I Became A Thief Who Steals Overpowered Skills - Chapter 56

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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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Chapter 56. Farewell

A Chaos Spirit burning away as it desperately sought its master.

Krash exhaled softly.

‘It’s far weaker than I expected.’

The Chaos Spirit, which only responded to skills, had been a persistent headache for Starry Generation.

The very reason it had been able to level an entire city back then was because the lack of such skills posed the greatest obstacle.

Which made Ignis, a technique that transformed Aura itself into a skill, undoubtedly the most favorable matchup against a Chaos Spirit.

Yet despite that, Krash had defeated the Chaos Spirit far more easily than anticipated, and a faint puzzlement flickered across his face.

He’d expected to sustain at least a few puncture wounds.

‘…Could it be that the Chaos Spirit was being purified all along in the Spirit King’s Forest?’

Krash took note of how much weaker the Chaos Spirit had proven to be than anticipated.

Crimson Garden’s decision to release the Chaos Spirit into the Spirit King’s Forest might have been a rather sound one.

‘Now that I think about it, the Chaos Spirit only became a true monster because of the convergence of so many catastrophes.’

There were several reasons why the Chaos Spirit had grown beyond control.

First, the cabal of mages who had dabbled in Spirit Amplification Magic, far more perilous than Spirit Magic itself.

Then the world convulsed as war and World Erosion spread to their worst extent, the Spirit King’s Forest proliferating far beyond containment, and the Chaos Spirit consuming that very chaos itself.

In a mere span of time, it had become an uncontrollable monster—far worse than when it had simply wandered the Spirit King’s Forest after the death of the Primordial Spirit Mage.

‘It’s fortunate we could eliminate it now.’

Having settled his thoughts, Krash drew in a sharp breath and raised his hand.

Though it couldn’t regenerate while consumed by Ignis’s flames, the real problem with the Chaos Spirit was its regenerative capacity.

No matter how much damage was inflicted, time would always restore it around its core.

To truly end the Chaos Spirit, he had to destroy that core.

The catch was that ordinary attacks couldn’t destroy it.

‘Black Hood.’

With that, Krash immediately activated Black Hood.

Power gathered in his palm, and a sleek, round sphere manifested in his grip.

The moment Krash seized the core, the black liquid that comprised the Chaos Spirit began crawling toward him in sluggish movements.

He’d used this same method to defeat the Chaos Spirit before—destroy the core this way, and it would die.

Krash’s gaze fell upon the core.

Within the core, writhing darkness trembled as Krash gazed upon it.

The core had absorbed so much of the World Erosion’s power that it had become a useless mass of malice, fit for nothing.

So in the past, he had destroyed cores the moment he obtained them.

But Krash had found another way.

‘If the root of it all is World Erosion…’

Then it could be absorbed through Extreme Blood Poison.

“Crimson Garden.”

At Krash’s call, Crimson Garden picked her way through the rubble of the collapsed black wall.

“Prepare yourself. Say your farewells.”

Krash immediately swallowed the World Erosion contained within the core.

That was when it happened.

Krash felt the sunlight upon his head and lifted his gaze upward.

Before his eyes unfolded a scene he had never witnessed.

Above a peaceful meadow.

A boy and a girl with emerald eyes passed quiet moments together beneath the shade of an ancient tree.

‘How is it, Agni? Refreshing, isn’t it.’

The girl summoned a breeze to cool the recumbent boy’s face.

As the gentle wind stirred, Agni’s hair drifted slowly, and he smiled.

‘Actually, it tickles.’
‘What do you mean tickles? Then how about this!’

The girl raised her hands and began tickling Agni’s body without restraint.

Caught off guard by her assault, Agni burst into laughter, then pulled her close and tickled her in return.

Beyond that peaceful moment, the two had endured countless trials.

Sometimes they were praised as heroes who saved lives; sometimes they were celebrated as founders of Spirit Magic.

Yet time, cruelly indifferent, flowed on and on—until the boy became an old man.

Unlike the aged boy, the girl beside him remained unchanged.

Before a dying campfire.

The old Agni slowly closed his weathered eyes.

‘Eh, Lir.’
‘Yes, Agni. I’m beside you. Did you call for me?’
‘I’m sorry. It seems my time isn’t endless like yours.’

A spirit that lives by the power of World Erosion.

A human who lives by the lifespan of flesh and bone.

No matter what, their timelines could never align.

‘I wish I could show you so much more. My world never grew as vast as yours.’
‘Agni?’
‘Eeri.’

Agni called her name with labored breath.

His eyes would not open again.

‘My time was happiness because you were there.’

The boy who had dreamed of worlds as a Spirit Mage had become an old man, standing at the threshold of his final days.

And so, at the edge of that expiring lifespan, the old man made a wish.

That his happiness might somehow reach her.

That she would not grieve after he was gone.

With that wish, Agni drew his last breath.

‘Agni? Are you sleeping?’

The girl called to him with innocent wonder.

She did not understand the death of living things.

And so she believed, as she always had, that Agni had simply fallen asleep.

From that day forward, the girl remained by his side every single day.

She called out his name as he lay sleeping peacefully, waiting with bated breath for him to wake.

‘Agni, it’s cold today. You might catch a chill.’

Sometimes she would blow a warm wind across him and drape a blanket over his form.

And she would brew his favorite cocoa, set it before his table, and wait for him to open his eyes at the sweet aroma.

‘Agni, it’s summer now. I can hear the cicadas outside. Delon’s daughter—the one born not long ago—got married. Time moves so quickly.’

Sometimes she would blow a cool wind to ease the heat and set a watermelon she had found somewhere on his table.

It was the season for watermelon—the fruit he had always loved for how refreshing it was.

And so spring came, then summer, then autumn, then winter.

Time continued on, unceasing.

The girl spoke beside him every day, telling him the many things that had happened, helping him rest in peace.

The girl waited for him.

She waited and waited.

But Agni’s corpse gradually turned to bone, and in the end, he never opened his eyes again.

‘Agni, I’m growing weary. I want to talk with Agni again.’

The girl longed for those days when she had spoken with him, days now past.

She missed Agni’s smiling face, sometimes his sorrowful one, and those moments when he would grow angry at something or other.

‘Agni.’

She yearned for him with a sharp, aching hunger.

‘I miss you so terribly, Agni.’

Though she refused to believe it, the girl came to understand.

That her master would never open his eyes again.

And that this was what parting meant.

On the day the skeleton’s corpse crumbled to dust, the girl’s heart shattered alongside it.

For a Spirit who had never known farewell, this first parting was an unbearable truth.

In a world without the boy, there was nowhere for the girl to belong.

‘Ah, Agni.’

Still yearning for the boy until the very end, the girl was consumed by Chaos.

Flash—

Krash’s eyes opened slowly.

What greeted his gaze was a sphere turned pristine white.

As Krash stared at that pure sphere, unmarred by even a thread of darkness, a single girl came into view.

Her emerald hair had lost all its color, and more than half her face had crumbled away, making it nearly impossible to recognize her form.

Yet the emotion etched into those remains was unmistakable.

Resignation and acceptance, woven together.

The girl looked toward Krash and Crimson Garden, who had stepped to his side, and smiled slowly.

Crimson Garden removed the respirator from her face and walked forward.

“I’m sorry. I thought it wasn’t my place to interfere—that your parting belonged to you two alone. But perhaps someone was needed to soothe a farewell.”

She reached out and pulled the girl into an embrace.

She had been certain the girl would recognize the parting and depart as well.

After all, once the boy was gone, Crimson Garden would lose the ability to perceive this world.

Yet the affection the girl had harbored for Agni proved far stronger than anticipated, and it had driven her toward destruction.

With Agni gone, perhaps it had fallen to her to look after the girl all along.

Crimson Garden ached with regret that she had not seen her through to the end.

Within that embrace, the girl slowly faded away.

In the arms of Crimson Garden, who carried the same aura as Agni, she became light-dust and soared silently into the high sky.

Krash gazed up at the luminous particles ascending skyward.

At least he hoped those particles would reach him—the one she had longed for so dearly.

＊ ＊ ＊

After placing the orb safely in his pocket, Krash and Crimson Garden left the Spirit King’s Forest.

The soldiers saluted her and offered their thanks for her efforts, and Crimson Garden responded appropriately.

As Krash walked alongside her, he glanced at her and asked:

“Are you all right?”

Krash had only glimpsed fragments of Eeri’s memories as he absorbed the World Erosion.

But Crimson Garden was different.

She had seen and experienced the world directly through Agni’s eyes.

So perhaps that was why she could not bring herself to end Eeri, even though she had the power to do so with her own hands.

“I’m fine.”

Crimson Garden said this and breathed out slowly.

“That’s simply what immortality is.”

Crimson Garden was an immortal who had lived far longer than Eeri.

Krash could not fathom the length of the life she had lived.

He only knew that it had been far, far too long.

She must have endured countless farewells.

She had watched the ones she cherished die and mourned them.

Yet still, she created another.

It was the only way she could perceive the world.

An infinite life repeats endless partings with those who live finite ones.

Perhaps the reason Crimson Garden had so desperately wished to erase immortality was because she could no longer bear to endure such separations.

“I will take your immortality.”

So Krash turned to face Crimson Garden and spoke.

At these words, Crimson Garden let out a brief, bewildered laugh and raised her hand.

A crow descended and landed on her hand.

“Yes, and for that reason alone, I’ll make you strong.”

To sever the chains of Immortality, Crimson Garden needed to make Krash strong.

There was no other way to break Immortality.

Mirsys set the crow on Krash’s shoulder, bowed her head, and departed.

—Now go and resurrect that Spirit called Dorothy.

“That’s what I intend.”

Krash drew out the sphere he’d kept in his pocket.

It was none other than the Spirit King’s Egg.

The core that emerges when a Spirit is destroyed and perishes.

That was precisely what the Spirit King’s Egg was.

Because Krash had absorbed all of the World Erosion’s power, the Spirit King’s Egg remained in pristine condition.

Now all that remained was finding Dorothy’s Core to resurrect Dorothy.

The problem was where that core lay.

‘……Yeomju.’

Aslan’s mother and the secondary matriarch of the Igrit Family.

She would surely be in possession of Dorothy’s Core.

Which meant Krash would have to steal it from her.

But alone, that was impossible.

He’d be caught long before he could even breach Yeomju’s chamber.

‘I don’t necessarily have to steal it myself.’

All he needed was to cultivate a companion who would steal the core for him.

And Krash had already established an acquaintance with someone who could introduce him to such a person.

“I’m going to meet Lirina.”

It was time to be introduced to Aslan.

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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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