The Mage Who Devours Disasters - Chapter 40

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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 40.
Cryos was certain of it.
This war could not be lost.
He was a meticulous deity.
Not some fool who moved his troops at the whim of emotion.
Before issuing the order to advance, he had already completed his investigation of Rag.
‘It’s all smoke and mirrors.’
The conclusion was clear.
The fastest to ascend to godhood among the Seeds.
The one who completed an S-rank Floor in such a short span.
Glittering accolades clung to his name, yet beneath them lay nothing but an empty shell.
‘All of it is Heimdall’s halo.’
Massive Nectar support.
The bestowal of divine artifacts.
Without those, Rag would be nothing more than a sniveling brat languishing on the First Floor.
Moreover, he had obtained intelligence regarding the state of the 7th Floor.
-There is a Gold-Plated Temple.
-It resembles a resort with hot springs flowing and flowers in full bloom.
-There are no defensive installations or traps whatsoever.
“A flower field, then.”
Cryos let out a derisive snort.
On the eve of war, and yet he decorates his Floor like a resort?
It was impossible unless his mind itself had turned into a flower field.
What of his forces?
Merely scraps of Frost Tribe Elves pilfered from my own Territory.
A weak, pathetic race I had intended to burn as sacrifices—creatures who knew nothing of combat.
And he dares to face my elite legions with them?
“Such arrogance.”
The price for striking first would be severe.
I shall annihilate him utterly.
The disparity in power was overwhelming.
The Frost Legion—honed over thousands of years, perfectly obedient to my will alone.
Though the loss of Lion King Kusan, my gatekeeper, was a bitter blow, it changed nothing of consequence.
For I possessed lieutenants more powerful and more loyal than Kusan could ever be.
‘The Four Knights of Death.’
My cherished honor guard.
Immortal knights born from the abyssal chill itself.
So long as they held their ground, nothing Rag could do would breach our defenses.
Even in a one-on-one duel, there was no possibility of my defeat.
The depth of divinity was simply different.
The weight of experience differs.
“Let’s go.”
Cryos moved forward with unhurried grace.
He crossed through the dimensional gate.
The preparations for victory were complete.
All that remained was to sever that arrogant newcomer’s neck and present it to Skadi.
Whiiiiing!
The vertigo of spatial displacement faded.
The air of the 7th Floor touched his skin.
It was warm.
A nauseating gentleness to the atmosphere.
But soon this land too would be consumed by his frost and frozen solid.
That was when it happened.
“Krraaaaaaagh!”
“P-please, save me!”
“What is this! Ahhh!”
Screams erupted.
Anguished death cries.
Piercing shrieks that seemed to tear eardrums echoed from all directions.
The corners of Cryos’s mouth lifted.
‘It’s begun.’
His vanguard must be slaughtering the elves.
The screams of these pathetic creatures as they died never failed to thrill him.
He slowly opened his eyes.
To savor the spectacle.
Anticipating the Golden City stained crimson with blood.
But.
“…?”
The moment he beheld the scene before him.
Cryos’s expression hardened rigidly.
“…??”
Blood was spraying.
Severed limbs flew through the air.
But the blood’s owner was not an elf.
“Gaaaah! It’s burning!”
“I’m melting! My body is melting!”
Frost Giants.
The Frozen Knight Order.
His proud army was being slaughtered the moment they crossed the dimensional gate.
“What is… this?”
I couldn’t grasp the situation.
A Flower Field, they said.
A Resort, they said.
Yet what lay before my eyes was hell itself.
Roooaaaar!
Crimson pillars of flame erupted from the earth.
From the sky, a deluge of razor-sharp ice arrows rained down like a tempest.
The legion that had charged forward with absolute certainty of victory met catastrophe at the very entrance.
It was a perfect defense.
A complete counter.
A counterattack that had meticulously dissected Cryos’s full strength and relentlessly exploited every weakness.
The flame pillars seared the flesh of the Frost Giants, while the ice arrows pierced through the joints of the Frozen Knight Order.
“…A trap?”
Cryos bit his lip.
This was a fortress built with currency.
Those cascading arrows, those surging flame pillars—all of it was Nectar.
To transform a peaceful resort into a killing field in an instant required astronomical amounts of resources.
‘This makes no sense.’
A Flower Field, they said.
Not even preparing for war, merely indulging in divine leisure, they said.
Yet where did this staggering arsenal emerge from?
Suspicion pointed in a single direction.
‘Heimdall.’
Could Heimdall have broken his agreement with Skadi?
Reinforcements had been forbidden since the declaration of war.
But there was no other explanation.
A lowly minor deity hoarding this much Nectar?
“Damn it!”
Cryos roared.
But his shock was brief.
He was the master of Tower Floor 50.
A conqueror who had traversed Asgard’s battlefields for millennia, trampling countless deities beneath his feet.
He was not so fragile as to crumble under a mere ambush of this caliber.
“Do not falter!”
He swept his hand through the air.
Whoooosh!
The power of frost engulfed the battlefield.
The ice arrows that had filled the sky froze mid-flight in the void.
“You dare attempt to pierce me with such crude cold?”
Crack!
As he clenched his fist, the arrows disintegrated into powder and scattered.
A superior upgrade.
In the hierarchy of frost power, he held overwhelming dominance.
“Shield bearers! Form ranks!”
With the command issued, the legion that had descended into chaos moved with perfect synchronization.
Colossal ice shields held by giants blocked the path ahead.
Pillars of flame struck the shields, but failed to penetrate the thick walls of ice.
“Advance! Push forward!”
Boom! Boom! Boom!
The shield wall surged ahead.
Then.
“Retreat! Fall back!”
Urgent cries of the Frost Tribe Elves echoed from within the forest.
The arrow barrage ceased.
The ambush forces began withdrawing.
Cryos laughed coldly.
“Vermin.”
Once their firepower was blocked, they fled.
A predictable pattern.
“Chase them! Leave none alive!”
The legion’s morale surged.
There was nothing more exhilarating than pursuing a fleeing enemy.
Cryos was certain of victory.
The 7th Floor was narrow anyway.
No matter how far they ran, they would hit a cliff’s edge.
The game would end once Rag was annihilated or the layer’s core crystal was destroyed.
Victory was assured.
‘Traps laid with Nectar eventually run dry.’
He followed the legion’s advance with ease.
The Frost Giants bulldozed through the forest, carving a path.
The Frozen Knight Order surged along that path toward the Golden Temple.
In the distance, his main base came into view.
But.
“…?”
Cryos’s brow furrowed.
It had been too easy.
The resistance at the entrance felt like a lie—the path forward had encountered no obstacles whatsoever.
As if the way had been deliberately opened to welcome him.
‘Surely not.’
An ominous premonition flickered through his mind.
That was the moment.
The foot of the leading Frost Giant sank deep into the earth.
“What?”
Rumble, rumble, rumble!
The ground screamed.
It was not an earthquake.
The very bedrock was collapsing.
What I had believed to be a thoroughfare—a flat expanse—suddenly yawned open like a colossal Sinkhole.
“A trap!”
“Retreat!”
Too late.
Thousands of soldiers were sucked into the chasm below.
And from that abyssal darkness.
Hissssss!
A sickly green vapor rose with a nauseating stench.
Poison.
A virulent toxin that dissolved flesh and bone in mere moments.
“Arghhhhhh!”
“Help me! My legs! My legs!”
The pit became a living hell.
Giants writhed, clutching at their melting limbs.
The knights’ armor corroded and ate through their flesh.
Cryos ground his teeth.
“This… cowardly bastard!”
Poison, of all things.
A Natural Faction deity using poison?
On such a massive scale?
This was the Biological Faction’s method.
It bore no resemblance to the traps a Natural Faction deity would devise.
The trap’s design was masterful.
Disturbingly cunning.
Cryos clicked his tongue.
‘A deity who only just ascended to godhood?’
He could not believe it.
This one would stop at nothing to achieve victory.
Honor? Pride?
Such things could be thrown to the dogs.
Like a veteran hardened by countless mud-pit brawls.
The scent of a seasoned commander who had weathered every trial of war.
Even the psychological warfare was flawless.
I’ve been deceived.
The Flower Field was a disguise.
The resort concept was theater designed to lower our guard.
He deliberately feigned weakness.
Pretending to panic and flee, he lured Cryos’s legion into the deepest and most perilous reaches of this layer.
Soldiers were dissolving within the Poison Mist.
Screams echoed without end.
“Stay calm!”
Cryos roared.
“Fall back! Get out of the poison!”
We had to retreat, at least for now.
Fighting in this hellhole would be suicide.
We needed to regroup and reorganize our formation.
Time was on my side anyway.
Our numerical advantage remained overwhelming, and he couldn’t deploy such traps indefinitely.
“Retreat! Full retreat!”
As the order rang out, the Frost Giants turned.
The Frozen Knight Order began backing away.
That was when it happened.
Whiiiiiing!
A violent gust erupted from behind.
Biting cold permeated the air.
“…?”
Cryos turned his head.
His eyes widened.
A colossal vortex blocked the path of retreat.
A storm of ashen hue.
Within it, tens of thousands of ice blades spun like the teeth of a gear.
A divine power.
Rag had unleashed it.
As he swung his staff, the tempest writhed with terrible life.
Frost as well?
Cryos trembled.
The storm carried frost within it.
Thick frost, too—pure and concentrated cold.
He felt it instinctively.
Compared to his own divine power, “Extreme Frost,” it was not lacking in the slightest.
No—in terms of destructive force, it might even be superior.
“…Is that Heimdall’s divine artifact?”
The staff he’d only heard whispered about.
The reality lived up to its reputation.
Wind tore through space itself, and bitter cold froze the wounds it left behind.
A perfect instrument of slaughter.
“Krraaaagh!”
Soldiers with no escape route were ground to dust by the tempest.
The giant’s skin shredded like tissue paper.
The knight’s armor froze solid and crumbled to fragments.
Poison ahead, tempest behind.
A sandwich trap.
“Break through! If we’re blocked, we die!”
Cryos unleashed waves of frigid air, attempting to counteract the storm.
But it was insufficient.
This wind would not yield easily.
Then, in that instant.
Uuuuuuung!
The heavens themselves wailed.
Another force surged forth.
Multiple varieties of calamity, no less.
Fire, water, earth, and collapse.
Four distinct catastrophes intertwined and cascaded down upon us.
“What in the abyss is this?!”
Legendary-grade divine authority.
Disaster descending from all directions.
I could not comprehend it.
A divine authority blending multiple calamities together?
It could theoretically exist.
But for a single entity to wield it with such flawless mastery—that was an entirely different matter.
Most deities possess a single type of divine authority.
Fire if fire, water if water.
To achieve mastery over one’s inherent nature and reach its apex.
That is the path and law of divinity.
Of course, there exist deities capable of wielding two varieties of calamity.
With exceptional talent, even three or four become possible.
But the law is merciless.
‘Dilution breeds weakness.’
One who spreads themselves across many domains can never overcome one who focuses entirely on a single path.
Compared to a deity wielding singular calamity, each of those scattered powers becomes shallow and crude by necessity.
But this creature?
“…It’s impossible.”
It commands the divine typhoon while simultaneously unleashing such comprehensive devastation.
Far from diminishing, their powers complemented one another, creating a synergy that amplified their devastation.
Fire melted ice into water, water saturated the earth into mud, and collapse cascaded across the terrain.
A perfect orchestration.
Like a conductor commanding an orchestra, Rag was conducting countless calamities with a single finger.
Cryos trembled.
A memory flickered through his mind.
‘Disaster Aptitude: 0 points.’
The humiliating evaluation Rag had received during the selection trials.
The Deities had mocked him.
They scorned him as incompetent, as someone who had climbed through sheer luck.
But what was this spectacle unfolding before his eyes?
Was this the work of an incompetent?
Such destructive power, such manipulation of multiple divine authorities—only a deity of transcendent talent could achieve this.
“It was all… an act?”
Tremor after tremor wracked his frame.
Cryos could not help but shudder.

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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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