Level -99 Archmage - Chapter 115

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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 115. The Next Stage of the Avatar
“An… avatar?”
The voice was halting, revolting.
Multiple voices fused into one utterance.
At once masculine and feminine, childlike and aged.
Yi Hyeok-soo watched the man called Balzac with every nerve tensed.
Eyes black as pitch.
Surgical scars riddled his face.
Gashes torn and sutured, raised in knots and welts, covered every inch of his visage.
Though his cloak hid most of him, the scars that climbed his neck suggested someone had carved him into pieces.
Grotesque enough to make one’s face contort involuntarily.
Yet he made no effort to conceal it.
“Asked… you. An… avatar?”
Thump-thump!
Yi Hyeok-soo’s heart hammered wildly in his chest.
A warning born of pure instinct.
Run.
That creature—Balzac—is a monster!
Every cell in his body screamed it.
It wasn’t merely a question of brute strength.
There was something so fundamentally alien about him, as though something that should never exist in this world had suddenly materialized.
‘Is he even human?’
He wore a human form, yet that was no human.
He could not be called human.
Then was he a Doppelgänger—a copy made flesh?
No. He was something far stranger still.
…What was the word?
Merged.
A Hybrid—several abominations fused into one being.
Most of all, looking at that face, countless sections bore the telltale awkwardness of skin forcibly grafted from other bodies.
Human parts. Inhuman parts.
Countless entities stitched together by force into something grotesquely composite and utterly deranged.
‘A Chimera.’
Like the Chimera of Greek myth, a single form carrying the genetic traits of many.
Clench!
Yi Hyeok-soo bit down hard on his teeth.
His feet would not obey him.
The moment Balzac’s voice reached his ears, paralysis seemed to seize his body—every muscle locked rigid.
Then came the words.
“You… are not… an avatar.”
Balzac spoke with deliberate weight.
Yi Hyeok-soo was no Avatar.
The Avatars nearby erupted into chaos.
“What?”
“Not an Avatar?”
“Damn, I was really looking forward to it.”
“What a story that would’ve been—the Savior Yi Hyeok-soo turns out to be an Avatar after all!”
“But if he’s not an Avatar, how the hell did he find this place?”
This place—the Abyss of Earth 666—had been revealed only to Creators.
Creators sent Avatars bound by contract, and those Avatars entered the Colosseum.
Even if someone stumbled upon it while climbing Bukhansan by chance, the entry restrictions would bar them from passing through.
And then the Avatars began to laugh—low, cruel snickers.
“Anyway. Should we kill him?”
“He’s been a thorn in our side anyway. Word is he’s been hunting down Avatars left and right.”
“He’s seen our faces. He has to die.”
“If that bastard reports us to the Abyss Safety Department, we’re finished.”
“Wait, there’s a Kill List?”
They were all Avatars.
Yi Hyeok-soo had seen every one of their faces.
There was no way to let them leave alive.
If Yi Hyeok-soo returned alive and reported this to the Abyss Safety Department, or if Yi Hyeok-soo himself launched into Avatar hunting, none of them would know when they might die.
The Abyss Safety Department was aware of the danger posed by Avatars’ existence.
They simply pretended ignorance on the surface.
They lacked the personnel to stop them.
But the Avatars knew as well.
That the Abyss Safety Department was secretly compiling lists of Avatars and Super Awakeners.
There were already several Avatars within the Abyss Safety Department itself.
So the Avatars called that Avatar list the Kill List.
They were certain that the Abyss Safety Department would eventually begin hunting down the Avatars whose names appeared on it.
Which is why.
“Kill him!”
“Don’t even think about coming back alive!”
“Hunt down the Savior!”
…Madmen, the lot of them.
An Avatar’s thinking was certainly different from that of a sane person.
A screw was loose somewhere in their heads.
He’d encountered quite a few Avatars recently, but these gathered here were among the worst of them.
What was most shocking was the content of their conversation.
‘Do Avatars have their own network?’
The Avatars were communicating with each other.
Weren’t they the type who desperately concealed their identities?
…But that preconception had long since shattered.
Over a hundred Avatars had organized themselves into a collective and were occupying Bukhansan.
This wasn’t a phenomenon unique to this place alone.
Avatars were consolidating.
They were organizing into factions.
If they continued to grow in numbers and reached a point beyond control…….
Crack!
Yi Hyeok-soo gritted his teeth hard.
Sensation was gradually returning to his motionless body.
‘Shadow Suffocation.’
Whoosh!
Black fog spread forth from Yi Hyeok-soo’s blade.
A shadow mist that strangled and killed everything it touched.
“Gasp! Cough!”
“What? Where did he go!”
Yi Hyeok-soo hid his body within it.
But Yi Hyeok-soo wasn’t targeting the small-fry Avatars.
‘That one in particular is far too dangerous.’
…Balzac.
He had to kill him.
Because leaving him alive would be a disaster—a monster of great harm.
* * *
It was as though an enormous beast had raked its claws across one face of Bukhansan and moved on.
The dense trees lay toppled in places, their severed trunks and branches scattered in chaotic profusion.
Between them were strewn the body parts of those who had been Avatars.
“Damn it, what the…”
“Monster bastard. Spit!”
“Did he escape?”
The remaining Avatars furrowed their brows.
The clash had lasted only around ten minutes, yet in that time more than thirty Avatars had fallen.
“So a Savior is still a Savior after all?”
“His reputation wasn’t exaggerated, then.”
“Ah, my fingers!”
The remaining Avatars shook their heads in disbelief.
Had the battle continued, most of them would likely have died.
Yi Hyeok-soo’s inability to press the fight was entirely thanks to one man.
“Balzac! You’re as magnificent as ever!”
“The way you handled that Yi Hyeok-soo like a child—brilliant!”
“The Champion’s seat is as good as yours!”
The Avatars’ lips curved into smiles, as though Balzac had never worn a scowl in his life.
Balzac.
He was the one who had turned Yi Hyeok-soo into a corpse.
Balzac opened his mouth with an expressionless face.
“I’m… hungry.”
“Yes!”
“My apologies, Balzac!”
“Come now, bring the bodies here!”
“It’s Feeding Time!”
The Avatars began piling the scattered corpses before Balzac.
This was Earth, not the Abyss.
When you died, a body remained.
Soon the corpses accumulated in a mountain heap.
Flutter!
In that instant, the Cloak that shrouded Balzac’s Transmigration Body rippled.
From within, countless tentacles emerged.
They poured forth and clung to the bodies in torrents.
Squelch. Squelch.
Fangs drove in, and bodily fluids were drawn out.
The drained limbs turned pitch black and withered, then crumbled into dust that scattered on the wind.
After some thirty minutes, everything stacked there had been thoroughly consumed.
“More… required. Sacrifices.”
Balzac spoke.
Sacrifices were necessary.
To become a Champion, more corpses were needed.
* * *
“Cough!”
Yi Hyeok-soo, who had descended from Bukhansan, coughed up blood once more.
Black blood pooled on the ground.
He fought to steady his scattering mind.
‘It’s not human.’
It was impossible.
A non-human creature in a place that wasn’t the Abyss?
A monster from the Abyss was operating openly on Earth.
Questions swirled, but one fact was certain.
‘It cannot be killed.’
It was an Immortal that could not die.
That monstrous regenerative power…
He had severed it and attempted to suffocate it with Shadow Suffocation, but it regenerated in an instant.
That wasn’t all.
‘When I attack it, I take the same damage.’
That was why.
Why Yi Hyeok-soo had no choice but to flee.
Damage reflected on him like a curse, identical in kind.
Moreover, since the creature regenerated in an instant, it was a natural predator to a Warrior-type like Yi Hyeok-soo.
It could not be killed in direct combat.
Unless there existed some overwhelming magic that could reduce the entire body to dust in a single moment…
Even if such a thing were possible, he could not be certain it would achieve a hundred percent kill.
‘Where did such a thing come from?’
An Avatar.
A being transformed into a monster through a contract with the Creator.
Which meant.
The Creator had designed that form as well.
…But for what purpose?
What lay in Bukhansan?
He couldn’t know, but if left unchecked, the danger to the nation’s very existence was immense.
Avatars were a malignant tumor upon humanity.
The fact that such an unprecedented entity could emerge spoke volumes about the threat they posed—no further explanation was needed.
As the Prophets had said, they all had to be slain.
‘I alone cannot manage this.’
Yi Hyeok-soo drew a deep breath.
This situation was far too large for him to handle alone.
…It seemed he would need to join forces with the Abyss Safety Department.
A large-scale Avatar purge appeared to be necessary on their end as well.
* * *
《Winning streak!》
《Champion ‘Nameless Man’ reaches sixteen consecutive victories!》
《Accumulated Coins so far: 25.》
《Upon defeating the Champion, all accumulated Coins are awarded immediately.》
These past few days.
Park Chan-woo had managed to add five more consecutive victories.
Yet he couldn’t bring himself to celebrate.
‘The number of Avatars entering has dropped dramatically.’
Something had changed.
The number of Avatars entering the Colosseum recently had diminished noticeably.
His prediction was simple.
‘Someone is controlling Bukhansan.’
But who?
What could their motive be?
No individual could control it alone—which meant a faction was involved.
Ordinary Awakeners wouldn’t even know an Abyss existed in Bukhansan, so if there was a culprit, it had to be an Avatar.
‘Which means the Avatars are forming into a faction.’
The picture was becoming clear.
Faster than expected.
In the past, Avatars only organized into factions after the inter-species war.
After the strong were culled in great numbers, the Avatars began to rise.
Yet now, mere months in, they were already organizing and occupying Bukhansan.
He suspected this Abyss he and Adora had created was acting as the catalyst.
Park Chan-woo stroked his jaw.
Should he make a trip to Bukhansan for inspection?
Whoosh!
In that instant.
Whoosh!
Whoosh!
Whoosh!
Suddenly, a flood of entrants surged into the Colosseum.
Their number exceeded one hundred and fifty.
The Avatars who had entered grinned the moment they saw him.
“Hey, Champion! Want to throw down with us?”
“We’ve brought some incredible gifts just for you!”
“Hehehehe!”
This group looked worse off than the other Avatars.
They were likely the ones occupying Bukhansan, preventing other Avatars from entering.
Yet immediately, Park Chan-woo couldn’t help but tilt his head.
Whoosh!
……An extraordinarily ‘peculiar presence’ made itself felt.
He shifted his gaze toward the final entrant—the one they called Balzac.
At the same moment.
Ding!
《’Kim Jin-ryang’ challenges the ‘Champion’!》
《’Yi Tae-woo’ challenges the ‘Champion’!》
《’Yi Woo-jin’ challenges the ‘Champion’!》
《’Shin Han-soo’ challenges the ‘Champion’!》
…….
Countless challenge notifications.
This was one of the Colosseum’s systems.
Anyone had the right to challenge the Champion.
Yet all who had challenged him died.
Even Avatars value their own lives.
An overwhelming difference in power.
Few Avatars would stake their lives on certain death.
Yet the hundred and fifty Avatars now gathered before him seemed to have cast aside all regard for their own lives.
‘Brainwashed.’
Park Chan-woo’s gaze fixed on Balzac.
It was him.
The one who had brainwashed all of them, erasing the emotion called fear from their minds.
…Peculiar.
It was human, yet it was not human.
Park Chan-woo knew exactly what it was.
His brow furrowed without thinking.
‘A Half-Human Half-Demon has already appeared?’
The next stage beyond a common Avatar.
Half human, half demon.
……It seemed that one of the more powerful Creators was genuinely vying for the position of Champion.

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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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