Chapter 196: Miracle (6)
Translator: RaidenTL
Chapter 196: Miracle (6)
“How much further do we have to go…”
Grumbling in annoyance, he fired a bolt of red lightning, shattering yet another blocked door.
Each time he did, the woman behind him trembled in terror, but he didn’t pay her much mind.
In fact, as if venting his foul mood over losing his prey onto her, he advanced even more violently, smashing through obstacles the more she shuddered.
It was certainly a freakish dungeon, just as he had heard.
Hardly any enemies appeared, yet the energy permeating the dungeon itself was immense. Moreover, if one tried to siphon that energy away, it resisted fiercely—it felt as if the dungeon itself were alive.
A strange sense of unease settled over him.
Come to think of it, hadn’t their ‘collaborator’ warned that it would be dangerous once the boss fully awakened, urging them to dispose of it as quickly as possible?
Honestly, he didn’t think anything could have gone wrong just because he’d been distracted for a moment, but since he hated complications, he decided to finish it quickly.
The moment he resolved to get serious about clearing the dungeon, he suddenly sensed a surge of killing intent and looked up.
A portal had manifested directly above him.
Without hesitation, he hurled a bolt of red lightning toward the portal.
“Stupid bastard. Who’s going to fall for an ambush when you’re leaking killing intent like that?”
He felt the distinct sensation of the lightning striking home.
After a brief wait, a charred corpse tumbled down.
He wondered what kind of misplaced confidence possessed someone who couldn’t even withstand the red lightning of Astrape to attempt an ambush.
Feeling needlessly irritated, he raised his leg to stomp on the corpse, but the moment he brought his foot down, the body vanished.
“Huh?”
Simultaneously, he felt something wrap around his leg. His balance broke, and a boy holding a sword appeared right before his eyes.
Aha, the corpse was a decoy?
Using a deception to induce carelessness, breaking his balance, and then launching a second ambush.
“You think that shit works on a god? You moron.”
All he had to do was discharge the blue lightning of Keraunos in every direction to intercept him.
However, before he could even fire the lightning, the boy widened the distance on his own, evading the radial discharge.
Given the brat’s level, it was impossible that he had reacted to the lightning after seeing it.
He must have predicted the counterattack and moved in advance.
It happened occasionally.
A miracle where someone hyper-focused on combat accidentally predicts an opponent’s movement and evades an otherwise unavoidable attack.
But it wasn’t the kind of thing that happened twice.
The assailant he finally faced head-on was a boy with black hair and red eyes.
He looked young enough to be a student, and he wasn’t particularly tall.
However, there was one jarring detail: for someone who had radiated such blatant killing intent during the first strike, the boy was now observing him with an utterly expressionless face.
As he watched the boy calmly scrutinizing him, a realization suddenly struck him.
“Hmm? Black hair and red eyes… are you Kang So-hyun? Wow, I heard you were pretty, but you actually do have the looks.”
The boy maintained his stoic expression as if he couldn’t care less about who was in front of him, but regardless, the man was intrigued.
The collaborator… Chae Yu-jin had warned him to be so cautious that he’d been curious about what kind of monster the kid was, but at first glance, he didn’t seem like much.
In fact, based on raw energy alone, the ones he had been fighting on the beach earlier seemed to have more potential. What more was there to say?
Well, seeing how he’d dodged every attack so far, he seemed to have decent instincts for his level, but that was it—
“Hey.”
The boy, who had remained silent until now, finally opened his mouth.
“Are you one of those ‘Calamity-class Villains’ or whatever too?”
You?
“You really don’t know your place, human. I shall answer you out of divine mercy, so remember this well. This exalted one is no mere villain. I am the greatest god in the heavens—”
“Pfft.”
“…Are you laughing?”
“How can I not? A thing like you is a god?”
He fired a bolt of lightning the moment he heard that, but the boy skillfully evaded it again.
His movements were decent, but he wasn’t so fast that he couldn’t be hit.
Yet, strangely, the moment he aimed and threw, the boy was already moving out of the target zone.
“No. Anyone can see you’re not a god, just a crazed villain drunk on his own power. The word ‘god’ isn’t meant for pieces of shit like you.”
“Keep barking. Soon, you won’t be able to let out anything but screams.”
“What a relief. I guess not all Calamity-classes are the same. You’re the weakest of the bunch, aren’t you?”
“…What?”
“You heard me, so why are you playing dumb? Huh? You pathetic scrub. Why do all you bastards act exactly the same?”
“You…”
How long had it been since he’d been this angry? His lightning qi surged uncontrollably in response to his emotions.
“Do not expect mercy.”
Pfft.
There it was again. The boy let out a scoff.
“Mercy is something the stronger one grants, you moron.”
The blue lightning of Keraunos swept across the area.
“Low-lives who run their mouths always hasten their own de—”
“Bullshit. You missed.”
Again. It was clearly an unavoidable distance. How on earth did he evade a radial lightning strike fired in all directions without even appearing to move?
“I’ve got your number now.”
The boy smirked and raised his sword.
“You’re weaker than me.”
* * *
It was a bluff, obviously.
Based on the results of the first exchange using my clone and the subsequent probing, I had my answer.
This guy was a monster too. At my current level, he wasn’t someone I had a high chance of winning against in a head-on fight.
First, his instantaneous red lightning was so fast that I could barely dodge it, and its power was lethal if it hit directly. The blue lightning, which seemed to require a short charge time, wasn’t hard to dodge, but its destructive power was insane.
Even a graze would turn my bones to ash. He was an opponent whose victory seemed guaranteed.
Are all these Calamity-class bastards such monsters?
Nevertheless, I kept talking as naturally as possible.
“…I’m weaker than you?”
That’s it. Get more offended. Get more agitated.
The fact that I’m weaker and can’t win in a fair fight doesn’t mean I can’t kill him.
I’m used to fighting opponents stronger than me.
According to my experience fighting countless powerhouses, he is stronger than me, but he’s the type of person I can kill.
He’s careless, he bluffs, he’s obsessed with style, and his pride is sky-high.
He possessed every single trait of the morons who were stronger than me before my regression but still met their deaths at my hands.
“Don’t make me laugh.”
In other words, he was an opponent I could handle on my own without extra help.
Turning his body into lightning, he charged at me.
An ordinary person wouldn’t be able to see him.
Lightning is light, and light is not something the human eye can track just by trying.
However, my eyes are different from an ordinary person’s.
The Fiery Eyes and Golden Pupils that Sun Wukong personally bestowed upon me. Though they weren’t perfect since I hadn’t realized the underlying principles myself, I could fill the gap using my Reinforcement.
Even so, lightning is still difficult to track.
But I didn’t need to see the lightning to find him.
Since the Fiery Eyes and Golden Pupils allow me to see through the essence of an opponent, I used his habits and breathing to infer his movements. Then, I elevated those predictions to the realm of foresight using Reinforcement, neutralizing his actions before he could take them.
The hand he thrust out to grab my collar swiped through empty air, and my knee, driven toward his ribs, sank deep into his body.
“Guh… ack…!?”
Rushing in at high speed means the impact is that much greater when you collide with something.
“You son of a…!”
“For a god, you sure have a foul mouth.”
That’s it. Get angrier.
Lose your cool and charge in.
If he widened the distance and spammed lightning, I’d barely be able to endure.
So, I had to provoke him first, making him lose his reason and inducing him to fight at a distance where he abandoned his own advantages.
Well, it’s not like lightning isn’t dangerous at close range.
But the important thing is that it’s also a distance where I can shove a blade into his throat, right?
However, I couldn’t switch to the offensive just yet.
If he realized my attacks were manageable, he’d quickly regain his composure. My transition to the offensive had to be the moment I could perfectly devour him.
Until then, it was enough to keep dodging and getting under his skin.
“Why… why can’t I hit you once…! It’s divine! It’s the lightning of a god…! It’s the heavenly punishment of the greatest god in the heavens…!”
The more I dodged, the more I toyed with him and backed him into a corner, the more erratic his attacks became and the more his sense of distance crumbled.
Slowly, his frustration was reaching its peak.
“Astrape and Keraunos. That’s Greek, right? Then the god you’re talking about must be Zeus?”
“Do not speak my name so casually…!”
This time, even though I didn’t dodge, the lightning streaked past me.
His agitated attack had simply flown off in a completely different direction, but his eyes were filled with shock.
“So you’re mimicking the Zeus from mythology with that frivolous speech and arrogant attitude? But did you know? Zeus isn’t actually just a vulgar god.”
This was something I had told Seo-ha before, but if you look deep into it, Zeus isn’t just a fierce and violent lecher.
“…What?”
“Calling yourself a god when you don’t even know that.”
In fact, he’s a figure who suffers from quite a lot of slander due to the patchwork nature of the myths.
“What would a brat like you know…!”
Now.
If I can suppress this maximum-output lightning he just unleashed, I can completely take control of the atmosphere.
I released my Reinforcement and summoned the Black Shadow.
The dragon’s shadow, having devoured my Innate True Qi to its limit, awakened and revealed its true form, beginning to consume the erupting blue lightning.
But I was being pushed back.
I guess he has enough power to justify calling himself a god; his raw destructive force is truly idiotic. Since I couldn’t endure with Reinforcement alone, I sacrificed more of my carved-out Innate True Qi and accepted the trade of the Touch of the Devil.
The moment the vast demonic energy reinforced my body and my eyes dyed purple, I felt a surge of certainty.
The certainty that I could now hold my own.
“What… what the hell is that…!”
Immediately after the shadow greedily devoured his lightning, the scales tipped in my favor.
The moment he lost his mind and the tide completely turned, I closed the distance and raised my sword.
Petals blooming with demonic energy erased his lightning qi, and my extended blade pierced through his barrier.
At the same time I felt the sensation of cutting through flesh and bone, a burst of lightning exploded.
I had aimed for his neck, but he escaped by sacrificing an arm.
An arm in exchange for a Calamity. Not a bad result, all things considered.
“Aaa… aaaaagh…!”
“Geez, stop screaming so loudly. It’s just one arm.”
Well, I said that, but honestly, this is pretty taxing.
The life force required to reinforce the Black Shadow was no joke, and I wasn’t in perfect condition either, having failed to completely offset the shock of the electrical discharge when I cut off his arm.
At least it was a relief that he’d fallen into a panic from the terror of being maimed. He didn’t seem to have the will to fight left in him, at least not immediately.
It would have been dangerous if he were the type to get even more fired up when injured.
— Daddy, your friends are going to wake up soon.
To make matters worse, I even got word that everyone was about to wake up.
Wait. No. Is the timing actually bad?
* * *
A monster. He’s a monster.
At first, he thought it was a fluke, but the boy was definitely staring right at him and evading his attacks.
Should he have fought from a distance?
Or should he have avoided the fight altogether from the start?
The monster, for some reason, hadn’t moved further after severing his arm, but staying like this was dangerous.
If he couldn’t recover the severed arm, he would lose ‘Astrape.’
Of course, the brat wouldn’t know that, but if things went wrong, he might lose half of a Myth-grade artifact.
But then, as if reading his thoughts, the boy walked toward the arm lying near him and stepped on it.
“Hey, just stay right there, okay?”
“…?”
Then, the boy stood still as if waiting for something. Suddenly, as if receiving a signal, he released a tiny fraction of the lightning his shadow had devoured back toward himself.
From a distance, it would look as if he were being attacked by the electrical discharge of Keraunos.
But what on earth could that possibly mean?
“So-hyun…!!!”
He soon had his answer.
Because people screaming his name were running toward them.
Ah?
Those guys…?
They were the ones he had missed on the beach.
But in that short span of time, they had become completely different people from when they had fought him.
Wait? Is this brat using me right now to make them angry?
But why…?