The Mage Who Devours Disasters - Chapter 57
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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 57.
Park Ji-hoon swallowed hard.
His mouth had gone completely dry.
He had inherited the soul of the Sword Saint.
One day, his older brother suddenly placed a hand on his forehead, and with a brilliant flash of light, forcibly infused him with that power.
Thanks to it, he had grown absurdly strong over the past month at a pace that defied reason.
But that was all.
‘I’ve never even heard a voice or anything like that….’
The resolve of a hero?
The enlightenment of a sword master?
He had never felt anything so grandiose.
Only a slight lightness in his movements and the sensation that his blade had grown heavier.
And the situation before his eyes right now was insane.
He had never stood on a battlefield where so many—hundreds of monsters—poured forth.
Moreover, each of those Demon Creatures emanated a sinister killing intent.
They were monsters at the level of ordinary dungeon bosses, or perhaps even stronger.
‘Am I supposed to stop those things?’
Park Ji-hoon looked down at his own hands.
The hand gripping the longsword was trembling violently.
He was afraid.
He wanted to run.
A terror of an entirely different magnitude from his days throwing punches in the Back Alley pressed down upon his mind.
But.
Thud. Thud.
At the end of his gaze.
His older brother, Kim Jung-seok, did not stop.
He advanced without hesitation toward that overwhelming army of Demon Creatures.
Not a single wavering step.
Such an imposing, weighty, and colossal silhouette.
‘…I.’
Watching that back, Park Ji-hoon felt utterly pathetic.
Father had said it.
Chairman Park had called his older brother “Teacher Kim” and praised him endlessly.
-That man will become a dragon. Ji-hoon, you must become his limbs and hands.
‘You were wrong, Father.’
Park Ji-hoon murmured inwardly.
A man who will become a dragon?
No.
That person is.
My older brother is.
It was something that had transcended even dragons.
And so the battle began.
Park Ji-hoon found himself at a loss for words.
Kwaaaang!
Demonic energy erupted from the black armor that enveloped my body.
The white holy sword in my hand traced an arc of light.
Screech. Clang!
Squelch!
It wasn’t a battle.
It was closer to one-sided slaughter.
The blade danced.
With each step I took, with each brush of light through the air, another Demon Creature’s head fell—thud, thud.
“Graaaah!”
“A human…!”
Death cries filled the air.
Those ferocious high-ranking Demon Creatures fell before my blade like wheat stalks during harvest.
Overwhelming violence.
Suffocating power.
Park Ji-hoon stared at the spectacle, his mind reeling.
But there was no time to marvel.
“Kieeeek!”
A single Demon Creature broke through my encirclement, circled around the perimeter, and was now approaching him.
A grotesque monster with goat horns and bat wings, easily three meters tall.
Its bloodshot eyes were fixed on Park Ha-yan, who stood defenseless as she conducted her contract with Mayon.
“…Hah.”
Park Ji-hoon drew in a deep breath.
He forced strength into his trembling legs.
Veins bulged across his hands as he gripped the longsword.
‘I will stop it.’
My brother trusted me.
I had to honor that faith.
If I couldn’t stop this monster, I wasn’t even worthy of following in my brother’s footsteps—I’d be nothing but vermin.
“Don’t you dare come closer, you bastard!”
Park Ji-hoon roared and swung his longsword with all his might.
Clang!
The Demon Creature’s claws clashed with the blade.
Tremendous impact reverberated through both arms.
“Ugh…!”
Pain as though his bones would shatter.
From just a single exchange, he could tell.
This creature was far stronger than me.
Speed, raw power, mana—I was outmatched in every regard.
Thwack!
“Ugh!”
The Demon Creature’s tail struck Park Ji-hoon’s abdomen with brutal force.
Coughing blood, he staggered backward.
It felt like my ribs had cracked.
Each breath was agony.
But I didn’t fall.
Gritting my teeth, I raised my sword again.
The wounds multiplied.
My shoulder was slashed, my thigh torn open.
Blood streamed down, obscuring my vision.
‘I have to protect them.’
That single thought consumed my mind.
I had to endure.
If I retreated, Park Ha-yan would die, and my brother’s game would be lost.
“Raaaaaaagh!”
Park Ji-hoon roared like a beast and charged forward again.
A desperate struggle.
A crude, life-or-death sword strike.
Then it happened.
-It’s on your right.
“…?”
At Park Ji-hoon’s ear.
From the depths of his soul, a voice resonated.
Low, noble, brimming with fighting spirit.
-Release your tension. Don’t block—redirect the force.
It sounded like the Sword Saint’s voice.
More precisely, it seemed as though the Sword Saint himself was visible.
A translucent blue phantom overlaid Park Ji-hoon’s vision.
Garcia’s final hero.
He seemed to envelop Park Ji-hoon’s body, guiding the footwork and sword path he needed to advance.
“…”
Park Ji-hoon’s eyes transformed.
Fear and desperation vanished as if washed away.
His breathing steadied, and the unnecessary tension drained from his sword-wielding wrist.
Whoosh.
The Demon Creature’s lethal claws streaked toward him.
A strike that moments before would have deflected me helplessly backward.
But Park Ji-hoon twisted his body half a step to the side.
He slipped the attack by a hair’s breadth.
—Now.
With the phantom’s voice came the moment.
A sharp whistle cut through the air.
Park Ji-hoon’s longsword traced a graceful arc.
It carved deep into the Demon Creature’s thick neck.
“…Ack, gack.”
The Demon Creature’s eyes widened.
Blood sprayed like a fountain, and its massive body collapsed lifelessly.
Victory.
“Haa, haa….”
Park Ji-hoon dropped to one knee, breathing heavily.
I’d won.
I’d cut down a monster stronger than myself, guided by the Sword Saint’s teachings.
But the joy was short-lived.
Ku-ku-ku-ku-ku!
My brother was slaughtering the Demon Creatures, but.
From the ground, from the rifts torn in the void itself.
As if the dead were being copied and reproduced, new Demon Creatures were being summoned endlessly.
“This is insane….”
There seemed to be no end.
With each summoning, their numbers increased, and the demonic energy they radiated grew thicker.
How long do we have to keep doing this?
When does this actually end?
Park Ji-hoon turned his head and asked urgently.
“Hey! When does the contract end!”
Park Ha-yan’s condition was critical.
Blood trickled down from her nose.
With her eyes shut tight, she was locked in a desperate struggle, grasping at Mayon’s dissipating smoke.
“Another… gasp, hour at least….”
Park Ha-yan answered with great difficulty.
She wasn’t lying.
Her face had turned ashen.
The contract with Mayon was gnawing away at her soul—the agony was written plainly across her features.
“An hour? Are you joking! I can barely hold on for a minute!”
Park Ji-hoon cursed and swung his sword at the Demon Creatures rushing toward him again.
Fighting.
Fighting and fighting again.
The Sword Saint had shown me the path, but the body’s exhaustion and limits could not be deceived.
My wounds multiplied one after another.
My vision flickered, and my breath rose to the very edge of my throat.
How many more minutes had passed?
After what felt like an eternity.
“…?”
Suddenly, silence descended upon the Battlefield.
The summoning had ceased.
The Demon Creatures that had poured forth like madness vanished without a trace.
The corpses scattered across the ground crumbled into ash and dispersed.
“Is it… over?”
Park Ji-hoon collapsed to the ground, exhaling a breath of relief.
But.
“Not yet.”
I gripped Abriel tightly and gazed upward at the empty sky, darkened like the night itself.
My voice had hardened like a bowstring drawn taut.
Uuuuuuuuuung—!
Space itself began to scream.
It was on an entirely different scale from the murderous intent of a mere horde of Demon Creatures.
It felt as though it would crush the very soul itself.
“So the true form finally reveals itself.”
The sky tore open.
And through that fissure.
The incomprehensible.
The unreachable.
The Incomprehensible descended.
* * *
It was as I had anticipated.
My contract with Mayon was drawing toward its end.
The true mastermind had revealed itself to prevent that contract from being fulfilled.
I lifted my gaze toward the fissure in the sky.
Crack, crack, crack, crack!
The fissure yawned open like the Abyss itself.
Perfect darkness—not a single glimmer of light.
From within that darkness, viscous shadows dripped down like slime, coalescing and twisting as they began to form a shape.
And the entity that emerged from the darkness.
“….”
I narrowed my eyes.
A suffocating sense of déjà vu.
Black armor.
A holy sword gripped in hand.
And beyond the helmet, a gleam of intelligence flickered in those eyes.
An entity identical to me was stepping forward.
This was the true form of The Incomprehensible.
So then.
‘I understood.’
My inquisitive nature as a mage was piecing together the puzzle in my mind.
Why Mayon, an oddity from Earth, had been summoned as the boss of unprecedented difficulty in the deepest reaches of the Demon Realm.
Everything aligned.
‘The Incomprehensible was never meant to exist.’
It was something that could not exist.
The System pursues perfection.
But my abnormal honor score of 1.35 million had caused an overload.
It had forcibly created a difficulty level that should not have existed—The Incomprehensible.
Yet it had only fashioned a shell, with nothing substantial inside to fill it.
‘So that’s why Mayon’s power was needed.’
Mayon is an oddity that extracts human fear and memory, constructing nightmares as perfect as reality itself.
An ability like Mayon’s—transforming nightmares into ‘reality’—was something even the illusionists and Succubi of the Demon Realm did not possess.
One could say Mayon’s ability was that exceptional.
But ultimately.
The Incomprehensible had only one purpose.
‘Materialization.’
It yearned to become real.
For it was merely a shadow born from a System error.
A phantom without substance.
Grant me sacred fire?
Make Mayon the Nightmare King?
‘Lies.’
All of it was deception.
It intended to kill me, seize my body, and devour even Mayon’s authority.
Only after consuming everything would it finally be reborn as a ‘true existence.’
That’s why it had stolen my form.
By copying my existence, it had become a doppelgänger seeking to become the real thing.
I tightened my grip on Abriel.
A sharp tingle.
Vibrations transmitted through my fingertips.
It felt different from that lightness when I was slaughtering Demon Creatures within the Protective Barrier.
“….”
I could feel it.
That shadow had imitated me.
Moreover, it had transcended mere external appearance.
Not merely a Level 7 shell of a spec, but a true ‘Incomprehensible-grade’ monster—one the System had artificially inflated to match the 1.35 million honor points I possessed.
In other words, it surpassed me in power.
My instincts screamed in terror.
‘I cannot win.’
Against that.
In my current state, it was an insurmountable wall—the perfect embodiment of death itself.
‘With Kim Jung-seok’s body as it stands now, I cannot prevail.’
But.
I opened my inventory.
I reached out and seized the radiant golden shard, its luminescence blazing.
If I cannot win as I am now.
‘Shards of the Broken Golden Rule.’
The key that shatters the constraints of reality and forcibly draws forth the power of Asgard.
Crunch!
I crushed the shard of the Golden Rule in my grip.
Then a torrent of brilliant golden radiance cascaded down like a waterfall.
“Descent.”
Kabooooom!
A deafening roar that seemed to shatter the very sky of the Demon Realm.
Golden energy enveloped my entire body and erupted outward.
My flesh twisted and expanded.
Casting off the limitations of humanity, the true essence of the ruler of Floor 55—the devourer of calamity—manifested.
A towering frame that soared well beyond two meters.
Muscles rippling with power.
Hair gleaming with golden radiance.
Rag’s true form.
Descended into the heart of the Incomprehensible’s Demon Realm.
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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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