The Mage Who Devours Disasters - Chapter 10

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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 10.
Shortly after the Third Gateway, “Purification of the Sacred Realm,” had begun.
Darakan, a Seeds of the Dark Elf tribe, let out a cry of exultation.
“This is my chance.”
A faint, bloodstained smile played at the corners of my lips.
The Second Gateway had been the aptitude evaluation.
There, Rag—whom I had regarded as my strongest rival—had received a score of zero.
All that talk of black this and that, but in the end, Administrator GuGu’s assessment was “nothing.”
It meant I possessed no aptitude whatsoever for handling calamities.
‘Lucky bastard.’
I was certain of it.
Obtaining the dragon of great calamity in the first trial was nothing but the favor of heaven.
And even that was merely a newborn hatchling.
What could one possibly accomplish with a creature no larger than a fist?
But I was different.
“Go! Sweep them all away!”
Kuaaaaang!
With my roar, an enormous shadow engulfed the forest.
It was my Familiar, the “Dragon of the Abyss.”
Though not yet fully matured, the breath erupting from that massive frame—large as a house—was overwhelming.
Whoooosh!
Blue-green flames consumed the fallen spirits.
The mist-shaped monsters vanished without even a scream.
“Hahaha! Yes, this is it!”
I clenched my fist tightly.
Overwhelming force.
This was the true qualification to become a Deity.
Destructive power that Rag could never even imitate.
‘I will claim first place in this gateway.’
Then I could overtake him in the overall score.
I would ascend proudly as the master of the First Floor.
Dreaming of that sweet future, I raced through the forest.
But then.
“…Damn it, how are there so many?”
Before even ten minutes had passed, my expression twisted.
No matter how many I slew, there was no end.
When I cleared away the mist, more mist surged forward.
Each individual spirit was weak.
When the Dragon of the Abyss raked its claws, dozens burst apart.
The problem was sheer numbers.
Kieeeek!
Grrrrr….
Strange cries echoed from all directions.
A dark crimson mist obscured my vision.
It felt as though I were sinking into a swamp.
The more I struggled, the deeper I was pulled down.
“Huff, huff….”
Darakan’s breathing grew ragged.
Even the Abyss Dragon showed unmistakable signs of exhaustion.
The power of his breath had noticeably diminished.
‘This is insane.’
This was no test.
It was a massacre.
To ‘purify’ tens of thousands—no, hundreds of thousands of spirits.
An impossible mission from the start.
“Ugh! Hold them back! Don’t let them get any closer!”
Darakan shouted irritably.
The spirits surged to within arm’s reach.
A stench of rotting flesh assailed my nostrils.
Terror gripped me.
‘If I’m struggling this much….’
Suddenly, I wondered about the fate of the other Seeds.
Here I was, possessing the Abyss Dragon—a supreme-tier Familiar—reduced to this.
What of the others?
‘They’re all dead.’
No doubt about it.
Pathetic deaths.
Especially that one.
‘Rag.’
A worthless incompetent with zero aptitude for calamity.
His only asset was a fist-sized dragon hatchling.
He was undoubtedly being torn apart by spirits at the forest’s entrance.
Not even his bones would remain.
“How pathetic.”
I found solace in the thought.
My struggle was due to the insane difficulty.
At least I was holding my ground.
Mere survival guaranteed a top ranking.
In that moment of self-justification.
Flash!
Center of the Sacred Realm.
A brilliant flash erupted from an impossibly distant point.
“…?”
I doubted my own eyes.
It was as if the sun itself had risen.
The violet-tainted sky was instantly bleached white.
And then.
KWAAAAAAAAAAANG!
A deafening roar struck my eardrums with delayed ferocity.
The earth convulsed violently.
Trees standing nearby were uprooted entirely.
Darakan threw himself to the ground, screaming.
“Aaaaaaah! What is this?!”
Had a nuclear bomb detonated?
The shockwave swept across the entire Forest.
The spirits that had clung so tenaciously were caught in the tempest and vanished without a trace.
The mist dissipated.
The world fell silent.
Darakan lifted his head in a daze.
Dust and smoke billowed across the Center of the Sacred Realm.
A colossal mushroom cloud was rising from that place.
‘What in the world is that…?’
Before I could even comprehend the situation.
Ding!
A System Message materialized before my eyes.
[The Third Gateway, ‘Sacred Realm Purification’ has been completed.]
[The source of contamination in the Sacred Realm has been completely eliminated.]
[All Seeds must cease your actions.]
Completed?
Already?
Darakan’s mouth fell open.
The contamination source had been removed.
‘By whom? How?’
Could an Administrator have intervened?
Had they halted the trial due to difficulty adjustment failure?
Another message materialized before his bewildered eyes.
[Calculating Gateway Clear contribution.]
[Announcing rankings.]
Rankings.
Darakan swallowed hard.
Right, if someone resolved it, the rankings would appear.
I caught quite a few spirits with the Abyss Dragon early on.
I had a fair shot at first place.
But.
Darakan’s eyes widened as if they might split as he scrolled down.
[1st Place: Rag (Contribution: 99.7%)]
[2nd Place: Darakan (Contribution: 0.15%)]
[3rd Place: Seria (Contribution: 0.1%)]
[…]
“…What?”
My breath caught in my throat.
I thought I’d misread the numbers.
99.7%?
He did it all alone?
And my contribution in second place was measured in decimals.
A figure worth less than dust.
“This… what is this….”
It made no sense.
I couldn’t accept it.
He said his Calamity aptitude was 0.
That he was an empty shell with no abilities whatsoever!
This was a dream.
Surely this was just a bad dream.
Darakan rubbed his eyes.
He looked again, and again.
But the numbers floating in the air remained unmoved.
99.7%.
Crack!
He slapped his own cheek hard.
A stinging pain rushed through, but the nightmare didn’t break.
“Does that even… make sense?”
That massive mushroom cloud that obliterated the Center of the Sacred Realm.
The destructive power that transformed the very terrain itself.
A single human caused all that?
That guy with 0 Calamity aptitude?
“Impossible! There’s no way he could have that kind of power!”
It was then that Darakan cried out in frustration.
Whoooooosh!
The sky split open.
The dark clouds parted, and a blindingly radiant pillar of sacred light poured down.
From within that radiance, someone rose slowly into view.
“…An Angel?”
The Seeds’ gazes snapped upward in unison, fixing upon the empty air.
Archangel Abriel.
The exalted being known as the Guardian of the Sacred Realm was ascending toward the heavens.
Cradled in her embrace was someone.
Limbs hanging limp.
A golden-haired man with his head bowed weakly.
It was Rag.
“Is he… dead?”
“There’s no way he survived that explosion.”
The Seeds murmured amongst themselves.
He appeared to have perished, unable to withstand the blast’s aftermath.
Hope flickered in Darakan’s eyes.
Yes, he should have died.
Such an absurd monster should never exist in this world.
But then.
[Hear me.]
The Angel’s voice resonated throughout the entire Sacred Realm.
Her tone was profoundly solemn, naturally inspiring reverence in all who heard it.
[This one has honored my children and has condemned the Mad Deity whom none could overcome.]
Abriel cradled Rag’s form with utmost tenderness.
As though handling a sacred relic.
[Most merciful and most destructive of all.]
She knelt in the empty air.
[I, Abriel, do hereby pledge to serve you as my new Deity and my sole master from this day forth.]
“…!”
Shock had no chance to erupt.
Whoooosh!
Brilliant radiance burst forth from Abriel’s form.
Her flesh scattered into particles of light, dispersing into the void.
Then, in the next instant, they coalesced into a single shape.
Ching!
A clear, crystalline resonance.
Where the light faded, no Angel remained.
Instead.
A single Holy Sword, its crossguard fashioned in the shape of blindingly white wings, floated at Rag’s side.
“…Hah.”
Darakan could not close his mouth.
A calamity was not enough.
…Even the Archangel Abriel of the Sacred Realm had become a weapon herself and followed Rag.
* * *
Administrator GuGu pressed his forehead with his short wings.
‘…This is a disaster.’
A dull ache throbbed through his skull.
This wasn’t part of the plan.
No—the entire scenario had collapsed from its foundation.
The original design intent of the Third Gateway was crystal clear.
On the surface, it was ‘purification of the Sacred Realm’.
But its true nature was ‘contract killing’.
The target was Archangel Abriel.
The objective was to break the seal she was protecting with her life.
In other words, the liberation of Mad Deity Tulkacha.
‘Tulkacha’s power is too valuable to waste.’
GuGu clicked his tongue.
‘The raging volcano’.
This power wasn’t merely about spewing scorching magma.
It was the force that grasped and shook the very veins of all volcanoes.
It was even the authority of a sovereign—capable of forcing the submission of lesser deities bearing fire and earth attributes.
The Tower Gods had every reason to covet it.
But there was a problem.
Tulkacha had gone mad, and it was the noble Archangel Abriel who had sealed him.
‘There was no justification.’
The Deities valued their reputation.
To kill an unblemished archangel just to free a mad deity?
Asgard’s public opinion would never permit it.
So they resorted to a trick.
They deployed unsuspecting Seeds into the Sacred Realm.
When the spirits attacked, the Seeds would counterattack to survive.
The plan was to naturally turn them into enemies of Abriel.
If the Seeds killed Abriel, the Deities would quietly appear and simply retrieve Tulkacha.
It was a flawless plan.
Until that madman Rag showed up.
‘How did he even manage it?’
GuGu narrowed his eyes and stared at Rag.
He lay limp, feigning unconsciousness, but his life force remained intact.
No—it had actually grown stronger than before.
Fine, he joined hands with Abriel.
Fine, he borrowed the power of her transformed into a holy sword.
But even so, ‘annihilation’ should have been impossible.
The Deity is a being that approaches immortality.
One can shatter the physical form, but erasing the divine essence at its core is an entirely different matter.
Yet Tulkacha vanished without a trace.
As if someone had simply devoured him.
‘The higher-ups must be quite furious.’
GuGu exhaled a heavy sigh.
But what could be done?
The milk was already spilled.
I could only hope that ‘their’ wrath would be directed at Rag, not at myself.
Above all else.
Ding!
The System had produced its results.
An Administrator is the System’s servant.
Setting aside personal feelings and political positions, the results had to be announced with absolute fairness.
Whoooosh!
Light flashed brilliantly as the surviving Seeds were summoned forth.
“Ugh….”
“We… we survived.”
The survivors, including Darakan.
They crawled across the ground, caked in dirt.
They had been driven to the brink of death by the spirits, barely clinging to life thanks to Rag’s explosion.
GuGu forced the corners of my mouth upward.
Smile.
A professional’s smile.
“Well then, everyone worked very hard! The Third Gateway has concluded!”
Clap clap clap.
I struck my wings together to create the sound of applause.
The Seeds stared up at me blankly.
They seemed unable to read the situation.
“As promised, the source of contamination in the Sacred Realm has been eliminated. Though the process was… quite dynamic.”
My gaze lingered briefly on Rag before turning away.
“Now I shall announce the results.”
Gulp.
The Seeds swallowed hard.
A glimmer of hope.
Perhaps they would receive some points for surviving?
But I was unmoved.
I pointed toward a hologram chart floating in the air.
“The scoring criterion for this Gateway was ‘contribution.'”
My voice rang out with clinical precision.
“First place, Rag. 300 points.”
“…!”
The Seeds’ mouths fell open in shock.
300 points.
200 points had been astounding enough, but now it was 300.
A number so vast that even the maximum score seemed incomprehensible.
“And….”
GuGu scanned through the remaining names on the list.
I barely managed to suppress the sigh threatening to escape.
“Darakan, 2 points.”
“…What?”
“Seria, 1 point.”
“….”
“The rest of you, unfortunately, scored 0 points.”
Silence.
The atmosphere froze as if doused with ice water.
Darakan’s voice trembled as he spoke.
“2, 2 points? I summoned thousands of spirits as an Abyss Dragon…!”
“Yes, you did.”
GuGu cut him off.
“But they were utterly useless in removing the source of corruption. In fact, you only agitated the spirits and raised the difficulty unnecessarily.”
“Still, 1 point is too…!”
“It is the System’s judgment. If you find it unfair, do as Rag did—obliterate the entire Sacred Realm.”
“….”
Darakan fell silent.
There was no argument to be made.
That overwhelming explosion.
And the Angel transformed into a holy sword.
The gap between them was already as vast as heaven and earth.
GuGu spread his wings and made his declaration.
“With this, all proceedings of the First Floor Promotion Examination have concluded.”
His eyes gleamed.
“The overall first place remains unchanged—Rag. Congratulations. You are now the new master of the First Floor of the Tower of Gods.”
Fireworks erupted.
But not a single cheer rose to meet them.

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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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