Chapter 162
Chapter 162
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Translator: Ryuma
Chapter: 162
Chapter Title: Chapter 30: Perception (5)
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‘The situation in China is one where Players are heavily suppressed.’
In such circumstances, what method would they have used to pump mana into that bastard?
Even without asking someone directly, I could roughly grasp the situation.
‘The auction function, perhaps…….’
Confirming that it was realistically possible to funnel mana into someone wasn’t a bad thing.
However, the method and results weren’t satisfactory, which left me with more thoughts swirling in my head.
To become a gold badge, ten million mana was required.
‘Ten million, no less.’
In simple numerical terms, that was the amount of mana you’d get from crushing thousands, tens of thousands of lives.
Whether it was Ain or monsters, slaughtering that many would inevitably build real combat experience.
Yet Jang Lun had swung his sword fewer times against me than Yoon Ji-hye, who was a silver badge.
He didn’t have the skill to exploit my openings.
‘Can I assume he has less experience than her?’
Jang Lun had become a gold badge by scraping together mana through some loophole.
And that loophole was undoubtedly the auction function.
‘No wonder I thought it was a bit early for a gold badge to appear.’
In a way, I’d also become a gold badge through a loophole.
Thanks to Karos’s authority and Kerax’s spear, I’d gotten an abnormal opportunity to sweep up mana.
It was too early for a gold badge to emerge through normal growth without such cheats.
‘And he barely seems to have trained either.’
I’d found it odd that he hadn’t used magic since that first time.
‘It wasn’t that he didn’t use it—he couldn’t.’
He wasn’t accustomed to arranging mana, so he couldn’t cast spells during rapid exchanges of blows.
In this game with no automation features whatsoever, failing to train was an unforgivable mistake that deserved death.
For a guy who was barely that competent to be a gold badge like me.
Thinking about how he’d lorded over this place with that rank made me scoff.
“Ha.”
It was true that I’d considered using auctions to cultivate higher-grade Players.
But I hadn’t wanted to blindly pump mana into someone who didn’t even bother with proper training.
The picture I’d envisioned was funneling mana to copper or silver badges who took this war seriously and pondered their own roles.
That way, at least I wouldn’t feel like the ten million mana was wasted.
I was sighing in a mix of disbelief and emptiness when.
Jang Lun, who’d been glaring at me with his sword pointed my way, rummaged in his pants pocket.
He pulled out some kind of paper envelope.
“Hup, khem.”
He snorted the black powder inside through his nose.
“Ha!”
It was so absurd that a hollow laugh escaped me involuntarily.
I wasn’t so ignorant of the world that I didn’t know what I’d just seen.
What kind of mindset lets you think of doing drugs in this situation?
It was so ridiculous that my killing intent faltered for a moment.
But I forcibly rallied my murderous aura again, spinning the spear in circles.
At the same time, I resumed my halted steps, advancing toward Jang Lun.
If he wouldn’t come to me, I’d go to him.
Jang Lun retreated, flinching with every step I took.
I’d given him enough time to try magic again, but he showed no signs of using mana.
He seemed to have lost his composure entirely, unable even to operate mana.
‘Shouldn’t someone at that level have graduated from copper badge days?’
Every time I confirmed how pathetic he was, the corpses I’d seen kept flashing in my mind.
It felt so hollow that so many people had died to a guy like this.
The fact that he could commit such one-sided atrocities just because they were Players was infuriating.
My thrusts at Jang Lun grew more savage.
Chaeng-!
His sword blocked it almost reflexively, but only for a moment.
Kak, kkaak.
I’d put so much force into it that the spear scraped along the blade, sparking as it slid.
If things had gone as I’d seen and experienced, the spear should have pierced Jang Lun right there.
That was the extent of his skill and situational response.
But the spear I’d thrust was caught in Jang Lun’s hand.
It was unexpected, but I didn’t panic and condensed mana.
Jang Lun’s fingers sliced off like tofu, blood spurting out.
Pushing further from there wouldn’t have been hard.
But I froze in place. I’d seen the black shadow creeping up from Jang Lun’s nape.
‘Veins……?’
Wriggle, wriggle.
What bulged prominently across his skin, moving as if alive, were definitely veins.
The problem was their pitch-black color.
The black veins quickly covered Jang Lun’s face and forearms.
Seeing it instantly brought a memory to mind.
-We extracted blood from monsters and made a new kind of drug.
-It’s seriously dangerous in its effects. Your veins turn black and swell up, your muscles bulge visibly, to the point where you barely seem human anymore.
No sooner had I recalled Aisa’s words than—boom!
Jang Lun kicked off the ground with incomparable power and speed compared to before, slamming a kick into me.
“Keuk!”
My body was flung backward.
But would I just take it lying down? That would bruise my pride.
In the instant my body was sent flying, I materialized attribute mana.
The blue flash hurtled toward Jang Lun, whose face was alight with ecstasy.
In the meantime, I regained my balance from the backward momentum and raised my spear again.
“Kraaak!”
Steam rose from Jang Lun’s body.
It had hit him dead on. He should be paralyzed and unable to move for a while.
That’s how it should have been.
‘He’s moving?’
Jang Lun was moving as if nothing had happened.
I was startled only briefly before his sword came crashing down from above.
I calmly raised my spear to block it.
Thud.
A heavy pressure bore down on me from above.
The stone cave floor cracked with a jjjeojeok, forming a circular crater.
My eyes cooled coldly as I withstood the weight with my entire body.
There was a clear difference from Jang Lun’s power just a few minutes ago.
I now fully understood what Aisa had meant.
‘He’s entering some kind of berserk state.’
The drug seemed to inflate his physical abilities explosively.
While my gaze turned icy cold, Jang Lun’s face flushed even more intensely.
Before I could focus on the black veins creeping over his cheeks and eyes—boom, boom boom!
Jang Lun hammered down at me like a madman, driving me back.
“Uhahaha!”
Madman—that was the only fitting description.
Jang Lun swung his sword noticeably faster and stronger than before, but that was it.
‘More annoying than threatening.’
His strength and speed had increased, but not enough to catch up to my experience.
Proof came when, the moment I swapped Kerax’s spear for a dagger, Jang Lun’s movements tangled.
‘Stupid bastard.’
Seizing the opening, I closed the distance. With the dagger in my left hand, I bound his sword.
With the one in my right, I thrust deep.
The motion was flawless, without excess.
‘Brata dagger technique.’
A skill I’d naturally picked up while sparring with Kim Yul.
To train systematic dagger work and build Kim Yul’s interpersonal combat experience.
Lately, I’d been steadily practicing close-quarters combat with daggers.
Thanks to that, the dagger in my right hand shot toward Jang Lun’s chest like a boxing jab.
Before he could even dodge.
“Huaaaak!”
I cleanly severed his right arm.
Immediately after, I grabbed the now weaponless bastard by the throat and smashed him into the ground.
Jjeok-!
The earth split as Jang Lun vomited blood.
“Keurgh……!”
But his eyes were still ferociously mad with insanity.
The moment I sensed his mana stirring, I pulled a magic stone from my inventory.
The advanced restraint tool that the Players who’d escorted me to Busan had used on Yoon Ji-hye.
As soon as the magic stone shattered, blue chains surged up, binding Jang Lun.
“Kraaak!”
I checked the timer in the upper corner of my vision and gripped his collar tighter.
Then I asked about what had been bothering me.
“Where’d you get the Cretol?”
Jang Lun, coughing raggedly perhaps from exhaustion, suddenly started giggling.
“Why, want some?”
I hadn’t noticed amid his frantic movements, but his tongue was slightly slurred.
“It’d be a shame to just give it away…… This stuff’s the best I’ve ever tried.”
Heehee, heh.
As he grinned, Jang Lun suddenly grabbed my arm, which was pressing down on his neck with his remaining hand.
“You think catching me ends it?! Everything you’re doing is futile!”
Then he shrieked like he was having a fit.
“So let me live, hehe.”
In an instant, he switched to begging for his life with a completely different face.
“Spare me, and I’ll give you all the Cretol.”
His eyes narrowed slyly as he subtly made his demand, a gesture that seemed practiced.
Watching him act all coquettish made me think I could guess what kind of life he’d lived.
But my interest wasn’t in Jang Lun’s past or background.
“You said there’s more.”
What did he mean by it not ending with catching him?
It meant this damn human trafficking group had more members.
All Radriol had found were Jang Lun’s crew near Bi-cheta.
I couldn’t be sure how many more were out there.
Killing the ones here while sparing those elsewhere didn’t make sense.
So it was right to extract info on the others from Jang Lun.
“I might tell you if you promise to let me live.”
The strength drained from Jang Lun’s hand gripping my arm.
And then he started giggling again, leisurely this time.
‘He’s convinced I have no choice but to let him live.’
A laughable delusion.
“Just die.”
Because there were still surviving Players.
Having confirmed it via the map, I snapped Jang Lun’s neck clean.
Fake or not, a gold badge was a gold badge.
「Mana is being absorbed. Some contaminated mana is mixed in.」
A massive amount of mana began flowing into me.
The contamination level was higher than expected, but since I already had more mana, it wasn’t a big issue.
My current Purification trait was level 2, with proficiency over 98%.
‘Wonder what options the next level will give.’
Alphas were a position the system had filtered out to support Player growth.
Thus, the growth-type Purification trait unique to Alphas would become more suited to supporting multiple Players as it leveled up.
While running Purification, on the cusp of its next level, and checking my status window, I looked at Jang Lun’s corpse.
More precisely, at the symbol still hovering over the head of the guy who’d died from a snapped neck.
‘Senoa of Humility.’
Among the Players who’d burned alive today, about seventy or eighty percent bore Senoa’s symbol.
‘Does she not know, or is she turning a blind eye?’
The Senoa I’d seen during the meeting with the system didn’t seem like someone who’d tolerate this.
‘Or maybe that was all an act.’
Staring at Senoa’s symbol deepened my suspicions and distrust.
Were personnel from the Seven Churches really involved in this?
How were the drug cartels operating around the US and Mexico connected to this human trafficking ring?
‘These guys are bigger than I thought.’
But if you think I’d let them off the hook, that’d be a huge misunderstanding.
I withdrew the flame magic and stood, thinking of who to consult about this incident.
‘I should meet Horpe.’