Neo walked through the black desert.
He saw the door to Depth Level 2.
It was a swirling mass of shadows, about a day’s walk away.
Tremors appeared on the ground. Bones of various colors—white, yellow, black—jutted out from the earth.
Revived corpses of monsters and mythical beasts began to unearth themselves.
“Seems like there’s a Necromancer here.”
“Is he related to why Mira became so strong in the novel?”
Dozens, perhaps hundreds, of corpses emerged.
Instead of taking a stance, Neo continued to walk.
Red lightning crackled around him. It traveled from his core to his legs, entering the ground.
The red lightning pulsed through the earth, killing the revived corpses before they could fully emerge.
“They’re really weak.”
The journey was uneventful.
Ghouls, ghosts, Dullahans, Wraiths.
They continued to attempt becoming roadblocks for him.
Neo reached Depth Level 3 after several hours.
The Divine Energy in the air grew murky. Instead of Shadow elementals, the air was filled with Death elementals.
Black bones jutted out of the ground. Neo frowned when he laid his eyes on them.
“What is this…?”
He could feel the grudges of souls embedded in the bones. A tear slipped down his cheek.
Confused, Neo realized it was his blessing crying.
“Save them,” it was telling him.
Before Neo could do anything, he heard maniacal laughter. Dark clouds gathered in the sky.
“You’ve come, sacrifice.
“I must say, I was surprised to see you defeat my underlings!
“But it ends now! You’ve stepped into my Domain! You are as good as dead!”
The Necromancer, a skeleton in a majestic red robe, laughed from his throne far ahead.
A giant orb of Darkness floated behind the throne.
“I commend your bravery, sacrifice, for coming to face me alone! As a—”
The Necromancer stopped speaking when Neo disappeared from sight.
He felt a gust of wind pass him and heard a voice behind him.
“A Spirit Seed. So this is where Mira got her Spirit and became so powerful.
“I take it you used the grudges of the dead and their souls to empower the Seed?” Neo asked, standing behind the throne.
The Necromancer froze.
‘How did he get behind me?’
‘I didn’t see him move.’
‘Teleportation? Space Warping? Perception manipulation?’
He grew nervous.
‘I felt the gust of wind. Was that pure physical athleticism?’
‘Did he move at a speed I couldn’t perceive?’
That was not good.
It was bad bad news.
The Necromancer raised his hand.
The rings on his fingers glowed.
But before he could attack, his vision tilted as his head fell from his body.
The bones of the skeleton’s neck had been cleanly sliced.
Neo looked back.
He had beheaded the Necromancer when he passed him earlier.
“It could still talk, even though I beheaded it.
“Seems like a ‘Lich’ is quite hard to kill…”
Neo’s words trailed off as he sensed something.
He looked toward one of the bones jutting from the ground.
The bone grew, like a sapling becoming a tree, and transformed back into the Necromancer.
“What did you do?!
How did you attack so fast?”
Gone was the majestic aura and pride the Necromancer held.
Five seconds were enough for it to realize the disparity between itself and Neo.
“Hmmm…”
Neo unsheathed his sword, ignoring the frantic Necromancer.
He infused his Aura of Death into the sword.
Engravings of red lightning arcs appeared on the blade.
“The Aura Blade doesn’t look defective.
“So, how are you still alive? That attack could’ve killed the Minotaur in one go.”
He retracted his Aura, and the engravings disappeared.
Seeing his frown, the Necromancer realized he might not be as helpless as he thought.
A smile appeared on his face.
“This is the power of my Domain!
“As long as I’m here, I’m Immortal!
“You might be strong, sacrifice, but you can never kill me!
“Sooner or later, you’ll exhaust yourself, and I’ll end you when that happens!”
The Necromancer’s confidence returned.
Neo looked at the bones jutting out from the ground.
‘It seems like he revives himself through the bones.’
‘There are hundreds of thousands of them.’
Neo returned the sword to its sheath.
While he could brute-force his way through and destroy every bone, it was time-consuming and exhausting.
Trying to use Death to overpower the Necromancer’s Immortality directly was even more futile.
The Necromancer had lived for centuries; his Death resistance was leagues above what Neo could muster.
‘This is troublesome.
I’m stronger, but I can’t win.’
While Neo was lost in thought, the Necromancer attacked.
His ring finger glowed as two giant bone hands erupted from the ground, crushing Neo between them.
The Necromancer knew this was far from enough to kill Neo.
‘The brat can use some sort of otherworldly sorcery to increase his defenses.’
‘I better keep attacking until I’m sure he’s dead.’
Being ancient, the Necromancer lacked knowledge of Spells.
It was not surprising he couldn’t understand how Neo strengthened his defenses with Aura Manipulation of the Water element.
The water element wasn’t supposed to increase defenses; that was the Earth element’s domain.
“Take this, sacrifice! Let’s see how much you can withstand!”
Neo’s eyes narrowed as he gauged the situation.
The Necromancer was indeed relentless, but his attacks felt less threatening and more… desperate.
“‘Sacrifice?’ I’d say I don’t fit that role,” Neo murmured, brushing dust from his sleeve.
The bone hands squeezed tighter, grinding against his aura-infused defenses, but Neo’s presence only grew stronger.
The Necromancer’s voice echoed across the wasteland as he raised both arms.
It chanted in an ancient tongue.
‘That’s not a spell.’
‘That’s…’
‘Incantations.’
Neo realized what it was trying to do.
Incantations were advanced form of Divine Energy manipulation techniques.
They were different from Spells.
Dark energy spiraled from the necromancer’s throne, feeding into the giant orb of darkness hovering above him.
The air became even denser with death elementals.
The ground shook as bones, claws, and skulls writhed up in droves.
The army of revived corpses attacked Neo from all sides.
The necromancer smirked, assured in his domain’s might.
“So, this is your plan? To keep resurrecting the dead over and over, relying on numbers to exhaust me?”
Neo watched the oncoming wave, unfazed.
“You’ll see, sacrifice! This is the wrath of centuries of cursed souls.
No one, not even you, can withstand it forever!” the necromancer boomed, his confidence returning.
“I wouldn’t be so sure about that.”
The red lightning arced across the field, searing the earth and shattering the bones before they could fully rise.
Waves of death elementals incinerated everything in a split second.
The necromancer’s grin faded as he watched his reinforcements crumble under Neo’s relentless energy.
“Impossible!” the necromancer screeched, stumbling back. “Why do you have so much mana!?”
Neo paused.
He pursed his lips.
The academy had felt like a cage to him.
His friends and acquaintances in the first year were too weak for him to go all out.
The three months of boredom nearly made him quit the academy.
It was why he entered the window alone.
To finally have a battle where he could go all out, a battle where he had to put his all on the line to win.
But…
“You are too weak.”
He closed the distance in an instant.
His speed caused his figure to blur, and he swung his sword in a wide arc.
A surge of red lightning coursed through the air, creating a massive gash that cleaved the necromancer’s throne in two.
The necromancer let out a strangled cry.
His form shimmered and distorted, his head detaching from his body once again.
For a moment, silence reigned.
Neo stood, ready to strike, watching as the necromancer’s body dissipated—only to reform yet again from another bone a few meters away.
“This is the power of my domain, sacrifice,” the necromancer taunted, trying to reassert his dominance.
“You might kill me a hundred times, a thousand times, but I will always return! You are merely a temporary annoyance!”
Neo sighed.
He really wasn’t in the mood to fight anymore.
Each passing second only increased his boredom.
“Mars or Arthur would’ve been better sparring partners.”
“Weak as they are, they can still use tricks and surprises to injure me.”
A smile appeared on his face as he recalled his friends.
“Well, Morrigan would’ve been the best sparring partner.”
“But her demands are starting to increase.”
“I’m worried my wallet won’t be able to feed her for much longer.”
Neo took a deep breath, focusing his energy inwards
“I suppose I should end this soon.”
His Divine Energy started to fuse into the air at a fearsome speed.
The Necromancer frowned when it realized Neo was doing something.
Dark cloud, rumbling with red lightnings, gathered in the sky.
Analyzing the Aura signatures, the Necromancer stiffed.
“How…?”
His words got stuck in his throat when giant swords made of compressed red lighting descended from the sky.
Each sword was as big as the giant Shadow monster that Neo encountered when he first entered the Window.
The Necromancer desperately setup defenses.
The attack, while fancy, was very simple.
It was pure compressed Death elemental Divine Energy.
Nothing more, nothing less.
However, the amount of Divine Energy imbued in the attack made it devastating.
“Stop this madness, fool!
“You’ll kill us both!”
The giant swords hit the ground and the world shook.