The All-Time Best Talent was F-Class Purification - Chapter 25

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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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25
Chapter 25 – An Elite Talent Awakened as an F-Rank Purifier
What transmitted through my wrist was no mere impact. It was a heavy, crushing pressure—an unmistakable difference in weight class.
“Ugh!”
I stumbled backward with a groan. Even with E-Rank enhanced strength, my feet scraped across the floor, leaving two parallel lines in their wake. My hand throbbed, and my fingers trembled around the purification dagger’s grip.
The Assassin in Gray Coat, by contrast, moved with ease. He deflected the attack effortlessly, landing with the grace of a dancer.
“Interesting.”
A voice tinged with curiosity emerged from behind the mask.
“You’re different from the intel. I was told you were an F-Rank greenhorn. E-Rank level? No, your reaction speed exceeds that. Is it the equipment?”
His gaze swept across my special alloy combat vest and the purification dagger in my hand—the look one might give a tiresome plaything.
“But that’s all you have.”
Whoosh—
His form blurred. A speed my eyes couldn’t track. I no longer had Park Jae-jung’s veteran instincts to guide me, nor the Gias Shield to protect me. My senses alone were my only defense.
‘Right.’
Before my brain could process it, the fine hairs on my skin reacted first. I instinctively dropped and rolled to the right.
Whoosh—
A few strands of hair fell away. The space where I’d been standing moments before was sliced clean through. Had I been 0.1 seconds slower, it wouldn’t have been my hair severed—it would have been my neck.
“You dodged?”
His voice came from behind me. Chills ran down my spine. I tried to use my momentum to create distance, but he saw through my movement, cutting off my path and launching a second attack.
This time, I couldn’t evade. I gritted my teeth and barely managed to raise the purification dagger to block his blade.
Clang!
Sparks erupted with the metallic ring. But his assault didn’t end there. The moment his left dagger was blocked, the second blade in his right hand curved inward, targeting my thigh.
‘Damn.’
I twisted my body desperately. But I couldn’t dodge completely.
Slice—
The outer thigh burned as if seared by fire. The sharp blade found the gap in my combat suit and tore through skin. It was a shallow wound, but depth wasn’t the problem.
“Ugh…”
A burning sensation spread from the wound. Poison. A fast, lethal toxin surged through my veins like molten lava. My legs betrayed my will and began to buckle.
“Your movements are sluggish now.”
The Assassin chuckled. He wasn’t in a hurry. Like a hunter savoring the slow death of prey succumbing to venom, he circled me leisurely, reveling in his advantage.
“I hear you’ve made quite a fortune. Munglade.”
He spoke as if he knew the state of my finances.
“There are fools who think they’ll grow stronger by wrapping themselves in fine equipment and swallowing expensive potions. But here’s the truth—in the real Hunter’s world, strength can’t be purchased at a shop.”
His words rang true. I’d bought E-Rank level armor with money and crafted E-Rank level weapons. But my essence? Had I truly grown stronger, or was I merely an F-Rank wearing a shell of false strength?
In this moment, the over 10 billion won in my account was utterly useless. Even if I offered 100 billion, this Assassin wouldn’t stop. The only currency that mattered in this narrow alley was raw power.
“Ugh…”
The poison made my vision swim. I reached trembling fingers into my pocket for an antidote potion. But he didn’t even grant me that moment.
Thud!
His kick struck my solar plexus. My breath caught, and the potion bottle slipped from my grasp, shattering on the ground. Blue liquid spilled out pathetically.
“What a waste. That must have been expensive.”
He stepped forward, crunching broken glass beneath his feet. I crawled backward along the floor, my back pressing against the cold brick wall. A dead-end alley. There was nowhere left to retreat.
The surroundings remained eerily silent. Beyond the mouth of the alley, countless people must have been passing by, yet none of them noticed the desperate struggle unfolding here. A space completely isolated from the world.
‘Think. I have to think.’
I fought desperately to grasp my fading consciousness. A direct confrontation was impossible. Speed, strength, technique—he overwhelmed me in every aspect. My only remaining weapon was a single ability: purification.
But I couldn’t reach him. The ability only activated on contact, and his speed far exceeded my reaction time. If I carelessly extended my hand, my arm would be severed.
‘Without touching him… how can I capture him?’
Then, my eyes caught sight of the antidote potion spilled across the floor. And beside it, a puddle of water dripping from an old air conditioning unit mounted on the wall.
The memory of crossing the Acid River in the Dungeon. The memory of creating a smoke screen with water vapor.
My ability wasn’t simply about making things clean. It was the power to transform the state of matter itself, to manipulate energy.
He raised his short blade for a final, decisive strike.
“Farewell.”
In that moment, I feinted throwing the purification dagger toward him, but instead drove it downward into the puddle at my feet.
‘Now.’
He hesitated, shifting into a defensive stance. But he wasn’t my target. The instant the dagger touched the water, I released every ounce of core energy I had left.
[Purification: State Conversion – Rapid Freezing]
Crack—
The puddle began to freeze instantaneously. But it wasn’t ordinary ice. The purification energy forcibly expanded the water molecules, and sharp ice spikes erupted upward toward his ankles where they touched the puddle.
I saw the muscles around the Assassin’s eyes twitch. An unexpected attack. He tried to leap backward, but the wet floor—the freezing happened faster.
Snap.
The ice spikes grazed his ankle, momentarily dulling his movements.
It wasn’t perfect suppression. Barely a second of time gained. But that single second was my only lifeline in this moment.
I seized the opening, pushed off the wall, and threw myself into his space. I reached out with my bare hands, not a weapon.
‘Just touch him. Once is all I need.’
He panicked and swung his blade. The edge cut deep across my shoulder. Searing blood erupted. Intense pain stabbed through my mind, but I didn’t stop.
My fingertips brushed the hem of his gray coat and made contact with his chest beneath.
“Got you.”
I gritted my teeth and shouted.
“Purify.”
But something unexpected happened. Instead of his body dissolving, a blinding light burst from his chest, and a powerful force sent me flying backward.
Boom—
I crashed into the opposite wall.
“Cough…”
Blood spilled from my mouth. The Assassin was also pushed back several steps, but he remained unharmed. He felt his chest. A sharp metallic sound rang out as something shattered and fell to the ground.
A broken pendant. A protective artifact.
“You crazy bastard…”
The Assassin’s voice trembled with rage. His eyes darted between the shattered pendant on the ground and me.
“You destroyed a C-rank protective artifact in a single strike? An F-rank piece of trash?”
The composure in his eyes vanished. In its place came intense killing intent and wariness. He no longer saw me as prey—I was now an enemy to be eliminated.
I staggered to my feet. Blood streamed from my shoulder, and the poison was numbing my entire body. I’d destroyed only one protective barrier, yet he remained intact. The situation was still hopeless.
But I wiped the blood from my lips and smiled.
“Looks like it was expensive. What a waste.”
I could tell. That last strike had frightened him. The terror of watching his equipment, his very life, evaporate in an instant. That fear was my only weapon now.
‘I have to endure. Until Park Jae-jung arrives.’
Without Park Jae-jung, I had to weather this hell alone. The real fight was just beginning.
But the Assassin gave me no more time. He was a professional. His panic was fleeting, and he quickly regained his composure. He’d grasped that my condition was far from normal.
“You’ve got some skill, I’ll give you that. But that’s where it ends. The poison should be spreading by now. Your fingers probably can’t even twitch.”
He was right. The burning sensation that had started at my shoulder wound was already spreading throughout my entire body. The venom coursing through my veins was paralyzing my muscles and severing the flow of my core energy in stuttering waves. My vision blurred, and with each breath, my lungs felt like they were burning away.
‘This is dangerous.’
I leaned my back against the wall and barely held on. He was correct. Breaking through his barrier had been sheer luck, and my body was at its limit. If he accelerated again and attacked, I had no confidence I could defend myself this time.
“This time, I won’t miss.”
His form blurred again. A D-Rank’s signature acceleration skill. He charged at me with a speed my eyes couldn’t follow.
I instinctively swung my purification dagger.
Clang!
I blocked it. But a defense without power behind it was meaningless. His dagger easily deflected my guard and drove straight into my ribs.
“Ugh!”
Excruciating pain. A second dose of poison flooded into my body. My legs gave out, and I collapsed to the floor.
“It’s over.”
The Assassin approached my fallen form. He gripped his dagger in a reverse hold, aiming for my heart to finish me.
In that moment when death loomed before me, strangely, my mind grew ice-cold. More vivid than fear was the sensation of this alien poison ravaging through my body.
‘This is… contamination…’
A deadly toxin that rotted my flesh and numbed my nerves. It wasn’t a mere chemical substance. It was concentrated contamination energy fused with his mana. And my body was being systematically destroyed by it.
Cells dying, core circuits severing. High-level contamination that an F-Rank vessel—no, even an E-Rank vessel—couldn’t withstand.
‘Wait.’
Suddenly, the memory of healing Park Jae-jung flashed through my mind. When I purified the contamination accumulated in his body, his circuits hadn’t simply been restored. They had reconstructed themselves, expanding their capacity to endure the contamination and accept the purification energy.
My body is being forcibly torn apart by this poison right now. My F-Rank’s decrepit circuits are snapping and melting away. So what if, at this very moment, I pour purification energy into them and lay down new circuits?
Perhaps this paradoxical moment, when contamination has reached saturation, was the only opportunity to evolve my body.
“Farewell, Mun Glade.”
The Assassin brought his dagger down.
I didn’t dodge. Instead, I reached out my left hand toward the blade hurtling toward my heart. Not to defend myself. To grab his arm and anchor my body in place.
Squelch!
His dagger pierced deep through my left shoulder.
“Got you.”
I endured the pain and gripped his arm with all my strength. He panicked and tried to pull the blade free, but my grip held like a vice.
“You crazy bastard!”
He kicked at me repeatedly, but I didn’t budge. I closed my eyes and focused every sense within my body. The deadly venom flowing through my veins, my torn muscles, my severed circuits. I confronted the full scope of this destruction.
And I drew up the last core energy remaining in the depths of my soul.
‘Purify.’
[Warning: Body contamination exceeds 87%. Life is in critical danger.]
[Attempting self-purification.]
Whoooooom—!
In an instant, the world turned white. No—it wasn’t the world. It was my vision.
‘It’s burning…’
The word “burning” fell short of the truth. It wasn’t the agony of flames consuming flesh, nor the scalding of boiling water. Every single cell was exploding, reconstructing, and exploding again in an infinite cycle.
“Aaaaaargh!”
I screamed. The pain from the poison was nothing compared to this. The shockwave created by the collision between my purification energy and the toxin felt like a blender grinding through every bone and muscle in my body.
My F-Rank body shrieked and collapsed, replaced by stronger, purer E-Rank cells—no, cells of even higher grades—being generated at superhuman speed.
Death and birth occurring simultaneously. Chaos incarnate. At the end of that agony, I felt a wall that had been sealed tight crumble and collapse within me.
[You have overcome the contamination saturation state through purification.]
[Core circuit has been reconstructed. Mana sensitivity increases significantly.]
[You have broken through the limits of your physical body.]
[Physical Grade: E-Rank → D-Rank]
[Core circuit reconstruction complete]
[Mana sensitivity increased by 150%]
[Strength increased by 130%]
[Agility increased by 140%]
[Endurance increased by 120%]
System messages flooded in like a deluge. As if by magic, the pain vanished, replaced by an overwhelming surge of power. The world slowed down. The flow of air, the movement of dust, even the terrified expression on the assassin’s face as he desperately tried to wrench the dagger from my shoulder—everything became crystal clear.
I slowly opened my eyes.
“You… what are you? What did you—”
The assassin tried to back away. But my hand still gripped his arm. I tightened my hold.
His arm bones shattered like cookie crumbs. Before he could even scream, I twisted his neck. The hunter and the hunted had switched places. In my grip, he was nothing but a trembling mouse.
Crack.
“Aaaaah!”
The sound of his arm bone breaking echoed through the alley. D-Rank? No—to me now, he was merely a pathetic creature. My D-Rank physical abilities combined with my absurdly overpowered purification trait far exceeded what a typical D-Rank Hunter could achieve.
I pulled the dagger from my shoulder with my own hand. Blood gushed out, but the wound sealed itself before my eyes.
“You said I’d lose my entire fortune, didn’t you?”
I stood up, gripping the blood-stained dagger. The assassin, paralyzed by fear, scrambled backward on the ground.
“P-please, spare me. I was just hired! I have no personal grudge!”
“Neither do I. This is business, after all.”
I walked toward him.
“But I have one principle in my business: if you touch me, I always repay the favor.”
He reached for a smoke bomb in his pocket. Too late. I gripped the dagger in a reverse hold and drove it through his thigh into the ground.
“Ugh!”
“Don’t even think about running. I still have questions for you.”
I grabbed him by the collar and lifted him up. The situation was over. I was the victor.
Thirty minutes later, a vehicle from the Moonglade Security Team, led by Park Jae-jung, arrived at the alley. The moment Park Jae-jung stepped out of the car, he turned pale at the sight of me standing there drenched in blood and rushed over.
“Director! Are you alright? The blood—!”
“It’s not my blood. Well, some of it is mixed in, I suppose.”
I answered calmly, pointing to the unconscious assassin on the ground.
“Let’s collect him. He’s a gift from Ma Seok-gi.”
Park Jae-jung examined the sprawled assassin’s face and clicked his tongue.
“This is Shadow Blade. He’s a fairly famous D-rank killer in the underworld… you took him down alone?”
“I got lucky.”
I gave a brief answer, but Park Jae-jung seemed to instinctively sense that the aura flowing from my body had changed. He peered into my eyes and exhaled a sigh of relief.
“Really, you’re something else…”
We loaded the assassin into the car and returned to our base. After showering and changing into fresh clothes, my excitement still wouldn’t settle. I stared at my reflection in the mirror. Muscles more defined than when I was E-rank, eyes deeper and sharper. I had definitely grown stronger. But the price was brutal. Growth purchased with death. It was an experience I never wanted to face again.
Park Jae-jung emerged into the living room. He had already completed a preliminary interrogation of the assassin.
“Just as expected. Ma Seok-gi ordered it directly—500 million won upfront, with a promise of guild shares as success payment.”
“Guild shares… so he was that desperate.”
I sank deep into the sofa.
“We have plenty of grounds. Solicitation of murder, conspiracy to commit terrorism. We’ve got the cards to bury them both legally and morally.”
“Should we hand it over to the Association? Team Leader Lee Ji-young would welcome it with open arms.”
“No. Not yet.”
I shook my head.
“The law moves slowly. And Ma Seok-gi will obviously cut loose ends. With evidence like this, we might lock him away, but we can’t dismantle the Steel Fang organization itself. Once he gets out of prison, he’ll try to retaliate again.”
“Then what do we do?”
I turned on the tablet PC sitting on the table. The screen displayed the Renewal Shop’s sales figures and the recent financial statements of Steel Fang that Park Jae-jung had smuggled out.
“Let’s strangle them from the roots.”
I smiled coldly.
“Starting tomorrow, let’s expand our Renewal product lineup. C-rank and D-rank basic equipment—Steel Fang’s main products. We’ll release everything at half price.”
Park Jae-jung’s eyes widened.
“Half price? That’s a loss for us too.”
“It doesn’t matter. We have the ammunition for a game of chicken. We’ll bleed a little, but they’ll have broken bones.”
Steel Fang, already struggling with cash flow, wouldn’t have the stamina to endure this price war. Once their sales dried up, their members’ salaries would fall behind, and the organization would fracture from within.
“And one more thing.”
I picked up the curved dagger the assassin had been using.
“We’ll use him as bait. Send Ma Seok-gi a message: ‘There was a delivery accident. If you pay more, I’ll bring you Lee Tae-hyun’s head.'”
“You mean turn him into a double agent?”
“Yes. We need to draw Ma Seok-gi out. I want to show him the moment he crumbles—destroyed by the very tool he trusted most, when he felt most secure.”
A faint smile crossed Park Jae-jung’s face, as if intrigued.
“Understood, Director. I’ll set up the board properly.”

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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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