The Lord Who Levels Up by Devouring - Chapter 222
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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 222. Mongma
“Forest Keeper…?”
A trembling voice echoed through the air.
It was a small Elven child.
The child stared at The Spirit Summoner with fear and confusion mingled across her face.
The Spirit Summoner slowly raised her hand toward the child.
Then, as a sharp gesture sliced through the empty air—
Kyaaaaaaagh!
Krrgh, krrrghhhhh!!
Her spirits went berserk.
The earth spirit tore out thick tree roots and wielded them like a whip.
I immediately kicked off the ground.
Embracing the terrified child, I fled the spot.
The root whip wielded by the earth spirit crashed down where the child had been standing.
Boom! Crack!
The thick roots tore through the earth like paper.
At that sight, the Elves screamed.
“Run!!”
“The spirits… they’ve gone mad!”
The Elves scattered in all directions.
But as The Spirit Summoner gestured again—
The fire spirit spewed pitch-black flames.
The wind spirit spread the inferno through every passage.
The escape routes were cut off, and the village was swallowed by fire in an instant.
“Why… why…?”
“The Forest Keeper is attacking us…?”
The Elves’ voices broke, tinged with sobs.
The Spirit Summoner trudged forward.
Monsters gathered around her, shrieking in distress.
The Spirit Summoner’s eyes no longer gleamed with emerald light as she gazed upon the Elves.
A deep and murky darkness.
I stepped forward to block the Elves’ path and spoke.
“This is not the Forest Keeper you knew.”
As my words reached her, The Spirit Summoner—
No, Mongma’s lips slowly curved into a smile.
“Hm, how unlike a human to cling to such foolish faith.”
A sensual tone laced with seduction.
There was a strange power in her voice alone that could shake the heart.
“But it is too late. This vessel is already mine.”
Mongma slowly raised her hand.
The air around me grew heavy and oppressive.
As if the entire forest breathed in unison with Mongma, a moment of absolute silence descended upon everything.
I drew my tension taut.
Mongma originated from the lies of certain Monks who indulged their lust in secret.
A demon seduced me in my dreams!
Mongma existed only within dreams and imagination.
Naturally, it could neither exist in reality nor ever come to exist.
But the Monks possessed something.
The ultimate aura—divine power.
That collective belief ultimately manifested the existence of a Devil into reality.
Therefore, Mongma’s true nature was fiction, not reality.
By birth, she was an entity that utterly disregarded the laws of reality.
◆Reality Warping[M]
: The user can arbitrarily deform or reconstruct all elements that compose reality, including physical laws, causality, and conceptual structures. This makes it possible to alter the very essence of existence and events themselves, with the scope of influence expanding or contracting based on the boundaries of reality the user perceives.
Mongma could wield the ultimate aura that allowed her to manifest the nightmares she conjured into this reality.
* * *
Adrian moved immediately upon hearing the Elves were in danger.
He tore through space with that same terrifying velocity as before.
The speed was truly incomprehensible.
Even the spatial leap magic, Blink, could not hope to keep pace.
“W-wait for me!”
Flash!
Iliana squeezed out every last drop of her mana and pursued him.
And so we arrived.
…It was nothing short of hell itself.
Pitch-black flames consumed the Elven Village.
The wind carried embers, transforming every alley into a sea of fire.
The earth lashed out with root whips, severing all escape routes.
And within that inferno.
A single crimson flash shot forth.
It was invisible to the eye.
But Iliana could sense it.
“Adrian…?”
Boom!
An explosion erupted in sync with her question.
As the crimson light tore through the pitch-black flames and detonated, the fire spirit was driven backward.
The wind vortex was shredded and dispersed.
Through the charred debris obscuring Iliana’s vision, someone walked out slowly.
A female Elf.
And an extraordinarily beautiful one at that.
Of course, Elves were a race of beauty.
But this Elf transcended that entirely—her beauty operated on a different plane altogether.
She fell just short of The Saint, Isolde.
Yet considering that Isolde’s beauty was sculpted by holy power, this Elf could be called the perfect visage that nature itself could craft.
This beautiful Elf swept her hand through the air.
Crrrunch—! The earth warped grotesquely.
Sssssss! Tree shadows stretched forth like serpents.
“Huh?”
A question mark materialized across Iliana’s face.
And for good reason—what in the world was that?
Fwump! The shadow burrowed into the ground.
Crack—!
The earth split open.
“W-what?!?!”
Iliana’s eyes went wide as saucers.
She couldn’t comprehend what had just happened.
For soil and shadow to move in such a manner, there had to be at least some underlying principle.
Spirit intervention, perhaps.
The flow of natural mana, maybe.
Or homeopathic magic, sympathetic magic, contagion magic—something along those lines.
Even if it couldn’t be explained by sorcery, there had to be a cause.
But this… was not that.
Ignoring all causality, she had manifested results through sheer ‘will’ alone.
A power that manipulated reality itself.
“This… this can’t be real!!”
Iliana’s voice trembled.
This was the ability to materialize imagination into reality.
It was the very essence of sorcery itself—its fundamental nature.
…Dangerous.
Adrian was incredibly dangerous.
Just as even the mightiest ship cannot float when the sea itself overturns.
No matter how strong Adrian was, he couldn’t fully unleash his power against an opponent who manipulated reality.
‘I have to help!’
Iliana desperately drew up her mana.
In that instant, Krrrunch!
The ground beneath Iliana’s feet vanished.
It wasn’t that the earth had collapsed.
The very concept of ‘solid ground’ had been erased.
Her body floated weightless as everything in her vision scattered backward in chaos.
“Kyaaaaaaah?!”
With a scream, the mana I’d pulled forth scattered into the void.
I hastily gathered my mana again.
But it wasn’t easy.
The very laws of reality had collapsed and inverted. Consequently, the structure of mana manipulation had also crumbled and reversed.
In this place, Iliana’s magic held no power.
There was only one method.
I had to reinterpret the inverted structure of reality itself.
Only then could I wield magic.
But that was an extraordinarily difficult task.
It was akin to comprehending the contents of a book whose letters constantly shifted, then scoring a perfect hundred on an exam about it.
A realm bordering on the impossible.
Yet, remarkably enough.
…Adrian was turning that impossibility into reality.
* * *
Mongma’s Reality Manipulation[M].
At first glance, it was a broken ability.
No, honestly, it was broken.
How could an ability to freely warp and reconstruct reality be anything but broken?
But it wasn’t entirely without limits.
First of all.
As a power that defies the laws, it incurs the world’s resistance.
The world seeks to maintain all balance.
So when transcending the laws, the world begins to erode the user’s very existence.
The more laws one ignores, the stronger the resistance becomes.
Such as reversing causality.
Or forcibly deleting one’s existence.
Distortions of such absurd magnitude were beyond even Mongma’s reach.
Craaack—!
The empty air around me split open, fractures spreading outward.
As if the world itself sought to erase my existence, an eerie grinding sound echoed through the space.
But as I said, such extreme distortions were impossible.
Therefore, my Single-Molecule Blade[S] was more than sufficient to handle it.
Craaash—!
“Hmm, impressive.”
Mongma’s lips curled into a light smile.
Her gaze then shifted toward the tips of my fingers.
“Peculiar claws you possess. Delicate, yet capable of easily tearing through the very skin of this world.”
Mongma’s eyes rippled with a faint dark luminescence.
In that instant.
The air around me warped.
My fingertips trembled with precision.
I was manipulating reality itself to nullify the very nature of the Single-Molecule Blade[S].
But there was a weakness to reality manipulation.
The second one.
The scope of reality manipulation expands or contracts according to the boundaries of reality that Mongma perceives.
In other words, places Mongma cannot see.
Concepts she does not know.
And regions beyond her perception cannot be manipulated.
Crack—!
Mongma’s reality manipulation halted.
The reason was simple.
The Single-Molecule Blade[S] does not exist in the natural world.
A force born from the fusion of the concepts of Limit[M] and Infinity[M].
If one does not understand both concepts?
One cannot even interpret it.
And there was an aphorism left by Arcanis Rilsein, the first mage.
[Place no limits on curiosity. Save only for infinity.]
Throughout all of history, not a single soul has ever understood infinity.
“Impossible!”
Mongma stumbled backward in shock.
Her obsidian eyes trembled violently.
“You…! You’re using a concept that doesn’t exist in this world?”
Mongma gnashed her teeth.
Shards of shattered laws shot upward with razor-sharp edges.
The void twisted into grotesque hues.
“Then I shall erase you along with this world!”
As Mongma flicked her fingertips, a black void consumed everything around me.
Since she could not manipulate me directly, she would manipulate my surroundings.
In other words, spacetime itself.
It resembled Marzen’s spacetime laceration.
Yet Mongma’s method was far more fundamental.
Where Marzen forcibly tears open the seams of spacetime, Mongma’s approach was to erase spacetime entirely.
Reality manipulation in this way was akin to rewriting the laws themselves.
And reality expands when the opponent accepts that change as ‘real’.
In essence, one is ‘forcing’ one’s imagination upon the other.
Thus, the weakness of reality manipulation.
The third one.
If Mongma cannot force her imagination upon me?
If I do not truly accept that change?
Then the manipulated reality cannot completely overwrite me—.
◆The Successor’s Will [EX] resists the manipulated reality!
◆185 Sanity has accumulated.
◆157 Sanity has accumulated.
◆179 Sanity has accumulated.
.
.
In the end, it was nothing but my Sanity value.
The black void, sublimated into Sanity, scattered away.
The power twisted and vanished.
And so, I finally pierced through the manipulated reality and drew near—.
“Impossible!!”
Mongma shrieked, her voice trembling with disbelief.
“What, what is this…!!”
Her dark eyes wavered with panic.
But it was only momentary.
“I shall hurl the entire world at you!!”
Mongma spread both arms wide to either side.
The corrupted spirits wailed as they rose into the air.
The surrounding monsters twisted and deformed grotesquely.
When no manipulation directed at me would work, Mongma instead manipulated other entities, transforming them into tangible threats.
Thus came the twisted roots and fused flesh—abominations.
Hybrids where fire and water, wind and earth, all mingled together.
Though manipulated, they all possessed substance.
And so they approached me as undeniable, solid forms.
And this meant—
◆You have defeated Rootbone!
◆You have defeated Element Abomination!
◆You have defeated Trunkbite!
◆You have defeated Ashstorm!
.
.
.
◆You have obtained 15,650,000 combat experience!
◆Your level has increased!
◆Your level has increased!
◆Your level has increased!
The existence of experience meant they were ‘huntable targets.’
“This, this can’t be…!!”
Mongma’s eyes widened in shock.
Fear permeated every step of her retreat.
And so, I arrived at this place.
Mongma’s reality-warping world was, for me alone, a false reality—
◆You have defeated Akuriess!
◆You have defeated Ignir!
.
.
◆You have gained 10,610,000 combat experience!
◆Your level has increased!
◆Your level has increased!
◆The Successor’s Will [EX] resists the manipulated reality!
◆335 Sanity has accumulated.
◆289 Sanity has accumulated.
.
.
It was the perfect training ground where I could accumulate both experience and Sanity simultaneously.
* * *
Adrian—a human upon whom no reality-warping power held any effect.
As he charged forward with sharpened nails, Mongma found herself instinctively taking a step back.
Her eyes wavered, and her body trembled.
And the emotion stirring within her chest was…
‘Am I feeling fear?’
That couldn’t be right.
Mongma was a demon.
A demon who fed on fear and grew stronger, who became even more formidable in the face of dread.
Therefore, for Mongma to feel fear was like saying fear itself was afraid—a logical impossibility.
And so.
A story flashed through Mongma’s mind.
It was a tale that circulated among demons like a jest.
[Which demon hunter do demons fear the most?]
Demons feed on fear and grow.
The deeper and more intense that fear, the exponentially stronger a demon becomes.
Therefore, if there existed a human who did not fear demons, he would surely be a hunter who starved them of their power.
But Mongma’s thoughts diverged.
The demon hunter Mongma feared most.
It was not one who knew no fear or dread.
Nor was it one who overcame fear with courage.
Rather, it was one who transmuted fear and dread themselves into madness—
A being demons could never comprehend—
A lunatic.
“Hahahahahaha!!”
…That mad, deranged lunatic was the very worst predator that Mongma feared most.
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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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