The All-Time Best Talent was F-Class Purification - Chapter 111

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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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111
Chapter 111 – An Elite Talent Awakened as an F-Rank Purifier
My thought to neutralize Kang Tae-man before he could unleash his lightning strike was nothing but greed on my part. The cyan mana wave swept across the abyssal darkness of the deep sea in an instant, bleaching it white.
The underwater environment dulled human movement. But to tens of thousands of volts of lightning, water was nothing but a perfect conductor and a blessing—a medium that allowed its destructive force to radiate outward in all directions.
“Die, you vermin.”
The moment those words left the lips of Kang Tae-man, the Lightning Emperor and second director of Blue Tower, there was no incantation, no preparatory motion. His eyes simply flashed with crimson light, and an overwhelming lightning strike that even my A-rank awakened dynamic vision couldn’t follow tore through the deep sea in a straight line.
Flash—!
An explosion so instantaneous that sound itself couldn’t catch up.
0.1 seconds. In that brief moment, my brain processed two pieces of information: the direction of the lightning strike, and the person at its end.
It wasn’t me. It was Han Ae-ri, who had been hiding in the darkness preparing for her next assassination.
I reached out. Even knowing I couldn’t reach her, I reached.
‘Block it.’
Before the command could travel from my brain to my muscles, the flash had already grazed past Han Ae-ri’s face.
“Ugh…!”
No matter how much she wielded an underwater magic harpoon or pushed her swimming speed to its limit, Han Ae-ri’s base physical ability was D-rank. It was fundamentally impossible for her to react to and evade a single strike from a monster who had survived since the early days of Cataclysm Day and reigned at the apex.
Crack—!
If Han Ae-ri hadn’t reflexively twisted her head, her entire skull would have been blown away. With a horrific tearing sound, half of her pressure suit helmet melted like clay, her gill mask shattered, and crimson blood erupted into the seawater like ink.
“Aaaahhhhh!”
A bestial scream tore from Han Ae-ri’s mouth, slamming through the underwater communication network. Where her right eye should have been, the socket was now a charred, hollow void.
Complete loss of her right eye.
My hand still stretched into empty water. That unreachable hand grasped uselessly at the seawater.
‘0.1 seconds. Just 0.1 seconds faster.’
A smile curved across Kang Tae-man’s lips. A second lightning strike was already forming at his fingertips, ready to lance toward Han Ae-ri’s heart as she sank, still screaming.
A massive shadow blocked her path.
It was Park Jae-jung.
He didn’t calculate. The moment he saw the second lightning strike forming, he was already moving, gripping the Gigas Shield on his back with both hands. He positioned himself at the exact intersection where Han Ae-ri’s descent and the lightning’s trajectory would cross.
A weapon like a heart that had shared life and death with him. An absolute barrier that had never shattered against any physical blow or magic collided head-on with the calamitous lightning.
Boom—!
At a depth of 1,000 meters, the seawater evaporated, creating a massive vacuum cavity.
“Rrgh—!”
The bone surface of the Gigas Shield, which had deflected tank shells, screamed as it was struck by cyan lightning and burned red-hot.
Crackle—!
Boom!
The center of the S-rank beast bone, which seemed like it would never break, melted under the terrible heat and energy, and a hole the size of an adult fist was punched clean through it. Yet the Gigas Shield maintained its form, reducing the lightning’s power by over ninety percent. It was the shield’s final stubbornness—to protect its master’s life.
But the remaining ten percent of lightning that pierced through the shield’s hole was lethal in its own right.
“Kgh…!”
Cyan current mercilessly battered Park Jae-jung’s arms and chest. His blue-green pressure suit burned away, his bare skin charred like coal.
“Park Jae-jung!”
I urgently cut through the water, hooked Han Ae-ri’s waist as she sank, and placed my bare hand on the charred Park Jae-jung’s shoulder.
Zzzt—!
The moment my hand touched Park Jae-jung’s body, a horrific current surged backward through my fingertips. It wasn’t mere electricity. The true nature of this lightning was the corrupted core energy that Kang Tae-man wielded. That venomous energy coursed through Park Jae-jung’s blood vessels and nerves, burning his organs from the inside out.
“Hold on!”
I gritted my teeth and drew mana from my dantian. The core that had already been overloaded from blocking the turbid currents of the underwater city screamed in protest, but I ignored it.
Pure white light poured through my palm into Park Jae-jung’s body.
I could sense the core poison traveling through his blood vessels. It wasn’t a single stream. Dozens of strands of corrupted energy spread in all directions along Park Jae-jung’s neural network. I tracked each flow with waves of purification.
Energy burrowed deep into muscle, circled around the heart, and surged toward the lungs. This wasn’t about cutting off electricity. It was a vicious interference—washing away the lethality of corrupted core energy wearing the form of lightning, forcibly converting it into harmless pure mana.
Another layer of burden stacked upon my already overloaded core. My temples throbbed as if they might burst.
Ssshhhhh—!
“Cough… hack!”
Park Jae-jung’s eyes snapped open as he vomited black blood inside his helmet. His scorched neural network barely stabilized, and his denser body began hemorrhage control at a terrifying speed.
“The shield…”
Even as Park Jae-jung coughed blood, he gripped the Gigas Shield—now horrifically punctured and charred—with an iron grip. The strength in his hand remained undiminished.
But the situation was catastrophic. Han Ae-ri had lost her eyes and fallen into shock, moments away from inhaling seawater without even a gill mask.
“Su-jin!”
I shouted toward Han Su-jin, who stood frozen like ice behind us.
“Take Aeri and ascend immediately! Break through the barrier and escape to the sea surface. If you stay here, Aeri will die!”
“B-but… the Guild Master and everyone else…”
“That’s an order. Focus your healing only on saving Aeri. We’ll handle this. Now!”
Han Su-jin bit her blood-stained lips hard and nodded. She took Han Ae-ri, fitted the spare respirator attached to her own mask into Aeri’s mouth, and opened her buoyancy device and mana to maximum capacity.
Whoooosh—!
Han Su-jin and Han Ae-ri’s bodies cut through the water, surging upward toward the surface of Chilcheon Island.
“Where do you think you’re running, you lower district vermin?”
Kang Tae-man smiled with a fishy grin and flicked his finger toward where they ascended. A colossal lightning spear materialized at his fingertip, about to pierce through Han Su-jin’s back.
Whoooosh—!
A massive steam explosion erupted directly in Kang Tae-man’s line of sight. It was Seo Eun-ha. Her extreme heat instantly vaporized the seawater around Kang Tae-man, creating a thick steam storm.
“Your opponent is right here, you lightning-grilled old man.”
Seo Eun-ha’s crimson eyes gleamed as she repositioned her staff. Kang Tae-man’s lightning strike was blocked by the expanding steam barrier and dissipated into empty space. In that brief window, Han Su-jin and Han Ae-ri’s presence completely vanished toward the upper reaches of the deep sea.
All that remained was me, Seo Eun-ha, and Park Jae-jung, breathing heavily with his punctured shield gripped tightly in his hands.
“Hmm. Impressive.”
Kang Tae-man emerged, swimming through the steam as if walking. The lightning crackling around him vaporized every bubble and drop of seawater it touched with a crackling sound.
“So my lightning energy kept dissipating. It was you. The rat who shoved both hands into the deep sea’s turbid currents and cut off my fortress’s power.”
His crimson eyes locked onto me.
I began analyzing Kang Tae-man.
An existence that couldn’t be confined within the S-rank framework. A monster who awakened in the early days of the Cataclysm and had never known defeat, ruling unchallenged. And this deep sea environment was far more advantageous to him than the surface.
The entire seawater was his conductor. The moment he released lightning from his fingertips, it wasn’t a linear attack—it became an area attack spreading in all directions. Everything within dozens of meters was struck simultaneously. Dodging wouldn’t solve it. The greater the distance, the more seawater became a conductor, only widening the electrocution range.
Standing firm against it head-on was impossible. The Gigas Shield was already in that state.
‘Then only one option remains.’
Purification is contact-based. If I could reach Kang Tae-man, I could wash away his core energy itself. Cut off the source of the lightning. But to do that, I’d have to breach that lightning tsunami while closing the distance of dozens of meters.
There was a method. For lightning to spread through seawater, ions in the water served as the medium. If I deployed a purification wave around myself, the core energy would be removed from the seawater within that range. I’d momentarily sever the very medium through which Kang Tae-man’s lightning flowed. It wasn’t perfect defense. I’d have to maintain the purification wave while simultaneously charging forward—a dual burden on an already overloaded core. Failure meant the end right there.
But this was the only option with any chance of success.
“The price for destroying my paradise. Down here in these depths, I’ll show you the limits of your parlor tricks.”
Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzt—!
As Kang Tae-man spread both arms wide, the entire seabed beneath Chilcheon Island began to vibrate with a sickly cyan light. Tens of thousands of lightning nets, writhing like serpents, surged toward us three like a colossal tidal wave, completely ignoring the water’s resistance from all directions.
“Lee Tae-hyun! What do we do!”
Seo Eun-ha cried out urgently, layering her thermal barriers one upon another. Park Jae-jung was already positioning himself in front of me, attempting to shield me with his own body as he braced against the lightning.
“Both of you—stay no more than one meter behind my back.”
Seo Eun-ha’s eyes narrowed. She grasped the meaning of my words instantly.
“You’re saying you’ll charge through while using purification to sever the lightning’s medium? But your core is already overloaded!”
“If you have another option, tell me.”
Seo Eun-ha pressed her lips together firmly. Park Jae-jung, without a word, shifted his damaged Gigass Shield to his back and repositioned himself to guard my left flank. The way he silently took his stance, blood trickling from his mouth, was his answer.
I reversed my grip on the Shadow Fangs in both hands. From the depths of my dantian, I scraped together every last drop of mana from my core that was already burning white-hot. Simultaneously, I began spreading the wave of purification widely around my body. The seawater within a one-meter radius around me began to glow faintly white as the corrupted energy started to dissipate.
The tidal wave of death-dealing lightning that Kang Tae-man unleashed came surging through the seawater like a colossal wave.
I pushed off Park Jae-jung’s shoulder and launched myself directly into the heart of that tidal wave.

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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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