10. Undead Leaders(3)
[You have ingested the item <Fragment of the Imugi's Inner Core>!]
[The item <Fragment of the Imugi's Inner Core> settles inside your body.]
[The item <Fragment of the Imugi's Inner Core> is in an incompletely absorbed state. (2/4)]
[The <Poison> status ailment deepens a further step.]
[By the effect of the skill <Indomitable Star>, you are freed from all status ailments.]
'Good. I wasn't too late.'
From Lee Jin-hyeok's position, the worst case was Majuron killing the three undead leaders first and taking the <Fragments of the Imugi's Inner Core> as well.
But the current situation was the best case.
His plan was to sneak in and take only the inner cores while Majuron was busy fighting the three undead leaders.
'Majuron has no information.'
So Majuron would have to subdue or threaten the leaders to get the information out of them.
But Lee Jin-hyeok, on top of the information he already had, had been able to pinpoint the inner cores by working the Scavengers like dogs.
Perhaps because they hated the idea of clashing with necromancers head on, they had strained every nerve and found passages that let them go around.
Thanks to that, Lee Jin-hyeok had already been able to ingest one inner core.
'I, is he even human?'
'He just swallows an inner core full of deadly poison?'
'This is insane...... is he a dragon that polymorphed or what?'
'There are no dragons anymore. Idiot.'
'Then how does that make any sense? How does a bastard who just came up to Floor 2......'
Gulp.
One glance from Lee Jin-hyeok and the Scavengers all shut their mouths at once.
Swallowing an inner core whole had apparently been shocking enough that now they could not even speak to him.
"Big Boss."
Only Keln came up to Lee Jin-hyeok and spoke.
"Wh, what do you intend to do now?"
"Find them. The rest as well."
"......Pardon?"
"While the time is being bought for us."
"Who is buying us time?"
Lee Jin-hyeok did not answer Keln's question.
He only smiled.
'Who else would it be.'
Grin.
'Majuron.'
Once a <Fragment of the Imugi's Inner Core> vanished, the undead leader lost its function.
Which meant that every time Lee Jin-hyeok absorbed an inner core, Majuron could subdue the leaders that much faster.
'There isn't much time.'
FLASH.
'In the worst case, Majuron subdues the remaining leaders and starts hunting for the inner cores first.'
But there was nothing to worry about.
Lee Jin-hyeok had specialists who had spent more than ten years exploring nothing but this terrain.
"This is the place!"
The place they arrived at next was Flu Flower's territory, in full bloom with purple flowers.
Pushing further inside, the inner core revealed itself before long.
[You have ingested the item <Fragment of the Imugi's Inner Core>!]
[The item <Fragment of the Imugi's Inner Core> settles inside your body.]
[The item <Fragment of the Imugi's Inner Core> is in an incompletely absorbed state. (3/4)]
[The <Poison> status ailment deepens a further step.]
[By the effect of the skill <Indomitable Star>, you are freed from all status ailments.]
Skull Lord's inner core, and now Flu Flower's as well.
Only one inner core remained.
Dead Skin's.
"Is he impervious to ten thousand poisons or what?"
"He wolfed down every inner core and he's still alive?"
"This is insane......"
Keln, and the Scavengers.
Those traveling with Lee Jin-hyeok could not contain their astonishment.
To be truthful, when he ate the first inner core, they had thought they would be free men.
It was a poison so extreme that merely coming near it would melt every piece of equipment they had.
But it was not so.
Lee Jin-hyeok had walked up in silence and simply swallowed the inner core.
'A monster......'
Once could happen, but when he did it a second time, that was no coincidence.
A monster off the scale.
A monster with a body no one could believe was human.
"Boss. I think we provoked the wrong man."
"You're only realizing that now? You bonehead."
"Why take it out on me? I said we should back off!"
'Damn it all......'
Keln squeezed his eyes shut.
That was right.
He had plainly had the chance to see Lee Jin-hyeok and simply pass him by.
And had he done so, Lee Jin-hyeok would not be working them like slaves now.
'Stripped of my Epic grade item, stripped of every point I'd saved......'
Holding back tears inwardly, Keln bowed his head to Lee Jin-hyeok.
"Congratulations, Big Boss."
"Congratulations!"
"Congratulations!"
"What are we, a gang?"
Lee Jin-hyeok shook his head.
"Guide me to the next place."
"Yes!"
[You have ingested the item <Fragment of the Imugi's Inner Core>!]
[The item <Fragment of the Imugi's Inner Core> settles inside your body.]
[The item <Fragment of the Imugi's Inner Core> is completely absorbed! (4/4)]
[All <Fragments of the Imugi's Inner Core> in your possession are consumed!]
[*Warning! The <Poison> status ailment begins inflicting enormous damage!]
[By the effect of the skill <Indomitable Star>, you are freed from all status ailments.]
Lee Jin-hyeok was able to ingest the last remaining inner core, Dead Skin's.
"Hiiiik?"
"R, run for it......!"
"It's poison!"
As the four separated <Fragments of the Imugi's Inner Core> merged into one, poison mist began pouring out of every opening in Lee Jin-hyeok's body.
Touching the skin or breathing it in was a fatal blow on its own.
The Scavengers, with no immunity to status ailments, began running the moment they saw it.
[A hidden condition has been satisfied.]
[*Warning! Your body is beginning to change.]
'Hrgh......!'
Being freed from every status ailment did not mean he built up a tolerance to the pain of the upheaval his body itself went through.
The agony of every muscle twisting and his skin burning away and turning inside out.
'I thought I'd gotten used to the pain of my whole body burning.'
<Pure Radiance>'s main powers were intense light and Divine Power.
So he was used to the agony of skin burning away.
But this was another kind of pain entirely.
The sensation of every cell in his body changing into something else.
'Endure...... I have to endure.'
Pressure bore down on his body until his eyes felt ready to burst, but he held out stubbornly.
[You have acquired the skill <Imugi's Blood>.]
['Imugi' is added to your race value.]
CRACKLLLE......!
Before long the poison mist around him lifted, and the man crouched in the middle of it rose to his feet.
"......."
The area around him had melted away completely.
The <Eternal Frost> and the other equipment he had set aside before eating the last inner core were thankfully safe.
"Hoo."
When Lee Jin-hyeok let out a sigh, poison energy formed and stained the air around him murky.
The Imugi.
A monster that failed to ascend and so never became a dragon.
In the Tower it was a powerful monster, famous for holding an extreme poison.
Having gained the race value of such an Imugi, the skill he had just obtained was Legendary grade, no less.
After stealing a Constellation's body, now the blood of an Imugi ran in him.
'I can't even call myself human now.'
Looking at the black scales risen on his palms and up his forearms, Lee Jin-hyeok gave a bitter smile.
"Skill window."
{Skill}
<Imugi's Blood>
Grade: Legendary
▶'Imugi' is added to your race value.
▶Your Mana stat rises by an amount equal to your level. (Currently: [Mana +24])
▶An extreme poison comes to run in your blood.
▶When mana or poison is applied, scales rise on your skin.(*The scales absorb impact and raise physical and magic resistance.)
▶Digests poison to raise your Mana stat at random.
An Imugi is a creature that grows stronger the more extreme poison it consumes.
'And the way it works is, once it ascends and becomes a dragon, all the poison it gathered turns into mana.'
Swish.
'Status window.'
{Status Window}
Name: Lee Jin-hyeok
Race: Human, Imugi
Level: 24
[Strength: 68] [Vitality: 63] [Agility: 65]
[Mana: 49] [Divine Power: 0]
"Is it finally over?"
In truth, the <Fragments of the Imugi's Inner Core> had come more easily than Lee Jin-hyeok himself expected.
It was because Majuron was busy fighting the undead leaders, which left their homes empty.
'The Scavenger bastards' help was considerable too.'
Even so, the time this journey took came to a full fortnight.
They were located farther away than expected, and he had avoided the necromancers wherever possible, which was why it took this long.
'By now Eike should have finished the item.'
A fortnight had passed, so the item would have been done long ago.
***
Odusasa's corpse, put up on the auction house one day out of nowhere.
The moment she saw it, Majuron knew.
That after a full two years, her chance had come.
'Two years. Two whole years in this damned place without even sunlight.'
Tight grip.
'At last I can take the leaders' corpses.'
Majuron.
She was a being who set foot in various fields and combined them to create new domains.
What she had taken an interest in recently were the four undead leaders on Floor 2, <Dead Run>.
Undead that had each taken a quarter share of the Imugi's power.
Individuals that possessed a self and had outstanding ability at dominating lower-order undead.
She was certain that merging them all into a chimera would produce a summon with tremendous power.
'For a name...... Imugimera should do nicely.'
The <Fragments of the Imugi's Inner Core> they held would serve as the power source.
The chimera itself would be a calamity, but the greatest advantage of all was being able to control lower-order masses 'perfectly.'
'I was lucky that Odusasa died.'
Grin.
'Because with my power as it is now, subduing all four leaders is impossible.'
In fact, using a little more of her power would have made it possible.
But that would mean expending considerable power, and that would be an opening for the damned 'Saint' hunting her.
So she had not been able to use great power, and fortunately the chance had come.
Three leader undead instead of four was manageable.
"Quietly."
CRUNCH!
"Kneel!"
The countless magic circles unfolded beside Majuron shone and pressed in on the three leaders clustered together.
And in that moment.
Something strange happened.
FIZZLE......!
In the middle of a taut standoff and battle, Skull Lord suddenly lost its strength and collapsed.
"What on earth......?"
Thanks to that, Majuron easily subdued the other two leaders.
'But something about this......'
She felt something was off, but assumed it was the work of her own magic.
Yet the identity of that unease was revealed not long after.
"......!"
Flu Flower, and then Dead Skin as well.
She had plainly kept them alive with their selves intact to use in her research, and at some point they simply toppled over.
Corpses that did not move, as though they had met death.
"This damn......!"
GRRRRIND—!
Only then did Majuron grasp the situation, and she began raging in fury.
"Which bastaaaard! Which bastard do I get to tear apart for stealing the inner cores while I was fightiiiing!"
BOOM! BOOM!
"How! How is this even possible! There shouldn't be another High Ranker on Floor 2!"
There was no High Ranker who knew poisons better than Majuron.
And even Majuron would have to spend at least several months making an antidote to barely withstand an Imugi's poison.
And yet in the few days she spent fighting the leaders and subduing and hauling them in, every inner core had been stolen?
It made no sense.
"Ughhh...... Right. The only ones with any resistance to poison are those bastards."
Judging that what was hers had been taken, Majuron let her malice show wildly.
"<Pure Radiance>. That damned bastard's followers!"
***
'Majuron will think <Pure Radiance> intercepted the inner cores.'
Majuron was hot-tempered and a villainess, but she was extremely intelligent and logical.
Someone like her would know perfectly well that there were only a few 'players' capable of taking the <Fragments of the Imugi's Inner Core>.
The most likely candidate among them was <Pure Radiance>'s third Apostle, the one pursuing her.
It would be Elena, who went by the epithet 'Saint.'
'She won't imagine that a player who has only just come up to Floor 2 took them.'
Looking at the <Archive> records she might know that Lee Jin-hyeok killed Odusasa, but she would never think he could withstand the poison.
Even if Lee Jin-hyeok, who had killed Odusasa, brushed past her list of suspects, her arrogantly logical way of thinking was more likely to narrow her own field of view instead.
'Immunity to every status ailment. There's no way she could imagine a skill like this exists.'
From her position, now that she had secured the corpses of the four leader undead, she would not waste time.
'She'll just be nursing her thirst for revenge against Elena.'
With the inner cores gone and the corpses secured, she would have no reason to stay on Floor 2.
She would go to the floor where she mainly operated.
'Which means <White Castle> becomes a little safer.'
However constrained she was, Majuron was a High Ranker.
He had intercepted all the <Fragments of the Imugi's Inner Core> that should by rights have gone to her, so he was satisfied with that much.
Grin.
'Imugimera. She won't be able to make that cursed chimera now either.'
Before the regression.
There had been a chimera called Imugimera.
An infamous chimera that slaughtered countless commoners and players.
Its main body alone was powerful, and it could control every lower-order undead, which made it enormously troublesome.
But with no <Fragments of the Imugi's Inner Core>, the thing could not even be made now.
"That takes care of it."
After gathering the rest of his equipment, Lee Jin-hyeok stepped out of the cave.
"Still, they've got some nerve."
Grin.
"A little danger and they bolt straight away?"
Lee Jin-hyeok's eyes gleamed.
"They can't have gotten far."