The Mage Who Devours Disasters - Chapter 83

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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 83.
The sky above Seoul.
Eighty pillars of light descended upon the city.
It was magnificent.
And terrifying.
Each pillar was a gateway summoning catastrophe.
The government moved with swift precision.
Citizens were evacuated.
Seoul, emptied in an instant, transformed into a battlefield.
Yet.
“Individual defense is impossible.”
Kim Jun-tae, Director of the Management Bureau, spoke.
Defending against eighty pillars individually would be suicide.
Divided firepower meant each would be picked off separately.
The Management Bureau established a regional defense strategy.
They concentrated Guilds and Parties at key strongholds.
The Gangnam Station Area. Sector 7.
The ruler of this sector was the Light Guild.
Guild Master Heo Young-ho stood at the railing, gazing down.
His eyes burned with confidence.
“Are the preparations complete?”
The Vice Guild Master nodded.
“Perfect. Everyone is equipped with at least Hero-grade gear.”
Heo Young-ho smiled bitterly.
This Episode was an opportunity.
A golden chance to etch his name across the world.
He still refused to accept the rankings from the last Episode.
Especially that bastard.
‘Park Ji-hoon.’
Fourth in the Hall of Fame, Park Ji-hoon.
The more I thought about it, the more my blood boiled.
“What honor does some thug from the slums deserve?”
Heo Young-ho ground his teeth.
Park Ji-hoon was the leader of the Black Tiger Guild, a criminal syndicate.
Yet that scum had been assigned a higher difficulty than him.
And he had even cleared it.
Heo Young-ho remembered the Hard difficulty Demon Realm.
It was hell itself.
The Demon Creatures were unknowable and terrifying.
Incomprehensible magic and curses rained down relentlessly.
We barely escaped after narrowly dodging annihilation dozens of times.
But Park Ji-hoon pulled it off?
Park Ha-yan and the Flower Party could understand it.
She was South Korea’s greatest Spirit Summoner.
The quality and quantity of spirits she commanded were beyond standard measure.
But Park Ji-hoon was different.
The bastard was a rat.
Lowborn blood that crawled up from the sewers.
“All the money spent better be worth something.”
Heo Young-ho adjusted his gauntlets.
The Light Guild was built on the capital of a chaebol family.
The caliber of guild members, the quality of equipment.
Everything ranked at the very top of South Korea.
There was no way he could fall behind in a group battle like this.
Capital never betrays.
That was Heo Young-ho’s creed.
Heo Young-ho shouted toward his guild members.
“Listen up, everyone! Today we become heroes!”
“Roaaaaar!”
“The government’s bounty is ours! Don’t let a single one escape!”
The guild members’ morale pierced the heavens.
Loyalty bought with money burned hot.
The sun sank below the horizon.
Deep darkness descended upon Seoul.
The streetlights flickered and died.
Silence arrived.
Cold air brushed against skin.
Ding!
A message materialized in the void.
[Night has fallen.]
[The curtain of the Hundred Ghosts Night Parade rises.]
[Survive.]
As if on cue, the Pillar of Light trembled violently.
A resonant vibration shook the ground beneath their feet.
“They’re coming!”
Heo Young-ho drew his sword.
Pitch-black shadows poured forth from within the pillar.
Yokai.
The first to reveal itself was the Goblin.
But it was no ordinary Goblin.
“…What on earth is that?”
“Th-their size…!”
Heo Young-ho’s eyes widened in shock.
First and foremost, their sheer magnitude was overwhelming.
Each one stood at least three meters tall.
Horns jutting from muscles that seemed ready to burst.
Grotesque fangs protruding from their gaping maws.
The clubs they wielded reeked of blood.
Kuooooooo!
The Goblins roared.
The glass windows of the buildings lining Gangnam-daero shattered into countless fragments at their cry.
A suffocating pressure that crushed the very space around them.
These creatures were fundamentally different from any Demon Creature I had faced before.
Heo Young-ho hastily activated his observation skill.
[Activating ‘Insight’ skill.]
[Angry Goblin Lv. 55]
[Furious Goblin Lv. 61]
[Enraged Goblin Lv. 63]
He froze instantly.
There was no mistaking what he saw.
The Insight skill he had purchased for a staggering ten billion won.
A noble ability that allowed him to discern his opponent’s level.
With this skill, he had hunted only the weakest prey.
But most troubling of all.
‘Their average level is nearly sixty…!’
The average level of his guild members was merely in the forties.
Even he, who monopolized every advantage, was only level forty-eight.
Yet among the Goblins that had emerged from the light, not a single one fell below that threshold.
Their average far exceeded his wildest fears.
“M-Master?”
The Vice Guild Master’s voice trembled beside him.
The members of the Light Guild, whom he had prided himself on as an elite force, hesitated.
They understood instinctively.
…That the beings before them were far beyond their capacity to handle.
“Hieek…!”
Heo Young-ho drew in a sharp breath.
His heart pounded wildly in his chest.
The murderous intent gleaming in their eyes felt like it was clawing at his very soul.
One step.
Without realizing it, Heo Young-ho stumbled backward.
The pride of a chaebol family meant nothing. Neither did the arrogance of expensive equipment.
Before such overwhelming hierarchy, the body reacted first.
My legs trembled.
The bravado I had shouted moments ago had long since vanished.
The Goblin legion advanced slowly.
With each tremor of the ground, reason crumbled away.
But.
This was merely the beginning.
The gates of Hell had only just opened.
“M-Master! Behind that—behind that…!”
The Vice Guild Master pointed with trembling hands toward the interior of the Pillar of Light.
Heo Young-ho’s gaze followed the direction of those fingers.
Boom!
A colossal footstep.
The weight was entirely different from the Goblins’ tread moments before.
As if an earthquake had struck, the Asphalt Street fractured with sharp cracks, sending debris flying.
The 3-meter-tall Goblins that had been walking ahead parted to either side like the parting of the Red Sea, as if by covenant.
They bowed their grotesque heads.
A true monster had arrived—one that even monsters instinctively feared.
“…Ah, ahhh.”
A vacant gasp escaped Heo Young-ho’s lips.
A shadow.
A colossal shadow that seemed to devour even the light of the streetlamps engulfed Gangnam-daero.
Its size alone was beyond standard measure.
A towering frame that appeared to be at least 5 meters tall.
A mass that rivaled the height of a two-story building emerged, its crimson musculature rippling with each step.
That overwhelming weight alone stole the breath from my lungs.
Yet far more horrifying was its face.
A grotesque, gaping scar that split diagonally across the entire visage.
In that single crimson eye burned only pure murderous intent directed at humanity.
Ting!
A blood-red message forcibly materialized above Heo Young-ho’s vacant pupils.
[A calamitous entity descends.]
[Dueokshini Level 70]
[Grade: Named]
[Description: Sovereign of malevolent spirits. A slaughterer forged from wrath and madness.]
“A, a Named…?”
Heo Young-ho doubted his own eyes.
Level 70.
And a Named at that.
This was a true “calamity”—something that even a coalition of ordinary Parties and Guilds would struggle to defeat.
Heo Young-ho’s level was 48.
Even borrowing the power of equipment plastered with money, he could barely muster the combat strength of an early-level 50 Awakener.
Yet a level 70 Named Monster now stood before him.
“H-how am I supposed to win against this…?”
Heo Young-ho stumbled backward and fell hard on his rear.
The legendary blade he’d been gripping slipped from his fingers and clattered against the ground with a deafening metallic ring.
Equipment forged with money. Powerful mercenaries hired with money.
All of it felt as though it would scatter like scraps of paper with a single breath from that colossal Dueokshini.
“R-run! Retreat!”
Heo Young-ho screamed until his voice cracked.
But his Guild members couldn’t move.
The terrible “fear” effect emanating from Dueokshini had frozen their legs in place.
-GUOOOOOOOOOO!
With Dueokshini’s roar, the Goblin Legion surged forward in unison.
The Light Guild’s once-brilliant formation was trampled like dominoes in an instant.
* * *
At the same moment.
In another district of Seoul.
In the heart of Jongno, where buildings towered like a forest.
“….”
Park Ji-hoon stared straight ahead.
A longsword shimmering with faint magical energy rested casually across his shoulder.
His suit fluttered in the wind.
Behind him, dozens of men in black suits stood in perfect formation.
The Black Tiger Guild—the true power of Korea’s Underworld, armed with Kim Jung-seok’s vast wealth.
Their expressions were tense, yet not a single one took a step backward.
At the end of Park Ji-hoon’s gaze.
A colossal creature coiled around a shattered high-rise building.
A beast whose scales were each the size of a human’s upper body.
Could such a thing even be called a mere snake?
The creature, coiled up the building, flickered its cyan eyes and flicked its forked tongue.
Its sheer size and the demonic aura it radiated made even the surrounding atmosphere viscous and oppressive.
Ding!
[A calamitous entity descends.]
[Imoogi Level 75]
[Grade: Named]
[Description: A vengeful spirit that failed to ascend to heaven. It craves human flesh to become a dragon.]
“Whew.”
A soft whistle escaped between Park Ji-hoon’s lips.
Level 75.
A Named monster, no less.
“Damn, that’s brutal.”
Park Ji-hoon chuckled softly, muttering to himself.
The level was absurdly high.
At a glance, it looked devastatingly powerful.
Those thick scales were so imposing that I doubted whether a blade could even leave a mark—an overwhelming physical presence.
But.
Park Ji-hoon’s eyes did not waver.
Rather, a strange determination and madness intertwined within his bloodshot gaze.
It was partly because Garcia’s Sword Saint, dwelling deep within his soul, was responding.
But there was a more fundamental reason beneath that.
He adjusted his grip on the longsword slung across his shoulder.
Skreeeee.
The sharp scraping sound tore across the asphalt.
“Is everyone ready?”
Park Ji-hoon asked without turning his head, his voice low and grave.
Behind him stood the members of the Black Tiger Guild, arrayed in formation.
They were all seasoned men who had cut their teeth in the underworld.
“Yes, boss!”
“Ready to move at your command!”
A resounding chorus answered him.
Not a single one showed any sign of hesitation.
Instead, they gripped their weapons tightly, radiating a thick killing intent as they assumed their battle stances.
Park Ji-hoon turned his gaze forward once more.
The Imoogi coiling around the building began hissing and spewing venom.
Facing that colossal calamity, Park Ji-hoon recalled a memory from long ago.
‘I lay in bed for three years.’
I had spent those long three years lying motionless on a bed.
A vegetative state.
My consciousness was trapped in darkness, and my body was nothing but a lump of meat devoid of function.
I could not hear, could not speak, could not move.
I could only battle my own terror and fear in that endless void of darkness.
That terrible helplessness—alive yet no different from dead.
‘If it weren’t for my brother, I would have rotted away in that darkness forever.’
The hand of salvation that Kim Jung-seok extended.
When my eyes opened like a miracle, I felt that heartbeat and the oxygen filling my lungs.
For Park Ji-hoon, death was not.
The cessation of breath and the stopping of the heart.
What truly terrified him was ‘being unable to do anything.’
Trembling with fear before the enemy’s overwhelming power, fleeing pathetically only to be devoured—that was a fate I refused to accept.
Standing motionless in terror, waiting for death like a coward.
That was no different from the cursed time I spent bedridden in a vegetative state.
Rather than that.
It was a hundred times, a thousand times better to charge forward on my own two legs and die fighting.
That was how I would prove my reclaimed life.
“Good.”
Park Ji-hoon’s lips twisted into a grin.
From his body, the ferocious aura of the Sword Saint rose like heat shimmer.
The blade hummed, suffused with blue light.
He raised his longsword toward the Imoogi.
His distinctive, rough, and overwhelming charisma seized control of the atmosphere.
“Then, let’s go die.”
The Black Tiger Guild’s motto.
Far from a declaration guaranteeing victory.
Rather than standing idle, waiting for death.
It meant swinging the blade once more before falling.
A desperate madness of the Underworld’s men—to prove they were alive, that their existence mattered.
“Waaaaaaah!”
“Let’s go die!”
As the command fell, the Black Tiger Guild’s members roared like beasts.
They did not hesitate.
Even facing the despair of a level 75 Named creature.
Even before the killing intent of the colossal Imoogi crushing the buildings.
Instead, they charged madly toward the gaping maw of despair itself.
“Follow me well, you bastards! I’ll cut first!”
Park Ji-hoon kicked off the ground.
Boom!
The asphalt cracked and cratered as his body shot forward.
At the very front, tracing the path of the Sword Saint, his eyes held not a shred of fear.
Shaaaaaaack!
The Imoogi opened its massive jaws and spewed a mist of deadly venom.
But Park Ji-hoon did not evade.
He pushed his sword energy to its limit and charged straight through.
Death held no terror for me.
What terrified me was only standing still, accomplishing nothing.
To inscribe my name in the highest reaches of the Hall of Fame at the end of this night.
To become a limb worthy of my brother, Kim Jung-seok.
A man willingly threw himself toward the Land of Death.

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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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