Death King Karnak Novel - Chapter 19

Death King Karnak

5. Darkness of the End (3)

Fred shouted once again, “Arise, evil spirit!”

He shouted again and again until the veins on his neck stiffened.

“Kill him on my orders!”

The creature was immobile. Lying flat at Karnak’s feet like a well-behaved puppy, it didn’t move.

Karnak grumbled while looking at Fred, “Why do you keep calling it an evil spirit? It has a name with which it should be called.”

Barros replied while putting the sword around his waist.

“If you haven’t learned it, you might.”

In the first place, Fred did not formally learn necromancy. He just gained the power of darkness in an instant and used it instinctively. He only had these concepts in his head: evil spirits, many evil spirits, and even stronger evil spirits.

“This creature is also a kind of evil spirit, right? I don’t think I said it wrong.”

“From my point of view, don’t they shrivel up a lot?”

Let’s change that to common sense.

Like a commander ordered his soldiers to:

“Go, humans!”

“Kill them all, people!”

How awkward would that be? This was exactly how it felt to a necromancer.

Karnak’s expression crumpled.

“He did this stupid thing, so why are you ashamed of me watching it? Damn it……”

Fred’s eyes suddenly changed.

“That power…….”

Karnak felt nothing when using magic. But now it’s different. Violent, deceptive, and negative energy flowed from his body.

“You were a necromancer too!”

“Did you find that only now? Quite a dull fellow.”

He couldn’t use necromancy with chaos magic. However, Karnak still had leftover evil energy and command after refining his chaotic magic. It was an extremely concentrated command power.

Of course, the total amount itself is extremely small. In terms of command power alone, it was less than one-tenth of Fred’s. However, it was overwhelmingly superior in all areas except capacity. Enough to overwhelm any creature.

Fred shouted as if it was unfair, “You couldn’t live by helping other necromancers, so you decided to become a dog of the church!”

Karnak and Barros widened their eyes. Their reaction was like they had heard something really out of the ordinary.

“What now? Do you live by helping necromancers?”

“Wow, does he really not have even the tiniest amount of common sense?”

“To be such an innocent necromancer, that’s new.”

Necromancers were beings that fed on death and darkness. This death and darkness made up the existence of the necromancer. No, it was rather like a great elixir.

Because of that, it was never possible for necromancers to get along well with each other. Either kill the opponent and consume their energy, or cast a strong ban on them and enslave them.

“Certainly, the world has changed. A necromancer talking nonsense like that.”

“At least in our time, there was no case where command power could only be obtained with knowledge.”

Fred watched carefully.

‘These guys…….’

Could it be because that guy had an overwhelming advantage over the creature? They treated him as if he was a prey that had already been caught and were talking amongst themselves.

‘Now then…….’

Suddenly Fred turned his back and started running with anger. He aimed to run away while they were talking.

“What the hell, are you trying to run away?”

Karnak did not bother to give chase. Why did he treat the likes of Fred as a pack of prey?

“Because I actually subdued them all.”

Darkness suddenly rose from Fred’s limbs as he fled. Darkness became a mighty grip and seized him.

“Keuk!”

Fred slumped to the floor, unable to take a few steps forwards. Karnak had already secretly subdued the opponent’s limbs with necromancy.

“Do you think I talk too much? It’s one of the main methods of necromancy to draw attention from the front and do other things behind the back.”

It’s called misdirection, and there’s even a separate chapter for it in books related to necromancy.

“Since I matched the young master’s rhythm, I’ve also gotten used to babbling while fighting. Actually, I don’t have to.”

Even while both were talking leisurely, the darkness was steadily doing its job. It climbed on its limbs, took control of its torso, and eventually rose to its head. Darkness began to twist and grip Fred’s soul.

A desperate scream erupted.

“U-Uaaagh!”

When the summoner fell, the summoned creature also disappeared by itself. Karnak stretched out his hand towards the stunned Fred. He was thinking of using mind control to extract information.

“Open your eyes, my servant…….”

Fred’s eyes closed and mouth opened.

“Yes, Master…….”

Soon he started uttering everything he knew. There was nothing significant about everything he said. Since he just got stronger, he ran amok and got caught. End. It was a very brief life.

“He was such a no-nonsense guy. There’s nothing to be gained through this guy.”

Barros asked, “Then what are you going to do now?”

“He should kill himself.”

It would become problematic if the Church of Ratiel learned about the two’s intervention.

“Go through his belongings and find something like a knife.”

“Yes.”

There was no case where a person on the run wouldn’t carry a sword. Even if not for self-defense, a knife was a must for travel. Barros found the dagger in Fred’s bosom and placed it in his hand.

“Let’s back off a bit. Blood will spurt.”

After retreating to a reasonable distance, Karnak manipulated Fred’s mind. Fred, distressed, cut his own throat with a dagger.

Pooh!

The blood splashed like a fountain, and he died then and there. Any witness could describe it as a ‘situation in which the necromancer, who was pursued along the flower road, took his own life while being pessimistic about it.’

“Now we just have to wait for Ratiel’s chasing party to find this body.”

“Wouldn’t it be discovered that he killed himself with command power?”

“If the other person was a normal human, we would get caught, but…”

Karnak reached over Fred’s corpse.

“In this case, there’s still a lot of dirty evil energy left on the corpse anyway. Wouldn’t it be obvious that you splashed some sewage on the excrement?”

Darkness rose from the corpse and headed towards Karnak. Black energy began to permeate fiercely into his grasp. Barros asked in surprise.

“Huh? Do you want to take command power?”

“Just a little bit. Shouldn’t most of it be left to the Church of Ratiel to avoid suspicion?”

“No, that’s not it… Didn’t you say you should rather avoid this filthy command power now?”

Chaotic magic takes too much effort to erase traces and manipulate them. Rather than absorbing filthy spirit power like Fred, it is more efficient to just absorb pure Yin energy from the start.

Karnak shook his head, “I’m not doing this to increase my strength. I’m trying to find out about the Oracle of Ruin. I might have something to salvage.”

He started concentrating on absorbing the darkness.

“……!”

Suddenly, his expression hardened. Barros asked in surprise.

“Why are you doing that, Young Master?”

There was no answer. As if in shock, his complexion only grew paler.

“…… Young master?”

For a while, Karnak stood firm in place. Barros was about to take his hand and asked confused, “Is something wrong?”

Suddenly, with a deep sigh, Karnak moved on.

“……Let’s head back to the mansion for now, Barros.”

He was the usual young master. Barros was relieved but puzzled at the same time.

‘Why are you being like that?’

To be precise, his expression was a little different from usual.

‘It’s like…….’

Karnak was more familiar with ghosts than anyone else in the world. He dealt with all sorts of ghosts and ruled over death and darkness, eventually being called the King of Death. So, Barros had thought he would never see Karnak make such an expression.

‘……You look like you’ve seen a ghost, right?’

⋆﹥━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━﹤⋆

As expected, Ratiel’s pursuers found Fred’s body. The work went without a hitch. After investigating the scene, Ratiel’s priests concluded that Fred had committed suicide.

It was so typical for the pursued necromancers to commit suicide because of pessimism that no one doubted Karnak or Barros. After expressing gratitude to the Zestrad estate, Ratiel’s pursuit team returned to the Church.

After that, Karnak went behind closed doors for a while. He stayed away from even Barros and lived in the gymnasium for most of the day except for sleeping time. He avoided contact with people so thoroughly that even meals were brought to the gymnasium.

This was the only known reason.
“I want to learn magic more deeply, so I will stay away from the world for a while.”

It’s common for knights and wizards to go through closed-door training to reach a new level, so it’s close to common sense. Didn’t Karnak leave the territory for training even during the dueling trial?

Barros thought so, too and moved on.

Even during his time as the Death King, Karnak, who was being researched, was often left alone for months. He was just a little puzzled.

“What was that look on your face then?”

A week passed just like that. Karnak finally came out of the gymnasium. And immediately called Barros.

“I heard you summoned me?”

“Yes.”

When Barros entered the study, Karnak immediately prepared his magic. Use chaos magic to thinly cover the entire study. It was a barrier that prevented sound from leaking out.

“Why the barrier at his own house?”

Watching that scene, Barros was even more puzzled.

It was a specially soundproofed library for quiet reading. So even when discussing necromancy, he didn’t show this level of caution.

“Why are you like this? It’s not like you, young master.”

Karnak opened his mouth slowly.

“Hey, Barros”

“Yes.”

“I did some research.”

“That, the darkness of the apocalypse?”

Few things were yielded from Fred, but one thing became certain. The fact that the black energy that influenced him was the same one called the ‘darkness of the end’ by the seven churches on the continent.

“Yes, that goddess’s oracle…. Um, that prophecy about the world’s destruction or end…….”

Karnak’s words continued to blur as he ran his fingers through his messed-up hair.

“Young master?”

Barros made a strange impression.

“Why are you moving your tongue like that?”

“Haaa…….”

After taking a deep breath, Karnak smiled.

“That made me the culprit.”

⋆﹥━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━﹤⋆

King Karnak used his enormous command power to twist space-time and connect the future and the past.

Sending one’s soul to the past using this connected space-time passage is the space-time regression technique.

After succeeding in this technique, he returned to this era, abandoning even his tremendous authority as the King of the Dead.

“I thought it was like this until now…….”

Sitting on a chair, Karnak murmured weakly.

“There was a part where I was mistaken.”

“You were mistaken?”

“Hmm.”

Suddenly, Karnak made another noise.

“Barros.”

“Yes?”

“Where do you think the energy of the world, such as fighting spirit and mana, is accumulated?”

Shaking his head, Barros asked again.

“Doesn’t it accumulate in the body?”

“Yes, to be precise, it accumulates in the body. According to common sense, that is.”

A knight’s fighting spirit or a wizard’s mana accumulates in the body. That’s why no matter how powerful a knight or wizard is, they can’t eventually overcome the flow of time.

The same goes for priests. Divine energy accumulates in the body, and the soul coordinates with the body to control the energy.

“The command power also accumulates in the body like this.”

Karnak lighted a little black flame and grabbed it after that.

After using chaos magic to erase the dirty energy, he continued.

“The space-time regression magic I created is a technique that discards the body and allows only the soul to escape and transcend space-time. There is nothing wrong with the method itself.”

The problem was that Karnak’s case was so unusual.

“I was Astra Schnapp, right?”

The King of all the undead. The absolute refined authority, comparable to that of the god of death.

“Here’s the question. What did I, the Death King, look like?”

Barros was dumbfounded.

Did he just ask that as a question to his confidant who had been watching him for nearly 100 years?

“What do you look like? A skeleton gourd covered in blue aura and walking around like an undead…….”

His expression, which had been blunt, hardened in an instant.

“Wait, like an undead?”

A deep sneer appeared on Karnak’s lips.

“Yes. Being the Astra Schnapp, I…….”

A being who abandoned his human body and created a spiritual body with the mighty authority of darkness, transcending fate and dominating death.

Yes. It was the body of the undead. It was an existence of chaos that seemed ambiguous whether it is a body or a soul.

“I naturally thought that my command power belonged to the body. But the soul was the real owner of the body.”

And Karnak’s soul transcended time and space and returned to this era.

“Impossible…….”

Barros’s mouth opened wide.

“Did young master’s commanding power also travel through time and space?”

[To be continued.]