The All-Time Best Talent was F-Class Purification - Chapter 95
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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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95
Chapter 95 – An Elite Talent Awakened as an F-Rank Purifier
Kwaaaaaang—!
The moment three generations of mana golems unleashed point-blank bombardments into each other’s chests, time itself seemed to freeze in Underground Level 4 of the Black Market. An absolute white noise so deafening that even the eardrum-shattering explosion became inaudible.
The collision of compressed, ultra-dense mana birthed an explosion that expanded like a miniature sun, vaporizing every scrap of metal and garbage heap in its vicinity.
“Hold it back—!”
Park Jae-jung drove his Gigass Shield into the floor with a roar that seemed to burst every blood vessel in his body. Behind him, Seo Eun-ha wrung out her remaining mana, layering Wind Shields upon Wind Shields—yet they shattered like glass without lasting even a second.
Kuuuuung—!
A tremendous shockwave slammed into the container. The twenty-ton steel mass, welded to the floor, lifted off the ground and was driven backward roughly a meter, scraping against the concrete.
“Kraaaagh!”
Dark crimson blood erupted from Park Jae-jung’s mouth like a fountain as he absorbed the full force of the shockwave. His left shoulder dislocated at a grotesque angle, and the sound of cartilage shattering in both knees reverberated through the container.
“Brother! Brother!”
Han Su-jin screamed and crawled toward him. I, Han Ae-ri, and Dr. Junk—all sprawled on the floor—were hurled against the ceiling and walls with each violent tremor of the container. Superheated fragments from the explosion poured in, bathing the interior in a hellish red glow.
How much time had passed? The eternal vibration finally ceased, leaving only the stench of burning flesh and the acrid bite of ozone gas.
“Cough… Is everyone… all right…?”
I lifted my face, caked with dust and blood, to ask. The ringing in my ears was so severe I could barely hear my own voice.
“Ha… hah… barely….”
Seo Eun-ha struggled to her feet, leaning on a staff. Blood dripped from her nose down her chin. Han Ae-ri clutched one arm against her side, bracing herself against the wall as she gasped for breath. But the worst was Park Jae-jung. On the verge of losing consciousness, he still refused to release his grip on the shield’s handle despite his shattered shoulder. Han Su-jin wept as she poured healing magic into him, but it wasn’t enough.
I approached Park Jae-jung and knelt beside him.
His dislocated left shoulder had the joint completely separated, the arm hanging at an unnatural angle. His knees were worse. The cartilage damage was obvious even to the naked eye. Below the knee, the limb was bent at an unnatural angle and locked in place, internal bleeding spreading beneath the skin in a grotesque purple swell. I couldn’t believe he’d maintained his grip on the shield through all of this.
“Park Jae-jung. Let go of the shield.”
He didn’t respond. Even in his hazy state of consciousness, his fingers refused to release the handle. Whether it was a reflexive rigidity or some remaining instinct to endure, I carefully pried his fingers open one by one, lowering the shield.
“You did well.”
That was all I could offer. Apologies felt hollow in this moment, as did praise. Seo Eun-ha and Han Ae-ri were silent too. We were alive because of that shattered shoulder and those crushed knees.
“Purify.”
I placed my hand on his chest. I channeled my mana, drawing out toxins and corrupted mana fragments from the internal bleeding. Reattaching cartilage or setting bones was beyond my ability. All I could do was ease his pain.
Park Jae-jung’s eyelids relaxed slightly, and his ragged breathing gradually steadied.
I peered through the crumpled shutter opening. It was a scene of utter devastation. The three four-meter mana golems that had surrounded us were now unrecognizable, melted into seething masses of molten metal like lava. The Cleaners nearby had been caught in the explosion, reduced to charred husks scattered across the ground.
“We… made it….”
I was about to exhale in relief.
Fwubuck! Beep-beep-beep!
An eerie burst and alarm erupted from the workbench. Dr. Junk’s holographic monitors flickered and died one by one, while uncontrolled sparks erupted from his mechanical prosthetic arm.
“Damn it! EMP backlash! Three cores ruptured simultaneously—mana backflow!”
Dr. Junk screamed, his face drained of color. He tore the sparking prosthetic arm from his body and hurled it away, then began frantically reconnecting power cables by hand with his remaining bleeding arm, moving like a madman.
“Did we lose the data?!”
“I just switched to the backup server! Decryption rate at 85%! But with an explosion this crude, it’s only a matter of time before the Steel Alliance upstairs or the Black Market Administrators notice! They’ll know what happened!”
He was right. Beyond the scrap metal junkyard, through the smoke and debris of the explosion, cyan eyes began to gleam again. Roughly twenty Cleaners from the main force, still alive.
Their movements were different now. The orderly tactical formation had collapsed, but the mana waves radiating from their bodies were ominously sinister and violent.
[Situation control impossible. Security Code Zero activated.]
[Capture objective abandoned. All units, initiate overclocking. Eliminate all life forms within the hideout.]
The Cleaner Captain’s visor turned crimson. They pulled syringe-shaped cylinders from their waistbands and drove them mercilessly into the napes of their necks.
“Those insane bastards… they’re injecting themselves with Kang Chang-gyung’s mutation drug!”
Seo Eun-ha gasped in horror.
The moment the syringes entered their bodies, the Cleaners transformed. The veins in their necks swelled black, their eyes beyond the visors blazed crimson with bloodshot fury. Mana compressed forcibly at every joint, hardening like armor with a sickening crunch.
They were burning through the very limits of human endurance. This was their tactic—a desperate gambit to reduce us to minced meat within mere minutes, before the Steel Alliance could mobilize in response to this catastrophic explosion.
“Jae-jung! Don’t get up! Your bones are shattered!”
Despite Han Su-jin’s pleas, Park Jae-jung let out a bestial growl and forced himself to raise the Giga Shield. But only his upper body rose; his legs dragged uselessly across the floor. Further tanking was impossible.
Rat-a-tat-tat-tat!
The drug-injected Cleaners surged through the wreckage at speeds that transcended human limitation.
In their hands were not firearms, but single-molecule mana blades slick with corrupted mana.
They were charging into the cramped container interior to end this with close-quarters combat.
“I’ll hold them back.”
I stepped forward to shield Park Jae-jung.
‘How much mana do I have left?’
I traced through my circuits. My mana reserves would be depleted after facing three of them.
These drug-overclocked Cleaners would achieve A-rank or higher reaction speeds through overdrive. If I traded blows with them, I wouldn’t last long.
I had to be as fast as possible, using the minimum mana necessary to end them.
“Aeri, get Su-jin and Eun-ha to fall back. You need to protect Dr. Junk—no one gets within a meter radius of him.”
“Understood.”
Han Ae-ri bound her bleeding arm with brutal efficiency and gripped her twin daggers. A Slasher doesn’t need wide battlefields. The darkness of this cramped container was a perfect trap for her.
Crack!
The dented container shutter was torn away like paper by the Cleaners’ mana blades. Three lead Cleaners with blazing red eyes poured through the narrow entrance simultaneously. The one on the left charged with blade raised high; the center aimed low at the abdomen. The right one leaped from the wreckage, attacking from the flank. A three-pronged assault closing in from all directions.
I gripped Shadow Fang in reverse grip and concentrated all remaining mana into the blade’s tip.
[Skill: Holy Flame]
Pure white flames blazed brilliantly across the dagger’s edge in the darkness. Rather than an explosion, I had coated the blade itself as an absolute medium of purification.
“Die!”
The lead Cleaner roared like a beast and brought the mana blade crashing down. A single-molecule blade that could slice steel like tofu. I didn’t dodge—I raised Shadow Fang to meet its trajectory head-on.
Clang! Ssshhhhh!
The moment blade met dagger, an awful sound of something burning filled the air instead of metal striking metal. The Cleaner’s mana blade, held together by corrupted mana, turned to white ash the instant it touched Holy Flame’s fire. As the weapon disintegrated, shock flickered across the creature’s face.
Thud.
I drove Shadow Fang upward through its body, piercing from beneath the jaw toward the crown of its head. Holy Flame’s fire instantly purified its corrupted brain matter, severing its life in a heartbeat.
“One down.”
I kicked the corpse aside and pivoted toward the next threat. But the overclocked Cleaners felt no fear. Two blades came at me simultaneously from both sides, targeting my neck and waist.
Then.
Ping! Boom!
A high-pressure air bullet came from nowhere, striking the right Cleaner’s face. It was Seo Eun-ha. She’d calculated that using flames in this confined space would consume all the oxygen, so instead she fired compressed wind like a shotgun blast.
In that one-second gap as the creature’s head snapped backward, Han Ae-ri erupted from the shadows on the floor like a viper.
Slice!
Her curved dagger severed the right Cleaner’s Achilles tendon with surgical precision. As its knees buckled and it collapsed, a second blade followed, piercing its neck. A Slasher’s flawless combination attack.
“Gaaahhh!”
The remaining Cleaner on the left thrashed wildly, swinging his blade, but I had already seized the advantage of close quarters. My palm pressed against his chest plate, directly over the embedded mana core.
“Purify.”
A wave of pristine white light pierced through his core. His drug-ravaged heart seized, and he collapsed with foam frothing at his lips.
After disposing of three of them, my fingertips felt hollow. My mana reserves had bottomed out completely. The sensation of maintaining the sacred flame alone was overloading my circuits. The next activation would be my last.
“Haah… haah….”
Beyond the open shutter, more than ten Cleaners surged forward with bloodshot eyes. The narrow entrance could only accommodate three or four at a time—a bottleneck of slaughter straight out of a film.
“Tae-hyun! My mana’s completely depleted! This is really it!”
Seo Eun-ha dropped her staff to the floor and collapsed.
“I… I can’t produce any more healing mana either….”
Han Su-jin was equally exhausted, while Han Ae-ri knelt on the ground with her legs giving out, gasping for breath.
My own condition was approaching its limit as well.
Setting aside mana reserves, my arm muscles screamed as if they would rupture from continuously blocking the devastating strikes of A-rank Cleaners at close range.
[Target combat effectiveness declining. Push forward.]
The next wave poured through the shutter with mana blades raised high. I clenched my teeth and tried to ignite the sacred flame of Shadow’s fangs once more. But the flame flickered like heat shimmer before extinguishing completely.
Mana exhaustion.
The leading Cleaner’s blade rose slowly, its trajectory aimed precisely at my throat. I couldn’t block it. I had no strength to evade.
‘Is this the end?’
The thought grazed my mind in that instant.
Just as the blade was about to descend.
Beep beep beep beep—! Ding!
Piercing through the container’s deafening gunfire and battle cries, the most cheerful electronic chime imaginable erupted from Dr. Junk’s monitor.
“Damn it! I cracked it! Decryption rate 100%! Got all the logs!”
Dr. Junk threw both arms up in triumph. On the monitor screen, command directives from Blue Tower’s leadership, transaction receipts for mana engineering cores with Dominion, and access logs to Kang Chang-gyung’s bioexperimentation database cascaded like a waterfall.
[Command Code: Eliminate all Moonglade personnel. Incinerate Dr. Junk’s container.]
The moment all truth was unleashed.
The Cleaner who had raised his blade toward me turned his gaze in response to the cheer. A momentary opening. That single second allowed me to retreat.
“Download complete! Just need to grab this chip…!”
The instant Dr. Junk reached for the memory chip, the Cleaner Captain, who had been swinging his blade at me, spotted Dr. Junk and pivoted, drawing the pistol from his waist.
“Die, traitor!”
“No!”
I threw myself forward to block, but I was too late. A flash erupted from the Cleaner’s muzzle.
Bang—!
With the gunshot, Dr. Junk’s body lurched backward violently, and the memory chip slipped from his fingers, tracing a slow arc as it rose into the air.
Everything depended on that single, tiny chip.
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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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