Chapter 75
I’m translating the chapter directly into the required HTML format and preserving the in-universe text styling where it applies. The key pass here is keeping the narration fluid in English while making sure dialogue stays distinct and the special skill/system-like passages are handled as styled blocks.CHAPTER_TITLE: A Walker Nuclear Warhead
Park Ho-sung waved his hand through the air.
The motion was so elegant, so precise, that he looked like a maestro conducting an orchestra. Each time his hand moved, the wand in his grasp scattered light and drew patterns in the air.
The hand not holding the wand was not idle, either. While his right hand drew one figure after another, his left carved symbols into the spaces between them.
Yoon Sang-hyuk watched with obvious interest.
“What on earth is he doing?”
Yang Su-chan spoke with a sullen look in his eyes. He was still irritated that Park Ho-sung had taken away his chance to fight, so when Park Ho-sung started acting strangely, his tone turned sharp.
Yoon Sang-hyuk gave Yang Su-chan a brief glance, then looked back again.
Seeing was a matter of knowledge.
It was invisible to Yang Su-chan, but Yoon Sang-hyuk could clearly see it. With every movement of Park Ho-sung’s hand, the mana rippling through the air became distinct.
Not just rippling in a simple way, either. It was highly ordered. Whenever the mana threatened to surge out of control, Park Ho-sung’s left hand corrected the flow.
The turbulent mana gathered. A sphere shedding holy light hovered in midair. Was the spell complete? Park Ho-sung extended both hands and spoke softly.
“Mass Turn Undead.”
Threads of light burst outward from the glowing sphere. They sank into the bodies of the undead preparing to attack in the stone chamber.
And then...
Wooooong-
Crack- crack- crack-
One undead after another was wrapped in light, reduced to powder, and erased from existence.
“Ohhh.”
Turn Undead was a spell Yoon Sang-hyuk knew well. It returned undead beings, who had defied the will of the gods and risen again, to their original state, back to nature.
He had seen many mages hunt undead with Turn Undead in Eternal World. But never, not once, had he seen dozens of targets wiped out at the same time with a single Turn Undead.
“Holy crap.”
Yang Su-chan stared, mouth hanging open.
More than half the undead had vanished with a single spell. At that moment, Park Ho-sung was already preparing his next one. The wand in his hand once again drew a beautiful image through the air.
The remaining undead charged at Park Ho-sung. Mass Turn Undead had erased most of the Nameless King’s soldiers. What remained were the mages and knights.
While the Nameless King’s mages prepared spells in the rear, the knights attacked Park Ho-sung.
“Spell Cancel.”
Park Ho-sung’s left hand slid through the air as gently as if he were stroking something unseen.
“Aaagh!”
The mages who had been preparing spells behind the charging knights let out piercing screams. The spells they had been forming were nullified before they could manifest.
“Lightning Field.”
As Park Ho-sung pointed the wand toward the ground and chanted, the force of lightning pouring from the wand spread across the stone floor.
The Nameless King’s knights could no longer advance. They twisted and convulsed in place.
It was a chain of astonishment.
“Double Casting?”
Double Casting was a must-have skill for high-level mages capable of using two spells at once.
There were plenty of players with the mage class who could use Double Casting. But the spells they could double-cast were usually only third-circle magic or lower.
Even Christina Robianco, the Crimson Witch who stood at the pinnacle of mages, could only mix fifth-circle and fourth-circle magic. Even then, properly performing Double Casting required a fairly long casting time and considerable focus.
But Park Ho-sung had casually double-cast seventh-circle Spell Cancel and sixth-circle Lightning Field.
And that was not even the end of it. While the Lightning Field was taking shape, he completed another spell with his left hand.
“Rain!”
Raindrops began to patter down from the ceiling of the stone chamber. Droplets falling like rain soaked the bodies of the Nameless King’s knights and mages. The lightning within the Lightning Field fused with the water, and its power surged.
“Aaaagh!”
The shrill screams of the undead tore through the chamber.
After a short while, one undead after another collapsed onto the stone floor.
Yang Su-chan stared at Park Ho-sung with his mouth still open.
“You, you, you...”
He looked like he wanted to say something, but couldn’t get the words out. Yoon Sang-hyuk was equally stunned and trying to decide what, exactly, he should say.
“Impressive.”
After some thought, that was the best he could come up with. But no other words came to mind. Even that did not begin to describe Park Ho-sung’s talent.
“It was only possible because of the items the Lord gave me.”
That result could not have been created simply by putting on a few pieces of gear. The items had helped, certainly, but without Park Ho-sung’s own talent, it would have been impossible.
“Double Casting? No, was that Triple Casting?”
“No. I just used the spells sequentially. I only used my right hand and left hand separately.”
“Ha.”
All he could do was laugh.
Park Ho-sung looked as though he had merely done something natural, the way one breathes, and wondered why everyone was reacting like this.
“How much mana do you have left?”
“I haven’t used that much mana. If I had gone all out, I’m not sure.”
“You weren’t going all out?”
It was one surprise after another, each one bigger than the last.
“Did you think I should have?”
“No. I was just curious.” Yoon Sang-hyuk paused, then asked, “But compared to your level, isn’t your mana pool unusually high? Did you invest a lot in mental strength?”
“No, that’s not it.”
He had cast seventh-circle magic and sixth-circle magic in quick succession. Before that, he had also used Mass Turn Undead, whose circle Yoon Sang-hyuk could not even estimate. The accessories Yoon Sang-hyuk had given him before the battle increased magical power, but not mana quantity.
In other words, Park Ho-sung’s mana pool itself was enormous.
“When I leveled up, I invested most of the stats I gained into wisdom. The total amount of mana increases naturally through meditation, after all.”
Understanding what Yoon Sang-hyuk wanted to know, Park Ho-sung explained.
And that made Yoon Sang-hyuk surprised all over again.
He was startled once by the fact that meditation alone could raise a mage’s mana capacity enough to let them use high-circle magic repeatedly without strain, and then again by the fact that Park Ho-sung, at level 187, had invested almost all of his stats into wisdom.
“How high is your wisdom stat?”
“At the start I put a little into vitality and agility because I thought mages would need those too, but everything else went into wisdom. It should be just over 800.”
The longer the conversation went on, the more stunned he became. Surprise followed surprise, and then something even bigger than that, crashing over Yoon Sang-hyuk in waves.
“Over 800?”
“That’s insane.”
Yang Su-chan shook his head repeatedly as well.
“Don’t ever use magic on me, even as a joke. If it’s your magic, I think even getting hit by an Energy Bolt would kill me.”
It was meant as a joke, but there was nothing but sincerity in Yang Su-chan’s words. Yoon Sang-hyuk nodded in agreement.
Two days ago, at Ahmed Hassan’s house, Yoon Sang-hyuk had ordered Park Ho-sung to kill anything that moved. If the guild members of the Tower of the Dead had dared to act up then...
“From now on, when I ask you to do something, I’m going to have to think twice.”
“Twice enough? You should think three times. No, ten times. He’s a walking nuclear warhead.”
* * *
“Lightning Bolt. Stack, stack, stack.”
Wooooong-
Whoosh- whoosh- whoosh-
Arrows of lightning floating above Park Ho-sung’s head shot forward in staggered succession. The sight looked like a meteor shower pouring through the night sky.
Then came the impact sounds, followed by the undead’s screams.
It looked as though he was firing them at random, but Park Ho-sung was controlling each of the more than fifty Lightning Bolts individually. Not a single one missed.
As the spellwork unfolded one after another, Yoon Sang-hyuk and the rest of the Tower of the Dead guild members kept letting out waves of admiration.
By the time they had passed through five stone chambers, Park Ho-sung had single-handedly exterminated every undead that appeared.
What was even more astonishing was that, while laying waste to those five chambers, he had never once drunk a mana potion or stopped to meditate. Yoon Sang-hyuk found himself wondering just how large the boy’s mana pool actually was.
“Good work. That was truly incredible. I had some idea, but I never expected it to be at this level.”
Park Ho-sung bowed his head. The corners of his mouth twisted faintly. Yoon Sang-hyuk knew what that tiny change in expression meant. Park Ho-sung had smiled. For someone so poor at showing emotion, that slight expression meant a great deal.
“This should be enough to judge your skill.”
“I’m still fine. I have mana left.”
“I know that, but once that guy gets sulky, he stays that way for a while. And I’m sick of watching him laze around.”
Yang Su-chan bristled at once.
“Do I look like some kid? I’m not sulking. And was I sitting around doing nothing? Didn’t I collect the items while our great archmage here was hunting?”
“You collected them? The undead collected them.”
Yang Su-chan hated doing battle directly, but he also hated looting items himself. True to his undead-obsessed nature, he had been making the undead handle even the smallest tasks.
“If my babies do it, that’s me doing it. Don’t talk about what you don’t understand.”
“I’m sure you’re very satisfied. So what, you don’t want to hunt? Can Ho-sung keep doing it?”
“Who said I didn’t want to? Since our great archmage has worked so hard, he should rest a bit. It’s a little annoying, sure, but if I have to step in, what choice is there?”
Yoon Sang-hyuk snorted.
From the next chamber on, it was decided that Yang Su-chan would do the hunting.
As they moved, Yoon Sang-hyuk asked Park Ho-sung, “How did the teamwork feel when you hunted in the Castle of Chaos with the Masked Mercenary Group members?”
“It wasn’t bad. However...”
“However?”
“The efficiency was low.”
“Explain properly.”
Park Ho-sung thought for a moment, then said, “Up to Falcolore, I think I could have hunted alone without any trouble. If I pushed myself, I think I could probably handle something like Glazhalabolas or Nebiros on my own too.”
Yoon Sang-hyuk could see what he meant.
Why hunt monsters he could kill alone with a large group at all?
Falcolore was the forty-first-ranked Demon Lord, and Glazhalabolas was ranked twenty-fifth.
Once again, Park Ho-sung felt extraordinary.
Yoon Sang-hyuk himself could easily hunt Baal’s degraded copy, the final boss of the Castle of Chaos, but the difference between himself and other players was, honestly, meaningless to even measure.
Park Ho-sung was different. If he were equipped with top-tier gear and raised his level a little more, he might be able to perform at the level of several top-ranked players, even if not quite at Yoon Sang-hyuk’s level.
“At some point, let’s go hunting together, just the two of us.”
He would have to see just how far Park Ho-sung’s talent really went.