Death King Karnak

Chapter 40. 10. Night of the Corpses (4)

Five rough-looking men were perplexed by the scene before them.

“What the hell is this?”

“Why are these guys dead here?”

They were also low-ranking members of the Ranpelt family.

While searching the streets with their comrades, they had stumbled upon some men from another group, lying dead in a different area.

“It’s kind of strange to be an enemy attack…”

No matter how you looked at it, it seemed like they had stabbed each other to death.

Living in a city where such incidents happened often, they could tell at a glance.

But in the current situation, there was no reason for them to kill each other.

“Did a magician tamper with the scene?”

“If that’s the case…”

“Doesn’t that mean he’s targeting us right now?”

At that moment, as the gang members, feeling a sudden chill, turned their backs on the corpses and stared into the mist, two blood-soaked corpses slowly rose behind them.

“Urrgh…”

Before the Ranpelt members could even turn around, one of the corpses plunged a knife deep into the chest of one of the men.

“Guh, guh!”

A life was snuffed out all too easily.

Seeing their comrade fall to the ground, bleeding, the gang members screamed in horror.

“Aaaah!”

“The-the corpses are moving!”

“It’s necromancy!”

The blood-soaked corpse wielded its sword and lunged at them.

The men, terrified, fought back.

“Damn it! They said it was a magician!”

“Damn those bastards at the top!”

“They should’ve told us something this important beforehand!”

A chaotic fight ensued, filled with stabbing, slashing, and spraying blood.

A sword was lodged into the corpse’s torso.

“Urrgh…”

It was useless. The dead do not die again. The corpse relentlessly pushed forward and stabbed with its sword.

The sword lodged into the man’s torso.

“Gah!”

A scream erupted. The living, losing their vitality, collapsed like puppets.

The fight between corpses that felt no pain or fear and the living, who could die from even a small cut, was terribly unfair.

“Aaaah!”

“Cut off its head!”

“It won’t die even if you cut it!”

“Then cut off its head and all its limbs too!”

The price five men paid to render just two moving corpses incapacitated was heavy.

Two of the five had lost their lives, and the remaining three, gravely injured, could only gasp for breath.

“Huff, huff…”

“But at least we’ve taken care of them to this extent…”

“…They shouldn’t get up again.”

They had crushed the zombies’ heads completely and chopped up their limbs into finely minced meat. Even if the zombies moved again, they had no means of attack, so this should be enough.

“Damn, who knew moving corpses could be this terrifying?”

The man who muttered those words suddenly turned pale.

‘Wait, did he say corpses moving?’

There were two more corpses here. The Ranpelt members who had just been killed by those zombies.

“Urrgh…”

“Urrgh…”

Even the fallen comrades began to rise as zombies.

A scream, filled with terror, pierced through the night fog.

“Aaaaah!”

* * *

Strange occurrences were happening one after another throughout the city.

Comrades were killing each other, only to rise again as zombies and attack their remaining comrades.

However, the members of the Ranpelt organization were not easy targets.

In one of the streets in the central area of Trist City, about ten members were in the midst of hacking apart three zombies.

“Huff, huff…”

“Hmph! These mere zombies…”

“If we handle them calmly, they’re nothing!”

These were all battle-hardened veterans, accustomed to blood and death—they wouldn’t fall so easily to something like zombies.

One of the members wiped off the blood and spat on the ground.

“Hmph, that necromancer scum. Did he really think we’d be shaken by this?”

Torment over having to kill dead comrades again?

There was no such thing, to begin with.

They could easily kill any living comrade if necessary, so why would it be an issue to hack apart those who were already corpses?

“Search the surroundings! There must be a necromancer nearby who’s doing this!”

A few subordinates scattered across the street.

A moment later, a shout came from an alleyway.

“They’re here!”

“Over there!”

As if they had been waiting for this, the men surged into the alley with killing intent.

Just as they were about to look deeper into the alley—

“Huh?”

“What the hell?”

There was no one inside. Neither the necromancer nor the subordinate who had shouted.

“…Then who made that noise just now?”

As they all stood there, baffled, another subordinate called out to them from outside the alley.

“This way, boss!”

As soon as he reported, the subordinate quickly ran off into the mist. Clicking their tongues, the others followed him.

“Did they escape that way?”

But when they reached the street, the subordinate was nowhere to be seen.

“Where did that guy go?”

While the men were bewildered, another subordinate came running from the opposite side of the street.

“There’s no one over here, boss.”

It was the same subordinate who had just disappeared into the mist.

The boss looked at him and asked, “What the hell? When did you get over there?”

“Huh?”

“You just ran this way!”

“Huh?”

As they exchanged confused looks, unable to understand what was happening, footsteps were heard this time.

Tap, tap, tap, tap!

Then, a third identical subordinate emerged from the mist.

“Boss, there’s no one here—huh! What the hell is that!”

He was shocked as he saw another version of himself on the opposite side.

As everyone became bewildered and began to panic, the boss muttered under his breath.

“Now that I think about it, we heard footsteps this time, didn’t we?”

They hadn’t heard that sound earlier.

“It’s a trick! This one’s a fake!”

Even so, he had experienced countless battles in Trist City. Did they really think he would fall for such a trick?

“You bastard!”

“How dare you try to deceive us!”

Determined to teach the fake a lesson, the men gripped their swords and charged.

“Huh? What? What’s going on?”

They paid no attention to the enemy’s confusion.

In their line of work, a single mistake could cost them their lives. Acting quickly was the only way to survive.

“Ugh, aaagh!”

It all happened in an instant—the victim was hacked to pieces.

Yes, it was a person.

Not an illusion or a hallucination, but a person.

Holding their blood-dripping swords, the men exchanged glances.

“Hey…”

“This… doesn’t feel right…”

“It seems… real…”

The boss snorted.

“Hmph! There’s no way it’s real.”

After all, the real one was behind him. He was certain he had heard footsteps.

“Isn’t that right, Prot…?”

He called out the subordinate’s name as he turned around. And then he froze.

“Prot?”

No one was there.

The subordinate who had been standing there just a moment ago was gone.

“Where did he go?”

To be precise, he was still there.

The subordinate named Prot had been hacked to pieces by their own hands, now lying as a corpse.

A chill ran down his spine.

“Then…”

“…the one we just killed?”

The corpse began to move.

“Urrrgh…”

The one who had been unjustly killed by his own comrades…

“Urrrgh…”

Now rising as another zombie, filled with a deep grudge and emitting an aura of malice and resentment.

“Aaaah!”

* * *

They couldn’t trust what they saw.

The comrade who had been right in front of them disappeared, and the one who shouldn’t have been there appeared in his place.

“Damn it! What’s happening here?”

They couldn’t trust what they heard.

Auditory hallucinations weren’t just about hearing things that weren’t there. They also included not hearing things that should be there.

“No, I definitely didn’t hear anything…”

If they stabbed a comrade who silently approached them, blood would gush out.

If they sent away a noisy comrade, he would vanish without a trace.

“Everyone, get a grip!”

“Don’t scatter—stick together!”

But could they trust even the comrades at their backs? Could they trust the warmth they felt from them?

When that warmth slowly turned into a cold chill?

Thud!

“Ugh!”

“When did he…?”

The comrade who had just been one of them was now a blood-soaked corpse, stabbing another comrade.

The dead, now moving corpses, groaned as they walked the earth again.

“Scatter!”

“There’s a zombie among us!”

“No way! He seemed fine just a moment ago…”

In the midst of shock and panic, they continued slashing at the zombies. Suddenly, the eyes of a comrade who had been fighting alongside them rolled in a bizarre manner.

“Hey, you… Your eyes…”

The comrade, now being pointed out, responded irritably.

“What about my eyes?”

The reassurance that it was a normal, human response lasted only for a moment.

Pop.

The comrade’s eyeball suddenly popped out, dangling by dark red veins and swaying back and forth.

“Aaahhh!”

Terrified, they all swung their swords at once.

“Gah! Why are you suddenly attacking me…”

The one who was suddenly attacked died in bitter resentment.

The survivors, panting heavily, glared at the fallen comrade.

And then, they were horrified.

‘What did I just see?’

‘I’m sure I saw his eyeball fall to the ground!’

The corpse’s eyes were intact, staring blankly, though now devoid of life.

With eyes that were perfectly intact but now unfocused, the corpse groaned and rose as a zombie.

“Urrrgh…”

Now, they couldn’t trust anyone.

Not even themselves.

All they could do was scream in terror, lost in fear, confusion, and despair.

“Aaaaah!”

* * *

Karnak continued his work.

He roamed through Trist City, hunting down members of the Ranpelt organization.

They were noisy and caused a ruckus wherever they went, making them easy to find.

Once he spotted them, he cloaked himself in the Veil of Darkness and vanished from sight. Then, he cast illusions on the Ranpelt group, manipulating the situation.

His necromantic power was limited, so he couldn’t cast large-scale illusions. But that wasn’t much of an issue.

A brief auditory hallucination didn’t consume much of his power.

“Gotcha.”

That one word was enough.

The mere suggestion that someone might have said something suspicious caused chaos among them.

“You… you bastard!”

“Wait! Why are you suspecting me?”

Of course, the more level-headed among them tried to regain control of the situation.

“Everyone, get a grip!”

“Someone’s playing tricks on us! Can’t you see that?”

At this point, Karnak added a pinch of salt to flavor the chaos—a pinch of illusionary salt.

“Wait… your face…”

“What about my face?”

“Aaah! Don’t come any closer, you monster!”

“What nonsense are you spouting now!”

They began killing each other, the bodies piling up. The more corpses there were, the more they killed the living, adding even more to the growing pile of the dead.

There were even unexpected situations that Karnak hadn’t anticipated.

How would the sight of the Ranpelt members’ infighting appear to the ordinary citizens?

“Ah, those detestable Ranpelt bastards are getting what they deserve!”

But they were clad in expensive swords and armor.

Even a slight separation often led to their unnoticed deaths, happening so frequently that it became routine.

Karnak grinned in satisfaction.

“It seems this is what happens when only wicked people gather together.”

When bad people gather to do bad things, they end up living in a reality filled only with bad outcomes.

If the world feels like it’s filled with nothing but evil, it’s only natural to expect the worst as soon as things start going wrong.

And most of the citizens of Trist City were people who had always solved their problems solely with swords and violence.

“This is why people should live virtuously, don’t you think?”

“It’s so convincing when you say it, my lord,” Varos snorted.

“Maybe we ended up like this because we couldn’t live virtuously?”

“That’s why we’re performing good deeds now, aren’t we?”

Karnak boasted, and Serati shivered as she looked at him.

‘So this is what real necromancy is…’

He didn’t spread a massive darkness or turn the entire city into a living hell like the necromancers of legend.

He simply wandered around the city, casting simple illusions again and again.

Yet people kept dying…

‘Was it really the right choice to become this man’s subordinate?’

Of course, she wasn’t unfamiliar with killing.

As an adventurer, she had been forced into deadly battles, and she had plenty of experience punishing wrongdoers.

But no matter how evil the enemy, was it right for people to die so easily like this?

Perhaps sensing Serati’s gaze, Karnak turned to look at her. Then, scratching his head awkwardly, he spoke.

“This is really embarrassing. I don’t normally act like this, you know.”

‘So he does have a bit of a conscience?’

Judging by his expression, he seemed genuinely embarrassed. Serati felt slightly relieved.

‘Well, no matter how much of a necromancer he is, he’s still human. He can’t possibly be doing this without feeling some discomfort…’

“Normally, I’d spread the power of darkness across the entire city and raise an army of corpses all at once. But since my necromantic power is lacking, I have no choice but to do it this way. So, there’s no need to look at me with such disappointed eyes.”

‘…That’s what he’s embarrassed about?’

Karnak sighed deeply, oblivious to Serati’s shock.

“Sigh, it’s really hard living without power.”

It was indeed a tiring task. If he were his old self, he would never have bothered with such a tedious approach.

Still, as a result, the number of unjustly killed continued to grow.

The wronged corpses walked the earth, and the vengeful spirits hovered in the sky.

“I think we’ve gathered enough, don’t you?”

Karnak extended his hand into the air.

“Rise, my army…”

His ominous voice spread through the city, carried by the shadows.

“Become a legion of the dead and march at my command!”