Level -99 Archmage - Chapter 18

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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 18. Dazzlingly Brilliant Talent
Kim Byeong-han had heard Lee Hyeok-su refer to that man as a “self-proclaimed prophet.”
And everyone gathered there had witnessed the prophet perform miracles.
When he summoned the Death Knight and killed Andrariel.
The chill of that moment still hadn’t faded from memory.
Yet Kim Byeong-han had never actually seen the prophet wield power alone.
‘Because Lee Hyeok-su did everything by himself.’
The death booking he’d experienced that first night in the Abyss, at the Mul Joha Nightclub.
In that game where the monsters grew stronger with each stage, the prophet had stood perfectly still, hands clasped behind his back, never taking a single step.
Only Lee Hyeok-su had wielded his blade with every ounce of strength.
He’d sweated through the whole ordeal, playing the role of a bus driver perfectly.
So it was only natural that doubt would creep in about the power of this prophet in demonic armor.
A perfectly reasonable doubt—that perhaps the prophet himself was weak.
…….
But that ‘doubt’ was now, in this very moment, completely and utterly shattered.
Not just for Kim Byeong-han.
All those who’d been rushing forward froze as one, as if a pause button on a remote had been pressed, unable to move an inch.
The instant Park Chan-woo’s mouth opened.
The ‘magic’ that manifested from the tip of his staff had transformed the world.
“What… what is this…….”
“What… what on earth…….”
People looked around themselves.
They couldn’t trust their own eyes.
…Thorns had sprouted across every surface.
Countless spikes jutted upward, turning the world inside out.
So densely packed that nothing could move.
Floor, building, everything visible in their sight was crammed full of them.
It had become nothing short of Thorn Hell.
“Don’t move.”
That was when it happened.
People turned their gaze toward the voice that suddenly rang out.
Park Chan-woo, the Great Mage who had wrought this phenomenon.
Though the entire world bristled with thorns, there was not a single spike around him.
“If you so much as brush against the thorns, you will die.”
“Gasp……!”
The people trembled at Park Chan-woo’s words.
Even without his warning, they couldn’t move anyway.
The thorns hadn’t merely consumed the space around them.
They had grown long and already wrapped around their entire bodies.
Close enough that even pouting their lips or twisting a finger slightly would draw blood.
There was truly nothing they could do but breathe.
“Stay like that for the next two hours. This is the price of recklessness, of attacking without knowing your place.”
Park Chan-woo had imposed this punishment of thorns upon them.
The price for their ignorance, their thoughtless charge.
Screaming and rushing in without even attempting to gauge the difference in strength was the same as begging to be killed.
But he hadn’t killed them—only contained them.
Park Chan-woo had shown them mercy.
‘Ignorance is a sin grave enough to claim lives in the Abyss.’
Ignorance.
Not knowing was a sin.
But the gravest sin of all was ‘refusing to seek understanding.’
Just as these people had done.
The rules had suddenly changed, and the number of those who needed to die had increased.
Then shouldn’t the first priority be to calmly assess the situation and understand the opposition?
Why had the architect suddenly changed the rules? Why had an extra person appeared? Shouldn’t one first grasp the reason and context behind it?
Thus, Park Chan-woo had imposed this punishment to teach them a lesson.
So they would never repeat the same mistake again.
For them, it would become an invaluable experience they could never forget.
‘Still… that’s an exceptionally powerful Domain Magic. The King of Thorn Hell, Andrariel—his rank might well be that of a high-tier demon or greater.’
Merely using it had blanketed the entire Abyss in thorns.
Domain Magic of this caliber is exceedingly rare.
Domain Magic was fundamentally a unique magic that only top-tier mages could employ.
It referred to a mage’s own territory—pre-constructed to make ultra-high-grade magic easier to use.
Using ultra-high-grade magic normally required an enormous amount of incantations and an unimaginable quantity of mana, but Domain Magic allowed one to store that power in advance.
Thus, when top-tier mages clashed, victory often hinged on who could deploy their Domain Magic first.
And this Thorn Hell was Andrariel’s own world, Andrariel’s own domain.
Naturally, no common high-ranking demon could possess such a thing.
“Hah… I can’t… hold on…”
“Ahhhhh…”
After some ten minutes had passed, the people began to emit pained groans.
They could not move their bodies at all.
Enduring two hours in an awkward posture was an agony beyond imagination.
And to hold that pose while completely tensed?
Pleas for mercy spilled out unbidden.
But Park Chan-woo paid them no mind.
He sat cross-legged, gazing up at the night sky.
“Ow, it stings!”
“It hurts! It hurts!”
“Ahhhhh!”
Screams erupted from all directions.
As time wore on, they could no longer support their own weight, and they were pricked by thorns over and over.
Flesh tore open. Blood spilled.
Though they tried desperately to regain their posture, it was maddening—they wanted to scream and leap away.
‘This is excruciating!’
‘So much pain!’
‘When does this end?’
It felt as though time itself had stopped.
What seemed like hours had passed, yet the clock before their eyes showed only thirty minutes had gone by.
“Heh… serves them right. Bastards…”
Kim Byeong-han smirked as he watched them.
Seeing the people who had attacked him indiscriminately now suffering was deeply satisfying.
What did it matter that they had shared meals for over ten years?
In the end, humans were bound to betray.
Especially in the world to come, polarization would only worsen.
Unless he grew stronger, or unless he had a powerful backer, there was no surviving.
‘I survived.’
Kim Byeong-han’s gaze shifted to the Seer—to Park Chan-woo, who gazed at the moon.
This Seer seemed even stronger than Lee Hyeok-su, who had killed Yong Shin-jang in a single blow.
A magic that engulfs the entire world in thorns!
What a monster, to wield such power.
There would be nothing wrong with staying on good terms with him.
They had even struck a bargain.
Wasn’t it much like having already secured a connection?
“Um… Seer, could you perhaps heal me?”
Kim Byeong-han spoke in an ashen tone.
He had dodged the vital points, but two arrows had pierced straight through.
He thought he would truly die.
Park Chan-woo glanced at Kim Byeong-han for a moment, then replied.
“Why would I?”
“Wha…?”
“Why should I heal you?”
“But… you said you’d save me earlier…”
“If I didn’t kill you, isn’t that the same as saving you?”
“…?”
What in the world was this nonsense?
Was he really saying that not killing him was the same as saving him?
Of course, strictly speaking, it wasn’t wrong.
If he could have killed but chose not to, then yes, he had indeed saved him.
“I said I’d save you, not that I’d heal you.”
“Ah…”
Kim Byeong-han was thinking.
‘We’re done for!’
It seemed he’d made a mistake, trying to go it alone.
His heart quickened with alarm.
If he didn’t get treatment soon, he could die.
Even if he survived, the odds of permanent disability were high.
But there was simply no way out.
In this world thick with thorns, he had no strength to move.
At that same moment, Kim Byeong-han understood something.
His situation was no different from those of the others who’d attacked him.
And so the time passed.
“The allotted time has expired.”
“A Death Knight has appeared at the Center of the Abyss!”
“The Death Knight will slaughter every living human.”
“Survive for one hour by evading the Death Knight, and the Abyss will end.”
Park Chan-woo rose slowly from his place.
At last, the one he’d been waiting for had arrived.
The Death Knight.
A knight made of corpses—or rather, a being who had once been a great hero in life.
Boom!
It launched from the ground, soared through the sky, and appeared before Park Chan-woo in an instant.
“The Queen has decreed it. You are to sweep away every human in this place. And you are to annihilate that one especially thoroughly.”
Death poured from its voice, each word laden with menace.
The figure wore full armor dark as shadow.
The light that flickered behind its visor was bottomless as an abyss.
Power rippled from its blade, and the very air seemed to shudder.
‘Sword Aura.’
The quintessence of power that only a Swordsman-class who had completed a 4th Threshold Breakthrough and reached Level 41 could manifest.
That was Sword Aura.
In other words, the Death Knight’s minimum level was 41 or higher.
Park Chan-woo’s level was 96, making the gap incomprehensibly vast.
Even if Park Chan-woo had a million versions of himself, he could not defeat a single Death Knight.
Indeed, it was established fact that any difference of thirty levels or more was insurmountable, no matter how many you had.
Therefore.
‘Running away would be the wisest course.’
Hadn’t the system itself said so?
Flee and survive for one hour.
Victory was never part of the premise to begin with.
Such a possibility did not exist.
“False mage. This is not your magic. You cannot defeat me with power that is not your own.”
The Death Knight understood this too.
That this Domain was not Park Chan-woo’s.
Moreover, Domain Magic was merely a preparation ground for wielding ultra-high-grade magic.
Impossible to command freely unless one were Andrariel himself.
And the caliber the Death Knight sensed from Park Chan-woo fell far short of Andrariel.
“Resign yourself to death, false mage.”
The Death Knight raised its blade.
It settled into stance and pushed off the ground.
Whoosh—
Roar!
The instant its feet left the earth, the Death Knight’s form vanished.
It bore down on Park Chan-woo with speed that matched folding space itself.
Park Chan-woo raised his staff.
Scritch-scritch-scritch!
Thorns erupted from the ground and formed a shield before him, blocking the way.
Shwip!
The Death Knight’s blade sliced cleanly through the thorns.
Yet more kept rising endlessly.
“Parlor tricks!”
It was nothing but buying time.
After all, it wasn’t even his own magic.
He couldn’t fully command even the mana stored in that Ring.
He was forcing control over another’s magic and mana—soon his nerves would rupture, his mana circuits shatter, and his entire body would burn.
And thorns alone could never stand against a great knight such as him.
Swift Sword Chaos.
The Death Knight’s blade moved so fast it blurred beyond mortal sight.
In an instant, he’d sliced through every thorn and reached the spot where Park Chan-woo had stood.
“Die, human.”
Black energy surged along the Death Knight’s blade.
With all his might, he swung it down.
Crack!
Park Chan-woo’s body split cleanly in two.
But the Death Knight immediately sensed something wrong.
“A fake?”
It made no sense.
He’d certainly cut down something bearing Park Chan-woo’s form, yet impossibly, it was nothing but a thorn.
A counterfeit woven from thorns.
“Then where is the real body…?”
Thud!
That instant.
A massive thorn branch erupted from behind, piercing straight through the Death Knight’s chest.
Under ordinary circumstances, such a thing would be impossible.
A single moment of carelessness.
The assault came from behind without missing even that blink-of-an-eye gap.
Thud! Thud-thud-thud-thud-thud!
Thorns stabbed in from all directions.
Small branches quickly intertwined, transforming into something massive like a great tree, pinning the Death Knight’s body and rendering him immobile.
The Death Knight could not possibly comprehend it.
“What are you? How do you command another’s magic as your own?”
This Domain Magic, this Thorn Hell—it belonged to Andrariel.
Only Andrariel could wield it completely.
Yet this sorcerer commanded it as though it were truly his own.
Yes. “Command” was the right word.
Like a servant or slave, he stood above the magic and controlled it.
It defied all logic.
It ignored every principle and concept the world held dear.
Nothing about this made sense from the start.
He’d been sitting and gazing up at the moon—yet somehow he’d created a thorn clone and lured the Death Knight into lowering his guard.
Had he not been careless, he would never have been pierced and pinned by thorns.
“Since when. When did you get there?”
The Death Knight’s eyes fixed forward.
There, now, stood Park Chan-woo.
He’d been cut in half—yet he stood whole and unharmed.
That wasn’t all.
“From the beginning.”
The staff grasped in Park Chan-woo’s hand.
Upon it, enormous mana converged.
The Death Knight knew at once what he beheld.
That mana was his own.
Mana drawn forth by his own attacks!
Reflection Magic.
Yet Reflection Magic could only apply to a single entity.
And the Death Knight had attacked only thorns.
Not just one thorn, but many he had cleaved asunder.
Still, the mana now gathered in the staff.
How had he done it.
No—how was it possible.
The Death Knight spoke then, his tone one of utter disbelief, his voice trembling with shock.
“Did you… did you layer Reflection Magic over Domain Magic…?”
Even as he spoke, the absurdity of it struck him as laughable.
That’s impossible.
Layering magic upon magic—it shouldn’t exist.
He’s not even deploying his own Domain Magic!
If it were possible to wield another’s magic as though it were his own, to stack spell upon spell and evolve it to a higher tier—
Then even the weakest magic could become the strongest.
…And if that were possible, this thing is no mere sorcerer.
—You must be… a member of a great race…!
A great race.
The Dragon Race!
Surely one who ranks alongside the Ancient Dragons or higher.
For they are the originators of magic—the only beings who command it.
And yet.
“Human.”
Park Chan-woo spoke without emotion.
—You lie! No human could possess such radiant magical talent…!
The Death Knight could not believe it.
The limits of humanity are absolute.
A pitiable race, unable to touch the ultimate in anything.
Impossible, then, that any human should wield such brilliant magical aptitude.
But the Death Knight found no words to speak.
Tap.
The World Tree Staff made contact with the Death Knight’s forehead.
The mana gathered at its tip began to writhe violently.
Boom!
With a tremendous explosion—
…the Death Knight’s entire body was vaporized.
《You have completed the hunt for ‘Death Knight’!》
《Predicted survival rate since ‘Death Knight’ appeared: 0%》
《You have shattered all predictions and achieved 100% survival rate.》
《Heaven-Shaking, Earth-Awakening. You have overcome a gap wondrous and incomprehensible, transcending all expectation.》
《All survivors acquire a ‘Gold Box (★★)’.》
《Your Level has increased.》
《You acquire 1 Class Level Point.》
《You are additionally granted a ‘Platinum Box (★★★)’ and a ‘Latent Ability Scroll’.》

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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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