I Became A Thief Who Steals Overpowered Skills - Chapter 93

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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 93. Strike During the Transformation

Eleven hours had now elapsed since the battle with Agaress began.

Without a moment’s rest since that first clash, the Jucheon Knight Order continued to grapple with Agaress in the darkness.

Needless to say, they had abandoned any thought of a direct confrontation.

Agaress possessed a power that transcended humanity by an unimaginable distance.

A calamity.

Agaress was an Erosion Entity, a creature that warranted that very word.

So the Jucheon Knight Order had adopted a strategy of attrition, buying time.

“Ahhhhh!”

In that instant, one of the Jucheon Knights caught by a strand of pitch-black darkness was suddenly wrenched toward Agaress.

To look directly into the eyes wreathing Agaress’s body was to invite a cascade of curses—confusion, vision degradation, hemorrhaging, panic—all at once.

The knight had failed to spot the attack precisely because he’d been avoiding eye contact.

Crack!

Agaress’s maw yawned wide, revealing teeth the color of fresh blood.

It was about to swallow its prey whole and digest it.

Slash!

Clang!

But two figures appeared before the strand of darkness first.

One was Krash, wreathed in pitch-black Black Flame.

The other was Lilish, brandishing a brilliant blue Aura Blade.

Their blades cleaved through the dark strand in perfect unison, and the Jucheon Knight quickly steadied himself.

“Captain, Krash—thank you!”
“Keep your wits about you. Stay sharp.”
“Yes, sir!”

Lilish acknowledged the knight’s response even as her blade drove back another tendril of darkness.

Meanwhile, her eyes tracked Krash intently.

For eleven hours straight, Krash had moved without respite alongside her, and now he’d saved one of their soldiers at this critical moment.

Because of him, the Jucheon Knight Order had suffered zero casualties despite the elapsed time.

She could never have managed this alone.

‘He must be at least an Expert of the highest caliber.’

Where on earth was all this Aura continuing to pour from, at such a caliber?

That much, even she could not discern.

Yet there was precisely one thing that had been nagging at her mind all along.

And she knew exactly what this persistent sensation was.

A Skill.

Id.

Her Skill, known as Premonitive Intuition.

She had come to obtain this Skill merely a year ago.

On the day of Velokin’s funeral, she had made the decision.

Because her eldest brother and lord, the Sword King, had spoken to her directly that day, there in that place.

‘In World Erosion, sometimes you survive not by overwhelming strength, but by a single moment of intuition.’

It had been the Sword King’s counsel that the direct descendants should stop dying in World Erosion.

He must have been displeased that Balheim was losing its fighting strength.

Though Lilish’s true thoughts differed, she too had agreed with those words.

She had intended to obtain a Skill only after she had trained herself further, to a level where she need not rely on Skill at all.

But when it came to intuitive matters, she thought it reasonable to lean a little on Skill.

So she had chosen Id.

In truth, Id had proven useful in World Erosion.

And today, that Id had triggered once before.

It was the moment she saw the Black Flame wreathing Krash’s body.

The instant she beheld it, her Id’s intuition locked into place, and she recalled Velokin’s Ignis.

When she verified Krash’s reaction, it proved correct.

And now, her Id was triggering once more.

Directed squarely at Krash.

Her brother was about to do something dangerous.

She could feel it, intuitively.

“Darbian, how much time do we have left!”

In that instant, Krash’s voice burst forth.

Darbian checked the time and answered.

“Eleven hours and twenty-one minutes, sir.”

The moment the time aligned, Krash exhaled softly.

Soon it would be twelve hours.

The hellish darkness would finally reach its end.

Of course, not just Krash but all the members of the Jucheon Knight Order knew this fact.

Agaress had faced opponents from other houses besides Balheim before.

Each time they’d failed to kill it, but the survivors who lived through those encounters had carefully gathered intelligence on the creature.

So everyone ought to know.

That maintaining this darkness was Agaress’s limit—a twelve-hour span.

‘Actually, I shouldn’t call it a limit.’

Better to put it differently.

The creature had decided the darkness wouldn’t kill them, so now it was deploying its next tactic.

Screeeee—

At that moment, an eerie sound erupted from Agaress’s body.

Agaress was an intelligent being, much like a human.

Whether it could communicate was unknown; its level of intellect remained uncertain.

But one thing was absolutely certain.

‘It deliberately displayed certain patterns when facing an opponent.’

And looking at the Jucheon Knight Order members, it seemed only Krash among them understood why.

‘It’s trying to lower their guard.’

Deliberately creating a pattern that could be exploited.

Then, once the opponent grew familiar with that pattern, turning the tables to catch them off-guard and devour them.

That was the trap Agaress favored.

True to its demonic nature.

Its fundamental mindset was oriented entirely toward toying with humans.

So right now it was deliberately feigning the appearance of a mindless Erosion Entity.

‘Sorry, but.’

Krash dodged the incoming spears of darkness one by one, slashing through them with Black Flame.

‘This side already sees right through what you’re thinking.’

Krash steadied his breathing.

His lungs throbbed sharply from his rough movements, but it was bearable.

All of it came down to continuously absorbing the World Erosion flowing from the Demon Realm.

Absorbing World Erosion far beyond what he burned through, Krash moved like a fish returned to water—unrestrained and exuberant.

But there was a price.

Sting—

The Madness he’d been holding down with the Eye Doll kept surging up in sharp, staccato waves.

With World Erosion filling his body completely, even the Eye Doll struggled to contain it.

Crack—

Krash ground his teeth and forced the Madness down by sheer will.

His mind wasn’t so fragile that Madness alone could shake his resolve in a place like this.

He’d endured far worse before.

‘Twelve hours.’

Once that time elapsed, Agaress would truly begin to move.

As always, revealing its pattern.

‘I don’t know how much damage the Nokae Knight Order will inflict on the Erosion Entities.’

All he could do was hope—hope that the Lordship empowering Agaress would diminish even slightly.

Screech—

Krash tore through the encroaching darkness once more and drove his heel into the ground.

At the same moment, the ring of swords echoed from all around.

The Jucheon Knight Order soldiers were fighting desperately against Agaress, buying time with their lives.

Among them, Lilish stood foremost.

She moved through the darkness with overwhelming force, closing on Agaress to strike directly with her blade.

Agaress couldn’t afford to ignore her either.

The moment she approached, thousands of bone-shard arms erupted from beneath its cloak, blocking her attacks.

Lilish, moving defensively, couldn’t deal any significant damage to Agaress.

But she was effective at drawing its attention.

Thanks to her efforts, the Jucheon Knight Order soldiers found moments to catch their breath.

The battle raged on.

“Twelve hours have passed!”
“Everyone—fall back to the opposite side of Agaress!”

At last, the moment the twelve hours arrived.

Whoosh!

All at once, a violent gust of wind swept through, and darkness began to pour entirely in one direction.

The target was none other than Agaress.

Agaress had finally closed all of its crimson eyes, abandoning the tactic of fighting through darkness alone.

The creature swirled its cloak while drawing in not just the darkness but everything around it.

Because of this, the members of the Jucheon Knight Order hastily wheeled about and began to run in the opposite direction.

Conventional attacks would not work against Agaress while it was absorbing the darkness.

They would only be pulled into its darkness themselves, crushed alive by the pressure.

So as everyone was fleeing in that moment.

Above the barren Black Forest, where all had been consumed by darkness.

Crack!

A single figure launched off the ground and charged toward Agaress instead.

“Krash?!”

Lilish, the only one who witnessed it, cried out in horror.

Krash’s current action was nothing short of suicide.

So she rushed to grab him, but it was already too late.

Krash, riding the very force that was drawing everything in, was already hurtling toward Agaress at a speed beyond all limits.

‘Just a bit more.’

Krash’s eyes began to take on a crimson tint.

Myeolhwa Chimshik surged forth, tempering his entire body.

There was only one move—one path forward—that could fell the creature.

For the sake of that move, he had endured relentlessly until this very moment.

‘More.’

From Krash’s lips, the scorching heat of his body poured forth as smoke.

When his body had been heated to its limit by Myeolhwa Chimshik.

Krash’s hand rose.

What manifested in his palm was none other than the Black Hood.

When Agaress draws in the darkness.

All of its eyes close, but only for the briefest moment.

And in that single narrow gap.

The monster’s true eyes finally open.

Normally hidden in shadow, invisible.

But those are Agaress’s real eyes—the ones that command darkness itself.

Whoosh!

In that instant, Agaress’s darkness was sucked backward into Krash’s grip as he activated the Black Hood.

Agaress’s darkness is nothing more than a creation born from the Demon Realm’s World Erosion.

Which means it belongs not to Agaress, but to the Demon Realm itself.

And that meant Krash could steal the Demon Realm’s darkness—darkness without will or intent.

In that moment, the darkness that had gathered around Agaress’s midsection was torn away wholesale into Krash’s hand.

Then Agaress’s true eyes were exposed through the dissipating shadows for the first time.

Eyes bright red as crimson jade, pupils that recalled an amphibian’s gaze.

And in those eyes, for the first time since its malign birth, the creature’s face showed something like bewilderment.

“Beautiful eyes, I’ll give you that!”

In that instant, Black Flame and Raione erupted simultaneously atop Krash’s Ureongseong.

Crackle, snap!

To concentrate everything at a single point.

Ripples surged across the vast lake of Krash’s consciousness, rising upward.

That surge, bearing both flame and lightning together, met the World Erosion and belched forth a jet of pure darkness.

And at last it reached the blade in Krash’s hand.

Crack!

The instant the pitch-black blade burst forth through the Ureongseong,

Krash’s thrust—concentrated at a single point—drove forward.

Thud-crack!

“Shrieeeeeeeeeeeeek!”

With Agaress’s first-ever cry of pain, lightning and Black Flame detonated in unison.

In that explosion, skeletal arms of bone-white giants came pouring from beneath Agaress’s cloak in a torrent.

Those arms, which had yanked Agaress skyward in an instant, now cascaded down upon Krash.

And there was no space left to evade—even Krash’s Byeokryeok would have struggled to slip past them.

“Haah!”

As Krash immediately wrapped Black Flame around his body, ready to let himself be shattered rather than let his guard break,

Crash! Crack! Crack!

It was none other than Lilish who blocked the attack.

With her sword, she shattered the creature’s bone arm in an instant, then seized Krash by the nape of his neck.

In the same motion, she hurled him backward and extended her blade in a straight line ahead.

Her sword, brimming with azure Aura to its limit, blazed forth like a tempest.

The Shattering Ruin Sword.

When the Aura—condensed in an instant—struck Agaress’s giant arm,

only a soft, spring-like sound of resistance echoed out.

But the aftermath of the Shattering Ruin Sword did not end there.

A moment later, Agaress’s entire bone arm began to writhe and resonate.

Crack, crack-crack-crack-crack!

Boom!

With a belated thunderous explosion, Agaress’s bone arm twisted and shattered into fragments.

It was Lilish’s original secret art—resonating Aura within the target and detonating it from inside.

Yet perhaps because the technique was still incomplete,

her blade too bore a fine crack down its length.

The blade had struggled to contain the technique’s recoil.

Regardless, she spun to face Krash with blazing eyes.

Seeing him dash forward the moment an opening appeared, without the slightest caution for his own safety, her fury ignited.

“You!”

At her sharp rebuke, Krash offered a brief smile and reset his stance.

“Sister, attacking during a transformation is basic strategy.”

There was only one moment when Agaress revealed its true eye.

Only when it absorbed darkness.

Krash knew this fact, so he forced himself forward despite the risk.

If the true eye were destroyed, the other cursed eyes could no longer open.

And most importantly, because the eye serving as the conduit for darkness was now injured,

Agaress could no longer manipulate darkness freely.

Proof lay in the bone arms Agaress was thrashing about now.

Originally, those arms’ muscles and skin should have been filled with darkness.

But now there was no further change to the creature’s arm—only bone remained.

Having lost the ability to wield darkness, it could no longer draw upon its true strength.

This was the price Agaress paid for growing careless, treating humans as playthings.

Had this gambit failed, Krash had already resolved to abandon any attempt at killing Agaress altogether.

A creature that could both manifest its true form and command darkness was nothing short of a calamity.

There was no way to win against that—not with what he had now.

But the gamble had paid off.

Without question.

Lilish seemed to notice it too—her eyes widened sharply.

Rather than scold Krash for his reckless move, she turned to address the members of the Jucheon Knight Order, who stood stunned by his sudden action.

“Jucheon Knight Order!”

She was not fool enough to let this opening slip away.

“Attack with everything you have!”

At her cry, every member of the Jucheon Knight Order ignited their Aura Blades and charged toward Agaress.

Agaress completed its recall of the darkness and revealed its true body of bone from within its mantle.

What should have been clad in armor of shadow now stood skeletal and bare—nothing but bone.

Moreover, the knights of the Nokae Knight Order had proven far more effective than anticipated at slaying the Erosion Entities.

The power of Agaress’s true form—bearer of Lordship though it was—had diminished considerably.

“Shrieeeeeek!”

Agaress loosed a cry thick with fury.

Krash exhaled slowly, his fist clenching tight.

“Listen.”

In his hand dwelt Agaress’s own darkness.

“Let me borrow that curse of yours.”

Now came the moment to turn Agaress’s own curse against it.

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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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