The All-Time Best Talent was F-Class Purification - Chapter 38

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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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38
Chapter 38 – An Elite Talent Awakened as an F-Rank Purifier
“Ugh… *cough! Cough!*”
Ragged coughing erupted from behind the gas mask. It was Lee Ji-young, my team leader. She stumbled, gripping my arm as the filter reached its limit—toxic fumes seeping through the gaps, corroding her respiratory system.
“Team Leader, are you alright?”
She shook her head weakly.
“I… I can’t see. My eyes… they’re burning so much…”
For her, who had activated the Eye of Truth, the poison was lethal. With her vision stripped away, we’d become blind in this absolute darkness.
*Squelch. Squelch.*
Viscous slime continued rising beneath our feet, as if the swamp itself were opening its maw to swallow us whole.
“This is insane. My legs won’t move.”
The slime coiled around Seo Eun-ha’s ankles, dissolving her boots and burrowing into her flesh.
“I’ll freeze it!”
She drove her staff downward.
[Frost Nova!]
*Whoosh—* White frost swept across the floor. The slimes hardened instantly, their movements ceasing. But it was only temporary.
*Crack. Snap.*
Fissures spider-webbed across the frozen slime’s surface, and from within, an even more concentrated acidic gas erupted.
“No! It’s more toxic now!”
Seo Eun-ha recoiled in horror.
“Fire doesn’t work, ice doesn’t work… What the hell are we supposed to do?!”
The situation was catastrophic. Attack and they burst. Freeze them and they release poison. And their numbers showed no sign of diminishing. Ceiling, walls, floor—everything within sight writhed with undulating green gelatin.
“Guild Master… the shield… it’s melting.”
Park Jae-jung’s voice trembled.
The surface of his Gigass Shield bubbled violently. The B-Rank mana coating was failing against the corrosive acid, peeling away.
“At this rate, we’re all dead.”
Park Jae-jung clenched his teeth, his eyes meeting mine.
“I’ll break through. Guild Master, take the other two and get out.”
His gaze held the resolve of a tank prepared for his final stand—he would stay behind as bait.
“Don’t talk nonsense.”
I shouted.
“If we’re leaving anyone behind, we never should have started! We’re getting out together. Jae-jung, you clear the path—I’ll handle the rest!”
At my cry, Park Jae-jung seemed to regain his senses, nodding sharply.
“Understood. Hold on tight.”
“Eun-ha! Cover our rear. Run like your life depends on it!”
“Got it. Man, this is embarrassing—running away like this.”
Seo Eun-ha grumbled while adjusting her grip on her staff.
“Here we go! Hyaaaaaah!”
Park Jae-jung charged forward, shield raised.
[Shield Rush.]
Boom! The slimes in his path exploded as he charged through. I followed behind, supporting Lee Ji-young as we ran, while Seo Eun-ha trailed after us, unleashing waves of cold magic to slow our pursuers.
“Huff… huff….”
My breath came in ragged gasps. Inside the gas mask, sweat and heat accumulated, and my skin prickled everywhere. The poison was seeping in.
“Just a little further. The entrance is right ahead.”
In the distance, the entrance to the Black Moss Cave came into view. But they were relentless. Slimes hanging from the ceiling dropped down in massive chunks toward our heads.
Splat—thud!
“Ugh!”
Seo Eun-ha fell. A large glob of slime clung to her back, burning through her clothes.
“Eun-ha.”
I shoved Lee Ji-young toward Park Jae-jung.
“Go ahead. I’ll catch up in a moment.”
Then I spun around and ran back, tearing the slime from Seo Eun-ha’s back with my bare hands.
“Purification.”
Sizzle! My palms burned with searing pain, but white light incinerated the slime. Yet my core energy was running dangerously low. My vision swam.
“Get up. We’re almost there.”
I lifted Seo Eun-ha to her feet and supported her. Tears streamed down her face from the agony.
“It hurts… Tae-hyun, it hurts so much….”
She called my name without thinking.
“I know. Just hold on a little longer.”
We leaned on each other, stumbling through the hellish Swamp Area and finally escaped.
100 Meters Underground Safe Zone Base Camp.
“Urgh… hack!”
Lee Ji-young ripped off her gas mask and vomited onto the floor. Her face had gone deathly pale, as if she’d expelled everything down to her stomach acid. All traces of her usual cold composure had vanished.
Seo Eun-ha sat slumped against the wall, trembling violently. Serum oozed from the bandaged ankle and her back.
“Ah… seriously….”
She whimpered as she searched for a water bottle, but her hands shook so badly she couldn’t even unscrew the cap.
Park Jae-jung stared blankly at his shield, which he’d set down on the floor. His prized B-rank shield. But now its surface was pitted and scarred, melted away like a pockmarked face. Much like his pride.
“…I’m sorry.”
Park Jae-jung spoke in a hoarse voice.
“I should have blocked better.”
“It’s not your fault.”
I lay sprawled on the floor, breathing heavily, my vision spinning. “This is just… we’re not strong enough yet.”
Defeat. Crushing, humiliating defeat. Not even from an overwhelming power gap. We’d fled from a mere pack of D-rank monsters—unable to withstand the environmental damage.
‘Equipment bought with money, A-rank firepower… without sustain, it’s all just a house of cards.’
The realization cut deep. A healer to patch wounds instantly. A support mage to cleanse poison across the battlefield. Our party lacked that vital heart.
“Are there… any more potions?”
Seo Eun-ha murmured.
“I keep drinking them, but it still hurts….”
I reached to hand her the remaining potion but stopped. She was already showing signs of potion addiction. Drinking more now could actually make things worse.
I hesitated before handing over the remaining potion. She was already showing signs of potion addiction. If she drank more now, it could actually become poison.
“You can’t drink it now. You’ll go into shock. You have to endure it.”
“Then what do I do! I’m dying from the pain!”
She cursed under her breath.
Silence fell. My purification wasn’t omnipotent. I could treat people one at a time, but in a situation where an entire party was collapsing in real-time like this, there was nothing I could do.
“…We need a healer.”
Lee Ji-young wiped her mouth and spoke with difficulty.
“Not just any healer… A real one who can handle a crazy party like ours.”
“Who would come.”
Park Jae-jung laughed bitterly.
“Even a C-rank healer gets recruited by the Large Guilds. What madman would come to a dirt-covered New Guild like us, especially one that’s made enemies of Dominion?”
He was right. Money? I could provide it. Equipment? I could make it. But healers prioritize safety and prestige above all else. A place like ours, where we were diving headfirst into the unknown, was their number one target to avoid.
“If one doesn’t exist… we’ll have to find one.”
I pushed myself up and spoke.
“There has to be someone out there. Someone with real skill who’s hiding for some reason. Like Seo Eun-ha.”
Then Lee Ji-young seemed to remember something and pulled out a small notebook from her damp pocket.
“…There is one, actually.”
She murmured as if talking to herself.
“The odds are fifty-fifty. Or maybe she’s even more broken than Seo Eun-ha.”
My gaze, Park Jae-jung’s, and Seo Eun-ha’s all locked onto her at once.
“Who?”
Seo Eun-ha asked.
Lee Ji-young stared directly at me. Her eyes were bloodshot red, but within them lay a strange certainty.
“Have you ever heard of the urban legend called the Saint Who Drinks Pain?”
“Drinks… pain?”
“Yes. A woman who supposedly lives in District 99 Slums, the absolute bottom of the Lower District. They say that whatever wound you have, she just needs to touch it and it heals completely. She’s even brought people back from the brink of death. Based on her abilities alone, she might be S-rank, or even higher.”
S-rank talent. My ears perked up. But nothing in this world came free.
“Then why is she hiding? With that kind of ability, Cheong Wa Dae would recruit her, not Dominion.”
“The penalty is… rather horrific.”
Lee Ji-young grimaced.
“Every time she heals, she takes on the other person’s pain directly into her own body. If she heals someone with a severed arm, she feels the pain of her own arm being severed. If she heals someone poisoned, she becomes poisoned herself.”
“…That’s insane.”
Park Jae-jung sighed.
“That’s why there are rumors her mind has half-collapsed. She went into hiding because she’s terrified of healing people.”
Pain transference. A cursed talent. The moment I heard that story, I felt a strange thrill run through me.
“Interesting.”
I clenched my fists. This sense of defeat we experienced today. This aching insufficiency. I felt like I knew where the final puzzle piece that could fill it lay.
“She might be our lifeline.”
I looked around at my comrades. They were all exhausted, but seeing the light in my eyes, they steeled their resolve once more.
Whirrrrring—
Inside the cargo elevator ascending from the 100 Meters Underground Safe Zone Base Camp to Ground Level, only the sound of the massive motor turning filled the silence. On the elevator floor lay melted boot marks we’d dragged from the 450-meter point, drops of blood, and the weight of our defeat dripping steadily down.
“Ugh… it stings….”
Seo Eun-ha, huddled in the corner, let out a pained whimper. The acidic slime from the monsters had been hastily wiped away at the base camp, but her skin was already inflamed and raw.
Park Jae-jung stood in silence, his hand gripping the shield trembling faintly. The surface of his Gigas Shield had melted like a pockmarked face long ago, and the B-rank artifact had lost all its former glory.
I closed my eyes and leaned my head against the wall. The thirty minutes we’d spent fleeing from the Black Moss Cave at the 450-meter mark up to this 100-meter point felt as long as three years. We were alive and ascending, but part of my soul remained trapped in that viscous swamp.
Golden Tower 35th Floor, Penthouse. The living room overlooked a brilliant night cityscape, but now it resembled nothing so much as a field hospital.
“Ow! Take it easy!”
Seo Eun-ha, sprawled across the sofa, cried out. I removed my gloves and worked with bare hands to extract the lingering toxins from her back.
“Please stay still. The poison has burrowed deep into your nerves—I need to scrape it out thoroughly.”
“Why not use anesthesia at least! This is completely raw… ugh!”
I paid no mind to her complaints and concentrated my purification energy. A sharp hiss. Dark blue smoke rose from her back. This wasn’t simple wound treatment. I was decomposing microscopic acidic particles lodged between cells and burning them away.
“There. That’s done. Now we’ll apply ointment and wrap it with bandages.”
I wiped the sweat from my forehead and stepped back. My core energy was bottoming out. Dizziness washed over me.
“You’ve worked hard, Director.”
Park Jae-jung handed me an ice pack. His forearm bore distinct burn marks.
“Come here too, Park Jae-jung. I need to check your arm. If our tank can’t use his arm, he might as well retire.”
“I’m fine… ugh.”
I forced him to sit and treated his arm. Having expended so much energy healing Seo Eun-ha, my fingertips trembled as I worked on Park Jae-jung.
‘I’ve hit my limit.’
I cursed inwardly. Handling all the damage mitigation for a four-person party alone was impossible. Dealing damage during combat, commanding, and healing all at once? That was arrogance.
Once treatment was finished, we gathered around the living room table. The atmosphere was heavy. Lee Ji-young had washed her face and was buried deep in the sofa, her face still wet.
“Let’s take stock of this.”
I spoke first.
“Firepower, defense, intelligence—all excellent. So why did we have to retreat?”
“…Sustain.”
Lee Ji-young answered flatly. She tapped her finger against the empty potion bottles on the table—tap, tap.
“If combat goes over ten minutes, we collapse. Potion cooldown is one minute, but the monsters’ continuous attacks come every second. And in places like today where the environment itself is a debuff… there’s no answer.”
The conclusion was clear. Without a dedicated healer to instantly restore us and cleanse status ailments, we couldn’t advance any further.
“So, that person you mentioned earlier… are you certain about them?”
Park Jae-jung asked, looking at Lee Ji-young.
“Not certain. They’re someone who keeps very hidden.”
Lee Ji-young pulled a damp notebook from her pocket and opened it.
“Name is Han Su-jin. Estimated age: mid-twenties. Alias: Saint Who Drinks Pain.”
She read through the notes written in her notebook.
“Apparently she heals by transferring others’ wounds and illnesses onto her own body. There are rumors she’s mentally half-broken from the penalty and lives in hiding.”
“Pain transference…”
I murmured.
It was a rare penalty. But if the true nature of the pain accumulating in her body was magical contamination or toxin buildup, then perhaps my purification could save her.
“But where does she live?”
Seo Eun-ha asked.
“…Don’t be surprised.”
Lee Ji-young pulled up the map. Her finger pointed to a location that was neither the Middle District nor the typical Lower District.
On the map, a region marked with a red skull symbol.
[Zone 99: Uncontrollable Area]
“The absolute bottom of the Lower District. Beneath the pillars that support this floating city we inhabit… where it touches the actual ground level.”
Park Jae-jung’s expression hardened.
“Zone 99? That’s not a place for people to live. Isn’t that where the contaminated atmosphere from the ground seeps in directly, and monsters assault the settlement every night?”
Correct. In this world, the ground level is abandoned land. Humanity has constructed cities atop massive pillars to escape pollution and monsters. But the impoverished with no money and nowhere to go are pushed to Zone 99, near the base of those pillars, forced to coexist with monsters.
“How could a healer possibly survive in such a hellscape? She’d be monster food.”
Seo Eun-ha voiced her bewilderment.
“That’s the mystery.”
Lee Ji-young tilted her head in confusion as well.
“Despite monsters swarming everywhere, they never approach the small clinic where she lives. It’s as if… they fear some aura she emanates.”
“An aura?”
“Or perhaps there are people protecting her. Either way, the situation is far from ordinary.”
I rose from my seat. The danger was significant, but the potential reward justified the risk.
“Let’s prepare. This time, wear inconspicuous clothing instead of formal wear. Bring weapons as well.”
An hour later, we changed clothes and gathered at the Parking Lot. Instead of the luxurious limousine, we boarded a dilapidated van used for hauling cargo.
“I’m heading out.”
Park Jae-jung, gripping the steering wheel, started the engine.
The vehicle exited the gleaming Golden Tower and descended toward the lower reaches of the city. We passed through the forest of buildings in the Middle District, then through the typical Lower District, descending into deeper, darker places.
As we followed the endless spiral road downward, the landscape outside the window grew increasingly grotesque. Artificial lighting vanished, replaced by a pale mist rising from below that obscured our vision—contaminated vapor ascending from the ground level.
Massive pipes from the city above poured filth overhead, while beneath our feet lay a blanket of putrid fog. This was the City Sewers, the tomb of the abandoned.
“…The air itself is different.”
Seo Eun-ha pinched her nose, grimacing. The acrid stench of sulfur mixed with the reek of decay.
“Look there.”
Park Jae-jung pointed ahead.
Between massive pillars, a settlement of ramshackle shanties huddled together. And around the village’s perimeter, instead of barbed wire, a fence constructed from monster bones stood erected. Beyond the fence, in the darkness, dozens of pairs of crimson eyes glinted, fixing their gaze upon our vehicle.
[Warning: Monster-infested area.]
Mutant feral dogs native to the ground level. They barked and snarled as our vehicle passed, attempting to pursue, but as we approached the Village Entrance Plaza, they inexplicably tucked their tails and retreated.
“It’s really true…”
Lee Ji-young murmured to herself.
“This village has no barrier, yet monsters don’t enter. They stop right at the entrance.”
We parked at the Village Entrance Plaza. Stepping out, the muddy ground squelched beneath our feet. Around us, children rummaged through garbage, and elderly men sat with vacant stares. They watched us warily, eyes narrowed.
“The atmosphere is rather tense.”
Park Jae-jung moved to my side, surveying the surroundings.
“It’s this way.”
Lee Ji-young checked her map and took the lead.
We walked through the labyrinthine Shantytown alleys. At the alley’s end stood a small building—unusually dilapidated compared to others, yet meticulously maintained. No sign hung above it. Only a crudely drawn red cross on the door marked it as the sole refuge in this place.
“Here it is.”
As we stood before the door, groans emanated from within, accompanied by the metallic scent of blood, and between them came the faint, agonized whimper of a woman.
“Ugh… ugh…”
The sound was so harrowing it sent chills through the very bones of anyone who heard it. We exchanged a single glance before carefully opening the door.
Saint of Hell. This was my first encounter with her.

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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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