Level -99 Archmage - Chapter 148

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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 148. The Most Brilliant Talent
The more they exchanged blows, the more Aurum grew puzzled.
‘It should have been skewed, surely.’
A body in which balance was nowhere to be found, even if you looked carefully.
Because his base stats were fixed, his flesh itself had never been properly tempered.
He was simply being dragged along by vast quantities of ‘additional stat points’ to move a body that could barely function.
‘……How did he even learn swordsmanship?’
Normally, it should have been impossible to properly master swordsmanship at all.
Swordsmanship was the technique of controlling the body, and achieving a high level of swordplay meant, in other words, achieving high perfection of the physical form.
So, he decided to test it.
He hadn’t gone all out from the beginning.
There was no fun in simply suppressing something that had caught his interest.
But then.
‘He’s learned it quite thoroughly.’
Quite impressive, in fact.
Eyes that don’t lose sight of the blade.
High-level concentration, calculating each movement of the body with surgical precision.
He doesn’t lose his composure even after narrowly escaping death multiple times.
And that’s not all.
‘Playing weak, waiting patiently for me to step into his territory.’
His acting was masterful.
Like a spider weaving its web and waiting for prey.
The man was enduring, gathering himself to strike down Aurum.
Concentration, composure, patience.
All three were the most essential virtues a swordsman must possess.
Yet acquiring all three of these qualities at once was no easy feat.
More than that, it wasn’t merely something he possessed.
It ran deep.
Deep enough to inspire admiration.
‘Did his talent overflow so abundantly that he couldn’t break through the wall?’
…What kind of case was this, anyway.
Even Aurum had never encountered anything like it before.
The master of Fox’s Burrow, the ‘Creator of the Burning Boundary,’ had deployed countless monsters and powerful beings for his growth.
In that process, he had encountered strong warriors with all manner of talents and surpassed them, but there had never been anyone like Park Chan-woo.
And so he grew curious.
‘Could he break through the wall?’
An pathetic body with no semblance of balance.
Decent skill with the blade, but a foolish man who had given up early, unable to properly recognize his own talent.
If he were told of his talent, could he truly break through the wall?
‘No.’
There was no way that could happen.
Until now, no such being existed.
He had shown many who stood against him how to break through the wall, yet none had truly grasped it and crossed over.
Of course, someone might wonder.
They might ask if it made sense to break through a wall the moment they were told how.
‘If one doesn’t grasp it the moment they learn, it holds no meaning.’
They wouldn’t grasp it later either, in any case.
In the first place, what was enlightenment?
Enlightenment was recognizing one’s shortcomings and correcting them.
If one truly believed it, one would break through the wall in that very moment.
At least, that was how it had been for Aurum.
Conversely, beings like spirits—imbalanced and incomplete—could never cross over, no matter how many hundreds or thousands of times he showed them.
So then.
‘You’ll be the same.’
Identical.
Unable to break through the wall, unable to shatter his limits.
He held no great expectations.
……But then.
Clang!
As their blades met, the wrist holding the sword rang out.
With each passing moment, his blade grew deeper, sharper.
Slowly, he was becoming the sword itself.
‘…….’
This feeling was entirely new.
I had merely shown him the way.
He grasped Enlightenment in an instant and manifested it through his body.
He erased every thought, even himself.
“Heh.”
……It was beyond words.
Before long, he had become the sword.
In that moment, a single word flickered through Aurum’s mind.
‘Arahan.’
Shiver.
Aurum’s body trembled slightly.
Thump! Thump!
His heartbeat began to quicken wildly.
…At meeting someone like himself, an ‘Arahan’.
The highest ideal that any practitioner could attain.
An existence of the State of No-Learning, reachable only by those of pure skill alone.
That is what an ‘Arahan’ is.
A name the demons of the Abyss could never dare speak.
Long ago, after crossing several walls, Aurum came to naturally understand what ‘Arahan’ meant.
Arahan was both the name and qualification of ancient practitioners, and simultaneously a collective that stood against the lords of the Abyss.
They passed their name down only to those like Aurum—those who had crossed the walls by their own strength.
What was certain was that those who bore that name possessed transcendent, pure power.
Aurum had always wished to face them in earnest one day.
But now.
‘You too have inherited the qualification of Arahan!’
A being with the same qualification as himself had appeared.
One who had crossed the walls by his own strength.
Though still a fledgling, admittedly.
‘How far will he climb?’
If he is the same as me, he will continue to rise.
A single Enlightenment brings unlimited achievement.
And that one was still in the midst of his Enlightenment.
Or rather, to be precise.
‘……He has now truly awakened the talent he possessed all along.’
What he had carried from the beginning was finally becoming usable.
Whether it ends with mere sword talent.
Or if there is something more—I cannot help but wonder.
Aurum began to demonstrate his true strength.
From what he observed, that one’s Ultra Regeneration could only restore, at best, a single finger joint’s worth.
Any wound beyond that cannot be rapidly regenerated.
In other words.
‘If I deal a massive blow all at once, he cannot regenerate.’
Whoosh!
He released the restraint on his Mana.
Infinite Mana writhed across his entire body.
Soon, he embraced a hundred spirits within himself.
And then.
Roooooaaarrr!
The emerald-hued aura of spirits surged forth.
As countless spirits mingled together, his eyes gleamed with azure light.
Aurum became the Spirit King himself.
An immense surge of Mana swept across and scoured the entire domain in an instant.
Whisk!
Crack-crack-crack-crack!
As he swung the spirit blade, Park Chan-woo’s body launched backward like a spring.
Even having become a sword, he could not withstand a power like a raging sea.
If there is nothing more here, he will meet death as it comes.
“……?”
Aurum’s brow furrowed.
Remarkably, the man had not fallen.
Far from it—he stood balanced, steady on his feet.
The blow had landed unmistakably, yet somehow he remained unbroken.
But had mere standing been all, Aurum would not have been so astonished.
There was another reason entirely for his shock.
“You…….”
Park Chan-woo’s Holy Sword was threaded through with the essence of spirits.
It was not merely that he had repelled the Spirit King’s power with the blade—he had fused it, seamlessly, into his own.
No. That was not quite right.
To call it a union would have been inaccurate.
……It had followed.
In an instant, he had transformed the very nature of his Mana to mirror his own.
Just as the Spirit King’s was.
Such a technique was new even to Aurum.
And so, comprehension eluded him.
The fact that there existed something he could not understand struck him as incomprehensible in itself.
“Did you possess more than merely a swordsman’s talent……?”
One thing was certain: that talent had now bloomed.
Likely, even the man himself was unaware.
For he existed now in the State of No-Thought.
He had not considered and then executed—nothing so deliberate.
Rather, by pure instinct, he was unleashing the full measure of his talent.
He had altered his own nature, imprinted that altered nature upon the blade, and received the Spirit King’s assault as naturally as breathing.
‘When blade met blade, a vibration. A resonance of something vast and formless.’
A wave. Perhaps wavelength was the better word.
There had been something like the resonance of the soul.
What was certain was that it bordered on Magic itself.
A power that births phenomena. An art that rewrites reality and bends it to will.
Magic refined to its absolute extreme!
A talent Aurum had never witnessed before.
Without hesitation, he could say it was the most radiant talent he had ever beheld across all his years.
To name that talent in a single word…….
“……Mageblader.”
A being who wields both Magic and the blade with perfect freedom.
To possess the ultimate talent without leaning toward either—what else could such a one be called but Mageblader?
Ah.
“So this was your balance.”
It existed.
Balance.
Blade and Magic both.
These two things had been correcting his grotesque distortion all along.
“You are…… truly fascinating.”
Grin!
Aurum laughed with all the force he could muster.
This tension. This thrill. This exquisite satisfaction!
How long had it been?
‘To pour forth full strength and slay.’
……There was a taste to killing like this.
He would devour that heart, seize that talent for himself.
For the first time in his existence, Aurum felt desire.
Envy.
Of a talent he did not possess, could never possess—his alone.
That which defied understanding was a wall Aurum could never surmount.
He would seize it by force, would he not?
‘There can be no ascending higher from this point.’
He had witnessed the blooming of that talent clearly.
This was surely the man’s limit.
From a single moment of Enlightenment, he had unveiled the most radiant talent—to climb further would be mere greed.
Thud!
Aurum rolled backward.
Then, pouring all his strength into the strike, he drove his blade toward Park Chan-woo’s throat.
Screech!
“……!”
In that instant, Aurum’s eyes widened to their fullest extent.
‘What is this?’
The first impact.
Aurum’s hand rose to touch his own neck.
Then.
Riiiiip!
The skin of his throat split open.
That was only the beginning.
‘…What is happening?’
The blows were accumulating.
With each exchange of strikes, the Holy Sword’s edge began to layer impact upon impact across Aurum’s flesh.
‘What on earth…….’
He couldn’t make sense of it.
The man’s awakened Mageblader talent alone was remarkable enough.
‘In that short span of time, he’s transcended to yet another level……?!’
He had leaped forward by another tier entirely.
It shattered everything Aurum understood.
It was as though a child who had only just learned to walk was now sprinting.
“I can’t…… believe…….”
Thwack!
In total, nine strikes.
Only the final blow remained.
……Unbelievable.
It was the phrase those who faced Aurum most often uttered.
They marveled at how he evolved in mere instants.
Did they feel as he felt now?
Beyond astonishment—touched by something like awe.
This creature was an enigma that transcended him entirely.
‘Am I…… going to die?’
Aurum’s pupils began to tremble with intensity.
Never in all his existence had he felt the terror of death.
Never had he imagined that his end might come by another’s hand.
In that moment.
Aurum’s eyes met Park Chan-woo’s, truly seeing into them.
In that instant before the end.
And Aurum accepted his fate.
…This creature would not stop, no matter how much he screamed or pleaded.
‘……A monster’
That monster was the Abyss itself.
Crack!

Aurum’s thoughts ended there.
The final, tenth blow.
His head severed, and with it, his life came to an end.
* * *
Ding!
《You have hunted the demon ‘Aurum’!》
《You have cleared the ‘Fox’s Burrow’!》
《You have completed the ‘Savior of Fox’s Burrow’ scenario!》
《For achieving a hidden scenario, you have been granted 50 additional Black Stars.》
《Your Black Star count has reached 100.》
《You have qualified to become the ‘Master of Fox’s Burrow’.》
《Alternatively, you may use 100 Black Stars to obtain a ‘Platinum Box (★★★★★)’ with certainty.》
《Your Level has increased!》
《Your Level has increased!》
「Your level has increased!」
「Your level has increased!」
「Enlightenment: You have awakened the Prepared Qualification.」
「Arahan’s Basic Swordsmanship has been promoted to Arahan’s Intermediate Swordsmanship.」
「Your attack power ratio based on physical stats increases by 20%.」

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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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