Level -99 Archmage - Chapter 121

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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 121. The Divine Beast’s Contractor
Dagon exhaled a deep, inward sigh.
Special pigment and brush—they were worth almost nothing in the grand scheme.
But the other party was Sephiro, the Dragon God.
A pan-universal monstrosity wearing human skin.
The slayer of a Great Lord—known to destroy worlds with a mere exhalation of breath!
“And one more thing.”
“Yes, speak your will.”
He’d acquired pigment and brush.
Dagon wondered if the man meant to ask for paper next to complete the setup.
Since Sephiro’s eccentricities defied all prediction, Dagon had given up trying to understand.
Park Chan-woo tilted his head slightly as he spoke.
“Can you procure the Vessel of Red Souls as well?”
At the same moment.
“The, the Vessel of Red Souls… you say?”
Dagon’s eyes widened in shock.
His gaze brimmed with astonishment and barely contained excitement.
It was no ordinary item.
It was so rare that merely naming a price felt like stating its worth.
Yet he couldn’t fathom why Sephiro would want such a thing.
“Can you get it?”
“…I’ll do my best to procure it. Though I confess, I’m puzzled why you’d need the Vessel of Red Souls—as you surely know, it’s a tool designed for demons.”
“You talk too much.”
“Agh! I, I apologize. Please, give me just a moment!”
Bang!
Dagon vanished in haste.
Some ten seconds passed before he reappeared in a plume of smoke.
In his hands now rested a vessel, blood-red in color.
“Fortunately, the administrator took interest, and I procured it with top priority. This vessel’s base value is 16 million. Including my contractual margin of 15%, the total payment due comes to 18.4 million.”
“I’ll pay it.”
Value payment recognizes no restrictions on form.
Equipment, tools, one’s own body, or Coin—all were acceptable.
Park Chan-woo opened his Inventory and withdrew the necessary payment.
Dagon felt a chill race down his spine at the sight.
“Y-you intend to pay in Coin?”
Demons treasured Coin above all else.
Even goods of equal value rarely commanded a higher appraisal than Coin would.
For a merchant, how many Coins one accumulated weighed heavily on assessments for the next rank.
“Five should suffice.”
“Yes, yes! Exactly right. Currently, one Coin holds a value of 4 million—in fact, slightly above what you owe. I shall use the remainder to procure those other items you requested. And if you wish, I can also share one piece of crucial information regarding the Abyss that will soon manifest…”
Dagon spoke with scrupulous honesty.
Another demon merchant would have schemed to extract more profit, but one had to read one’s clientele carefully.
Against a being who saw through everything, deception was useless.
Better to deal fairly and remain bound only by the contract itself.
Besides, this information about the Abyss was worth more than the surplus value anyway.
One might call it a courtesy gesture.
“Speak.”
At Park Chan-woo’s ready consent, Dagon drew a deep breath and continued.
“Only a tiny fraction of the Merchant Guild knows of this—but a massive Targeted Snipe Abyss is set to open soon.”
Park Chan-woo brushed his chin lightly.
This was unprecedented.
To be “sniped” meant one had incurred the Creators’ displeasure.
It signified that a Creator deemed you worthy of spending their own Coin to target you directly.
Yet a “large-scale snipe” was something that scarcely occurred, even across ages to come.
Of course, it hadn’t never happened before.
“Is it targeting a single individual rather than many?”
“Yes.”
“Who is the target?”
“A human named Han Min-o.”
Han Min-o?
The name sounded familiar for some reason.
‘Han Shin’s younger brother had the same name, didn’t he?’
Could this possibly be referring to Han Shin’s blood brother, the second son of the Haneyeon Group?
The Haneyeon Group—shining at sixth place in South Korea’s corporate hierarchy.
Yet overshadowed by Han Shin, reduced to a pretty but ultimately hollow figurehead.
But as far as Park Chan-woo knew, Han Shin’s younger brother had died long ago.
He understood it to mean the man had passed away in the early days of the Abyss.
“He is the human you saved when we first met, sir. You even regenerated him yourself with a superior elixir in the Fire Dungeon, did you not?”
Dagon spoke carefully.
Only then did Park Chan-woo’s memory stir, and he nodded.
“That man was Han Min-o?”
When the massive Dungeon Abyss erupted and Fever Time commenced, bringing with it the appearance of demonic merchants.
Park Chan-woo had once saved a man whom Dagon had been forced into a contract with and nearly died for.
It had been nothing more than a tactical maneuver to push Dagon into a corner.
But thanks to it, he’d managed to secure the exclusive contract with Dagon without difficulty.
And it appeared that the man he’d saved back then had been Han Min-o.
“Yes. He said his father is the chairman of the Haneyeon Group. Upon investigation, it seems to be quite a famous organization here in Korea. Are you familiar with it?”
“…There’s no way I wouldn’t be.”
It was what he’d half-suspected. Just as he’d feared.
The second son of Haneyeon itself.
Little was publicly known about Han Min-o.
He’d died far too young.
‘…Is this what they call the mockery of fate?’
He’d revived a man who was destined to die.
And now that man faced a large-scale Snipe.
He couldn’t help but be curious.
“What is the reason for the large-scale Snipe from the Creators?”
“He violated a taboo in the Second Night, so I’ve heard.”
“What taboo are you referring to?”
“I’m not entirely certain on that front. However, according to the elite merchants, Han Min-o apparently contracted with a Divine Beast.”
“Contracted with a Divine Beast? A human?”
“Yes. So I cannot say with absolute certainty. But when the veil of the Second Night was briefly torn by an ‘intruder,’ a Divine Beast did apparently manifest. And not just one—two of them.”
His mind reeled for a moment.
All the pieces suddenly aligned.
The black dragon Ataraxia had torn through the veil of the Second Night and forced her way in.
A hole had been punched in the Creative Abyss, meaning a rift had formed in its wake.
Divine Beasts were monsters dwelling within those rifts.
Wherever they emerged, they obliterated the Creative Abyss itself—a catastrophe.
They were the very beings Creators despised most deeply.
And such Divine Beasts had torn through the rifts and appeared. Not one, but two of them.
“Wait. Are you saying he contracted with both of those Divine Beasts?”
“Since it’s uncertain, they seem to be preparing the large-scale Snipe.”
A human who’d contracted with Divine Beasts.
Not just one, but all two of them.
Unprecedented. Never happened in past or future.
Park Chan-woo closed both eyes for a moment.
He pondered it, but the conclusion was singular.
‘He has to be saved.’
If everything Dagon said was true, Han Min-o would surge forth as a great hero of tremendous significance in the Racial War.
Divine Beasts stood in direct opposition to Creators, and to have contracted with them meant, in other words, he could never become an Avatar.
Avatars were unpredictable in what they might do during the Racial War.
They might prove useful, or they might not.
Avatars moved according to the will of their Creators.
On balance, they were more hindrance than help.
Even Han Shin merely pretended to be of assistance, playing the role of savior to keep up appearances…….
‘Yi Hyeok-soo alone won’t be enough.’
Four months remained until the Racial War.
Park Chan-woo had to secure at least three victories, including his own.
That was the bare minimum to avoid last place.
If Han Min-o was truly a Divine Beast contractor, he could secure at least one victory.
He and Yi Hyeok-soo alone were insufficient.
They lacked one decisive trump card.
In truth, it was partly why he hadn’t simply killed Han Shin outright.
Right now, avoiding last place in the Race War mattered more than Han Shin’s death.
First moves determined futures.
If he failed here and finished last, there would have been no point in his regression.
“When does it begin?”
“Based on the shipments moving through the Merchant Guild, I’d estimate within the next week or so. They’ve been acquiring quite a few specialized traps—looks like they plan to capture Divine Beasts directly.”
Not immediately, then.
That meant there was still time.
Park Chan-woo felt the pressure lift.
Rushing these things only ensured failure.
Tap.
He moved at an unhurried pace.
‘Valhalla.’
A warp opened toward Valhalla’s lands.
Whoosh!
“Wait—that land is…….”
Beyond the warp, a dimly visible territory.
Dagon’s eyes widened with shock as he recognized it—the territory of the Second Night, where the Fame Shop operated.
“Did you—did you become the territory’s lord?”
“I did.”
“……!!!”
He had seized the territory from Aheta, the Moon’s Lord.
It was a rumor whispered even in the Abyss.
But now he stood witnessing the truth with his own eyes.
“Cross over. You still have work to do.”
Park Chan-woo spoke those words without hesitation and stepped through the warp.
Dagon stared blankly at his retreating figure for a long moment before managing to cross just before the warp collapsed.
* * *
From Valhalla’s lands, Park Chan-woo passed into the Creative Abyss—the Colosseum.
The Colosseum held no spectators.
Partly due to the aftermath of recent events, and partly because it had been closed for now.
Dagon gauged the mood, his gaze flickering between Park Chan-woo and Adora at the center of the arena.
‘He’s gone all the way now—become a Creator himself. Truly insane.’
His contractor had made the witch a lord of the Abyss, and moreover, a Creator.
By seizing Valhalla’s territory and creating the Creative Abyss itself, Dagon couldn’t even imagine what lay ahead.
‘But what exactly is their relationship?’
An odd current flowed between them.
Something heavy and solemn.
Dagon quickly shook his head and asked, “B-but what do you intend to do here?”
“A ceremony.”
“…A ceremony?”
“Dagon. Proceed with the Soul Ceremony.”
“……Did a demon die here?”
The Vessel of Red Souls.
It was an artifact used in ceremonies to honor the souls of demons.
Ordinarily, it was a high-value offering reserved only for the deaths of special lords.
“A human died. Mistaken for a lord.”
“A half-demon…….”
The moment Park Chan-woo spoke, Dagon understood completely.
When demons died, their souls were swallowed by the tides of the Abyss, condemned to eternal torment.
Only through ceremony—comforting their souls and allowing them to ascend—could that cycle of suffering be broken.
Much less a human who had become a demon.
A being neither human nor demon could only exist in greater agony.
More still—even without demonification, all Avatars bound to demons suffered such fate.
Not death, but eternal anguish—screaming endlessly as they wandered the Abyss.
The true price. The hidden cost written nowhere in the Avatar Contract.
Only.

Why Sephiro would invest such value for a mere half-demon was beyond comprehension.
Much less entrust the ceremony to a demon like himself.
‘He trusts me enough to entrust the ceremony to me?’
It was common sense that a Soul Ceremony was entrusted only to “the most trustworthy.”
Yet nothing made sense, nothing rang true.
Dagon spoke.
“Do you know the name of the demon who died in this place?”
“Balzac.”
“Yes. Then I shall begin the Soul Ceremony for Balzac.”
He set the Vessel of Red Souls down on the ground.
Tap. Tap-tap-tap!
Dagon placed all the gold ornaments he wore into the vessel.
An offering to ensure the soul’s safe ascension.
Dagon laughed softly as he spoke.
“Do not concern yourself with payment. This one is on the house.”

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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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