Level -99 Archmage - Chapter 14

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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 14. Black Box
Lee Hyeok-su looked around.
The hospital ward reeked of disinfectant.
By the window—the same place where he’d first gazed up at the moon.
‘It’s morning.’
Lee Hyeok-su squinted slightly against the bright sunlight streaming through the glass.
Somewhere along the way, the sun had risen into the sky.
Not that unsettling moon with its moving eyes.
……As if he’d been dreaming a long dream all night.
But it wasn’t a dream.
Lee Hyeok-su lowered his gaze.
‘The Lion King’s Armor Set.’
Plate armor, greatsword, gauntlets, belt, boots, and helmet alike.
Still wearing exactly as he had been when he’d acquired it from the Abyss on that first night.
“……!”
Realizing it was real, Lee Hyeok-su hurriedly searched his belongings.
There, he found a small medicine bottle shaped like a narrow-necked flask, no bigger than a baby’s fist.
“It’s here…….”
A luminous blue liquid shimmered inside the vial.
An Elixir.
A miraculous potion he’d purchased for 3,000 Points.
The Seer had said that with this, he could wake his mother.
Tap.
Lee Hyeok-su was already moving.
He rushed to the bedside and gazed down at the woman lying there.
Skeletal, skin stretched thin over bone.
Her hair held no life.
She was Kim Ji-yeon—Lee Hyeok-su’s mother, who’d lain unconscious for nearly ten years.
‘God above.’
He’d called that name thousands, tens of thousands of times.
But God had never answered him once.
Yet still, Lee Hyeok-su whispered the name one last time.
Pop!
With trembling hands, he uncorked the vial and tilted it slowly between Kim Ji-yeon’s lips.
Drop by drop, slowly.
It took nearly ten minutes to coax every last drop of the Elixir into her mouth.
‘Why isn’t anything happening?’
But there was no change.
Had the Seer lied to him?
Or perhaps a comatose patient and an Elixir had no connection at all.
A thousand different fears flooded his mind.
“Mm…….”
“Ah……!”
Lee Hyeok-su’s eyes began to tremble slightly.
His mother—who had shown no response for nearly a decade—was opening her eyes, however faintly.
“Are you… coming to?”
“Who……?”
“It’s me. It’s me. Hyeok-su. It’s…”
Lee Hyeok-su removed his helmet.
Seeing him drenched in sweat like a rat caught in the rain, Kim Ji-yeon’s lips curved into a gentle smile.
“My Hyeok-su…… you’ve grown so much. I hardly recognize you.”
“Mom…… Mother…….”
“But I’m still so sleepy. Just a little longer…….”
The reunion was brief.
Kim Ji-yeon drifted away again, her eyes closing gently.
At the same moment, Lee Hyeok-su’s expression hardened.
Could she have fallen back into an endless sleep from which she wouldn’t wake?
Dark thoughts began to creep into his mind.
“Mm…….”
“……!!!”
Shiver-shiver-shiver!
Lee Hyeok-su’s entire body trembled.
……Sleep-talking.
It was distinctly different from those times when he’d barely reacted at all.
In that instant, Lee Hyeok-su’s vision blurred.
Emotions that had been dull for so long surged up without warning today.
Lee Hyeok-su bit his lip hard, swallowing back the flood of feeling, then reached into his chest once more and withdrew the Coin.
The Seer would have said that saving his mother with the Elixir wouldn’t be the end of it.
The Seer had told him.
That this world would become hell going forward.
And that to save his mother in that hell, he would need this very Coin.
But more important than that was.
“If you truly wish to protect them, become a Savior, Lee Hyeok-su.”
It was right before he lunged at the Dragon God General, immediately after casting that spell.
The Seer seemed to have already known, even before killing the Dragon God General, what kind of treatment he would receive from others afterward.
Of course, Lee Hyeok-su had no intention whatsoever of becoming such a grandiose thing as a Savior.
Yet.
‘I must grow stronger.’
He understood the point of what the Seer meant by those words.
He had to become stronger than anyone else.
Strong enough that even demons wouldn’t dare covet him.
Strong enough that they wouldn’t even think to lay a finger on his family, on what was his!
…That must be what it meant to seize overwhelming martial power.
“From tomorrow, the world we knew will change. A transformation beyond imagination will unfold. Don’t be startled, don’t be afraid—look forward like a rhinoceros’s horn and press ahead.”
Press ahead. Keep looking forward, keep moving, and what you wish to protect will naturally be preserved.
Lee Hyeok-su approached the window again.
Before, the bright sunlight had obscured the view, and he hadn’t been able to see the state of things on the ground clearly.
“Emergency patient!”
“We—we don’t have enough Hospital Wards!”
“Ahhhhh! It hurts! It hurts!”
“You bastards! Don’t you see a patient here?!”
……Already, this world had become Avici Hell.
Injured patients trying to drag themselves into the Hospital.
The woefully understaffed medical staff blocking their way.
Everything was collapsing.
Yet.
‘The contrast…… for the first time it looks clear.’
It was different for Lee Hyeok-su.
It was the first time since his cranial surgery.
The light and shadow in his vision had never seemed so distinct, the world he beheld never so sharp.
It felt as though his focus had finally been adjusted.
Lee Hyeok-su turned away and carefully placed the Coin in his mother’s hand.
And.
‘I’ll follow your words, Seer.’
Without hesitation, he left the Hospital.
Ten thousand times, a hundred thousand times he had called out, yet God never answered.
But the Seer had answered in just a single meeting.
Therefore.
From this day forward.
‘You are my God.’
Lee Hyeok-su’s God had become the Seer.
* * *
After the First Night of the Abyss had ended, Park Chan-woo returned home and spent over thirty minutes staring silently at the black box.
“A Black Box, then…….”
What could it be?
It’s a color of box he’d never seen before.
Of course, speculation had long persisted that the colors of boxes weren’t limited to what mankind knew.
Bronze, Silver, Gold, Platinum, Diamond.
Beyond these, rumors abounded of people seeing Pink Boxes or White Boxes.
But none of it had ever been verified as truth.
Some of those spreading such rumors were even ‘Incarnates’—those who, under contract with their Creator, spread false tales to lure people into the Abyss their Creator had designed.
Given the situation, most rumors couldn’t be trusted.
Park Chan-woo himself had always been certain that no box of a different color existed.
But…….
“So a box of a different color really did exist…….”
Now that certainty lay shattered.
It had been granted because he’d demolished every Creators’ expectation.
Not a single Creator among them had believed humanity could succeed in hunting the Twelve Divine Generals.
Park Chan-woo had made it possible.
By using the Reflection spell he’d learned the moment he acquired the Original Mage class.
‘My offensive power has limits.’
A staggering negative Level—enough to drive anyone mad.
Even if he raised his Level, his base stats wouldn’t increase.
That wasn’t all.
The weapons he obtained were equally pitiful in attack power.
What good would offensive magic do if he couldn’t mount a proper assault?
That’s when the idea of the Reflection spell came to him.
‘If my offensive power is weak, I can simply borrow someone else’s.’
The Reflection spell, elevated to great magic through his power, had actually managed to bounce back even the Dragon God General’s assault.
‘Before opening the box…… I should examine other things first.’
A ominous, black box.
Who knew what might burst out from inside.
To live long, the unspoken rule was to leave the unknown untouched.
But then again, he couldn’t simply leave it unopened.
It only required a moment of mental preparation.
First, though, came organization.
Before anything else, he needed to verify and organize what he’d obtained from last night’s Abyss.
Park Chan-woo called up his status window.
Soon after, his gaze fell upon the center of the status window that materialized before him.
Class: Mage (Level 2)
Available Magic: Reflection (Great Magic, Rare)
Remaining Class Level Points: 2
“……!”
Park Chan-woo’s pupils trembled faintly.
Upon clearing the first night’s Abyss, his Level had risen by 2.
Though his base stats remained unchanged.
‘But I can obtain Class Level Points!’
There was something even more important than that.
He could sooner abandon his base stats than ever give up those Class Level Points!
In the past, Park Chan-woo had managed to raise his Mage class level to only 9.
‘Remembering those days—it’s enough to bring tears to my eyes.’
Dual Class.
He had grown to Level 90 as a Knight, then foolishly switched to Mage—and among all of humanity, only Park Chan-woo himself had taken such a path.
‘The reason I could only learn basic magic was because of this Class Level ceiling.’
It was no exaggeration to say that in this world, Level was everything.
If your Class Level was low, there was truly little you could do.
For sword-wielding classes, raising that class’s Level allowed one to unlock Sword Energy, Sword Mastery, or specialized techniques.
Mages were no different.
Only with a high Mage class Level could one learn high-tier magic.
A Level 9 Mage could only learn magic of Normal Rank.
‘To elevate the Rank of basic magic……I sacrificed every piece of equipment I’d used as a Knight.’
The Fire Ball that had touched the heart of Sephiro the Dragon God.
I’d exhausted nearly all my assets to raise the Fire Ball spell—a Normal Rank magic—all the way to Eternal Rank.
And Sephiro had mistaken it for Domination magic, when it was actually Telekinesis—one of the basic spells.
I had raised that to Eternal Rank as well.
It was only later that the Domination spell’s hierarchy had been added to my arsenal.
‘As I was told, without talent as a Mage, even sacrificing as much as you wish won’t raise a spell’s Rank.’
Park Chan-woo had awakened to his magical talent thanks to the God of Sacrifice.
―God of Sacrifice. What is my talent? Do I even possess such a thing?
―Contractor Park Chan-woo. Your magical aptitude already reaches toward the ultimate.
Park Chan-woo made a substantial offering to ask the God of Sacrifice what his talent might be.
This was shortly after his defeat at the hands of Lee Hyeok-su, the Sword King.
The God of Sacrifice answered that Park Chan-woo’s talent lay in magic.
Told that he possessed talent enough to perceive the ultimate, Park Chan-woo immediately cast aside his sword and belatedly set foot upon the path of magic.
But now… things would be different.
《’Class Level Point’ has been used: 2.》
《’Wizard’ class level rises by 2.》
Four levels in a single day.
If it were possible to raise levels properly even after surpassing the minus level threshold…
Then the maximum class level he could realistically achieve was ‘198’.
‘Nearly reaching the twentieth tier. Absurd.’
The probability was slim, but it wasn’t zero, was it?
Park Chan-woo took a deep breath and laid out the ‘Wizard’s Stone’ and the ‘Void’ on the floor as well.
The Wizard’s Stone was, true to its name, a stone—a bluish gem with a faint dusky tinge.
Name: Wizard’s Stone
Rank: Legendary
Description: A stone discovered in the ruins of the collapsed Mage Tower. It is said that a legendary sorcerer poured everything they possessed into it.
Equip Slot: None—Passive Effect
Unique Option:
From the moment of acquisition, Magical Power increases by 1 each time a level is gained.
Current Magical Power added by ‘Wizard’s Stone’: 2
A growth-type artifact that increased Magical Power, a stat tied to both a wizard’s offensive capability and their standing as a practitioner.
The earlier one acquired it, the greater the snowballing advantage.
It was precisely why Park Chan-woo had spared no effort to obtain the Wizard’s Stone.
‘The Void.’
Yet what mattered more than the Wizard’s Stone was the ‘Void’.
A gemstone no larger than a baby’s fingernail, it radiated a gray luminescence that seemed to draw the gaze into its depths.
The moment his eyes fixed upon it, the description surfaced in his mind.
Name: Void
Rank: Eternal
Description: Found in a place where nothing exists. This is the ‘Void’ discovered there.
Equip Slot: None—Passive Effect
Unique Option:
Grants the ability to possess mutually opposing attributes simultaneously.
Sparse lines. Sparse to the point of being no description at all.
Yet that single ‘unique option’ alone could devour everything else.
It was sheer broken power.
The description read merely that it ‘grants the ability to possess mutually opposing attributes’—but in other words, that meant one could wield ‘every attribute’.
It nullified all attribute penalties entirely.
“This will suffice… remarkable.”
He had gained much in his first day.
Treasures of incomparable rarity that the old Park Chan-woo could never have obtained, even after years of effort.
Now only one thing remained.
“…Open.”
Park Chan-woo opened the Black Box with deliberate care.
Then.
《’Black Box’ is opening.》
《A powerful curse enveloping the contents within flows outward.》
《’Easter Egg (001)’ activates.》
《’Luck (1)’ arrives and evades the curse.》
《Another ‘Luck (2)’ arrives and renders the box’s contents radiant.》

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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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