The Mage Who Devours Disasters - Chapter 84

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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 84.
Yamamoto gazed upward at the sky.
Countless Pillars of Light were pouring down over the Japanese Archipelago.
Rummmmmble!
A tremendous tremor shook Tokyo’s urban center mercilessly.
Asphalt fractured, and glass from the skyscrapers rained down like a deluge.
The screams of citizens filled the night streets.
Pandemonium.
Yet.
Standing atop the Shinjuku Building’s rooftop, Yamamoto remained composed.
His eyes betrayed not the slightest tremor.
Rather, a faint, bitter smile played across his lips.
‘Not every single one of those pillars contains a Deity within it.’
Yamamoto knew.
The true nature of this Episode 5, the Hundred Ghosts Night Parade.
Those hundreds of Pillars of Light that had erupted so suddenly.
Each one did not necessarily signify the descent of a Deity.
‘It is the effect of overused Nectar.’
To forge new bodies, the Gods of Asgard had poured forth a vast torrent of divine power upon Earth.
That immense Nectar, oversaturated in the atmosphere, had dispersed—and those scattered Pillars of Light were the result.
In truth, only a minuscule fraction of those pillars contained anything of substance.
Of course.
Yamamoto—or rather, the War Deity Ares—could have chosen differently.
There had been ample opportunity to discard this frail human shell.
Like the other Supreme Tier Deities, he could have poured in tremendous Nectar and transformed into an entirely new monstrous or calamitous form from the start.
But he had not.
‘Creating a new avatar would be tantamount to admitting defeat.’
He was the War Deity.
The embodiment of conflict itself.
To discard a weapon once chosen and grasp a new one was the same as acknowledging his own incompetence.
Ares’s pride would never permit him to change his form merely to reclaim the top position in the Hall of Fame.
‘Everything—I will seize it all with these hands.’
Yamamoto launched himself from the rooftop railing first.
Crash!
The moment his feet touched the ground, his katana cleaved through the air.
Slice!
The head of an enormous spider yokai that had lunged at him fell cleanly away.
A single, pristine stroke.
Crimson blood should have gushed forth.
Yet.
“…Hm?”
Yamamoto’s eyes narrowed sharply.
The decapitated yokai’s body suddenly transformed into something like ink.
Drip, drip.
The dark liquid that had melted away seeped into the ground, then began flowing rapidly in a single direction.
“Guild Master! Something’s wrong with the yokai!”
A Guild Member cried out urgently.
They too were cutting down yokai that erupted from all directions.
But the dead yokai scattered like black ink, gathering unnaturally toward the wide Crossroads at the center.
“Don’t panic.”
Yamamoto spoke calmly, brushing debris from his katana.
“Our task is singular. Slay every yokai, kill them all.”
Of course, I knew better than anyone that this wouldn’t end easily.
The deaths of yokai and humans.
Endlessly consuming that terrible resentment and deathly miasma.
Something far away was taking shape.
Rumble, rumble, rumble!
Colossal demonic energy erupted from the center of the Crossroads.
The ink left behind by hundreds of dead yokai surged skyward.
Soon a massive turbulent mass swirled, sculpting itself into a distinct form.
Black raven feathers.
A sharp beak.
And a half-human, half-bird yokai with a solid human torso.
In its hand was gripped a staff that emanated an ominous crimson glow.
“Karasu Tengu.”
The yokai’s name flowed from Yamamoto’s lips without emotion.
He let out a scoff.
‘Worth engaging.’
Tengu.
In Japanese yokai lore, they reign as kings who command forests and mountains.
But the ‘Karasu Tengu’ before me was merely a subordinate among the lowest ranks of those tengu.
A beast with size alone, never touching the true mystery and calamity that defined their kind.
The meaning was unmistakable.
‘No Twelve Sovereigns-tier Avatar has established itself in Japan.’
Had another Sovereign poured vast Nectar into this island nation as a stronghold.
Then not this crow-like wretch, but the absolute great yokai ‘Dai-Tengu’ revered as a god would have emerged.
With that tremendous concentration of magical power, a far greater calamity would have been wrought.
But merely Karasu Tengu.
The wind had left my sails.
“Stand aside! This one is mine!”
“Don’t stop me!”
That was when it happened.
A series of deafening explosions erupted around the Crossroads.
Brilliant magic and bizarre martial techniques rained down mercilessly upon Karasu Tengu.
They were not members of the Warrior Guild.
Unfamiliar faces I had never seen before.
A handful of awakened ones I was encountering for the first time were raging like madmen, radiating murderous intent.
The magical power they emanated was far too vast to dismiss as ordinary humans.
‘Avatars, then.’
Yamamoto’s eyes narrowed.
Supreme Tier Deities who had seized human bodies and poured forth vast quantities of Nectar—that much was certain.
Like moths rushing to the flame, they had hastily fashioned vessels the moment Episode 5 began, throwing themselves into the fray.
They too were desperate to capture Karasu Tengu and monopolize the rewards.
‘Pathetic amateurs.’
Yamamoto laughed coldly.
No matter how much Nectar they plastered themselves with, I was the master of this battlefield.
This was Japan, my home ground.
‘It matters not which deity appears.’
I grasped the hilt of my katana firmly with both hands.
Shing.
Crimson battle aura coiled around the blade and erupted explosively.
It was time to imprint upon those arrogant deities exactly what the majesty of a Chief Deity meant.
“Karasu Tengu is mine to capture.”
The instant I was about to surge forward, grinding the earth beneath my feet—
A chill.
“….”
My movement froze as if it were a lie.
Still holding the katana aloft, I became rigid as a statue carved from ice.
“…Master?”
Satoshi called out from behind, his voice tinged with confusion.
But Yamamoto’s ears could not hear his subordinate’s voice.
My skin crawled.
Every hair on my body stood on end, and my heart hammered wildly as if the veins would burst.
The War Deity.
My instinct—honed across eons of warfare, wandering countless battlefields, thirsting only for conflict—
Was now screaming an ominous warning directly into my consciousness.
My eyes were no longer seeing Karasu Tengu standing before me.
The avatars of other deities competing and raging held no place in my awareness.
Where my gaze turned.
Across the Sea.
Far to the west, in a distant land.
Its gaze fixed upon Korea.
‘…They summoned that?’
An enormous distance separated them.
A vast, insurmountable chasm that no ordinary sense could ever bridge.
Yet Yamamoto perceived it with absolute clarity.
The terrible vibration of divine essence.
No—this was no ordinary divinity.
The Abyss itself, utterly incomparable to that squawking Karasu Tengu before my eyes.
Immense, crushing, suffocatingly dense.
‘A true calamity.’
Yamamoto’s brow furrowed deeply.
Cold sweat seeped into the grip of his katana.
‘From that distant Korean land….’
Yamamoto could not tear his gaze from the Western Sky.
Because.
‘It has appeared.’
A true monster had emerged.
Yet.
For that very reason, I could not comprehend it.
‘…Is this a backlash?’
According to the episode’s progression, yokai naturally gestated from the Pillars of Light scattered across various locations.
But the aura pressing down upon that Western Sky was different.
It was unmistakably a shockwave from one of the Twelve Sovereigns molding an avatar.
A backlash—the System’s very scream—born from an extraordinary concentration of Nectar erupting in a single location.
‘How powerful an avatar are they creating to cause such a commotion?’
Not merely donning a human shell.
The Twelve Sovereigns would never resort to such trivial theft of a mortal’s flesh.
They would forge everything from soul fragments to the mana within veins, sculpting a perfect vessel directly from divine artifacts and Nectar.
The energy poured into that process twisted and coalesced in the atmosphere, inevitably birthing such an unprecedented great yokai.
Yet the doubt lingered.
‘Can it be hunted?’
No matter how formidable the Sovereign’s avatar, it had only just opened its eyes.
Its level was low, its body not yet fully adapted to the laws of this world.
To face such a great yokai in that state?
It would not be easy.
‘If it fails….’
Yamamoto’s crimson eyes narrowed.
If it failed, Korea would vanish from the earth.
The great yokai would devour the entire Korean Peninsula, and its aftermath might even reach across the sea to this land of Japan.
What proved even more catastrophic was the annihilation of the Avatar itself.
Since it wasn’t borrowing a human body, losing a directly crafted Avatar dealt a genuine blow.
Even for the Twelve Chief Deities, squandering that much Nectar and essence was an agonizing loss.
They took on such risk and committed this atrocity anyway?
‘Or perhaps.’
My mind raced with terrible clarity.
‘…Are they targeting the annihilation of Korea itself?’
Countless human deaths.
Thousands, millions of screams and scattered blood.
If they had chosen as the Avatar’s base a horrifying entity that absorbed that immense resentment and transformed it into its own power.
‘They’re trying to become death itself.’
Then the situation changed entirely.
That great demon was no mere hunting target.
It was a colossal sacrifice prepared for the Avatar’s birth—a detonator stoking massacre.
‘A madman indeed.’
Among the Deities, few Chief Deities could commit such unhinged acts.
It meant they were deadly serious about this game.
‘All to capture NONAME.’
A deranged obsession to overturn the entire board itself.
In short.
…They intended to play for real.
“How amusing.”
Yamamoto tightened his grip on the katana’s hilt.
“Go ahead and try. I have no intention of losing either.”
He withdrew his gaze and hurled himself toward the Karasu Tengu before him.
* * *
At the same moment, in the heart of Seoul.
“Haa, haa….”
Park Ha-yan exhaled ragged breaths.
Sweat trickled from her forehead and beaded at her chin.
The surroundings had already become hell.
Dozens of Goblins lay scattered, their forms shattered, while the debris of destroyed buildings choked the streets.
Then it happened.
“Kiiiieeee!”
A grotesque shriek pierced the empty air.
The spirits began to tremble violently.
The spirits of light and wind that had circled Park Ha-yan’s side cowered as if herbivores encountering a predator.
‘The spirits… are afraid?’
Park Ha-yan’s eyes widened.
Despite facing countless monsters until now, the spirits had never been gripped by such terror—not even once.
These were warriors who had burned with fighting spirit even before Named-tier fiends.
But now.
A soft, slithering sound.
The shadows beneath their feet stretched long and thin.
The streetlights hadn’t gone dark, yet the area around the Pillar of Light—which should have blazed bright as midday—was dying into absolute black.
‘I can’t… move…’
Park Ha-yan forced her legs to move, but they had turned to stone.
It felt as though her mana had been severed.
The yin energy drifting through the air pressed down upon her lungs.
They had been locked in combat with the yokai for some time now.
Countless yokai corpses piled atop one another, their blood soaking into the Asphalt Street, and at the very center of that carnage.
…something was being born.
A piercing, shrieking sound.
It was darkness.
Not shadow, not some veil obscuring vision.
An absolute ‘black’ that devoured light itself and swallowed space whole.
It had no form.
A colossal mass of darkness surged skyward, beginning to blot out Seoul’s entire night sky.
And then.
Ding!
[A true calamity descends.]
[Dusksini Level 100]
[Rank: Annihilation]
[Description: A lord of darkness that feeds upon human fear and grows. It despises light, and those who gaze upon it fall into despair.]

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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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