I Became a Disaster-Class Newbie by Stealing Abilities - Chapter 51
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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 51. Heuk Bi (1)
The path to the Operating Room.
“You’ve gone to such lengths to save Nam Goong Su-ho. At first, I thought you were simply a terrible person… but I was mistaken. I apologize.”
Heuk Bi tucked her glossy black hair behind her ear as she bowed in contrition.
A soft sigh escaped me.
Was this what they called tsundere?
All those efforts to open her heart were finally bearing fruit.
“But are you really sure about this? It could be quite dangerous. Wouldn’t it be better to wait outside the hospital?”
“The omens are unfavorable. I must go.”
A resolve to stake everything in order to save the one who gave her life back.
As expected, the key to conquering Heuk Bi was Nam Goong Su-ho.
“Even if I told you there’s virtually no chance you could stand against Nam Goong Cheon with the power you possess?”
“I was already dead once. How could I call myself human if I forgot such grace and only looked after my own safety?”
I found myself envying Nam Goong Su-ho a little.
With a Great Calamity who trusted and followed him so unconditionally, what could he possibly fear?
Well, I do have two Great Calamities myself, after all.
Both of them leeches, at that.
“Stubborn as a steel wire, aren’t you? Fine. I’ll be with you every step of the way. Let’s give it a try.”
Heuk Bi hesitated at my words.
“What? Something wrong?”
“I’m… not used to hearing words like that.”
“What a thing to say. Still, I’ll be collecting quite the debt from you for this later. You might even end up regretting I didn’t refuse.”
“I could never forget this kindness.”
Heuk Bi nodded firmly.
Once I rescued Nam Goong Su-ho, Heuk Bi’s heart would be mine.
Only one more step remained before bringing the martial gathering to a triumphant close.
‘I’ll take this. And that too, just in case.’
Even as I moved along the shortest route, I didn’t forget to gather several materials along the way.
When dealing with an eccentric like the Doctor, no amount of preparation could ever be enough.
Moments later.
Boom! Boom! Boom!
With a deafening roar, the guardians belonging to the Abandoned Hospital burst into the Operating Room.
There were no obstacles in their path.
Now that the system was under my control, the Doctor’s hands and feet were completely restrained.
Yes.
If I simply dealt with the remaining stragglers and finished the job, everything would wrap up cleanly.
Clearly, that’s what I’d thought would happen….
Crash!
What I found inside was something far too grotesque.
Thump.
My heart pounded.
Fear at seeing my existing plan collapse.
Thump.
Dread of what kind of ripple effect the horrors about to unfold would create.
“Don’t look!”
I tried to block Heuk Bi from entering.
But it was already too late.
No matter how fast my hands moved, they couldn’t outpace what the eyes could see.
“Uuugh….”
“Kaaaagh….”
“Master…?”
A grotesque life form reflected in Heuk Bi’s retinas.
A form as if Nam Goong Cheon and Nam Goong Su-ho had been blended together in halves.
The madman wielding two swords could no longer be called human at all.
“Doctor! We have visitors!”
“Ooh! Welcome, welcome! You’ve arrived at precisely the right moment—my masterpiece has just been completed! A work designed to face all of you!”
The Doctor greeted the intruders while dressed in a gown soaked with blood.
[Chimera ‘Su-ho-Cheon’ responds to its master’s call!]
The Emperor Sword Form, which only Nam Goong Su-ho could wield, and Nam Goong Cheon’s Cang Gong Wu Ai Sword.
From the blades held in each hand, a terrible resonance screamed forth.
“Fusion Surgery is indeed a high-difficulty procedure, but who am I? A little seasoning here, a careful cut there, and I’ve birthed something exquisitely perfect—a beautiful, flawless living creature!”
He stood intoxicated by his own creation.
The Doctor’s face flushed crimson as he spread both arms wide.
That was when it began.
Crash!
“Graaaaahhh!!!”
Su-ho charged forward, sword in hand.
“Roooarrr!”
“Waaaahhh!”
The guardians and staff the Doctor had gathered at the hospital answered his assault.
Slash!
Someone died each time steel whistled through the air.
The guardian wearing a dermatology specialist’s badge tumbled to the floor—his head severed clean.
Crack!
This time, a skull was cleaved away.
A hospital employee’s height had been considerably reduced.
Powerful.
The Doctor had reason enough to boast so confidently about his masterwork.
“Waah, plenty of patients to operate on. Doctor!”
“Hurry. It may take ages to fix them all, you know?”
The Doctor and his nurses performed Trepanation on the fallen guardians and staff.
“Roooarrr!”
“Waaaahhh need no more aaahhh!”
They rose again, reborn as perfectly obedient servants with reprogrammed minds.
Their numbers dwindled with each passing moment….
While the enemy’s forces only grew.
The situation spiraled downward.
“Ah….”
A shallow sigh escaped Heuk Bi’s lips.
The precious person she trusted and followed was now charging at her in that wretched state.
If her reason didn’t shatter beneath such a brutal reality, it would be a lie.
“Ahaha! Allies clashing blades against each other! This is true art in its purest form, is it not!”
This was bad.
Beyond bad—dangerously, obscenely bad.
“Damn it.”
Did that insane doctor not realize?
That a monster they could barely contain was being released in this very place.
‘If the Great Calamity awakens here—it’s truly over.’
The Bi-jeok-pae, the band of outlaws that had ravaged the regions around Cheon Ju Mountain.
The ones who slew over a thousand malevolent spirits—it was not Nam Goong Su-ho or the Nam Goong Family’s subjugation forces.
It was all the work of a single boy.
“Heuk Bi! Get ahold of yourself!”
“But… that man… Nam Goong Su-ho….”
Jade-colored clouds gathered around Heuk Bi.
Early symptoms of Awakening were already manifesting.
“If you collapse here too, Nam Goong Su-ho will have to live like that forever. You want that?”
“Gck! Who’d want that! That’s something I absolutely cannot allow!”
“Then do exactly as I say. You can do this.”
History’s greatest and most dangerous Yin-Yang Master.
This was the moment Heuk Bi’s talent was needed.
* * *
All the necessary materials were already prepared.
The items gathered as Ju-sang entered the Operating Room were spilled across the floor.
Blood Transfusion Packs instead of ink.
Fingers instead of brushes.
And spread across the floor was the Hyeon Wol Jin Gyeong Do, smuggled out from the Auction House.
Whuuuummm!
As magical power poured in, the painting came alive and began to breathe.
Rushing river waters in endless coils.
And the moon rising above.
The Harmony of Yin-Yang blooms before her eyes.
“This… what on earth is this?”
Heuk Bi gazed at the dreamlike, mysterious spectacle and asked.
Wiping out the Bi-jeok-pae belonged to the realm of the unconscious.
Heuk Bi had done it, yet she hadn’t done it.
So naturally, all of this could only strike her as wondrous.
“There’s no time to explain it all. Just follow where your instinct leads.”
The flow of energy, the signs.
This was precisely where Heuk Bi’s talent shone brightest.
She possessed an inborn gift for reading the World Lines.
“I’ll use the nature of Earth to raise the mountainside. Then I’ll breathe twice the nature of Wood into the undergrowth.”
Once Ju Sang opened the path ahead—
“I sense unwholesome energy from the mountainside direction. It would be better to follow the river instead.”
Heuk Bi compensated for this with perfect precision.
[The Subtlety of Yin-Yang awakens!]
[The target’s talent blossoms!]
Jade-colored clouds began to gather thick around Heuk Bi.
“You must never cross the line. If you do, you’ll not only fail to save Su-ho—you’ll cross over to that side yourself.”
“I will keep that in mind.”
Heuk Bi answered, wiping cold sweat from her brow.
‘Almost there.’
Just a little more.
Just a bit further and it will be done.
Then, at that very moment—
Boom!
Su-ho brought down the last remaining guardian.
Now there was no one left in this hospital but them.
Su-ho trudged forward, his sword clenched in his grip, caked with blood.
Like something from a horror film.
The kind of nightmare you pray never to see.
“Ohhh… a delicious-looking morsel… how tempting. Just one bite. Let me devour that overflowing power.”
Two voices merged into one.
Having fed on the flesh and blood of the guardians, he had even gained the ability to speak.
Watching Nam Goong Su-ho like this—now consumed by the hunger—it made her chest ache.
“Heuk Bi!”
“I understand!”
[The Yin-Yang Five Elements Formation’s “Breaking” phase activates!]
Crash! Crash! Crash! Crash! Crash!
The river flowing from the mountainside surged forth, encircling Su-ho on all sides.
Scarlet characters blazed with blinding light.
“I believe there is still consciousness of Su-ho lingering in the depths of your heart! So please—do not give up!”
Heuk Bi’s voice rose to a shout that tore through her throat.
“Did you not tell me this: no matter how much reality becomes hell, one must never abandon righteousness and principle!”
She poured out her desperate plea, hoping her sincerity would reach him.
Of course, it was all in vain.
The eyes of Su-ho, transformed by Doctor’s surgery, contained only hunger—voracious and absolute.
“Khaha! The whelp plays tricks. How curious—such a fine aroma. Even more appetizing now!”
The Nam Goong Family’s formations were supreme in all the martial world.
So naturally, Su-ho was versed in them too.
Crackle-boom!
The water scattered in all directions.
The Yin-Yang force binding Su-ho weakened, and the mental image of the Hyeon Wol Jin Gyeong Do began to crumble.
“Roooar!”
“Prey, prey!”
The modified guardians and staff members began rushing forward with terrible speed.
Then, at that instant—
“I will not give up. Not ever. No matter the cost to myself.”
Heuk Bi seized the scattering Yin and Yang energies in both hands.
[The Great Calamity awakens.]
She had crossed the line.
Of my own will.
* * *
Thrum-thrum-thrum-thrum!
An immense surge of power engulfed the entire hospital.
What Heuk Bi had invoked was an art of alchemy—one that ground the lives of dozens into dust to restore a single soul to wholeness.
The Ghost Spirit Return Formation.
Even as consciousness slipped away, a single will remained: to bring Nam Goong Su-ho back.
From the arrangement of the Five Elements rising in the formation, she had resolved to sacrifice even herself.
‘I have to stop that.’
If I lost Heuk Bi here, every effort made until now would crumble to nothing.
I withdrew the hidden card I kept stored in the subspace.
[The Sacred Artifact ‘Palgwan Daejanggyeong’ awakens!]
Click!
From among the endless rows of scripture volumes, a single tome drew itself free.
From the Palgwan Daejanggyeong, I needed to extract only the seventh verse of precisely the six thousand five hundred and twelfth volume.
‘In the game, discovering this condition alone took three months.’
Fiendishly intricate, yes—but once pulled off, the effect verges on the absurd.
[To overcome this desperate crisis, I search for the highest probability available!]
A fierce will to repel foreign invasion.
That intention and yearning remained preserved whole within the Palgwan Daejanggyeong.
[I borrow the target’s ability ‘Master of the Devouring God’!]
This was the result.
‘I can do this.’
In the past, I had learned the Yin-Yang Art specifically to counter Heuk Bi.
To survive her vicious techniques, I needed even shallow knowledge.
Whoooosh!
Negative energy coalesced in my left hand.
Flare!
Positive energy coalesced in my right hand.
As day and night converged in a single space, light beyond imagination blazed forth.
Crack-crack-crack!
A massive formation unfurled beneath my feet.
Chinese characters shimmering in azure rose in succession.
“This time, things will be very different.”
Let me prove that I didn’t earn that Level 3 Chinese Characters certification for nothing.
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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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