The All-Time Best Talent was F-Class Purification - Chapter 46

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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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46
Chapter 46 – An Elite Talent Awakened as an F-Rank Purifier
Crash—!
A sharp shattering sound pierced the silence of the laboratory. The massive reinforced glass fractured like a spider’s web before the internal pressure shattered it completely. A torrent of green cultivation fluid cascaded across the floor, and the bitter cold emanating from within coiled around our ankles.
Kuoooo….
A colossal shadow rose from the mist. The mechanical wings attached to its back unfurled with a grinding screech. The sound of bone and machinery interlocking. The wingspan alone stretched five meters. Instead of feathers, razor-sharp steel blades protruded from those wings—a testament that he was no longer a hero soaring through the heavens, but a weapon of devastation upon the earth.
“Lee Jin-sung…”
Park Jae-jung gripped his shield tightly as he spoke the name. An S-rank Hunter who had saved countless lives ten years ago before vanishing without a trace. People had believed he died heroically. But he hadn’t died at all—instead, he lay trapped in this frigid water, transformed into a monster.
“Data analysis complete.”
Even amid the dire situation, Lee Ji-young remained composed and focused on the monitor, her fingers moving urgently across the keyboard.
“I understand now. Why Dominion did this.”
“Why? Aren’t they just insane?”
Seo Eun-ha ignited her staff and shouted.
“No. For them, it was survival.”
The screen Lee Ji-young pulled up displayed a top-secret classified document titled [Floating City Lifespan Report], filled with crimson graphs.
“The anti-gravity engine that keeps the Floating City aloft is deteriorating. They knew. At most, fifty years. Within that time, humanity would have to descend to the ground once more.”
“So…?”
“But the ground is saturated with toxins. So they thought of something. Since purifying the land is impossible, they’d modify humans to adapt to the toxins instead.”
Her voice trembled.
“A prototype of cost-effective slaves to replace humanity when they descend in fifty years—beings who would breathe in the toxins, extract resources, and fight monsters without needing protective suits or wages. Eternal slaves.”
“Bastards….”
I clenched my teeth. They had committed the most inhumane atrocity under the guise of humanity’s salvation.
Then, Specimen No. 1, Lee Jin-sung, turned his head to look at us. His eyes were white without pupils, yet they held no emptiness. They seemed to contain a profound sorrow intertwined with an uncontrollable murderous intent.
“Kraaaaaah.”
He roared. It wasn’t merely a cry—compressed mana burst forth with the sound wave, scattering the laboratory equipment in all directions.
“I’ll handle it. Disperse.”
Simultaneously, Lee Jin-sung’s steel wings gleamed. Whoosh—dozens of feather-shaped blades fired from the wings like machine gun rounds.
“I’ll block them. Iron Fortress.”
Park Jae-jung stepped forward and increased the output of his Black Mamba Armor. A massive black shield unfurled, intercepting the blades. Clang. Crash. Clang. Terrifying impact sounds reverberated. In the past, the shield would have been pierced, but the shield and armor reinforced with acidic slime alloy remained unscathed.
“Reflect.”
Park Jae-jung flicked his shield. The embedded blades ricocheted backward, pinning Lee Jin-sung in place.
“Now’s your chance. Eun-ha.”
“Got it. Let’s show this bastard some heat.”
Seo Eun-ha kicked off the ground and soared into the air. The Salamander Suit she wore glowed crimson, amplifying her mana.
[Flame Cannon]
A thick beam of flame erupted from the tip of her staff. Boom. It struck Lee Jin-sung’s torso directly. But as the smoke cleared, what was revealed wasn’t a wounded body. The ashen scales covering his skin had absorbed the heat entirely.
“What? Magic resistance?”
“A Chimera.”
Lee Ji-young shouted.
“Contaminated obsidian worm genes are mixed in. His magical resistance is over 90%.”
“So we have to break through with brute force.”
I gripped the white fang and charged forward. Lee Jin-sung recognized my approach and swung his arm. His hand had transformed grotesquely—all five fingers had elongated into razor-sharp blades.
Whiing—. The sound of air being cleaved filled the space. Even a glancing blow carried enough force to bisect a body.
But my eyes caught every movement. My enhanced physical abilities, combined with the Alchemist’s Hand Gauntlet, sharpened my reflexes. I ducked low to evade the blades and drove myself into his embrace.
“This will hurt, but please bear with it, Senior.”
I thrust my short blade into his thigh. Squelch. The crystalline edge pierced through the gaps in his hardened scales.
“Purification.”
Shhrieeek. White light erupted. Lee Jin-sung screamed and staggered backward. Magic couldn’t touch him, but my purification energy—which burned away contamination itself—was his poison.
Yet he didn’t stop. The pain only drove him into a frenzy, and he lost all reason, beginning to destroy everything around him indiscriminately.
Crash-boom. A laboratory pillar collapsed, and the ceiling came crashing down.
“Kyaaah.”
Debris scattered, hurtling toward Han Su-jin.
“Su-jin.”
Park Jae-jung threw himself forward to shield her from the fragments. Han Su-jin remained crouched on the floor, staring blankly at Lee Jin-sung. Tears streamed endlessly down her face.
“Director… that person….”
She cried out through sobs.
“He’s not attacking. He’s… he’s begging to be killed. Pleading for us to stop. He says the pain is unbearable, that he’s going mad…”
The senses of an S-rank Healer. She was experiencing Lee Jin-sung’s agony in real time. The mechanical device embedded in his body controlled his mind, while contaminated mana burned through his veins. He was nothing but a puppet dancing against his own will.
Hearing those words, my chest tightened. He wasn’t a monster. He was merely a wretched human sacrificed to Dominion’s ambitions.
“…Let me end this for him.”
This wasn’t simply about defeating him. I had to save him.
“Ji-young. What’s the weak point? Where’s the core?”
“Not the heart—the brain.”
Lee Ji-young analyzed the data and shouted.
“The back of the neck. There’s a control chip embedded where the spine connects. That’s the source of the contamination.”
“The back of the neck….”
He hovered in the air, wings fluttering. Getting close wouldn’t be easy.
“I’ll create an opening.”
As Park Jae-jung stepped forward, Seo Eun-ha moved as well.
“Burning won’t work, but blinding him—that’s possible.”
She planted her staff into the ground.
[Ash Cloud]
Black smoke exploded upward, engulfing the laboratory’s airspace. Lee Jin-sung’s vision was cut off. He panicked, slashing wildly through empty air with his blades.
“Jae-jung. Give me a platform.”
“Ready.”
Park Jae-jung lowered his stance and raised his shield.
I sprinted at full speed. I planted my foot on his shield and launched myself upward, borrowing his strength. Ting—. My body shot up like an arrow.
Through the smoke, Lee Jin-sung’s silhouette became visible. He sensed me instinctively and swung his wings. Steel feathers grazed past my body.
“Damn.”
Pain seared through my ribs as they tore, but the Commander’s tactical jacket prevented a fatal wound. I twisted mid-air and landed on his back, gripping the base of his mechanical wings with my left gauntlet.
“Grraaahhh.”
He thrashed about wildly, his strength immense, but I refused to let go.
“Su-jin. Now!”
At my shout, Han Su-jin clasped her hands together from the floor.
[Saint’s Prayer – Pain Suppression]
A beam of white light shot upward, enveloping Lee Jin-sung’s body. It wasn’t a heal. It was an analgesic spell that temporarily paralyzed his rampaging nervous system. Lee Jin-sung’s movements froze for just a moment.
In that instant, I gripped the Queen’s white fangs firmly and aimed at the black mechanical device embedded in the back of his neck.
“Rest now.”
Thwack.
The dagger pierced the control chip with perfect precision.
“Purification: Liberation.”
I poured every last ounce of core energy from my body into it. A deafening roar erupted—
A blinding storm of light exploded from the dagger’s tip. The black mechanical device melted away, and the crimson magical circuits that had dominated his brain burned white-hot to ash.
Lee Jin-sung’s convulsions ceased. The steel wings that had sprouted from his back crumbled into dust and scattered. The grotesque scales peeled away, revealing the original human skin beneath.
Lee Jin-sung and I descended slowly to the floor. Park Jae-jung rushed over and caught us.
Dust settled across the laboratory floor. Lee Jin-sung lay cradled in my arms, breathing heavily. The monster’s form was gone, replaced by the middle-aged hero I had seen in photographs from ten years ago. Yet his life force was already fading, flickering like a candle about to be extinguished.
He opened his eyes with great effort. Life returned faintly to eyes that had been rolled back white.
“…Th…ank…you…”
A fractured voice. It was the first human language he had spoken in years.
“…I’m sorry. For not coming sooner.”
I bowed my head.
With trembling hands, he reached up and grasped my gauntleted hand. His lips moved as if trying to convey something.
“…Basement… Level 3…”
“What?”
“…They… hid… the real…”
He couldn’t continue. Instead, a small key fell from his hand. It was old and rusted, yet it carried a strange magical aura.
“…Please… I beg you…”
That was the end. His head fell limply, and my hand slipped from his grasp to the floor. Lee Jin-sung, hero of South Korea. He who had been trampled by Dominion’s ambitions finally ended his long suffering and found eternal rest.
Silence filled the laboratory. Han Su-jin wept silently, while Seo Eun-ha turned away, swallowing her curses. Park Jae-jung stood in solemn salute.
I picked up the key he had left behind and gripped it tightly. The cold metal bit into my palm.
“…This isn’t over.”
I rose slowly to my feet. My gaze had grown colder than the corpse before me.
“Basement Level 3. That’s where Dominion’s true hell must be hidden.”
The air in the laboratory hung heavy. The culture medium that had pooled on the floor was slowly drying, and the heat of battle was fading.
We stood gathered before the body of Lee Jin-sung, once a hero, now a corpse. The traces of his transformation into a monster had vanished with my purification, but the skeletal frame left by ten years of time and five years of torture could not be hidden.
“…What do we do?”
Seo Eun-ha asked in a hoarse voice. Her usual bold demeanor was gone, her eyes bloodshot.
“We can’t just leave him here. Those Dominion bastards might come back and… do something else.”
“We can’t take him with us either.”
Park Jae-jung shook his head heavily.
“The decay is too severe. If we move him… he’ll crumble to pieces.”
Cruel, but true. It was impossible to transport him to the surface intact. I gazed down at him for a moment, then made my decision.
“Let’s send him off… here.”
I looked toward Seo Eun-ha.
“Eun-ha. I’m asking you. With the hottest, purest flame you have.”
Seo Eun-ha bit her lip, then nodded. She raised her staff. It wasn’t the fierce, scorching inferno she usually unleashed on enemies. A gentle, candlelike flame bloomed at the tip of her staff, quiet and serene.
Whoosh.
The flame enveloped Lee Jin-sung’s corpse. Crackle, crackle. Instead of the stench of burning flesh, white smoke rose as if purifying the laboratory air itself. The hero who had vanished ten years ago while fighting for humanity became nothing but a handful of ash, finally at peace.
We observed a moment of silence. His death was no mere tragedy. It was the most certain justification we had for bringing down Dominion.
As the funeral ended, the exhaustion I’d been suppressing crashed over me like a tsunami.
“We need to rest. We can’t go any further in this condition.”
I pointed to a small room that appeared to be an on-duty room attached to the laboratory. The thick iron door looked defensible. Park Jae-jung shut the door and barricaded it with the desk.
“Security secured.”
We collapsed onto the floor. Without anyone going first, long sighs erupted from all of us.
“Haa… seriously, what a crazy day.”
Seo Eun-ha leaned her head against the wall and grumbled.
“I just came along to make some money and get my revenge, but here we are uncovering the world’s secrets or something….”
“Do you regret it?”
Lee Ji-young asked.
“No. Actually, it’s good. Now I understand why Kang Chang-gyung acted so superior. That bastard really did pick out every dirty deed imaginable.”
I opened my backpack and pulled out a portable burner and combat rations. This was Zone 9 Underground. Lighting a fire could deplete oxygen, but the purification filter I’d created kept the air circulating, so it was fine.
Glug glug. As water boiled in the pot, warmth began to spread through the barren room. The menu was instant beef porridge and canned coffee. Not Michelin-star cuisine, but the finest feast we could ask for right now.
“Please, eat.”
I ladled porridge into paper cups and handed them to my colleagues.
Han Su-jin took the cup but couldn’t bring herself to eat. She stared blankly down at her own hands—the hands that had shared Lee Jin-sung’s suffering.
“…It hurt so much.”
She murmured.
“It felt like my bones were melting, my brain was being crushed… I wanted to die, but my body wouldn’t move, so I couldn’t even do that. For years… alone in that darkness….”
Her body began to tremble. Trauma. I set down what I was eating and moved to her side. I pulled a handkerchief from my pocket and gently wiped away the marks on her hands.
“Su-jin. Look at me.”
She slowly lifted her head.
“That pain is over now. Because you felt it, we were able to recognize him for what he was, and we could set him free. You saved him.”
“I… saved him?”
“Yes. Without you, we would have just killed him thinking he was a monster. Then he would have been remembered as a monster forever. Thanks to you, he was able to leave as a hero.”
At my words, her eyes wavered. The guilt seemed to ease a little.
“…Thank you, Tae-hyun.”
For the first time, she called me by my name instead of my title. She gripped the handkerchief tightly and slowly took a sip of the porridge.
“It’s delicious….”
Only then did a faint hint of color return to her face.
Seo Eun-ha clicked her tongue and pulled a chocolate bar from her pocket, tossing it to Han Su-jin.
“Have something sweet. Sugar’s the best cure for depression.”
“Ah… thank you, unnie.”
“Don’t thank me. If you collapse, who’s going to heal us? I’m feeding you to keep you alive.”
Her words were gruff, but Seo Eun-ha’s ears had turned slightly red. Park Jae-jung smiled warmly at the sight. Lee Ji-young quietly sipped her coffee while organizing something on her tablet.
After we finished eating, each of us took time to maintain our equipment. Park Jae-jung was polishing scratches off his shield, while Lee Ji-young was analyzing the data she’d downloaded earlier.
I pulled out the key Lee Jin-sung had handed me at the end. A rusted brass key. Yet the aura I felt through an alchemist’s touch was far from ordinary.
[Item: Administrator Key – Level 3]
[Grade: Special]
[Description: Elevator key to the Core Control Room at the lowest level of the Dominion Zone 9 Research Facility.]
“Director.”
Lee Ji-young called out to me as she removed her glasses.
“I’ve finished analyzing the data. Basement Level 3… that’s not a typical laboratory.”
“Then what is it?”
“A mining operation. One with a straw jammed straight into Earth’s Core.”
The blueprint she showed me was shocking. Basement Level 3 contained massive drilling facilities. Ten years ago, instead of sealing the hole where the obsidian worms had erupted, they’d built facilities directly above it to extract energy.
“They created enhanced humans like Lee Jin-sung and sent them down into the scorching depths to mine resources. And in the process, they imprisoned and experimented on the Core Beasts that awakened.”
“Insane bastards….”
Park Jae-jung punched the wall.
“Blinded by greed, they’ve left the gates of hell wide open.”
“The problem is now.”
Lee Ji-young’s expression grew grave.
“It’s been five years since the administrator disappeared. The control system is on the verge of collapse, and the pressure in Basement Level 3 has exceeded its limits. If that place ruptures….”
“Either all of Zone 9 gets obliterated, or something far worse comes pouring out onto the surface.”
I continued the thought.
We fell silent. Our mission was to purify Zone 9. But this wasn’t a cleaning job. It was a time-bomb defusal operation.
“Should we head back?”
Seo Eun-ha asked.
“We’ve already secured the evidence. This is more than enough to embarrass Dominion. We don’t need to risk our lives going all the way down to Basement Level 3.”
It was a practical suggestion. We were already in enough danger. No one could blame us for turning back now.
But I gripped the key tightly. Lee Jin-sung’s final gaze. The plea in those words echoed in my ears. And above all, my instincts were screaming. There was something down there—something that would elevate my purification ability to the next level.
“No.”
I stood up from my seat. I’d rested enough.
“If we stop here, Dominion will get away with cutting off its tail. They’ll claim it’s an abandoned facility, that they knew nothing about it. To end this properly, we need to seize the Core itself—the very source they’ve been mining.”
I looked around at my teammates.
“Of course, I won’t force anyone. If anyone wants to turn back….”
“Forget it.”
Seo Eun-ha stood up, leaning on her staff.
“I’m going. I hate leaving things half-finished like this.”
“I’m coming too.”
Park Jae-jung picked up his shield.
“If I go alone, who will protect me?”
“I’m coming too….”
Han Su-jin rose to her feet.
“Those people… they’re still crying down there. I want to ease their suffering.”
Lee Ji-young silently donned her glasses and secured her goggles. Her answer needed no words.
“All right.”
I cleared away the barricade we had wedged against the On-duty Room door. With a metallic clang, the iron door swung open, revealing the long, shadowed corridor once more.
But it was different now. We had entered this passage trembling with fear, yet now anger, purpose, and trust in one another fortified us with unshakeable resolve.
“Let’s go. To Basement Level 3.”
We stepped forward into the darkness.

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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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