Chapter 347
Chapter 347
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Translator: Ryuma
Chapter: 347
Chapter Title: Consciousness Recovery
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"The Creator's Four Beasts... Fierce God Baal! Why is that thing here in its complete form...!"
Adora stared at the beast, her face drained of color.
She remembered Park Chan-woo borrowing the power of the Baal Set to 'summon' this beast.
But back then, it had only been an unstable manifestation of a fragment of the power dwelling in the equipment.
However, the existence before them now was different.
It possessed a complete ego and unleashed its original power without restraint.
"I still don't sense Sepiro's influence. Perhaps Baal has been wandering the Abyss separately from him?"
Kraaaaaargh!!
As if mocking their confusion, Fierce God Baal let out another roar.
All that remained in Baal was rage and primal hostility.
Kuwaaaang-!
Baal raised its massive forepaw and slammed it mercilessly down toward Charpam's outer wall.
Kwadududuk!
Charpam's translucent outer wall directly blocked Baal's attack, but the shock was transmitted entirely inward.
"Cr-crazy!"
"Hold on!"
Lee Hyuk-soo and everyone else tumbled across the floor from the intense vibrations.
Charpam's internal space warped as if screaming, and the Abyss landscape visible beyond the walls grew even more chaotically jumbled.
Even an Outer God known as a Dimension Traveler seemed to struggle against a direct hit from one of the Creator's Four Beasts.
"Has it gotten stronger?"
"It seems like it's rampaging because the seal has been broken!"
Adora and Dagon said urgently.
"Flash!"
Lee Hyuk-soo swung his sword first, even as he staggered.
From the tip of his blade, a condensed sword beam shot out like a streak of light, piercing through Charpam's outer wall and targeting one of Baal's massive eyes.
Whoosh!
From Adora's hand, crimson-black death mana spread like a wave, attempting to corrode Baal's carapace.
-Foolish... mortals...!
Baal's will echoed in an even more powerful wave.
Crackling crimson-black lightning began to swirl around its enormous body.
The dimension-shattering destructive aura, just like when it had torn through the sky to appear.
Hundreds, thousands of strands of crimson-black lightning whipped like lashes, mercilessly battering Charpam's outer wall.
"Th-this is dangerous! The outer wall's going to break!"
Dagon cried out, his face pale.
'I have to block it!'
Lee Hyuk-soo gritted his teeth.
Though his entire body screamed in agony, he instead focused his mind to the utmost limit.
On the brink of death, his senses sharpened abnormally.
At the same time, he began to pierce through the essence of the overwhelming presence before him—Baal.
It was undoubtedly powerful.
True to its name as one of the Creator's Four Beasts, its pressure and divine power were incomparable to any being he had faced before.
But it wasn't perfect.
'...Incomplete.'
Lee Hyuk-soo sensed it instinctively.
The subtle imbalance existing within that overwhelming flow of power.
A sense of something missing, or forcibly pieced together.
The final piece needed for complete descent, for perfect Baal, was absent.
Thus, this state was not flawless.
Lee Hyuk-soo moved.
He abandoned defense.
Instead, he concentrated all his remaining power and will on a single point.
Golden sword energy condensed at the tip of the Greatsword of the Lion King.
He plunged into the 'shadow' within Baal's massive form.
'Now!'
Then, toward the instinctively felt 'gap' and 'incomplete link,' he poured everything he had.
Kwaaaaaaaaak-!!!
A horrific scream blending pain and shock beyond compare shook the Abyss.
Lee Hyuk-soo's attack hadn't inflicted a fatal wound on Baal's main body.
But it had precisely pierced its weakness of 'incompleteness,' shattering the balance of the forcibly maintained descent state.
Baal's massive beast form convulsed violently.
The pent-up crimson-black energy rampaged wildly, exploding outward in all directions, while the pitch-black carapace forming its body cracked and flickered unstably.
Hudududuk!
Finally, Baal's massive beast form disintegrated.
At the same time, the 'three pieces of equipment' revealed themselves.
"Th-those pieces of equipment!"
"...!!"
Everyone was stunned.
Baal's Sword.
Baal's Shoes.
Baal's Belt.
It was exactly the 'Baal Set' that Park Chan-woo had been wearing.
However, the Baal Set was completed with four pieces.
Because it wasn't a complete Baal, Lee Hyuk-soo had been able to exploit the gap.
"Hah... hah... haa..."
Only after Baal's momentum completely vanished did Lee Hyuk-soo collapse to his knees, utterly spent.
He barely propped himself up with his sword, gasping for breath.
His body was a wreck, but his eyes still burned with life.
"As expected, you can see it, can't you."
Suddenly, Adora spoke in a somewhat bitter tone.
Her authority was powerful, but it couldn't directly strike Baal's essential incompleteness or core.
Yet Lee Hyuk-soo, who should be weaker than her, had pierced Baal's weakness with near-instinctual senses and dismantled the descent state.
Even diving into the shadow itself and attacking from within, in a way that defied common sense.
"Can you sense the mana waves?"
The form of 'mana waves' that only Park Chan-woo could see.
Perhaps he was feeling them instinctively.
Lee Hyuk-soo tried to grasp the intent of Adora's question for a moment but soon shook his head.
"Mana waves? I don't know. I just... instinctively felt the gap."
He couldn't clearly explain how he had pierced Baal's weakness.
In the extreme situation, all his senses had opened up, as if things invisible before became visible—a hazy sensation like that.
Perhaps he had glimpsed a fragment of the way Park Chan-woo viewed the world.
Adora asked no more. She simply gazed at Lee Hyuk-soo with complex eyes.
In the meantime, the three items left behind by the disintegration of Fierce God Baal had fallen to the floor.
A massive sword radiating intense darkness and destructive energy, a belt engraved with ominous runes, and black shoes that seemed to pulse with storm power.
It was the Baal Set that Park Chan-woo had used.
Though not a complete set, each piece was undoubtedly powerful equipment.
Lee Hyuk-soo staggered forward toward the three pieces.
His body had reached its limit from the prolonged battle and final strike, but he couldn't just leave them be.
They had been Park Chan-woo's, and at the same time, vessels imbued with the power of the Fierce God that had tried to kill them moments ago.
As he reached out to grasp the hilt of the black sword first...
Wuuung!
The sword resisted fiercely, spewing dark energy.
A rejection as if refusing to acknowledge him.
Was it the arrogant ego of Baal, once a beast of the Creator, dwelling within?
However, it was strange.
"...Aren't Abyss equipment impossible for others to equip?"
Lee Hyuk-soo asked, puzzled.
This was common knowledge in the Abyss.
You couldn't equip or even touch another person's equipment.
If someone else tried to possess it, it would evaporate into dust.
Yet for some reason...
'Why does it feel like I can hold it?'
Baal was merely testing him.
Arrogant, but not outright refusing.
"Wait, can you equip his equipment?"
Dagon asked in surprise, and Lee Hyuk-soo nodded.
"Somehow... it feels possible."
Suddenly, he recalled what Dagon had said earlier.
The words about being Park Chan-woo's successor.
He hadn't believed it, but in this moment, he wanted to cling to that idea.
If Park Chan-woo had acknowledged him, then his equipment could accept him too.
Lee Hyuk-soo lifted the sword.
"...!"
"N-no way!"
It was heavy, but strangely, it fit perfectly in his hand.
Soon, the belt and shoes equipped to him without further resistance.
The moment the belt cinched around his waist and the shoes enveloped his feet, an enormous wave of power surged through his entire body.
"Krahk!"
Lee Hyuk-soo let out an involuntary groan.
Baal's power.
Destructive, savage mana so potent it was hard to control poured into him.
His depleted stamina filled in an instant, then rampaged like a bursting dam, threatening to devour his very existence.
"Kuhuk... kuaaaaak!!"
He dropped to his knees again.
It wasn't mere power infusion.
A burning sensation like lava in his veins, horrific pain as if his muscles and bones were twisting and reassembling, and Fierce God Baal's primal rage and destructive impulses hammered directly at his mind.
His muscles spasmed, blood vessels burst in his eyes, dyeing his vision red.
The Baal sword, belt, and shoes he had just equipped glowed crimson-black, trying to erode him further.
'H-how did he handle this power...?'
In the daze of mind-numbing pain, Lee Hyuk-soo suddenly thought of Park Chan-woo.
He had wielded this Baal Set effortlessly.
He must have handled countless other incomprehensible powers even greater than this.
'Did he... endure this kind of pain without flinching? Is this... part of the burden he carried?'
Baal wouldn't have treated Park Chan-woo any differently.
It must have tested him too.
Pain beyond imagination.
If this was even a fragment of the reality Park Chan-woo had endured, he couldn't collapse here.
Dagon's claim of him being the successor might be nonsense, but his desire to emulate that man was sincere.
Now finally feeling a fraction of the weight of the path he had walked, Lee Hyuk-soo gritted his teeth.
Kriduk!
Kaduduk!
He clenched his teeth until his jaw felt like it would shatter.
He resisted the savage power of Baal invading his body.
He drew up his pure sword energy to suppress the rampaging mana.
If he lost consciousness, he'd be completely consumed by this power.
"Kruuuu...!"
The pain persisted, but he endured.
He didn't give up.
His indomitable will became a shield barely sustaining him against the Fierce God's savage power.
How much time passed?
The power of Baal that had rampaged to tear his body apart began to cease its fierce resistance, ever so slightly submitting to his control.
It wasn't perfect mastery.
Still as dangerous and unstable as boiling lava, but at least it entered a precarious state of coexistence without immediately destroying him.
"Haa... haa..."
Lee Hyuk-soo panted roughly as he barely raised his upper body.
At the same time.
Ding!