The All-Time Best Talent was F-Class Purification - Chapter 67

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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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67
Chapter 67 – An Elite Talent Awakened as an F-Rank Purifier
The pain stretched on endlessly. Time and sensation lost all meaning. Within that torment, hallucinations began to manifest.
‘You’re not cut out for this, Lee Tae-hyun.’
‘What could an F-Rank possibly accomplish?’
‘You don’t even have three million won for hospital bills, you bastard.’
Fragments of past memories flashed through my consciousness. The contemptuous gazes of Hunters who looked down on me. The humiliation of the day I had to transfer Mother to a Lower-tier Hospital because I lacked the funds. And that chilling wind from the moment the Blue Tower’s retention officer abandoned me and walked away.
‘I’m sick of it.’
I twisted my lips into a smile, my mouth caked with blood. Weakness is a sin. In this world, weakness equals death, contempt, and the right to be betrayed. I despised it with every fiber of my being. That’s why I clawed my way up.
But to die here? Consumed by nothing more than this mass of gas?
“That’s… not… funny…”
I tightened my grip on the dagger. The sound of finger bones cracking echoed through me, but I didn’t care. I pushed my purification output to its absolute maximum.
Whoooosh!
White flames erupted from within my body. This was no ordinary manipulation of mana. It was a final, desperate act—burning my very life force as kindling.
I incinerate the toxic poison that pours in. Burn it and transform it into pure mana. Then, with that mana, I rebuild my shattered body.
A torrent of energy cascades into my body. It tears through my veins and grinds my bones to dust. But I don’t stop.
Destruction and regeneration. Collapse and reconstruction.
Crack. Pop. Grotesque sounds reverberate through my body. Liquefied muscle regrows and adheres to bone. Ruptured blood vessels regenerate, reconnecting thicker and stronger than before. My blackened, rotting lungs fall away, replaced by pristine white lungs capable of filtering even the toxic miasma itself.
This horrific cycle repeats dozens of times per second.
I feel my body being reforged in real time. I’m transcending the boundaries of humanity. My weak genetic code—the blueprint of an F-Rank—is being forcibly rewritten to adapt to this merciless environment.
“Gaaahhhhh…!”
I clench my teeth. They shatter under the pressure. Yet even those teeth regrow within the radiance of purification. How much time has passed? A minute? An hour? A day? I can’t tell. Only an all-consuming thirst remains.
‘It’s not enough.’
My mana reservoir is already filled to capacity, yet I cannot be satisfied. I must grow stronger.
Never to be looked down upon again.
Never to lose someone precious again.
Never to be abandoned again.
I open my mouth with ravenous hunger. Breathing alone is insufficient. I inhale the liquefied gas surrounding me. The agony of my stomach burning? Now even that pain feels like sweet satiation.
Shhhhhhh.
The vortex of gas around me begins to spiral inward, centered on my body. As if I’ve become the eye of a hurricane. The vast expanse of violet mist filling the Sinkhole is being sucked into my small frame.
That’s when it happened.
Crack.
Deep within my soul, a solid, transparent barrier that seemed unbreakable—the limit of C-Rank, the vessel of mediocrity, the innate ceiling I believed was absolute—screamed. Spider-web fractures began spreading across that wall.
‘It’s coming.’
I don’t open my eyes. Not yet. It’s only cracked, not shattered. This level of pain isn’t enough. I need greater impact, greater pressure.
“More…”
I force the words out through gritted teeth.
“Come on in, you bastards!”
I completely dismantle my body’s defense mechanisms. I reduce the purification filter to its minimum and drive raw, unfiltered toxin directly into my heart.
It was madness. A gamble where my heart could stop at any moment.
Thump! Thump!
My heart pounded violently, each beat like a hammer strike against my chest. The shockwave rippled through my entire body and crashed against the cracked wall with devastating force.
In that moment.
As the pain intensified beyond measure, reality itself began to slip away. My vision flickered, and hallucinations bloomed before my eyes.
“Lee Tae-hyun.”
A whisper brushed against my ear.
“Who are you?”
I tried to open my mouth and respond, but no sound came. Where was I? Just moments ago, I had been inhaling the toxic gas at the bottom of the Sinkhole.
The landscape unfolding before me was familiar, yet horrifying.
The Middle District First Hospital. That white hospital room where Mother lay admitted.
“Mother?”
I opened the hospital room door. But the figure lying on the bed was not Mother.
Park Jae-jung, drenched in blood and sprawled across the mattress. Seo Eun-ha with her neck twisted at an unnatural angle. Han Su-jin, her body already cold.
“You killed them.”
A voice came from behind me. I turned to see myself from ten years ago—the pathetic F-rank version of me, cowering over lack of money, glaring at my current self with contempt.
“They’re all dead because of your greed. You should have just quietly cleaned. Look what happened when you got above your station—everyone around you died.”
“Shut your mouth.”
“See? That poison you’ve been breathing will drive you mad and incinerate everyone around you. You’re not a Purifier. You’re a walking catastrophe.”
The phantom version of me sneered and seized my collar. From that grip, a sickly violet toxin rose like smoke.
It clawed at my guilt. The gas leak accident. Colleagues isolated because of me. My selfish act of breathing in the poison to survive alone.
Just as my resolve wavered, black hands erupted from the abyss below, grasping at my ankles—the will of corruption, dragging me down into the gas, into eternal death.
This gas was no mere energy.
It was a thought-form woven from the resentment of tens of thousands who had died on this land since the Fateful Day, mingled with the murderous intent of monsters. They were using the moment my body grew stronger to devour my mind.
“Nngh…”
My consciousness grew hazy. Sleep seemed merciful—a place without guilt, without responsibility. But then, I felt something hard in my pocket.
A pocket within the hallucination. Inside it lay a D-rank Superior Magic Stone—proof of my first success, the reason I survived.
But that wasn’t all.
The note Park Jae-jung left behind. Han Su-jin’s antidote. Seo Eun-ha’s energy bar.
Everything my colleagues left for me. Everything in my backpack. The reason I made it this far.
Flash.
My eyes changed.
Guilt? Regret? Yes, I can feel those. I’m human, after all. But there’s something far greater than that.
“This is mine.”
I twisted the wrist of the phantom holding me.
“This power, this gas, and the Guild I built—every last bit of it is my asset, earned through blood and sweat.”
Crack!
The phantom’s arm shattered.
“How dare you play master here? You’re just a tenant who doesn’t even pay rent.”
I seized the phantom by the collar and slammed it into the ground. This was my mental realm. My domain. Here, I was law, and I was god.
“Get out.”
Crash!
With my cry, the hospital room shattered into fragments. The hallucination crumbled like breaking glass.
“Screeeech!”
A grotesque shriek echoed through the darkness. The will of corruption that had tried to consume me was bouncing back against my fierce ego.
Flash!
I opened my eyes in reality.
The bottom of the Sinkhole. The scorching heat and violet mist still enveloped me. But something had changed.
Crash!
A crisp sound rang out. Glass shattering? Chains breaking? It didn’t matter. What mattered was that one shell imprisoning me had shattered completely.
Crack. Crackle.
[Awakening Complete. Rank Readjustment: C → B]
The transparent shell enveloping my soul had broken.
B-Rank.
Lee Tae-hyun, the F-Rank porter, had finally stepped into the realm of B-Rank, called the tier of elite Hunters.
My body felt lighter. The crushing pressure vanished and my breathing opened up. The quality of mana flowing through my veins had transformed. Where it had been murky before, now pure, crystalline power flowed like clear spring water.
I looked down at my hands.
My skin had changed. The flesh that had been ravaged and melted by toxins now faintly glowed white. As if the power of purification had seeped into every single cell of my body.
“…Ha.”
A hollow laugh escaped me. So this was a B-Rank body. A realm I couldn’t have imagined during my F-Rank days.
But I didn’t close my eyes.
B-Rank. A tremendous achievement. An F-Rank porter becoming a B-Rank Hunter—it was a miracle worth celebrating.
But.
‘Is this all I’m supposed to do?’
Before my eyes, mountains of gas still remained. That violet storm pouring from the Fissure. Leave it behind? I couldn’t afford to waste it.
And with just B-Rank power, I couldn’t devour the Dominion waiting for me above.
I repositioned myself. This newly formed, larger and sturdier B-Rank vessel. Now it was time to fill that empty space.
“I’m still hungry.”
I began absorbing again. This was no longer spooning it in. I was gulping it down by the bucketful. Faster. Stronger.
Whoooosh!
The flow of gas changed. The toxins pouring from the Fissure were now being sucked toward my body like a black hole.
That was when it happened.
Writhe.
Something moved deep within the Fissure.
I narrowed my eyes. Beyond the flow of gas, in the deepest part of the Fissure. Something was rising up. At first, I thought it was mist. But it wasn’t. It possessed will.
Kuoooo.
A low resonance shook the space. The gas I had been drawing in hesitated. No—the gas itself began to clump together.
“What is that?”
I drew out White Fang. The dagger sensed its master’s vigilance and glowed faintly. The violet gas gathered into a single point. The scattered toxins condensed, compressed, and began to take form.
A gelatinous, slime-like entity, or perhaps a twisted human shape. Dozens of eyes blinked across its entire body, glaring down at me.
The essence of corruption.
The core of the gas emanating from this Sinkhole. The entity that had invaded my mind moments ago and attempted a mental attack now manifested in physical form.
“So it was you.”
I looked up at it. Roughly five meters in size. Its form rippled unstably, yet the pressure emanating from within was tremendous.
It seemed flustered that I had broken free from the hallucination and risen. It puffed itself up menacingly, and dozens of eyes poured forth crimson light.
Roooaaarrr!
Formless pressure crashed down upon me. Fear. Despair. An instinctive dread of death. This creature specialized in mental attacks.
But.
“I already ate that earlier.”
I laughed softly.
Just moments before, we had clashed within my mental realm. And I had won. The same trick wouldn’t work twice.
I took a step toward it.
“I know what you are. You’re the core of the gas, right? It would take time to absorb all those scattered fragments one by one.”
Another step.
“How considerate of you to bundle yourself into one lump.”
The fear and killing intent it radiated pricked my skin. But my body, now B-rank, brushed it aside contemptuously. I spread both hands wide.
If I consumed that creature. If I swallowed every drop of that concentrated essence. I could transcend B-rank and glimpse what lay beyond.
“A delicacy, perhaps.”
The essence of corruption threatened as it extended its tentacles. Dozens of violet whips surged toward me. I did not dodge.
“Seonghwa.”
Brilliant light exploded from my body. An advanced purification technique. A power that purified an entire space at once. Light flooded the area. The moment its tentacles touched the radiance, they evaporated like smoke.
Roooaaarrr!
The essence of corruption shrieked. For it, the light of purification was a natural enemy. For a being composed of corruption, the power to erase corruption was death itself.
But it did not die easily. It filled the melted portions with surrounding gas, and instead grew larger.
“Stubborn.”
I bared my white fangs. I couldn’t cut it with a blade. It wasn’t a physical entity. But I hadn’t come to cut. I came to consume.
“Bon appétit.”
I lunged toward it. Like a ravenous beast.
I lunged at him like a starving beast.

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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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