The All-Time Best Talent was F-Class Purification - Chapter 107
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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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107
Chapter 107 – An Elite Talent Awakened as an F-Rank Purifier
In the far reaches of Black Market District 4, beneath Doctor Junk’s abandoned junkyard, lay his underground warehouse.
Doctor Junk extinguished the brilliant arc of his welding torch and wiped the sweat from his brow.
“It’s finished. A masterpiece forged from my very bones.”
At his feet lay five deep-sea tactical pressure suits we had stolen.
For a solid three hours, Doctor Junk had worked without pause, dismantling and reconstructing the suits’ mana circuits while pushing the oxygen conversion efficiency of the gill masks to their absolute limits.
“These were already premium-grade equipment, the pinnacle of Blue Tower’s magitech engineering. But now that my hands have touched them, they’ll protect your bones and organs even in the crushing depths of thousands of meters, against the turbulent currents of core energy. However, your maximum operational window is twelve hours at best. You’ll need to sever their lifeline and escape the water before then.”
“Thank you for your work. This will be more than sufficient.”
I carefully stuffed the modified suits and masks into my backpack and nodded. My teammates likewise secured their equipment and rose to their feet.
Doctor Junk wiped his oil-stained hands on a rough towel and asked, “But how exactly do you plan to reach this Geoje Island or wherever on the South Coast? The Dominion bastards have obliterated every passage connecting the Lower and Middle Districts. You can’t tunnel through the Ground Level. Surely you’re not foolish enough to hijack a transport ship? With Blue Tower ransacked, the entire city’s security posture should be at maximum alert.”
“We won’t resort to crude hijacking. We’re planning to board the safest, quietest, and most legal vessel available.”
I projected Ryu Jin-hwan’s data bank hologram into the warehouse’s empty air. A massive red dot blinked along the perimeter of the glowing blue map.
“Blue Tower is the main logistics center of Blue Tower Organization, as you’re aware. Countless resources produced in Neo Seoul are shipped out to other cities every night via regular cargo vessels. Among them, there’s a massive scheduled transport ship departing in the early dawn hours bound for Neo Busan. We possess the highest security-grade logistics codes that Ryu Jin-hwan once used. We plan to disguise an entire container and quietly fly it to the airspace above Neo Busan.”
Upon hearing my plan, Doctor Junk let out an incredulous laugh.
“So you’re saying you’ll steal security codes from the enemy’s heart and ride the enemy’s ship southward? That’s audacious.”
He stopped laughing and held the data bank in his hand, looking up at us for a moment. His half-destroyed mechanical prosthetic arm tapped quietly against the case’s surface.
“Fine. I’ll take on the task of completely cracking the encryption on this data bank and broadcasting it to the media. While you’re turning the seafloor upside down, I’ll be shattering Blue Tower’s face on the surface. So.”
Doctor Junk placed a cigarette between his lips and added in a low voice,
“Just make sure you come back alive. If my masterpiece rusts away in the water, my pride will be wounded.”
The words were gruff, but the weight behind them was anything but.
We left Doctor Junk in the warehouse and stepped outside.
The relentless acid rain had ceased, and a cool night breeze laden with moisture blew through the thick dark clouds.
Han Ae-ri took the lead, navigating around the patrol drones’ trajectories. Our concealment pendants masked our mana signatures, and Seo Eun-ha synchronized the body heat of our party members with the surrounding air, allowing us to blend seamlessly into the darkness.
Though the city’s security posture was at its peak following Blue Tower’s breach, paradoxically all eyes were turned toward the urban center. We moved through that blind spot, pushing the glittering neon signs and towering skyscrapers of the city behind us as we walked steadily toward the outskirts.
A desolate industrial zone emerged, tangled with rough steel structures and thick pipes. After walking for some time, the dull clang of massive metal chunks colliding filled the air, accompanied by the acrid stench of exhaust and ozone.
Neo Seoul 1st Skyport Dock.
Upon arriving there and gazing beyond the massive windbreak wall, I had to stop in my tracks and part my lips slightly.
“This is… a transport ship?”
Docked there were dozens of massive gray cargo ships, each stretching hundreds of meters—vessels better described as small artificial islands rather than mere boats.
The power sustaining these colossal steel mountain ranges in the air came from hundreds of thousands of high-purity mana stones densely embedded across the lower hull and side armor plates.
After Cataclysm Day, when core energy erupted from the ground and monsters poured forth, humanity climbed higher to survive.
Initially, they connected the buildings on the ground to create the Lower District, but once it was confirmed that monsters couldn’t climb beyond a certain height, people ascended even further.
As ability users emerged and the power of mana stones was revealed, humanity finally succeeded in suspending massive structures themselves in the air using mana stones. Thus the Middle and Upper Levels were born, and the floating cities came into existence.
Beneath the dark night sky, the mana stones densely covering the cargo ships’ hulls simultaneously blazed with brilliant cyan mana light—a surreal spectacle, as if an entire galaxy from the cosmos had been embedded directly onto steel plating.
Uuuuuuuuung—!
At that moment, one of the transport ships docked at the end of the pier began its departure. The light from tens of thousands of mana stones suddenly blazed with blinding intensity, and that colossal artificial island defied gravity, slowly rising into the air.
The transport ship did not linger at Neo Seoul’s altitude. It pierced through the clouds, soaring far higher, and majestically flew southward.
And what captured my gaze even more powerfully was the vast expanse of the outside world stretching beyond those enormous cargo vessels.
And what drew my gaze even more powerfully was the vast, distant landscape of the outside world that stretched beyond those enormous cargo ships.
Beyond the edge of the Sky Dock’s fence, five hundred meters above, lay the grotesque cross-section of a Floating City suspended in the void. I found myself drawn toward the iron railing, leaning over to gaze downward.
An endless, vertiginous precipice stretched before me. Far below, thick and murky Core Gas lay like toxic fog, and between the layers of contamination, the skeletal remains of collapsed skyscrapers from the old era jutted upward like the ribs of a rotting beast, alongside severed highways. The true bedrock of Old Seoul—now an abandoned wasteland transformed into a paradise for monsters. From hundreds of meters below, strange cries seemed to drift upward through the polluted air, faint but unmistakable.
“Wow, our Guild Master. Your eyes are about to pop out of your head.”
Someone tapped my shoulder as I stood transfixed by the view. Seo Eun-ha stood before me with her arms crossed, a smirk playing at the corners of her mouth as she looked up at me.
“This is your first time seeing the landscape outside the Floating City directly, isn’t it? Well, it makes sense—you wouldn’t have had the chance to come to a place like this. You’re drooling, Tae-hyun.”
At her characteristically mocking tone, Park Jae-jung, who stood behind me, covered his mouth with one massive hand and let out a low chuckle.
“I was simply admiring the view.”
I scratched the back of my head awkwardly as I replied.
“During my F-Rank days, my entire existence was confined to surviving in the rat holes of the Lower District. I lived in such a narrow, suffocating world that I sometimes forgot this city even floated in the sky. I never knew ships like those—adorned with Magic Stones that shine like stars—could fly, or that the landscape below looked like this when viewed from above.”
Something flickered in Seo Eun-ha’s eyes at my words. Even she, standing before this overwhelming vista, seemed to feel something beyond her S-Rank title—something profoundly human.
I turned my gaze to search for Han Ae-ri.
“Aeri, are you—”
I barely managed to suppress a laugh that threatened to burst forth.
Han Ae-ri, who always maintained an icy, expressionless facade, was now clinging to the thick iron mesh fence of the Sky Dock with both hands gripped tightly, her lips slightly parted as she gazed up at the ascending lights of the Transport Ship with an entranced expression.
The Slasher had lived in depths far darker than mine—she had never once escaped the foul-smelling back alleys of the Lower District. Now, tens of thousands of Magic Stone lights embroidered across the sky sparkled in her dark eyes like a true Milky Way.
“Aeri.”
I called out carefully, and her shoulders jolted in surprise, her body stiffening. Realizing she had been entranced by something, she quickly released the fence and cleared her throat, attempting to return to her cool, Assassin-like expression. Yet the flush that had spread from her neck to the tips of her ears was impossible to hide.
“…The ship is quite large. It looks like it could carry plenty of meat.”
Han Ae-ri turned her gaze away awkwardly, her words tumbling out. The utterly incongruous excuse—both fierce and endearing—was too much for even Seo Eun-ha and Han Su-jin, who burst into stifled laughter. Han Ae-ri’s ears flushed an even deeper red, like cherry tomatoes.
“Well, let’s save the admiration for later. It’s time for the cargo box we’re riding to move.”
I checked my terminal and drew everyone’s attention to the task at hand.
We bypassed the heavily guarded passenger boarding gates and cargo inspection areas entirely, slipping silently toward the Unmanned Cargo Handling Facility where containers were automatically sorted and loaded. The VVIP logistics code extracted from Ryu Jin-hwan’s data bank proved to be a perfect pass.
As I input the code into the massive infrared scanner using my terminal, a cheerful access tone sounded instead of an alarm. The heavy autonomous forklift robot recognized us not as living beings but as “Grade 1 Fragile Valuables,” and opened the door to a deep gray specialized container that had been nestled among countless cargo stacks.
“Despite appearances, this is first-class—equipped with internal shock-absorption padding and an independent climate control system. Shall we step inside?”
Without hesitation, we concealed ourselves within that dark, spacious container.
With a heavy metallic clang, the container’s thick steel door sealed shut, cutting off all external noise and light in perfect isolation.
In the darkness, we each found our positions. Han Ae-ri sat with her back against the corner of the container, her twin blades resting across her lap. Her ears still hadn’t fully cooled, though I pretended not to notice.
Seo Eun-ha closed her eyes and regulated her magical breathing into a steady rhythm. Park Jae-jung stood his Gigass Shield beside him and folded his arms, closing his eyes quietly. Han Su-jin checked her gill mask’s mana conversion device one more time before taking her seat.
I felt the mechanical apparatus lift our container into the air with a series of jolts. Once the container was perfectly secured deep within the cargo hold of the Transport Ship, a faint vibration began to transmit from the floor.
Uuuuuuuung—!
The majestic vibration of tens of thousands of massive Magic Stone engines activating simultaneously. It didn’t sound like mere machinery in motion. It was the overwhelming roar of a hundred-thousand-ton steel artificial island tearing through gravity and rending the sky asunder with its tremendous power.
I sat with my back against the dark steel wall, eyes closed, feeling the subtle shift in gravitational direction. My body felt weightless as the Transport Ship surged diagonally upward.
Neo Seoul—the narrow, filthy city where I was born and raised—was receding into the distance.
Chilcheon Island Deep Sea. The moment I thought of the core energy flow—my awakened mana pouring forth like a waterfall there, purifying the contaminated gas since Cataclysm Day—my Dantian responded with intense heat. For them, it would be a hell that bound their feet, but for me, it was different.
A place where I could transcend my limits by consuming the endless tide of contamination. And the only location where I could crush the true heart of Blue Tower with my own hands.
I was not afraid.
As the vibration of the Transport Ship tearing through the night sky traveled through my spine, I quietly prepared for the battle to come.
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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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