The Lord Who Levels Up by Devouring - Chapter 162

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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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Chapter 162. Resolve (1)
A collision in a single instant—power rippling outward like an explosion.
Wave Spear—!
The Saint’s barrier and the layered shields crumbled in that same breath.
And silence, swallowing all sound, filled the space.
Dust settled slowly.
Within it, only one figure remained standing.
My clothes hung in tatters.
Blood and wounds streamed across my entire body.
Trembling hands and ragged breathing.
Yet I was undeniably standing.
In other words, the undeniable victor of this clash.
“Kha—!”
Adrian—I laughed harshly, as though spitting blood.
* * *
This fight had begun as instruction for Kai.
But I also seized the chance to train in Weak Point Hunting[M].
To test the physical capabilities evolved through Ogre Predation[S+].
To experiment with Mana Predation.
I had pushed for a battle as close to real combat as possible—
Yet I found myself intoxicated without realizing it.
Predator[M] bore no small part of the blame.
My instincts had seized complete control, drowning out conscious judgment, and through that, excessive aggression had manifested.
But the true reason was Kai.
Kai, drawing closer to the commander of the Frost Legion in real time.
Emotions from my past life surged up unbidden.
In that sense, Kai.
…That bastard is truly the most insane person I’ve ever encountered across both my lives.
“Haah…! Haah…!”
My breathing came in rough gasps.
Physical overload from Predator[M].
Cerebral overload from Weak Point Hunting[M].
The backlash from both Mythic[M] skills crashed down at once, and I felt both body and mind on the verge of shattering.
‘…Yet I endured.’
The body evolved through Ogre Predation[S+] had become completely mine.
The combat instincts of Weak Point Hunting[M] had become mine as well.
Drawing all of this together, I had transcended my limits once more.
“Kha—!”
Laughter spilled from me unbidden.
In that moment.
“K-Kai…!!”
Seraphia’s urgent voice pierced through the chaos.
She vaulted over the collapsed rubble, racing toward where Kai had fallen.
Kai lay half-buried beneath the debris.
No movement. No breath.
His aura had been completely depleted—restoration was impossible.
Kai’s death conditions were twofold.
Either Seraphia would die.
Or his aura would be completely exhausted.
Kai’s aura was now depleted.
In other words, Kai was dead.
But I could sense it.
…He hadn’t truly fallen.
That power Kai had displayed in his final moment.
If my suspicions were correct…
“Kai! Come back to us…!!”
I reached back into the memories of my past life.
* * *
Darkness as if all sensation had been erased.
It felt as though I had no body.
My thoughts were murky, and time seemed to have stopped flowing.
Perhaps this was what the realm of death would feel like.
Kai sank deeper into that fading, hollow void.
Then, ever so slowly, something grasped at me.
Following that touch, I opened my eyes.
“K-Kai…!! Are you awake…?”
Seraphia called out to me through trembling tears.
Beside her stood The Saint, Isolde.
It seemed she had used her holy power to restore me.
I could sense it instinctively.
‘…I lost.’
I had been defeated by Adrian.
I had wagered my life, drawn upon everything within me, but…
In the end, I could not cross that threshold.
There was no bitterness in it.
The defeat was absolute.
Throughout my clash with Adrian, I had never held the advantage even once.
In momentum, speed, reflexes, and even focus itself.
I had been struggling merely to keep pace.
Adrian had never wavered.
Above all, there was what Adrian had said just before the fight.
-By the way, I won’t be using the Monoatomic Blade.
I didn’t know what that technique was.
But Adrian never used that skill throughout the entire battle.
In other words, even my best couldn’t draw out Adrian’s true strength.
So there was no reason to feel wronged.
No reason to feel bitter.
…And yet, I don’t understand.
I’m not wronged, not bitter, and yet.
There’s this hollow sensation somewhere in my chest.
I lifted my gaze to look at the collapsed Frost Trial Grounds.
A ruined space.
It seemed to mirror my current state of mind perfectly.
Perhaps this emotion was the limit I faced at the end of the time I’d endured through loyalty, and
despair…I wondered if that’s what this was.
The loyalty that had sustained me all this time.
The oath that always drove me forward.
It all felt utterly useless now.
Unlike my determination to become the strongest on The Continent and cut down even death itself, the word “strongest” felt impossibly distant.
Now even my loyalty and oath toward that strength could no longer guide my goals forward.
I lifted my body slightly.
People had gathered around me.
Adrian stood in my field of vision.
Adrian, leaning against a shattered wall.
He was battered and broken.
His clothes hung in tatters.
Blood continued to flow from his slashed and torn wounds.
Whether he couldn’t regenerate.
Or simply wouldn’t.
One thing was certain—the holy power I’d used to heal myself seemed unable to restore Adrian.
“Listen carefully.”
Adrian spoke, blood dripping from his lips.
“Kai, the power of the aura you use is… in simple terms, the power of imagination. And imagination differs from person to person.”
Because everyone’s circumstances and experiences are different.
Humans cannot imagine what they haven’t experienced, so ultimately imagination cannot transcend the boundaries of the life one has lived.
“A child born in war knows no peace.”
So when a day off comes, they’ve never imagined what to do with it.
Tomorrow was always just another day to survive.
“A child born in peace knows no war.
So they’ve never imagined that something held in their hand could become a weapon.
An outstretched hand had always been meant to help someone.
“Two children raised in different environments develop Aurors with fundamentally different trajectories from the very beginning.”
One to survive.
The other to help.
Because their life experiences differ, so too do their Aurors manifest entirely different realities.
“Through such divergent experiences, they hone different imaginations, and the form of Auror achieved at that culmination is called an ‘Exclusive Auror.'”
Exclusive Auror.
“It is, quite literally, a monopolistic power.”
The Auror of a child raised in war elevates killing intent and perception to their absolute limits.
The Auror of a child raised in peace heals wounds with mere touch.
Not by laws the world has decreed—
“But by the world they lived in. In other words, a power born from their own unique imagination.”
An absurd power that draws forth mere personal imaginings and manifests them as reality.
“That is the power called Auror.”
Yet Auror cannot truly accomplish everything.
“Excessive imagination is constrained by the laws of the world.”
Kai agreed with this assessment.
I was experiencing it firsthand.
I can elevate killing intent and perception.
But killing intent and perception alone cannot take a life.
I can heal wounds with a mere touch.
But I cannot resurrect the dead.
I can manifest imagination as reality, but it is always regulated by the laws of the world.
Yet very rarely, there were those.
Those who manifested their own absurd imaginations—things that should never be possible under the world’s laws—as pure reality.
A realm where the power of Auror not only overcame the world’s resistance but pierced through it, transcending the threshold itself.
“Kai, you are now touching upon that realm—the stage of Master.”
Master.
Masters manifest their own unique imaginations without constraint upon this world.
Your Immortality.
A power no other living being in this world could ever wield, yet you can—that is why.
“But even Masters are not omnipotent. Because theirs is a power that defies the world’s laws, they are not truly free.”
I agreed with this as well.
The more one defies the laws, the stronger the world’s resistance becomes.
“The world seeks to maintain all balance.”
So when imagination-born Exclusive Aurors transcend the laws, the world begins to erode the user’s very existence.
Kai felt this acutely.
“This is why Masters are called the pinnacle of Auror.”
Because the world permits nothing beyond.
The end of imagination, and a threshold that cannot be crossed.
There is nothing beyond Master.
It is the law and common sense of The Continent from ages past.
And yet.
“A realm beyond that exists.”
Adrian spoke thus.
As though he had already witnessed it himself.
Aura—a force that overcomes the world’s resistance, pierces through that resistance, surpasses the threshold—and that alone is not enough.
“One can distort the very laws of the world.”
“I… beg your pardon?”
Iliana stared blankly, repeating his words.
Her face filled with bewilderment.
Iliana wore an expression she had never before worn.
“Do you mean… that Aura can alter concepts themselves?”
“Precisely.”
Adrian nodded, and Iliana’s eyes grew even wider.
“And beyond that—”
Aura—a force that overcomes the world’s resistance, pierces through that resistance, surpasses the threshold, and ultimately distorts the laws themselves—and even that is insufficient.
“One can alter the laws themselves.”
“I… what?!”
Iliana’s voice rose.
Kai, too, gazed silently at Adrian.
…He could not comprehend it.
“Simply put, Kai—your immortal imagination. In other words, forcing your exclusive Aura upon this world.”
“I… do not quite understand.”
“What is one plus one?”
“Two.”
“You could make it three.”
Forcing this world itself to calculate differently.
It is, quite literally, the power to alter the laws themselves.
“What?! That’s… that’s possible?”
“It is.”
“But… how?”
“I do not know the details myself.”
However.
“I am certain such a realm exists.”
Adrian spoke without hesitation.
Again, as though he had already witnessed it.
Yet Iliana could not bring herself to believe it.
This is… not even a legendary realm.
Legends, at least, have some theoretical foundation.
In theory, one could reach that far.
But what Adrian spoke of was theoretically impossible. Throughout the Continent’s history since mana was discovered and established, it had never been theoretically formulated.
Then… was he lying?
Come to think of it, Adrian couldn’t even handle mana.
Yet Iliana didn’t feel like Adrian was lying.
For one, his depth of understanding regarding aura was exceptional.
His very level of comprehension about the power called aura was different.
Hadn’t Adrian’s depth of knowledge already astonished even Iliana?
…Where exactly was Adrian looking?
And where was Adrian trying to reach?
What Adrian had seen and experienced.
And what was Adrian imagining as a result?
…The level was different.
The perspective and viewpoint with which one perceived the world operated on a different dimension entirely.
Iliana found herself at a loss for words, and in that silence, Adrian spoke again.
“The difference between knowing and not knowing that such a realm beyond exists lies in experience.”
And the difference in experience was simply—.
“A difference in imagination.”
“….”
“Those who don’t know can only adapt to and follow the world given to them, but those who know can imagine beyond that world.”
“….”
“Therefore, Kai.”
Adrian’s gaze turned briefly toward Seraphia. Then his eyes shifted back down to Kai.
“From now on, you must aim for the realm beyond Master.”
Only then could Kai understand.
Why Adrian had spoken such words.
“That path is one I cannot teach you. Do you understand?”
Kai couldn’t answer for a long while.
The loyalty that had sustained me all this time.
The oath that had always driven me forward.
Before the despair of it all crumbling away—.
“…I understand.”
Something… a new path was beginning to reveal itself.
I had reached the pinnacle known as Master.
But I had been defeated.
The strongest was not granted to me.
So now.
I thought that my loyalty and oath to that strength could no longer guide my goals forward.
For in my world, Master had become a wall beyond which I could not advance.
In the world I could experience and imagine, the realm beyond Master did not exist.
So I had thought.
That this was the limit permitted to Kai.
But in this moment, I could understand.
The pinnacle of aura, Master.
It was not the end of aura.
It was not the final boundary the world had set.
It might be the finish line for others.
It might be the terminus for someone.
For Kai, it was merely a ‘gate’ to pass through.
I could only realize that I could build something new after completely falling apart.
This was the very intention of this battle—
…Adrian.
The ‘true teaching’ he had risked his very life to impart to me.
“If I could reach that realm, would I become the strongest knight on The Continent?”
“No.”
Adrian shook his head with resolute certainty.
“Even those who have reached such a realm have ultimately failed to surpass a certain existence.”
A wall that even those who touched the realm of altering the laws themselves could never cross.
But could such an existence truly be…?
There was only one such being.
I could discern it from The Saint Isolde’s question.
“Are you speaking of God?”
God.
“No.”
But Adrian was not speaking of God.
And Adrian offered no further answer beyond that.
Therefore, who that existence was remained unknowable to me, beyond my experience and imagination.
“…Then, if I reach that realm, could I surpass you, Adrian?”
“No.”
Adrian slowly lifted his gaze.
Eyes burning crimson.
What dwelt within them was neither the despair nor resignation that Kai harbored.
“I will surpass that existence.”
Resolve.
In that moment, a resolve crystallized within me as well, and a new path unfurled before my eyes.
“Then I shall make Adrian my goal.”
Drawing closer to Adrian meant—
It was the same as drawing closer to the strongest.
“I do not know what existence you speak of. But please… surpass it without fail.”
And to surpass such an Adrian—
Soon I would stand at the pinnacle of absolute strength.
And standing at the pinnacle of absolute strength meant—
“I too will surely surpass you, Adrian.”
Seraphia.
It meant I could protect her until the very end.
* * *
All this explanation aside, it was quite lengthy.
Kai would handle it well on his own.
In my past life, that madman had twisted the very laws of existence by himself to become a Lich.
I had merely offered guidance to accelerate that timeline, to help him reach it faster.
The difference between knowing and not knowing was the difference in experience, and that gap widened through imagination.
That was all it was.
But the light in Kai’s eyes as he looked at me.
…Something felt off.
He was gazing at me with a dangerously intense look, as if that “madman” had resolved to cause some kind of trouble—
◆Kai’s affection toward you has reached its maximum!!
A perilous(?) message materialized before my 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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