I Conquered the Tower with the EX-Class Character That I Raised - Chapter 34

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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 34
“Cough, cough.”
As I finished reading the will, Lee Ah-woon awoke with painful coughing.
‘It worked.’
[Y-you’re alive···?]
Whitey’s voice trembled with profound shock.
Lee Ah-woon expelled the blood that had pooled in his throat, gasping desperately for breath.
“Hack. Cough. Cough.”
He pounded his chest and began rolling about convulsively.
The backlash from resurrection was quite severe.
“Ugh, gah-aaaah! Screeeeeee!”
I watched as his cries of agony intensified.
“Uh, what’s wrong with him?”
Should I give him another elixir?
I was just reaching into my pocket for the elixir when—
“Huh?”
Something felt wrong about the surroundings.
Gooooo—
The mana had become unnaturally still.
···This wasn’t a normal flow.
Mana always flows.
Like air, or like water.
It pools in empty spaces, and when full, flows toward other voids.
But around Lee Ah-woon, the mana had stopped moving.
‘No, it’s not stopped so much as···.’
It’s being held in place.
This made no sense.
“Aaaahhhhh!!!”
[This is catastrophic!]
Whitey’s voice grew louder.
[Lee Ah-woon’s ability, Circulation, is running wild! He’s experiencing a mana reversal syndrome attack!]
‘A mana reversal syndrome attack?’
At this rate, the Lee Ah-woon I’d just brought back to life would die for the same reason.
‘He’s not healed?’
Why?
The red elixir definitely worked. Didn’t it revive the dead?
And if it was just injuries, emergency treatment should have sufficed.
[Warning. Estimated time to critical threshold breach: 12 seconds. Predicted explosion force sufficient to obliterate the Incheon region! Survival probability 0%. Immediate evacuation recommended··· No, evacuation is no longer possible! This must be resolved!]
‘···The red elixir functioned properly.’
Mana reversal syndrome—it won’t be completely cured.
A red elixir-class spiritual medicine lacks potency.
‘But immediate recurrence after healing?’
That makes no sense.
Yet even if it’s low-grade, it’s still an elixir. A legendary spiritual medicine.
Its efficacy doesn’t evaporate the moment you drink it like some cheap potion.
Even now, Lee Ah-woon’s skin continues to crack and heal in cycles.
He’s alive because the medicine’s effects still linger.
I’ve seen cases like this before. Rare, but I have.
Lee Ah-woon’s mana backflow syndrome.
It was never a disease.
Then what’s the real cause?
‘There’s only one answer.’
[The core of the rampage is Lee Ah-woon himself! We need to resolve the mana stagnation immediately!]
Reflecting Whitey’s urgency, arrows appeared in rapid succession centered on Lee Ah-woon.
The mana mass began to envelop him protectively and rise into the air.
…First, focus on resolving the crisis.
At this rate, I’ll get caught in the explosion and die.
[Quickly like defusing a bomb, but carefully!]
Yes. Whitey’s advice is sound.
Half of it.
The orthodox approach is correct.
But it takes too long.
Circulation.
This ability, which the system rated as S-rank, is so rare that even Whitey struggles to grasp its exact nature.
So even clever Whitey must have misunderstood it.
But I know what mechanism this ability operates on.
I’ve seen it before.
So I’m certain.
There’s a better answer.
This one.
Kuoooooh!
I concentrate my mana, and an ice sphere spinning at ultra-high speed materializes behind me.
Han Seol-ah’s finishing move.
Eternal Permafrost.
Into the densely packed mana mass.
Toward Lee Ah-woon, I hurl it forward.
[Agent?!]
Whitey cries out in shock.
It must look insane.
Because the compressed mana will swell and detonate like a bomb.
Then at least Seoul would be cleanly reduced to ruins.
But telling it to explode—that’s the right call.
Ssshhh—
The moment permafrost touched the dense mana mass, it vanished like melting snow.
‘The mana efficiency is poor, but that’s actually working in my favor.’
Thud.
Lee Ah-woon dropped to the ground.
At the same moment.
Boom!
With a heavy sound, the “empty space” visibly swells before my eyes.
[No, what are you doing!!!]
Whitey, stripped of its usual mechanical coldness and plunged into extreme panic, screamed desperately, abandoning even the AI’s basic protocols.
Ignoring Whitey’s loud cries.
I focus my consciousness.
I pour every ounce of the overflowing EX-rank mana flooding through me into my brain and eyes.
[You’re—in—sane]
Whitey’s voice stretches like a slowed tape.
My subjective time is slowing down.
With mana hammered into my eyes, each individual thread of mana’s flow begins to become visible.
Mana that normally remains unseen.
A crude technique to perceive it as if it were real.
How do I know this?
I tried it before becoming an unawakened one.
[Saaaave]
Whitey’s voice stretches even further.
My brain burns hot.
I watch the mass beginning to explode.
Like tangled thread, mana is hopelessly knotted together.
Now I have to unravel this.
Flicking my finger, I pluck one strand of mana.
Ssshhh—
Immediately, the connected line of mana trembles, pulling free from the tangle with a soft sound and dissolving into empty space.
Success.
Now I just repeat this.
For how long?
Until that massive tangle is completely unraveled, endlessly.
“Ugh…”
Heat flares inside my nose, and soon blood begins dripping steadily.
A terrible crushing pressure surges through me, as if my skull might burst at any moment.
It was an inevitable side effect—I was forcibly overclocking my nervous system by hammering an enormous concentration of mana into it.
The edges of my vision were tinting red—a sign that several blood vessels in my eyes had ruptured.
Damn it. Once I release this synchronization, I’ll be dealing with hellish aftereffects again.
Schick— Schick—
Grinding through the searing pain, I continued severing the threads of mana.
Schick— Schick—
Loosening the cord.
Again.
* * *
As if time itself had frozen, the atmosphere of that specific space had congealed like gelatin.
An unprecedented mana stagnation phenomenon.
Whitey’s computational capacity immediately predicted the worst-case scenario.
By protocol, I should approach the core of the stagnation—Lee Ah-woon—and carefully disperse the mana.
Like defusing a bomb, strand by strand, with meticulous precision.
A dangerous operation with slim odds of success and requiring considerable time.
But Apostle casually disregarded the orthodox procedure Whitey had outlined.
[Agent?!]
Instead, he unhesitatingly unleashed his ultimate technique, ‘Eternal Permafrost,’ directly at the core of the condensed mana mass—that ticking time bomb waiting to detonate!
Like pouring oil onto a burning warehouse.
[No, what are you doing!!!]
Every circuit of Whitey screamed in horror.
Insane! Was this guy actually a villain all along?
Boom!
The instant Eternal Permafrost made contact with the mana mass, expansion became reality.
Space itself shrieked and twisted, and Whitey’s sensors detected energy readings that heralded catastrophe.
Time remaining until detonation: 0.5 seconds… 0.4 seconds…
[Insane…]
Whitey screamed with all its might, but—
[You bastard…!]
The mana that should have exploded never detonated.
[…What?]
Instead, something unbelievable unfolded.
With abnormal movement, threads of air flowed. Each single thread was entirely ‘mana.’
Upon that recognition, once the pattern was adjusted, the mana became visible.
So Whitey could now witness the magnificent spectacle unfolding before it.
The mana mass that had been chaos itself trembled, and as the tangled threads unwound, thousands upon thousands of mana strands separated and embroidered the void.
Like the Milky Way stretching majestically across the night sky, a river of mana unfurled in splendor.
At its center stood Apostle.
Apostle moved with the elegant grace of an orchestra conductor.
With each subtle gesture, the mana strands responded and found their rightful places.
The method Whitey had proposed was correct, but this—this was something entirely different.
To accomplish this so easily!
[‘This… this is… impossible. A human interfering with mana on this scale…?’]
Controlling tens of thousands of mana strands simultaneously, and in an unstable state on the verge of explosion—it defied every physical law I understood.
In a world of zeros and ones, it was something beyond imagination itself. A miracle, pure and simple.
But it wasn’t over.
Ssshhhhh…
The released mana strands didn’t scatter into empty air.
As if drawn by a powerful magnet, they all shifted direction at once and began surging toward the Apostle.
An energy storm whirled around him, being absorbed into his very center.
Whoooosh!
The moment the last thread of mana vanished into the Apostle, the sky returned to serenity as if nothing had happened.
The catastrophe ended in the blink of an eye.
Work that should have taken minutes—no, hours—was completed in mere seconds.
[‘…What in the world just happened?’]
I checked the Apostle’s condition, my mind reeling in confusion.
His vital signs were catastrophic.
Every reading hovered on the edge of the threshold for maintaining life.
That miracle came with a price, it seemed.
[Agent! Are you alright? Your current state is…!]
I expected the Apostle to convulse in agony at any moment, coughing blood.
“···.”
But the Apostle remained composed.
He shook his head casually a few times and exhaled deeply, and like magic, all his vital readings returned to normal.
The Apostle murmured languidly.
* * *
At the same moment, at the Korean Hunter Association Mana Observation Center.
“Director! A catastrophe-level mana runaway has been detected in the Incheon direction! The readings are at least S-rank… no, they’re off the scale!”
“What?! Issue an evacuation order immediately—!”
Beep- beep-.
“…Huh?”
The alarm that had been blaring frantically fell silent as if it were a lie.
The mana wave that had dyed the control room’s screen red evaporated in an instant, as if someone had pulled the power cord.
Someone in the control room, engulfed in silence, muttered vacantly.
“What… just happened?”
* * *
“Dog’s honey taste.”
[···Pardon?]
This abnormal mana phenomenon was created by the runaway of ‘Circulation’.
Circulation is, simply put, an ability to change mana into whatever property the user desires.
And to achieve this, it grants a supplementary ability—the freedom to absorb and release mana very naturally, as easily as breathing.
This catastrophe resulted from an S-rank Elixir—which, right up until its master collapsed, repeatedly absorbed and released mana while doing its utmost to respond to the user’s singular will.
‘That will was probably: I don’t want to die.’
The Elixir converted mana into the ‘recovery’ attribute with all its power to restore the user’s body.
But Lee Ah-woon’s chronic condition—mana reversal syndrome. That was the problem.
A bizarre ailment where mana rotates backward.
Under normal circumstances, mana should be absorbed, converted to the recovery attribute, and used to restore the body.
But now?
Mana was absorbed and converted to the recovery attribute. It must have gotten that far.
But instead of restoring the body, it all got expelled.
‘If I could have caught every bit of that backward-flowing mana, the situation would have been different.’
It seemed Lee Ah-woon’s talent for handling mana wasn’t quite at that level.
A shame.
Anyway.
I gulped down the enormous quantity of recovery-attribute mana that Lee Ah-woon had prepared.
“Feels great.”
Thanks to that, all the old internal injuries that had accumulated in layers and throbbed painfully washed away so comfortably.
Even the ‘minor’ damage I’d incurred from overexerting myself just now was completely healed.
“Phew.”
With this, I’ve averted South Korea’s crisis of annihilation.
How many times have I saved this country now?
‘I’m truly remarkable.’
Shouldn’t the president award me something?
Of course, there’s no president now.
‘And…’
I look down at Lee Ah-woon sprawled on the ground.
[Um, Agent. Shouldn’t you administer the second Elixir?]
Whitey’s opinion, noticeably more cautious now.
I gave him an Elixir, but he didn’t recover.
So I should give him another bottle to heal him…
An extremely reasonable opinion.
“No.”
But it won’t work.
“Lee Ah-woon’s condition isn’t just mana reversal syndrome.”
If it were only mana reversal syndrome.
It should have been cured when I gave him the first Elixir.
But the result?
‘How dare you try to heal me?’ —a seizure erupted as if to say.
As if attempting to heal were stepping on a landmine.
There’s only one case like this.
The result manifested as mana reversal syndrome, deceiving the system, Whitey, and even me at first.
“It’s a curse.”
Lee Ah-woon was afflicted by a curse.
A particularly vicious one at that.

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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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