Climbing the Tower with Multidimensional Avatars - Chapter 112

—————
This chapter was translated by Lunox Novels. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
—————

Chapter 112. The Sephiroth Magician – Murderous Clown (6)

“No, this can’t be—!!”
A scream echoed from somewhere as the clown vanished in black smoke, revealing a turbid magic stone and the corpse of a boy in his original form.
Naturally, the boy’s corpse was far from intact.
His entire body was riddled with holes from the magic bullets I’d fired, his neck was severed, and ash-like residue from the dissipating black smoke clung to various parts of his body.
Then, from far away, a man came rushing over with tears streaming down his face.
I was about to draw a magic bullet pistol from my holster and aim it, but seeing his expression filled with sorrow rather than anger, I simply stepped away from the boy’s corpse.
The man—the mage who’d fired that sniper spell at me—made no attempt to attack me, his trembling hands gently touching the boy’s severed neck.
“Ah, no… Max, no… Max…! Please…!”
The man wailed in anguish, tears pouring down his face.
Andromallius, who had been observing from atop a building, flew to my side and spoke.
“It seems the individual’s transgression wasn’t born from malicious experimentation, after all.”
I nodded at his bitter tone.
Judging by the age difference between the man and the boy, could they be father and son?
No, the gap seemed smaller—perhaps uncle and nephew, or an older brother and a much younger sibling.
The grieving man had completely lost control of his magical power and aura, consumed by the pain of losing a loved one.
His rank was 4-Class, or had he just ascended to 5-Class?
His face suggested he was in his early thirties, and a 5-Class mage in his early thirties would be called a prodigy without question—a mage of great promise.
Of course, considering Andromallius appeared to be in his twenties despite being 43, he could have been in his sixties.
Accumulating magical power slows the aging process, after all.
In that case, the boy might not have been a son or nephew, but a grandson.
“What do we do now?”
The subjugation was complete—should we leave?
The clown’s subjugation had been recorded as video through the mask.
The mask functioned as a kind of body camera.
“We should leave. That is, if he lets us depart peacefully.”
At Andromallius’s words, I examined the grieving man’s magical power more carefully and found he was prepared to attack us at any moment.
Had we turned our backs and tried to leave, offensive magic would have been unleashed immediately.
The man was clearly burning with resentment and rage directed at us.
From his perspective, we were nothing but murderers who had killed his family.
No matter how much the boy had transformed into a monster and killed people, the fact that he was family remained unchanged for this man.
“Max… Ah, Max…!”
His seething rage, finding no outlet, turned toward us.
It was irrational and illogical anger, resentment—but that was simply what humans were.
Greater knowledge didn’t make one wiser or more rational.
Of course, he likely knew how to control himself through his learning and had practiced it regularly, but emotions like a tempest were sufficient to strip away reason.
“Why did you leave the transformed monster unattended?”
At Andromallius’s question, the man bellowed.
“Don’t call Max a monster!”
The man sheltering the Murderous Clown constructed dozens of offensive spells and glared at us.
“Max was a good child! A child who could smile brighter than anyone! How could you do something so cruel and merciless to such a child!?”
He’d completely lost his reason.
Andromallius shouted in anger.
“Simply undergoing a mutation doesn’t make one a monster! But completely mutating and slaughtering people is certainly enough to warrant the title! You’re the one who turned such a good child into a monster! Why didn’t you stop it!?”
The man cried out defensively against Andromallius’s rebuke.
“I did stop it! I tried to stop it! But Max was suffering! Max couldn’t control the mutation factor, so he’d starve to death without other people’s life force!”
“So you let him kill other people!?”
“I had no choice! I wanted to send Max to the Lower Levels if I could! But sending Max down there would inevitably attract the City Government’s attention! And even if I could have sent him down! How could our Max survive in such a filthy place crawling with monsters!?”
Even the shred of compassion I felt evaporated at those words.
He wanted to send him to the Lower Levels?
So it’s fine if Lower Level people just die?
And the Lower Levels are filthy and crawling with monsters?
Well, it wasn’t entirely wrong. But it was absurd hearing someone from the Magic Tower—the very organization that created such a society—say such things.
“It’s all over… I’ll kill you all. I’ll kill every last one of you who dared to kill Max!”
The man unleashed the spells he’d prepared, firing them at us in rapid succession.
Andromallius, as if he’d anticipated it, casually erected a barrier around us to block the onslaught.
As the magical barrage poured down, Andromallius spoke.
“The barrage won’t last long. He’s already consumed considerable mana with that attack—shall I try facing him alone?”
“Even with depleted mana, he still appears to be Class 5?”
“Class 5 in name only. Using Credit’s terminology, I’d call it an empty shell spec.”
Had I really said something like that aloud?
“But the astral body tier difference is still unavoidable, isn’t it?”
Astral body tier was a crucial factor that significantly reduced mana consumption.
Even though I possessed the equivalent of Class 4 mana in practical terms, a two-tier difference meant he could spam Class 4 spells with merely Class 2 level mana.
Meanwhile, I couldn’t dream of casting Class 4 spells even at full strength.
“Just looking at how he uses magic, he’s never seen real combat. Plus, there’s something absolutely advantageous.”
The Scale of Sin.
Judging by how he spoke, he was a textbook sociopath—brimming with elitism and hypersensitive only to his own pain.
In this dying world, I’d only seen people with sin values below three digits among the Andromallius Family members or genuinely young children.
Of course, the sample size was small since I’d only gained the ability a few hours ago.
I used the Scale of Sin to check the man’s sin value.
“1.8 million—this bastard’s insane.”
Not even five digits, but a seven-digit number.
“At this level, wouldn’t he go into shock the moment he uses the ability?”
My sin value was negative 13… so why did it become negative 3,000?
Ah, probably because I eliminated the Murderous Clown.
After creating a clone in this world, it was estimated at 0, and without causing any trouble, I’d locked myself in my room studying magic, occasionally picking up trash on the streets when I had to visit the True Hideout Outside Inner Wall, and doing minor good deeds like erasing graffiti for magic practice—which brought me to negative 13.
But suddenly dropping to minus three thousand felt disorienting.
“An ordinary person would suffer shock from the gap alone, but the opponent is a mage who has crossed the boundary of realms twice despite being merely a 5-Class in name—they won’t die from this ability alone.”
I swapped the non-attribute cartridge in my magic bullet pistol, which had little ammunition remaining, for a water-attribute cartridge and checked the mana reserves of my mana blade.
The mana blade had barely consumed any energy.
The reason I switched to a water-attribute cartridge was because the mage primarily used flame-based magic.
“Let’s give it a shot.”
The moment the magical bombardment ceased, I immediately placed the mage protecting the Murderous Clown and my sins on the scale.
Naturally, the scale tilted heavily toward the enemy, imposing powerful debuffs and restrictions.
The man’s complexion turned ashen from the sudden debuff, and he gritted his teeth.
“The Andromallius Family! So you hypocritical bastards were real after all!”
Still, his claim of belonging to the Magic Tower wasn’t entirely a lie—he knew about us.
At his fury, I let out a snort of laughter.
“Have you ever done good despite your hypocrisy? Or do you not know the meaning of karma? Given your intelligence level… forgive me for saying, but you’re currently experiencing karma.”
“Shut your mouth!”
Enraged by my mockery, the man created countless flaming arrows and fired them at me.
“If you’re going to curse someone, why not curse your past self who committed those acts instead of harassing an innocent person like me? Did someone threaten you to live like garbage?”
I twisted the trajectory of the flaming arrows with wind magic.
Had he been in perfect condition, my magic wouldn’t have been able to evade his arrows.
But his deep, profound sins had weakened him.
I stepped closer and closer to him, and he unleashed formidable magic in desperation.
Though his spells, weighed down by the scale of sin, shrank and weakened endlessly, a 5-Class mage was truly formidable.
My hands trembled from the impact of cutting through magic, and my mana rapidly depleted as I evaded the relentless barrage.
I fired water-attribute magic bullets—aqua orbs—from my magic bullet pistol.
I fired at maximum output without sparing the cartridge’s mana, but the man created a flame shield to block the aqua orbs.
However, burdened by the scale of sin, he grew increasingly pale with each expenditure of mana.
I continued pulling the trigger, and on the ninth shot, the shield finally broke through, striking the man’s shoulder.
“Krraaaagh!”
With each shot consuming ten percent of the cartridge’s mana, the power was tremendous.
The man’s shoulder struck by the aqua orb bore a large hole as if a high-pressure water jet mixed with abrasive had drilled through it.
Already in the worst condition from the scale of sin, blood gushed like a fountain from his shoulder, and his pale complexion turned white.
The man, who had lost his reason to fury, finally felt the terror of death and tried to crawl away.
“My, unauthorized spatial transfer magic is illegal, you know.”
Andromallius nullified the magic the man was attempting to use.
“What have I…! What did I do to deserve this! You took Max from me, and now you’re taking my life too!”
Terrifying self-justification and rage.
And fear born from the threat to his own life.
That irrational and senseless madness overheated his astral body, rapidly constructing a grand spell beyond his current capability.
Andromallius was startled and tried to block the spell, but my action was faster.
“Dispel Kick!”
I kicked his head without hesitation.
Why are you trying to block an urgent situation with magic?
Just strike it down and nullify it.
“Ugh!”
Popcorn kernels erupted in all directions like kernels bursting from heat.
His head reeled as his magical formula crumbled, twisted, and reversed.
The man writhed in agony, coughing blood from the backlash of mana.
Though the source of mana was the astral body, the gateway to the world was the physical form.
Naturally, a mana backlash was more than sufficient to destroy the body.
Yet he remained alive. Alive, at least.
“This qualifies as a capture, does it not?”
Andromallius nodded with a subtle smile at my question.
“An excellent capture. Well done.”
Andromallius retrieved an identification card from the unconscious man’s possession and examined it.
“So he truly was affiliated with the Magic Tower. But it seems he lacks powerful backing, so we need not worry. The Magic Tower will be delighted to have acquired such a quality experimental subject.”
The Magic Tower perpetually desired high-ranking mages as experimental subjects.
However, high-ranking mages were hardly common, and as precious human resources, they could not be carelessly expended as test subjects.
Thus, a high-ranking mage who had committed such grave crimes became eagerly welcomed experimental material for the Magic Tower.
Would they spare him because he was a member of the Magic Tower?
Such a thing required extraordinarily powerful backing to achieve.
Unless one’s backing reached the level of the Tower Master himself, or at minimum an Elder, there would be no way to prevent a high-ranking mage from becoming an experimental subject.
High-ranking mages—especially those of the 5th Class—were experimental materials of such rarity.
“A dreadful tale indeed.”
“I too dislike such stories, but we must be satisfied that he receives punishment in this manner at least.”
The man, who had regained consciousness at some point, pleaded in terror.
“P-please… please spare me…!”
With teeth missing and his entire body in ruins, he lacked even the thought of escape, barely managing to beg for his life.
Being affiliated with the Magic Tower himself, he knew well what his future held.
“Simply accept it as karmic retribution.”
“D-damn it! If I’d known you were Andromallius…!”
Had he known he was facing the Andromallius Family, he would have fled immediately.
With any other Shadow, he would never have imagined losing to a 5th Class mage unless the leader of each Shadow came personally—a natural assumption.
Yet he could never have anticipated that the Andromallius Family would appear here, and of all people, Andromallius himself, the leader.
He likely remained ignorant even now.
His face was completely concealed behind a mask.
In this world marching toward ruin, there exists no one untainted by sin.
This was why Andromallius, once the weakest in offensive authority among the Shadows and scorned as worthless during peaceful times, now ranked among the absolute elite.
The power to punish wickedness and the wicked.
The terror of those who have committed sin.
Justice feared even by the fallen Magic Tower’s mages who dominated the corrupted City.
That was precisely what Andromallius embodied.

(To be continued in the next chapter)

—————
This chapter was translated by Lunox Novels. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
—————