“That thing from yesterday is quite the item, is it not?”
Lee Ho-gyu, the pawnshop owner and Black-market Dealer, said this after looking at the cybernetic arm Park Il-sang had torn off.
“They rushed me, intending to rob me. It was not as if I could simply let them.”
“That is true enough. In any case, you removed it cleanly. As expected of you, Mr. Park.”
Cybernetic arms were fairly expensive. At minimum, they started from ten million won.
Of course, depending on how one looked at it, ten million won for a single human arm or leg might be a low price.
“I will count it as one million. Two pieces, so two million.”
Of course, it was the brand-new product that cost around ten million won; used ones were cheaper. As a rule, the price fell to less than half depending on the condition.
If the goods came from a 5th-class Residential District like this, the price fell even further.
So one million was already a fairly generous offer.
He would probably repair those roughly and sell them for around two to three million. Park Il-sang knew this well, since someone he knew had bought a used cybernetic arm and leg for three million.
“That works for me.”
“Here is the money.”
Lee Ho-gyu, the pawnshop owner, handed over the cash.
Park Il-sang accepted it and tucked it away.
“But, Mr. Park, what exactly is your Job that you go around looking like that?”
“It is a New Job called Necromancer.”
It had been registered when his Hunter Registration Card was issued, and was personal information not practically public property these days?
It was information one could obtain cheaply even in the back alleys, so there was no reason to hide it.
“It was a New Job? Well, I suppose so. I heard there has been an uproar lately because so many New Jobs have appeared.”
“That is true. Well then, I hope business goes well.”
“Come again.”
Park Il-sang left the pawnshop with a much lighter step.
***
Today, he intended to earn money.
Hunters could only grow by entering Dungeons, but in truth, Dungeons were not places where one could earn much money.
Hunters earned their money in the Field instead.
They went outside the Great Wall and hunted in the demonized wilds, where Monsters swarmed.
Monster corpses became money, after all.
However.
In the case of Field hunting, one did not grow. It meant that even if one spent a hundred days killing Monsters, one would not grow by even a single point.
‘But I am a little different.’
Park Il-sang was not just any Hunter.
He was a Hunter who had once been an Arch Lich in his previous life!
He knew all sorts of methods that others did not.
‘Let us see…. I am fairly far from the city now. Shall I begin?’
“Come out.”
CLATTER.
Something huge and pure white burst out from the [Corpse Box] on his back.
A Skeleton Beast.
Kitty.
The Skeleton Beast, which was as large as a large truck, stood on the ground.
The reason it was bigger than before? Because he had fused even more skeletons into it!
He climbed onto the chair on its back and fastened the belt tightly.
After that,
he took out all the Skeleton Centaurs.
Kitty currently consumed the control capacity of twenty bodies.
It had been an unavoidable choice in order to increase its size.
Each Skeleton Centaur consumed the control capacity of four bodies.
Because of that, there were exactly five of them.
A leftover control capacity of two bodies remained, but he left it alone. That could increase later anyway.
“Let us go.”
“Grrrrr.”
Kitty and the Skeleton Centaurs began to run.
They left Seoul and headed straight east. Originally, this would have been the area where Gimpo City appeared, but the current Gimpo City had long since become demonized wilds.
Half of the apartment buildings had collapsed, and the remaining half were covered in plants that had crossed over from another world.
This place was the main hunting ground of F-Grade Hunters.
All sorts of creatures, such as Goblins, Kobolds, Ratmen, Blade Spiders, and Armored Centipedes, lived there while forming an ecosystem.
The distance was not particularly great either. As he ran along while riding Kitty, he saw people driving Hunter-only trucks far in the distance.
They were also heading to Gimpo.
As expected, cars were fast, and they soon disappeared from view.
***
Once he entered the Gimpo Demonized Forest, even the atmosphere was different.
Park Il-sang had come here so often during his days as a Menial Worker that it was already a familiar place to him.
Gunshots could be heard in the distance as well.
There were screams, the sounds of people dying, and the sounds of Monsters dying.
Amid that commotion,
he took out items from a bag he had prepared separately, not from [Corpse Box].
A burner. A grill plate. And meat.
SIZZLE!
Sitting on Kitty’s back, he grilled the meat.
One might wonder what kind of foolish nonsense this was, but it was a traditional hunting method.
If one did this, Monsters would soon rush in.
Because the smell of grilling meat drove them absolutely mad!
As he grilled the meat like that, eventually, a Monster came bursting out.
“Tsk. It is a mushroom?”
A Walking Mushroom.
As the name implied, it was a mushroom that walked. And these things did not make money.
Other than the fact that they were edible, there was nothing remarkable about them.
The world might have been half-ruined, but in an era with cybernetics technology and even Cultured Meat, was there really any need to eat a Monster like that?
No matter how poor one was, there was artificially produced food.
THUD! THUD! THUD!
The Walking Mushroom approached while making strange footfalls.
Kitty raised a front paw.
Then brought it down.
CRUNCH!
It became something that had ‘once been’ a mushroom.
“This… is a really bad omen.”
If a mushroom appeared as the first Monster of a hunt, it was a dud.
There was a superstition like that.
It was because this thing did not make money.
It would not even cover fuel costs. Would one’s ancestors pay the cost of hiring Menial Workers? That all cost money too.
Hunters earned a lot of money, but in this half-ruined dystopian world, a Hunter’s income was the price of risking their life.
In old-fashioned terms, they lived by the sword.
Naturally, Menial Workers were the same.
If the Hunters were wiped out, would the Menial Workers survive? At times, Hunters would even throw Menial Workers out as bait in order to save themselves.
However, in the end, Menial Workers were also a fairly high-income profession, even if they did not earn as much as Hunters.
That was why Raid Leaders (short for raid-party leaders) all had to think about profits, which made their job rather troublesome.
But for the first Monster to be a Walking Mushroom?
It felt like,
‘I am going to have bad luck! Graaaaagh!’
Something like that.
“Sigh. Fine, what can I do? Whether in my previous life or this one, having bad luck seems to be my default.”
He shook his head and sighed.
Then he continued grilling the meat.
After a while, other things began to appear.
The first to appear was what people commonly called a Pill Bug.
It looked similar to an actual pill bug. The problem was that it was as large as a person.
If one had a phobia of bugs, the mere sight of it would be enough to send a chill down one’s spine!
WHOOSH! CRUNCH!
Yes. Skeleton Beasts did not know anything about that.
“Today really is ruined, is it not?”
And
Pill Bugs did not make money either.
After that, one unprofitable, pathetically weak creature after another appeared in succession. Of course, there were so many of them that an ordinary F-Grade Hunter would probably have struggled.
However, they were no match for the Skeleton Beast Kitty!
This was what made Undead good.
Aside from bones, they did not require any separate maintenance costs!
There was, however, a problem.
“No. Not a single thing with bones is coming out? Is this real?”
Park Il-sang was so dumbfounded that he could not control his expression.
Money was money, but in truth, there was a reason he had come this far to hunt.
He had come to obtain some bones.
Another Necromancer exploit.
Mass-producing [Corpse Box]!
That was right.
There was no need for him to carry [Corpse Box] on his own back!
If he made them and equipped Undead with them, they could be used as well.
One might call them auxiliary batteries.
It might sound like an absurdly unfair ability, but Necromancers were originally unfair. Their floor was extremely high, and one might say their ceiling was also in the upper tier.
However, it was true that when they reached the final end point, they were a little weaker than other Mages.
After all, Space Mages crossed through space and collapsed space itself, while Time Mages reached the point where they could toy with time itself.
Even if Necromancers reached the ultimate level, they amounted to little more than ‘I do not die.’ Their destructive power and versatility were a little ambiguous.
That was why, once Necromancers reached a fairly high level, it was common for them to dabble in other forms of Magic as well.
In any case.
Having a high floor was a major advantage. Thanks to that, Necromancers had played a very active role in his previous life when fighting the Demon King’s Army.
Demon Zombies. They were very good.
That was that.
But the current situation was bad. It had been an hour since he started grilling meat.
By now, the meat had burned completely, and there was nothing left to grill.
So he threw it away and looked around. There were all sorts of corpses, but the problem was that none of them had bones.
There were only insect-type and plant-type Monsters everywhere!
“Did all the Goblins and Kobolds get wiped out or something? This is ridiculous….”
Sighs kept escaping him. They did not make money, did not help him grow, and could not even be used as materials.
Ah. There were no bones. No bones!
Of course, flesh could be used if he wanted to use it.
A horrible and grotesque lump.
Or an Undead made by sewing pieces of flesh together, called an Abomination.
However, the situation was not good for using such things openly.
Zombies smelled terrible, first of all!
Back when he was an Arch Lich, it did not matter because he had no sense of smell, but did he not now have a living body?
He did not want to go around accompanied by a rotten stench.
One could say he had wasted nothing but time, with no real gain.
It was then,
when he was thinking that.
“I came to see who was still using such an outdated hunting method…. What the hell is this? Are you a Summoner?”
A man wearing a glossy black combat suit appeared.
***
Kim Hoon-cheol was an ordinary Hunter, the kind one could find anywhere. His Grade was D+.
He was a Hunter several stages above F. Naturally, he had considerable experience, and he had earned quite a bit of money.
Once Hunters reached D-Grade, they could live decently even if they worked in a relaxed manner. Even without entering Dungeons anymore, the profits from catching Monsters in the Field were fairly substantial.
With the money they earned, they could enter a 2nd-class Residential District. Of course, it was not enough for them to spend the rest of their lives playing and eating, but they could still live comfortably.
And most Hunters settled down there.
Because D-Grade was called the Beginner’s Wall.
Why?
Because in order to go from D to C, one had to complete a special Quest, and the mortality rate there was over a staggering fifty percent.
It meant risking one’s life, so naturally, they had no choice but to settle down there.
Among such Hunters, people who tried to use exploits inevitably appeared.
Kim Hoon-cheol was one of those Hunters.
He would offer sacrifices to an Evil God Constellation!
By doing that, he was trying to cross over into C-Grade.