For his plan,Jinwoo needed more shadow soldiers. He had the Rulers guide him to the Sea of the Afterlife before parting ways, and entered the realm alone. The entire dimension was dark, but he could make out an ocean with an abyss darker than the shadows.
Looking closely into the vast ocean, there are countless souls drifting about, most probably the dead.
In Jinwoo's shadow, Beru sensed something.
"My liege, there seems to be a status effect applied to this entire dimension."
"I thought so. This is..."
Jinwoo submerged his hand halfway into the ocean, and grinned.
"All shadows, step into the ocean."
The shadows followed the order and dipped into the ocean.However, they were unaffected.
"My liege, this is..."
"This must be the 'death' status effect, given that this place is the Sea of Afterlife."
Since the shadows contain the souls of the dead, this would not affect them.
(No wonder this felt familiar.I am unaffected probably because I am the King of the Dead, and I sort of died once already.)
There appears to be numerous souls floating about on the sea, seemingly unconscious. Jinwoo assumed this must be the non-awakened civilians that fell into eternal sleep.
(So their souls were trapped here,huh?)
Jinwoo shook the body of the one closest to him, but it did not budge.
(Hmm, eternal sleep can be cured using the elixir of life, and one of its ingredients is a fragment of the World Tree...)
Moving them towards the ancient tree may help, but one million shadows in an endless ocean may not be enough. They might take days to look for all of them. Jinwoo stared into the ocean, and raised his voice so loud that it thundered throughout the entire realm.
"Arise."
The souls of the dead drifting about in the whole dimension began to rise out of the ocean, bowing down and acknowledging their new king.
Some were soldiers of the Heavens and some were chaos monsters who died in battle, ancient strong warriors that calling them decent is an underestimation.
These warriors who were born from the world tree were only created to fight, so they are unquestionably strong.
(Countless S-ranks, with numerous on the level of national level hunters, and even several that are on par with marshals of the Chaos army. I can't even count with this many monsters.)
On closer observations, there were a few things to note:
The giants here look weaker than the ones from the S-rank Japan gate. Those giants might be Legia's personal army when he got captured, and the leading monster was probably the marshal. That explains why he was quite strong.
The beasts seem to be quite strong compared to the ones he fought from the Chaos army. They might have amassed quite the army in an attempt to betray and defeat Ashborn centuries ago.
(It really seems that Rakan abandoned his army to survive. The beasts from the gates and the current chaos army pales in comparison to those here.)
Additionally, there seems to be a couple of other monster species that he has never seen before. The casualties from the seemingly never ending war must have been really severe.
Though they were near countless and powerful, Jinwoo's strength was more than enough to successfully extract their shadows for the first time, as one of the strongest of the Monarchs.
Having been distracted enough with the new shadows that now expand the shadow army to more than 100 times over, Jinwoo focused on the matter at hand.
"All shadows, find the unconscious souls floating about and follow me."
The shadows did as told, and Jinwoo had them point to him the direction towards the World Tree, now that every dead being in the realm had become his shadows.
"Carry the souls to the world tree near enough so that they can touch it."
Bringing them near the World Tree helped them to regain consciousness, waking up one by one. They were surprised to see the shadows when they opened their eyes, but their body glowed brightly and returned to the human world, disappearing from the realm.
(Touching the World Tree awakens the non-awakened? Then this means they would not suffer from eternal sleep anymore.)
Looks like one problem is solved for now.
Jinwoo faced a shadow soldier and spoke to it. He then created a temporary body for it just like the blood-red commander Igris and sent it out on its task; to become stronger.
"Good luck."
Now that he got what he came for, Jinwoo summoned back all of his shadows and left the Sea of Afterlife.
The next day, news spread all over the world that patients who fell to eternal sleep have all woken up, and they have become awakened themselves. The world was thrown into both confusion and celebration. The medical experts quickly explained that the patients being awakened means that their body has adapted to mana and they would not fall to eternal sleep ever again.
However, this recovery must have been triggered by something, they speculated. They began asking questions to the patients to investigate the cause. Later on, reports show that the patients that recovered from eternal sleep, before waking up, unsure whether they were dreaming or not, saw figures in black. One of them even stated that they saw a person, who looked like a Korean. This immediately confirmed that Hunter Sung Jinwoo was involved in this. They began sending in requests to hold another press conference again, to which Jinwoo immediately rejected. He knew that it would be troublesome to deal with their questions and left them as is.