Record of a Thousand Lives - Chapter 144

플래터13-17 minutes 24.09.2022

The small ember-like spirit gradually started to take physical form, and Kang Yoon-Soo turned into a dark green skull.

[First Evolution!]

[You have evolved into a Skull Blessed by the Underworld.]

[Your stats have increased greatly.]

[A Soul Undead has greater potential to grow stronger compared to a normal undead being.]

[The variety of things you can evolve into has increased.]

[You have obtained a new special skill—Soul Bite.]

[Memories from your previous life have slowly started to return due to your evolution.]

‘There’s no body, as expected,’ Kang Yoon-Soo thought.

He was currently only a skull, but he was capable of floating like a vengeful spirit, unlike a skull from the normal Undead path. He would have had to roll pathetically across the ground if he chose to be a Cracked Skull, which was the first evolution of the Undead path. 

‘I’ll grow as quickly as possible and move on to the next evolution,’ he thought. It was imperative for him to free himself from his weak shell and evolve into a proper undead being.

Kang Yoon-Soo clacked his bony jaws and flew up into the air. Then, he spotted a skeleton roaming around the cemetery all alone. He quickly flew toward the skeleton and violently bit the back of its skull.

Crack!

“Euuuuoh…!” The skeleton groaned in agony as it flailed its bony arms around, but Kang Yoon-Soo stubbornly refused to let it go as he bit down with all his might.

[Soul Bite has activated.]

[The enemy will receive increased damage.]

[You will absorb spiritual energy every second.]

Kwachik!

The skeleton’s skull broke into pieces. Kang Yoon-Soo examined the skeleton’s bones lying on the ground, then consumed the large chunks of sturdy bone while leaving out the brittle or cracked bone pieces.

[You have stolen the clavicle and fourth rib of the Dark Cemetery Skeleton.]

[The stolen bones are now a part of your body, and have increased your stats.]

[Your strength and vitality have increased by three.]

The clavicle and fourth rib became tainted with Kang Yoon-Soo’s dark green energy. He then roamed around the cemetery in search of other skeletons, hunting them down ceaselessly. In the end, he hunted down more than three hundred skeletons and took all the bones he needed to complete his skeletal structure from them.

[The Skull Blessed by the Underworld has completed its body.]

[Your bone composition is as follows: 79 knight bones, 57 mercenary bones, 29 archer bones, 23 summoner bones, 14 necromancer bones, and 4 vagrant bones.]

[You have started to evolve.]

Kang Yoon-Soo’s body started to go through another change. The dark green aura started to glow even darker as his body successfully evolved.

[Second Evolution!]

[You have evolved into a Skeleton Swordsman Blessed by the Underworld.]

[A Skeleton Swordsman Blessed by the Underworld is quite stubborn and has spectacular abilities.]

[It is a species adept at handling all sorts of weapons, and it is especially skilled in swordsmanship.]

[You have obtained a new special skill—Strike of the Underworld.]

[Strike of the Underworld gathers the cold, sinister energy of the underworld and strikes the enemy with it.]

[Memories from your previous life have started to return due to your evolution.]

Kang Yoon-Soo observed his newfound body made entirely of bones. His bones were much denser and his frame was much larger compared to an ordinary skeleton. He roamed around the graves in the cemetery and picked up a rusty old broken sword.

The racial trait of the undead was quite an odd one. They never went hungry and had lost their sense of taste. They were also a race that had virtually no emotions, rarely feeling anything in their dry, bony bodies.

Kang Yoon-Soo realized that he was no different from them, thinking, ‘It’s just like how I usually am.’

There were times when he had felt as if he were an undead being. He was alive, and yet dead inside because of the countless regressions he had gone through, causing his emotions to dry up. However, he had to change from now on.

‘I’ve started to change in my final life. I have to change to stop this endless cycle of regression and kill the Demon Lord,’ he thought as he steeled his resolve one more time.

A funny thought suddenly crossed his mind.

What if?

What if, really?

What if he managed to successfully kill the Demon Lord and this regression finally stopped? What was the first thing he had to do then? Of course, that would be none other than…

“Kyaaaaak!” A pale white undead creature screamed, suddenly attacking from out of nowhere.

Kang Yoon-Soo instinctively pulled his rusty sword out and parried the creature’s attack. He then moved back and created some distance from it. The pale corpse stood there glaring at him with red eyes. He examined the creature, thinking, ‘It’s an Enraged Gravekeeper.’

It was one of the monsters that he had to kill to draw out the boss monster of the Dark Cemetery. It was only an intermediate-ranked undead creature, but it was almost as scary as the Demon Lord for the current Kang Yoon-Soo. However, he pulled out his rusty sword without any hesitation and muttered to himself, “I’ll never be able to kill the Demon Lord if I can’t even kill something like you.”

“Kyaaaahk!” The Enraged Gravekeeper shrieked.

Kang Yoon-Soo ran toward the creature and swung his sword as hard as he could.

***

“Go and bring me some booze.”

“You go and bring it yourself, dumbass.”

Reanna glared at her brother as she lay down, asking, “Aren’t you going to address me as ‘noona’?”

“What’s there to be proud of about being old?”

“Did this bastard eat something wrong today? Why are you so rebellious?” Reanna remarked, furrowing her brow.

“It’s because of the nasty soup you made this morning,” Reanna’s younger brother, Rekil, nonchalantly replied.

“Look at this punk. It’s been quite a while since I last beat you up, hasn’t it?” Reanna said, standing up.

A fight ensued between the siblings. As always, it was a decisive victory for Reanna.

Rekil rubbed his bruised forehead and grumbled, “That’s strange… I’m the man here, but why do I always lose to noona?”

“There’s no law that says every woman in this world has to be weaker than a man,” Reanna replied while leisurely lying down once again.

“Oh my god! You were a woman?” Rekil exclaimed with a shocked expression.

“Shut up,” Reanna replied, before standing up once again. She walked over and took out some ointment from her bag, applying it to her younger brother’s forehead while grumbling, “What are you going to do, being so weak and frail?”

“Let’s set the record straight. I’m not weak; noona is just absurdly strong,” Rekil replied.

“Yeah, I took all of the good stuff from our parents,” Reanna said.

“I would have been bigger than you if only the church hadn’t collapsed when our mother was pregnant with me,” Rekil complained.

Reanna took a sip of alcohol from the bottle before saying, “Our mission this time is in the Dark Cemetery.”

“I’ll be stained with the stench of the dead again, then. I don’t have any clothes to change into anymore,” Rekil grumbled.

“Stop grumbling. Hunting the undead is always like that,” Reanna said. She downed half of the bottle in one go, then took out a handful of medicinal herbs from her pocket.

Rekil furrowed his brow and said, “Noona has to quit drinking and smoking.”

“Stop being so rude toward my lovers, will you?” Reanna replied.

“Ugh… Are you telling me that herb is my brother-in-law? I can’t accept that,” Rekil grumbled.

“I haven’t met any guys more decent than these,” Reanna said, puffing out a cloud of smoke. The white smoke flew up toward the black moon.

Rekil remarked, “I think we siblings are quite strange. Noona is too tough.”

“My little brother is too cute and pretty,” Reanna added.

“Please don’t speak like an old man…” Rekil protested.

***

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The siblings arrived at the cemetery filled with tombstones.

Reanna’s face crumpled and she muttered, “Something’s strange.”

“What is?” Rekil asked.

“It’s too quiet,” Reanna replied.

Rekil crossed his arms and said, “I don’t see many undead around here.”

“Did we come to the wrong place? Are you certain that there’s a powerful undead being here?” Reanna asked.

“My divine power is always accurate,” Rekil replied seriously. Reanna nodded in agreement. Her younger brother was never wrong when it came to searching for undead.

It was then that screams filled the air from the other side of the cemetery.

“Aaah…! Aaaah…!” 

The siblings tilted their heads in confusion.

“What’s that?” Rekil asked.

“Beats me. It doesn’t seem like a human screaming… unless there’s a drunken vagrant somewhere around here?” Reanna replied.

The siblings eventually found out the cause of the sound.

“Aaah…! Ah…! Aaaaah…!”

The undead ran toward them while screaming, as if they were running away from something.

“What the hell is that…?” Rekil exclaimed with a laugh.

There were not just one or two of them; it seemed as if all of the undead living in the cemetery were running away from something.

Reanna flicked her cigarette and said, “The undead usually don’t run around like that.”

“I agree,” Rekil said.

“But what do you think those guys are running away from?” Reanna asked, flicking her cigarette once again.

“Hmm… I have no idea,” Rekil replied.

“It must be something much scarier than death itself,” Reanna said.

“Does such a thing even exist?” Rekil asked.

Reanna pointed with her chin toward the shadow that was chasing after the horde of undead—it was a skeleton wielding a rusty old sword.

“What? It’s just a single skeleton?” Rekil exclaimed with a hint of disappointment on his face.

Reanna took out another cigarette while observing the skeleton, then said, “It’s not just an ordinary skeleton. It has a larger build, and its bones look pretty dense too.”

“It’s still an undead being that’s at the bottom of the food chain, but why are the undead running away in fear from something like that?” Rekil wondered.

The siblings eventually decided to wait it out and observe the situation. They saw the skeleton swordsman catch up to the horde of undead, agilely cutting them down one by one.

Sukeok! Sukeok!

“Euh… Guuoh…!” The moans of the undead reverberated across the cemetery as a single skeleton swordsman massacred the area’s entire undead population.

Rekil watched the scene in front of him in disbelief, crossing his arms over his chest. He said, “It’s pretty strong for a mere skeleton.”

“It’s not an opponent you can leave your guard down around,” Reanna added as she drew her longsword.

It was then that the skeleton swordsman looked toward them. It said, “Be careful.”

“…?”

The siblings looked at each other in disbelief when the skeleton swordsman spoke. Had that undead being really just told them to be careful?

Rekil asked in a voice filled with disbelief, “What do we have to be careful of?”

The skeleton swordsman pointed down before taking a step back. Then, the cemetery ground slowly started to crack and split open.

[All of the gravekeepers and undead in the cemetery have been killed.]

[The boss monster of the Dark Cemetery, the Patchwork Monster Senekaru, has appeared.]

“Gwaaaaaaah!” 

A monster with stitches all over its body made an appearance. It was a grotesque-looking creature, stitched together from different corpses.

Reanna readied her long sword and called out, “Rekil.”

“May the guardian of the light hear our cries and become our protector!” Rekil chanted a spell.

Reanna’s sword began glowing brightly.

Rekil extended his hands toward the Patchwork Monster and cast another spell. “Oh holy light, may you cleanse the filthy monster before me.”

Holy light surrounded the Patchwork Monster and inflicted heavy damage on it. The boss roared loudly in anger and charged toward the siblings. Reanna charged toward the boss as well, swinging her longsword with all her might.

Sukeok!

The long sword enveloped in light cut down the Patchwork Monster, but that was not all. The wound inflicted by Reanna spewed out divine power that engulfed the boss.

“Gruuuwoooh!” The Patchwork Monster roared in agony.

“It hurts, doesn’t it, you punk?!” Rekil taunted excitedly as he cast debuff after debuff at the boss monster.

Meanwhile, Reanna unleashed a barrage of attacks to cut down the boss. She was a seasoned swordswoman, and she knew it would be much more efficient for her to chip away at the boss monster with precise attacks rather than aim for one big, risky strike.

Sukeok!

Reanna’s long sword sliced through the Patchwork Monster’s neck, and blood spurted out from it.

“Gruuuwoooh!” The Patchwork Monster groaned in agony once again, and its body began to swell up.

Reanna took a step back, preparing to deal the final blow, when suddenly…

“Strike of the Underworld.”

The skeleton swordsman stabbed its rusty old sword into the back of the Patchwork Monster’s head. The boss flailed around wildly, but the skeleton swordsman continued to stab at its head.

At the moment when the Patchwork Monster died, a message popped up.

[You have killed the boss monster of the Dark Cemetery, the Patchwork Monster Senekaru.]

[You have obtained the spiritual energy that Senekaru has accumulated until now.]

[You have killed a boss monster.]

[Your stats have risen greatly.]

“What the? That skeleton took the last hit?” Rekil exclaimed, scoffing in disbelief.

Reanna pointed her sword at the skeleton and asked, “Do you wish to fight?”

“No,” the skeleton swordsman replied.

Reanna lowered her longsword in response, leaving Rekil greatly surprised. He asked in shock, “Noona, what are you doing right now?”

“It says it doesn’t want to fight,” Reanna replied.

“So you won’t kill it?” Rekil asked in disbelief.

“There’s no reason to kill an undead being that has no wish to fight, right?” Reanna said as she took out a cigarette.

Rekil was stunned. He then turned around and looked at the skeleton before saying, “Today is your lucky day, skeleton.”

Just as the siblings were about to turn around and leave, the skeleton swordsman said clearly, “I have to go to the Cathedral of Repentance.”

The siblings looked at each other in surprise.

The Cathedral of Repentance?

Rekil raised a brow and asked, “Why do you want to go there?”

“I have some things to settle over there,” the skeleton swordsman replied. It said in a low voice, “That’s why I’ll be tagging along with you guys.”

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