The Mage Who Devours Disasters - Chapter 100

—————
This chapter was translated by Lunox Novels. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
—————

Chapter 100.
The King of Orga’s eyes widened dramatically.
The Man in Black Armor descended upon the City Walls.
Rag.
As the king gazed up at his silhouette, my chest surged with overwhelming awe and reverence.
‘It’s different.’
The king swallowed hard.
The Guardian Deity I once served—Kartal, the God of Earthquakes.
This was on an entirely different scale.
The magnitude of power and destructive force required no comparison whatsoever.
Merely three minutes.
Thousands upon thousands of demonic beasts reduced to ash by that overwhelming force.
Yet what truly chilled the king was not Rag’s power, but his ‘demeanor’.
‘Completely different from the existing Deities.’
As with nearly every Deity in Asgard.
Most gods are exceedingly stingy in wielding their power for mortals.
Even Guardian Deities, when crisis befalls a nation, demand massive tribute payments in advance as compensation.
Resolving dungeons was even worse.
The king remembered Kartal’s ruthless extortion with trembling rage.
Kartal had plundered mercilessly.
Half of the kingdom’s annual budget.
While most kingdoms and empires paid tribute to their Guardian Deities at rates between ten and thirty percent.
Kartal had extracted murderous profits double that amount.
And that was merely the beginning.
He demanded living sacrifices—chaste youths and maidens—as casually as one might demand meals.
The people’s resentment reached the heavens, yet there was nothing to be done.
A Guardian Deity was an essential condition for national survival, and particularly given the region’s frequent earthquakes, the God of Earthquakes was a lifeline the Orga Kingdom clung to desperately.
But.
This Deity before me was different.
Rag operated on an entirely different principle from any god the king had ever known.
‘He asked for nothing.’
Even after disposing of the demonic beasts, he made no demands for tribute.
He neither required advance payment nor threatened for sacrifices.
He simply raised his staff and, with overwhelming power, annihilated the beasts in an instant.
But that wasn’t the end of it.
Other memories flickered through the king’s mind.
The banquet held in his honor.
-All the food prepared here shall be distributed among your starving people. Every last morsel.
It was shocking.
The Deities love pomp and ceremony.
In Asgard, if a meal presented to oneself did not suit the palate, it was common sense to overturn the table at once and sever the cook’s head.
Yet here was an order to distribute the remaining food among the people?
The King of Orga doubted his own ears.
A Deity who concerned himself with the hunger of mortals.
Moreover, throughout the three-day journey back to the kingdom.
Rag had merely gazed silently out the carriage window, never once voicing a single complaint or making an unreasonable demand.
He had not indulged in the arrogant superiority of divinity, crushing mortals beneath him like insects.
‘Could it truly be… that he desires nothing at all?’
The King of Orga’s chest burned with warmth.
It was as though a miraculous ray of light had descended upon the bleak future of the Orga Kingdom, which had been filled only with despair.
That was when it happened.
Rag turned his body atop the City Walls and looked down upon the king.
“King of Orga.”
His voice was dry yet oppressive.
The king started in alarm and prostrated himself upon the ground.
“Yes, yes! Great Rag!”
“What has become of the task I assigned you?”
Rag asked, resting his chin in his hand.
“I told you to find anyone connected to the Heavenly Demon.”
The king’s face drained of all color.
Yet he quickly nodded and summoned his escort knight.
“We f-found him! We were about to bring him after the banquet. You there, bring him at once!”
The sound of chains rattled.
The knights dragged forth a small figure bound tightly with rope.
A pitiful sight.
His face was caked with dirt and grime, and he was a gaunt boy clad in tattered rags.
The boy trembled like an aspen leaf from fear, his head bowed as he knelt.
“This is the child.”
The king spoke carefully, gesturing toward the boy.
“An orphaned immigrant who has lived alone on the outskirts of the territory since childhood… and for several days now, he has been muttering incomprehensible ravings.”
“Ravings?”
“Yes. He speaks of the Heavenly Demon, a devil from the sky, calling to him… and every night he has been bowing toward that ominous Dungeon.”
There was no doubt.
The remnants of destruction resonating with the Heavenly Demon Cult Dungeon.
The thread of that lingering resentment was connected to this boy.
The king glanced about cautiously and added in hushed tones.
“Rag.”
He lowered his voice further.
“When an ominous immigrant connected to a Dungeon is discovered, typically…”
The king’s hand made a gesture across his throat.
“It is customary to sever their neck on the spot and scatter their blood at the dungeon entrance.”
“….”
“By doing so, the dungeon’s curse and malevolent energy are temporarily alleviated, making the conquest far more manageable.”
A blood ritual.
The sacrifice of the cursed.
It was a brutal rule of dungeon conquest that was considered common sense in Asgard.
The King of Orga naturally assumed Rag would tear the Boy to shreds on the spot.
The Boy, sensing this as well, trembled violently and wept tears that fell like rain.
But then.
“Insane nonsense.”
What escaped Rag’s lips was a cold, derisive laugh.
The King of Orga flinched in surprise and lifted his head.
“Pardon?”
“I will not commit such barbaric acts.”
Rag descended the stairs and stood before the Boy.
With the end of the Sage’s staff he held in his hand, he gently tapped the thick rope binding the Boy.
Whoosh.
The rope unraveled as if by illusion, falling to the ground in loose coils.
“…Lord Rag?”
The King of Orga’s eyes widened in bewilderment.
Rather than spilling blood, he had freed the Boy from his bonds.
Afterward, Rag spoke.
“Come with me. Tell me your story.”
Rag took the Boy’s hand and leaped down below the City Walls.
It was then, as the King of Orga stood dumbfounded, unable to comprehend the meaning of those actions.
The colossal shadow that had been standing behind Rag’s back.
Turan, the eldest of the Barbarian Four Brothers, opened his mouth with a grave voice.
“Foolish mortal.”
Turan’s bestial yellow eyes looked down upon the King of Orga.
“Our master does not covet the blood of mortals.”
“…!”
Turan’s voice was thick with absolute faith and pride toward his master.
“He stands in a different league from the wretched deities you have known.”
Turan drove his greatsword into the ground with a resounding thud, driving home his point.
“Our master would never open a path by burning the lives of the weak as kindling. So speak no more such drivel henceforth.”
“….”
The King of Orga stared blankly at Turan.
He could not respond.
For a moment, he could not comprehend what Turan was saying.
…Whether such a deity could truly exist in Asgard was beyond his understanding.
This Asgard.
The land of the Deities.
Where only despair and fear of the Deity exist.
* * *
I sat across from the Boy with a table between us.
The Boy still trembled like an aspen leaf, gripped by terror.
His gaze darted nervously toward the floor, never meeting my eyes.
“….”
I rested my chin on my hand and studied him intently.
The King of Orga’s cruel proposal echoed in my mind.
-It is customary to slit his throat and scatter his blood at the dungeon entrance.
Madness.
That is the way of the Deities.
Vile creatures who sacrifice innocent mortals as meat shields for their own convenience, merely to avoid the inconvenience of curses.
I was never one of the Deities of this place to begin with.
There is no reason whatsoever for me to follow their repugnant methods of resolution.
Above all.
‘He called out.’
The fact that the Boy had bowed toward the dungeon every night.
There is context to this.
Something within the Heavenly Demon Cult Dungeon requires this Boy.
To ignore that and blindly spill blood before entering would contradict my way as a mage who pursues truth.
I opened my mouth carefully.
“What is your name?”
The Boy flinched.
His lips trembled, but no sound emerged.
Absolute terror.
Fear gripped him—the dread that I might change my mind at any moment and slit his throat.
I exhaled briefly and reached into my inventory.
A soft rustling sound.
And I withdrew the Heavenly Demon Armor.
“…!”
The Boy’s eyes widened as if they might burst from his skull.
The moment he saw the armor, his breathing grew ragged.
Just as I thought.
He had seen it before.
“I too share a connection with the Heavenly Demon.”
I spoke calmly.
“As you can see, I possess his relics and have mastered his swordsmanship.”
The Boy stared blankly, his gaze shifting between the armor and me.
“So there is nothing to fear.”
I drove the point home with conviction in my voice.
“I simply wish to know the truth. I swear by the name of The Deity that I will not harm you.”
A oath sworn by The Deity.
In Asgard, such a vow carries weight heavier than life itself.
Only then did the Boy’s tightly sealed lips slowly part.
“…M-my name is Baek-un.”
The Boy swallowed hard.
His voice was small, yet the trembling terror from moments before had largely subsided.
“I am descended from the Heavenly Demon… a bearer of his bloodline.”
“Descended, you say.”
“Yes. Long before Asgard was settled… a lineage that has endured since before our world was destroyed by The Deities.”
Baek-un’s eyes grew sorrowful.
A survivor of the Destroyed World.
The descendant of refugees, trampled beneath The Deities’ amusement, stripped of everything, cast into this foreign land.
“The Heavenly Demon was truly magnificent.”
A peculiar pride resonated in Baek-un’s voice.
“His power pierced the very Sky, and even The Deities trembled before his might. He was our world’s sole savior, a true Demon God who stood against The Deities themselves.”
Baek-un hesitated briefly.
“But….”
Baek-un’s head bowed deeply.
“In the end, he fell.”
What world has ever stood against The Deities without perishing?
“His vengeful spirit… it seems to have called out to me.”
With trembling hands, Baek-un pointed toward where the Dungeon lay.
“For days now, every night I have heard his voice at my ear. Saying he was cold, that it was unjust, and… commanding me to come here.”
Tears welled at the corners of his eyes.
“I only wished… to soothe his resentment. For him, suffering alone in that terrible rift, I could only offer prayers and devotion from without. I swear I never sought to awaken the Dungeon or bring harm to the Kingdom.”
He spoke with absolute sincerity.
The King of Orga had seen Baek-un as the source of the curse, but the truth was the opposite.
Baek-un was merely a devoted descendant seeking to appease a restless spirit.
I stroked my chin thoughtfully.
My mind raced.
‘The Heavenly Demon’s vengeful spirit is calling to his own bloodline.’
But why?
Mere loneliness? A sense of injustice?
No.
When a dead spirit calls to the living, there is only one truly desperate reason.
‘It desires a body.’
A vessel of shared blood capable of containing his full power.
That is why they call upon it.
And.
‘So that is why the Deities slay their own bloodline.’
I grasped the true meaning behind the “custom” the King of Orga had mentioned.
They sever the neck and spill the blood.
It is not a mitigation of the curse.
It is the destruction of the “living vessel” that the vengeful spirit within the Dungeon desires from the very beginning.
Dead blood and a broken body lose their value as a vessel.
Thus the vengeful spirit abandons its descent, and what appears to be a temporary reduction in the Dungeon’s difficulty is merely an optical illusion.
‘How befitting of the Deities—shallow and cruel in their methods.’
But my thoughts diverged.
Prevent the descent?
No, rather.
‘I must allow it to descend.’
I would allow the Heavenly Demon to borrow this boy’s body and manifest itself completely in this world once more.
After that.
‘I will devour it.’
Even the Deities had trembled before it, or so it was said.
Undoubtedly, it possessed divine authority of that magnitude.
A being of catastrophic proportions, wielding immense divine power—of that I was certain.
Moreover.
‘If I leave things as they are, Baek-un will die anyway.’
There was no chance the King of Orga would let him live.
I nodded.
The calculation was sound.
“Baek-un.”
At my call, the boy wiped away his tears and looked toward me.
I extended my hand.
“Come with me into the Dungeon.”
“…What?”
Baek-un’s eyes widened as though they might split.
“The Heavenly Demon desires you, does it not?”
I spoke calmly, yet with an intonation that brooked no refusal.
“Offering prayers from outside will hardly soothe such resentment. We must enter directly and hear what the Heavenly Demon truly desires.”
Baek-un swallowed dryly.
Fear was evident, yet he seemed to discern an inexplicable certainty in my gaze.
Baek-un hesitated for a moment.
“…I understand. I will follow you.”
Slowly, he grasped my hand.

—————
This chapter was translated by Lunox Novels. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
—————