Necromancy Essential Skills

Colonel Robert followed this advice. Throughout the entire night, he ignored the slimy sounds emanating from outside the safe house—sounds like gargantuan mollusks rubbing and crashing against the streets, grinding every obstacle in their path into dust and debris.

He ignored everything, acting as if he heard nothing at all. Even the monster shrieks he had grown accustomed to hearing while hiding in the bathtub seemed to shift in tone—he heard their terror, their panic. The hysterical wails of desperate beasts at the end of their lives sounded exceptionally pleasant at this moment. And for a man who had always suffered from poor sleep, he finally received the reward that only comes from following good advice.

He slept soundly.

He did not curl up in the bathtub as he had every night in the past; instead, he slept on the living room sofa, enjoying an exceptionally comfortable rest, knowing that he could see his two visitors the moment he opened his eyes.

The intense sense of unreality could not, in the end, have any tangible effect on him. When he finally woke the next morning to the alarm on his sports watch, the sight that met his eyes made his heart leap with joy.

It was not a dream.

He had truly met a Miskatonic University professor from the future and his assistant, and with their help, he had captured a large number of Night Demon samples for research. More importantly, he drew strength from their arrival—the future was no longer an untouchable fog, but a tangible, reachable dawn of victory.

I will definitely be able to develop the cure for the KV Virus.

The golden age belonging to us humans will surely return.

His vision shifted from blurry to clear. The black-armored figure sitting on the sofa was as silent and imposing as a massive mountain. A twilight-colored glow seemed to flow quietly over the high-tech Nanosuit, eventually converging in the eyes of Professor Si.

"Good morning, Colonel." Professor Si's voice was as gentle and refined as ever.

"Good morning, Professor." The Colonel nodded reflexively, and for a moment, he thought he had returned to a day three years ago, back to the time when he was fighting on the front lines with his colleagues.

"Last night..." He stopped mid-sentence. "...it was quite lively."

"A bit." Professor Si nodded in response. "The Night Demons seemed to sense something. There must have been over ten thousand of them in the vicinity last night. They destroyed many empty houses and broke into them, which forced me to be a bit... boisterous when I took action."

The sound of a frying pan came from the kitchen, and the aroma of breakfast soon filled the air. The professor's assistant was busy at the stove wearing an apron, and it seemed she would finish her cooking before long.

The Colonel walked to the window blocked by protective panels.

"May I?" He made a gesture to pull back the partition.

Professor Si simply made a 'be my guest' gesture, signaling that he could do as he pleased.

He pulled back the partition.

He quickly pulled it shut again.

What he saw was an undeniable mountain of corpses and a sea of blood. The shattered remains of Night Demons stretched from outside the window to the other side of the street. Nearly all the small houses nearby were as broken as if they had been hit by a typhoon. Some looked as if the Night Demons had smashed through the doors and torn open the windows. Yet others looked as if they had been slammed into the walls by a tunnel boring machine!

At least two thousand Night Demons had died on the street last night... at least two thousand. And these bloodthirsty, flesh-eating Night Demons hadn't even managed to scavenge the remains of their own kind!

He swallowed hard.

The Colonel felt his face might be contorting, and the smile he wore must have looked quite strange.

"...Boisterous?"

"There will only be more tomorrow." Professor Si nodded. "Their collective subconscious is warning them that something posing a fatal threat to the continuation of their species is about to be born. This is their final resistance, their last struggle. It is also the greatest obstacle standing in the way of humanity's revival."

Collective subconscious—Robert had heard of this theory. He wanted to ask Professor Si how he reached such a conclusion, but considering the man's expertise, he felt it was better not to waste time on such trivial matters.

He had even started to get used to the Skeleton Soldiers with ghost fire burning in their eye sockets.

"I will speed up the research on the cure," he said in a deep voice.

"No need to rush." Professor Si just waved his hand. "I will buy you time."

The sound of plates touching the table rang out as the professor's timid and introverted assistant placed breakfast on the table. She looked at the decision-makers discussing important matters with a mix of unease and anticipation, her fingers gently pinching the edge of her skirt.

"Um... breakfast is ready."

The breakfast tasted good.

Even though it was made using only ordinary canned goods and vegetables, the meal the girl cooked had a home-cooked flavor. It was a quality the Colonel hadn't felt in a long time, something that might be called 'the warmth of human life' in the East. Eating this sweet and delicious food made everyone at the table feel cheerful.

Sam's tail wagged particularly happily.

"Ishikawa, stay behind for a while and assist the Colonel with his experiments." The professor assigned a task to his little assistant as he set down his cutlery, which made Robert lift his chin slightly.

"I can handle it alone, Professor."

"But I won't be able to take her with me later, at least not this time." The professor shook his head slightly, pointing out a critical situation that had to be taken seriously. "Besides, there are twenty-eight Night Demons in your lab right now; she will ensure you don't run into any unexpected situations."

The Colonel was thoughtful, but the girl looked flustered. She waved her hands vigorously, looking quite panicked.

"M-me?" Her pretty face turned red, her voice trembling. "But I... I can't do anything."

"You don't need to do anything. You just need to stand by Colonel Robert's side in my stead... My necromancy requires a medium to operate over long distances. As long as you are there, if any unexpected loss of control occurs, I can command the Skeleton Soldiers to immediately take down those Night Demons."

"If it's just that..." She let out a sigh of relief.

"You should have a little more faith in the potent sedatives I've formulated, Professor." Robert complained casually, then made a serious promise to Si Ming. "Don't worry, I will protect Miss Ishikawa. But regarding what you said about buying time..."

"...It wouldn't be the way I'm imagining, would it?"

Robert's intuition was sharp. Or rather, Si Ming's undisguised style of doing things was simply too easy to understand. When the sun's brilliance fully spilled onto the streets, bathing everything in a golden glow that made the Night Demons cower, he had already arrived at his destination.

The Night Demons' lair, the hub station of the New York subway. When he rode that necromanced wind-attribute Magic Wolf to the surface entrance, the dark, chilling air from the underground entrance turned into an invisible wind, brushing against the skin protected by his Nanosuit.

They knew he was coming, and they were lying in wait.

Crimson glints flickered in the darkness. Countless restless heartbeats were hidden behind one makeshift trap and barricade after another.

A large portion of them could be used to hunt giant beasts.

That was clearly a gift specially tailored for the Burrowing Devil Worm, as they had already suffered greatly at its hands.

However...

"Not bad, but not enough."

"To be able to deduce that I would launch an attack during the day, it seems my judgment was indeed not far off the mark."

In truth, the collective subconscious theory he had proposed was merely a casual remark, just as his claim that he required Shizuka Ishikawa as a medium to remotely control the Skeleton Soldiers was also complete nonsense. The former was simply to bolster the professionalism and persuasiveness of his persona as a Miskatonic University professor, while the latter was merely to increase Shizuka Ishikawa's sense of participation in the mission and to cultivate a bit of confidence in the timid girl.

But now it seemed that this matter of a collective subconscious might not be entirely baseless. These Night Demons, which Colonel Robert had observed for three years before concluding they possessed "no social behavior," might derive their intelligence from a hive-mind network similar to an ant colony or a beehive, where quantity determined strength.

And since that was the case...

"I was wondering why mental corruption could even affect beast-like things such as you."

One mystery had been solved. His mood improved significantly as a result.

Si Ming rode the giant wolf, stepping into the gloom without a shred of fear—the lack of fear referred to the Necro-Wolf beneath him rather than himself, for in his eyes, these Night Demons, whose parameter limits had already been verified, were now no different from dust.

The summoning space opened silently.

Another twenty Bone Soldiers, brandishing swords and shields, charged ahead of him, delving deep into the underground. The moment for close-quarters combat arrived quickly under his watchful gaze. After advancing for no more than twenty seconds and penetrating fifty meters underground, the lurking Night Demons could no longer restrain themselves, pouncing from the dark corners toward their ambush targets!

"Roar—" The roar of the Night Demons was deafening.

The powerful vanguard among them immediately tackled one Skeleton Soldier to the ground, while its accomplices immediately launched an attack on another Skeleton Soldier in the formation. In just an instant, the twenty Bone Soldiers faced a simultaneous assault from over fifty Night Demons. The only reason the number was so low was that there was only so much space available to launch an attack at once!

Sharp, ear-piercing shrieks filled every part of the underground tunnel. Si Ming did not even need to observe closely to know that the welcoming party in the subway station numbered at least in the thousands.

They were endless, and they were full of confidence.

Yet, when the vanguard among them had tackled all the Bone Soldiers guarding Si Ming to the ground, their eyes, glowing with bloodthirsty red light, saw only Si Ming's hand suddenly clench into a fist.

"Detonate."

He gave his reply to those who had offered such a warm welcome.