Necromancer Survival

Chapter 136

TW: self harm

The skeleton remained within a certain distance while rushing at me. When I ignored the skeleton–thinking that was all it could do–and reached out a hand towards Choi Lee-kyung…

Crack–!

A strange light suddenly appeared from within the skeleton’s skull, different from before. The unique glow of a skill enveloped its teeth and jaw. Interested, I didn’t avoid it and stayed still. Soon, the skeleton’s hard teeth succeeded in biting through my hand.

‘Maybe because I’m an undead…my pain receptors have dulled.’

I checked my half-torn knuckles. After eyeing me, the skeleton put more force on its jaws, as if it were trying to completely bite them off.

I’d had enough, so I grabbed the skeleton’s skull with the unbitten hand and hurled it into the corner of the room. Since I tossed it lightly, the skeleton was able to quickly stand up again, but it couldn’t avoid the chains that sprung forth from the floor. In the midst of rushing towards me, its limbs were tied up.

[Clack – clack – clack]

The clacking sound was annoying, so the chains wrapped around its mouth like a gag. Somehow, the ensuing gnawing sound was more agitating to my ears.

I checked the recovering condition of my bitten fingers that were fluttering in the air. My mood wasn’t soured since I had uncovered quite a lot of information.

‘So it’s possible for servants under the same master to attack each other; if injured, I can barely feel the pain… However, since I had yet to be exposed to holy attacks, I could hardly be confident about the lack of pain…’

It took almost a minute for the bitten finger to recover. Still glancing sideways at the struggling skeleton, I retrieved an appropriate item from my inventory.

[Martyr’s Sword]

The retrieved weapon was a long sword often used as a secondary weapon by Paladins that benefited from an additional effect that dealt extra damage to the undead.

This perfect item suddenly crossed my mind, and I gripped it in my hands without delay. I approached the skeleton and took a swing, but, just before the tip cleaved the skeleton’s skull in two, I stopped.

“……”

I turned back to look at Choi Lee-kyung–he was still in deep, turbulent sleep. He wouldn’t wake up, no matter what happened.

However, I sheathed the sword; I also released the skeleton from my binding skills. Even though it was free from my chains, the skeleton didn’t move–it knew that it had been suppressed thoroughly.

Kick–!

I kicked the skeleton towards the bed. Only then, trembling, did it crawl under Choi Lee-kyung’s mattress.

Crouching in that position, it raised its head towards me; two red, unblinking dots were glaring at me from under the bed. It was a gaze I had seen many times while still alive–I understood its meaning immediately.

“So, you have an ego too, huh?”

[……]

It was a hateful gaze, full of desire to kill.

However, wasn’t it just an entry-level summon given when the class was first chosen? The servant in the other Necromancer’s video didn’t give me a similar feeling… How did this difference come about? It was quite suspicious, but I stopped paying attention as there was no way to arrive at the correct answer right this moment.

Lifting the [Martyr’s Sword] in one hand, I immediately cut off the ring finger of my other hand.

“Haah…”

It hurt much more than I expected. When the skeleton bit and tore through my finger, I was only annoyed–I felt something akin to cutting my fingernail too short. However, I felt the pain of fire running burning down my hands when I cut myself with the [Martyr’s Sword]. As I had thought, holy attribute attacks or weapons that had been optionally upgraded with holy attribute damage were deadly to the evil properties of us servants.

Black smoke, instead of red blood, poured out from the dismembered finger. After a certain period of time, the smoke faded and the cut fingers slowly grew back. It took about five minutes to return to its original state–five times longer than the skeleton’s bite.

By the time my fingers had all recovered, I had thrown the [Martyr’s Sword] back into my inventory and approached Choi Lee-kyung’s bed. The bloodlust originating from underneath the bed had increased, but I ignored that and pushed at Choi Lee-kyung. He lightly pushed back. I sat on the vacant space that was created by my gentle shoves.

‘Of all things, Bae Jaemin is a priest, so he’ll be an incompatible opponent. Kim Olim is… Can she still access her divine power when she revives?’

While mired in such thoughts, Choi Lee-kyung’s arm touched my body while he tossed and turned. I looked at him slowly.

“……”

Then, I looked at his round head.

Actually, a little while ago, while pointing at the skeleton’s shiny skull with the [Martyr’s Sword], I was briefly overcome by a ridiculous impulse.

[If I cleave his head, won’t that fill the room with a pleasant smell……]

A terrible impulse to want to split Choi Lee-kyung’s skull rather than his servant’s.

Thankfully, I still had some rationality, so I cut off my own finger before doing anything I’d regret; the pain wiped my mind clean. After my hand healed and I could calm down once more, I felt relieved. Irritation began to arrive in waves. There was no doubt; this was a ruse perpetuated by the system. In the first place, I had never been a psycho that found pleasure in killing another.

What was more frustrating was that this desire wasn’t constant throughout all the servants. Even though we served under the same master, the thing underneath the bed only wanted to cling to Choi Lee-kyung. Its eyes were not yet overtaken by madness, nor did its movements index anything strange.

Rather, it was hostile towards me, as if it knew I was attracted to the scent of Choi Lee-kyung’s blood. Even now I could sense that it was paying keen attention to my movements from underneath the bed. The moment I laid a hand on Lee-kyung’s body, it probably resolved to bite at my feet until their complete destruction.

‘This is really dangerous…..’

At first, I had simply thought that I may lose reason if I were exposed to Choi Lee-kyung’s blood. However, it was clearly not an ordinary urge if I had the impulse to make him bleed. Choi Lee-kyung was far too weak, and the only one on his side–at the worst situation–would be that skeleton, which was no match for me.

Above all, I had an ominous feeling that this impulse was not a singular issue that would fade away. So, I wracked my brain while sitting next to the still asleep Necromancer.

The best case scenario was, of course, to find what specific conditions trigger the appetite surge and to block those conditions. I usually thought of Choi Lee-kyung as a weak and occasionally frustrating ally, not some delicious hunk of meat. In the first place, I didn’t have a human body that needed meals. But, if I wanted to eat his human flesh from time to time, then didn’t it mean that there were certain triggers that stimulated these responses?

‘There must be certain conditions…I just don’t know what it is yet.’

However, this was the first time I felt such a morbid impulse. There were countless parts of this desire that tugged unpleasantly at my heart, so it was unreasonable to experiment with my behavior to figure these conditions out. In other words, I was still unable to block future surges of this appetite.

‘I’ll need some way to stop this appetite after it appears…..but how?’

This was a huge problem. The best method would be to prevent me through force, but Choi Lee-kyung had no such ability. The same went for the skeleton.

I thought about teaching him some self-defense, but, on top of time, who was to say that I wouldn’t go crazy and fail to treat him gently? The same went for useful items. Even if I could give Choi Lee-kyung a legendary item, he may die before he could activate it.

‘Then, that means I’ll need to stop myself…’

I recalled how I cleared my mind from the pain of the dismembered finger.

‘If I’m in pain, I won’t think of anything else and calm down afterwards… Is self-harm necessary?’

However, thinking of how I might need to cut off a pinky for every time my appetite might surge…I may soon go crazy.

All of a sudden, in the midst of my crazed thoughts, I thought about the [Doppelganger curse].

The [Doppelganger curse] was a summoning-type skill that manifested a doppelganger. When the skill is first used, something similar to a transparent slime is summoned onto the battlefield; it soon copies the enemy’s appearance and takes its shape.

Of course, the true enemy would attack the skill construct; oddly enough, the enemy would soon be injured in the same spot that it attacked on the doppleganger, forcing it to desist and run away.

In other words, the curse skill implied that if the enemy tried to truly kill the doppelganger with a strong attack, the main body would die.

TL: Seo Dawon has it worse than Lackey–Choi Lee-kyung is his salvation, but he’s filled with the contrary desire to devour him. I can’t imagine that it’d be easy for him to admit that–but also I could understand why he placed so much protective spells…for his own sanity.