The All-Time Best Talent was F-Class Purification - Chapter 91

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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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91
Chapter 91 – An Elite Talent Awakened as an F-Rank Purifier
“Gasp!”
Han Ae-ri jolted upright from the worn sofa with a sharp cry, her entire body drenched in cold sweat. Her unfocused eyes darted aimlessly through the air, searching for something that wasn’t there.
“Ae-ri! You’re safe. Calm down. We’re in a secure location.”
Han Su-jin, who had kept vigil at her side all night, quickly wrapped her arms around the other woman’s shoulders. As Han Ae-ri’s ragged breathing gradually steadied, her gaze slowly regained focus. The crimson glow of the butcher shop lights, the scent of dust mingled with blood, and the concerned faces of people looking down at her.
“Su-jin… sister? Brother Jae-jung?”
“Yeah, I’m here. It’s all over now.”
Park Jae-jung gently stroked her hair with his large hand. Han Ae-ri stared blankly at her own palms. She had been trapped in that hellish cultivation tank, and it had felt as though she were experiencing the agony of her comrades being torn apart.
“I… I can’t remember clearly. It felt like a terrible nightmare, but everything’s hazy, like looking through fog.”
She murmured while pressing her temples.
“Don’t force yourself to remember.”
I handed her a paper cup filled with warm water.
“Your mind likely protected itself by blocking out the traumatic memories. And I… helped with some cleaning as well.”
Last night, through synchronization and purification, I had burned away the core of the trauma clinging to her psyche. She retained the facts of what happened, but the paralyzing terror and sensations that would have shattered her sanity had been cauterized away.
Han Ae-ri held the warm cup in both hands and fell silent for a long time. But even if the pain of memory had faded, that didn’t mean the grief would disappear with it.
“What about Seung-ryong and the others?”
At the tremor in her voice, the air in the warehouse grew heavy. Seo Eun-ha turned away, and Park Jae-jung clenched his jaw. There was no room for lies.
“They all… closed their eyes peacefully. Not as monsters, but as Hunters…”
My calm reply sent her pupils trembling violently. Her knuckles whitened as she gripped the paper cup, and soon thick tears began falling onto the water’s surface, one after another.
“Ah… ugh… ahhh…”
She bit her lip to suppress the sound, but couldn’t hold back the sobs that escaped. We didn’t need to ask what those tears meant. We simply remained at her side in silence, letting her fully release her grief.
Time passed. When Han Ae-ri finally lifted her head, her face streaked with dried tears, she spoke in a hoarse voice.
“Who did this.”
The light in her eyes had transformed. It was no longer the gaze of someone in hiding. It was the cold, razor-sharp killing intent unique to a slasher—the kind that finds an enemy’s blind spot and severs their lifeline in a single motion.
“Kang Chang-gyung of Dominion, and Blue Tower, who provided them with bioweapon technology.”
I pointed to the whiteboard we’d organized last night. Han Ae-ri staggered to her feet and stood before the board, staring intently at the names Kang Chang-gyung and Blue Tower written there. Then she turned and looked at me.
“I’m coming with you. No—take me with you.”
“Ae-ri, in your current condition, combat might be—”
Han Su-jin tried to dissuade her, but Han Ae-ri shook her head firmly.
“I’m a slasher. I can do plenty without direct confrontation—bypass security systems, mask my presence, and… assassination. I will have my revenge on them. I’d rather die than stay here being treated like a patient.”
I nodded at her resolve. Giving her a clear blade to wield would be far more empowering than hollow comfort.
“Welcome, Han Ae-ri. You may very well be needed tonight, perhaps sooner than we think.”
I picked up the silver-gray helmet resting on the table.
“We’re heading back to the Black Market to find an expert who can crack this helmet’s encryption.”
As we prepared to depart, the warehouse fell into purposeful silence.
Park Jae-jung pulled extra recovery potions from his pack and handed them to Han Ae-ri. Seo Eun-ha pulled an old hood over her head and secured her staff at her waist. Han Su-jin checked on Han Ae-ri’s condition once more before packing a first aid kit into her bag.
Watching them move about, I reflected.
Not even a day had passed since we escaped the Underground Research Facility. Lee Seung-ryong, Lee Chung-hyung, Ju Mi-sung, Choi Min-ji—they were already mourning in their own ways and rising again in their own ways. That was how these people lived. Not by refusing to break, but by continuing to walk even as they fell apart.
I wanted to rest. If I’m being honest, I did. But Kang Chang-gyung wouldn’t rest, and neither would Blue Tower. They’d already sent Cleaners after us—they wouldn’t be letting go.
I had to move.
I fastened the short sword to my belt and rose from my seat.
PM 11:30 – Neo Kuro Market Basement Level 4 (The Pit’s Deepest Reaches)
We descended into the underground black market once more, our bodies concealed beneath tattered overcoats. This time, Han Ae-ri accompanied us. Beneath her pulled-down hood, her eyes swept the surroundings with predatory sharpness, perfectly vigilant against our blind spots. Truly, the keen movements of a Slasher.
“This is the most remote corner of The Pit. Ordinary merchants wouldn’t dare venture here—it’s the Junkyard section.”
Park Jae-jung led the way, guiding us forward. Unlike the upper levels where illegal minerals and potions were traded, the air itself was different here. The acrid bite of ozone, the searing reek of solder, and the nauseating stench of rancid lubricant. Along the corridor, limbless illegal mercenaries lay sprawled in queues, waiting to have their mechanical prosthetics repaired.
The broker Seo Eun-ha had already contacted months ago had gone silent. It was perhaps inevitable for someone whose communications had been severed for so long. But if Dr. Junk continued operating in this underworld, traces would inevitably remain. I simply needed to follow the ozone stench. Only a handful of facilities throughout The Pit possessed engineering capabilities of this caliber.
We navigated through the labyrinth of towering scrap metal heaps and arrived before a dented container box without even a sign. Above its makeshift iron-plated entrance, the words [Dr. JUNK] were scrawled in red spray paint.
“We’re closed. Either you’re dying or come back tomorrow.”
A gruff voice mixed with metallic clanging echoed from within. We entered the container without answering.
The workshop interior was so cluttered with wiring and unidentifiable machine parts that there was nowhere to set foot. A gaunt man sat before the workbench, welding goggles perched on his head, and turned to glare at us irritably. His researcher’s coat was stained with grease and grime. His left arm was not human—it was a crude, grotesque steel prosthetic.
A former chief researcher of Blue Tower, now a scrap metal repairman of the black market. Dr. Junk.
He read our group’s imposing stature and unusual atmosphere, and his brow furrowed. His remaining right hand naturally drifted toward the shotgun grip beneath the workbench.
“What is this? Did Black Dog send you? I paid protection fees last month.”
Instead of answering, I pulled a silver-gray helmet from the worn bag and dropped it onto his workbench.
“We’re here to request repairs. Or more precisely, a decontamination service.”
Dr. Junk’s gaze locked onto the helmet. In that instant, his breath caught. His grumbling mouth slowly fell open, and his eyes behind the goggles trembled as if seized by an earthquake.
“This is….”
He bolted upright as if burned by fire. He drew the shotgun from beneath the workbench and aimed it directly at my brow.
“You insane bastards. Get out with that helmet right now!!”
His voice wasn’t anger—it was terror.
“Do you know what this is?! It’s a Blue Tower Cleaner-exclusive tactical helmet! And these damage marks… Goddammit, did you kill a Cleaner?!”
“They tried to kill us first.”
I answered calmly, and Dr. Junk inhaled sharply. He retreated backward, the gun barrel still trained on me.
“Get out. Take that thing and get out now! Bringing this into my workshop? There’s real-time location tracking on this, biometric signal synchronization—everything! Carrying this around is like walking around with a bomb!”
“We physically destroyed the tracking device on the way here.”
“That’s not the problem! They’ll find it anyway! You pups who just cracked the black market don’t know shit about what Blue Tower is—they don’t kill people, they erase existence itself!”
He tried to grab the helmet with his trembling mechanical prosthetic and hurl it toward us. But I didn’t dodge. I stepped forward and gripped his gun barrel, pushing it down.
“So, are you afraid?”
“What?”
“‘We do not lie before knowledge.'”
I recited Blue Tower’s motto quietly.
“A defeated man who couldn’t bear the weight of that vaunted knowledge and fled. A genius engineer who lost an arm pursuing truth and was cast into the sewers of the black market.”
My provocation made Dr. Junk’s shoulders flinch. His mechanical prosthetic crackled and sparked.
“What do you know about my past?! If you don’t leave right now, I’ll blow your head clean off—!”
I cut off his words and withdrew the magical engineering core I’d taken from underground, placing it on the workbench. A heart-like machine—a blue crystal suffused with dark crimson contamination, pulsing ominously within.
Dr. Junk’s gaze fell upon the core.
His hand stopped.
The gun barrel slowly lowered. Not by conscious will—his strength simply drained away. As if entranced, he walked toward the workbench and picked up the core. His eyes wavered as he gazed into it. The engineer’s instinct had reacted first.
“This structure… the arrangement of the mana circuits….”
“Familiar, isn’t it?”
He slowly lifted his head.
“This was extracted from the Dominion Hospital Underground Research Facility. It was connected to the helmet’s communication logs. And I suspect you know better than anyone that this core couldn’t be manufactured without Blue Tower’s technology.”
His lips trembled visibly. I couldn’t be certain how much he already knew, but the moment his eyes fell upon this core, I could feel the pieces clicking into place inside his mind.
“This core is proof of what those leaders of the Tower of Knowledge—the ones who cast you out—accomplished when they joined forces with Kang Chang-gyung.”
Dr. Junk stared at the core in silence for a long moment. The quiet hanging in the tavern felt suffocating. That prolonged silence spoke volumes about what was churning through his thoughts.
“These insane bastards… They actually… they actually succeeded in creating a power core that uses human neural tissue as a catalyst?”
His hand holding the core trembled violently. His breathing grew ragged. His expression was unreadable—whether it was rage or disillusionment, I couldn’t tell. Until this moment, he probably never imagined they’d actually completed such a thing.
“Will you unlock all the command logs from Blue Tower’s leadership contained in this helmet, as well as the transaction records with Kang Chang-gyung?”
I took another step forward.
“The truth Blue Tower tried to bury, their hypocrisy—we’ll expose it all to the world.”
Dr. Junk lifted his gaze, studying each of us in turn. Though his worn coat concealed much, the lethal glint in my companions’ eyes couldn’t be hidden. Han Ae-ri’s gaze in particular was frozen with a coldness that suggested imminent slaughter.
Dr. Junk bit his lip for a long time. He picked up his gun, then set it down. He lifted the core onto the workbench, then grabbed it again. I could see the internal struggle—his survival instinct warring against the wounded pride of a scientist.
Finally, he let out a hollow laugh and roughly dragged the chair in front of the workbench toward him, sitting down hard.
“Crazy bastards. Fine. I’m just rotting away tinkering with scrap metal anyway. Might as well give those sons of bitches a taste of their own medicine.”
He retrieved the helmet, connected thick cables to it, and activated a holographic keyboard. Dozens of complex coding windows materialized in the air before us.
“But there’s a condition. This helmet has triple-layered firewalls and an auto-deletion sequence. To bypass them and extract the logs, I’ll need at least 12 hours.”
“Twelve hours?”
Park Jae-jung’s brow furrowed.
“Yeah. And the moment I touch those firewalls, even though I destroyed the physical transmitter, they’ll start a counter-trace through mana waves. It’s only a matter of time before Blue Tower breaches the Black Market Communication Network and pinpoints my container’s coordinates.”
Dr. Junk flipped his welding goggles back down over his eyes, glaring at us.
“For the next 12 hours, no matter what happens, don’t let anyone inside this container. If even one person gets in and touches my equipment, the data vanishes forever.”
“Don’t worry.”
I turned to my companions behind me and drew my dagger. Park Jae-jung unfurled his bundle, revealing the lustrous surface of his Gigas Shield, while Han Ae-ri silently gripped two daggers at her waist. Seo Eun-ha closed her eyes and began drawing mana to the surface.
Before he could finish speaking—
Beep. Beep-beep-!
An old radar sensor sitting in the corner of the workbench suddenly blazed with frantic red light.
“Damn it! They’ve already caught the scent!”
Dr. Junk hammered at the keyboard frantically, shouting. Beyond the container, past the Scrap Metal Junkyard, countless footsteps began echoing toward us. Whether they were Bounty Hunters sent by Blue Tower through the Black Market or Cleaners who’d already infiltrated the area, their presence was unmistakable.
“Focus on your work, Doctor.”
I turned toward the shutter. I didn’t know how many were out there, but one thing remained unchanged—I had to hold this door for 12 hours.
“This door will never open.”
The footsteps outside grew closer. I adjusted my grip on the dagger and exhaled slowly. It would be a lie to say I wasn’t afraid. But there was no reason to retreat. I—we—couldn’t move forward until this fight was finished.

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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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