The Lord Who Levels Up by Devouring - Chapter 63

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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 63. The Architect of Greed
They say ambushes are supposed to be sudden.
But Adrian’s ambush was less sudden than it was utterly unexpected.
That said, was his skill ordinary?
That was decidedly not the case.
Before I could even comprehend the situation, Adrian had slaughtered all the manor’s guards—the combat-type homunculi—which was anything but ordinary.
At first, I thought the golden-haired knight had done it, but…
Watching Adrian shatter shield magic with his bare hands changed my assessment.
‘So the rumors called him Count Whitewolf’s House’s reckless fool…’
It seemed rumors were not to be trusted after all.
They were merely rumors gleaned from Baron Beneron’s memories, so their accuracy was questionable at best.
Adrian was certainly no reckless fool of Count Whitewolf’s House.
But separate from that, a question remained.
‘How could he have discerned my true nature?’
Transmogrification was not a magic that could be sensed.
One would need to perceive the unique mana pattern to notice anything amiss.
Yet mages capable of perceiving unique mana patterns were rare on The Continent.
More than that, Adrian had torn through my layered shield magic with his fingernails.
In other words, Adrian was a knight who wielded aura rather than magical power.
More precisely, a martial artist who commanded aura.
But a knight—not a mage—had discerned my transmogrification?
…It made no sense whatsoever.
I couldn’t even begin to fathom how Adrian had perceived my transmogrification.
‘I’ll have to capture him as a test subject and study him.’
He was certainly worth researching.
But Adrian’s skill was far from ordinary.
Had we met on an open field, he would have been a formidable opponent.
However, this place was different.
A mage’s dungeon—my domain.
“To crawl into my domain of your own volition… kekeke…!”
Within this ‘Infinite Silence’ barrier, Adrian was nothing more than a rat in a trap.
Within this barrier, the flow of mana ceased entirely.
And without the power of aura and magical force, humans were pitifully weak creatures.
Humans lacked the raw strength of ogres.
They had neither the sharp claws of beasts nor sturdy skeletal frames.
Biologically, humans possessed only intelligence and stamina as advantages. Left bare in nature, humanity was utterly defenseless.
But.
I was not human.
I had long since abandoned humanity.
Grrrrrrrrgh!
Avarus’s body underwent a grotesque transformation, his flesh swelling to monstrous proportions.
Alchemical compounds mixed with his blood, triggering a genetic mutation.
Bloated masses of flesh spawned writhing tentacles.
Adrian stood frozen in place.
Paralyzed by fear.
A smile of assured victory spread across Avarus’s lips—
“I’ll kill you!!!”
The swollen tentacles surged toward Adrian.
Dozens of wildly thrashing tentacles coiled around Adrian’s neck.
And in that very instant.
Adrian dropped into a crouch, evading the incoming tentacles?
“What…?”
Avarus’s eyes widened in shock.
He dodged that? Impossible…?
It made no sense. The speed and reflexes were beyond comprehension.
The kind no mere human could possibly possess.
…Was it mere chance?
Yet to call it that—
Whoosh—! Whoosh whoosh—!
Adrian evaded every single tentacle that came at him.
Each time the fleshy mass tried to seize him, Adrian slipped away with movements too swift for the eye to follow.
Tracking ability, reflexes, and more.
Not a single aspect could be called human.
“How… how is this…?”
I couldn’t comprehend it.
Before I realized it, Adrian had closed the distance. His razor-sharp nails tore through the air.
I hastily compressed my flesh into a defensive barrier—
Crack—!
…It was shredded effortlessly.
“What is this…!!”
Horror far exceeding pain flooded my eyes.
And for good reason—what he’d just torn through was no mere flesh.
It was the reinforced metallic tissue of one who’d abandoned humanity, strengthened by alchemical compounds, hard as steel itself.
Yet he’d simply ripped it apart with his fingernails?
With mere human nails, fit only for scratching an itch?
My mind reeled in confusion and vertigo.
And Adrian’s assault was far from over.
At this rate, I would surely die.
“Aaaaaaahhhhh!!!”
I let out a desperate roar—
Splooooosh—!
The torn flesh fractured and multiplied into countless branches, and all the tentacles and tissue burst forth explosively in every direction at once.
Boom-boom-boom-boom!
Tentacles filled every corner of the space.
There was nowhere to escape.
And yet.
Adrian was evading them. He reacted to every single tentacle attack that crammed the entire space and dodged them all.
He was even reacting to strikes coming from behind his back.
“How… how on earth…!!”
His reflexes were so extraordinary they bordered on the miraculous.
Yet he wasn’t dodging every attack.
There were occasional blows he missed, and they were definitely carving wounds into Adrian’s body.
As that damage accumulated and accumulated, Adrian would eventually collapse.
That was the limit of a weak creature called a human.
But then.
‘He’s regenerating…?’
The wounds were regenerating in real time.
At a speed that could never be explained by human recovery.
“What… what the…!!”
Avarus’s emotion had finally transcended mere shock.
“You! What is your true identity!”
“I told you. A brute.”
This made no sense. It was impossible.
It couldn’t be.
How could that possibly be called a brute!
Within this domain, the flow of mana was completely halted.
Neither magical power nor aura—nothing could be used.
Only pure biological, physical prowess could be employed here.
Which meant all the abilities Adrian was displaying were purely physical.
Abilities that existed only on a biological level.
But… could that even be possible?
Could that even be called human?
Avarus had also abandoned his humanity.
Yet it was different.
There was an immeasurable gap at the biological level.
Adrian was on ‘another level’ entirely.
Human yet not human—a predator that devoured monsters.
But how could that be…?
“There’s no need to despair so.”
Adrian spoke as if he had read Avarus’s thoughts.
“Even The Grand Mage couldn’t explain me.”
Avarus’s complexion drained to a sickly pallor.
Predator and monster.
Without fail, it is the monster that gets devoured.
To capture a predator, being merely a monster is not enough.
This way… there’s no choice.
I must lift the Infinite Silence.
* * *
Crash—!
The sudden sound of glass shattering.
In that same instant, my instincts screamed a warning, and I hurled myself backward.
Boom—!
A pitch-black bolt of lightning struck the spot where I had been standing mere moments before.
Lightning magic.
Had my reaction been even slightly slower, I would have taken a direct hit.
I wouldn’t have died, but the caloric expenditure would have been considerable.
‘So he lifted the Infinite Silence.’
I raised my gaze, and electricity crackled at Avarus’s fingertips.
It certainly seemed that way.
This had become somewhat troublesome.
When Avarus uses magic, countering him becomes extraordinarily difficult for me.
So I was caught slightly off guard.
In my past life, he never lifted the Infinite Silence barrier.
But back then, the Allied Forces had The Grand Mage and The Spirit Summoner as their heroes.
If he lifted the Infinite Silence?
He’d be beaten senseless by The Grand Mage and The Spirit Summoner.
It was far better for Avarus to seal their mana instead and face me alone—that gave him better odds.
But circumstances were different now.
Beside me stood only Kai.
Avarus apparently believed Kai was a worthwhile opponent to test himself against.
That was a grave miscalculation.
Kai launched himself from the ground as if he’d been waiting for this moment.
With the Infinite Silence lifted, Kai’s aura power surged back to full strength.
But Avarus’s magical power had recovered equally.
Whoosh—!
Flames erupted from Avarus’s fingertips this time.
As Avarus swept his hand once—
The entire room was engulfed in inferno in an instant.
But then the flames vanished without a trace, and instead, brilliant light flashed from all directions.
‘A feint.’
Fake Magic.
A deceptive feint commonly employed by knights—a hollow gambit.
This technique of misdirection had been adapted to the magical arts.
To distinguish it from the feints used by warriors, mages called it by a separate name: Fake.
The Grand Mage, hero of the Allied Forces, was a master of such Fake Magic.
By controlling the mana required for a spell and sometimes withdrawing it entirely, one could disperse the magic on the verge of manifestation and instead unleash a different spell altogether.
With magic shifting so unpredictably, the opponent became confused.
They could no longer discern which spell posed a genuine threat to their life.
Of course, it was not easy to execute.
It demanded exquisite control over one’s mana reserves.
Yet Avarus wielded Fake Magic with consummate skill.
Compared to the Grand Mage, hero of the Allied Forces, it was nothing—but that was only because the Grand Mage operated on an entirely different plane of existence.
Avarus’s Fake Magic was far from negligible.
And yet, Kai responded to each and every one of Avarus’s feints.
“What in the world are you?!”
Crash! Snap!
Not once had he been deceived by Avarus’s Fake Magic.
He discerned the true spell with precision and dismantled it flawlessly.
In truth, countering Fake Magic was simple yet difficult.
One need only read the mana.
Through reading mana, mages could distinguish each other’s feints.
But Kai was a knight who wielded aura.
He could not read mana—or so it seemed.
‘He’s reading the flow of mana itself.’
That appeared to be the case.
Mana is a higher concept than magical power.
Magical power is merely energy converted from mana into usable form.
No matter how finely one controlled magical output, if mana itself was perceived, the true nature of the feint would be instantly revealed.
This was possible because aura, which Kai wielded, was also a derivative of mana.
Magical power and aura were derived energies branching from the same root: mana.
In other words, Kai had grasped the essence of aura and, through sensation alone, was reading not magical power but ‘mana’ itself.
But that was easier said than done.
‘Was such a thing even possible?’
Of course, my mana sensitivity approached zero, so I knew little of such matters.
Thus, when Avarus cast his spells, they posed considerable difficulty for me as well.
In any case, from what I recalled, there were only two knights who countered magic in such a manner.
Kai, commander of the Frost Legion.
Ian, supreme commander of the Allied Forces and the Hero.
‘As expected.’
Kai was no mere hunting hound—he was a war dog.
* * *
Shing—!
The fireball was sliced apart with hollow ease.
Severed by the aura, the flames scattered into nothingness and dissipated.
“This can’t be happening…!!”
Avarus’s already pallid complexion drained to a ghostly white once more.
What kind of knight was this, anyway?
The very notion that a knight could see through feint magic was absurd.
Just as aura was the exclusive domain of knights, mana was the exclusive domain of mages. A knight could never read the flow of mana—it was impossible.
In that instant.
A blade descended to eclipse my vision.
Beyond my wide-open eyes, a brilliant blue aura spun with ferocious intensity.
Crackle-crackle-crackle—!
Caught in the vortex, my flesh was torn away in shreds.
Even through it all, those eyes blazed with killing intent, burning with hatred as though facing an eternal nemesis—this knight was nothing short of a rabid beast.
…A mad dog, pure and simple.
It didn’t bark, but it was a mad dog nonetheless.
In other words, I had tried to suppress Adrian with magic and instead unleashed the beast.
If only I had maintained the Infinite Silence.
Then at least I could have kept this mad dog restrained.
But I had already used the Infinite Silence once. To activate it again would require at least six months of preparation.
There was nothing I could do about it now.
My escape route had vanished.
My biological abilities were completely countered by Adrian, the predator.
My mana-based abilities were completely countered by this knight, the mad dog.
I was cornered.
In other words, only one option remained.
“Grraaaaaaaaahhhhh!!!”
I released all my mana at once.
* * *
Boom—!!
As though the very space itself erupted, a tremendous gale tore through everything.
Caught in the tempest, Kai was hurled backward with tremendous force.
Kai drove his blade into the ground to barely maintain his footing, and I too managed to steady myself by plunging the dragon’s claw into the earth.
The gale swept through everything around us, with Avarus at its center.
“Behold!! The power of the Great One!!!”
Soon blood vessels burst across Avarus’s twisted eyes.
Bones cracked with a sickening crunch.
Muscles tore with a wet rip.
His grotesquely swollen body reached its breaking point.
Blood poured from every opening in his face—eyes, nose, mouth, ears—an unstoppable torrent.
“Kahahahahaha!!”
Yet despite this grotesque display, Avarus laughed with unmistakable delight.
‘Why is he like this?’
I genuinely couldn’t fathom it.
How could one comprehend the madness of greed incarnate? But this was different from my previous life—the method of his demise had changed.
Lifting the Infinite Silence had altered everything. In my past life, Avarus hadn’t died like this. He’d simply surrendered his heart to me, docile and resigned.
Which made what Avarus held in his hands now all the more significant.
‘That is….’
Something I’d never seen before.
Something I hadn’t witnessed even in my previous life.
Yet the object contained within that rather large glass vial resembled an elixir in every way.
Most likely.
‘That’s the elixir that was supposed to heal Seraphia.’
In my past life, I’d given it to her, so I never possessed it myself.
Which meant this was almost certainly the elixir that awakened Seraphia as The Frost Lord.
The moment I activated Predator’s Instinct [S], information about the elixir materialized before my eyes.
◆Elixir of ※※※ [?]
: Upon ★consumption, the user’s body and mana ☽increase [??]** fold∇. Thereby the user ∎escapes all ※disease and ◈curse, completely ✪freed from ※suffering.
Concurrent with ‡consumption, dormant ∑abilities **awaken★, and all ♢abilities transcend ∎∎natural ※limits∇.
However, the user ☽escapes ☽time※ completely [※※※ ※※]∇bound to ∑eternal ∇suffering.
But the characters of the information materializing before me were corrupted and distorted.
Which meant this was information that even Predator’s Instinct [S] couldn’t decipher.
‘How is that possible?’
It shouldn’t be possible.
Predator’s Instinct [S] was the accumulated survival instinct of countless lives that had struggled to survive across countless natural environments.
Through it, I could innately and a priori comprehend the information of all living things, environments, and subjects.
For information to be incomprehensible even to Predator’s Instinct [S] meant it had to be something the lifeforms of The Continent had never experienced.
In other words.
It wasn’t of this world.
“I offer my soul to the Great One!!”
Avarus’s cry, fervent as a zealot’s prayer.
And in that same instant, the elixir shattered explosively—
Kwaaaaaaaaaa─!!
A pitch-black darkness erupted from within, consuming the entire space.

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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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