The All-Time Best Talent was F-Class Purification - Chapter 109
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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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109
Chapter 109 – An Elite Talent Awakened as an F-Rank Purifier
Behind that creature lay more. Dozens of deep-sea mutants, their bodies three times the size of ordinary great white sharks and encased entirely in grotesque bone armor, surged forth from the darkness. Crimson core energy erupted from their gills, and teeth arranged in a nightmarish pattern gleamed as if capable of shredding steel itself.
I activated the mana communication channel embedded in my gill mask. True to Blue Tower’s premium equipment, my voice transmitted with crystal clarity even beneath the waves.
“They’re coming. Prepare for combat.”
“I’ll engage them first.”
Park Jae-jung surged forward with a heavy communication tone, his body reconstructed through vascular surgery now possessing far greater density than before. The immense water pressure of the deep sea became the ultimate weapon to maximize his raw, brute physical force.
The moment the circular-mawed monster lunged with gaping jaws, Park Jae-jung unleashed a bestial roar and explosively channeled mana into his gauntlets, driving a straight punch forward. The destructive force erupting from the gauntlets forcibly displaced the seawater, creating an instantaneous vacuum that collapsed into a tremendous underwater shockwave sweeping across everything ahead.
Boom—!
“Shrieeeek!”
The hard bone armor of the monsters struck by the shockwave began to splinter and crack. The circular-mawed creature’s teeth bent backward, driving inward through its own mouth. The monsters spewed dark crimson blood, losing all directional control and flailing helplessly.
Han Ae-ri was no slasher to miss such a fleeting opening.
“I’ll finish them.”
Han Ae-ri’s dry, composed voice crackled through the communicator. Her pure D-rank physical abilities could never pierce the bone armor of such colossal monsters. Yet in her hands rested a water-resistance-zero magical harpoon dagger modified by Dr. Junk, and before her lay the perfect fissure Park Jae-jung had created.
Whoosh—!
Han Ae-ri propelled herself through the water like a shadow using her webbed boots, diving behind the circular-mawed monster. Her harpoon dagger pierced with pinpoint precision through the gaps in the bone armor shattered by Park Jae-jung’s shockwave, targeting only the gills and eyes.
Crunch! Thud!
An assassination without waste. Before blood could even spray, she was already sliding behind the next target using the corpse as a springboard.
Then, a warm light flickered softly across my suit.
It was Han Su-jin. The moment combat began, she closed her eyes behind her mask and pressed her hands together, quietly drawing up mana. The S-rank Healer’s regenerative dots and enhancement buffs—invisible support, yet I could feel my wrist joints, which had fractured from the recoil of Park Jae-jung’s shockwave, rapidly healing. Han Su-jin remained at the outermost perimeter, continuously monitoring the entire team’s condition in real-time while channeling mana.
“Tae-hyeon, I’ll sweep my sector. Fall back.”
Seo Eun-ha’s voice came from above. She crossed her hands and swung her staff. No flames ignited, but the seawater surrounding the massive tentacle monster swarm approaching her began to boil violently in an instant.
Bubble-bubble-bubble— Shrieeeek!
Superheated steam droplets generated in a flash seared the monsters’ outer skin horrifically. For creatures adapted to the deep sea’s frigid temperatures, this extreme thermal shift and expanding boiling water became a lethal area-of-effect attack—skin flayed away, eyeballs bursting from their sockets.
“The path is clear. Let’s continue descending.”
I silently purified the corrupted cores of the smaller creatures thrashing in the boiling water and pressed forward.
Three hundred meters deep, five hundred meters, eight hundred meters.
As we descended further, the water pressure grew intense enough to crush bone, yet Dr. Junk’s modified pressure suit withstood it admirably.
And finally, when we broke through one thousand meters of depth—
“What… what is that…?”
Han Su-jin gasped in shock, her question crackling through the communicator.
We halted our descent and gazed, mesmerized, at the overwhelming vista spread across the seabed beneath Chilcheon Island.
A colossal hemispherical mana barrier dome stretching beyond sight. Within it lay an underwater city of dazzling splendor and grandeur—as if the entire Upper District of Neo Seoul had been torn out wholesale and buried beneath the waves, radiating brilliant artificial illumination.
Skyscrapers constructed from premium materials and entertainment facilities. A secret, luxurious underwater paradise reserved exclusively for the top 0.1 percent of power holders—a realm the surface dwellers, suffocating under core gas contamination and locked in desperate survival struggles, could never even imagine.
Yet now the city was not peaceful. In fact, it lay utterly empty.
Looking closer, light leaked from the buildings within, but there was no sign of human activity. No human figures appeared at the docks, plazas, or underwater gardens.
‘When the ley line ruptured and core energy began leaking, the personnel inside must have evacuated first.’
It was the obvious sequence of events. When the ley line fissure began flooding the city’s surroundings with crimson contamination gas, the civilian personnel within this fortress would have already escaped through emergency evacuation routes. What remained inside that barrier now would be only Blue Tower’s combat forces ordered to defend the underwater city.
And as if to prove it, war raged outside the city’s dome.
From the massive crater where the seabed ley line had split open, a turbulent flow of crimson core energy erupted like a volcano, and colossal mutant krakens and sea king monsters, drawn by the vast core energy, hammered frantically against the dome’s outer barrier with mountain-sized bodies.
Flash—!
Boom—!
A tremendous lightning strike illuminated the seabed a thousand meters deep as if it were midday.
Tens of thousands of volts of lightning, perfectly channeled through water as a conductor, tore through the seawater and struck the massive sea king’s head that had been battering the Dome, reducing it to charcoal in a single blow. But that was not all. The lightning spread in all directions through the seawater, simultaneously electrocuting every monster within a twenty-meter radius. Dozens sank to the bottom, convulsing in unison.
At the center of that overwhelming magic, a single man floated in the water, wrapped in a sphere of cyan lightning.
A uniform with a silvery sheen. A monster whose mere mana fluctuations pushed back the surrounding water pressure, evaporating droplets. The density of his mana was so high that the seawater within a five-meter radius of his body continuously released bubbles and evaporated. He was deflecting thousands of atmospheres of water pressure with pure mana alone. This was what an S-rank of Blue Tower truly was.
“Blue Tower’s Second Director. The Thunder Emperor, Kang Tae-man.”
That was not all. To his left and right, two S-rank combat personnel belonging to Blue Tower and dozens of A-rank elite guards stood with their backs to the Barrier, desperately holding back the waves of monsters. Each one of them was on an entirely different level from the Armored Guard of Blue Tower.
“Tae-hyun. Their defensive line is incredible. There are tens of thousands of monsters, yet they can’t break through. You’re not asking us to charge into that melee, are you?”
“Of course not. A frontal assault would be suicide. Breaking through that monster Kang Tae-man and dozens of A-rank guards head-on is impossible for us right now.”
I turned to my comrades and pointed alternately with my finger at the Dome’s Barrier and the blood-red Core Crater spewing energy beside it.
“Our objective isn’t to beat down Blue Tower’s forces one by one and play hero. We’re going to turn this entire city into their tomb.”
“What do you mean by that?”
Han Ae-ri asked in return.
“Where do you think the power came from to maintain the Barrier of such a massive Underwater City against thousands of atmospheres of water pressure and monster attacks? It’s impossible to supply it with magic stones delivered from Neo Seoul.”
Park Jae-jung’s eyes widened.
“You don’t mean… they’ve been using the Core energy gushing from the Seabed Ley Lines as the city’s power source?”
“Exactly. They must have connected pipes to the Core energy erupting from the fractured Crater and used it as the power source to maintain the Barrier. The Seabed Ley Lines ruptured so catastrophically that the energy leaked out of control, driving the surrounding monsters mad.”
“Then if we cut off the source of that energy….”
Han Su-jin trailed off, unable to finish.
“The mana Dome enveloping the city will begin to lose power. As the Barrier gradually collapses, thousands of atmospheres of seawater and starving Deep Sea monsters from outside will pour in. The civilian population has already evacuated. All that remains is combat personnel, so that should be considered a casualty of war.”
I spoke coldly and continued.
“While they’re distracted holding back the monsters, we’ll circle around their blind spots and infiltrate the heart of the Crater. Once I begin severing the energy flow with purification, cracks will start forming in the Barrier. They’ll fall into complete panic—forced to hold back monsters, repair the crumbling Dome—and their formation will collapse.”
“In that chaos, we’ll take down their isolated targets one by one from the darkness.”
A chilling killing intent resonated in Han Ae-ri’s voice. That was enough.
“Operation commencing. Follow me.”
We minimized our lights and kept our bodies low, making a wide detour around Kang Tae-man’s brilliant, lightning-filled battlefield. Thanks to the murky blood and dust kicked up by tens of thousands of monsters, visibility in the Deep Sea was abysmal, and their attention was fixed solely on the sea kings before them.
After a slow and stealthy swim, we reached the edge of the massive Crater behind the Underwater City’s defensive line, where blood-red energy surged upward.
“Ugh….”
As we drew closer, the toxicity of the Core energy pierced through the pressure suit, stinging my skin. Inside the Crater, like a living, massive heart, blood-red energy writhed frantically, being sucked into thick mana pipes connected to the city.
The moment I grasped the scale of it with my eyes, I exhaled a long breath internally.
‘This is on an entirely different level from the Sinkhole.’
Even when purifying the contaminated gas at the Sinkhole, my mana core had borne considerable strain. But compared to what lay before me now, that was the difference between a puddle and the ocean. Since awakening as A-rank, my mana core’s processing capacity had increased several times over, but even so, handling all of that turbulent flow would eventually reach my limits.
It was a matter of speed. If I couldn’t sever it quickly, I would have to endure it.
Without hesitation, I approached the heart of the Crater and plunged both hands deep into the overwhelming torrent of energy.
“Guild Master! It’s dangerous!”
Park Jae-jung reached out urgently, but I shook my head and closed my eyes.
A storm of contaminated Core energy trying to tear my body to shreds. But the pure purification erupting from my Dantian filtered out that toxicity and began converting it into pure mana. Massive energy oxidized white as it passed through my hands.
I intercepted the power that should have flowed into the Underwater City, using my body as a massive conduit to disperse it—a blocking operation.
Ten seconds. Twenty seconds.
My mana core began to heat up. It was purifying more smoothly than it had at the Sinkhole, but the absolute volume was different. The moment arrived when the incoming surge felt faster than my purification speed. My temples throbbed. The pressure of energy trying to backflow through my hands made the inner sides of my wrists burn.
‘I have to hold on.’
One minute. Two minutes. Three minutes.
And finally.
Uuuuuung—
Screeeeeech—!
The enormous transparent barrier dome enveloping the entire Underwater City began to flicker with an eerie grinding sound.
“What, what’s happening! Why is the barrier output dropping!”
Kang Tae-man’s bewildered cry, who had been raining lightning from the front lines, came through faintly via mana communication. But in a situation where the Kraken swarms were surging like waves, he couldn’t abandon his position. If he took even a single step back, mountainous tentacles would pour through the gap.
Kuguguguguung—!
As the energy supply gradually diminished, the outer wall of the dome couldn’t withstand thousands of atmospheres of water pressure and crumpled terrifyingly, massive spider web-like fissures splitting open with a crack. Seizing the opportunity, a mountainous Kraken shoved its tentacles into the dome’s cracks and began tearing the barrier apart like a madman.
“This is insane! The power pipe from the Core Crater is severed! Rear reserves! Check the pipeline immediately!”
As Kang Tae-man urgently commanded, about a dozen A-rank Guards waiting in the rear fell into panic, broke formation, and began swimming frantically toward the dark rear where we were positioned.
The front lines had collapsed, and their vision was torn. The Underwater City’s artificial lights flickered, and the seabed was engulfed in complete chaos and darkness.
Purification waves continued to flow ceaselessly from my fingertips. My mana core was radiating heat just before overload, but I couldn’t stop. If I pulled my hands away now, the energy would flow back through the pipes and the barrier would begin recovering.
I had to hold on. Until their formation completely crumbled.
Han Su-jin must have sensed it, because warm healing mana quietly flowed into me from behind my back. It couldn’t completely prevent my mana core from overloading, but it served as a buttress, pushing the limit back a little further.
I gritted my teeth and sent a brief message to my allies.
“They’re coming. Shall we begin?”
The moment my words fell, Han Ae-ri’s form completely dissolved into the darkness and vanished. Deadly heat began condensing at Seo Eun-ha’s fingertips. Park Jae-jung crouched behind fragments of the crumbling dome, his massive fists clenched.
And in that darkness, the A-rank Guards swimming frantically toward us still had no idea what was waiting for them.
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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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