My Harem of Dangerous and Crazy Women as a Reincarnated Necromancer-Chapter 53: Desperate Times Call for Desperate Measures

Mark took off running toward the five unconscious women.

He wasn’t fast — he didn’t have Yuki’s speed or Rose’s agility — but he didn’t need to be fast.

He just needed to get there before the nun stopped him.

"WHAT THE HELL DO YOU THINK YOU’RE DOING, YOU SON OF A BITCH?!"

The nun snapped her head toward Mark and the look she shot him was so intense that for a moment he felt as if a knife had been driven into his back.

Those green eyes, which until now had shown nothing but frustration and irritation, now burned with pure fury.

She ignored Yuki and Rose entirely and launched herself toward Mark at a speed that shouldn’t have been possible for someone in her condition. 𝙛𝓻𝒆𝒆𝒘𝙚𝓫𝙣𝙤𝒗𝙚𝓵.𝙘𝙤𝙢

’Shit, shit, shit!’ Mark thought as he ran.

"MAGMA WALL!" Rose shouted, and a wall of molten rock rose from the floor between the nun and Mark, cutting off her path completely.

The heat it radiated was so intense that Mark felt it on his back despite being several meters away.

"Your fight is with us!" Rose shouted from across the hall, both hands outstretched keeping the spell active.

The nun stopped in front of the lava wall, and for an instant it looked like she was going to try to punch straight through it.

But Yuki didn’t give her time to consider it.

Three daggers came flying from somewhere invisible in the hall, aimed directly at the nun’s back.

She detected them at the last second and turned, deflecting two with her gauntlets, but the third grazed her shoulder, opening a fresh cut.

"DAMN IT ALL!" the nun roared.

Mark was now only a few meters from the bodies.

’I just need to reach them,’ Mark thought desperately.

The nun, caught between the lava wall and Yuki’s attacks, clenched her teeth so hard Mark could almost hear the grinding from where he was.

"DIVINE ARROWS!" the woman shouted as golden portals materialized in the air around her.

Five, ten, fifteen... Mark stopped counting when they passed twenty.

From each portal a lance of golden light emerged, and all of them shot forward at the same time.

"A miracle?!" Rose cried out in surprise. "Wasn’t she supposed to be a close-range fighter?!"

But she had no time to complain, as a wave of golden lances came straight for her.

Rose reacted on instinct, pressing both hands together in front of her chest.

"THOPS’S BARRIER!" Rose called, and a barrier of dark energy materialized before her just in time.

The lances struck the shield one after another, each impact generating an explosion of gold and purple sparks that lit up the hall like fireworks.

The shield held, but the lava wall wasn’t so lucky.

The molten rock barrier separating the nun from Mark crumbled, cooling and collapsing into chunks that scattered across the floor.

Yuki was also caught in the crossfire.

A volley of golden projectiles rained down on her position, but the assassin had already moved, slipping behind one of the stone columns still standing, emerging unscathed from the attack.

When Mark finallly reached his target, he quickly touched the first woman, and his heart stopped.

Not hers. His.

’They’re... alive?’

He touched the second. Then the third. The fourth. The fifth.

All the same.

Their heartbeats and breathing were faint, barely perceptible, but they were there.

’No, no, no, no, no...’ Mark thought desperately.

Wake Up only worked on corpses, not on people on the verge of death, and Mark was running out of time.

So Mark did the first thing that came to mind... finish them off.

"Vorax, sword, NOW!"

The small slime that had been hiding inside his robe reacted in under a second, sliding down to his right hand and solidifying into the shape of a short sword.

Mark grabbed the hilt and drove the blade into the first woman’s chest.

Then pulled it out and stabbed the second.

Then the third.

The fourth.

The fifth.

Five seconds, five deaths.

Mark’s hands were trembling and blood covered his fingers up to the wrists, but he didn’t stop.

"Wake Up."

The ability activated and Mark felt energy leave his body in five directions at once.

The cost in mana was brutal, like someone had torn a piece out of him, but it worked.

"Consciousness Modification."

Mark had no time to be precise or careful.

So he settled on a single modification and applied it to all of them at once.

Loyalty: Absolute.

Love: Unconditional.

Personality: Total submission.

Mark didn’t even bother checking their stats or their names.

First: Modified.

Second: Modified.

Third: Modified.

Fourth: Modified.

Fifth: Modified.

They opened their eyes at the same time, and Mark still with their blood on his hands and the sword dripping at his side, gave them a single order.

"Stop her!"

The nun, now free of the lava wall, turned immediately toward Mark, but it was already too late.

Because suddenly she watched as the five women she had carried up from the lower floors — the ones she had protected with her life — threw themselves at her.

"...Huh?" The confusion in her voice lasted less than a second, as all five women tackled her at the same time, knocking her onto her back against the floor.

Two pinned her arms, two others her legs, and the fifth sat on her torso, immobilizing her with dead weight that, combined with the exhaustion and her wounds, was enough to keep her on the ground.

None of them were physically strong, but she couldn’t bring herself to strike them.

"WHAT DID YOU DO TO THEM?!" the nun screamed, staring into the blank eyes of her companions. "LET ME GO! IT’S ME! WHAT THE HELL DID YOU—?!"

"YUKI, NOW! FINISH HER!"

Mark’s voice rang through the entire hall, and the nun’s eyes went wide.

Yuki had materialized directly above her.

The assassin came down with her full weight, both hands on the grip of a single dagger, aimed directly at her heart.

The nun saw it coming but could do nothing, and the dagger drove through her chest, ending her life.

"Finally..." Mark murmured, letting himself fall flat on his back against the floor with a heavy sigh. "I thought that woman was never going to go down."

Mark’s heart was still pounding hard and his hands trembled slightly from the adrenaline.

He hadn’t fought directly, but the tension of being in that woman’s sights had been just as draining.

Maybe more so.

"Are you alright, Yuki?" Mark asked, turning to look at her.

Yuki stepped down from the nun’s body slowly, pulling her dagger from the woman’s chest, then wiped it on her clothes and sheathed it in silence.

The five reanimated women also released the nun’s body.

Rose walked calmly toward them.

"I have to admit it, Master," Rose said with a half smile, stopping in front of Mark. "Using the people she wanted to protect against her... that was brilliant."

Mark let out a short laugh from the floor.

"At first I was going to use them as hostages to make her stop," Mark admitted, staring at the wrecked ceiling of the hall. "You know, the classic ’move and I kill them’... but in the end I just killed them and reanimated them directly."

Rose blinked in disbelief, even raising an eyebrow.

"What do you mean, kill them?" she asked, confused. "Weren’t they already dead?"

Mark glanced over at the five women, who were now standing in a row.

"No." Mark scratched the back of his neck with a nonchalance that would have been deeply unsettling to any normal person. "They were on the verge of death, yes, but they were still alive... barely, but alive."

"And so...?" Rose asked, as if waiting for Mark to finish the sentence.

"Obviously I had to finish them off quickly with Vorax’s help before I could use Wake Up on them," Mark replied matter-of-factly.

"..."