Chapter 117
Chapter 117
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Translator: Ryuma
Chapter: 117
Chapter Title: Annihilation Flame Erosion Third Stage
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Haring heard Krash's shout and belatedly extended her foot, but her reaction was too slow.
Krash had no choice but to yank her arm while swinging Thunderclap.
The slash of Black Flame tore through space and struck Juyo's right arm.
With the ensuing explosion, Krash grabbed Haring and leaped back far.
But even through the thick billowing smoke, the darkness pouring from the crystal skull kept extending outward.
Krash tucked Haring under his arm like luggage and swiftly pulled away from the spot.
He had good reason to do so—he knew exactly what that darkness was.
'Night.'
He'd tried to take out the bastard Juyo as quickly as possible to prevent the Night God from using its power.
But somehow, some condition had been met, and the Night God had begun to stir.
'Damn it.'
Krash scowled fiercely, his luck always rotten in situations like this.
"Put me down."
Haring's voice came at that moment.
Her face screamed wounded pride at being carried like baggage.
As Krash released his grip, Haring landed gracefully like a cat and immediately sprang to stand beside him.
"It was urgent."
"I know."
Good, if she understood.
Krash stared ahead as he listened to her reply.
The crystal skull in Juyo's right hand had already turned pitch black.
At the same time, starlight slowly flickered in the black skull's eye sockets.
The atmosphere of the surrounding space flipped entirely.
It felt like being trapped in a night realm, staring only at the night sky.
Haring's hair stood on end, her lips pursing into a triangle.
Krash reacted with equal displeasure.
He knew what this sensation was.
When a god manifests in the human realm, people are swept by an incomprehensible impulse.
An infinite awe directed toward the god.
But Krash knew better.
"A nameless god pulling mental interference tricks."
This was a mental attack.
The flames igniting inside Krash's body forcibly snapped his mind awake.
Against a nameless god—not a higher one—he could fend off the mental interference by setting his body ablaze with Ignis.
Physical shock was perfect for clearing the head.
"Haring, use a poison on yourself strong enough to snap you out of it."
Krash advised Haring, who stood frozen with her hair on end, unable to act.
Haring belatedly activated her Ten Thousand Poisons Deadly Strike.
"Ugh."
Blood trickled from her mouth, and light returned to her eyes.
Pain lingered, but she seemed fine to move.
Haring's gaze flicked toward Krash.
Ten Thousand Poisons Deadly Strike handled poison and antidote simultaneously.
To break free from the mental interference, she'd used a fairly potent poison.
Her clouded judgment hadn't let her calculate the right dose.
Even she, accustomed to poisons, had to swallow a groan.
She could detoxify it, no problem.
But Krash couldn't.
He had to endure the shock with his body alone.
'To snap out of mental interference, she must've given herself at least as much shock as I did.'
Yet his face showed no change.
'...Are all Valheims like this?'
As Haring eyed Krash with wonder,
Krash focused on the skull before him.
Then, with a clatter, the skull finally opened its mouth.
Each word from its mouth made Krash's body hair stand on end.
But separately, Krash's eyes began to open slowly.
The Night God had precisely identified him as a grave robber.
Another term for grave robber.
Thief.
And the skill Krash possessed.
Black Hood.
The Night God knew about the god Krash had contracted with.
Black Hood.
He had met the god who granted him this skill when he was about the same age as now—not much difference.
Contracts with gods were said to be special.
The skills gods bestowed were inhuman powers.
Depending on how one used them, they varied wildly.
So many desired such skills.
But not everyone was that lucky.
Thud crash!
Back then, Krash was no different.
He tumbled across the floor after taking a hit in a spar.
Sixteen years old.
It had just been a month since enrolling.
Like others, Krash couldn't enter at the standard age of fifteen.
So he'd trained a year harder than his peers.
With his half-baked talent, he'd barely made it into Raheln Academy.
Compared to geniuses, he was pathetically lacking, but training could at least make him knight-level.
But knight-level at Raheln Academy?
Trash talent not worth using.
"Hah, idiot. Stop struggling when you know you're no good."
In the martial department's arena training ground.
Krash felt the scornful gazes and voices directed at him.
"Tch."
He spat out the blood pooling in his mouth.
He was a total mess.
This was a mock battle.
And in it, Krash was dead last.
"Aren't you ashamed to bear the Valheim name? Can't even fight with dignity."
One eye injured?
Half his vision dark.
Krash glared at him through his squinted eye.
A fellow freshman.
A year younger, from the Four Kingdoms of Poseus.
Derek Orman.
One of Poseus's four great houses, hailed as the new golden boy, his name buzzing everywhere.
Krash knew.
The Valheim name was the only reason he'd crossed Raheln's threshold.
These guys before him were beyond his reach.
But this was all he could do.
"Shut up, you worm!"
Krash gripped his sword and swung at him.
Crack!
The spear shaft flew in, uppercutting his jaw and sending his mind flying.
Derek clicked his tongue at the rolling Krash.
"If you suck that bad, fix that foul mouth of yours."
"Derek! Quit messing around and come here! Senior Arthur's doing a mock battle!"
"What, for real?"
Amid the stampeding kids,
Krash lay alone on the ground.
The sky was disgustingly high.
'Hurts.'
His body throbbed from the hits everywhere.
Following the instructor's advice to visit the infirmary, Krash headed there.
He went so often from daily rollings that he was sick of it.
Outside the infirmary.
Kids' voices echoed.
Full of dreams, they buzzed with excitement.
Even as adults, barely in their twenties on average.
All enjoying their youth.
But Krash sat alone in the infirmary, self-treating while the nurse was away.
No paradise in escape, they say.
Even fleeing Valheim to Raheln Academy, Krash was alone.
"Fuck."
The curse slipped out.
Krash clutched his dark blue hair like tearing it out.
If only he weren't Valheim, but some ordinary house, he'd avoid this treatment.
But that hair color and name clung like a tag.
And would forever.
'If only.'
He had a skill.
Krash swept his hand over his face.
What was he thinking now?
He stepped out with his bandages.
"Treating it like that'll just make it worse, y'know?"
Then he heard a voice.
Turning, he saw someone perched on the infirmary windowsill.
Dark infirmary inside.
Sunlight over the sky touched the girl's back, casting shadows.
Face so pale it didn't seem human.
Long black hair fluttered like summer wind.
Cicadas droned in the distance.
The girl smiled captivatingly at Krash.
Wearing unfamiliar clothes, she said,
"Or maybe no matter how you treat it, it'll fester anyway."
A girl whose name he didn't know.
And she was the god who gave Krash Black Hood.
Krash stood rigidly before the Night God-possessed skull.
He still didn't know why that god gave him Black Hood that day.
The god said nothing about herself and never appeared again.
He only sensed her presence when the skill's power stirred.
This was a contract utterly different from others'.
So Krash had always wondered.
Who was the god that gave him Black Hood?
"Night God, do you know who the god I contracted with is?"
As Krash asked, the skull's eye glow turned red.
He knew.
This bastard knew.
Krash's eyes gleamed with different meaning.
He hadn't expected the moment to unravel his long-held question like this.
"Let's talk."
Krash proposed first.
He needed the Night God's night, but his own god mattered too.
So he wanted to converse somehow.
The skull fell silent at Krash's offer.
Clack clack clack!
Suddenly, it gnashed its teeth.
Krash caught the Night God mocking him.
As his face twisted, the laughing skull stopped abruptly.
Rotten bastard.
No intention of talking from the start.
At that instant, night rippled around the Night God.
The Erosion Priest Juyo Iirma, who had lost consciousness, was already rising.
Or rather, not quite rising.
His head was empty, devoured by pitch-black night.
Viscous night flowed between the arm holding the skull and Juyo's severed stump.
The nights connected, restoring the arm to normal.
Black Flame surged again.
The Night God erased the approaching flames with a gesture.
Then, as its eye glow turned to Krash's spot, it was empty.
Krash had fled in that gap.
The Night God's hand extended forward.
Darkness dripped from its grasp and seeped into the floor.
Boom, boom, boom!
Giant things began rumbling everywhere.
Erosion beasts influenced by the Night God's night mobilized en masse.
They targeted all intruders in this graveyard.
Soon, the invaders would be torn apart by their night-empowered fangs.
But the Night God had overlooked one thing.
Tap-
A footstep sounded, and the Night God's gaze turned back.
Clang!
A golden blade ambushed the skull, clashing before it with a deafening roar.
The skull's eye glow twitched.
The one swinging the sword at it was none other than Krash.
He hadn't fled—he'd faked it.
The Night God realized what Krash had done.
As it said, Krash had hidden his presence and form with Haring's skill.
Haring's skill, Invisible.
Thanks to it, he'd approached the Erosion Priest Juyo Iirma from behind.
But Haring wasn't beside Krash now.
The crystal skull noticed Haring moving alone under Invisible and gnashed its teeth.
The crystal skull sneered.
All pointless.
Krash's ambush hadn't pierced its protective barrier.
Then black pillars erupted from the ground.
Pillars that blinded with darkness on contact.
Krash dodged back from the pillars.
Smoke began seeping from Krash's mouth.
The World Erosion dwelling in his body ignited, activating Annihilation Flame Erosion.
The Night God's eye glow flared fiercely at the sight.
He'd sensed it from first glance.
The power emanating from Krash was unmistakable World Erosion.
Krash didn't answer.
Instead, he tempered his flesh.
His boiling body was entering the second stage of Annihilation Flame Erosion.
Yet Krash felt it lacking.
'This level won't cut it against the Night God.'
Even nameless, a god was a god.
The divine power from the skull far surpassed Krash.
Trivial compared to its true body, sure.
But still overwhelming him.
'Two ways to win.'
One: Haring succeeds in the task left to her.
Two: Shatter that crystal skull housing the Night God's power.
Neither easy.
But if possible, he'd do both.
So.
"Crimson Garden."
[Haa.]
Crimson Garden sighed with full dissatisfaction at his call.
"Gonna use the third."
[Can you handle it?]
"It's my specialty."
Krash lowered Thunderclap to his side as he spoke.
Regulating his breath, he snapped one curse he'd always used.
His eyes turned crimson, his mind dyeing red.
[Rotten fool, don't blame me if your brain fries.]
Crunch!
It was then.
The Night God sensed the surrounding presence had completely changed.
And who it centered on.
Thunderclap at his side.
A boy quietly exhaling smoke from his mouth.
'What?'
The skull's eye glow shook slowly through the night.
By the time the Night God realized something,
Kaboom!
Juyo's body—and the Night God within—tumbled, smashing through the graveyard wall.
Flung to the opposite corridor.
The night-made barrier shook violently.
The skull's eye glow shook in confusion for the first time.
It hadn't grasped what hit it.
Drip, plop.
Something fell from the broken wall.
The Night God's gaze turned—to Krash there.
His eyes dyed crimson, red aura rippling around him.
Thunderclap glowed blood-red, unlike before.
The Night God's eye glow burned.
It couldn't fathom what Krash had done.
Smoke trailed from Krash's lips.
The explosive power from his body was on another level now.
The curse Krash had temporarily severed.
The Doll's Eye.
During training with Crimson Garden, Krash's Doll's Eye had once clashed and canceled with another curse.
Both in his body rampaged simultaneously.
One: World Erosion's Madness.
The other: Heaven-Death Star's Killing Intent.
When they went berserk against each other,
Krash discovered something new.
Madness and Heaven-Death Star's killing intent were similar yet incompatible.
They collided, offsetting like tightrope sparks.
The two mind-eating monsters checked each other, splitting their power.
The moment one outweighed the other—endgame.
Krash's mind would be devoured instantly.
But the clash's power flowed purely to his flesh.
World Erosion surged explosively via Madness.
Flesh forcibly drawn by Heaven-Death Star's innate killing intent.
The instant these two dwelled in Krash,
He glimpsed a new realm.
Annihilation Flame Erosion's third stage.
'10 seconds.'
Krash's peak time.