The All-Time Best Talent was F-Class Purification - Chapter 113
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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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113
Chapter 113 – An Elite Talent Awakened as an F-Rank Purifier
Crimson droplets of blood scattered into the scalding steam.
At a depth of 1,000 meters in the pitch-black abyss, within the colossal steam dome conjured by Seo Eun-ha, the myth of an absolute being—one that seemed eternal—was being brutally shattered.
“Grraaagh… Hack!”
Kang Tae-man, the Thunder Emperor and Executive Director of Blue Tower, staggered backward with his throat torn open, dropping to one knee. Blood erupted from the wound, and where it touched the steam, a metallic iron stench vibrated through the air. A monster who had reigned as a lord above the heavens his entire life, perhaps never allowing a single scratch upon his body. His silver uniform was now grotesquely soiled with blood, sweat, and soot.
But his kneeling lasted only a moment.
“You… lower district… parasitic bastards!”
Zzzzzzzzzt—
Kang Tae-man’s eyes rolled back like a beast that had completely lost human reason. The instant the blade cut him, he reflexively contracted his neck muscles to avoid a fatal wound, then shot a searing bolt of lightning at the blood pouring from his throat, cauterizing the wound by force. The burning smell faded as the bleeding stopped. It was the deranged ferocity of a monster that transcended the confines of the S-rank classification—burning his own flesh to stanch the flow.
“I’ll slaughter every last one of you! Not a bone, not a shred of flesh will remain—I’ll vaporize you all!”
Uuuuuuung—!
The fury erupting from Kang Tae-man’s entire body began shaking the seabed beneath Chilcheon Island with manic violence. It was no mere lightning. Extremely compressed core energy was friction-warping into a blackened plasma form, as if it had swallowed blood itself.
The entire space swelled as if about to burst from terrible static electricity. As the plasma’s ultra-high heat and repulsive force spread in all directions, Seo Eun-ha’s steam dome—barely holding back the crushing pressure of 1,000 meters depth—convulsed violently with an eerie grinding sound.
Screeeech! Boom!
“Tae-hyun! The dome is collapsing!”
Seo Eun-ha, straining to maintain the barrier, cried out with an expression as if she were about to cough blood.
“Kang Tae-man’s mana is expanding and pushing out my heat! At most thirty seconds! If we can’t end this within that time, this space will collapse and thousands of atmospheres of seawater will crush us into pulp!”
Thirty seconds. Failure meant being buried under millions of tons of water before the lightning could incinerate us—our bones and organs reduced to mush.
“Thirty seconds is enough.”
I let my left arm—burned so hideously that bone was exposed—hang limp as I adjusted my grip on Shadow’s fang in my right hand. Extreme agony pierced my brain, but the A-rank neural network awakened while purifying contaminated gas in the Sinkhole was instead using that pain as fuel, activating with frenzied sensitivity.
My vision pierced directly through Kang Tae-man’s chest—precisely toward his heart.
‘The pure white purification mana I forcibly injected into his body through my left hand earlier. It’s causing a rejection reaction with his corrupted core, shredding the pathways through which his mana flows to tatters. On the surface, he’s rampaging and spewing plasma, but his internal mana circulation is on the verge of complete collapse.’
The monster’s defense is at rock bottom. A single perfect thrust will sever his lifeline.
“I’ll open the path!”
Breaking the momentary silence, Park Jae-jung launched himself from the ground with a thunderous roar.
“Die!”
Kang Tae-man hurled a mass of blackened plasma toward Park Jae-jung. It was destructive force compressed dozens of times greater than ordinary lightning.
Kwaaaaaaang—!
“Kraaaagh!”
The perforated Gigas Shield took the explosion head-on. The bones of the S-rank magical beast finally reached their limit and scattered fragments, while the shockwave mercilessly battered Park Jae-jung’s body.
But Park Jae-jung did not yield. His physique—with bone and muscle density abnormally heightened after the substitution surgery—refused to stop advancing, stubbornly absorbing the impact even as his skin tore and muscles ruptured from the horrific injuries.
“This monstrous bastard—!”
The moment the shocked Kang Tae-man raised his hand again, Park Jae-jung’s thick mithril gauntlet seized his collar and drove him straight into the seabed.
Kuang—!
“Eun-ha! Now!”
“Close your eyes, Tae-hyun!”
With Seo Eun-ha’s cool cry, the crimson light condensed at the tip of her staff detonated directly before Kang Tae-man’s face. It was a flash grenade from an S-rank flame mage—pouring everything into vision obstruction and sensory paralysis rather than lethality.
Fwaaaaaaash—!
A blinding flash and ultra-high heat as if dragging the sun itself to arm’s length consumed the interior of the steam dome in white.
“Gahhhhh! My eyes!”
Kang Tae-man screamed, lashing out with a vicious kick at Park Jae-jung, who had been gripping his collar. The densely-muscled Park Jae-jung’s ribs shattered with a sickening crack, and as he was hurled backward, Kang Tae-man—now blind—began unleashing plasma indiscriminately into the void.
Crackle! Boom! Crash!
Black lightning streaked outward in all directions. With my eyes closed, I hurled myself directly into that merciless storm of electrical devastation.
Whoosh—!
My A-rank kinetic vision shredded the trajectory of each plasma burst in real-time. Lightning grazed my right shoulder. Scorching heat seared my left thigh. My pressure suit ignited and my bare skin tore open in agony, but my momentum never faltered.
‘Almost there. Three steps. Two steps.’
Blinded, Kang Tae-man detected my footsteps and the ripple of my mana, blood dripping from his lips as he turned toward me. He gathered every last shred of core energy in both hands, forming a colossal plasma spear—one that would leave nothing but bone dust if it connected.
“I’ll shred you to pieces—!”
As his arm muscles contracted and the plasma spear rocketed toward my heart, I didn’t dodge. Instead, I thrust my tattered left arm—already charred and numb from the lightning—directly into the path of his spear.
Sacrifice flesh to break bone. This had been the plan all along.
“What—!”
Squelch! Sizzle!
Kang Tae-man’s plasma spear pierced clean through my left arm from wrist to elbow, tearing it apart. The horrific pain flashed white across my vision, but I clenched my teeth hard enough to crack them and endured.
In that single frozen moment while he was locked in place, his spear embedded in my arm, I drew Shadow’s Fang from my right hand and drove it upward from the floor, plunging it directly into the center of Kang Tae-man’s chest.
“This is for Aeri.”
Riiiiip—!
The mithril blade tore through his breastplate and drove between his ribs, piercing straight through to his heart where the corrupted mana core lay embedded.
“Ugh… gasp…!”
Kang Tae-man’s pupils dilated as if they would burst. This was no mere physical stabbing. Through the blade lodged in his core, I detonated every last drop of purification energy remaining in my dantian, unleashing it in a catastrophic explosion within his heart.
Shiiiiine—!
Pure white light erupted through Kang Tae-man’s chest in a cross pattern. The blood-red core energy raging inside his body collided head-on with the purification mana I had driven into his heart, triggering a cascading detonation.
“Gahhhhhhhhhhh—!”
A scream that could only belong to the depths of hell itself. The black plasma enveloping Kang Tae-man’s entire body shattered like glass and scattered. His corrupted core burned white-hot and crumbled to dust, and his body—now stripped of that vast energy—became nothing more than a corpse riddled with holes.
I wrenched the dagger free and kicked Kang Tae-man’s collapsing shoulder.
Thud.
An existence that could not be confined within the S-rank classification. Kang Tae-man, the second director of Blue Tower, collapsed helplessly onto the seabed of Chilcheon Island, drenched in blood. His crimson eyes, now unfocused, gazed vacantly at the Underwater City he had spent a lifetime building crumble into ruin, slowly fading into death.
“Hah… hah…”
I clutched my bleeding left arm and staggered to my knees. My mana was completely depleted, and the world spun before my eyes.
“Lee Tae-hyun!”
Seo Eun-ha rushed over and caught me as I collapsed. Park Jae-jung, his ribs shattered, limped toward me with ragged breaths.
Rumble rumble—!
The moment Kang Tae-man died, the repulsive force of his mana vanished, and the deep-sea pressure that had been held back by Seo Eun-ha’s steam dome came crashing down with terrifying force. The vapor barrier contracted, and seawater sloshed around our ankles.
“The dome is collapsing! The pressure is crushing us! We have to get to the surface now!”
Seo Eun-ha shouted urgently and activated the underwater buoyancy device. Park Jae-jung’s massive hands seized my waist and hoisted me onto his shoulder.
“Hold on tight, Guild Master!”
Whoooosh—!
As we kicked off the floor and shot upward, Seo Eun-ha’s steam dome reached its limit and shattered completely, and the seawater from a thousand meters below mercilessly engulfed the space where we had been. One second later, and we would have been crushed to jerky alongside Kang Tae-man’s corpse.
We squeezed every last ounce of buoyancy and remaining mana as we pierced through the endless darkness above. Below us, the Underwater City—its defenses shattered by severed pipes—was being trampled by hundreds of thousands of deep-sea monsters, transforming into a cruel aquatic tomb that receded into the distance.
How far had we climbed? When the agony of my bursting lungs and the terror of suffocation reached their peak.
Splash—!
Our bodies erupted through the churning black waters, finally breaking the surface of Chilcheon Island’s roiling sea.
“Gasp—”
I tore off my gill mask and drew cold, crisp air deep into my lungs. The tempest howling across the South Coast battered our cheeks with rain, yet even that damp deluge felt like a blessing of survival.
“Guild Master! Over here!”
In the distance, a red flare burned atop the black waves. Han Su-jin, who had escaped first, clung to Han Ae-ri while standing on the magical lifeboat that Dr. Junk had deployed in advance for emergency evacuation—waving frantically toward us.
“Aeri—is she…!”
I swam urgently toward the lifeboat, my question tumbling out. Han Su-jin nodded, her face streaked with tears.
“The bleeding has completely stopped! She’s lost her eye, but her life is not in danger!”
With Park Jae-jung’s help, we barely crawled onto the lifeboat.
For the first time, we could see each other clearly.
Park Jae-jung sat quietly, wincing with each breath from his fractured ribs. Bare skin showed through the charred suit in places, and the Gigas Shield strapped to his back was punctured and scorched beyond recognition. Yet he refused to let go of the shield.
Seo Eun-ha remained seated on the lifeboat’s floor, her staff gripped in hand, eyes closed. From channeling S-rank mana for so long, deep shadows had settled beneath her crimson eyes. But the corners of her mouth curved upward ever so slightly.
I sat motionless, my left arm resting on my knee. From wrist to elbow, my left arm was pierced through—already numb. Han Su-jin rushed over and began emergency treatment with her mana, but before healing came something else my eyes sought out.
Han Ae-ri.
Kneeling in one corner of the lifeboat, Han Ae-ri gripped her right eye, wrapped tightly in bandages, and looked at me. Her face was ashen. But that one living eye gave me a small, wordless nod.
We survived. That was enough.
I forced my charred left hand upward and gave Han Ae-ri a brief wave. My fingers wouldn’t move properly. It didn’t matter.
We all lacked the strength for words, our blood-soaked suits clinging to us as we leaned against the lifeboat’s floor, breathing heavily.
Lightning split the sky above. In the deep sea beneath our feet, one of Neo Seoul’s most corrupt symbols was being utterly annihilated.
I gazed up at the ashen sky, feeling the pain in my charred left arm. The Blue Tower’s Second Director had vanished. The Underwater City had collapsed. Blue Tower’s data now rested in Dr. Junk’s hands. Blue Tower’s inner sanctum lay in ruins, and Neo Seoul’s vast power structure would sustain irreversible mortal wounds, beginning to convulse violently.
But it wasn’t over yet.
Kang Chang-gyung of Dominion. The Guild Master of Blue Tower. And the remaining directors still offering 26 billion won for our heads.
I closed my eyes and exhaled roughly.
For now, I could rest. Just this moment, nothing more.
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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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