Jun wasn’t exactly an expert in the game’s storyline, but he was still considered a veteran player.
In the early days of the game <Blackout>,
when there were no proper community sites and no user guides to rely on,
Jun had gathered all the information on his own. Every time he was thwarted by the enemy’s varied patterns, he endured countless trials and errors to overcome them.
Among them, the shamans…
They were particularly tricky to deal with.
The rule that “a prepared mage is dangerous” applied just as much to shamans.
In fact, they were even worse than mages in some ways.
I lost countless characters learning that lesson over and over again.
When it came to shamans, the answer was simple: avoid them if you weren’t prepared.
However, there were times in the game when you had no choice but to confront them.
And every time, Jun used various tactics to outwit the shamans.
Now, didn’t he have the reincarnator’s knowledge of shamanism at his disposal?
Shamans, at their core, are…
…a breed that cherished their own bodies excessively.
Because of this, most players would aim for the shaman’s true body, only to be counterattacked.
This principle also applied to the old crone.
The mirror she summoned before her was precisely one of those traps.
An ability designed to reflect the opponent’s attack.
Of course, it couldn’t withstand a certain level of impact, but unless there was at least a two-level difference, breaking through it was nearly impossible.
Still, the greatest strength and weakness of shamanism lies in the ability itself.
The fundamental principle of shamanism was equivalent exchange.
One pays a specific price to a supernatural entity to achieve a goal.
Therefore, the best way to deal with shamans was to disrupt that exchange.
For example, by targeting the mediums that enabled their spells.
[Flare]
Now that the incantation for [Flare] was as natural to him as breathing, it flowed effortlessly from his fingertips.
His target wasn’t the old crone hiding behind the mirror like a turtle, but rather the base of the staff absorbing her energy.
“You wretch!!”
The old crone let out a furious scream.
She was a skilled and experienced shaman, and above all, she understood the weaknesses of shamanism better than anyone else.
The moment she realized Jun’s finger was pointing at the base of her staff, she swung it to the side.
But Jun’s [Flare] had already shot forth from his fingertips, just a fraction of a second ahead of her movement.
It was a razor-thin difference in timing.
Thud—!
[Flare] struck the spot where her staff had just been.
Rumble—!
It hit the medium beneath the staff, the core of her spell.
However, the spell wasn’t completely destroyed.
In that brief moment, the old crone had forcibly completed the spell by pulling energy from her connection to the ground.
The backlash from doing so would come for her, but she didn’t care about that in the slightest.
She believed that if she could just get rid of that unexpected lump of variables, everything would be resolved.
[Spell: Dimensional Descent—Forest of Life and Death]
The spell was activated.
Before the mage could even react, the old crone’s spell struck him directly.
“Keereeeek!”
The old crone’s lips curled all the way to her ear as she grinned widely.
How many sacrifices had she offered in exchange for this spell? How many years had she spent preparing it?
She had even gathered the souls of countless dead people imbued in the medium of the spell and devoted herself to research for years.
That bastard!
Yet, there was one thing she found unsatisfactory.
The spell had not been perfect.
The mass of fire energy that the mage had shot out had inevitably damaged the medium of the spell.
Although she had barely managed to complete the spell by forcibly drawing power from the earth beneath her feet, the flaws remained.
It doesn’t matter. You’ll become a wandering wraith trapped in that place for eternity.
Now the question was what to do with his body.
Her thoughts naturally began to drift in that direction.
Surely, his physical form was no ordinary vessel.
Even his soul would have its uses, enough to make up for the losses she’d incurred in her preparations.
“Senior!”
“…Leader.”
The young man and the small, frail woman standing guard over the mage would also make excellent materials.
But first, she had to deal with this.
“Monk! Hold out, even if I’m not around!”
It was time to pay the price for forcibly twisting the spell into completion.
***
The moment the old crone’s spell struck him, Jun felt his soul being flung somewhere beyond his grasp.
He had tried to destroy the spell entirely, but his opponent was a seasoned shaman.
Not just seasoned; she was on a higher level than Jun, which ultimately prevented him from stopping the spell’s activation.
Damn it.
His soul, being dragged somewhere, trembled violently.
He could feel a powerful force intervening, making sure his soul was forcibly pulled away instead of escaping elsewhere.
When he finally opened his eyes, Jun surveyed his surroundings and nodded.
“As expected… it’s the Forest of Life and Death.”
The old crone’s ultimate technique: the Forest of Life and Death.
In some ways, it resembled Sergey’s mental barrier, but it was fundamentally different.
This was, quite literally, the creation of a spiritual dimension.
I lost so many characters here.
In the game, when a character died, even loading a save file wasn’t an option, making this place an immense source of frustration.
However, that also meant Jun knew the solutions to this space better than anyone.
The only problem was—
I don’t have any allies.
That was the crux of it.
Unlike in the game, the old crone had sent only Jun into this place.
Whether that had been intentional or a result of the spell’s instability, he couldn’t be certain.
But regardless, if a problem arose, the only thing to do was solve it.
“Still… this place looks exactly like it did in the game.”
The Forest of Life and Death.
A forest born of death.
True to its name, this dimension was saturated with nothing but death.
The first thing he noticed was the ashen sky.
It wasn’t quite the same as the one in the medium of the spell.
There were no stars, no moon, no sun.
There was only a gray sky filled with dark clouds.
Beneath this oppressive sky stretched an expanse of death, a barren land where hundreds, thousands of trees stood withered and dead, radiating an eerie, murky aura.
Squelch—
Taking a step forward, Jun felt dampness beneath his feet.
The stench that assaulted his nose made him glance down. This confirmed his suspicion.
The ground was covered with dark, polluted water that had seeped out from the cursed energy flowing through the trees, pooling into large puddles.
Floating atop the puddles were countless corpses.
Instead of soil, the land was blanketed in death, and the ground was formed of decayed bodies.
“What a bad taste she got.”
This was an illusory dimension conjured by the spell.
However, dying here meant death in reality as well.
In that case, one’s body and soul would be separated and turned into materials for the old crone’s rituals.
Of course, Jun had no intention of letting that happen.
“Hmm.”
When he took a step forward, he felt the energy drain from his body.
Like a [Field Effect] in a game, the entire space here was saturated with the shaman’s curses.
[Exhaustion] and [Drought], huh.
Both were curses designed to weaken physical abilities.
Though right now, I’m in a spiritual state.
Not that it made much difference; his soul was still affected by the curses.
[Drought] can be dealt with.
He just had to avoid coming into contact with the black water.
[Summon]
A dimension made of spirit.
Naturally, ordinary artifacts wouldn’t even activate here.
This was another major gameplay element.
Blackout was a game where artifacts and skills played a huge role in success.
But not all artifacts followed the same rules.
Guooong—
The ground trembled as [Tear of Teia] responded to Jun’s summoning command, beginning to mold a golem.
“Good, it’s working.”
Artifacts like [Tear of Teia], which were growth-type items, could still be summoned even in this cursed forest of life and death.
This was because the artifact itself contained spiritual energy.
This is something I learned thanks to Shylock.
The knowledge of artifact use that Jun had briefly studied under Shylock.
Of course, not all artifacts could be used this way. [Tear of Teia] was a masterpiece so extraordinary that even Shylock, who was a master of artifacts, was amazed by it.
“But why do you look like that?”
Jun frowned as he scanned the completed golem.
Unlike before, the golem now took the form of a crimson-tinged skeletal figure.
It seemed the terrain and Jun’s own magical power had significantly influenced its appearance.
Wooong—
The golem let out a sound as if protesting the injustice of its situation.
Jun patted the golem’s shoulder lightly and gave an order as if there was no other choice.
“Carry me for a bit.”
Wuuung—
The golem emitted a resonant hum as if to say, “First you criticize me, and now you’re asking for favors?”
Why does it feel like this thing is becoming more human as time goes on?
Whether a growth-type artifact could develop even a personality was something that only time would tell.
In the end, the golem grumbled but lifted Jun into its hand and set him on its shoulder.
“Let’s go.”
Thanks to its inherent [Magic Nullification] ability, the golem was completely unaffected by curses.
Riding on the golem, Jun traveled for an indeterminate amount of time.
Bubbling, bubbling.
“Huh.”
They had reached the first gate of the cursed forest.
Before them stood four doors, one of which they had to choose to enter.
Of course, there were those who would try to interfere with the process.
“The first gate, huh? But…”
From beneath the dark, polluted water, bubbles began to rise.
It was a familiar sight.
In the game, this was where black skeletons would emerge from below.
However, underestimating them would be a grave mistake.
Their hardness might not rival steel, but it was comparable to solid rock, so they were incredibly resilient to most attacks.
On top of that, defeating them under the influence of curses was no small task.
Instead…
Their resistance to magic was among the weakest, but…
There was a problem.
“Why are there so many of them…?”
There were far more than expected.
In the game, the most you’d face was about twenty.
Clatter―
But the number of figures rising before them now was, at a glance, at least three times that.
***
“Senior!”
Right after the spell of the old crone activated.
Jun’s body became a blurry shape as if it was covered in a shimmering shield.
The flustered Aiden reached out to touch Jun’s body, but his hand passed right through it.
“Damn it!”
Bern realized something was wrong, and checked Jun’s condition belatedly.
As an experienced paladin, he didn’t fully understand the mechanics of the spell, but he could roughly grasp what was happening.
“He’s still alive! Focus on what’s in front of us for now!”
At Bern’s shout, Aiden finally snapped out of it.
Meanwhile, Maya was already looking ahead.
There stood the old crone, hunched over in apparent agony.
“Hmm. It seems there’s an unexpected talent here.”
The Butcher Monk shook his head while looking at the hunched old crone.
Yet, despite his comrade’s suffering, the Butcher Monk showed little concern.
Instead, he gripped the prayer beads wrapped around his hand more tightly and shifted his gaze toward the group.
“Keururuk! Monk, need time!”
“Don’t worry, fellow believer. While it might be hard to completely subdue them…”
In an instant, a crimson aura exploded from his body.
“Dragging out time should be possible. Step forward once you’re ready.”
There was no response from the old crone. Instead, only a gurgling sound escaped as if her breath was giving out.
Bern, no matter what the opponent had done, couldn’t help but admire Jun’s efforts.
Even from Bern’s perspective, the old crone was an extraordinary shaman.
To push such a shaman to this state in one swift move was an incredible feat.
“Eleanor, stay behind me.”
“Old man…”
Eleanor wanted desperately to lift the curse afflicting Jun, but it didn’t seem like something that could be resolved quickly.
For now, she had to focus on the enemies in front of her, just as Bern had said.
If they could take down that lizard-like old hag, Jun would naturally return to normal.
[Hymnal of Light]
[Life Shield of Light]
[Bless of Light]
Divine magic that enhanced physical abilities provided a shield to block sudden attacks and continuously healed injuries for Aiden, Maya, and Bern.
“I’m sorry. This is all I can do for now…”
Eleanor berated her past self.
Divine magic included offensive spells as well, but she had never learned any of them.
It was a habit formed after an incident in her childhood when innocent people had suffered because of her.
But Bern shook his head.
“A paladin overcomes all adversity.”
With renewed determination, Bern gripped his battle hammer and shield tightly.
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