The Unwanted Undead Adventurer Vol. 01 Read online

  Having finally arranged my thoughts, I began to focus, surrounding my body with spirit energy. Amidst considerations that I had last used this ability when I was more than just a pile of bones, I had no idea if it would actually work. But I had to test it out somehow. If it didn’t work, then I would have to rely on simple force. If it did, on the other hand...

  I was known in life for pushing forward even if things seemed grim. It didn’t make sense to simply give up now.

  As I continued to focus, it would seem like my gamble was paying off. With all of my strength, I thrust the sword’s hilt, slowly pushing the weapon through the skeleton’s eye socket and eventually breaking through its skull. But the force of the attack did not seem to stop there—a series of unpleasant crackling sounds spread through the enemy skeleton’s body, and all at once, all the bones in its body broke into a thousand small pieces.

  Like a puppet with its strings cut, what used to be the enemy skeleton collapsed into a shower of bony fragments, scattering across the ground of the dungeon. Up until a few moments ago, those bones had been connected, and had formed the body of a skeleton. But with its head crushed and form compromised, the skeleton seemed to have lost its undead traits, returning once more into a lifeless pile of bones.

  I won. Somehow.

  Although it was a clumsy and thoroughly shameful display of a first battle, all that mattered was my victory.

  While I was not as agile or strong as I was in life, I had managed to use the abilities available to me for a strained victory. Perhaps I didn’t do as badly as I thought.

  With that notion in my head, I leaned back, my mind somehow filled with an ambivalent sense of relief.

  ◆◇◆◇◆

  Well, then. While it was all fine and good that I’d defeated a fellow skeleton, would this be a definitive step toward my evolution?

  Searching amidst the shattered bones of my opponent, I picked up what appeared to be a magic crystal. I held it up to myself, as if expecting some sort of change to occur. Unfortunately, however, nothing of the sort happened—at least, I assumed as much. Suddenly, as if to prove me wrong, a stream of light slowly rose from the skeleton’s shattered remains, gradually heading toward my body.

  Is it still alive?!

  Alarmed, I quickly took a combative stance, but the stream of light did not seem hostile in any way. It did, however, ignore my most valiant attempts to dodge it, eventually making its way into my body. Preparing myself for some sort of impact, I half expected the light to hurt me in some way, it did not. Instead, I felt full of strength.

  As I slowly began to absorb the light, I could feel the energy I had expended in the previous fight return to me. Oddly enough, even my reserves of mana, spirit, and divinity all seemed to increase, if only by a sliver. Was this the much-vaunted Existential Evolution that monsters went through?

  Deciding to find out, I conducted a thorough inspection of my body—not that it took very long to do at all. Although I definitely felt stronger, I was still visually a walking pile of bones, not quite yet the ghoul I was hoping to become. If anything, my appearance didn’t actually change in the slightest.

  While the lack of a mirror prevented me from confirming, the visible parts of my body, such as my arms and legs, were still pale white bone. My face probably did not fare any better. In that case...

  Then was this all for naught?!

  That was the first thought that crossed my mind in this moment.

  Thinking about it calmly, I realized that Existential Evolution was probably not something that happened overnight, especially not with the defeat of only one other skeleton. This was also knowledge that was gleaned from my readings of various tomes on monsters—numerous books seemed to reach the same conclusion.

  For instance, if said evolution truly did occur with the simple defeat of a monster by another of the same type, they would then instantly become stronger, more powerful monsters. In turn, they would effectively spread like wildfire and make the world a living hell for the rest of humanity. Although the lands were populated with distinct types of monsters, including those that posed credible threats to humanity, most of them were monsters that could be safely hunted and disposed of. This was how humanity managed to live on in relative peace inside established towns and villages.

  As such, those very same books I had been reading deduced that not many monsters go through Existential Evolution on a regular basis. Simply put, the process was not something that happened easily or quickly. One would possibly need to defeat a great many enemies first, with some having a higher degree of strength, or to live for a certain amount of time before it would even happen.

  In my case, I had just become a monster, and had struggled to defeat another skeleton. Evolution would not be knocking on my door anytime soon—such was a reasonable assumption. If anything, I should be grateful for becoming a little stronger, especially if the surge of strength and slight increase in my abilities were anything to go by.

  While I had trained for days, weeks, and months without much results in life, the instant gratification of my previous battle was much more preferable. With the defeat of a single enemy, I grew a little stronger.

  Relatively speaking, I would find battles easier the more of them I fought—a reasonable deduction, I thought. Of course, there was no guarantee that my battles would result in victory each and every time. I did also get rather lucky for my first fight.

  Well, I suppose it would ultimately come down to me trying my hand at defeating various other monsters in the area. I had to at least try.

  With that thought in mind, I set off on the passageways of the Water Moon Dungeon once more.

  ◆◇◆◇◆

  As expected, my hypothesis was correct—I grew a little stronger with each defeated foe. After that initial battle, I encountered and swiftly defeated a number of other skeletons. Each time, that strange light would rise from their body, making its way inside me.

  With each absorbed light, I felt stronger and faster. It was not just a mental illusion of sorts; my movements had become markedly faster and stronger. Even my spirit art attacks had their offensive power increased. While I had struggled to push my blade through the enemy’s skull during my first encounter, I could now send my opponent’s bones flying if I put my backbone into it, crushing them in the process.

  Perhaps the time had come for me to move on to bigger prey, like slimes. I had certainly become strong enough to at least entertain such thoughts.

  Although slimes were somewhat weak, just like basic skeleton monsters were, their indeterminate shapes and jelly-like bodies were qualities to not be underestimated. Due to these traits, physical attacks did not work too well on them, so the easiest way to defeat slimes was to attack them with spells of some sort.

  With that being said, however, it was inaccurate to say that slimes were invulnerable to everything but magic; it was still very much possible to defeat them with physical attacks.

  There were two ways to go about doing this. First, one could crush the slime’s core, which was a crystalline organ in the interior of the slime. If that object were destroyed, the slime would simply dissolve and die, leaving only magic crystals in its wake. But that was much easier said than done. A slime’s core was not stationary, as it often moved around inside its fluid-like body. Certain degrees of technique and finesse were required to damage it with a sword or spear. Such skills were commonly found in adventurers past the middle-Bronze-class level. On that note, I was a lower-Bronze-class adventurer, so I obviously could do nothing of the sort.

  The other method was somewhat messy, as one could simply scatter the gelatinous parts of the jelly around with blunt force impacts, eventually reaching the core before the slime could regenerate, thus destroying it. As this was an extremely simple method, even I was capable of executing it. It did, however, require a certain amount of execution time.

  The gelatinous nature of a slime meant that it could reform even if scattered, starting with the lar
gest piece. In order to prevent that from happening, either a relatively forceful blow, or a series of rapid blows, had to be applied. In my case, I chose a single, powerful spirit art reinforced attack. It was all I had.

  Basically, I was only able to hunt one slime a day in my previous life. I was incredibly weak—

  Well, I was a lower-Bronze-class adventurer after all. To make matters worse, I often traveled alone, as opposed to joining a party with others.

  Slimes were simple monsters that could be easily dispatched even if the sole member of the party had some small degree of magical aptitude. One did not need to be a great mage to take out slimes, as a single fireball or earthen arrow would do the trick. If anything, few adventurers chose to utilize the time-consuming, inefficient method I was now forced to use.

  In exchange, I was able to hunt lower-tier monsters, such as skeletons or goblins, in relatively large numbers. This resulted in respectable earnings for a lower-Bronze-class adventurer such as myself. Though in my current form, I might even give my archnemesis, the slime, a run for its proverbial money.

  Having at last gotten used to my skeletal body, I was able to deliver blows of considerable force, even without utilizing spirit arts. Surely that would be enough to scatter the gelatinous body of a slime.

  It was time to give my new skills a spin. I set off for an area in Moon’s Reflection that was well-known to be inhabited by my archenemy. Although I had already defeated one on my way into the uncharted territories of the dungeon, significant time had passed for a re-pop to occur, according to my assumptions. Of course, it was quite possible that another adventurer could have gotten to the slime before I did.

  After exploring dungeons for such extensive amounts of time, one eventually develops a biological sense of time within its walls, which is handy for keeping track of time when surveying. In highly-populated dungeons, the smell of blood and metal would often fill the air, in addition to vibrations caused by combat that could be felt in the floor and walls. In my case, I had spent most of my time exploring this particular dungeon, and as such, I had a relatively good grasp of its scope of time. Thanks to that, I could even determine which areas of the dungeon would experience high adventurer traffic during specific times of the day.

  As such, I determined that there were no adventurers known to frequent this dungeon around this period of time. This wasn’t the only dungeon around the town of Maalt after all. There was another, bigger one close by, apparently called the New Moon Dungeon.

  Many parts of that dungeon remained unexplored, with multiple areas and floors only partially mapped out. As a result, most adventurers in Maalt headed toward New Moon. Those who had instead opted to frequent Moon’s Reflection were either stubborn or solo adventurers who could not find a party to explore the depths of New Moon.

  For the record, I was of the latter group. Although I had originally wanted to explore the New Moon Dungeon instead, it was populated by a vast number of monsters, including those that attacked adventurers in packs. A lower-Bronze-class adventurer wandering into that dungeon alone would be no better than a death sentence. Barring those times when I had been invited at the last minute to fill a slot in someone else’s party, I greatly preferred hunting in the Water Moon Dungeon instead.

  Thinking back on it, it was a relatively lonely life.

  There were many reasons as to why I adventured alone, but the main reason was simple: no other adventurers wanted to be in a party with me. After all, I had been stuck as a lower-Bronze-class for roughly ten years. Even the most untalented adventurers would rise to middle- or upper-Bronze-class level in that lengthy span of time.

  —That was evidently not the case for me.

  Even so, I was not completely isolated; I was occasionally invited to join other parties. However, as I wanted to become a Mithril-class adventurer of my own ability, the nature of my dream prevented me from joining the parties of other adventurers quite often. In addition, my long stagnation in the adventurer ranks had apparently earned me the name of “The Thousand-year Bronze-class,” and as a result, even the occasional party invitations had eventually dried up.

  It’s a sad tale, so let us leave that be for now. More importantly, I still had to hunt myself a slime.

  Shelving those thoughts, I continued moving forward and was soon greeted by the sight of a slowly-moving, almost transparent monster of jelly.

  —It was unmistakably a slime.

  Drawing my sword, I slowly crept up upon my archnemesis, the very same kind of slime that I had hunted these past ten years.

  ◆◇◆◇◆

  It didn’t take long for me to notice that this slime was slightly different from its peers. Its body was clear and transparent—it was obvious that it had reappeared not too long ago.

  A clean slime like this was considerably rare. It’s perhaps worth mentioning that slimes’ hues often became clouded after living for a while, mainly due to eating other monsters or the occasional unfortunate small animal. Trapped in the slime’s gelatinous body, its prey would slowly start to dissolve, resulting in quite the unpleasant sight. Slimes also sucked up corpses and other dead bodies quite frequently, and it was not uncommon to see bones and half-digested remains of monsters suspended in a slime’s body. New adventurers not yet used to the sight of viscera often found themselves throwing up.

  While the sight of dead mice and the like were somewhat tolerable, slimes sometimes absorbed the remains of humanoid monsters such as goblins, or in some cases, even the half-digested corpses of adventurers who had died exploring the dungeon. Most adventurers would lose their appetite for exploration after such a sight, if not their stomach altogether. Of course, those who continued being so easily disgusted did not remain adventurers for long. Though even those that did press on down the adventurer’s path still continued to find half-digested dead bodies disgusting.

  In my case, I felt very little, having continued on as an adventurer for some ten odd years. Common wisdom stated that adventurers needed to steel their guts during their first year.

  Drawing my mind back from yet another train of thought, I once again became aware of the relative clarity of the slime before me. Although I was currently a skeleton, and could be more frightening to the common man in certain situations (more so than a slime in the middle of digesting its meal, at least), my emotions were still very much human.

  I didn’t want anyone to think I derived any sort of pleasure from destroying a corpse-filled slime. But this particular slime was clean, and very much so. The fluid of a freshly spawned slime like this was worth a tidy sum. If one were to somehow collect its fluids with a vessel of sorts, it could be sold to the adventurer’s guild or to an alchemist as an important, rare ingredient. Even the fluids of an impure slime could be boiled and mixed with various medicinal ingredients to create basic healing potions, so it was not a bad ingredient by any means. The fluids of a pure and clean slime, however, had many more uses, and as such could be sold for much larger sums.

  Although I was a skeleton now, the tool belt I had in life was still attached to my waist. In said tool belt was a container I had specifically prepared for this situation, and I quickly decided that this was the course of action I would take after defeating the slime.

  Slowly, and with considerably suspicious movements, I began to approach the slime. As I did so, the slime, as if noticing me, shivered intensely, shooting out what appeared to be a glob of water in my general direction.

  Anticipating its attack, I dodged cleanly to the side. The glob of water promptly hit the ground, instantly beginning to dissolve the earth. It didn’t take long for a small trail of smoke to rise from the unfortunate patch of dirt.

  This was one of the slime’s signature attacks—Acid Blitz. As its name may suggest, the slime produces an acidic substance within its body and shoots it out as a form of ranged projectile attack. Whatever was unfortunate enough to be hit by said attack would then dissolve.

  It was a simple, acid-based attack, and d
epending on where the victim was hit, it would not deal too much damage. However, if it caught one in, say, the eyes, the unfortunate victim would not escape unscathed. At the very least, one should endeavor to protect one’s face in such an encounter.

  Although I would not lose my vision from a simple acid attack to the face in my current form, the bone structure of my skull would most likely dissolve, in which case I would simply die. So losing one’s eyesight was hardly the problem here. It occurred to me that I had to avoid every single one of the slime’s attacks, just to be safe.

  It’s worth noting that while the slime’s attack was considerably dangerous, the slime itself was markedly slow. A normal slime like this one was not known for moving fast. In addition, its movements were easily predictable; all I had to do was be sufficiently careful. As long as one was alert for the ever-present threat of the fast-moving Acid Blitz projectile, slimes were not fearsome monsters by any means. If anything, the main problem adventurers faced when attempting to defeat a slime was that of their own skill sets and abilities.

  Due to my current state as a skeleton and the absorbed energies of the other skeletons I had defeated, I was stronger than I had ever been. At the very least, I was now capable of movements close to my original speed in life. I would probably not lose to a slime, of all things.

  As I gradually continued to advance, the slime motioned to shoot yet another round of acid in my general direction. This time, however, I was prepared, holding up my sword and boosting my speed with my spirit arts. Sprinting toward the slime, I swung down my sword in a flash, hitting its body and retreating rapidly before it could finish shooting its acid.

  Although I felt something give as I landed my blow, there was no way I had instantly defeated the slime. With that thought in mind, I quickly recovered, once again readying myself for another blow.

  But this time, the slime did something unexpected. Instead of following up with an attack, it simply stopped, quivering in place. All of a sudden, it completely stopped moving before promptly dissolving into a lifeless puddle.