The Female Lead Saves the World - Chapter 244

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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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Yeo Joo Saves the World
Part 2, Episode 65

By now, she should have been puffing out her round cheeks with endless nagging, glaring at me with those fierce eyes.
She should have been fretting anxiously, grumbling all the while yet desperate to heal my wounds.
But why.
Kang Han moved at a speed that even the wind couldn’t catch, positioning himself before Yeo Joo and Han Ji Sung.
“Brother, why is Yeo Joo….”
“Han, something’s wrong with Yeo Joo. She’s not breathing. She’s not breathing.”
Han Ji Sung spoke with a face twisted in anguish, as though his throat were being strangled.
Thud.
Kang Han dropped the sword he’d been holding and took Yeo Joo from Han Ji Sung’s arms, cradling her against his chest.
Then he brought his ear close to her face, searching for any sign of breath.
If even the faintest thread of breathing escaped her, it might calm the heart that hammered erratically within her rigid frame.
But his ear met only silence.
It wasn’t just the absence of breath.
The heartbeat that should have been pounding vigorously, pumping blood through her entire body, was nowhere to be heard.
Kang Han’s mind went completely blank.
He could think of nothing except holding her body—which seemed to grow colder by the moment—pressed tightly against him.
Han Ji Sung spoke to him in a trembling voice.
“A potion, maybe a potion….”
“…A potion?”
Only then did his eyes fall upon the empty potion bottles scattered across the ground.
There was a secret Yeo Joo had revealed to me before.
Drinking five or more bottles of stamina potion would cause a status abnormality, and the symptoms were determined randomly each time.
There were exactly four empty potion bottles visible nearby.
Naturally, Kang Han arrived at a single conclusion.
Yeo Joo might have deliberately drunk the potions to induce a status abnormality.
‘But why isn’t her heart beating?’
Could a status abnormality cause her to stop breathing?
Kang Han’s face contorted in anguish.
He knew so little about her.
Despite being so close, despite having so many opportunities.
Then it happened.
Thump.
A faint, barely perceptible heartbeat echoed against his ear.
Kang Han immediately bent down and brought his ear close to Yeo Joo.
“—Hah.”
A faint breath escaped between Yeo Joo’s lips—so subtle that even S-rank hearing would have missed it without careful attention.
“She’s alive.”
At Kang Han’s words, Han Ji Sung, whose legs had given out beneath him, collapsed to the ground.
“Ha.”
Sa Ma Young, who had remained at a distance unable to draw closer, exhaled sharply and rubbed his forehead roughly.
Yet his crimson eyes could not tear themselves away from Yeo Joo, cradled in Kang Han’s arms.
He despised how her wrist hung lifelessly.
The way it bent so unnaturally, with blue veins visible beneath pale skin, irritated him profoundly.
It was as Sa Ma Young stood there, gnawing at his lower lip.
Kang Han suddenly rose and walked toward the Gate, carrying Yeo Joo.
He recalled how Yeo Joo had been hospitalized at the Awakened Healer Hospital multiple times after collapsing from the drug abuse penalty.
Seo Yu Baek would surely understand her current condition far better than he did.
It was when they were only a few steps away from the Gate.
“Stop.”
Whoosh.
Sa Ma Young’s voice came from directly behind him, and in the same instant, a cold blade pressed against the nape of his neck.
“Where are you taking Yeo Joo?”
Kang Han’s back muscles tensed sharply.
An unfamiliar emotion surged up within him.
Suppressing the urge to strangle Sa Ma Young’s neck for speaking as though Yeo Joo belonged to him, he spoke.
“To a safe place outside the Gate.”
“Can’t your dull eyes see the mark that still remains on her?”
Kang Han’s movement toward continuing forward halted.
A mark.
His gaze shifted to the black skull emblem still hovering above Yeo Joo’s head.
“With the mark still on her, I can’t guarantee nothing will happen even if she leaves the field and exits the Double Dungeon. You’re going to recklessly take Yeo Joo out?”
He had to admit it.
That Sa Ma Young’s words were correct.
Grit.
Kang Han quietly ground his teeth and turned his head toward the Hill where the Death Knight had first appeared.
The Death Knight, now resurrected, stood holding the reins of its skeletal steed.
Whoooosh—
A putrid stench of death wafted on the blowing wind.
“Ji Sung, take Yeo Joo for a moment, please.”
“Got it.”
Sa Ma Young drew his sword with a long, deliberate sound and spoke to Kang Han.
“You stay here and watch over Yeo Joo. I’ll kill that thing.”
Thud.
As Sa Ma Young walked toward the Death Knight, he casually hurled his scabbard aside.
It was unnecessary.
There would be no need to sheathe his blade until he killed that creature—the one that had dared mark Yeo Joo.
Screech, screech.
With an eerie sound, the blade’s edge scraped across the earth, and blood seeping from the ground where countless soldiers had fallen trailed behind Sa Ma Young like a long tail.
Thud, thud.
Though his gaze remained fixed on the approaching Death Knight, I couldn’t help but see Yeo Joo’s wrist—bent lifelessly at an unnatural angle.
Each time her pallid, bloodless skin flickered before my eyes, heat surged through my entire body.
“Hah.”
My deep exhale, as I gripped the blade with knuckles prominent and white, burned hot as though laced with acrid smoke.
Sa Ma Young stopped walking and confronted the fire blazing within him.

[ Abnormal Status ‘Desire’ activates. ]

I craved the power to erase the Death Knight from existence.

[ All Awakened abilities temporarily increase by 20%. ]
[ All Awakened abilities temporarily increase by 30%. ]
[ All Awakened abilities temporarily increase by 40%. ]

No.
Sa Ma Young desired something else.
Something beyond what I already possessed.
I glimpsed something that transcended my own capabilities.
I craved the power to burn that creature—the one that dared mark Yeo Joo’s head—to black ash.

[ Abnormal Status ‘Desire’ stacks and activates. ]
[ Warning. ]
[ ‘Desire’ has reached its limit. ]

A surge.
Hot blood welled up from within.
Sa Ma Young bared his teeth, stained crimson, and laughed.
His body began to be engulfed in flames.
Whoosh.
Watching the Death Knight, which had charged forward with momentum, falter and slow its pace, Sa Ma Young continued to yearn, pouring fuel onto the roiling inferno.

[ Warning. ]
[ Warning. ]
[ Warning. ]

The system displayed a bright red warning window, but Sa Ma Young ignored it and drew his sword.
Soon, flames danced and billowed across the blade’s surface.
As he awakened the power of fire, a scorching pain he had never experienced before engulfed his entire body.
The heat that seemed capable of incinerating everything made his soul sizzle and boil.
Yet there was no fear.
If he could gain even greater power.
Fire had always burned by consuming something as an offering.

[ The system recognizes your ‘destructive desire’. ]

The crimson flames gradually shifted to pure white, then began to take on a blue hue.

[ The skill ‘Flame’ reawakens as ‘Calamity Fire
(Tribulation Flame)
‘. ]

Whoosh—!
The moment the reawakening message appeared, Sa Ma Young charged toward the Death Knight and swung his sword, wreathed in azure flames, in a wide arc.
“Ugh!”
Clang!
The Death Knight hastily raised his sword to block the incoming attack.
The change happened next.
Sizzle.
The sword that had blocked Sa Ma Young’s strike split in two and burned away into nothingness.
“Wh-what…!”
The knight cried out in shock and dropped the flaming sword.
He had narrowly escaped immediate danger, but then he realized it.
A knight without a sword could no longer fight.
Slash—!
The sword wreathed in blue fire bisected the horse.
The horse, unable even to cry out, turned to ash and vanished, while the knight, desperately scrambling away to avoid the spreading flames, tumbled across the ground.
Then, with heavy footsteps drawing closer, the Death Knight looked up at Sa Ma Young and spouted nonsense.
“A true knight deserves a new weapon with honor…!”
“How pathetic—a monster speaking of chivalry.”
Sa Ma Young looked down at the Death Knight crawling on the ground and sneered.
After marking the weakest healer with the mark of death, now that he was cornered, hearing this creature prattle on about knightly honor was so contemptible that he couldn’t even muster a proper laugh.
“But it’s perfect for you.”
Whoosh— Crack!
“Aaaahhh!”
Sa Ma Young severed both of the knight’s legs in one stroke.
“Ahhh, argh!”
As blue flames sizzled and slowly spread across the severed surfaces, both arms were cut away as well.
Before Sa Ma Young drove his blade into the upper torso where the core lay, he spoke with indifference.
“It’s a shame it’s already missing its head.”
Crack!
“Gasp! Gasp….”
The blue flames, swollen to massive proportions by their master’s will, consumed the Death Knight.
The inferno that incinerated the entire torso in an instant now burned even more fiercely, using the exposed core as its wick.
And then, as the core split apart with a crackling sound, turning into pitch-black ash that scattered into the wind.

[You have defeated the master of the Corrupted Battlefield, ‘Death Knight (S)’!]
[Quest Complete!]
[You have successfully prevented the collapse of the barrier.]
[Congratulations! Among all challengers recorded in history, you achieved this in the shortest time….]

Sa Ma Young pushed away the cascading system messages and sprinted toward the Gate.
But his pace could only slow with each step.
“…Yeo Joo.”
The mark above her head had vanished, but she did not open her eyes.

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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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