I Became A Thief Who Steals Overpowered Skills - Chapter 102

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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 102. Ready for the Academy

Krash remained motionless where he stood.

A figure approached him with measured steps.

Despite the late summer heat, he was dressed impeccably in formal attire, his hair brushed neatly back past his shoulders.

He adjusted his glasses, a necktie cinching his collar.

“Training in the Cheonsal-seong technique, I see. You certainly try everything.”
-Push it to the absolute limit.
“A fourteen-year-old child has already surpassed what he should be able to endure.”
-No. He needs to go further.
“Pardon?”

The man questioned Crimson Garden’s words.

What gripped Krash now was a curse-class illusion.

By now, he would be fighting desperately within that illusion.

The Black Flame continuously surging from his body was proof of it.

“This is quite a potent curse-class illusion.”

He spoke while shaking an empty bottle in his hand.

But Crimson Garden clicked his tongue.

-See? He still hasn’t broken through.

The moment Crimson Garden’s words ended—

Crack!

Something shattered, and Krash’s Black Flame suddenly roared to life with violent intensity.

His eyes, burning crimson from the Extinguishing Flame Erosion, blazed with clarity.

The man’s eyes widened in shock.

“…How? It’s a Grade-6 curse—the Darkness Veil Night.”

As he spoke in a tone of bewilderment, Krash exhaled sharply and swept his hair back from his forehead.

Seeing him, a figure came to mind.

‘So that old man’s disciple was Crimson Garden’s servant.’

The world’s foremost scholar of curse-related knowledge—yet so obsessed with curses that he neglected his own duties, wandering freely through World Erosion and beyond.

The world’s greatest Curse Master, Beltua Lakrod.

The man from whom Krash had once sought the most counsel on curses.

And by Krash’s reckoning, the most unhinged person he knew.

And the one standing before him was one of Beltua’s twelve disciples.

Osper, the Curse Master.

‘Good grief, they’ve brought in every breed of lunatic.’

To Krash’s eye, every Curse Master was thoroughly unhinged.

The reason was simple: a Curse Master’s ability to dispel curses was merely a secondary skill.

They could dispel curses because they wielded them—that was the crux of it.

The entire premise that they’d become Curse Masters in order to dispel curses was fundamentally backwards from the start.

These creatures simply found curses fascinating enough to study, and learning how to break them came almost by accident.

‘They’re not Curse Masters at all—they’re curse enthusiasts.’

Evidence lay in Osper’s eyes, which now gleamed with undisguised intrigue.

Krash had shattered a mid-grade curse—the Darkness Veil—in a single breath.

‘Well, I’ve been afflicted before.’

In matters of curses, Krash had been struck by far more than even Beltua, whom he revered as his master.

Having weathered the highest-ranking curses of the Forbidden Zone itself, a sixth-tier curse was child’s play to shed.

But separate from that, Krash had grasped Crimson Garden’s intention.

Cheonsal-seong amplified curses, making them stronger.

So even a mid-grade curse afflicting Krash’s body would pack the force of a high-grade one.

Crimson Garden, accounting for this, had conceived of a curse-training regimen.

—Osper, from now on, you’ll inflict upon him the curses I name.

A stream of curse names poured from Crimson Garden’s lips.

The balance of Cheonson-seong, the intent of Cheonkwon-seong, the force of Yoguang-seong.

Through cursing, they would awaken these three principles within him—and far more powerfully.

“Crimson Garden, if you layer all of those, he won’t survive it.”

And all the suffering and tribulation born of the process would fall squarely on Krash.

As Osper said, if such curses stacked on an ordinary person, they would certainly shatter their mind.

And this time, Krash would have to endure the curses without cancellation—pure, unfiltered exposure.

Amplified further still by the weight of Cheonsal-seong.

Crimson Garden’s gaze fell upon Krash.

Those eyes seemed to say how brutal a road must be walked by one who seeks the quickest path.

“I told you.”

Krash exhaled, as if answering to that gaze.

“That’s what I do best.”

It wasn’t resolve held for nothing—it had carried him through to the Apocalypse itself.

“Are you truly certain about this?”

Osper’s previously impassive eyes curved into crescents.

For a Curse Master, the chance to unleash his curses freely came rarely indeed.

Krash had given his consent, and Crimson Garden had given theirs.

He reached out at once, drawing several long vials from his waist.

“I wonder how far the body and spirit of Balheim can endure.”

Osper laughed, a sound edged with a strange brightness—the delight of someone conducting an experiment.

Pop!

The cork came free, and immediately the curses spilled forth.

Krash watched them bear down on him and let out a short, hollow laugh.

Coldblood Rampage—amplifying negative energy to an extreme, freezing the body from within if the subject could not endure it, resulting in death.

Killing Intent Saturation—an uncontrollable hatred of all living things that eventually leads to even rejecting one’s own life.

Stone Petrification—the body’s weight steadily increasing until the burden becomes unbearable, until at last the flesh hardens to stone and death arrives.

All of them were upper-tier curses, each carrying death if their conditions could not be met.

He’d once struggled endlessly to break free from curses he couldn’t undo, and now here he was, binding them to himself willingly.

Krash thought to himself: his fate was truly strange.

* * *

The training repeated, and considerable time had passed.

Late into the night.

Krash lay almost lifeless in sleep.

In recent days, Krash had done little but repeat training from dawn until dusk.

Cheonsal-seong amplified the power of curses.

Thanks to this, the curses Krash had received through the Curse Master Osper, when meeting with Cheonsal-seong, gnawed at him as if to devour him alive.

Yet he could not use the knowledge and techniques at his disposal to suppress those curses.

Only by fully accepting such a curse could he draw forth the constellation of Cheonsal-seong.

Krash, exhausted and breathing silently in sleep, suddenly became aware that his arms had grown unexpectedly warm.

Summer had slipped away unnoticed, and autumn had arrived.

In place of verdant foliage, the trees blazed in crimson and gold, and the season brought its abundance of harvest foods.

The weather had grown crisp, but that warmth was far from unwelcome.

Besides, perhaps because of the Wolgeumjiché he possessed, Krash’s own constitution had shifted toward a lower body temperature, and the modest warmth brought him comfort.

Krash’s eyes opened slowly.

The pre-dawn light cast everything in a faint blue tint.

He tilted his head deeper into the blankets.

Something shifted within them.

He lifted the blanket gently to look.

There, as expected, was a single strand of white hair.

When he drew back the blanket slightly, the temperature dropped just enough that its owner burrowed deeper still.

That white hair belonged to Bianca, of course.

Her eyes were closed in sleep, so it seemed she’d made a late-night trip to the privy and wandered back to his room.

After all those months sharing quarters, she’d fallen into the habit of slipping in like this at night, even though they had separate rooms now.

‘Perhaps she misses the warmth of another person.’

Or perhaps it was only with him.

He wasn’t certain, but he pulled the blanket up to ensure Bianca wouldn’t grow cold.

Krash wasn’t the only one who had thrown himself into training recently.

Bianca, too, had begun serious training under Jena’s guidance.

Krash lifted his hand and examined Bianca’s small one.

As he turned it gently, scars and marks became visible across her skin.

It was clear proof that her training was far from light.

She slept as deeply as the dead because of it—a testament to how exhausted she was.

In that moment, her small hand closed around his own.

“Krash….”

Her voice drifted up, half-awake.

“Why are you in my room?”

You’re the one who came in here.

Despite the absurdity, Krash began to stroke her hair slowly.

Her eyes were still clouded with sleep.

“People sleep better when they’re warm, you know.”
“You’d be cold if you were with me.”

Wolgeumjiché kept his base temperature naturally low.

“Krash has a warm heart, so it’s fine.”

But Bianca didn’t seem to mind, burying her face in his embrace.

“I can warm everything else for you.”

Was she offering to become a furnace for him?

Yet in many ways, warmth was spreading through him.

“Isn’t training hard on you?”
“It is. When we train, my master becomes strict.”
“If it’s too hard, you don’t have to do it.”
“I don’t want that.”

In this respect, she had surprisingly strong convictions.

“I’m going to keep staying with you, Krash.”
“I’m not going anywhere.”
“Even if you do, I’ll follow you.”
“Then I’ll walk slowly so you can keep up.”
“Will you hold my hand?”
“I’m already holding it.”
“I like that.”

Her words were rambling, drowsiness taking hold.

Krash chuckled at this, and Bianca’s forehead came to rest against his chest.

“You can’t forget about me even after we go to the Academy.”
“My memory’s good. So good I can’t forget things I want to forget.”
“Then remember only me.”
“That’s not something I can control.”

Bianca usually wouldn’t say such things, but drowsiness loosened her tongue.

She held back all manner of desires in her waking hours, but sleep stripped away her restraint.

“Krash, I’m sleepy.”
“It’s still a long way to morning. Sleep more.”
“Mm-hmm, okay.”

Watching Bianca as she began to snore softly, Krash’s own eyes drifted closed.

He would stop the Apocalypse—if only to protect this small creature resting in his arms.

For some reason, he felt sure tomorrow’s training would be more intense.

* * *

Time flies like an arrow.

No matter how hard he tried to grasp it, time flowed ceaselessly toward its target, impossible to hold.

He didn’t know when it would finally reach that mark.

But the passing seasons had already swept past autumn and arrived at winter’s door.

Large, wet snowflakes drifted down from the sky in a gentle cascade.

Krash felt the cold touch of snow on the bridge of his nose as he exhaled a breath of crystalline white.

Even the depths of winter, heavy with snowfall, did not linger long.

Soon enough, blue sprouts would push through the earth, and the scent of flowers would drift across the land.

When the cherry blossoms bloomed in shades of pink, spring would be complete.

“How do you feel about it?”

The question came from Crimson Garden, perched on Osper’s shoulder.

Hearing the question, Krash suppressed a light smile and gripped the Ureoe Constellation.

With a crack of thunder, a golden blade shot upward, and atop it appeared a blue Aura in the shape of a blade.

“Perfect.”

Early Master stage.

It was the moment Krash finally broke through the wall of the Master realm.

This was the Master stage he had struggled so desperately to reach before going to Rahelern Academy.

Fortunately, he had made it in time.

‘So I’ve at least met the minimum standard.’

The Master stage could be called the foundation of a genius.

Of course, breaking into the early stage was another matter entirely.

Reaching early Master at fourteen years old—by any measure, the world had every right to call him a genius.

Charlotte herself had reached early Master at fifteen, after all.

‘But Rahelern Academy probably has a decent number of Master-level students.’

A year had already passed since Rahelern Academy’s founding.

Among those in the fifteen-year-old age group, there were essentially none who could reach early Master except Charlotte.

If one accounted for those eighteen and older, Master-level students certainly existed.

And those were precisely the opponents Krash would need to face.

Krash believed he had to surpass not just his peers, but eventually the Top Ten Under Heaven and beyond.

So Krash had no intention of stopping at early Master.

There was still a long way to go before he reached his true strength.

‘In truth, this is only the starting point.’

It was time to measure himself against the real geniuses.

“Your curses won’t mean much to me anymore, I suppose.”

Osper smacked his lips with evident disappointment.

He’d enjoyed testing all manner of curses on the direct bloodline of Balheim, but now that pleasure had come to an end.

Krash had firmly anchored three of the Cheonsal-seong constellations within his body.

Krash had firmly anchored three of the Cheonsal-seong constellations within his body.

—Preparations are essentially complete, then.

Crimson Garden remarked that at this level, there was nothing more to object to.

And indeed, the preparations were finished.

All that remained was the Academy entrance.

‘Time to sort through the rotten ones from the start.’

Let’s go to the Academy and take some skills.

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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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