlike sense of omnipotence filling my body vanished.
An indescribable emptiness lingered.
The situation was too complicated to be wallowing in feelings like this.
“I cleared the road a bit, big bro. Let’s run.”
I smiled at Yiming while replaying as much as I could the sensations still lingering in my mana circuits.
“You bastard! Why are you hiding so much from your big bro!”
Even Yiming, who had been standing there with his mouth hanging open, gave me a thumbs-up.
:::Achievement(New!):::
- Use first-tier magic. +5pt
2.
“Rowen, you little punk, how did you do that just now? That wasn’t level 7, was it? Was it an artifact?”
“Big bro, I’ve got tricks hidden up my sleeve too. I’m really tapped out now.”
“Yeah! Thanks to you, I’m alive, so that’s enough!”
Obviously, I’m not stronger than Big Bro Yiming.
It’s just that, matchup-wise, Cedric was much better at bullying the weak.
Anyway, with the nuisance gone, there was no need to keep dragging our feet like sluggish grubs.
And thus we arrived at the final stage of this story.
F Sector’s famous cargo lift terminal, ‘Atlas’.
A steel framework clinging tightly to the cliff face.
Steel cables thicker than an adult man’s waist.
This was less a building and more....
Like the spine of a gigantic mechanical creature parasitizing the cliff.
-Kwoooom, kwoooom
The sound of engines coming from somewhere slammed into the moat wall and rang out like thunder.
The remnants of blue mana, mixed with acrid smog, were washing over F Sector’s sky in its own distinctive color.
I craned my neck to look up at the spectacular scene.
“That’s insane.”
“Right?”
Necropolis’s sky is completely covered in black blotches.
Which means every part of the sky is a 'void'.
In other words, Atlas is the only path that can lead to Aden.
Of course, the Golden Carp family knows that too.
“Thanks for making the long trip.”
A man appeared as if he’d been waiting for us.
He was neatly dressed in a changpao.
A dense pattern of golden carp was embroidered across his chest.
A slim, slick-looking handsome man.
He looked blatantly sleazy.
He was definitely eking out a pitiful living by hustling naive women.
“Long time no see, Xuan Yiming.”
“Yo, Li Cheng. Yeah, that’s right. We’ve known each other for a while now, haven’t we? Send me off nicely just this once. Next time I see you, I’ll give you a blazing welcome.”
“That won’t do. You were the one who messed with my property without permission, weren’t you? I managed to recover it, luckily, but it almost became a real headache.”
-Ding!
An alert rang out.
[ Fate Encounter effect has activated! ]
[ You have encountered a key figure in the scenario! ]
Ah, I can roughly see the picture.
Is that bastard the one who dumped the fake doll in the basement?
Whatever it is, it’s deeply connected to the 'doll,' so that must be why this alert popped up.
I roughly knew the identity of the Overnus Pharmaceuticals executive.
Li Cheng, the Golden Carp family’s red pole (紅棍).
The sound of it especially stuck with me because it weirdly sounded like a mom-insult.
And as for a red pole...
the executive in charge of the organization’s muscle.
“Since we have old ties, I’ll send you off peacefully.”
Li Cheng is the Golden Carp family’s strongest combat asset.
Very likely to become the final boss of this premium route.
He’s a Tier 3 mage.