The 100th Regression of the Max-Level Player - Chapter 323
—————
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 323
323. Resonant Echo
“Seo A-rin!”
“Yes?”
Min Ju-ri urgently sought out Seo A-rin.
“What if we use Resonant Echo to block the next attack? We could line up summons like a wall.”
“Ah…!”
Min Ju-ri’s idea was simple.
Line up summons like a wall, then use Seo A-rin’s maxed-out skill, Resonant Echo, to make them invincible.
Then couldn’t we block an area attack even once?
It was an idea born from such reasoning.
“So you’re saying we use invincible summons as a shield?”
“Exactly. If we use Yamtti’s monsters and John Delgado’s summons, we should be able to protect everyone here.”
It was a viable method.
Before coming here, we’d tested and confirmed that both Yamtti’s monsters and John Delgado’s summons became invincible.
“Sounds good. Let’s try Min Ju-ri’s method. Yamtti! John Delgado!”
“What is it?”
“…?”
Seo A-rin explained Min Ju-ri’s method to the two she’d called.
Both of them nodded simultaneously as if they’d made a pact.
“Not a bad strategy.”
“Since Black Scythe is working so hard to protect us, we should do something too.”
“But will the summons be able to block attacks like light?”
“We’ll just have to pack them as densely as possible.”
“What’s the cooldown on Resonant Echo?”
“One hour. We won’t be able to use it twice.”
“We can block it once then.”
“There’s no time. Let’s start right now.”
The four whose opinions aligned executed their strategy without hesitation.
“Roooaaarrr!”
Yamtti’s monsters, including the Three-Headed Dragon, were summoned in succession.
John Delgado summoned Archangel Sariel, nine Demon Nobility, and dozens of Undead Servants without falling behind.
Seo A-rin also added her own summons, though fewer in number, and gathered the players.
“Everyone gather over here!”
“We’re making a wall with summons. Everyone hide behind it!”
Large summons were positioned in front while smaller ones filled the gaps between them.
Arranged in rows like that, the summons formed a sturdy wall.
A wall capable of blocking even a barrage of area attacks.
“Has everyone moved behind the summons?”
“Yes! All 61 people accounted for!”
At Yamtti’s word that she was ready, Seo A-rin watched tensely as Angel was being slashed by Black Scythe.
‘Resonant Echo’s invincibility window lasts five seconds. I need to time it perfectly.’
Depending on my skill’s timing, everyone could survive—or we could all be annihilated.
Seo A-rin’s wide eyes tracked Angel’s every movement, refusing to miss a single detail.
* * *
Screech—!
Crimson blood sprayed as Artaros’s head was severed.
But it reattached as if it were a lie, and using the brief moment of invincibility, he inched forward bit by bit.
A sight I’d grown weary of witnessing.
‘Damn it. Soon his fourth area attack will be ready.’
I could dodge at high speed, but the others couldn’t.
‘Should I use the Light-Speed Rune now?’
I’d wanted to save it for emergencies, but shouldn’t I use it now to save everyone?
Screech—!
I severed his neck again to block Artaros from approaching my allies.
The moment I turned my head to gauge the distance between us.
An unexpected sight entered Ryu Min’s eyes.
‘What are they doing? They’ve clustered the summoned creatures together?’
Confirming the sixty-one players hiding behind the summoned creatures as shields, Ryu Min immediately grasped the strategy.
‘Are they trying to block it with Resonant Echo?’
Sure enough, reading Seo A-rin’s thoughts at the front, it was exactly as he suspected.
‘Min Ju-ri’s idea? That’s a rather clever thought.’
Ryu Min chuckled softly, read Artaros’s thoughts, and realized the area attack was ready.
[Foolish humans. Gathered in one place so conveniently for slaughter. Then I shall grant your wish.]
“Now, Seo A-rin!”
[Celestial Wrath.]
Did she respond to Ryu Min’s voice?
Or was she going to use it anyway?
Seo A-rin activated Resonant Echo before the area attack reached them, rendering the summoned creatures invincible.
Kwaaaaaaaa—!
A brilliant light spread with such fierce intensity it seemed to incinerate everything, yet it could not penetrate the invincible summoned creatures.
The players behind them were equally protected.
As the storm passed, the players who had been huddled like turtles lifted their heads.
“W-we survived.”
“We did it!”
The group erupted in cheers.
They had withstood the area attack without taking any damage.
For Artaros, who had expected them all to die in a heap, it was utterly absurd.
[So you endured by making your summoned creatures invincible. I’ll grant you that cleverness. But your deaths are merely a matter of time….]
Scrape—!
“We’ll only know if it’s a matter of time by watching.”
The head that had rolled from Ryu Min’s scythe returned to its original position along with a flash of light.
I couldn’t help but grow weary of this.
‘I blocked it once, but what comes next is the problem.’
The fifth, sixth, and seventh times.
Could I block all the area-of-effect attacks?
Watching Artaros chant his incantations as if to prove a point, Ryu Min felt a surge of impatience.
Scrape—!
‘I killed forty of them with that last scythe strike.’
By calculation, stats that were at 100% had now dropped to 1.65%.
At this level, his power had weakened tremendously, yet he remained a threat to the other players.
‘For him to stop being a threat, his stats would need to drop to one-millionth.’
To achieve that, I’d need to kill him ninety-two more times.
‘I won’t be able to block the area attacks until then. Now is the perfect timing to attempt this.’
Believing I had killed him enough, I resolved to execute the plan I had prepared.
‘Rune of Chains. Binding.’
Whoooosh—
Instead of killing Artaros, I summoned chains to suppress him.
His arms and legs were bound by chains that burst from the Space of Nothingness, pulled taut.
[What are you doing? You think you can restrain me with something like this?]
As Artaros exerted force, the chains rattled and shifted.
‘The description says the chain’s durability is infinite, so there’s no risk of it breaking, but….’
That didn’t mean it could actually restrain the opponent.
If he pulled with enough strength, that would be the end of it.
Snip—snip—snip!
I severed the tendons in his limbs so he couldn’t exert force.
Additionally, I also slashed out his eyes.
Crimson blood sprayed, but as if accustomed to pain, his body didn’t even flinch.
[Blocking movement and obscuring vision? What’s the point of that?]
‘There’s a point. He won’t be able to slow down time.’
However, I didn’t make the mistake of revealing my intentions by providing unnecessary information.
I simply pulled items from my inventory in silence, without a single word of response.
If I made a mistake, the opportunity would slip away.
[What are you doing?]
Artaros furrowed his brow, apparently watching through his Clairvoyance.
[What kind of item is that? What exactly are you doing?]
“What am I doing, you ask?”
My hand grasped Artaros’s jaw.
“You’ll see.”
[W-what…!]
To anyone watching, it was clear he intended to force-feed the item.
Naturally, Artaros—who had no intention of consuming such a suspicious substance—thrashed against his restraints.
But the taut chains held him immobile.
Even with stats exceeding two hundred million, he couldn’t budge an inch.
‘Well, I reduced it to 1.65%, so it should be around three million.’
Even so, it was a stat pool not to be dismissed.
It would have been insufficient to break free from the chains alone, but severing the tendons in his limbs had been decisive.
Uuuuuung—
Divine power erupted across Artaros’s entire body.
It was a technique I’d witnessed before—Blazing Radiance—a buff that enhanced stats by fifty percent.
[Noooo!]
He activated the buff and desperately shook his body, making it abundantly clear he would never willingly consume this, but the chains remained unyielding.
‘Had his stats remained intact, he might have broken free through sheer force. But now…’
Weakened as I was, I had no choice but to remain bound and swallow this mysterious potion.
I shook the potion directly into Artaros’s mouth and forced his jaw shut.
Clack—!
“Don’t spit it out. Swallow it.”
I kept his jaw clamped tight so he couldn’t open his mouth, but Artaros merely held the liquid in his mouth without swallowing.
I immediately struck his uvula with a knife-hand strike, and his throat convulsed—gulp—as he swallowed.
“Good. That’s how you do it.”
Having successfully forced the potion down Artaros’s throat, I finally let my lips curve into a smile.
What I’d fed him was none other than a Memory Erasure Potion.
‘Thank goodness I had one more potion left.’
I grinned as I watched Artaros’s eyes widen in panic.
“That look in your eyes suggests you think I’ve poisoned you. You’re wrong. What I gave you is a potion that erases memories—a miraculous elixir capable of reducing even the God of War himself to an idiot.”
[….]
“So stop resisting and accept your fate. Soon enough, you won’t even remember who you are.”
Artaros lost consciousness before he could respond.
And in that same moment, time was granted to me.
Time to sift through Artaros’s memories and erase them.
* * *
The Rune of True Thoughts could extract not merely the target’s conscious mind, but even the imagery hidden deep within their unconscious.
It was undoubtedly a cheat of a rune when it came to information gathering, but that didn’t mean I could excavate every detail of a person’s past.
‘But the Memory Erasure Potion makes it possible.’
This potion, which allowed me to delete memories from those who consumed it at will, granted me the ability to sift through Artaros’s entire existence like watching a film.
How he, born as one of the Celestial Tribe, ascended to godhood and reached his current station.
‘He was a case of exceptional performance in the Heavenly Demon War, catching the eye of the Creator God and ascending to divinity.’
Among the Celestial Tribe and gods, Artaros was a prodigy.
A true genius of combat.
He had been so formidable that no god could match him, and having seized both power and glory at such a young age, his arrogance only swelled.
Perhaps that was why.
Calamity struck from an unexpected quarter.
Intoxicated by strength, he touched what should never be touched—Earth.
‘He touched Earth, a dimension forbidden even among the gods, and received a human’s curse in return? That curse of immortality?’
It was hard to believe that a mere human could inflict such a curse, yet it was true.
As a result of becoming undying, Artaros’s pride was shattered like a delinquent receiving proper discipline….
‘There was a backstory—his emotions had worn away from countless cycles of death.’
One might ask what curse there was in gaining an eternal, immortal body, but that was the talk of those who had never experienced it.
All existence marks the end of life with death, concluding their long journey.
But Artaros had to continue his journey forever.
Against his will, living through endless ages.
It was a life even Artaros did not desire.
That’s why he committed countless acts of self-harm in attempts to die.
‘Yet he could not die. No matter how many hundreds or thousands of times he perished, he would resurrect.’
Unable to endure it any longer, he sought out the human who had cursed him, begging desperately for release….
But humans proved surprisingly petty.
It went without saying that Artaros beat the ground in regret.
‘When you think about it, he was a pitiable creature.’
As Ryu Min reading Artaros’s memories, I could understand his emotional state all the more deeply.
‘Regardless, I have no intention of showing mercy.’
My plan to end this crisis by completely erasing his memories remained unchanged.
Still, reading through his memories was necessary.
Through his recollections, I intended to discover how to dismantle the Space of Nothingness and pass Round 20.
And moreover, to learn the identity of the one who had given him orders.
‘It’s probably the god called Nyx.’
As I sifted through the past with that thought, I discovered Nyx’s face.
The Primordial God appeared to be none other than her.
‘But… there’s one more person?’
—————
This chapter was translated by Lunox Novels. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
—————