The 100th Regression of the Max-Level Player - Chapter 322

—————
This chapter was translated by Lunox Novels. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
—————

The Maxed-Out Player’s 100th Return – Episode 322
322. The Wrath of a Divine Being
Whoooosh—
The scythe, cradling flames from the Branches of Inferno, tore through Artaros’s limbs.
His body, unable to react before death claimed him, rewound through time and clung to me as if to prove a point.
[You’re fast. Faster and stronger than before. I suppose your allies granted you buffs?]
As Artaros muttered, he suddenly transformed the entire surroundings into a pristine white expanse.
[You have entered the Space of Nothingness.]
[No external buffs apply within this space.]
[How do you like this?]
“What… what is this?”
“Where are we?”
“Why did the Hall turn pure white?”
“More importantly, what does this message mean? Buffs don’t apply here?”
“I… my buffs have lock icons on them!”
“Same here!”
“The buffs aren’t working!”
Ignoring the panicked voices around me, I opened my status window.
Bless, Swiftness, Safety Barrier, Saint’s Blessing, Double Buff—everything was locked.
All my active buffs had been sealed.
My stats had plummeted to a quarter of their original values.
[You’ve experienced this before, haven’t you? In this space I created, no buffs function.]
“Of course.”
[Then you understand you cannot escape until I release this barrier.]
“I know. But what does that matter?”
Though my buffs were rendered useless and I was trapped in the Space of Nothingness, my momentum never faltered.
“If I can’t kill you, there’s no winning anyway. So what’s a barrier compared to that? Besides…”
[Death’s Aura activates.]
[The target’s all stats decrease by 50%.]
I halved Artaros’s stats and dove in before he could blink.
“Buffs or no buffs, what does it matter?”
Thwack—!
The scythe pierced straight through Artaros’s heart.
“Do you really think you can beat me?”
As Artaros revived once more, a hint of surprise crossed his expression.
[Remarkable. Even without buffs, you’re several times stronger than when I last saw you.]
It had to be. I’d accumulated stats by slaying Michael and the Angels.
That was the source of my power.
[I know you’re stronger than me. I’ve lost thirty-one times—there’s no denying it. And in just this brief span, you’ve already died twice. The 10% penalty is becoming bitter to swallow. But…]
Artaros’s eyes blazed with violet light.
[Giving me time to converse with you was your mistake….]
“Mistake? What do you mean?”
Artaros’s eyes widened in shock as he whirled around.
Using a blink skill, Ryu Min had already repositioned behind him and slashed at his neck.
“You were trying to slow time again, weren’t you? But here’s the thing—I’ve figured out that it doesn’t work unless you make eye contact.”
During our last battle, I had fallen victim to his technique and nearly had my memories erased.
But I was not the kind of person to fall for the same technique twice.
‘This isn’t time stop at all. It’s a technique that makes an opponent’s time move extremely slowly when their eyes meet his.’
In other words, simply avoiding eye contact would prevent it from working.
Since I knew when he would activate the technique through the rune of foresight, countering it was not difficult.
“Did you think I’d fall for it again?”
[To grasp the essence of a technique after experiencing it only once. You’re certainly no ordinary human.]
Artaros, having already completed his body’s restoration, smiled as if offering praise.
But it didn’t take long to realize it was mockery, not commendation.
[You cannot defeat me. Do you know why?]
Ryu Min slashed at Artaros as if he had no interest in hearing the reason.
The man, already dead four times, was engulfed in brilliant light and resurrected once more.
[Because you are a human susceptible to emotion.]
Artaros began chanting a spell.
I already knew what spell it was through reading his thoughts.
A large-scale area spell: [Divine Wrath].
It was a spell that would incinerate all living creatures within a 100-meter radius alive.
‘This bastard can’t kill me, so he’s trying to slaughter the people around me instead.’
Having grasped his intention immediately, Ryu Min killed Artaros once more.
Though the spell was interrupted mid-cast, the resurrecting Artaros remained composed.
[The technique I’m attempting can continue its incantation even after death. And I can chant it during the resurrection process just as easily.]
Clang—! Clang!
Ryu Min swung his scythe, but he could not strike Artaros.
During the three seconds when the creature was resurrecting and his body was being reconstructed, even Ryu Min could not touch him.
[During these three seconds of resurrection….]
Scritch—!
[If I continue chanting the spell….]
Scritch—!
[No matter how many times you kill me….]
Scritch—!
[You cannot stop the spell’s completion.]
Even after killing him eight times, I could not stop Artaros.
The creature’s lips were moving as he prepared to complete the skill.
Ryu Min shouted urgently toward Christine.
“Now!”
[Receive the wrath of the Divine Beings.]
The moment Ryu Min’s cry echoed, light erupted from Artaros’s body.
The radiance that spread outward was so intense it seemed capable of incinerating all living creatures.
Roooaaarrr—!
The damage was so catastrophic that every living being within a hundred-meter radius should have been annihilated.
Yet.
[…!]
Artaros could only spin around in shock, his eyes wide with disbelief.
[What in the—?]
Not a single human had fallen. They all remained standing.
A sight that made him question his own vision.
Then Artaros witnessed golden light shimmer across the humans’ bodies before fading away.
And he understood.
[An area-wide invulnerability skill?]
The Priest’s maxed-out skill, Protect Cell, had shielded all party members.
“Th-thank you so much, Krishi.”
“If you’d been even a moment slower, we’d have been finished.”
The group members offered their gratitude to Christine one after another.
Ryu Min also gave her a nod of approval.
Had his signal been delayed or Christine’s response even slightly slower, a catastrophe would have unfolded.
‘But we’ve only narrowly escaped death once.’
Artaros would attempt his area-wide attack again.
However, Protect Cell carried a cooldown of sixty minutes.
It couldn’t be used twice.
‘I need to kill Artaros as many times as possible to stack penalties and weaken him.’
That way, the damage from his area-wide attack would diminish proportionally.
With that thought, Ryu Min swung his scythe once more.
Shing—!
[Ah, so you’re trying to kill me repeatedly to minimize the damage output. Clever.]
Even as his head flew from his shoulders, Artaros did not lose his smile.
[But it changes nothing. You and your companions are merely delaying the inevitable. Surely you understand that?]
Rather than answer, Ryu Min claimed Artaros’s life.
Though he would resurrect again, this was all I could do.
Stack penalties upon him to drain his strength.
Yet even that offered no guarantee of my allies’ safety.
‘Artaros’s estimated stats are around two hundred million. Even if I reduce them through penalties, I can’t guarantee our team’s survival.’
Two hundred million—even reduced to one percent, that’s still two million.
Players with mere hundreds of stat points couldn’t withstand Artaros’s damage output.
A single grazing blow would be fatal.
Then what if I simply kept killing him?
Why not reduce Artaros’s stats to 0.0001% instead of 1%?
Of course, if I weakened Artaros enough to be manageable against other players, he would no longer pose a threat.
But Ryu Min, having already calculated everything in his mind, remained skeptical.
‘To reduce his stats to 0.0001%—one millionth—I’d need to kill him 122 more times.’
Yet could my allies survive those 122 kills?
Even if I killed him the moment he revived, I’d have to wait three seconds for his body to reconstruct.
In that window, he could chant a spell and cast area-wide attacks at least ten times over.
‘So there’s only one method.’
Just as I conceived a way to interrupt Artaros’s incantation, his second spell completed.
[Perish. Wrath of the Divine.]
The moment light began to radiate—
Thwack!
I kicked Artaros, hurling him a hundred meters away.
Without hesitation.
Kabooom!
The Wrath of the Divine erupted with enough force to dissolve all living creatures within its radius.
Fortunately, no players had entered the blast zone.
[Ah, so you took the hit. I wondered why you didn’t kill me even after my body finished reconstructing—you deliberately kept me alive to knock me away.]
“….”
[But you know as well as I do that you won’t get another chance. From now on, I’ll cast my spell while my body reconstructs.]
I know it too.
The knockback works only once.
If he uses an incantation while invulnerable, I cannot stop it.
‘Yet I can’t simply let him live either. If I don’t kill him, he can approach my allies freely.’
The key is to kill him as much as possible, keeping him away from my comrades.
That way, I can at least restrain him somewhat.
During those three seconds of body reconstruction, he can chant or move, so complete separation is impossible.
‘But that’s the only method to overcome him.’
I swung my scythe and precisely slashed Artaros’s eyes.
He must have felt pain, yet he didn’t cry out once.
[I can sense all your movements even without eyes. Blinding me won’t solve anything.]
Artaros was unmistakably a Divine Being.
He would certainly possess the divine trait of omniscient sight.
[Severing my wings or legs won’t help either. Lifting this body with telekinesis is no difficult feat.]
As he said, even cutting off his limbs wouldn’t immobilize him.
Since his spells weren’t spoken through his mouth, severing his tongue wouldn’t stop him either.
The best I could do now was kill him repeatedly to buy time.
[Soon my third spell will be complete.]
Artaros muttered while moving his body to approach my allies.
Scrape—!
The moment invulnerability ended, I killed him, yet Artaros rose again with a leisurely expression and chanted his completed incantation.
[Wrath of the Divine.]
The third area-of-effect skill detonated.
Unlike before, since he’d cast it while invulnerable, there was no way to push back against it.
Boom—!
Before the skill could fully explode, I’d already hurled my body beyond its range.
No matter how high my stats were, my defense wasn’t equally elevated—if I got caught in that, I wouldn’t escape unscathed either.
“Scatter!”
Before I could even speak, the players were already distancing themselves from Artaros.
They weren’t fools; they could instinctively sense they needed to put space between themselves and the Divine Being.
Yet not everyone managed it.
“Aaaahhhhh!”
“Noooooo!”
Ten players caught in a dead end, unable to escape the blast radius in time, were incinerated alive and vanished.
‘Damn it.’
They died without leaving bodies behind, so I couldn’t resurrect them.
Reviving them wouldn’t help anyway, but they were people I’d brought all the way to Round 20.
It would be a lie to say this didn’t sting.
[How does it feel watching your allies die before your eyes?]
“Shut your mouth!”
My scythe severed Artaros’s neck.
His detached head snapped back into place, and his lips curved into a smile.
[Let me make one prophecy for you.]
“I told you to shut up!”
[You will witness the death of every single one of your allies in this place.]
As Artaros’s head fell away once more, a rare smile played across his face.

* * *
‘Black Scythe….’
Min Ju-ri watched Black Scythe locked in combat with Angel, her expression etched with concern.
In truth, it could hardly be called a battle—the situation was overwhelmingly one-sided.
Black Scythe simply repeated the same devastating motion: severing Angel’s neck with overwhelming force, again and again.
‘And yet we’re still at a disadvantage. There’s nothing we can do.’
She accepted that her buffs had become useless.
The real problem was that Angel resurrected infinitely while occasionally unleashing area-of-effect skills.
‘Black Scythe is killing her as much as possible to prevent her from using skills, but….’
Within those three seconds of resurrection, Angel reformed her body, moved with increasing coordination, and closed the distance.
Each time, the players scattered to avoid the area attacks, but such evasion had its limits in this confined space.
‘This white space isn’t that vast. Eventually, we’ll all perish.’
How could she help Black Scythe?
Was she condemned to merely dodge area attacks and cling to survival?
Then, a brilliant idea suddenly flashed through Min Ju-ri’s mind.

—————
This chapter was translated by Lunox Novels. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
—————