Death King Karnak Novel - Chapter 26

Death King Karnak

7. A Model Necromancer (4)

 

Alius stuck out his tongue just before recalling the scene.

“How on earth can they fight like that?”

It wasn’t that he showed any superhuman abilities. It was far from the transcendent military force used by aura users or high-ranking wizards who had awakened fighting spirits.

‘The power of swordsmanship and magic itself is mediocre.’

But the skill was beyond imagination. They read and dodged every attack, targeted every weakness as if it was clear as day, and continued to do all of that without a single mistake and showing no nervousness whatsoever.

How much combat experience would one need to be able to do something like that? Alius also had a lot of experience for his age, but not to that extent. Although Alius was humble in front of others, he was well aware of his talent.

‘Even though they’re both still in their 20s. They’re the same age as me at best, but where did they get that kind of experience?’

“Were they hiding your skills?”

It didn’t match. There was no reason to claim that they hid their skills because didn’t the accused openly show such skills in combat? That sounded funny. Then there was only one conclusion.

Since they were still young, one had not awakened his fighting spirit while the other had low magic power, but their talent was so great that they pulled off such a thing with only their sense of battle!

‘Wow, I had heard about a lot of talented people while in the church…….’

Others could easily learn to do it by struggling over and over, but if you didn’t know that, you were an idiot. They were possessors of such great talents that even a genius would be jealous of them.

‘Did he say he was Baron Zestrad?’

They were not talented people who would be stuck in a country estate. And in such an increasingly chaotic situation, talent had always been in short supply.

‘I’ll find out as soon as I get back to the church.’

It was when Alius was lost in his thoughts for a while.

“Hey, priest?” Barros called him while Cleo’s back pressed against him.

“Now what? Kill or save?”

Alius came to his senses.

‘Now is not the time to be like this.’

As he approached the fallen Cleo, he aimed his staff at him.

“I’ll take care of it.”

Light began flowing from the tip of the wand. Cleo, who was lying on the floor, struggled in fear.

“Oh, I see.”

Ignoring it, Alius pointed the holy light at Cleo.

“Quaaaaagh!”

A scream erupted, and his blood vessels were stained dark red and stood out. The skin started to tear after a while, and black energy surged out. The black energy condensed in the air and was sucked into the bottle that Alius pulled out all at once.

After a while, all energy disappeared.

Barros and Karnak glanced at Cleo. It was after he had passed away.

 

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“As expected…….” Alius said to affirm that who had seen the holy light pour into the bottle.

“It is the darkness of the end.” Karnak smiled lightly.

‘Oh, you deal with it that way? I saw something good.’

He watched vividly from the side how the priest sealed the command power. It was a really great harvest.

On the other hand, Barros was worried.

[Can I do this? We need that too. Does it look like I just opened my eyes and was taken away?]

[Are you okay? I have prepared everything.]

[Prepared?]

It was then. Suddenly, a tentacle of darkness stretched out from a corner of the hallway and aimed at Alius.

Wow!

“Oops! There are still traps left……”

Alius turned around while looking all frightened, but his reaction was a bit delayed. The tentacles suddenly started choking him.

“Kuk! Kaa…….”

In his blurred vision, he saw Karnak running in amazement.

“Priest!”

Alius felt relieved inside, even after losing consciousness. He thought that since the necromancer had already been dealt with, they would do something about this.

‘I’m glad I didn’t come alone…….’

When Alius passed out completely, the tentacles that had choked him were released. The surprised Karnak also changed his expression.

“Done.”

Barros had a weird reaction.

“When did you prepare this?”

“Isn’t it the duty of a necromancer to have backup prepared?”

“But that’s the case if you have any doubts like this…”

Without muttering, Barros looked around.

“Well, isn’t that going to happen?”

The darkness of the end had been sealed in a bottle, but the residual evil energy still overflowed the corridor. And setting traps everywhere was originally one of the main specialties of necromancers.

“From this friend’s point of view, it’ll only look like he got trapped……”

“Actually, there is a bigger reason than that.”

Karnak slightly raised his chaos magic.

“Now, look? Is it magic?”

“What if it’s magic?”

“So I am a wizard now who uses normal magic.”

Barros also understood slowly.

“Oh, I see.”

Fred simply disregarded Karnak’s use of necromancy because of his ignorance and said, “This guy has hidden his identity!”

However, Alius was a respected priest. Even if a necromancer could pretend to be a wizard in front of the general public, it was impossible in front of the priest. Normal magic and fighting spirit, divine power, and command power were never compatible. That’s common sense.

“A man like him would doubt me when he had seen me using normal magic? Well, it’s actually chaos magic, but there’s little difference.”

Karnak grinned as he took out the black bottle that had fallen from Alius’s chest.

“It would be a perfect crime to return it after investigating it through this gap.”

 

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“Then where…”

Karnak concentrated for a moment as he breathed chaos magic into the darkness contained in the bottle.

Barros asked while watching, “Is it really the residue power of the young master?”

“That’s right.”

“We’re lucky. The necromancer we just found is exactly what we were looking for.”

“He wasn’t lucky.”

Karnak shrugged.

“Rather, it’s a natural course of affairs.”

In the previous life, a necromancer rarely appeared, like beans sprouting in a drought. On the other hand, because of the darkness of the end, they started appearing more frequently.

“Let’s say someone continuously pours about 10,000 other stones into a space that used to contain 10 stones. If you pick up a random stone from there, how likely are you to pick up the original stone from there?”

Most of those presently posing as necromancers were involved in the dark of the end.

“Even the stones that were there are gradually disappearing?”

Those were some facts he learned during his research. Cleo was a person who pursued necromancy even before the tribulation came. Originally, he was a pure necromancer, but his case involved killing another guy with the darkness of the end and absorbing his power.

“Even a conventional necromancer has started hunting for the darkness of the end and is giving it the highest priority in this situation. It must seem a very desirable prey.”

It was doubtful whether there would ever remain a necromancer unrelated to the darkness of the end. After the explanation, Karnak concentrated again. Barros, who had been waiting with great boredom, asked again after noticing something.

“So, did you pick up anything?”

“Okay. First of all, I know what this guy was doing…….”

According to the remaining thoughts, Cleo was active as a member of the cult serving Tesranak after obtaining the darkness of the end.

“Tesranak?”

Barros was puzzled. He had never heard of this name before.

“Hmm. The god of death?”

“Does that make sense?”

Even in the old days, there was an existence called the god of death.

Karnak asked himself.

He is not sane, but he is clearly of human origin, so it is unclear why such a grandiose title was given to him. According to the doctrine of the Church of the Seven Goddesses, death and darkness were not part of the realm of the goddesses.

Darkness was the concept of weakening the divine protection of the goddess of light, and the night was a time of fear when all kinds of demons and monsters ran amok.

Therefore, the goddess of the light drove away the darkness and turned night into day, and the goddesses of the moon’s stare continued to shine to give people light even in the darkness of the night.

Death was an unavoidable fate that disgraced humans face. If you believed in the seven goddesses and followed them, even after you died, you would be taken to the goddesses’ heaven and be freed from suffering.

If a person died without the protection of the goddess, the soul fell into hell infested with demons and suffered. Death and darkness were not separate phenomena but only the absence of life and light.

“But do you think there are separate gods of death and darkness?”

“The cultists seem to believe that.”

According to their doctrine, Tesranak was a god of death and rebirth that sowed the darkness of the end and was said to be a being who prepared a new paradise after purifying the turbid and false world with death.

Barros laughed.

“So that Tesranak is the one who created this tribulation. Is this the story?”

“I guess so.”

Karnak sighed absurdly.

“I’m really attached to everything. I made a god that doesn’t exist anywhere…”

From his point of view, it was a bizarre story.

“I can’t say yes or no, so should I just say that?”

“Right, what.”

He did some more searching but couldn’t find anything useful after that.

Because it was so fragmented, the amount of information was still too small to grasp the overall situation. More darkness of end was needed to find out more. He wasn’t particularly disappointed, though. Because he had expected it would be like this from the beginning.

“There are a lot of things I got this time, but I have to be satisfied with this much.”

Karnak smiled while drawing chaos magic from the bottle containing darkness.

“As expected, borrowing the power of a priest makes it super easy.”

“What?”

“Refining chaos magic.”

Chaos magic is purified spirit power. In other words, it could also be called the sealed command power. Theoretically, if you used the priest’s divine power, you could refine chaos magic much more quickly and easily!

“But there has to be a way to test this.”

After inviting a priest, if he said, ‘I’m going to use necromancy from now on, so please purify this with holy power’, he would get a very heated response. That was the biggest reason Karnak wanted to move with Alius.

Information on how divine power purifies spirit power and how to obtain the practical method to purify chaos magic. Karnak extracted all the chaos magic from the bottled darkness and put on a proud expression.

“Now I know what to do.”

The lack of knowledge filled, and the amount of magical power was more than doubled. It meant he had achieved a lot with little effort.

“With this, I can pretend to be a 4th circle wizard.”

Barros asked while looking back at the fainted Alius.

“Uh, then do I have to accompany that friend from now on?”

And knock him out every time like this? That didn’t seem like much. Unless he was an idiot, if the same situation repeated itself, he would definitely get suspicious.

“Of course not.”

Karnak shook his hand.

“The priests aren’t the only ones with divine power.”

There were cases in the world where objects other than people had divine power. They were called holy relics.

“Holy relics sound great, and in fact, they are surprisingly common.”

Holy water, Pasa amulets, and guardians that were sold for money in churches were also sacred objects. They were so common that they just didn’t feel like a relic.

“I have a lot of money, so I need to get a lot of it and use it for magic refining.

Since all of the information and magical power were to be extracted and eaten, there would be no need to deal with this darkness of the end anymore.

Karnak put the bottle back into Alius’ arms. Even if Alius checked the darkness, he wouldn’t find anything unusual. Not only did fraud and evil remained intact, but the act of extracting magical power from command power was usually difficult even to imagine.

“As in analogy, it’s like extracting only nutrients from excrement, but it’s hard to imagine from common sense, something like that.”

Barros frowned.

“Isn’t the analogy too dirty?”

“The necromancy is also such a dirty act. Especially for priests.”

“Were we that dirty beings?”

“Do you think we lived with all the hatred of the world for no reason?”

All that remains now is to wake up the fainted Alius. Karnak, after managing his expression for a while, quickly started shaking Alius. He raised his voice by acting and filled it with worries.

“Priest! Are you okay, priest!”

“Aaah…….” Alius slowly opened his eyes after a light moan.

Karnak breathed a sigh of relief.

“I’m so glad. You’re all right.”

Barros, who watched the scene, was just deluded.

[Wow, you don’t even put saliva on your mouth, and you act like that well?]

[Manage facial expressions! Barros!]

[Ah, yes!]

When Cleo died, the necromancy spell on Gel and the village was also broken. The disenchanted residents were shocked to realize the contradiction in their memories.

“My God, why did he look like such a young person?”

“Why did you think he was handsome?”

“Did even the priest of the church fall under the necromancer’s spell?”

Fortunately, Alius’ follow-up action calmed their fear. First of all, he matched the story with the village church. It wasn’t that the village church was neglecting it. In fact, he had been suspicious of Cleo the whole time. So, the Priest of Grasse secretly invited Alius to defeat Cleo.

It was announced in this way. Trust in the church was restored with this announcement. In addition, the fact that there was no real damage to the villagers was also great.

Clearly, Cleo had been preparing to catch village girls and use them as sacrifices. For the preliminary work, he tried to win favor by scattering money throughout the village.

However, it was caught by Alius right before the sacrificial ceremony. From the point of view of Gel and the village, did it become like taking money and washing your mouth?

“Oh wow, we almost got into trouble.”

“I’ll have to be careful in the future.”

Although the atmosphere became a bit heinous, the village managed to regain its stability. After finishing the cleanup, Alius headed to Derat City with Karnak and his party.

He asked questions to both of them along the way.

“Where did you two learn swordsmanship and magic?”

“You seem to have a lot of combat experience, but Baron Zestrad must be pretty rough, don’t you think?”

“Have you ever experienced a battle with a necromancer before?”

It seemed that he was pretty interested. Well, since they fought so actively, it was to be expected.

Karnak replied appropriately and passed it over.

“Fortunately, I had a chance to acquire the legacy of the old court mage. Sir Barros has learned Delphia’s swordsmanship technique.”

“Since our territory’s situation is a bit tough, there are many encounters with monsters.”

“Not too long ago, a necromancer fled to our territory, and we borrowed the power of the Church of Ratiel.”

By skillfully mixing lies and truth, the conversation went on quite smoothly. The time had finally come to arrive at Derat City and part ways.

“Are you two going back to the Estate now?”

At Alius’ question, Karnak shook his head.

“No. I will be staying in Derat City for a while.”

“Okay.”

While bowing elegantly, Alius gave an extended greeting.

“May Hatoba’s protection dwell on the two of you on your journey.”

Looking at his back as he walked away, Barros muttered nonchalantly.

“I guess we’ll see him again. That priest? He was very interested in us.”

“There is nothing to lose by making connections with a Goddess’s Church. Times have changed.”

Anyway, he had to keep looking for the darkness of the apocalypse. The more information sources he had, the better.

Karnak turned the horse’s head.

“Well then, let’s do our own thing.”

Barros followed excitedly.

“Yes! Let’s finish our tour of the unvisited restaurants!”

“Hey, the purpose is still to search for the darkness of the end, right?”

“So? Aren’t you going to eat?”

“I have to go, and it’s rice.”

 

[To be continued.]