Chapter 152

Hwang Dongsuk’s soul screeched in the darkness, blood flowing from his eyes. With the exception of his face, he was bound with bloodied chains that not only wrapped around his body but pierced through his soul. Even the ends of the chains were buried within him. These were the punishment and curse Harmakan had cast on his soul, the prison of his sins that he would be bound within for all eternity.

Dongsuk screamed again in agony. There was no way for his soul to escape this unending torture. All he could do was wail, shriek, endure the pain, and shed tears of blood in this hellish prison, which pushed his soul to the very limit of torment. Then he heard a voice.

“Arise.”

A savior was calling out to his soul from above. He raised his head, the blood flowing freely from his eyes.

The chains broke. The eternal curse Harmakan had put on him was dispersing. His arms and legs were free now, and he stood. The blood did not stop flowing from his eyes, however.

The curse was defeated, but the prison comprising his past sins still clutched his soul, creating an evil spirit armor. This was a death knight’s curse that Harmakan had specially created to imprison evil spirits. The armor continued to fill Dongsuk with terrible pain, squeezing his soul for all it was worth, even though the chains were now gone.

To a death knight, however, pain was power. Ironically enough, the armor he wore grew all the stronger proportional to his agony.

[Shadow Slave Soldier - Level 1 - Elite Grade]

Dongsuk’s soul, clad in the evil armor, shed bloody tears as it rose from the shadows. Even though he was now a shadow soldier, he still felt the same pain. Meanwhile, more and more evil spirit soldiers like himself were rising.

[Shadow Slave Soldier - Level 1]

[Shadow Slave Soldier - Level 1]

[Shadow Slave Soldier - Level 1]

[...]

Their full-body armor rippled with dark smoke. Dozens of death knights, all wearing the evil armor that Harmakan had wrought, gave terrible howls of pain and rage directed at him. Harmakan was the cause of their misery.

“All of you, forward!” Suho commanded.

The death knights roared as they all moved at once, their malicious attacks leaving Harmakan dumbfounded. “B-but how...”

Harmakan quickly ordered his spirits to defend against their attacks. He pulled the Vulcan’s Horn out of his body, blood spouting from the wound, and used the blood to create a hand seal in the air. He uttered a curse. “Evil spirits who have dared to rise against me! A curse be upon you!” The stench of blood flooded the air around him.

[Harmakan, the Supreme Chief of the demonic spirits, used the skill “Amplify Damage.”]

[Damage taken by cursed entities has been increased.]

[Ordinary attacks will now inflict fatal damage.]

Amplify Damage?

Suho raised an eyebrow at the system messages. Harmakan’s curse had been applied to all Suho’s shadow soldiers, and the spirits under his control began to do far more damage to them.

Harmakan cast another curse. “May the land of death be unleashed upon this place!”

[Harmakan, the Supreme Chief of the demonic spirits, used the skill “Exploitation.”]

[Harmakan recovers 2% of damage dealt as health.]

As Harmakan’s spirits attacked the shadow soldiers, his wound from the Vulcan’s Horn began to regenerate at a rapid rate.

Beru marveled at this and shouted to Suho, “Young Monarch! He’s excellent with curses!”

“You’re right. And he knows how to use them for maximum effect.” Harmakan seemed to deserve the title of Supreme Chief. He had amplified damage, then absorbed part of that damage for his own recovery. It was quite an annoying set-up.

“Not that it’ll accomplish much against me.” Suho smiled knowingly as he stared at the messages ahead of him.

[Curses detected.]

[Passive Effect “Blissful Longevity” has initiated curse banishment.]

[3... 2... 1... Banishment complete.]

Harmakan’s curses immediately vanished from Suho’s body. The effect bestowed by the blessing of the Grand Spellcaster Kandiaru had overcome the curses. “It’s clear who the stronger one is,” Suho stated.

Harmakan stared at Suho in shock. “Kandiaru’s Blessing?! So you

do

have something to do with the Monarch of Shadows! Don’t tell me you are his heir?” His shock, however, soon turned to greed. “Hehehe! What a lovely find! I was expecting to take home nothing but losses today. Who knew I would discover such a charming subject for experimentation!”

The spirits swirled around Harmakan and were sucked into his body. At the same time, his energy grew increasingly massive before Suho’s eyes. There was a rumble, followed by another message.

[Harmakan, the Supreme Chief of the demonic spirits, has emerged.]

Harmakan had left the body of the Yami Village chief and revealed his true self.

The death knights who were freed to become shadow soldiers suddenly charged at Harmakan with explosive speed. Shockingly enough, they were all sent bouncing back with far more force than they’d attacked with.

“Hahaha!” Harmakan burst out laughing at the center of the chaos, a strange energy hovering about him.

[Harmakan, the Supreme Chief of the demonic spirits, used the skill “Thorns of Pain.”]

[The pain and damage Harmakan receives is shared with the attackers.]

Suho frowned. “Thorns of pain?” A single blow was enough to wipe out the shadow soldiers.

So he reflects the damage he takes in full?

Harmakan himself was not spared from the pain or destruction, but the problem was the curses he had used earlier.

He shares the pain, but the amplification curse increases the damage his attackers take, while he uses Exploitation to recover.

This was a hellishly efficient use of his skills.

“What an interesting opponent.” Suho grinned and pulled back all the shadow soldiers, who were recovering from their damage. He commanded them to defeat the death knights still rife in this village.

“Esil!” he shouted. Now that he’d found the boss, he was going all out. The Vulcan’s Horn that Harmakan had pulled out of his body flew into Suho’s grip again. Esil rushed over at hearing his voice, using Spirit Possession without a single spoken word.

[Vulcan’s Horns devoured the demon’s soul.]

[Item: “Vulcan’s Horns” have been equipped.]

[Buff: “Destructive Desire” applied, increasing physical damage by 300%.]

“H-horns of a demon?” Harmakan said in awe, his eyes widening when he saw two horns emerge from Suho’s head. “How can the heir of the Monarch of Shadows use the power of a demon noble?”

But the surprises were far from over.

Divine Power.

Giant’s Armor.

Meadow Wind.

Iron Body Technique.

Suho applied all the skills to his body, and every time, Harmakan’s eyes seemed to bulge a little more.

“But how is this possible? Even if you are the descendant of the Monarch of Shadows, how can a human use such varied powers?”

Suho was huge now, and he walked toward Harmakan, his silver hair fluttering in the wind. “Do you know something? My father was apparently a necromancer. What does that make me, then?” The closer he got, the broader his smile became.

𝒇𝙧𝙚𝓮𝙬𝙚𝓫𝒏𝓸𝓿𝓮𝒍.𝓬𝙤𝓶

Suho’s fists, enhanced by the Iron Body Technique, began to swing at Harmakan in earnest. Each blow resulted in a massive explosion, and the shockwaves affected the entire area around them.

“D-damn it! You’re not going anywhere with this!” Harmakan shouted, gritting his teeth as he defended against the attacks. “You may have Kandiaru’s Blessing, but Thorns of Pain is a curse cast on myself!”

[Harmakan, the Supreme Chief of the demonic spirits, used the skill “Thorns of Pain.”]

[All the pain and damage Harmakan receives is shared with the player.]

Suho, who’d been continuing his assault, suddenly vomited blood. The recoil from his attacks was proportionate to how much stronger he’d become.

Harmakan gave him a twisted grin, followed by a strange cackle. “Hehehe! I get it. You’re quite impressive. But how long can you endure this?” He was also bleeding from the mouth, of course, as he endured the attacks. He was confident, however. “You should know something. This is an instance dungeon made using Kandiaru’s legacy, and I am its king! That means all the spirits of those who died in this land are lending me their power!”

After happening upon the instance dungeon, which was left by Kandiaru in a mystical world, and beginning to research it, Harmakan had grown rapidly in power. This was how he had been able to climb to the position of Supreme Chief even though he had only been the chief of an ordinary tribe.

“All you have is Kandiaru’s Blessing, but not so for me! I was Kandiaru’s apprentice, a pupil of the greatest demonic spirit sorcerer who ever lived!”

Kandiaru’s apprentice—the implications were astounding. The power of Kandiaru, the one who had designed the leveling system, was so massive that even the future Ruler of the demonic spirits had once feared it as well. In fact, although Harmakan had only found a part of Kandiaru’s legacy, it had been enough to catapult him to the seat of Supreme Chief. No matter how well Kandiaru’s Blessing might protect Suho, this instance dungeon—this land of death—was also something of Kandiaru’s making.

“Hahaha! Resist me as best you can! The stronger you become, the weaker you will make yourself—”

“You talk too much.”

Harmakan suddenly shuddered at Suho’s words.

W-wait...

Something wasn’t right. Suho hadn’t stopped his attacks at all, even though the pain was reflected right back onto him.

It hurt, of course, but Suho didn’t care. He was smiling despite the blood trickling from his lips. “I’m pretty confident in my ability to take a beating, you see.”

Beru had often sat beside Suho and told him old tales when he lay down to sleep. Most of those stories had been drawn from Beru’s own experiences, but the shadow ant had also mixed in some he knew about Sung Jinwoo’s younger days.

My father apparently did job change quests.

The first job he was given had apparently been that of a necromancer. It had probably been meant to serve as a placeholder job until Jinwoo could grow his vessel as the leveling system intended. But Jinwoo had grown far more than the system had been designed for, allowing him to become the Monarch of Shadows right away.

His father had only been level forty at that time. Suho, on the other hand, was now close to level fifty, but he had not gotten a job change quest yet. The reason was obvious—the leveling system had only been created to craft a vessel for the Monarch of Shadows. Things like job change quests were only stages in a process that was ultimately meant to make his father a suitable vessel. This meant that Suho could not become a necromancer, a Monarch of Shadows, or anything else, for that matter.

[Job: None]

Suho stared at the gap at the top of the status window, which had been blank from the start. His eyes gleamed brightly.

Well... So what if I don’t have a job

or job change quest?

I can simply

define my own path.

Right now, he would trust in his sturdy body and nothing else—which was a gift from his father, in a sense. He would fight at his best, crushing every enemy that stood in his path. That was all he needed to focus on at the moment.

“So for now, I might as well be a barbarian.” Barbarians were fighters who could endure any pain with their powerful bodies and took down strong enemies, giving a fight their all. “That’s my decision.”

There was a

ding.

[Skill: “Fighting Level 1” has been acquired.]

Suho’s fists suddenly became twice as strong, and Harmakan let out a screech of pain.