Chapter 328

Seo Taeran’s subordinates, having released the first-stage seal, showed no hesitation.

Since they had already exposed one of their secrets, they no longer held back in using their power.

With their sealed bodies unleashed, the Gauntlets of Assassination equipped, and even holy water added on top of that, ordinary undead stood no chance against them.

The zombie soldiers that emerged from the darkness melted away instantly under their assault.

Unlike the ghostified undead, the zombie soldiers still possessed physical bodies.

Their frail flesh could not withstand the barrage unleashed by Seo Taeran’s men.

After wiping out every last zombie soldier, the subordinates looked toward Seo Taeran.

They were waiting for her next order.

Seo Taeran’s gaze turned to Zeon.

“Where do we go now?”

“If we keep going like this for about a hundred meters, we’ll reach a dead end. There should be a path turning to the left there.”

“You can see all that?”

“Rather than seeing it, I can feel it.”

Zeon answered calmly.

Just because this space had been swallowed by deep darkness did not mean it had become complete nothingness.

The darkness had merely taken over the terrain that originally existed.

Zeon’s senses pierced through the darkness and spread throughout the underground space.

It was possible because there was sand even underground.

Seo Taeran nodded.

“That’s quite a convenient ability. It would’ve been nice if I’d awakened something like that too.”

“Aren’t your abilities already good enough? You’re the second-in-command of Neo Seoul, after all.”

“If I had stronger abilities, I could be of even greater help to the Mayor.”

“I always think this, but your loyalty is incredible.”

“Mr. Zeon, have you ever considered joining City Hall? If you want, I could even offer you the position of vice mayor.”

“I’ll pass.”

“Why? Is the vice mayor position not enough for you?”

“As you know, I don’t like being tied down anywhere.”

“That’s strange coming from someone who’s formed connections with quite a lot of people.”

“Those are relationships that formed naturally.”

“So you dislike anything artificial? Is that the right way to understand it?”

There was a sharp edge in Seo Taeran’s voice.

She was offended that Zeon had rejected her proposal again.

Zeon was the first person she had tried to recruit twice, and also the first person to reject her both times.

The unfamiliar experience filled her with anger.

Fortunately, Seo Taeran was an extremely rational person, and she knew how to quickly regain control of her emotions.

“I said something unnecessary. Pretend you didn’t hear it.”

“Fine by me.”

Zeon nodded and walked past Seo Taeran.

Seo Taeran stared fixedly at his back.

Other than Jin Geumho, there was no one Seo Taeran feared or found difficult to deal with. Yet even for her, Zeon was a troublesome opponent.

He treated those on his side warmly, but kept a blade-sharp distance from anyone outside that line.

He fundamentally blocked off any room for approach.

Emotional appeals did not work on him, and threats worked even less.

Nor could she threaten him using the people close to him as hostages. If she tried, Neo Seoul itself would be reduced to ruins.

Zeon was that kind of man.

That was why he was so incredibly difficult to handle.

‘Still, in the end, he’ll kneel beneath me. No matter how strong an individual is, he can’t stand against all of Neo Seoul.’

Concealing her true thoughts, Seo Taeran followed behind Zeon.

The victor is the one who smiles last.

Until then, one must know how to endure.

Fortunately, Seo Taeran possessed tremendous patience.

Thunk!

A dull sound came from Zeon’s foot as he walked ahead.

He had reached a wall.

It was the hundred-meter point Zeon had mentioned.

At the dead end, Zeon turned left.

“He’s practically a ghost himself. To walk freely through darkness this thick…”

The old man clicked his tongue in admiration at Zeon’s appearance .

Zeon paid no attention to such reactions and continued walking silently.

Fortunately, after the zombie soldiers, there were no more undead attacks. Even so, no one relaxed their guard as they followed behind Zeon.

No one knew how long they walked like that.

Everyone’s sense of time had become distorted.

It felt as though they had walked for hours, or perhaps wandered for days.

If not for Zeon, who acted like a lighthouse guiding them, they would have collapsed from exhaustion long ago or lost their way and been separated.

It was only because Zeon walked ahead so steadily and unwaveringly that they could follow him almost blindly.

Then Zeon, who had remained silent the entire time, finally spoke.

“There’s the exit.”

“The exit?”

The twins reacted first.

Being the youngest, they were mentally the most exhausted.

Seo Taeran frowned.

“Where exactly is this exit you’re talking about?”

“Just a little farther.”

“How much farther—”

“Here.”

Zeon suddenly stopped.

Because of that, Seo Taeran, who had been following right behind him, almost slammed face-first into his back.

Fortunately, she managed to stop just in time and avoided colliding with him.

“Where exactly is this exi—”

The moment Seo Taeran opened her mouth, Zeon fired a Fire Missile forward.

Boom!

With a deafening explosion, the door blocking their path shattered apart, and brilliant light poured in.

“Ugh!”

“Ah!”

Eyes that had adapted to the darkness could not endure the sudden intensity of the light.

Everyone except Zeon squeezed their eyes shut as tightly as possible to avoid the pain.

Only Zeon kept his eyes open as he stared ahead.

“Hoo…”

A sigh escaped him unconsciously.

The sight visible beyond the blinding light stirred him deeply.

Beyond the exit stood a massive structure supported by enormous pillars.

It resembled some kind of temple he had once seen before.

The problem was the countless corpses strewn throughout the corridor of what appeared to be the temple.

Every single body had collapsed in a horrific state.

They were the awakened ones from the expedition team that had entered this place earlier.

The corpses had already rotted, swarming with maggots.

The twin sisters’ faces twisted at the sight.

“Damn it!”

“What the hell happened in here? How did so many people die?”

Judging by the equipment they wore, they had all been powerful awakened ones.

Seeing such people reduced to rotting corpses crawling with maggots was more than enough to deliver a horrifying visual shock.

After examining the bodies for a moment, Seo Taeran tilted her head.

“This is strange.”

“It certainly is.”

The old man agreed with Seo Taeran.

The twin sisters asked with puzzled expressions,

“What’s strange about it? Sure, seeing this many corpses is shocking, but not exactly strange…”

“Looks like you girls can’t see what’s wrong.”

“Then what exactly is strange?”

The twins snapped back as they glared at the old man.

The one who answered their question, however, was not the old man but Brielle.

“The corpses are already this badly decomposed.”

“So what about that…?”

“The timeline doesn’t match.”

“What timeline?”

“It’s only been about a week since the expedition team fell underground. There’s no way the bodies could decay this much in that amount of time.”

“Idiot! Why wouldn’t they? Bodies rot quickly when exposed to air.”

“That’s true outside. But in here, the temperature is abnormally cold.”

“Oh… you’re right.”

Only then did the twins realize just how freezing the air inside the temple was.

It was so cold that their breath naturally fogged in front of them.

As Brielle said, it made no sense for corpses to decay this quickly in such an environment.

“There’s something here.”

“Definitely something.”

The twin sisters simultaneously wore grim expressions.

At that moment—

Crack! Creak!

The corpses that had been rotting with maggots suddenly began to rise with the sound of grinding bones.

As the bodies staggered upright, dragging their decayed entrails behind them, ghostfire flickered in their eyes.

The sight of corpses swarming with maggots while ghostfire burned from their eyes was utterly horrific.

The problem was that among the corpses were people Seo Taeran, the old man, and the twins personally knew.

Even Seo Taeran, considered one of the coldest and most composed figures in Neo Seoul, momentarily lost her calm at the gruesome sight.

“That person is definitely the captain of the Blue Hawk Raid Team.”

The captain of the Blue Hawk Raid Team had been a B-rank martial artist.

His main skill was Berserker.

True to its name, it transformed him into a rage-crazed berserker capable of sweeping away enemies with terrifying force.

Though the aftereffects were severe and prevented him from using it for long, during the thirty minutes the skill was active, he was practically invincible.

The fact that such a powerful awakened one had died was shocking enough.

But now he had revived as an undead.

Seo Taeran could hardly believe it.

“What kind of person could do something like this?”

“A necromancer.”

“There are real necromancers?”

“And an extremely powerful one at that. We may soon witness something even more horrifying than this.”

Zeon’s voice had sunk lower than ever before.

That was how intense the sense of danger pressing down on him was.

There was no such thing as an ordinary necromancer.

The very existence of a necromancer was abnormal.

One who rejects death.

A profane being that openly denies the natural order of the world.

One who piles corpses into mountains to build a temple solely for themselves.

That was what necromancers were in Zeon’s knowledge.

“So this place was the temple of a high-ranking necromancer.”

“But how can a necromancer build a temple? Aren’t they beings that deny the gods themselves?”

“Perhaps they intend to become a god themselves.”

“That’s…”

The old man trailed off with a groan.

Zeon’s words were simply too shocking.

Seo Taeran asked in place of the speechless old man,

“Is something like that even possible?”

“I don’t know myself. But the owner of this temple certainly believed so. Otherwise, they wouldn’t have built a place like this.”

At that moment, Brielle—who had remained silent until now—suddenly spoke.

“Pilgrim!”

“What?”

“A necromancer from the legends of Kurayan. The worst necromancer in history, who slaughtered tens of thousands of people and built a temple from their corpses. They said he did it to become a god. Every race in Kurayan joined forces to hunt him down, and only after unimaginable sacrifice did they finally manage to kill him.”

“There was really a necromancer like that? How do you even know this?”

Seo Taeran looked at Brielle suspiciously.

But Brielle felt no need to explain herself to Seo Taeran.

Besides, there was no time.

Krrrgh!

Grrroooar!

The dead awakened ones were already approaching them while making grotesque noises.

The sight of the decayed awakened ones shambling forward with creaking bones was horrifying enough to haunt nightmares.

Zeon muttered in a deeply sunken voice,

“I don’t know if the owner of this temple is truly Pilgrim, but I’ll give them credit for their twisted taste.”

To make the people who came to rescue the expedition team fight against the expedition team’s own corpses.

It was crude, but there were few methods more effective at breaking a person’s spirit.

Zeon asked Brielle,

“How do we grant peace to the dead?”

“You either kill the necromancer, or completely destroy the bodies at the atomic level—or burn them. Otherwise, they’ll revive endlessly and continue tormenting you.”

“I see.”

Zeon nodded and stepped forward.

At that moment, the sand piled across the ground began to ripple.

The sand surged like a wave and slammed into the resurrected dead.

KRAAANG!

The violently spinning sand shredded the undead down to the atomic level, while White Phosphorus Flames burned away the remaining fragments until not even a trace remained.

The dead raised by the necromancer were erased from the world just like that.

Within the blazing flames, Zeon murmured,

“I know you’re watching me. I won’t keep you waiting for long, Necromancer.”