The Mage Who Devours Disasters - Chapter 90
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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 90.
If victorious, there was no upper limit to the rewards.
He likely never entertained even the faintest notion that he might lose.
That’s why he had spouted such reckless conditions without hesitation.
But reality was merciless.
Thanks to that, I had claimed victory by an overwhelming margin of a hundredfold.
Honestly, I could barely comprehend it.
The mere 4,000 I had originally drawn.
…had ballooned to 100,000,000 with just a single roll of the dice.
A staggering figure of 25,000 times the original.
Moreover, Episode 5 itself had been extraordinary.
With Earth’s level elevated and difficulty skyrocketing as a result, the baseline scale of rewards had already become astronomically vast.
In other words.
‘Even the highest-tier rewards from ordinary episodes could not satisfy this current figure.’
As if to prove my prediction.
Ding! Ding! Ding!
Golden System Messages began cascading down before my eyes like a waterfall.
[The reward magnitude has exceeded the System’s standard payment threshold!]
[In accordance with the gambling rules, we are seizing the authority and assets of the loser, the Deity of Fortune.]
[The Deity of Fortune’s possessions will be forcibly liquidated and converted into rewards.]
【…W-What?】
Only then did the Deity of Fortune, who had been in a daze, snap back to awareness.
His eyes trembled wildly.
Against his will, the locks of the vault he had accumulated over countless eons.
…were being forcibly opened by the System.
【W-Wait! This is absurd!】
The Deity of Fortune frantically waved his hands, attempting to halt the System’s forced execution.
But even as an external deity, he was powerless before the gambling rules he himself had directly consented to and sworn upon.
The System proceeded coldly and mechanically to strip him of his wealth.
[The Deity of Fortune’s 75 million Nectar will be liquidated.]
[The Deity of Fortune’s 412 Mythic-grade Artifacts will be liquidated.]
[The Deity of Fortune’s 1,200 Ancient-grade Treasures will be liquidated.]
….
With each message that appeared, the Deity of Fortune’s face drained of color—from blue to ashen white.
His iridescent aura flickered like a dying candle, fading away.
“You’ve accumulated quite the collection.”
I couldn’t help but marvel openly.
Being an external deity, the sheer quantity of Nectar and equipment he had hoarded defied imagination.
But.
Ding!
[Warning! All assets of the Deity of Fortune have been liquidated, but the compensation threshold (100 million multiplier) has not been satisfied.]
[The loser’s payment capacity has been exhausted.]
[The ‘Deity of Fortune’ has declared bankruptcy.]
“…Bankruptcy?”
I blinked.
Bankruptcy, of all things.
Did the concept of bankruptcy even exist in the world of the Deities, let alone within the System?
It was a term I had never encountered, even in my previous life.
Yet the Deity of Fortune himself seemed painfully aware of what this meant.
Shudder, shudder, shudder.
The Deity of Fortune’s entire body convulsed violently.
The arrogance that had gleamed in his eyes was completely washed away.
【No… this can’t be…】
He wrapped his trembling arms around himself.
【This is impossible! Me, the Deity of Fortune, bankrupt?!】
The System’s message mercilessly ignored his anguished cry and pronounced the next phase.
[All liquidated assets shall be compressed and fused into a singular value.]
[The form of compensation shall be transformed.]
[You have obtained the Divine Artifact, ‘Dice of Reversal’!]
Shimmer!
My inventory window gleamed as a peculiar item materialized within it.
‘The Dice of Reversal, then.’
A singular crystalline essence forged from the grinding of countless Nectar and mythic-grade equipment.
I was already curious what miracle this would unleash.
But that was not truly the end.
The final blow.
The most lethal message stained the Empty Space crimson.
[To satisfy the remaining compensation threshold, the loser’s ‘existence’ shall be pledged as collateral.]
[Conditions have been met.]
[You may now annihilate the bankrupt ‘Deity of Fortune’.]
Silence fell.
Only the ragged breathing of the Deity of Fortune echoed through the void.
Annihilation.
The meaning of that word was unmistakably clear.
‘So even a god can be slain this way.’
Who would have thought immortality could be extinguished through gambling.
I slowly lowered my head and gazed upon my right hand.
Whoooooosh!
The golden rune inscribed upon my palm
blazed with a ferocity and brilliance I had never witnessed before.
Like a beast starved for days suddenly confronted with the finest meat before its eyes.
My hand trembled beyond my control, quaking with primal hunger.
The power of the ‘Mage Who Devours Calamity.’
That absolute predatory instinct began to covet the naked divinity of the ‘Deity of Fortune’—now bankrupt, stripped bare of every shell.
—Consume it.
—That crystallized arrogance of probability itself!
—Tear it apart and swallow it!
“Hah.”
I laughed low, raising my skeletal right hand.
The aura of death seeping beyond Thanatos’s shell and the predatory instinct of the golden runes mingled grotesquely, rippling through the air.
The Deity of Fortune stumbled backward.
Gone was the arrogant visage of that foreign god who once mocked the Tower and even dragged the Twelve Chief Deities into gambling dens.
He was acutely aware that his very life hung upon my fingertips.
【P-please… spare me…!】
The Deity of Fortune collapsed to the ground, screaming.
【I-I have lost! A complete defeat! So please, anything but annihilation…!】
It was pathetic.
All deities were ultimately the same before death.
Whether lower-tier gods, Highest Realm deities, or wandering foreign gods.
The moment their shallow reserves ran dry, they begged for their lives more miserably than mortals.
I gazed down at such a wretch coldly and began to slowly open the golden runes.
That was when it happened.
‘Ah.’
A fleeting revelation brushed past my consciousness.
I let out a bitter laugh.
“I almost fell for it.”
【W-what are you saying!】
“You’re still a god, after all.”
A god.
Whether seated upon Asgard’s throne or wandering the cosmos as a foreign deity, the essence remains identical.
Parasites who revel in the destruction of worlds, savoring the screams and despair that bloom from that ruin as their sustenance.
There was no way he would have appeared before me out of mere boredom or pure benevolence to propose a dice game.
“If I had lost, I too would have been bankrupted.”
At my words, the Deity of Fortune’s eyes trembled uncontrollably.
He clenched his lips tightly and averted his gaze.
‘Just as I thought.’
My suspicion was correct.
He had known the outcome of this gamble from the very beginning.
—If I win, I shall reduce every reward you gained in this episode, along with its records and titles, to ‘0’.
Zero is nothingness.
A state where nothing remains.
A way to erase the record of first place in the Hall of Fame already engraved into the System itself.
There is only one method.
‘Death.’
Completely deleting the very existence of the recorded subject.
Making it vanish without leaving a trace, even in the System.
Yes, he had been playing with words from the very beginning.
I didn’t know about the fatal System rule called ‘bankruptcy’.
He never told me.
After all, a gambler would never openly show all his cards, would he?
One truth paired with one lie.
Never mentioning the most crucial detail.
He tempted me into the game.
Making it seem from the start that I had nothing to lose.
My mind snapped into clarity.
And so, I laughed with genuine sincerity.
I am still lacking.
Still so ignorant about the Deities.
“If you were willing to stake my life and laugh with glee,”
I slowly extended my right hand.
“Then you should have been prepared for your own life to be forfeit.”
【No, please! I beg you!】
The Deity of Fortune cried out in desperation.
The faintly remaining iridescent aura from his body flickered like a final death throes.
But it was useless.
Uuuuuuuuuung!
The golden runes in my right hand rampaged like a beast consumed by madness.
Never before, when facing the true forms of any Deity, demon beast, or yokai I had hunted, had I felt such ferocity.
Even when devouring the core of Thanatos, that extinction-class shell that was death itself.
The predatory instinct flowed through my nerves, electrifying my very consciousness.
-Devour it!
-That overwhelming crystallization of fortune!
-Consume every last bit of it!
Golden threads extended like serpents.
They burrowed fiercely into the Deity of Fortune’s chest, toward his essential divine essence.
【Krrrrrraaaaaaagh!】
A death cry tore through the frozen space of the Demon Realm.
The gambler’s final moment.
The arrogant foreign Deity’s true form, who had mocked and scorned the laws of probability,
Was now being ruthlessly sucked into the maw of my right hand.
“Ugh…!”
I clenched my skeletal arm with all the strength I could muster.
It was heavy.
An overwhelming mass that transcended any divine essence I had consumed before.
As if I had swallowed an entire universe whole, a surging torrent of power flooded into my being.
Whoooosh!
The Deity of Fortune’s form shattered into particles of light and scattered.
Every fragment and quintessence was absorbed into me without remainder.
And then.
Ding! Ding! Ding!
System Messages erupted before my eyes like golden fireworks bursting in mad succession.
[You have devoured the Foreign Deity, ‘Deity of Fortune’.]
[You have acquired the Authority, ‘Transcendent Fortune’!]
Transcendent Fortune.
Just reading the words made my heart race.
Surely it was the ultimate authority—one that dominated probability itself and twisted even 0% possibilities into miracles.
Perhaps it was even more than that.
With the concept of transcendence woven into it, it could never be ordinary.
Laughter spilled from my lips unbidden.
But the rewards did not end there.
[You have digested immense divine essence and broken through your limits!]
[Your level has increased!]
[Your level has increased!]
[Level: 8 → 10]
Level 10.
The cursed experience bar that had stubbornly refused to rise now soared two entire stages the moment I devoured a Foreign Deity whole.
And in that instant.
Rummmmmble!
Light surged from the golden rune on my right hand.
Soon after.
Ding!
[You have reached Level 10.]
[Your understanding of your Class’s true nature deepens.]
[You have broken through the singularity.]
[The irregular Class, ‘Calamity Devourer’ advancement Quest has begun!]
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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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