CHAPTER 36: CHAPTER 35 - TIME IS TICKING

When Lev was still in Tozir’s grasp—within five to ten seconds—he activated his Necromancer skill. If he had been even a few seconds late, he would have completely lost consciousness.

[Skill Name: Necromancer

Description: Dead souls cannot be brought back to life. However, you can make their soulless bodies move according to your will.

Requirements: Only applies to corpses of people you have killed.]

According to the description provided by the Hero’s System, the Necromancer skill could make the bodies of enemies he had defeated move according to his will.

Actually, he didn’t really know that the skill he possessed was the Necromancer skill.

Back when he was alive on earth, he often manipulated the corpses of people he had killed to increase his combat strength.

It wasn’t permanent—only for one use—but his ability, which was the result of Black Magic Authority, had helped him a lot in various critical situations.

Many people thought that Necromancer skill was a skill that could bring back the dead, including himself. However, he knew that wasn’t something he could do with Black Magic Authority.

He could only move them, not talk to them. That’s why he was a little surprised when Hero’s System named his ability Necromancer skill.

"Will I be able to make this Necromancer skill live up to its name if I increase the Necromancer skill level?"

It would be nice if so, but it doesn’t matter if it doesn’t.

[Dark Mana: 98%.]

He felt that his Dark Mana was gradually being drained.

It seemed that the Necromancer skill would be canceled if he ran out of Dark Mana.

Lev closed his eyes.

He wasn’t sleeping; he was connecting with the puppet he controlled, Gallios.

Until now, he had been activating the Master Puppetry skill to control Gallios.

And there was one thing he could do with the Master Puppetry skill, which was to see what the puppet he was controlling saw.

[Starting to connect your sense of sight with your puppet’s sense of sight.]

[Connected successfully.]

When he opened his eyes, he no longer saw a dark and damp cave. Instead, he saw a clear sky and... the main building of the mansion in the distance.

Currently, Lev was controlling Gallios at the main gate leading to the Razanov family mansion.

Lev couldn’t feel Gallios’ physical senses. He could only see what Gallios saw.

First of all, he made Gallios knock out the guards who were guarding the main gate of the mansion.

It wasn’t difficult for Gallios to knock them out with his skills and specialization in assassination. Gallios simply used his Stealth skill and knocked them out one by one until they lost consciousness.

Luckily, the guards weren’t knight-level warriors.

If any of them had been able to use Aura, Gallios would have automatically lost the chance to win.

After knocking out the guards, Gallios broke down the gate with the white wolf emblem. The iron gate easily came off its hinges and flew away.

Usually, when the gate was broken down by enemies, the soldiers and knights inside the mansion would somehow notice and come quickly. Only this time was different.

Even if the sound of the gate being broken down was loud, there was no sign of help coming.

The reason was simple...

Lev made Gallios look to the side, where a high wall surrounded the Razanov family residence.

A bit far from the gate where the soldiers were stationed, there were various mounds of earth. These were mounds that Lev had made. Inside the mounds were the corpses of people Lev had killed in the past week.

It was quite difficult to bury the bodies without being noticed by the guards on duty. He often bought wine for the guards and got them drunk so that he could do his work.

He also made the mounds look as natural as possible so that the patrolling soldiers would not notice them. The only difference was that the ground where he buried the bodies had no grass.

As a result of Lev’s necromancer skill, a hand bone appeared from inside the mounds of earth.

Another strange thing about the necromancer skill was that all the corpses he controlled with his necromancer skill would turn into skeletons.

Once again, ’Should I raise my necromancer skill so that the corpses I control have flesh not just a bone?’

At first, all that could be seen from the barren ground were skeletal hands, but then skulls appeared as well. Eventually, the skeletons of their entire bodies became visible.

Since Lev did not make them stay in one place, they just looked like lost children in the vast grounds of the Razanov family residence.

There were also skeletons that rose first and waited for orders.

The reason Lev was able to resurrect them from afar was because he had injected them with Dark Mana beforehand.

Together with Gallios, the skeletons Lev resurrected slowly walked towards the main building of the mansion.

Although they were still quite far away, the commotion caused by Andrei’s party could be seen. The nobles were initially busy with small talk, but when they realized that there were human skeletons in sight, they began to stand still.

They weren’t necessarily afraid of the mysterious skeletons.

Are the skeletons Lev summoned strong? As far as he remembered, the answer was no. They could be killed easily.

The reason why all the nobles were frozen was probably because they were confused.

They might have guessed that a portal had opened and monsters had been spewed out.

None of them would have thought that someone would dare to attack a noble’s residence in the capital.

Lev did not make the skeletons immediately rush towards the nobles. Doing so would be like throwing flies into a fire. He made them advance one by one slowly while some of the others crawled so that they would take longer time to reach the nobles.

The skeletons were just a tool for Lev to buy time.

So, even though Andrei wanted to finish off the skeletons immediately, he couldn’t just rush in with his troops, because he was afraid that the weak skeletons were just bait.

Most of the high-ranking knights simply formed a circle around the nobles. The only ones ordered to charge forward like cannon fodder were the low-ranking soldiers like Boris’s men whom Lev had fought the other day.

To put it more dramatically, Lev’s strategy was hit and run.

"What is this? Why are these skeletons running away from our attack?"

"I don’t know either. I only know that no monster runs away when approached by humans. This is also the first time I’ve fought creatures like this."

Some soldiers who had reached the front line of skeletons muttered strangely. The conversation above was Lev’s guess from reading their lips.

When he felt that the tools he had prepared to buy time were finished, Lev canceled the additional effects on his Master Puppetry skill.

[Begin releasing your sense of sight from your puppets.]

[Your sense of sight has returned to your body.]

He opened his eyes and his gaze returned to the dark and damp cave.

Before he decided to disconnect his sense of sight from Gallios’ eyes, he gave Gallios permission to react freely.

The first thing Gallios did was scream, wondering why Lev had made him attack the noble family’s residence.

"Why did that black-robed man make me do this? If my body keeps moving closer to the noble residence, they’ll definitely recognize my face! I HAVE TO RUN!"

Gallios immediately turned around and intended to leave when he regained control of his body, but his body suddenly stood still in a running position. "SHIT!"

’Seeing Gallios suffering from worry is quite entertaining.’ Lev’s lips curled slightly as he remembered Gallios’ ridiculous reaction.

However, his smile faded when a notification from the Hero’s System appeared.

[Total number of skeletons: 119.]

Seeing the number on the notification, Lev guessed that some skeletons had been defeated because the initial number of skeletons he had summoned was 120, which was the number of corpses he had killed in the past week.

At the same time, his dwindling Dark Mana also indicated that he didn’t have much time left.

He decided to stand up and pull open the steel door he was leaning against. He then stepped inside.

As soon as his right foot crossed the threshold, he was slightly surprised by the sight behind the iron door.

He felt as if he had entered another dimension.

The room, which he thought would be as big as a living room, turned out to be the size of a soccer field.

The ceiling of the room was also very high—maybe about fifty feet?

If Lev was someone who had just entered the dungeon for the first time, he would have dropped his chin to the ground.

’Ugh!

He took his words back.

He looked at what was in the middle of the field and ended up dropping his jaw to the ground also, this time because he was disgusted by what he saw. Not because he was amazed by the size of the field, but because he felt repulsed by what was in the middle of the field.