Climbing the Tower with Multidimensional Avatars - Chapter 160

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This chapter was translated by Lunox Novels. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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Episode 160. Galaxy Martial God Hall – School Excursion (14)

As Cheon So-yeon’s phantom dispersed, a sickening energy swept across his body.
At the same time, he felt a faint vertigo as though drugged, and his sense of direction wavered.
But for a martial artist of Hwagyeong’s caliber, this was nothing.
Rather, the fact that such influence reached even a martial artist of Hwagyeong’s standing suggested this was no ordinary poison.
The man concluded as much.
In this age, millennia after the heterodox arts ceased to be practiced, only Poison Mastery or Sound Technique could affect the senses without formation magic—and the current martial world held few who mastered either.
No sound had reached his ears, so it had to be Poison Mastery.
There was no other conclusion to draw.
“The Cheon Family teaching Poison Mastery to a mere child—absurd.”
Mere numbness in his energy sense and muddled perception were hardly enough to trouble him against a child.
His body remained unimpaired, and without allies to protect, he could face twenty masters at Peak Stage without flinching.
He need only scorch the surroundings and ignore any consideration for them.
The man sensed movement behind him.
A blocked energy sense did not mean he couldn’t feel the five senses or detect the opponent’s force.
He immediately drew his blade and swung at the figure behind him.
“A-Dad….”
But he forced the trajectory of his sword to twist violently away.
Standing behind him was his own young daughter.
“Dad….”
“Hah!!”
He poured his full strength into an Energy Wave, channeling his force through it.
“How dare you mock me with such tricks!?”
He swung his blade to raise Sword Wind, scattering his daughter’s phantom like smoke.
As the phantom dissipated, relief flooded through him—only for his heart to pound with a suffocating ache.
The phantom, dissolving like mist, clung to his back as if embracing him, wrapping warmly around his neck and whispering.
“Are you… going to kill me again…?”
“Ahhhhh! Insolent!!”
He drove the phantom away and scattered Sword Auras in all directions.
Crash—crash—crash….
Crash—crash—crash….
The Sword Auras shattered walls and ceiling, but the sound reached his ears muffled and strange.
“Dad… it hurts… I… it hurts….”
His daughter’s faint voice echoed through his mind like a ghost’s cry.
The resort corridor had filled with an inexplicable mist.
And before his eyes appeared his daughter as she’d been before death—swaddled head to toe in bandages.
“Ahhhhh!! What sorcery is this! Cheon So-yeon! How dare you show me such things!!”
With bloodshot eye, he hurled Sword Auras in every direction.
Then he focused on his other eye—the one unmarred by burst blood vessels.
His mechanical prosthetic eye would ignore such phantom hallucinations and show him true sight.
His prosthetic was expensive technology—capable of holographic and infrared vision alike.
Yet through the mechanical eye, the world appeared only white, choked with mist.
The mist seemed to fill this entire space as physical reality.
The moment he thought this, the mist slowly parted, and warm sunlight flooded his vision, dazzling him.
“Where…?”
The resort corridor vanished. In its place lay a rooftop garden bathed in gentle sunlight.
The roof of his home—familiar beyond measure, cherished beyond words.
And from behind him, the sound of a child’s bright laughter.
“Dad! Look at this! Mom bought it for me!”
A girl in a white dress, straw hat barely clearing her knees, her face radiant with innocent joy.
My daughter—precious enough to ache.
Without thinking, he murmured aloud.
“Yes… so beautiful….”
A cherished scene that hadn’t even visited his dreams in years.
His child running about, his wife hanging quilts on the line.
Himself, watching them, smiling.
Oh, if only it were a dream that wouldn’t end.
“Dad~!”
“Yes… our… daughter….”
The moment he opened his arms to lift his rushing daughter, his body twisted slightly without his conscious will.
Then he clutched his abdomen.
Blood poured out in a sudden torrent.
Searing pain, as though burned by fire, drove the man to grip his head and swing his fists at empty air.
“Ugh!”
The longed-for scene scattered like mist and blurred together with the resort corridor.
A small boy lay writhing on the ground, clutching his arm.
The boy’s body half-covered the silhouette of a girl.
“Cabi, I could have ended this in one blow. I underestimated Hwagyeong’s survival instinct.”
Seeing the boy’s face, the man recalled—from the information gathered about Cheon So-yeon—the name and photograph of her closest student.
“Cheon… Ji-woo…?”
“Huh~? What’s wrong, Dad?”
“I’ll kill you!”
The man erupted with killing intent and charged at Cheon Ji-woo.

* * *

Having begun the hunt, I crafted paper birds from a thousand sheets of Magic Circle Paper and sent them flying out the window.
The moment I wove magic into the paper, it folded itself into the shape of a bird and took flight—magic I had cast, yet it never ceased to amaze me.
I hadn’t prepared the Magic Circle Paper in advance, not knowing what situation might arise; instead, I’d returned to my main body on Tower Floor 1 and spent considerable time drawing them carefully.
Each sheet took about five minutes, so accounting for breaks, it had taken roughly five days.
If I hadn’t learned Telekinesis Magic midway through and drawn several sheets simultaneously, it might have taken two weeks instead of five days.
Fortunately, notepads and A4 paper were stocked in bulk, so I never ran short.
The paper birds I released circled continuously around the resort at regular intervals.
I scattered my magic power to resonate with the Magic Circle Papers on the birds, blocking all Energy Sense from the floor where the enemy was located.
With Energy Sense blocked, I retrieved leftover medicinal ingredients from the Elixir Club and drugs used by the Andromallius Family—where my magical clone resided—and vaporized them into mist.
Illusion Technique used to deceive is originally most effective when combined with such substances.
Moreover, since my opponent was far beyond my realm and had built extreme resistance through Complete Body Transformation, being a Hwagyeong martial artist, I used the drug at two hundred times the standard dose.
At that concentration, it could kill a whale, let alone an elephant, though it might still fall short against Hwagyeong.
I hid a Magic Stone infused with my magic inside an illusory projection of Cheon So-yeon and sent it toward my opponent.
The enemy fell neatly into my trap, and the Magic Stone sublimated into the mist.
Before long, the enemy sank deep into my Illusion Technique.

-Why is he suddenly acting like that?

From the position where I’d told him to wait, Teacher Kim Do-hwa watched the enemy suddenly go berserk and grew flustered.
“I’m not sure? Maybe he’s having a bad dream?”
At my answer, Cheon So-yeon murmured softly.

-A bad dream? It sounds like he said ‘daughter’…?

I don’t know exactly what hallucination he’s seeing.
I simply triggered his worst trauma to make the drug take hold effectively.
“Serves him right. What business does a man with a child have kidnapping anyone?”
I clicked my tongue and climbed the resort’s outer wall into the floor where the enemy was.
Seeing him recklessly firing off Sword Waves in a frenzy, his reason was plainly shattered.
I shifted my magic pattern and showed him pleasant dreams—perfect for an ambush.
The man grew quiet, sunk deep in the Illusion Technique.
I manipulated his perception to accept me as a friendly presence and approached slowly.
“Yes… you’re so beautiful… yes… our… daughter….”
Was he seeing an illusion of his daughter?
Up close, he was the janitor I’d seen at the gym.
Just as I thought—he’d disguised himself as staff and infiltrated the place.
Perceived as his daughter, I drew close and thrust my sword at his Lower Dantian.
But as the blade pierced in, the enemy twisted his body and narrowly evaded the strike.
Then he swung his fist at me.
Had the Illusion Technique broken? No, it hadn’t completely worn off yet.
“Cabi, I could have ended this in one blow. I underestimated Hwagyeong’s survival instinct.”
My stagger gave me away, and he recognized my face.
“Cheon…Ji-woo…?”
The kidnapper knew who I was. Chills ran down my spine.
“What~? Why do you look like that, Dad?”
“I’ll kill you!”
The kidnapper charged at me, Killing Intent radiating from his body.
I didn’t miss my chance. I planted my hands on the ground and used magic to collapse the floor beneath us.
Surprisingly, destroying inanimate objects with magic was easier than martial technique.
As the floor suddenly gave way and the earth sank, Teacher Kim Do-hwa, waiting below, unleashed a Sword Wave toward the kidnapper.
The Sword Wave from Teacher Kim Do-hwa came from behind, and though the kidnapper was ambushed mid-air, he lived up to his Hwagyeong reputation—he kicked off the floor debris, twisted his body, and swung his blade to deflect it.
But because his sense of direction had been thrown off by the drug I’d scattered, he couldn’t block it completely; the Sword Wave caught his shoulder, slicing through it.
“Ugh!”
I twisted the rebar from the collapsed rubble like a serpent, binding his legs and yanking him off balance.
At the same time, I enshrouded his head in a fog I’d created from chemical compounds.
Cheon So-yeon, who had moved beside me, and Teacher Kim Do-hwa, positioned near the kidnapper, each unleashed Sword Aura and Sword Wave to attack.
The kidnapper easily snapped the rebar I’d twisted around him like a serpent and rolled away to dodge, almost tumbling down.
He desperately dodged the Sword Wave from Teacher Kim Do-hwa, but there was no angle to avoid Cheon So-yeon’s Sword Aura as well; he was essentially shredded by it.
“Damn, you’re tough.”
Even after being shredded by Sword Aura, his combat suit blocked more than half the damage; his only injury was shallow cuts on exposed skin.
No wonder they say good combat gear is worth a spare life.
“Ugh…! You bastard! What poison did you use on me?! Why won’t this damned fog disappear!”
Though hidden in the fog, I could see the kidnapper had a sickly blue complexion and was bleeding from his nose.
Well, nothing special. When I stabbed him, I used both Mountain Damage Poison and Spirit Poison—the one I’d developed myself—just in case.
What is Spirit Poison?
Back when I was still a preschooler, I’d failed to make Spiritual Medicine from spirit herbs and accidentally created a poison instead. I developed that poison further.
The Pharmaceutical Division from my family had asked if it was okay to research ways to enhance the toxicity, and I’d approved. When they shared their results, the Elixir Club instructor dispatched to the school even taught me how to manufacture the poison directly.
At the time, I’d wondered if it was right to teach something like this to a child, but as it turned out, knowledge always finds use when needed.
Of course, the instructor’s original intent had been to explain the antidote synthesis method through the poison synthesis process.
“You think I’ll crumble just because you used some cheap poison!”
“Of course not. Why else would Hwagyeong be Hwagyeong?”
Back when Hwagyeong martial artists began appearing like mass-produced factory goods—around thirty centuries ago—the dark age of Poison Mastery sects like the Dang Sect and Mandokgok began.
Even reaching Peak Stage grants considerable poison resistance. With Hwagyeong martial artists everywhere, even when poisoned, they’d simply ignore it and keep fighting. Poison Mastery’s effectiveness plummeted.
The intended effect of Poison Mastery was to poison enemies so they couldn’t properly use their Internal Energy, or simply have them drop dead on the spot.
But against Hwagyeong martial artists, the combat power reduction was minimal, and they’d just finish the fight quickly and use the Energy Circulation Method to purge the poison. For a martial artist with a lower Realm because they’d invested in Poison Mastery, there was no way to compete.
The extreme poisons that would even work on Hwagyeong martial artists were prohibitively expensive—practically final-form weapons—so casual use was impossible.
So poison-focused sects like the Dang Sect pursued two paths to overcome the situation.
One was to abandon Poison Mastery and adopt a new martial discipline as their foundation. The other was to pioneer the legendary Realms of Poison Mastery: Energy Poison and Heart Poison.
Naturally, since I’d never learned Poison Mastery, I couldn’t use Energy Poison or Heart Poison.
In fact, even if I’d trained in Poison Mastery, if I could use Energy Poison, I’d already be at or beyond Hwagyeong Realm, so it would be pointless anyway.
But I had my reason for poisoning this man.
I pulled a Hand Bell from my inventory and rang it.
Ding—!
“Now, it’s time to sleep. Illusory Dream Realm—open.”
I’d poisoned him and flooded his body with chemicals to use as catalysts to drag his consciousness deep into the Illusion Technique world.
I forced his awareness down into a nightmare, deeper and deeper still.

(To be continued in the next installment)

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