Chapter 46
Chapter 46
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Translator: Ryuma
Chapter: 46
Chapter Title: Unlikely Allies
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Typically, human mages did not challenge the selection trials.
Not only were humans, with their inferior physical abilities, the first to be eliminated, but they were also bound to become prime targets due to the pervasive anti-human sentiment in society.
But even so, there were always those who dared to dream the impossible.
“Brother. Are we there yet? Traveling all night is exhausting.”
“Let’s go inside and rest for a bit.”
At his sister Laila’s weary voice, Roben opened the door of a dilapidated convenience store and sat down among the old display shelves.
Roben brushed the dust from Laila’s face as she sat beside him, leaning the back of her head against a shelf.
His expression soured as he looked at her increasingly gaunt face.
They had traveled mostly at night to avoid being seen, and during the day, they had repeatedly stayed awake, wary of surprise attacks.
Thanks to that, their stamina was now depleted. If they were to encounter an enemy now, they would be as good as dead.
“Just hold on a little longer. We’re almost in the western region.”
“I’m hungry and thirsty…”
Her throat seemed clogged with dust as she let out a series of dry coughs. Roben patted her shoulder and spoke in a listless voice.
“Laila, why did you have to follow me? I told you. I said at least you should have stayed behind… Even as a wandering mage, as long as you’re a mage, there are plenty of ways to live comfortably, you fool…”
Laila’s eyes narrowed into a glare.
“Brother, didn’t I tell you to stop with the pointless talk? It was my choice, my decision. I’ve told you countless times. I’m not following you; it just so happens that you were walking ahead of me on the path I was taking.”
“But…”
“Enough. What’s the point of saying that now? Both you and I have already entered the selection trials for the future and development of our ‘group.’ So let’s just focus on our original plan—the two of us working together to become Top 10.”
“…Alright. Still, it’s a relief. We’ll be in the western region soon, you know? If we can meet Lord Lee Si-woo there, a path might open up for us. Of course, the chances are slim… but since we’re both human, maybe…”
Just then, a black mist suddenly billowed up, encroaching upon the inside of the convenience store.
Suddenly plunged into a darkness so thick he couldn’t see an inch in front of him, Roben shouted urgently.
“Be careful! It’s the Black Fog!”
The Black Fog, which blocked the vision of everyone except the caster, was an excellent debuff spell, but it had a fatal flaw: a long casting time.
If the siblings had been in normal condition, they would have been able to counter it. Unfortunately, they were utterly exhausted.
They were caught, completely helpless.
A playful voice echoed through the darkness.
“Freeze. Move and you die, kids.”
Hearing the voice, Roben despaired.
He realized that, having been caught in the Black Fog with their stamina depleted, they had no way to resist their enemy.
Sure enough, the presence in the darkness easily bound the siblings with a rope.
Completely tied up by the rope, an item that a 1-Circle mage could never break, Roben hung his head.
“How could this be… We were so close to the western region… To be caught right at the doorstep…”
The enemy, having succeeded in capturing the siblings, dispelled the Black Fog.
A small green monster, the goblin mage Greenlet, chuckled and spoke.
“Ah, so you were on your way to the western region, eh? Keh keh, were you planning on asking that Lee Si-woo bastard for help, thinking you’re fellow humans?”
“……”
Taking Roben’s silence as an affirmation, Greenlet grinned incessantly.
“Well, well, looks like I was right. But what are you going to do now? You’ve been caught by me. And so what if you had made it? Would things have been any different? Even Lee Si-woo must be too busy saving his own skin after drawing so much attention lately.”
Roben gritted his teeth and said,
“Too busy saving his own skin? Does the person with the number one kill score look like a pushover to you? He is one of the strongest people in this ruined city right now…”
Annoyed by Roben’s backtalk, Greenlet slapped him across the mouth repeatedly.
“What’s with that damn mouth of yours? You just can’t stop running it, can you? You idiot, Lee Si-woo is only number one in kills because he’s been picking off weakling Experts! Hmph, what if that bastard had kept running into 1-Circle Masters like me? Do you think a human piece of trash like that could have ever reached first place? Not a chance!”
Laila glared and shot back.
“Damn, you talk a lot. If you’re going to kill us, just do it. Stop flapping your gums.”
Greenlet grabbed Laila by the hair and slammed her into a display shelf.
He slapped her cheek as she groaned in pain and snapped.
“Where does a human brat get off talking to the great Lord Goblin like that? And you want me to kill you? Heh, who says I will? You two are sacrifices to be offered to Lord Kakan.”
Seeing Laila’s bloodied face, Roben roared in fury.
“Stop! Don’t touch my sister again! If you touch her again…”
This time, Greenlet kicked Roben in the bridge of the nose and said,
“If I touch her? What are you gonna do, you bastard! Dammit, you motherless human bastards really don’t know your place!”
Grabbing the head of the cluelessly defiant Roben with both hands, Greenlet repeatedly smashed it against the display shelf, muttering as if he’d found the perfect victim.
“You people. You’re like a cancer in the Main Dimension. You’re like cockroaches or mosquitoes—disgusting, despicable bugs that just keep popping up no matter how many you kill. I really don’t get it. Why did the gods allow scum like you to be summoned to the Main Dimension… Huh?”
Greenlet, who had been tormenting Roben as if possessed, changed his expression when he saw something through the opening in Roben’s shirt, torn from the repeated beatings.
Seeing the ‘human chasing the cross’ tattoo engraved on Roben’s chest, Greenlet cried out in shock.
“Hiek! W-what is this! T-this bastard is…”
The goblin, who was about to shout ‘A Racist!’, couldn’t finish his sentence.
The convenience store ceiling came crashing down, and a golden figure shot inside.
Translucent wind wings flapped behind his back, gleaming with a golden luster.
Recognizing one of the now-famous four mages of the selection trials, Greenlet let out a sharp scream.
“Hieeek! L-Lee Si-woo?!”
Lee Si-woo asked.
“Greenlet, the ace assigned the betting rights of the Old Tree Magic Tower. Is that correct?”
Greenlet shook his head from side to side and answered immediately.
“Y-you… You’ve got the wrong goblin.”
“Hmm, I think you’re the one. The description I got from one of the survivors matches you perfectly.”
“I-I’m telling you, it’s not me.”
Just then, Laila, her face covered in blood, spat out her words with defiance.
“Lord Lee Si-woo! He’s the one who said it! That if he had faced a few 1-Circle Masters like himself, a human piece of trash like you would never have gotten the number one kill score!”
As soon as he heard Laila’s tattling, Greenlet moved. He waved his hands, and the Black Fog flowed out from the shadows of the convenience store, engulfing the area.
It was a spell that normally took a long time to cast, but since it had been cast in this location not long ago, the casting time was drastically reduced.
[1-Circle Dark Magic: Black Fog]
As the Black Fog obscured his vision, Lee Si-woo focused his hearing.
But he could only hear the rustling of the siblings; Greenlet’s movements were imperceptible.
Thanks to the goblin species’ light weight and faint footsteps, his movements within the Black Fog were like those of a ghost.
Swoosh!
Detecting a Magic Arrow flying through the Black Fog, Lee Si-woo deflected it with the back of his hand.
Throb.
His hand, though enhanced by his mineralization ability, still ached slightly.
The power of the Magic Arrow was stronger than that of any mage he had faced so far. Lee Si-woo frowned.
‘A 1-Circle Master?’
What Greenlet had told the siblings wasn't entirely baseless.
Indeed, most of the mages Lee Si-woo had encountered were only at the Expert level, which was why he could deal with them so easily.
But it was a different story if his opponent was a Master.
Their magical attack power and mana shield defense were on a completely different level from ordinary Experts.
‘And he’s not even making a sound, not even breathing hard? This one knows how to fight.’
A 1-Circle Master with considerable combat experience.
Sensing that his opponent was a tricky one, Lee Si-woo was about to use his wind wings to retreat from the battlefield when a rope flew out silently and wrapped around him.
“I got him! I did it!”
At Greenlet’s joyful voice, Lee Si-woo let out a smirk.
Certainly, an ordinary 1-Circle mage, even a Master, could not break free from the rope’s binding.
But Greenlet could never have imagined.
That Kenyon had foreseen such a situation and had granted Lee Si-woo the flight-type artifact, the wind wings.
The wind wings flapped fiercely, unaffected by the rope.
Whoosh!
Lee Si-woo’s body soared with the flapping of his wings, shooting up through the hole in the ceiling.
As he shot high into the sky in an instant, the rope binding his body lost its power and came undone.
Items also functioned using their owner’s mana, so as the distance from its owner, Greenlet, increased, it became useless.
Woooong.
Mana gathered in Lee Si-woo’s hands.
As countless Magic Arrows shot out from his palms, decorating the air, Greenlet, looking up at the sky from within the Black Fog, was aghast.
“H-hey, there are two humans here! I-if you shoot that, they could die too!”
Lee Si-woo’s lips twisted into a sneer as he spoke.
“I came here to kill you, not to save them.”
As soon as Lee Si-woo finished speaking, a dozen Magic Arrows rained down on the Black Fog like a shower of arrows.
A cloud of dust rose from the convenience store building, battered by the Magic Arrows, and the Black Fog slowly dispersed.
Lee Si-woo let out a shallow breath.
The foundation of his skills was, after all, his mineralization ability. In terms of magical ability, he was still just a 1-Circle Beginner.
This meant that, with his magical talent, unleashing ten Magic Arrows at once was quite a strain.
‘But even so… dispelling the Black Fog is not difficult.’
Using the Magic Arrows, Lee Si-woo had successfully disrupted the mana pattern of the Black Fog formed around the convenience store. He looked down below.
Shashashak.
Spotting Greenlet moving stealthily like a rat through the dust cloud, Lee Si-woo shot downwards.
Like a hawk targeting its prey, Lee Si-woo’s dropkick slammed into Greenlet’s back.
Bam!
Surprisingly, Greenlet’s mana shield withstood Lee Si-woo’s blow without a problem.
This was in stark contrast to the other 1-Circle Experts, who had lost their lives in one or two hits.
‘So this is a Master?’
Not all aces were the same. Mixed in with the Experts hired as smokescreens were real ones like Greenlet.
And since Lee Si-woo had dealt with a considerable number of small fry over the past ten days, he would be facing more real ones like Greenlet from now on.
“Eat this!”
Greenlet stomped his foot hard on the ground, and a Magic Arrow, generated from the mana that had been gathered in the ground right beneath Lee Si-woo, shot up towards his crotch.
It was a trap Greenlet had set, certain that Lee Si-woo would target him.
Thwack!
With the sound of hitting a leather punching bag, the Magic Arrow hit Lee Si-woo’s lower body and exploded, but Lee Si-woo just scoffed.
The defensive power of his Gold-level mineralization ability was far too sturdy to be pierced by a mere Magic Arrow.
Lee Si-woo’s wind wings flapped again, and in an instant, he was right in front of Greenlet.
“Hieeek!”
Like the coward he was, true to his goblin nature, Greenlet tried to flee with a reaction straight out of a movie. Lee Si-woo grabbed him by the head.
With his left hand firmly gripping the back of Greenlet’s head, Lee Si-woo raised his right hand.
Pow, pow, pow!
One punch, two punches, three punches!
Lee Si-woo’s fists relentlessly struck Greenlet’s face, and with each punch, the color of the mana shield faded.
Greenlet screamed like a stuck pig and struggled, but he could not resist Lee Si-woo’s superhuman grip.
When the mana shield finally shattered, Greenlet cried out, pleading.
“N-no!”
Lee Si-woo smiled faintly and raised his fist again.
“Yes.”
Crack.
Greenlet’s body, his head smashed, collapsed pathetically on the spot.
Lee Si-woo dusted off his hands, and green blood dripped to the ground.
‘Hmm, I can handle one Master without much difficulty… but three or more would be tough.’
After a quick assessment of his own strength, Lee Si-woo turned his gaze to the siblings.
Though he had claimed he didn’t care if they died, he had been somewhat careful, and thankfully, neither of their lives seemed to be in danger.
As he examined them, covered in blood and dust, a flicker of interest passed through Lee Si-woo’s eyes.
With his keen eyesight, he had spotted the tattoo on Roben’s chest, the very thing that had startled Greenlet.
‘A Racist? Hmm, what luck. With these two, I won’t need to do any separate vetting.’
In truth, Lee Si-woo’s goal in the selection trials was simply to win.
However, when an external force intervened in the trials and tried to shake him through Dimdim, Lee Si-woo, annoyed, had changed his objective.
Not to win, but to screw over that external force.
So he had identified, vetted, and recruited nine survivors.
The vetting process was simple.
As long as the survivor and their family had no connections to corporations or Magic Towers, and they weren’t the type of person to betray him, he accepted them.
‘Good, does this make ten, including me?’
In the past, Medusa Phyllis had caused quite a stir among the powers of Granada by winning alone.
But in reality, while the process was chaotic, the result wasn't much different.
Though everyone else died, the Top 10 could simply be determined by the order of their deaths.
But what if all the aces who were assigned betting rights died, and the Top 10 was filled with completely unexpected people?
And what if only one of them held the allocation rights that guaranteed a stake in the interests?
If that were to happen, wouldn't it be the most surefire way to screw over the Magic Tower forces and the corporations?
For the sole reason that an external force had schemed behind his back, Lee Si-woo had decided to completely mess up the power dynamics of Granada.
After collecting Greenlet’s belongings and the item rope, Lee Si-woo glanced at the siblings and said,
“What are you doing? Stop spacing out and follow me. If you want to live.”