The Archmage’s Destruction Strategy - Chapter 86

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This chapter was translated by Lunox Team. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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#086. Compatibility

‘Corn?! Why?! Why corn!?’

Even while being crushed by such overwhelming power that he couldn’t move a single fingertip, the Immortal King was so bothered by the word ‘corn’ that Sung-jun had thrown out that he couldn’t even think of resisting.

Because Sung-jun’s declaration that he would counter the aura of death, which could turn even a massive metal pillar accelerated to hypersonic speeds into powder in an instant, with mere corn was so absurd.

However, Sung-jun paid no attention to the Immortal King’s gaze and tore open a sack he had taken from subspace, piling up corn kernels in abundance.

“Don’t let your concentration waver! Focus on the enemy before you!”

Amano Jugo, who had unknowingly been staring blankly at where Sung-jun was due to his bizarre behavior, urgently swung his shield to barely block an enemy attack and shouted.

Then the battlefield, which had briefly entered a lull as it was pushed back by Sung-jun’s wind magic, began to move urgently again.

Most of the skeleton army summoned by the Immortal King had been neutralized by becoming a giant green mass due to Sung-jun’s Hyper Bonding spell, but sub-boss level entities that could escape the sticky substance’s influence on their own still remained.

The attack team members who heard Amano Jugo’s cry tried to turn their attention toward the enemy and shake off their curiosity about what Sung-jun was trying to do from their minds.

However, even in the fierce battlefield where lives were at stake, Sung-jun’s last words echoed like a spell in the adventurers’ minds.

‘You might become the first monster to die from being hit by corn.’

‘Corn? Die from being hit by corn? How is he going to kill that crazy skeleton bastard with corn?’

When Sung-jun silently waved one hand, a massive pillar of fire erupted from a corner of the dungeon.

The place adventurers called the ‘Harvest Site’, currently the only location in Japan where humans could obtain edible crops.

The pillar of fire Sung-jun summoned completely burned the crops at that harvest site, then quickly died down and disappeared without a trace as if it had never existed in the first place.

‘Since there happens to be a harvest site nearby, I should put it to use. At least it’ll be more efficient than using bare ground.’

Sung-jun lifted a cluster of corn kernels into the air with magic and sent them flying toward the cleanly cleared harvest site, embedding them in the ground.

Then he cast water-element generation magic to thoroughly moisten the entire harvest site.

With this, all preliminary preparations were complete.

When Sung-jun finished all preparations and waved both hands in complex motions, a massive green magic circle began to shine above the harvest site.

“Huh?! Wha-what!?”

“The corn is… growing?”

“Why is corn…? Corn?”

The seeds Sung-jun had scattered were definitely corn kernels, but what grew from the ground was ‘something’ that resembled corn.

Strange creatures that looked like a skilled craftsman had decided to create human forms out of corn.

These bizarre corn life forms that looked like plants but moved like humans twisted their thick twin root stems out of the ground of their own will, as if their roots were human legs, and walked stride by stride toward where Sung-jun was.

And not just one, but a massive number reaching several thousand.

“I don’t know exactly what the counter attribute to the power you wield is, but since it looks like a death-related attribute, responding with life-system magic would be efficient. Let’s test how many you can withstand.”

When Sung-jun snapped his fingers, thousands of Corn Soldiers rushed toward the Immortal King.

Then they began throwing their bodies madly toward the black aura emanating from the Immortal King.

-Fsssss! Crack! Fsssss!!-

Making sounds like dried corn stalks splitting, the bodies of the Corn Soldiers that had been glowing bright green began to turn to powder and disappear in an instant.

However, Sung-jun watched the seemingly ineffective self-sacrifice of the Corn Soldiers with an indifferent expression and sent the next legion to advance.

“It’s useless!!!”

“I know.”

“You know yet you’re doing this nonsense!”

“Well, we’ll see as we go.”

The Corn Soldiers Sung-jun summoned broke off the corn ears attached to their bodies as soon as they sprouted from the ground, then scattered the corn kernels attached to the cobs all over the ground.

As if preparing soldiers to be newly born after they themselves perished.

The Corn Soldiers who had dropped corn kernels on the ground like this threw themselves forward like their ancestral predecessors, charging toward the black aura the Immortal King was emitting.

Watching the endless charge of the corn army pouring out like a factory conveyor belt, the Immortal King could only scream internally.

‘This crazy human!’

Though he didn’t show it, he could feel his power being chipped away, however slightly, each time a Corn Soldier was annihilated.

The problem was that the corn conducting these suicide attacks numbered not just thousands but hundreds of thousands or more.

The Immortal King raised his momentum even more fiercely to prevent his opponent from noticing that he was weakening, and shouted toward Sung-jun.

“I told you it’s useless!!”

“I said I know, didn’t I?”

“Won’t you stop this immediately!!”

“I can’t?”

“…Negotiation! Let’s negotiate!”

“I refuse.”

Sung-jun poured over 2 million Corn Soldiers at the Immortal King for a full 30 minutes.

While fending off attacks from other monsters rushing to save the Immortal King.

And finally, for the first time, a different sound echoed from the Immortal King’s body, which had only been making ‘fsss’ sounds of something decomposing.

-Thwack!-

Not the sound of something crumbling, but a definite impact sound.

Starting with that small sound, the furious beating by Corn Soldiers who had to sacrifice countless ancestors began.

-Thud! Thud-thud-thud! Thud! Thud-thud-thud! Thud-thud-thud-thud!!-

“Stop! You bastards! Aaaah! Mere corn!”

Though the intermittent bursts of death aura brought down a few remaining Corn Soldiers, more Corn Soldiers than those that fell kept popping up and wildly beating the Immortal King’s skull.

“That’s enough.”

Finally, when Sung-jun waved his hand to pull the corn army back, a skeleton in tatters like rags was revealed.

Originally, he possessed a body that couldn’t be scratched even by something with corn-level durability, but this was possible because the corn Sung-jun had deployed were all special entities with magic power wrapped around their entire bodies.

“As expected, when pushed by quantity, you get overwhelmed.”

Sung-jun, who had released the gravity magic cast on the Immortal King’s body, raised his foot toward the skull’s head area.

Then, before the skeleton could open its mouth, he channeled magic power into his sole and stomped down hard.

-Crack-

For a trump card prepared to eliminate all humans who reached the 90th floor, it was far too futile an end.

“Come here.”

When Sung-jun extended his hand, the Lion’s Key hanging near the broken neck bone floated into the air and was sucked into Sung-jun’s palm.

Having obtained the Lion’s Key, Sung-jun immediately infused consciousness to assess the number of remaining Skeleton Soldiers.

‘Most are neutralized entities, and fewer than 100 have damaged cores.’

If Sung-jun had fought the Skeleton Soldiers with force without using the sticky spell, it would have been difficult to properly control the skeleton brigade even after obtaining the Lion’s Key.

But Sung-jun deliberately chose the method of ‘neutralization’ instead of ‘destruction’, and thanks to Sung-jun’s decision, he was able to ‘completely’ obtain a vast quantity of 19,927 Skeleton Soldiers.

Not just the Skeleton Soldiers, but also the ‘other beings’ sealed in the remaining dimensions of the Lion’s Key.

Sung-jun immediately began readjusting the Lion’s Key by flowing magic power into it.

-Click, whirr, click-click-

Several diamond-shaped metal pieces began transforming with geometric movements.

‘He probably tried to solve this puzzle too. Not knowing it was an impossible puzzle to solve in the first place.’

The Lion’s Key had a form that looked like a metal puzzle at first glance, but strictly speaking, it wasn’t something that could be called a puzzle.

After all, you couldn’t call something impossible to solve a puzzle.

Except for Sung-jun, who had heard an explanation about the Lion’s Key from Teacher, no human could properly solve this puzzle.

‘First, let’s release the seal.’

When Sung-jun applied heat to the metal piece floating above his hand, part of the metal melted and dripped down.

Though it appeared to be made of a perfectly single material on the outside, it was actually a combination of heat-resistant and heat-vulnerable metals, so when heat was applied like this, the metal parts that prevented the puzzle’s completion would melt and separate.

Sung-jun grabbed the metals falling below with magic power, set them aside, then began fitting the remaining metal pieces together using magic power.

‘Stage 2 goes like this.’

Looking at the puzzle completed in a completely different state from its initial form, Sung-jun this time conversely blew bone-chilling cold air into the metal pieces.

Then the metal seals blocking the path from stage 2 to stage 3 crumbled like powder and fell away.

Having successfully completed the stage 3 puzzle, Sung-jun carefully began pushing the separately divided metal pieces and melted metal into the gaps remaining in the Lion’s Key.

And finally, when Sung-jun finished all the work, a tombstone-shaped metal mass glowing in a completely different form from when he first obtained it was emitting a mysterious light above his hand.

“Skeleton brigade, from now on I am your new master. Heed your master’s command and return to where you originally belonged.”

When Sung-jun, wearing the tombstone-shaped necklace around his neck, commanded while gripping the necklace, the skeleton brigade that had been tangled in a mass within the green sticky substance returned to subspace with a faint light.

Having returned all the Skeleton Soldiers to the ‘Bone Ossuary’, the first subspace of the Lion’s Key, Sung-jun looked at the large monsters remaining in place fighting the adventurers.

Then he infused consciousness into the necklace and commanded.

“Dark Marquis who presides over the funeral night. Appear before me in response to your master’s call. Funeral Night Marquis Argen.”

Instantly, black clouds billowed up before Sung-jun, and from within the clouds emerged a man dressed in pitch-black clothing.

The man with skin so white it looked almost blue, like a vampire from stories, was a beautiful young man boasting sculptural beauty that was impossible to believe as human appearance.

“I answer my master’s call.”

“Destroy those among the beings fighting over there that are not human.”

“Even if you say human… I’m not quite sure what you mean, my great master.”

“Those who possess life wavelengths similar to mine are humans.”

“Marquis of the Night Argen receives my master’s command.”

The moment Argen, who had bowed toward Sung-jun, turned around, every being in the dungeon stopped moving.

Because a terrifyingly fearsome aura that was too excessive to simply describe with the word ‘killing intent’ was radiating strand by strand from the pale-complexioned man.

He did not draw a weapon.

He wasn’t carrying any weapon on his body to draw and wield in the first place.

However, the moment the man took one step forward, the heads of the monsters that had been fiercely matching Japan’s strongest adventurers just moments before were instantly separated from their bodies.

-Thud. Thud thud thud thud. Thud thud-

Watching the heads of the magical beasts falling to the ground all at once like basketballs dropping to the floor, all the attack team members in the floor looked at Sung-jun with shocked expressions.

Then Sung-jun, who had been touching his necklace with an expressionless face, spoke to the adventurers.

“I told you, didn’t I? That I would take this. Don’t even dream of changing your words now.”

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This chapter was translated by Lunox Team. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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