I Became A Thief Who Steals Overpowered Skills - Chapter 134

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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 134. Cornered

Pandora August.

The secret technique passed down through the August Family: Geomsun Hoewu.

A secret art that manipulates sword fragments thin as ash dust.

The storm of such blade shards tears through human skin and muscle in a single instant.

This is why those who face the August Family are left flayed, their bodies ravaged beyond recognition.

Whip! Whip-whip!

As proof, Haring’s body accumulated small wounds one after another.

Her skill, Invisible, was optimized for ambush and sudden assault.

Naturally, it showed little effect in direct confrontation.

Especially not against someone like Pandora, who could attack from all directions.

Pandora walked forward leisurely, hands thrust into his pockets.

With each step, the blade dust circling him continued to press relentlessly against Haring.

She had already dropped her Invisible technique and now parried the blade fragments with her Assassin’s Dagger.

She knew all too well that Invisible was meaningless against Pandora.

“The Laggren Family is one I respect, in my own way. After all, the Poison King is among the Top Ten Under Heaven, and a poison that even works on Invasive Species of World Erosion is certainly formidable.”

Pandora spoke admiringly of the Poison King as he adjusted his Spectacles.

“But his daughter, it seems, is another matter entirely. Hopeless, really. I thought there’d be more ambushes in this World Erosion, so I expected a fair fight—yet here we are.”

Watching her fail to even penetrate his blade dust, Pandora’s expression twisted into a smirk.

Haring’s stamina had already been heavily depleted from her earlier battle with Rigra.

Especially her wrists, where the chains had bound her.

She could not wield her Assassin’s Dagger properly with her injured wrist, let alone deflect the blade fragments.

Whip!

And Pandora had no intention of sparing her wrist.

Blood sprayed upward as blade shards grazed across her wrist.

“Ugh.”line>

Haring swallowed a groan and fell back once more.

But she noticed then that there was nowhere left for her to retreat.

Her feet had reached the edge of the arena.

“No matter how I think about it, I really can’t understand this.”

The storm of sword dust swirled with increasing ferocity.

And from within that maelstrom of blade fragments, Pandora fixed his gaze on Haring and spoke.

“Haring, when the Imperial faction has barely enough strength united to face this crisis, why on earth would an Imperial noble help a Staron noble?”

Pandora’s expression made it clear he simply could not fathom this.

For a man who revered the Empire, it was an action he could never accept.

Yet Haring’s face remained unchanged.

“In the World Erosion, Empire or Staron doesn’t matter.”

She simply spoke of what she had experienced herself and what she had heard from others.

“I know that someone like Krash is the most trustworthy in the World Erosion.”

That day when she faced Decarabia alongside Twin Fang.

Haring had given everything against Decarabia as never before.

And Krash had answered her total commitment with total commitment of his own.

If she had to fight in the World Erosion, she wanted to stand back-to-back with someone like him.

And more than anything, she wanted to ensure that Krash—who would surely give everything again in the days to come—would not fall.

That was Haring’s true heart.

‘I won’t let him end up like him.’

She would not allow such a tragedy to repeat.

Haring’s eyes shone with vivid violet light.

Pandora, watching intently, swallowed a short laugh.

“Ah, I see.”

In that moment, the storm of sword dust halted all at once.

The sight of countless blade fragments that had been raining down wildly now frozen in midair carried a weight far greater than expected.

“Wasted time trying to make you see reason.”

With those words, the sword dust poured down upon Haring all at once.

Ten thousand shards descending in an instant—Haring’s body would surely be torn to ribbons.

But Pandora intended to make Haring taste bitter defeat in this moment.

He meant to make an example of what happens when an Imperial puts a foreigner before the Empire itself.

Just as Haring’s body was about to be shredded by the sword dust.

A violet poison aura rose from Haring’s form.

By the time Pandora confirmed it, it was already too late.

Haring had hurled herself into the Geomsun Hoewu without a shred of hesitation.

“Damn it, she’s insane!”

Watching Haring commit what amounted to suicide, Pandora recoiled—but he quickly realized this was no time to stop the technique.

The poison seeping from her body was dissolving the Geomsun Hoewu blade-dust before it could even reach her.

Pandora’s eyes snapped wide open.

He hadn’t expected her to mount a direct physical assault.

Yet no matter how accustomed to poison even a direct bloodline of the Laggren Family was, a stunt like that would surely wound her as well.

And Pandora’s assessment proved grimly accurate.

The poison from her Man Dok Tu Sal was potent enough to ravage her own body with equal ferocity.

Her skin blistered; the gashes that formed from the poison exposure screamed with pain.

A headlong charge without thought to defense, tearing through her own flesh to reach him.

The tactic was remarkably familiar.

Screeeech!

“…Didn’t I just say we’d settle this in a fair fight?”

Clang!

Pandora’s blade, swung down hard, knocked the Assassin’s Dagger from Haring’s grip.

With her wrist already badly wounded, Haring lacked the strength to match his force.

Clatter!

As the dagger skittered across the arena floor, Haring scrambled to reset her stance.

But Pandora was already reaching toward her with his other hand.

In his palm, shards of blade had condensed into a sphere, compressed and gathering.

Geomsun Hoewu.

Second Form.

Geomsun Hoetan.

Boom!

The detonation erupted, and Haring was engulfed in the explosive blast of blade-shards.

Her body flew skyward.

And before her frame could touch ground, someone caught her.

Haring’s eyes fluttered open, barely focused.

A deep blue head of hair came into hazy view.

Outside the arena.

Krash had caught her before she hit the floor.

“Rest now.”

At those words, Haring’s eyes slipped shut.

Lifting her lightly, Krash handed her off to a Theology student standing ready in the wings.

Krash turned his head.

There stood Pandora, virtually unscathed compared to Haring, a sneer playing at his lips.

“Pointless thrashing.”

Krash began ascending slowly into the arena.

“You really believe that?”

At the question, Pandora’s eyes narrowed slightly.

A look that asked what he meant.

But in that instant, Pandora felt the very space before his eyes tear open.

At the same moment, his pulse grew erratic, his breathing ragged and labored.

“Kch—”

A mixture of blood and saliva spilled from his lips as his hand clutched at his chest.

Only then did he sense something was wrong with his own body.

Not knowing when it had happened, bewilderment flickered across his eyes.

But Krash pointed toward his arm.

“When you recovered the Sword Dust.”

Pandora’s gaze snapped to his own hand.

Among the Sword Dust, he could see a single thread—thin and sharp as a steel wire.

The thread, connected to the Sword Dust, was wound around the tip of his finger.

Drip. Drip.

Blood trickling down his fingertip took on a dark hue.

Evidence of poisoning.

When Haring had first used the Invisible technique.

Her purpose was not concealment—it was to hide her own actions.

Within the storm of Sword Dust, the moment she vanished, she scattered the Laggren Family’s signature assassin’s daggers, each one releasing poison as they fell.

As a result, the wires that had been invisible in the Sword Dust suddenly moved freely through the tempest.

And so Haring had chosen a direct assault.

One designed to force Pandora to return the Sword Dust to him—even once.

And that provocation had landed with perfect precision.

The best move available when one’s body was no longer functioning normally.

Haring had executed that move flawlessly.

“Huurgh—”

Pandora spat vomit from his stomach onto the ground.

He braced himself against the floor, clearly in agony.

“Referee. Begin.”

Krash spoke to the referee without emotion, signaling the start.

The referee’s expression turned confused, but according to the rules of combat, an athlete could only leave the arena upon acknowledging defeat or losing consciousness.

Pandora had yet to admit defeat.

And he wouldn’t speak it of his own will either.

That made sense—the moment an imperial nobleman admitted defeat to Staron, it was game over in every way that mattered.

Krash understood this perfectly, which is why he’d asked the referee to begin.

“Y-yes, right. Begin!”

Even the student referee seemed to think it best to get this over with quickly, and gave the signal at once.

The moment those words left his lips, Krash drew his foot back.

“So you wanted me to hold back.”

At the same time, Annihilation Erosion began to boil up from within Krash’s body.

The tempering that started deep inside his frame fed his heat higher and higher.

And with each surge of that heat, the spectators felt something terribly wrong.

One by one, they couldn’t bear it anymore and began to retreat.

Whoosh!

The risen Black Flame roared with savage intensity, filling the arena entirely.

And there, standing at the very edge of that Black Flame, Pandora’s face grew whiter and whiter.

Crack!

The breath-stealing heat burned oxygen itself—it felt as though death by suffocation would come any moment.

Krash slowly raised the Lioneer.

As he did, a sheath of Lightning Qi began to form along the golden blade.

Crack-snap!

The roar of erupting Lightning Qi came with the Annihilation Erosion inside the sheath clashing against itself, growing stronger with each impact.

A chill.

Dangerous. This is dangerous.

If he took that directly to the front, it would truly be dangerous.

Through the spectacles, Krash’s face reflected back at him.

Behind those eyes that resembled his own sister’s, all warmth had vanished.

Only then did Pandora understand.

He was Charlotte’s younger brother—and far more brutal, far more ruthless than she could ever be.

Nothing but the will to kill dwelt in those eyes boring down on Pandora.

Valheim.

Those born in that den carried eyes devoid of emotion, eyes like those of the Grim Reaper itself.

Kill him.

He might actually die by his hand.

“Wait, hold on…….”

Pandora raised his hand in desperation, on the verge of conceding defeat just to beg for his life.

“I’ll do as you wish.”

Krash didn’t bother waiting for him to finish, merely twisting his mouth into a smile.

And the sheath of the Lightning Qi shattered.

Crack!

Annihilation Erosion.

Third Form.

Annihilation Heavenly Lightning.

A tempest of Black Flame and Lightning Qi swept across the arena in an instant.

Before a destructive force far beyond Pandora’s sword-dust storm, the spectators shrieked and tumbled.

Thud, crack-crack—

Across the arena scorched by Black Flame.

Pandora lay crumpled on the ground, his head bent backward in unconsciousness.

Sprawled alongside his shattered Spectacles, he was charred black by the Black Flame, a complete mess.

Only—as though he’d glimpsed death at the final moment—his trouser legs were damp.

And he hadn’t even taken the Annihilation Heavenly Lightning head-on.

‘Same as always.’

Krash clicked his tongue, recalling how Pandora had been shattered just as pathetically before Arthur.

Because Pandora had broken himself in a similar fashion against Arthur long ago.

From that fool’s perspective, Arthur—a provincial noble suddenly rising to prominence in the Empire faction—must have been unbearable.

‘If only he had a skill, I’d beat it out of him and take it.’

Unfortunately, Pandora possessed no such thing.

But there was another one here who definitely carried a skill.

Krash, who had extinguished the Black Flame that had erupted on the Lioneer, lifted his head.

Because that figure was walking through the smoke toward him.

The one who emerged was none other than Arsolde.

Built with the harsh frame befitting Freia’s child, he grinned wickedly as their eyes met.

“You’ve been getting antsy waiting around, haven’t you, Charlotte’s little brother?”

Krash looked at Arsolde and rolled his neck out lightly.

“Have you ever beaten Charlotte?”

At Krash’s question, Arsolde blinked.

Then he broke into a hearty laugh.

“No way—your sister’s too strong. I couldn’t take her.”
“Right.”

Arsolde showed no sign of minding the defeat.

Watching him, Krash let out a short laugh.

“Then you can’t beat me either.”

So you’ve lost to both of us siblings.

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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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