Chapter 146
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Translator: Ace
Chapter: 146
Chapter Title: 14th Floor - Lv. 2200 Dark Spirit King (3)
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The class hailed as the flower of fantasy was, no matter how you sliced it, the mage.
Even warriors, archers, marksmen, or assassins who reached the pinnacle could unleash earth-shaking, wildly imaginative powers. But none could match the sheer versatility of magic.
In the first place, it was impossible to completely exclude magical elements from combat in this realistic labyrinth.
The flesh of any living being had its limits, no matter how many skill corrections you piled on.
The extra power that dwelled within it was magic.
That was why countless veteran exiles possessed at least a moderate proficiency in magic, regardless of their main profession.
Of course, even mages made a point of picking up some basics in physical classes.
The God of Nature had started out as a swordsman, gradually delving into magic until he fully committed to the path of a mage.
There had even been a time when he'd thought himself the rightful occupant of magic's throne.
But now that he knew just how unhinged the God of Magic truly was, he could accept it.
In any event, he was a mage—one who'd wielded it as his specialty for an extraordinarily long time.
From his perspective, this exile—who had somehow bitten chaos, or perhaps been bitten by it—was endlessly fascinating.
There was no question that mage was this exile's true calling.
The diverse ideas and insights he'd witnessed up to now backed that conclusion solidly.
But this time, he couldn't help doubting it.
Even if conjuring typhoons and altering the weather counted as magecraft...
...even that mage would steer clear of the typhoon itself.
Few mages could accomplish anything against it directly, nor was there any reason to try.
He knew the mad goblins' reinforcements would arrive soon. So why not just buy time until then?
Did they really need to clash head-on like that?
To the God of Nature, it didn't seem like a wise call.
But at the same time, he figured there had to be a good reason for it.
Because that man's exploits brimmed with an extraordinary flair he'd never seen in countless exiles over endless years.
Honestly, he came off like a total lunatic at times—quite often, in fact.
If it had been him, he'd have handled it entirely differently.
Even that girl who spawned these insane challenges was tolerable.
She was the luck incarnate who'd dragged in a swarm of mainstream threats from the tutorial zone that even post-kingdom forces couldn't snag.
Whatever favor she enjoyed from some deputy divinity like the God of Luck or whatnot, she absolutely had to be kept alive and brought along.
On that point, he agreed completely.
But this guy was turning even casual leaps into meticulously knotted gains, steadily advancing with profit in hand.
It was hard not to be impressed.
He shouldered every deadly risk, methodically solidifying his foundation of support.
Even for things that could wait, he compressed the labyrinth's progress relentlessly.
For any exile aiming higher, NPC relations were crucial.
Many veterans knew that full well.
But.
The ruler of an entire server.
He'd never seen an exile claim such a position.
From the momentum so far, it was clear this one intended to sweep away every enemy, past and future alike.
The God of Nature still got word from the kingdom.
Especially now, amid all the buzz over this newly opened server's quirks.
He could hardly wait to see what kind of chaos would erupt when this party arrived.
Even from a god's vantage, a strange conviction assured him this man wouldn't perish here.
My eyes flashed.
Even when I'd doped my intelligence and unleashed Meteor, I hadn't been this locked in.
Back then, for all my talk, I'd had full stat buffs propping me up while doing something as routine as eating—so I never seriously thought I'd fail.
Sure, failure meant death either way, so I'd worried.
Plus, it meant not showing my full hand to the goddess.
The issue had been insufficient buffs; technically, it wasn't that tough.
By my standards, anyway.
But now? Even in a mastered setup, failure was a real possibility.
This wasn't some quiet, cautious maneuver. It was tantamount to facing a colossal typhoon brimming with malice toward me.
Before our blades could clash, I had to slash and thrust first.
No theories or right answers here.
Just split-second judgment, split-second technique, split-second improvisation.
Those fused into a complete technique.
First, seize the initial flow.
My pre-made barriers were holding the raging dark torrent at bay, if only briefly.
The ownerless darkness brushed the space I'd already claimed around me.
I redirected it.
No room to fully claim it as my own.
It began to bend.
A few strands broke off amid the frenzied one-way surge.
The stripped darkness gathered around me while barriers still held.
I didn't kill the flowing power.
I just nudged its direction bit by bit, making it whirl.
Even indirect meddling meant tangling with a typhoon.
Sparks erupted in my mind.
My soul felt crushed.
I knew my limits best under current stats and skills. For this instant, I endured even soul damage.
For mind control, I visualized myself as a mana-handling machine.
Judge rationally what I could and couldn't do. Visualize it in numbers.
The moment I directly bucked the onslaught, even briefly, I'd turn to cosmic dust.
Soul-squeezed, mana control surged beyond my character's stats—for an instant.
Nearly 130%.
Thus, the dark spirit's chaotically spilled power swirled around me, direction altered.
I eased the reins slightly. Once flow took hold, incoming power conformed without my forceful twists.
Darkness gradually seeped into barriers I'd forged from my own mana.
Couldn't absorb the opponent's mana, but reinforcement was feasible.
Barriers deepened in hue, steadily blackening.
Those teetering on collapse grew firm.
Poor summons: swept away and gone.
Of course, this was mere time-buying.
Still, it needed reinforcing.
Mana barriers rose that didn't defy the flow.
Shapes splitting it left and right from sharp tips.
Completed, I dismantled the front barriers.
After shattering and dispersing, gorgeous streamlined forms emerged—yielding to flow yet enduring maximally.
Burden on remaining barriers eased.
Control power for reinforcement gained breathing room.
Operating rate dipped to the 90s.
By then, my vision dimmed.
The crystal-clear sight, threading every filament, hazed subtly.
Mental unity. Mental unity.
I shaped channels to draw portions of the split flows inward, behind them.
Like gills on a sea creature that dies without constant swimming to flush water through.
Bits of the divided flows began pooling behind barriers, around my body, and to my rear.
Spin once more.
Initial flow too violent; my control could only redirect, not more.
And it couldn't stop.
Must keep rotating.
And accelerate further.
Mana was mana flow.
Faster meant stronger.
Spinning the first incoming strand wasn't easy.
But with a solid frame built, new darkness flowed in steadily.
The already coalesced, rotating sphere absorbed it, speeding up.
I let up-down darkness pass as much as possible. Couldn't handle that.
Only siphoned bits from left and right to merge into my flow.
A few more cycles, and it became self-perpetuating—no force from me needed.
Mana control rate plummeted.
Into the 50s now.
Even the darkness I'd directly manipulated for barriers got offloaded to the two black spheres spawned right behind.
Just pluck threads from those furiously accelerating orbs and feed them forward.
Self-sufficiency defined.
This far? Stable as could be.
90% of my mana had burned out holding the initial assault.
The rest trickled away solely on guiding foreign mana.
A pittance against the onslaught—but enough seed to grow the system indefinitely. Complete.
Now, farming time.
Scale up this mana-collection system to harvest what that thing pours out.
"What's happening right now?"
The old man posed the question.
Excluding the leader, he was the party member deepest into magic—an aged shaman.
Yet even he couldn't grasp what that eerie form, glimpsed amid the dark torrent, signified.
The target of his query was the great exile dubbed a god.
「I dunno. I'm a warrior, not a mage.」
"Heh heh."
The goddess gave up neatly on comprehending it.
She knew mana use for physical attacks inside out. But venturing fully into mage territory? Murky.
She knew how to nullify an incoming [Meteor Fall], but not how to wield it.
A pure warrior's life, after all.
「If you're that curious, ask the God of Nature later.」
"My deepest thanks."
Being able to quiz a god on this was blessing enough.
As a magic-class member, the old orc shaman felt smug about betraying his race so thoroughly.
Magic theory manifesting here outstripped all he knew—by centuries, maybe millennia.
How was any magic class supposed to cope?
Only two beings in the universe fully fathomed the spectacle.
One—the God of Nature—had shot up from his throne for the first time in ages.
His gaping mouth refused to close.
A vivid demo of how a fairy's jaw could split.
The God of Nature transcended shock into outright dismay.
Quirky ideas or novel tricks? This man had flashed them endlessly.
But this…
Could he pull it off himself if told to?
He'd gleaned the method from watching.
Initial control to seize the flow.
Then, intricate framing to make inflows conform.
Still.
No matter how undirected and ownerless, that power was a typhoon.
Yet this punk was whipping up a wind turbine on the spot—inside it—and spinning it.
And that wasn't even the finale.
"Those back there, and the two spheres behind them—that's..."
Mana spheres hyper-accelerated past a threshold produced more than inputted the instant they hit critical.
In that vertigo-inducing flow, sucked-center mana lost rotation room.
Crushed dead-center, it halted—existing only as particle-mana.
Repeating that...
"Nuclear fusion mana reactor..."
The tech that fueled countless races' space ventures.
An overwhelming-efficiency energy source, endlessly birthing mana.
Still powering fleets and planets today.
One lone individual had bootstrapped it.
Without physical form!
"This is nuts. Virtual mana reactor?"
Even voicing it struck him as absurd.
"The God of Magic needs to witness this!"
Throne be damned—he'd descend for sure.