The Lord Who Levels Up by Devouring - Chapter 44

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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 44. Hunting Dogs (1)
Primordial energy—Mana.
Energy refined and transformed from such mana into a usable form.
Mana Force and Aura.
Both derive from the power of mana, yet the mechanisms by which they operate are not merely different—they actively clash.
Those who wield Mana Force cannot master Aura.
Those who master Aura cannot use Mana Force.
This is the ancient law and common knowledge of the Continent.
But I knew the truth.
That it was not true at all.
The Grand Mage, hero of the Allied Forces, had explained it thus.
-More precisely, ‘mages’ who use Mana Force cannot master Aura.
The Grand Mage’s definition of Aura was elegantly simple.
The power to manifest imaginary things into this reality.
-Let me give you an example of warriors who wield Aura and display tremendous power.
Warriors who strengthen their bodies with Aura, thereby achieving superhuman feats.
The Grand Mage, hero of the Allied Forces, said this concept was first inspired by the ant.
A tiny insect that lifts thousands of times its own body weight—the ant.
What if we applied such a biological structure to humans?
Could humans not lift weights thousands of times their own mass?
To this question, the mage offered the following answer.
-Strength is proportional to the cross-sectional area of muscle.
The larger the muscle, the greater the strength.
And that was all I could comprehend.
Everything after that went in one ear and out the other.
-When body size increases, cross-sectional area grows exponentially.
Cross-sectional area is length times width.
Volume, however, is length times width times height.
Relative to the same amount, volume increases by the cube.
-Body volume increases exponentially compared to muscle cross-section.
So if an ant were to grow as large as a human?
It could not exert proportional strength.
Conversely, if a human were to shrink as small as an ant?
They could exert strength like an ant.
When you think about it, only small insects exert thousands of times their body weight in strength.
Consider the flea—is it not the same?
Therefore, the reason an ant can lift objects thousands of times its own mass.
It is body size.
In other words, small volume.
Thus, even if we applied an ant’s biological structure to humans, we could not lift objects thousands of times heavier.
-Thus, mages arrive at their conclusion.
Ah! That is fundamentally impossible!
So even when a mage employs strength-enhancement magic like Strength, they cannot manifest power that transcends the physical structure of the human body.
Their superior intellect has ‘comprehended’ its impossibility.
-But those warriors who wield Aura say something different.
We just do it, and it works.
Truly, there are no madmen quite like them.
By magical principles, it is absolutely impossible.
Even by the laws of this world, it cannot be done.
Yet right before their eyes, warriors with bodies structured like ants are flying about without restraint.
From a mage’s perspective, it drives them utterly insane.
-What is commonly called a mental breakdown.
This is the principle by which Aura enhances physical ability.
Through imagination, it ignores the world’s laws, drawing forth mere personal fantasies and manifesting them as reality-.
An absurd power that has never existed anywhere, yet exists—Aura.
Therefore, mages cannot use Aura.
Their superior intellect has ‘comprehended’ that Aura itself cannot possibly exist.
Conversely, knights too cannot use magic.
The moment they study and understand magic, they ‘deny’ the existence of Aura.
Aura and magic.
Though both are transformed energies derived from the same primordial mana, Aura is called the exclusive domain of knights, and magic the exclusive domain of mages.
Yet Aura was not omnipotent.
Being a power that ignores the world’s laws, it lacked freedom.
The Grand Mage expressed it as ‘experiencing the world’s resistance.’
Therefore, even enhancing physical ability and strengthening the blades one wields is a struggle.
But.
It happened very rarely.
Madmen who manifested their own absurd imaginations—things absolutely impossible by the world’s laws—as reality.
Not only did Aura overcome the world’s resistance, but they surpassed even its threshold.
Master.
Masters manifest the unique imagination only they possess into this world as reality.
And they apply it to themselves as if it were an original law.
Thus, truly absurd feats become possible—utterly disregarding the world’s laws.
And now.
The power I sense from Kai.
It resembles my regeneration [B+] ability, yet follows a different path.
It faintly resembles The Saint’s miracles, yet differs in its essence.
It is a power no living creature inhabiting this world has ever wielded.
Therefore, an ability that can absolutely, without question, never manifest in this world.
The Immortal.
In other words, Kai had taken one step into the realm of Master.
This meant he had drawn one step closer to the Frost Legion Commander.
Truly….
‘That madman.’
Across both my past and present lives, he is the strongest madman I have ever witnessed.
* * *
While I searched the Snowy Mountain, Kai had taken one step into the realm of Master.
At least there was one consolation.
‘He hasn’t reached the complete Master realm yet.’
The Master realm isn’t some trivial threshold that can be crossed so easily in a single leap.
Even within the Battenberg Kingdom, to which House Whitewolf belongs, true Masters can be counted on one hand. Searching across the entire Continent, the number of Masters is remarkably few.
The pinnacle of aura—Master.
Kai had merely taken one step toward that threshold.
Yet even that alone was something that defied all logic.
Kai was now only twenty years old.
To my knowledge, no one had ever touched the Master realm at that age.
In any case, he had not achieved complete immortality as I had in my past life.
Truth be told, even in my past life, it wasn’t complete immortality.
True immortality, in the genuine sense, belonged to only one.
Among the six lords who served the Emperor, only the Immortal Lord possessed it.
Kai’s immortality was not true immortality in that sense.
Just as my Regeneration [B+] required sustenance to function, Kai’s Immortal ability required aura to sustain itself.
In other words, when aura ran dry, the power of immortality would vanish.
When Kai was the Frost Legion Commander, he had overcome that limitation to some degree by becoming a Lich.
But now he was merely human.
The limitations of Kai’s immortality were unmistakably clear.
‘Still, that madman is something else.’
Regardless, a madman remains a madman.
Above all, in my past life, he was never this far along.
He had never grown at such a rapid pace.
Of course, I hadn’t properly observed Kai since he left the Whitewolf Territory.
But he had certainly never grown to this extent in my previous life.
‘Is it because of me?’
The Dragon’s Wrath [E] I had unleashed yesterday.
It seemed that by surviving that strike, he had gained some profound realization.
I couldn’t quite grasp what it was myself.
Who could ever understand the depths of a madman’s mind?
But it appeared that unlike my past life, I wasn’t the only one who had changed.
More precisely, as I changed, Kai was changing as well.
A small shift in me.
That stirred up quite a tempest within Kai.
‘If things continue like this….’
Killing Kai had become considerably more difficult.
Moreover, I realized there was nothing to gain by devouring Kai’s heart with Predation [S+].
Predation [S+] absorbs the foundational circumstances that gave rise to an ability.
In the case of monsters, it’s the mutant factor of madness.
In Kai’s case, I could see it would be aura that I’d absorb.
But I cannot manipulate aura.
The same applies to mana—I cannot wield it either.
I was incapable of handling mana as an energy source itself.
This was precisely why I never consumed human hearts in my previous life.
There was no advantage to it whatsoever.
I would only succumb to madness and rampage uselessly.
But the Beast Lord and the Beast Legion Commanders were different cases.
The Beast Lord possessed an ability called Authority.
The Beast Legion Commanders were beings who received power from such lords.
By devouring them with Predation [S+], I could obtain the Beast Lord’s Authority and strength.
Just one exception.
Kai alone stood apart.
He did not receive power from Seraphia.
He alone grew for Seraphia, surpassed her, transcended her, and quite literally beat his own drum.
‘A madman.’
Truly the most insane being I’ve ever encountered.
‘I shouldn’t devour Kai.’
In any case, my reason to devour Kai had vanished.
Simultaneously, killing Kai had become somewhat more difficult….
‘Well, at least it increases my chances of hunting down the Beast Legion Commanders.’
Since things had come to this, I decided to think positively about it.
Once Ian arrives, everything will be resolved anyway.
So now was the time to focus on the Beast Legion Commanders.
“Have you discovered traces of the legion?”
“Yes.”
“Where are they currently?”
“I don’t know.”
Kai tilted his head at my answer.
“Didn’t you just say you found traces of them?”
“I said I found traces—I never said I knew where they were.”
True to my words, what I had discovered were merely traces.
Evidence that a being commanding the legion was the Beast Legion Commander.
Information that the Beast Legion Commander was definitely somewhere in the Northern Region right now.
“I don’t know where he is right now.”
“Then let’s search together.”
Kai stepped forward eagerly.
His energy radiated with boundless enthusiasm.
But I had no intention of doing that.
“No. We won’t search.”
Did he think I knew where the Beast Lord was hiding somewhere in the Northern Region so we could search for him?
If I had planned to search methodically, I wouldn’t have returned to the Whitewolf Territory at all.
I would have continued searching for the Beast Legion Commander in the Snowy Mountain instead of coming back like this.
Naturally, I couldn’t possibly search the entire Northern Region.
How could I search every corner of such a vast territory one by one?
I needed to find Ian as quickly as possible.
To do that, I had to make the Predator Merchant Company the greatest merchant guild on the Continent.
Time was running short to prepare the next trade expedition, and I also had to raise the territory residents’ favorability to [Trust] status within ninety days.
My immediate priority was dealing with the goblin horde.
I had no time to chase after the Beast Legion Commander’s tail.
“So you’re saying you won’t search for him?”
“That’s right. I’ll make him come find us instead.”
Kai tilted his head in confusion once more.
It was only natural.
Kai didn’t know who the Beast Legion Commander was.
But I had been the commander of the Special Operations Unit.
I had personally collected and managed information about the lords and legion commanders.
All the information about the lords and commanders was stored in my mind.
If the individual I was thinking of was correct….
“I’ll bring one more person on this subjugation.”
There was a way to make the Beast Legion Commander come find us of his own accord.
* * *
A strange sensation tickled the corners of her eyes.
“Mmm….”
Seraphia’s graceful brows trembled, and consciousness gradually returned to her.
As the soft sensation of the bed registered beyond her senses, Seraphia realized she was lying in bed.
But she couldn’t open her eyes.
She lacked the courage to open them.
Adrian, who had lost both his arms.
That horrific scene where the nerves still twitched with life.
The terrible image resurfaced before her eyes, crushing Seraphia’s mind and heart.
Seraphia forcibly squeezed her closed eyes tighter, trying to push away the memory.
Then tears rolled down from the deep wells of her eyes.
“Sob….”
I could not accept it.
I could not accept the fact that Adrian was dead—
“Once you’re awake, prepare yourself immediately.”
In that moment, a voice suddenly reached my ears.
Seraphia’s eyes snapped open.
My entire body felt heavy, and my mind remained clouded with confusion.
Yet as my vision gradually sharpened, I saw a man coming into focus.
“O-older brother?!?!!”
…It was Adrian.
Seraphia’s body sprang upright.
“You weren’t dead?! You came back to life?! How?!!?”
“Did you wish for my death?”
“Absolutely not!!!”
Seraphia cried out vehemently, as though the very notion were absurd.
Though her voice had risen somewhat, Seraphia’s eyes widened with fierce determination, her resolve unmistakable.
Perhaps because of Seraphia’s reaction, Adrian said nothing more.
“But are you truly well?! You won’t d-die again, will you?!?”
“As you can see.”
Seraphia’s eyes moved swiftly, assessing Adrian’s condition.
Dark raven hair fell slightly across his forehead.
Sharp, distinct features.
Deep eyes that held an intense, commanding presence.
Long lashes and a sharp jawline.
And firm, muscular arms intact and whole.
“Sigh….”
At the sight of Adrian so perfectly unharmed, Seraphia could finally allow herself relief.
Adrian, too, seemed to have assessed Seraphia’s condition, for he soon spoke again.
“Then prepare yourself at once and come out.”
With that, Adrian turned to leave the room.
“Prepare…myself?”
At Seraphia’s question, Adrian paused for a moment.
Then came his swift reply.
“The three of us—you, me, and Kai—will subjugate the Beast Legion Commander.”
Seraphia’s crimson eyes widened far beyond their normal size.

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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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