Level -99 Archmage - Chapter 32

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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 32. The Demon Merchant
‘It’s here.’
Park Chan-woo’s eyes gleamed.
Ever since clearing the Shen Abyss, the reason he had refrained from any public action became clear in this moment.
‘Fever Time.’
An event that triggered whenever the probability of failing to achieve the target score dropped below one percent.
Had he cleared another dungeon immediately after hunting Shen, this event would never have appeared.
And Fever Time had occurred before in the past.
The Creators had similarly judged that South Korea would fail to achieve five thousand points, and under the pretense of generosity, they opened a trial and committed mass slaughter.
Countless people of all ages met death against their will.
It was all because of the ‘condition’ needed to trigger that event.
‘The fact that they’ve never entered a dungeon until now means they fall into the weak category.’
A random twenty percent who had never set foot in a dungeon.
Most people who were physically and mentally strong had already entered a dungeon.
Or there were plenty who had entered out of curiosity.
The problem lay with the rest.
Patients who couldn’t move easily.
Or the very young and very old who couldn’t fight—all of them were swept into random dungeons as part of that ‘random twenty percent.’
The outcome was predictable without even looking.
‘Seventy-six point one percent approval rate. Higher than in the past.’
What had changed compared to before was the number of people demanding Fever Time.
Nearly ten percent higher than before.
Was it because the initial rate of point acquisition had climbed so steeply?
As the rate of point gain began to slow, they seemed desperate.
Opinion must have split rapidly across social media and forums.
‘The Awakened Ones and Han Shin aren’t moving. No wonder points are hard to come by.’
The reason was clear.
Numerous Awakened Ones had died in the Shen Abyss.
At this stage, Awakened Ones were classified as the strong; many had died or been wounded, leaving a vacuum of leadership to rally the people.
···It didn’t matter much.
Even if those bastards worked hard as leaders and saved people now, the number of humans they’d kill later would be ten times as many anyway.
‘Though it’s strange that even Han Shin isn’t moving······.’
That obsessive maniac being quiet was unexpected.
Now that Shen was dead and even Anubis had been taken from him, it seemed he was pausing to observe the surroundings.
Park Chan-woo shook his head.
‘No. By Han Shin’s character, not moving in this situation makes no sense. The moment he resolves this situation, he’d become South Korea’s true savior. His contracted Creator··· Aheta must have intervened.’
Or it could have been Aheta’s own will.
Aheta would have bet that South Korea couldn’t acquire five thousand points.
But with the hardest Shen Abyss cleared, he’d lost a full thousand points. If Han Shin moved now, the target score would be achieved far too easily.
‘So Aheta must have wagered quite a few coins.’
Park Chan-woo smiled faintly.
One reason he’d been lying low had disappeared.
Han Shin and Aheta would surely be searching for him with eager eyes.
But if Han Shin couldn’t move freely, things would be different.
Besides, in the past Han Shin had been skeptical about achieving five thousand points.
He’d played the role of savior, yet South Korea still fell five hundred points short, facing the Invasion Abyss, which resulted in over two hundred thousand casualties.
Had he pushed forward actively, he could easily have hunted Shen.
Loath as he was to admit it, Han Shin was a monster.
He would have killed Shen through sheer overwhelming power, not through tricks like Park Chan-woo employed.
In any case···, he’d gained certainty that Han Shin wouldn’t intervene aggressively.
Because of this, the Creators also judged that achieving the target score was impossible and proposed Fever Time.
‘Dungeon rewards doubled.’
It wasn’t all bad.
To Park Chan-woo, it was actually good news.
They’d presented an absurdly generous figure—double the dungeon clear rewards.
And that wasn’t all.
‘Looking at the sun, you can instantly enter any dungeon you desire.’
They’d also made dungeon entry easier to save travel time.
Originally, all dungeon entrances had spawned before specific structures.
You could only enter if you were near the entrance, but now anywhere the sun was visible, you could enter an uncleared dungeon instantly.
But what Park Chan-woo coveted most was the third piece of information.
‘…I must find the Demon Merchant at any cost.’
A Demon Merchant!
Their appearances were extraordinarily rare.
To manifest so openly, as in this instance, was something you could count on one hand.
Demon Merchants were the only beings within an Abyss capable of making ‘transactions’ possible.
Of course, transactions in the true sense only allowed the exchange of equal ‘value.’
‘Perhaps they could cure this condition.’
If the value offered was sufficient, a Demon Merchant would give anything in return.
He had even heard tales of someone obtaining the World Tree Fruit from a Demon Merchant.
A treasure incomparable to any elixir—one that could undo every vile curse and ailment!
If he could only obtain that, curing his weakness, frailty, and limited time might become more than a pipe dream.
Park Chan-woo gazed upward at the sun in the sky.
《There are currently 13 uncleared dungeons in South Korea.》
《You will be transported to the dungeon you select from among these 13.》
《Dungeon selection confirmed.》
《Transferring to the Fire Dungeon (300)!》
《The current number of entrants in the Fire Dungeon is 587,191.》
* * *
《Congratulations! Han Min-o, you have been selected, beating odds of 20%!》
‘What… what is this?’
Han Min-o looked around in bewilderment.
Just moments ago, he had been in his own room.
Whoosh!
Everything before his eyes transformed in an instant.
A burning wasteland.
Several towering pillars of flame rose into the air.
‘What is that?’
No—not pillars of flame.
“Tornadoes! Fire tornadoes!”
“Run!”
The place was swarming with people who had been summoned just as abruptly as Han Min-o.
The fire-laden tornadoes engulfed them in moments.
“Aaaaagh!”
“Help me!!”
No matter how he thought about it, this was no dream.
It was real.
Han Min-o instinctively pushed himself to his feet.
And began running like a madman.
‘Could this really be… an Abyss?’
The random twenty percent who had never entered a dungeon before.
He had been chosen from among them.
Within moments of entry, dozens had fallen before his eyes alone.
They were caught in the tornadoes or burned alive, their screams trailing behind as they perished.
Whoosh!
Whirrr!
After running for some time, massive lizards appeared.
The flame lizards, their backs blazing with fire, flicked their tongues and snatched up the fleeing people.
Han Min-o immediately changed course, heading eastward.
“Keke.”
“Kekeke.”
At that mocking sound, floating skulls materialized from the empty air.
The skulls spewed flames from their mouths, burning people to ash.
Screams echoed from all directions.
‘This… this is hell.’
Only then did Han Min-o grasp the reality.
This place was a living nightmare.
Only one direction remained.
West.
“Graaaah!”
“Shriek! Shriek!”
The moment they headed west, zombies appeared.
The peculiarity was that their heads were nothing but bare skulls.
They looked like those skeletons from the east had evolved, inhabiting the bodies of corpses.
‘Military uniforms? What, soldier zombies?’
Most of the zombies wore military fatigues.
Soldiers who’d ventured into the dungeon long ago and met violent deaths.
Now transformed into zombies, they swarmed Han Min-o from all sides.
“No, no! Don’t come near! Stay back!”
Han Min-o, sprawled on the ground, screamed with tears and snot streaming down his face.
He was terrified. He didn’t want to die.
Never in his life had he felt fear of this magnitude.
“Please, please save me…”
“Want to live?”
“…!”
At the sound of a voice beside him, Han Min-o’s gaze snapped sideways.
A demon with a backpack was now standing within arm’s reach.
Black skin, horns jutting from its forehead, two wings folded at its back—it could be nothing but a demon.
The demon introduced itself.
“I am the great merchant Dagon. If your payment is sufficient, I can even resurrect you from death.”
The merchant calling himself Dagon smiled.
Han Min-o desperately seized Dagon’s feet.
“Money—I can give you all the money you want. You can speak to my father. He’s the chairman of Han Yeon Group, my father!”
“Money? That’s the most worthless thing in the Abyss.”
“Then—what should I offer you?”
“First, your ten fingers.”
“…What?”
“Don’t like it? Right now, all you can pay with is your body.”
“No, no! If it means I can live, my fingers are nothing—!”
Slash!
The sound of something being severed.
Thud!
All ten fingers fell in a line on the ground.
“Ahhhhhhh!”
Han Min-o dropped to his knees, groaning in agony.
Dagon picked up the ten severed fingers.
“Hmm, the value is only twenty? That’s far short.”
“What—what do you mean—!”
“Your body is too weak. As collateral, it’s worthless.”
“But you said you’d save me—”
“I said ‘first,’ didn’t I? It looks like I’ll need both your arms to make this a fair deal.”
He seemed entranced.
Han Min-o found himself nodding without thought.
“Yes, yes, I understand. Take my arms too, just please—”
Rip!
It was surreal.
Dagon grabbed both of Han Min-o’s arms and tore them off.
“Aaaahhhhh!”
The pain was so overwhelming that Han Min-o’s eyes rolled back in his head.
Dagon merely shrugged.
“Sorry. Both arms are worth only fifty. Perhaps your heart would be enough?”
It was sophistry. Pure nonsense.
A human cannot live without a heart.
If Han Min-o surrendered his heart, the only thing he would gain was death.
A choice between dying at the demon’s hands or dying to the zombies.
“Does it hurt? I could kill you painlessly in exchange for everything you’ve already given me, if you’d like.”
“Ahhh…”
It hurt.
This pain was unlike anything he’d ever known.
If only he could escape this agony, he felt he would do anything.
It seemed a hundred times preferable to being devoured by zombies.
“Please, I beg you······!”
“You?”
Dagon bared his sharp teeth and laughed with grotesque delight.
Go ahead, ask me to kill you.
If you plead for death, the bargain with the demon will be sealed.
“Kill me······!”
“Stop.”
It was then.
Someone appeared and cut off Han Min-o’s words.
As if rising from the ground itself, sudden and without warning.
“······What? Where did you come from? Did you use Invisibility Magic?”
Even Dagon could only tilt his head in confusion.
Full-body invisibility was quite an advanced spell.
Yet Invisibility Magic didn’t erase one’s presence.
An existence that appeared without the faintest trace.
Park Chan-woo glanced down at the unconscious Han Min-o once more, then spoke toward Dagon.
“Isn’t saving yourself from this situation worth enough?”
“You appear out of nowhere spouting nonsense. What do you mean, ‘save myself from this’?”
“I could have raised a wall or created a defensive barrier to keep the zombies at bay.”
“Listen. Value changes by the moment. A dying human has nothing of worth to offer.”
“A corpse that was going to die anyway?”
Screech!
The brilliant Anubis emerged from his pant leg and immediately unleashed Gigantification, driving the zombies back.
“Looks like he won’t die after all.”
······
Dagon was left speechless.
True to the words, the future he had foreseen had changed.
And if the future had changed, that meant—
“I see. I was mistaken. I didn’t anticipate someone like you would appear.”
The value of the two arms severed from Han Min-o had changed as well.
The deal itself was no longer necessary.
Park Chan-woo spoke with deliberate precision.
“The deal is void. Reattach the arms and fingers you cut off immediately.”
······
He was right.
To nullify the deal, the arms had to be reattached at once.
And to immediately rejoin completely severed arms and fingers, at minimum a High-Rank Elixir would be required.
Yet the arithmetic didn’t work in his favor.
Only deals of Equal-Value Exchange were permitted—an absolute rule.
And even Dagon could not escape the grip of that absolute rule.
‘To raise Merchant Rank, I must complete as many transactions as possible.’
Even demon merchants had ranks.
And at present, Dagon’s rank was ‘Ascendant.’
It was a fairly high rank among the demon merchants here, but fell short of being called ‘Great Merchant.’
Which was why he forced himself to complete transactions with humans.
A merchant’s rank could rise according to the ‘value’ of deals conducted.
‘The problem is, if I obtain a High-Rank Elixir, my rank might actually fall.’
Naturally, to cover up the mistake and acquire a High-Rank Elixir, Dagon would have to pay equivalent value.
A merchant’s worth was solely tied to rank, and a High-Rank Elixir was a difficult item to obtain.
There was no avoiding the grimace that twisted Dagon’s expression.
Meanwhile, Park Chan-woo opened his mouth with an impassive face.
“Why are you just standing there?”
······
“If this man dies like this, your standing as a merchant will be revoked.”
······!
For the first time, Dagon’s eyes trembled visibly.
The man before him seemed to know even the rules governing merchants themselves.
“You······ How does a human know the rules of merchants? What are you?”
His voice carried something close to rage.
Park Chan-woo let out a quiet laugh.
‘Just as expected.’
Every demon merchant, Dagon included, prowled the dungeon with ravenous eyes.
Each one hungry to extract as much ‘value’ as possible from every human they encountered.
They were forcing through deals, lining their own pockets in the process.
Climb high enough in Merchant Rank—become a truly ‘great merchant’—and you’d stand as an equal to the lords of the Abyss itself.
But unchecked greed invites ruin.
Dagon was living proof.
“Curious how I know your rules? Information like this doesn’t come cheap. Though I’m not certain you possess the ‘value’ to pay for it.”
He turned the tables, proposing a deal with a subtle provocation.
A question: did this creature have the ‘value’ needed to purchase information?
He was skilled at this.
Trading with demons.
Though Dagon couldn’t fathom where this human had come from, he studied Park Chan-woo with narrowed eyes.
It felt, somehow, like facing another demon.
‘He must have bought this information from another demon merchant.’
Dagon was certain of it.
The human had surely asked some other demon merchant to teach him the merchants’ rules.
Explaining the basic rules would cost no more than a Unique-grade piece of equipment.
And now the human was using that knowledge as leverage—blackmail.
He’d been hiding, waiting for Dagon to slip up. There was no doubt of it.
‘He’s showing me he knows the rules through this “trade,” and now he means to extract my value as the price for keeping quiet about his advantage?’
It seemed clear: the human planned to exploit the informational advantage of knowing the rules, then strip Dagon bare.
Quite a brazen little scheme.
But still.
Dagon smiled inwardly and spoke.
“Very well. I’ll trade value in exchange for the information. Now answer me—who told you about the merchants’ rules?”
He’d accepted the deal.
The fact that Dagon accepted the counteroffer spoke volumes; this human was impressive indeed.
Anyone capable of approaching unseen and startling him clearly possessed considerable value.
Once Dagon extracted this human’s value and used it to purchase a High-Rank Elixir, he could easily cover his own misstep.
That was the true purpose of this trade.
‘Fool. He doesn’t even know about the Non-Disclosure Clause.’
Information like this usually came with a Non-Disclosure Clause attached.
Most contract terms were written in Demon Language, so unless humans possessed Translation Magic, they’d never know what they were agreeing to.
But he could guess the contents well enough without reading them.
‘There would be a clause written in Demon Language stating that revealing the merchant’s name would trigger a breach penalty—ten times the original value.’
That was standard contract law among merchants.
And Dagon could use that to his advantage.
He’d demand half the penalty value as his own reward—for keeping the secret or erasing the relevant memories.
‘The moment you speak that merchant’s name, you’re finished.’
Once the human accepted, it was sealed.
The fool probably thought he could threaten his way out. He was badly mistaken.
He’d fallen into his own trap.
Of course, the more powerful the entity who’d shared the information, the steeper the penalty would be.
But Dagon remained convinced it had been another demon merchant.
That was when it happened.
Hhh.
Park Chan-woo twisted one corner of his mouth into an open smile.
“Sephiro.”
…Sephiro?
Dagon tilted his head.
That wasn’t a name among the demon merchants.
Yet it felt familiar somehow.
It was certainly an uncommon name.
‘Could it be…?’
In that instant, a single being flickered through Dagon’s mind.
But that was impossible.
There was no way a mere human could know that name.
And even if it were true, an entity of that stature would never bother teaching a human the rules of demon merchants…
《The assessment of information value begins.》
《The information has been verified as genuine.》
《The transaction is concluded.》
《The estimated value of this information is no less than 20,000,000 points.》
《Dagon remits payment.》

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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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