Chapter 1

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Translated by Sylph

Read it only at Novelbyu.com & Utoon.net

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The Talochium Empire.

The entrance to a rift in a small magic stone towered over the land.

“Huff, huff……”

Rio, a mercenary from the small island of Modeut, wiped the back of his neck with a trembling hand.

“Damn it, damn it.”

Bright red blood smeared across his entire palm.

“Kerreureuk-”

Right in front of his nose, the dragon-type monster “Rikelops” tilted its head and stared at him.

His fallen comrades had all already stopped breathing.

The forty mercenaries, excluding Rio, had been wiped out by three Rikelops.

“Kereuk-”

Rio tightly gripped his broken sword in his weakened hand.

Suddenly, the image of his mother, the last thing he had seen on the day he left his hometown, passed through his mind.

If he had known it would end like this, he would at least have given her a proper hug before leaving.

Before long, the Rikelops bared their teeth.

It was a sign that they were about to attack Rio.

Swallowing his rising breath, he closed both eyes.

He had been about to give up everything, but just then.

[Get a hold of yourself. If you want to live.]

An unfamiliar voice came from the air.

When he raised his head, he saw something black circling in the air with the moonlight behind it.

“Oops, excuse us.”

Then people whose appearance he could not comprehend shoved Rio aside and stepped forward.

Rio stiffened as he stared at their fluttering cloaks.

“Agabert……?”

Agabert, the newly formed mercenary company that had appeared one day like a comet and quickly made its name known across the continent.

They roamed all over the world and wrote new history every time, yet at the same time raised questions because they had strangely embroidered a bizarre-looking pink dwarf on their uniform.

“Young man, are you all right?”

Rio blankly stared at the old man who had approached him.

The old man in Agabert’s uniform clicked his tongue and began to examine the wound on Rio’s neck.

Meanwhile, an argument was breaking out up front.

“Veil. Come out. This time it’s my turn to show Tie.”

“What are you talking about! I’ve already seen you swagger around with that hammer more than a hundred times, you know? You’re in the way, so back off. This time I’ll finally show my real skill.”

“……Honestly, you’re still awful.”

“That’s just what you think, you pig who turned even your brain into muscle!”

“Ha, really! Please stop fighting. If the little commander sees this, there’ll be trouble!”

Even while the old man poured disinfectant onto his wound, Rio could not move.

Because he could not believe the scene in front of his eyes.

‘Is this…… possible?’

The members of Agabert were arguing loudly while batting away the Rikelops’ attacks with one hand.

Every time the monster’s teeth clacked together in the air, Rio’s body twitched.

The Rikelops were not easy monsters.

Just moments ago, they had annihilated Rio’s forty-man mercenary company.

And yet they were blocking the attacks of such creatures as if swatting away toys……

But that was not the end of it.

“Stoooop!”

At that moment, something suddenly popped out of the bushes and whizzed right past Rio.

When he saw it, his mouth fell slightly open.

A tiny height.

Soft, pale blond hair.

Even a pink backpack on its back.

‘……A child?’

The child, who did not fit the place at all, planted a hand on its waist.

“We said not to fight! If you do that, Tie’s gonna kick you out of Agabert!”

The members who had been bickering came to an abrupt stop.

The biggest man, gripping the neck of one Rikelops with brute force, asked,

“Kick us out, Tie? What do you mean by that?”

“You’re supposed to catch the monster, so what are you doing fighting each other? There’s even someone hurt! Out of everybody here, the only person who gets a good-job sticker is Grandpa Nordix!”

At those words, the big man’s face turned pale.

The other members also cleared their throats and avoided the child’s gaze.

The child muttered with its lips jutting out.

“All you do is fight every single day…… At this rate, when are we ever gonna gather twenty members? Twenty minus our fifteen means we’re still super short! We have to gather them fast so we can go to the registry office and become a large mercenary company……”

But before the child could finish speaking, one of the fallen Rikelops suddenly sprang up.

The monster bared its teeth, tilted its head, and then began charging at the smallest target.

The members of Agabert exchanged startled glances.

Rio also jumped to his feet on reflex.

He quickly reached out to the child, but she could not stop the Rikelops that had slipped through the gap.

“Run!”

Just as Rio shouted urgently.

“See? This is what happens when you keep dragging things out.”

A strange gleam flickered in the child’s eyes as it let out a sigh.

And then,

Rustle-

Something began to rise rapidly, breaking through the dirt soaked with the night’s dew.

Rio gaped blankly at the sight that followed.

What emerged from the ground was a bare skeleton without a scrap of flesh on it.

‘One, no, two, three, five, ten……’

Cold sweat ran down the back of his neck.

The dozens of bones that wriggled up from the ground instantly grabbed the legs of the charging Rikelops and toppled it.

Then they pulled at the monster’s thighs and torso and began dragging it down into the dug-up earth.

As the clouds that had hidden the moonlight thinned, the scream of the monster being buried alive in the forest rang out thunderously.

“Ahyohyo.”

Only after it had completely vanished beneath the ground did the little child turn toward Rio.

Then it stroked its chest and said,

“If it weren’t for my bone friends, that would’ve been bad.”

For a moment Rio’s eyes widened at the absurd name for a skeleton.

“Hello, mister!”

The child approached Rio, greeted him politely first, then raised two fingers with a rather serious face.

“From now on, mister gets to pick one of two things. First, you forget everything that happened here and go back home. You must be sad ’cause you lost all your friends, but that’s life……”

The old man who had treated Rio nodded beside them.

“And second, you join Tie’s mercenary company, Agabert!”

Rio’s eyes shook.

Agabert, so they really were Agabert after all.

But that little kid.

Hadn’t the child just called Agabert its own mercenary company?

‘The owner of Agabert is definitely supposed to be the Necromancer King.’

Could that rumor going around really have been true?

Rio asked in disbelief,

“You’re the Necromancer King?”

A bright smile formed at the child’s lips.

“Yep! That’s Tie!”

His heart sank.

The great mage known as the Necromancer King had appeared out of nowhere one day.

He was the strongest necromancer with no equal in history.

The entire continent, no, the whole world was curious about him.

Because Agabert, established by the Necromancer King, had risen to number one in the continental rankings in just two months and achieved a 100% conquest rate on magic stones.

Yet until now, no one had known the true identity of the mysterious Necromancer King.

‘But……’

Rio swallowed hard as he looked at the child.

For magic stones to have erupted across the world had already been quite a long time ago.

Rifts continually formed around the magic stones, and demonic beasts appeared from inside them.

When those creatures began invading human settlements and city centers, the world entered the age of great mercenaries.

That was because knights and the central army alone could not deal with the magic stones that had sprung up even within the cities.

A world in need of strong mercenaries.

It was only natural that attention would focus on the monstrous Necromancer King and her mercenary company.

“Mister, do you want to join our guild too? Our uniform is super pretty. I told them to put Tanipang right here!”

Rio’s heart pounded harder and harder.

‘So the name of that pink dwarf embroidered on the uniform was Tanipang?’

This was something he had never anticipated.

Still, one thing was certain.

Why no one had known the Necromancer King’s true identity until now.

“Of course, it’s okay if you don’t want to! Tie’ll erase your memory and take you back to a human settlement.”

The great mercenary Necromancer King, who freely handled necromancy, summoned souls, called forth corpses,

and was conquering the magic stones all over the world as casually as if he were swatting flies,

“Ah! And if you join our mercenary company, sometimes you can even sleep in late! Isn’t that nice?”

“……Why?”

“Because Tie has to go to Tie Academy from ten in the morning to four…… so we only work at night. Hehe.”

really was a child.

And a child who looked no more than five years old at that.

And to explain all of this, we have to go back two months.

More precisely, two months earlier.

To Jongno District, Republic of Korea.