The All-Time Best Talent was F-Class Purification - Chapter 104

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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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104
Chapter 104 – An Elite Talent Awakened as an F-Rank Purifier
I felt sweat beads trailing down my chin as I drew in the shallowest of breaths, rolling only my eyes to begin dissecting the situation below in meticulous detail.
The massive water-cooled cooling fans and the white noise of the servers created an environment where even the faintest footsteps or friction sounds would be completely swallowed. Yet the concealment of noise hardly made infiltration easy.
‘There’s no blind spot in their field of vision.’
The thirty guards maintained their positions so that not a single one fully exposed their back to another. Their lines of sight intersected like a spider’s web, each guard’s vision overlapping with another’s. Even if I silently snapped one guard’s neck, the corpse would be spotted by an adjacent guard’s vision in less than a second.
I decomposed the deployment once more in my mind. The corridor spacing between server rows was approximately two meters. The average distance between each guard was four meters. Centered around Ryu Jin-hwan’s isolation chamber, they were arranged in two concentric rings—an inner ring and an outer ring.
Twelve in the inner ring, eighteen in the outer ring. Regardless of which direction we approached from, the inner ring would react before we breached the outer ring, and the moment the inner ring reacted, an alarm would flash directly to Ryu Jin-hwan’s brain.
And when I examined the back of the guards’ helmets closely, I could see thin optical cables connected to each one, leading down to the main server on the floor.
‘Biometric signal synchronization…’
I clenched my teeth. The system was designed so that the moment any guard’s heart stopped or their brainwaves ceased, an alarm would immediately trigger in Ryu Jin-hwan’s isolation chamber. The instant his heart rate spiked, either lethal neurotoxin would be dispersed throughout this entire room or all the data in the main server would be completely erased.
‘Brute force won’t work. I need to do this in one move, perfectly controlled.’
I gestured very subtly toward my teammates hanging behind me. Five pairs of eyes converged on a single point.
“Eun-ha.”
I whispered in a voice barely audible to the ear.
“That special shielded glass where Ryu Jin-hwan is. It blocks electromagnetic waves but light passes through. Could you use your thermal manipulation to heat the air around that glass chamber in a circular pattern and refract the light? While we handle those guards outside, could you make it look like a mirage—as if the guards inside are still standing perfectly still?”
Seo Eun-ha’s eyes narrowed slightly. The mind of an S-Rank mage finished its rapid calculations, and a brief silence fell.
“Perfect visual illusions aren’t my specialty. But I should be able to create afterimages by twisting the temperature differential on the glass surface to an extreme degree.”
“What’s the other problem?”
“To maintain the afterimages of thirty people simultaneously, all my concentration would be focused there. Three minutes at most. Anything longer is impossible.”
“Three minutes is enough.”
Park Jae-jung spoke up quietly, continuing my thought.
“Really, Guild Master? Thirty of them?”
“If I block that cable problem, it should be possible.”
I gestured with my chin toward the thick orange optical cable bundle running down the ventilation shaft wall. It was the main data pathway through which the guards’ biometric signals entered Ryu Jin-hwan’s chamber.
“If I use purification to continuously wash away the alarm signals generated when a heart stops, Ryu Jin-hwan’s brain will only ever receive the signal that everything is normal.”
Han Su-jin asked anxiously.
“Can you maintain that while fighting simultaneously?”
“Eun-ha’s mirage and my cable filtering both need to run at the same time. Su-jin, please wait above and support Eun-ha’s mana so it doesn’t waver. The three of us will go down and handle it.”
Han Su-jin hesitated for a moment, but then nodded.
Han Ae-ri was already gazing downward with her twin blades loosely gripped. Her eyes spoke instead of words. She was ready.
I removed my gloves and placed my bare hands on the orange cable bundle.
Pure white mana seeped into the cable’s insulation and dissolved into the flow of data. I wasn’t severing the line. I was sensing the exact moments when alarm packets flowed through and making them disappear in real-time before they could reach Ryu Jin-hwan’s brain. My mana core throbbed painfully. I would need to maintain this while fighting simultaneously. I had no certainty it was possible, but this was the only option available.
“Let’s begin.”
Seo Eun-ha closed both her eyes and directed her hands downward.
There was no sound, no light. But the air around the shielded glass of the isolation chamber where Ryu Jin-hwan sat began to distort slowly like heat shimmer. The refraction rate of light passing through the glass was forcibly twisted, and in Ryu Jin-hwan’s vision, the thirty guards who had been standing moments before were now fixed like an eternally frozen photograph.
The illusion was complete.
I silently deactivated the mana stone that powered the ventilation shaft cover’s bolts, lifted the cover, and simultaneously threw myself, Han Ae-ri, and Park Jae-jung into the void toward the server room floor fifty meters below.
Even the sound of cutting through air was a luxury we couldn’t afford.
The first to touch the floor was Han Ae-ri herself—darkness incarnate. She landed like a feather on the antistatic mat covering the server room floor, then sprang forward like a coiled spring, attaching herself to the back of the first Armored Guard.
Thwick. Thud.
Han Ae-ri’s curved daggers in both hands sliced through the most vulnerable seam at the neck of the armored suit like paper, severing the cervical spine.
Before a suppressed sound could escape the guard’s lips, Han Ae-ri’s body rotated and her left foot kicked the back of the second guard’s knee, buckling it, and before his jaw touched the floor, the second dagger pierced his brain stem. The signature technique of a slasher that rendered rank differences meaningless.
Two silent deaths in just 2 seconds.
On the right flank, Park Jae-jung was in motion.
With a faint thud, Park Jae-jung landed without deploying his Gigas Shield, and the moment the third guard reflexively turned his head, Park Jae-jung’s massive hands clamped down hard on both sides of the guard’s helmet.
Crack.
A bone-chilling sound. The helmet, supposedly made from tank armor plating, crumpled like clay as the guard’s neck bones were completely pulverized. Park Jae-jung used the falling corpse as a shield and charged forward, driving his fist into the fourth guard’s sternum. The dull sound of shattering bone was swallowed by the cooling fan noise, leaving no trace.
I descended into the center of the main area.
The fifth guard’s gaze caught my landing. His muscles began to contract as he raised the mana rifle and pulled the trigger.
‘Too slow.’
Twisting my torso to deflect the barrel, I drew Shadow’s Fang and stabbed it into the seam of the guard’s chest plate. Purification waves flowed along the blade, incinerating the A-rank combat mana roiling in his dantian into white smoke. Stripped of his mana, the guard became a scarecrow trapped in heavy armor and collapsed to the floor.
The sixth guard swung a mana sword from the side. I stepped back, deflected the blade, then grabbed the inside of his wrist and destroyed his balance. I forced him to his knees and pressed my palm against the side of his helmet.
Screeeech.
Purification waves pierced through the helmet and obliterated his mana circuits. The guard crumpled.
The seventh and eighth guards rushed at me simultaneously. I instantly calculated the angle of their coordinated assault. The right one was 0.2 seconds faster. I grabbed the right guard’s wrist and pushed him toward the left one. In the moment they tangled, I leaped onto the left guard’s back, wrapped my arm around his neck, and squeezed. The instant consciousness faded, I channeled purification to annihilate his mana as well. Using his falling body as a springboard, I brought my dagger’s pommel down on the right guard’s helmet.
Both collapsed silently to the floor.
The mana core maintaining the cable filtering throbbed increasingly. The dual burden of combat and filtering simultaneously was heating my temples intensely. But I couldn’t stop. If even one alarm packet leaked to Ryu Jin-hwan, everything would be over.
The stench of blood spread through the server room’s dry air.
Each time Han Ae-ri’s daggers danced, ash-gray armored figures clutched their necks and fell. Each time Park Jae-jung’s fists cut through the air, helmets crumpled. I destroyed the mana of each target before their blood droplets even touched the floor.
1 minute.
By the time one-third of the 3 minutes Seo Eun-ha had promised had elapsed, twenty-nine of the thirty guards lay sprawled across the floor.
But one. The last guard bearing the Squad Leader insignia had noticed something was wrong. He abandoned his weapon and clasped both hands together, beginning to chant a massive explosion spell, exploiting the blind spot our three had momentarily created.
Whiiiiiing—!
Between his hands, a cyan high-density mana sphere swirled and compressed. If that detonated, Seo Eun-ha’s mirage would be blown away, and half the main server would go with it.
The distance was too far. Neither Han Ae-ri nor Park Jae-jung could reach in time—we were 1 second short.
I pushed my leg muscles to their limit, kicked off the floor, and shot toward him.
“Graaaah—!”
The Squad Leader let out a desperate roar and tried to slam the mana sphere into the floor. In that instant, my left hand wrapped around both his hands and plunged into the center of the mana sphere just before detonation.
Screeeeeech—!
My palm collided head-on with the cyan mana sphere. The destructive energy that had been about to explode was caught in my purification light, lost its direction, and shrieked. Clenching my teeth, I forcibly decomposed the massive A-rank mana and drew it into my dantian.
“Cough…!”
A hollow gasp escaped the Squad Leader’s lips. He had witnessed the mana he’d squeezed out with his life force melting like cotton candy in my hand and evaporating.
I placed my right hand over the helmet visor of the guard, now staggering without his mana.
“Sleep quietly.”
Pure white light flowed through the helmet. The Squad Leader’s body went rigid like a log, then collapsed to the floor like a puppet with its strings cut.
Situation concluded. Exactly 2 minutes 10 seconds.
I released the cable. Simultaneously, I deactivated the cable filtering. My throbbing mana core flared hot, and I wiped the sweat from my temples with my sleeve.
From the ventilation shaft above, Seo Eun-ha breathed heavily and dispelled her mirage spell. As the illusion lifted, the silhouette of Ryu Jin-hwan sitting obliviously in his chair beyond the shielded glass became clearly visible.
The floor of the main server room resembled hell—thirty ash-gray corpses and a pool of dark crimson blood. Not a single drop of our blood had been spilled.
Seo Eun-ha and Han Su-jin carefully descended along the pipe and joined me. Seo Eun-ha leaned against Han Su-jin’s shoulder, catching her breath. For having endured three minutes, her expression remained composed, though both her hands trembled faintly.
“You did well.”
Han Su-jin quietly patted Seo Eun-ha’s back.
I stood before the shielded glass wall.
I placed my bare hand over the mana stone that controlled the locking mechanism. A wave of purification flowed into it, and the mana stone quietly deactivated. The lock disengaged silently.
I grasped the door handle and opened it slowly, very gently.
Shuuuu.
As the door opened with the distinctive pressure-regulation sound of an isolation chamber, cool, perfectly sterilized air brushed against my cheek. Mingled with the cold were the faint scent of electronic equipment and the peculiar body odor that humans emit after prolonged confinement in an enclosed space.
I walked silently across the carpet until I stood directly behind Ryu Jin-hwan’s chair.
Up close, it became clearer. The thick mana nerve cables embedded in the back of his neck were not two—they were three. Minute vibrations of mana flowed ceaselessly through them. A sign that hyper-parallel computation was running at full capacity. On the hologram screen, biological experiment data smuggled from Dominion Hospital and dozens of account flows through which Blue Tower’s black funds were being laundered updated in real time.
The original data that had been stored in the memory chip was here.
I drew the short blade from my waist again and lightly tapped one of the cable bundles connected to Ryu Jin-hwan’s spine with the flat of the blade.
“…?”
Ryu Jin-hwan’s eyes, which had been moving frantically, stopped.
The flow of air. A subtle sense of wrongness. In that moment, his brain—performing hyper-parallel computation despite being a non-combatant—registered the fact that someone stood behind him.
His stiffened neck barely managed to turn.
The moment his pale face, bloodless lips, and those eyes that moved at an inhuman speed caught sight of me, his pupils contracted to pinpricks.
And beyond the glass window: the server room where thirty of his elite guards lay sprawled in blood-red pools.
Ryu Jin-hwan’s lips moved soundlessly. No words emerged. Every possible escape route his brilliant mind calculated through hyper-parallel computation was being systematically eliminated, one after another.
The option of elevating heart rate to disperse neurotoxin.
But that method was already too late. The moment I seized control of the cables, that option was purified away as well.
The option of rushing toward the emergency exit. Park Jae-jung stood before the door with his arms crossed. The option of sending a distress signal. Seo Eun-ha had already quietly severed the communication mana stone on the outer wall.
The calculation was complete.
“Good day to you, Director.”
My pale, cool smile, and beyond the glass window: a mountain of thirty corpses.
Ryu Jin-hwan’s pupils dilated as if they might tear. The fortress he had built his entire life upon corrupted data was crumbling silently, without so much as a single alarm.

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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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