Chapter 241 : Chapter 241
Chapter 241. What Are You Waiting For?
【Talent: Revival of the Dead
Effect: After you die, you can return to the Material Realm as one of the dead. The price is that you will lose some of your knowledge, and after performing a resurrection ritual, you can restore your body to that of the living.】
This was the talent Grant had obtained from the Spirit Realm. To be honest, it was an exceptionally powerful one.
Who knew how many people obtained utterly useless talents from the Spirit Realm—such as talents that only strengthened a spell they had never even acquired.
His own talent, by contrast, was useful in nearly any situation.
With this talent, it was as though he had an extra life. If an enemy killed him, he could suddenly revive in the form of an undead being and catch his opponent completely off guard.
Grant stood up from the ground and felt the state of his body. He had already lost his senses of taste and smell, and even part of his sense of touch.
That was the price of becoming one of the dead. As one of the dead, he no longer needed food to sustain himself. What he needed was something else—souls.
He could siphon souls from the living and use them as fuel for his movements.
“Anna, I never should have agreed to let you join the team,” Grant roared at Anna through gritted teeth.
As one of the dead, his body no longer displayed any obvious signs of anger. So even when he shouted at Anna, what others heard was still a cold, emotionless sound, like the cry of a beast. No feeling could be heard in it at all.
That was another thing he disliked. Although he had always secretly rejoiced at having a second life, the truth was that he had never really wanted to become one of the dead, because that meant he had failed.
Anna picked her short sword up from the ground and took her stance, her body drawn taut like a bowstring as she guarded against any attack Grant might launch.
Anna did not understand how Grant could still be alive after having his neck pierced, but his next sentence made her understand.
“I still have to go through a ritual to become one of the living again. What a nuisance. If I had known this would happen, I never would have let you join the team, though we really were short one ranger...”
“This is his Spirit Realm talent! He can revive!!” Anna shouted at once. On the continent, if you heard something was connected to a ritual, there was a fifty percent chance it was a ritual of some god’s faith.
The other fifty percent of the time, it belonged to those who had advanced through the Spirit Realm and gained talents from it.
Some talents naturally came with special rituals that had unique effects, and those rituals were granted to the talent’s owner at the same time as the talent itself.
At that moment, Grant lifted his eyes and looked around, taking in the current state of the battlefield.
“So, you already dealt with that Necromantic Skeleton Mage? Perfect...”
Grant’s 【Revival of the Dead】 talent allowed him to choose the time of his revival after death. He had deliberately set it to activate five minutes later.
He had done that so he could join the fight at the right moment and reap the battlefield afterward.
Fulan and Anna had killed that powerful Necromantic Skeleton Mage. That had taken him by surprise, but it did not matter.
He firmly believed that whether it had been that Necromantic Skeleton Mage or the newly arrived Fulan and Anna, everyone involved in this battle must have paid a heavy price.
“It looks like you helped me get rid of that undead creature. Thank you very much...”
Before his death, he had still been worrying about what would happen if Fulan and the others failed to wear down that undead creature.
Although Fulan and Anna had been able to deal with those seven skeleton soldiers in a short time, that Necromantic Skeleton Mage had simply been too powerful.
In the ten years since he had relied on this 【Revival of the Dead】 talent to cycle through three different identities, he had never seen such a powerful first-tier monster.
No matter how Fulan and the others had managed it, he was convinced of one thing: as long as they were still first-tier Professionals, they must have paid a price in that battle.
And unlike Gavin, a man who gambled everything on luck, someone like him—someone with the 【Revival of the Dead】 talent—would never do that.
He had come down here only after careful thought.
Grant clenched his fist and felt an unprecedented surge of energy filling his entire body. It was something he had never felt in any of his previous times as one of the dead.
“Just as I thought. That thing really does empower all undead creatures.”
He looked at the azure chest by Fulan’s feet, greed rising in his eyes.
He knew that object had strengthened that undead creature and turned the Necromantic Skeleton Mage into what it was.
That had led him to guess that perhaps it could empower all undead creatures.
When he had come down here, he had been betting on that slim hope—betting that the object would strengthen all undead creatures without discrimination.
After all, if that thing only empowered specific undead creatures, there would not be so many first-tier skeletons here.
Under normal circumstances, even a single first-tier skeleton required a tremendous amount of resources to cultivate. How could they appear here like they were free?
The only reason this could happen was because that chest was empowering all undead creatures equally.
“I’ll turn both of you into my undead servants.”
A stiff smile appeared on his face.
After all, even ordinary first-tier skeletons were hard enough to find. First-tier Professionals like the two standing before him were even rarer.
Naturally, he had no intention of letting those two first-tier Professionals go. Even his former teammate, Gavin, would become one of his undead servants.
Yet what surprised Grant was that he saw no panic on their faces. He did not even see the expression of people facing a great enemy.
Instead, what he saw on both their faces was mockery—more than that, disdain.
“Heh! You’re about to die and you still don’t even realize it!”
He merely gave a light sneer and no longer intended to keep talking to them.
For him, the situation was still extremely dangerous. Those mercenaries were still outside searching for him, along with the Church of the Goddess of the Currents and those Beastmen.
He had to act immediately. Either he would use that object to raise a squad strong enough to contend with his enemies, or he would have to find a place to hide as quickly as possible.
With that thought, he stopped hesitating and immediately began to summon a spell into his hand.
He was not afraid that the other side would interrupt his channeling, because he knew that thing also enhanced his concentration while casting. Even if a heavy axe split his skull open in one blow, it still would not break his channeling.
And the spell he was channeling now, 【Ground-Sweeping Frost】, was a powerful spell he had obtained from the Spirit Realm. This first-tier spell of his required only three seconds of channeling to complete.
His plan was good, and his actions were correct.
But he had run into an enemy he could never defeat, no matter what he did.
One second after he began channeling, a powerful surge of magical energy descended upon him with crushing force. The sheer might of that spell fluctuation filled him with terror.
He looked toward Fulan, who was casting the spell. There was a trace of speechless exasperation on her face, as if she were saying, “I’ve been channeling a spell this whole time. What are you waiting for?”
While Grant and Anna had been talking, Fulan had already begun channeling her spell.