Chapter 197
Chapter 197
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Translator: Ryuma
Chapter: 197
Chapter Title: Awakening of Extreme Intent
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For Yong-un, who had never set his own goals before, Royal Class became a new purpose in life.
A new sky he yearned to surpass.
Royal Class was exactly that for Yong-un.
Claaang!
A violet wave erupted from the Demon-Slaying Sword in Yong-un's hand, spreading outward with a massive roar.
Like a stone tossed into a pond, the violet wave rippled through the surrounding air, starting from a small circle and expanding into a massive one, reducing everything in its path to nothingness.
Just as the resonance between the Demon-Slaying Sword and Blood Heaven Demonic Art through enemy qi produced blood mist...
The resonance between the Demon-Slaying Sword and Extreme Intent created the phenomenon unfolding now.
And that wave...
Kraaaash!
...shattered the green-flamed charging bull and the ice bird spewing frigid blasts—attacks infused with the full might of the two Royal Class members—in an instant.
Whoooosh.
Ignito and Spello, their faces briefly shielded by the fierce wind, opened their eyes.
In the center of their recovering vision stood Yong-un, completely unscathed.
"Impossible..."
The two Royal Class members stared blankly at Yong-un as he calmly withdrew his violet Extreme Intent.
It hadn't been a light attack by any means.
The skill they'd unleashed at full power, intended to smash the Sudden Gate the moment it formed...
...had vanished so absurdly.
Swish.
Yong-un sheathed the Demon-Slaying Sword and silently regarded the two Royal Class members.
'I thought you were my new goal.'
Regret filled Yong-un's eyes.
His hand on the Demon-Slaying Sword's hilt, now sheathed, fell limply.
'So hollow.'
With a bitter smile, Yong-un clicked his tongue lightly and turned away without lingering.
'I hoped it wasn't true.'
Whoooosh! Boom!
As the surging indigo sparks stabilized, the Sudden Gate fully formed.
A pitch-black rift in the void.
The completed Sudden Gate.
Yong-un gazed at it intently.
"You're not thinking of going in, are you?"
Ignito's awkward, stiff voice rang out.
Yong-un spoke toward the vanished goal, the fallen sky.
"You seem to know something about this."
"......"
Ignito fell silent at Yong-un's sharp question.
Instead, Spello's voice responded.
"I can't tell you everything. But I'll share one thing: that gate... was born because of us."
"Old man!"
A Royal Class creating a gate?
It was an unexpected bombshell, but Ignito's reaction suggested Spello wasn't lying.
Yong-un couldn't help but ask.
"What are you hiding?"
Ignito glanced anxiously at Spello.
He was uneasy about handing so much information to a stranger, the prime suspect in the GHO raid.
But Spello, having held the Royal Class position longer than Ignito, didn't cause such worries.
"Curious?"
"Seems you can't say."
"True. We can't speak it. Not unless you ascend to Royal Class like us."
Yong-un slowly lowered his hand from the Demon-Slaying Sword and gripped the hilt firmly at its center.
"Then why share what you have so far?"
"Someone like you would figure it out the moment you enter."
The answers lay within that dark gate.
What Royal Class truly was, and why they sought to clear that Sudden Gate.
All his curiosities held answers in the gate before him.
"Then I won't ask more. But soon, I'll come to hear it properly."
"......"
"Once I become Royal Class."
Step. Claaang!
Yong-un took a step toward the Sudden Gate the two had tried to destroy.
A violet wave spread in all directions, just like when it resonated with the Demon-Slaying Sword earlier.
Whoooosh.
"Urk."
The overwhelming wave forced Ignito to shield his face again, then hastily uncover it.
But Yong-un had already vanished.
Crackle.
The Sudden Gate, twitching and spewing indigo sparks everywhere, was the only hint of where Yong-un had gone.
"Ignito."
"Old man..."
Watching the Sudden Gate rampage from the intense mana, the two Royal Class members grimaced.
"You felt it too, right?"
"Definitely..."
"Maybe that guy's... one of us."
Spello turned sharply after his words.
He walked toward the dazed Natalia in the distance and said,
"We're heading back immediately."
Spello walked away, while Ignito stared at the Sudden Gate, face still scrunched.
"Things are getting interesting."
Ignito cracked his neck lightly, then suddenly grinned.
"Ignito, move! Hurry!"
At Spello's urgent call, Ignito wiped his smirk and turned.
He muttered something laden with meaning.
"Maybe this gate isn't just because of us."
Fwoosh.
Ignito closed the distance with flames, grabbing Spello and Natalia's shoulders.
His face shifted to its usual playful expression as he unleashed the flames.
Roooar.
In central Seoul, under evacuation orders due to the Sudden Gate.
At the heart of the chaos, the Royal Class members' covert capture operation concluded amid fierce flames.
Inside the Sudden Gate, Yong-un lowered his head quietly and looked at the Demon-Slaying Sword.
"I've fully awakened Extreme Intent."
He couldn't help but smile.
It was the first time since mastering Extreme Intent.
Claaang.
Violet waves spread from Yong-un in all directions.
The air twisted, space warped.
Where the waves passed, qi flows shattered and collapsed.
It was the moment Cheonnoeja's intent and wish—for Yong-un to walk the path of Extreme Tyranny—became reality.
"Heh."
Resonating with the sword through one's own qi was a phenomenon grasped by only a rare few among countless martial artists, like stars in the night sky.
One needed a famed sword that fully accepted inner qi as a basic requirement.
One must fully control the qi in their dantian and awaken it perfectly for this ultimate swordsmanship.
Back as the Sword Demon, Yong-un had resonated with the Demon-Slaying Sword by perfectly awakening Blood Heaven Demonic Art.
The blood mist born from that resonance birthed the moniker "Blood Ghost Sword Demon" and instilled terror in countless martial artists.
But to go further, achieving resonance through Extreme Intent—the pinnacle of Cheonnoeja's nameless manual.
He had stepped into a realm unimaginable even in the murim, made real here.
"How could I not be pleased?"
His speech, altered by returning to reality, reverted to the Sword Demon's tone.
Kraaaash!
But joy was fleeting.
The gate sensed the powerful wave from the Extreme Intent resonance, drawing hordes of monsters across the vast plain toward Yong-un.
Rumble rumble rumble.
The thunderous footsteps of what seemed like hundreds of savage monsters echoed from beyond the plain to where Yong-un stood.
An overwhelming number worlds apart from the dozens in ordinary gates.
Even a party of high-rank Hunters would be stunned by the spectacle—but to Yong-un now, it was pure delight.
Because...
"It's perfect for testing my current self."
The more, the better.
The tougher, the better.
The harder...
"The better!"
The resonance with Extreme Intent instantly banished thoughts of uncovering the Royals' hidden truth.
In its place burned only the urge to test his new realm.
Crunch.
Yong-un's rear leg pushed back hard, digging into the ground.
His front leg, loaded with power, crushed the earth like tofu, sinking up to the ankle.
With his upper body low and lower body firmly anchored...
Veins bulged on both hands gripping the Demon-Slaying Sword.
Claaang!
And just as the wave from Extreme Intent resonance echoed again!
"Extreme Heaven-Splitting Sword!"
Violet light burst from Yong-un's eyes as the long-concealed Demon-Slaying Sword moved.
A ferocious pressure that could cleave the world in two.
Whoooosh.
Yong-un's slowly moving arm changed at the one-third point.
Craaaang!
By the time his mind registered the sword swing, his arm had already reached the end of the strike.
Swish.
The Demon-Slaying Sword, having unleashed a mighty stroke, was sucked back into its sheath.
His lowered stance returned to normal.
But the distant monster horde charged on without pause.
No earth-shattering, sky-falling tyranny as before.
He'd merely swung once from left to right through empty air.
Was something wrong? The thought lasted only a moment.
As the Demon-Slaying Sword fully sheathed...
Crack!
The monster horde's roars cut off simultaneously.
Rumble rumble boom.
Hundreds of monsters, bisected at the waist, sprayed blood onto the ground.
Deaths so sudden they couldn't even register.
Yong-un watched from afar, a satisfied smile on his lips.
"Is this the sword you so desired, Cheonnoeja?"
Rumble rumble boom.
Monsters of varying sizes all severed at the midsection, spilling blood.
As they took long to fall, Yong-un looked up to the sky.
With a deep smile, he shouted.
"This is the sword you wanted. Behold it well."
Rumble rumble rumble.
Facing the tidal wave of blood-scented wind, Yong-un lightly pulled his foot from the ground.
Then, he stepped toward the distant red glow, one foot at a time.
A mere child from Korea.
Cheonnoeja's nameless manual transformed him into the Sword Demon, a blood ghost.
Unbeknownst to all, it shook the entire murim under the name Sword Demon.
And the Extreme Intent Cheonnoeja sought through that manual.
Now, in the Sudden Gate of this non-murim reality, it unfolded perfectly as swordsmanship in Yong-un's grasp.
Step.
Yong-un halted while walking toward gate clear.
Though heading for the boss amid a vast plain like the one he'd massacred monsters on, no boss appeared.
Only endless plain and horizon filled his view.
But then, as he slightly raised his head, Yong-un's eyes caught a sky unlike any gate before.
"You, huh."
A rift in the sky like shattered glass.
Within, thick energy presumed to be the gate-maintaining boss.
And the violet world visible through the rift felt familiar to Yong-un.
"The demon who tried and failed to descend through Heavenly Day's sister's body."
The female demon who had descended into Yeong-il's body, Heavenly Day's sister.
Master of the 108 Demon Eyes.
Demikrasia's form peeked slyly from between the cracks.
"I knew we'd meet again, but not this soon."
Appearing in her true body, not Yeong-il's, Demikrasia was incomprehensibly massive.
Her upper body barely visible from the rift in the sky.
"Why are you..."
Demikrasia glanced around before flashing a seductive smile at the astonished Yong-un.
"Unique human. I wanted to see you again, but you're not my goal right now. Sorry..."
Her enormous eyes spun rapidly, flashing myriad colors.
Finally settling on golden star-shaped pupils, she unleashed vast energy.
Energy several times stronger than her prior descent through Yeong-il's body.
"I need to head out. He's coming soon."
Yong-un frowned.
Drunk on his new realm, he now realized why he'd entered here.
What the two Royals had hidden.
'So it was this demon.'
High-level battles ended in one second.
Yong-un's second of surprise...
...wasn't enough against Demikrasia's skill, twice as strong as expected.
"I won't let him take you. Letting those rats slip is a shame, but."
Snap.
Demikrasia's finger flicked.
Yong-un swung the Demon-Slaying Sword belatedly, but...
Flaaash!
Demikrasia's skill activated faster.
The sudden burst warped Yong-un to the front of the Sudden Gate.
And the belated Demon-Slaying Sword...
Craaack!
...merely cleaved the innocent Sudden Gate.
The Extreme Heaven-Splitting Sword, brimming with Extreme Intent, diagonally bisected the indigo-sparking Sudden Gate.
The upper half slid down the lower like melting.
Then...
Kaboooom!
A massive explosion annihilated the gate.
Yong-un countered the ensuing storm with his own wind, dissipating it.
But...
"Slipped away."
The Sudden Gate had already vanished.
An irritating situation full of questions.
Yong-un sheathed the Demon-Slaying Sword quietly, eyeing the empty spots where the Royals had been.
"One more reason to become Royal Class."
Demikrasia, who orchestrated the GHO intrusion, and Royals deeply tied to such demons.
The uneasy feeling of some massive shadow he didn't know...
...stirred faint anxiety in Yong-un's chest, the man who infiltrated GHO's basement.
'I must uncover it. For myself, my faction, my family.'
Abandoning lingering thoughts on the lost Sudden Gate, Yong-un turned sharply.
With a light foot stomp, he vanished from the spot.