The Mage Who Devours Disasters - Chapter 58

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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 58.
I lifted my chin.
I gazed down at that shadowy figure wearing Kim Jung-seok’s face.
Beyond the helmet, I saw the gleam in its eyes flicker for a moment.
“Well?”
I pointed the Sage’s Staff toward the creature.
“Can you mimic this form as well?”
【…!】
The shadow faltered.
Demonic energy swirled around its body, struggling to shift its shape.
It desperately attempted to replicate Rag’s true form.
But.
Crackle! Screech!
The shadow’s form only warped irregularly—it could not change.
It could not change.
The skeletal framework composing its body was nothing but fragments of illusions and nightmares created by Mayon.
An aberration’s ability to sculpt form using human fear and memory as a medium.
It had limits.
It could not imitate the true essence of a god.
How could a mere scrap of nightmare bear the weight of a god’s soul, that overwhelming divinity and authority?
Even its mimicry of me, Kim Jung-seok, was far from perfect.
At best, it had merely copied the exterior—the surface appearance.
It could not replicate the infinite possibilities contained within.
I could not help but let out a hollow laugh.
“Is that your limit?”
I sneered.
It had emerged bearing the grandiose name The Incomprehensible.
A bastard born from the System’s error.
It was called a monster of the Abyss worthy of 1.35 million Hall of Fame points.
“To call you The Incomprehensible—”
I adjusted my grip on the staff and spoke coldly.
“You are far too weak and pathetic.”
I knew the real thing.
I stood at the apex of this accursed System, and I knew the true Incomprehensible.
The Irresistible Force.
The true weight of the Abyss.
In my eyes that had faced that true Incomprehensible—
this counterfeit doppelgänger cobbled together from human nightmares could never appear frightening.
“A fake is nothing but a fake.”
I raised the Sage’s Staff toward the empty air.
The tip of the staff carved from divine wood blazed with blinding radiance.
Uuuuuuuung!
The very earth of the Demon Realm screamed.
Two colossal powers opened their eyes simultaneously.
“Vanish.”
The power that surged up my left arm cleaved through the atmosphere.
Kwaaaaaaaaaa!
The primordial flame, alive and eternal.
And the wind of annihilation.
The most devastating destructive force I could command rained down upon a single point like a carpet bombing.
* * *
Park Ji-hoon couldn’t believe his eyes.
His mouth hung open, unable to close.
Where my brother had stood just moments before.
The unremarkable human in the hoodie, Kim Jung-seok, had vanished without a trace.
Instead.
Kwaaaaaang!
Golden light exploded, sweeping away the entire darkness of the Demon Realm.
Rising through the blinding flash—a towering figure exceeding two meters in height.
Resplendent golden armor.
A divine staff radiating overwhelming magical power.
“B-brother…?”
Park Ji-hoon murmured in a trembling voice.
It was as if a legendary being from mythology had materialized before his very eyes.
The overwhelming presence was so intense his knees buckled and collapsed to the ground.
Park Ji-hoon was not the only one shocked.
“Hik…!”
Mayon.
Even that creature’s very soul screamed at this insane sight.
Black smoke writhed and expelled horror.
-A-after all! He wasn’t human!
Mayon’s voice struck Park Ha-yan and Park Ji-hoon’s eardrums.
In a flat, prostrate voice mingling fear and reverence.
-He was a god! A true god’s descent!
“…A god? You mean a god?”
Park Ha-yan asked blankly.
The benefactor who had saved her, the indifferent man who sipped canned beer in that shabby semi-basement room.
A god?
Mayon did not deny it.
Instead, he began madly affirming and chanting hymns.
-It’s undeniable! That overwhelming divine presence! Behold that insane power—tearing through the shell of a mortal and manifesting directly in his true form! And to think he wields multiple catastrophes so effortlessly in a single hand!
Mayon’s metallic voice trembled with rapture.
The fact that the one who had subdued him was not some mere human, but a transcendent being of unfathomable magnitude, seemed to bring him solace instead.
-A deity of the highest order! Perhaps even beyond that—an absolute being who transcends countless eons! Ah, of course! There’s no way a mere human could possibly know my true name!
“That’s right.”
Park Ha-yan nodded as if entranced.
Her gaze remained fixed upon the radiant golden silhouette suspended in the void.
“Kim Jung-seok told me Mayon’s name.”
My benefactor. My savior.
And now, a god.
The weight that Kim Jung-seok occupied within Park Ha-yan’s heart swelled endlessly.
Did the Deity himself save me?
Out of pity for my suffering?
But then.
Kuuuuuuung!
As the Sky split asunder, catastrophic forces erupted from Kim Jung-seok’s fingertips.
The ‘Living Primordial Flame’ and the ‘Wind of Absolute Annihilation’.
In the moment those destructive powers detonated.
Park Ha-yan’s shoulders convulsed violently.
“Ah….”
Her blue eyes trembled finely.
A grey tempest consumed her entire vision.
The trajectory of that savage wind—severing space itself, shredding everything into tatters.
‘Is that… what power truly is?’
Park Ha-yan murmured as if questioning Mayon, or perhaps herself.
Her breath caught in her throat.
Fragments of a terrible memory she had forgotten, tried desperately to forget, flashed across her mind.
The day the Passenger Airplane was torn in two.
The merciless blade-wind that had shredded them from the sky—it bore an uncanny resemblance to this.
Of course, it was different.
The tempest raging before her now carried flames and a biting chill.
But.
‘It’s similar.’
That overwhelming, weary aura emanating from Kim Jung-seok.
That arrogant gaze, as if looking down upon the world from beneath his feet.
The silhouette of that man she had glimpsed through the fractured Sky on the day the Passenger Airplane fell, and the golden divine form standing before her now.
They overlapped in an eerie, inexplicable way.
‘Was that man also… a god?’
Park Ha-yan bit her lip.
If that man from that day had been a god.
Why does Kim Jung-seok, my benefactor, wield powers so similar to that man’s?
Why does he grasp such a terrible wind?
Confusion crashed over me.
My head spun.
But the questions didn’t linger long.
Kwaaaaaaang!
A colossal explosion erupted as if the very ground of the Demon Realm were evaporating entirely.
Light and heat flashed brilliantly enough to sear the retinas.
Park Ji-hoon and Park Ha-yan reflexively squeezed their eyes shut.
How much time had passed?
When the thunderous roar subsided and the searing wind that had pierced their skin began to fade.
“….”
An almost suffocating silence blanketed the battlefield.
Park Ha-yan carefully opened her eyes.
Park Ji-hoon lifted his head as well.
Where the dust had cleared.
In the spot where the shell of the Abyss, called “The Incomprehensible,” had stood moments before.
“….”
“….”
…nothing remained.
Not a handful of ash, not even a wisp of black smoke.
* * *
I lowered the Sage’s Staff.
Ragged breathing scattered into the air as vapor.
“Hah.”
I steadied my breath.
The space before me.
The form of that shell—The Incomprehensible—that had stood mimicking my appearance until moments ago had vanished without a trace.
But.
‘It hasn’t been destroyed.’
I knew this.
The ‘Living Primordial Flame’ and ‘Wind of Absolute Annihilation’ I unleashed had only burned and torn its shell.
This was not the true Demon Realm.
We were still trapped within this vast ‘nightmare’ labyrinth that Mayon had woven and The Incomprehensible controlled.
Uuuuuung!
As expected.
The space twisted grotesquely, and the ruins of the collapsed Pyramid began to surge upward as if being played in reverse.
The aura of The Incomprehensible, which had vanished, crawled upward from the ground like a viscous darkness.
This labyrinth itself was no different from its true nature.
It was not an entity that would fall from breaking a single shell.
I turned around.
My gaze fell upon a sight that would haunt me.
A girl, her face drenched in blood, both hands desperately clutching at the dissipating black smoke as it scattered.
Park Ha-yan.
And in her grasp, screaming—the master of nightmares himself, the Nightmare Entity.
Mayon.
I spoke slowly.
“Park Ha-yan, end your contract with Mayon. You alone can dispel this nightmare.”
Mayon is a Specter.
The essential cog that constructs this illusory world.
The Incomprehensible can maintain this colossal stage only because it parasitizes Mayon’s power.
In other words, if Mayon withdraws the illusion of his own volition?
‘The Incomprehensible loses its form.’
I drove the wedge home.
“If you wish to live, bind yourself willingly. Mayon.”
Crimson light flickered in Mayon’s eyes.
He understood.
The moment that overwhelming shell rose again, his soul would be the first torn asunder.
His pride as a spirit and specter crumbled away.
—I-I’ll make the contract! I will!
Mayon shrieked in a voice torn to shreds, raising the white flag.
His scattering black smoke condensed in an instant, then rushed like an arrow into Park Ha-yan’s outstretched hands.
Ahhh…!
Park Ha-yan’s body arched like a bow.
Pure white radiance and dark demonic energy collided, intertwined, and spawned a fierce vortex.
Yet she did not yield.
A transcendent vessel where the seeds of a Spirit Lord were sprouting.
Ding!
[Subordinate ‘Park Ha-yan’ has established a forced contract with the Specter ‘Mayon’.]
[You have gained dominion over the nightmare.]
“Now. Dispel it.”
“Yes!”
Park Ha-yan swung both arms forcefully to either side.
A command that turned Mayon’s power against itself.
The will to dismantle the illusion manifested.
Crack! Shatter!
A sound like shattering glass shook the Demon Realm.
The regenerating Pyramid scattered like dust.
The crimson sandstorm evaporated into nothingness.
The double and triple traps that had imprisoned us collapsed like dominoes.
【Crk, craaaaaaaaaagh!】
At the same moment.
The Incomprehensible’s mass of darkness, which had been attempting to coalesce once more, let out a shriek as if being torn asunder.
The stage shattered.
Mayon’s magical power severed.
The error mass, stripped of its foundation for manifestation, began to lose form and dissolve.
“It’s over.”
I raised the holy sword Abriel gripped in my right hand high.
-Filthy dregs! Return to light!
Abriel’s consciousness resonated with thunderous clarity.
The holy blade blazed with radiance.
Shuuuuuck!
The fragments of The Incomprehensible scattered with anguished cries.
They were all drawn into the sacred edge of Abriel’s blade.
In an instant, all darkness lifted.
“Haa, haa….”
Park Ha-yan collapsed to the ground, breathing in ragged gasps.
Upon her shoulder rested a palm-sized bat-shaped shadow, lying docile and still.
It was Mayon.
A creature completely subdued, now bound by a leash.
Park Ji-hoon stared at the crumbling void with a vacant expression.
I too exhaled deeply and set aside my weapons.
And then.
The Abyss of the Demon Realm blazed brilliantly, erupting in golden celebration.
Ting!
[Episode 4, ‘Invitation to the Abyss’ has been cleared.]
[An astounding Achievement!]
[You have cleared ‘The Incomprehensible’ difficulty for the first and only time.]
[The Abyss of the Demon Realm bows to your magnificence.]
Messages flooded my vision.
It was time for reward settlement.
[Distributing rewards for clearing The Incomprehensible difficulty.]
[Hidden Piece bonus applied.]
[Reward (1): 30 Fragments of the Broken Golden Ratio]
‘Thirty pieces.’
A smile spread across my face unbidden.
One million Nectar per fragment.
In other words, thirty million Nectar had just rolled into my inventory.
But the real treasure lay elsewhere.
[Episode 4 Hall of Fame has been updated!]
[1st Place: NONAME]
[Score: 1,999 Points]
[Title ‘Walker of the Abyss’ Acquired.]
1,999 points.
A number that far surpassed the 1,000 points I had earned in Episode 3.
And finally.
Ding!
The largest, most resplendent dice window materialized before my eyes.
[Overwhelming Honor Score Achievement Bonus!]
[Hidden Piece, The Incomprehensible Dice has appeared.]
[Rolling Dice (1~9,999).]
One to 9,999!
If the maximum number appeared, I couldn’t even fathom what tier would emerge.
Whirrrr.
The number spun wildly in the void.
Click.
The dice stopped.
And then.
The number embedded in the void.
[9,999!]
[Congratulations!]
[Jackpot has been triggered!]

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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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