Chapter 238
“Kurgh... Son of a bitch!” shouted Raziel, the commander of Orbis’s fifth legion, as he stared at something in disbelief, his wings fluttering as if they were about to be ripped off.
“AHHHHHHHHHH!” Seong-Hwi screamed.
However, he didn’t look right—he was turning into a tree. His blood vessels turned into tree ridges, vines grew from his body, his eyes shone with an emerald light, and the Wings of Evolution were emitting an explosive storm of mana.
Tree branches began to grow from the ground like coral reefs, so fast that it was as if time was being sped up, growing even taller than the nearby buildings in a flash. The more time passed, the more Seong-Hwi resembled Keter, the Fifth Lord.
“GRAAAAAAAAAAHHHHH!” Seong-Hwi continued to scream, and cracks formed on Orbis Repulsio one after another.
“No, you don’t!” Raziel shouted, activating his skill in succession.
[Activating Race Skill: Orbis Repulsio.]
[Activating Race Skill: Orbis Repulsio.]
[Activating Race Skill: Orbis Repulsio.]
...
He activated the skill again and again to contain Seong-Hwi, but the rings broke even faster than before.
“Kurgh! What the hell is he?!”
The human had suddenly gone out of control while Raziel had been heading toward Gabriel. An immense amount of mana that not even a Spare Ranker like Raziel could endure exploded from the human.
“Haaaaah!” Raziel yelled as he waved his hand, and the Spiculum Inclusio, the 111 white spears, moved to pierce Seong-Hwi.
However, the spears were obliterated by the high-density mana storm before they even reached him.
“Urgh! I planned to offer you to the God of Heaven, but at this rate, I will have no choice but to kill you!”
Raziel gritted his teeth and gave up on capturing Seong-Hwi. His vigilance, telling him that he needed to kill the human here and now, overtook his curiosity to uncover the human’s secret.
For the God of Heaven! Raziel thought as the pages of Raziel’s Book rapidly flipped, and he activated an ultimate skill that would annihilate his opponent.
[Activating Unique Skill: Secretus Concludo.]
Raziel’s Book shone and flipped to its last page, which sucked in everything around it like a vacuum. Only Raziel, who possessed Raziel’s Book, could activate the unique skill, Secretus Concludo, or the closing of secrets.
Buildings, bridges, streets, and everything else were sucked into the book, and once something was in the book, not even Raziel could pull it back out. It would be eternally forgotten from the world, becoming a complete secret, and Seong-Hwi was no exception.
“GUUUUURGHHH!” Seong-Hwi groaned, being pulled by the book’s gravitational force.
Just then, the trunk of the giant Bulgasal grabbed Seong-Hwi.
“What in the world is that?!” Raziel said as he looked into Bulgasal’s secret. “So, physical and magical attacks are ineffective against you. Hahaha! Too bad for you, but this is a seal!”
However, an eternal seal was no different from death. Even the giant Bulgasal began to be pulled into Raziel’s Book. Bulgasal pulled its trunk back with all its might to protect Seong-Hwi. The sight of a small book sucking a giant elephant inside it was like seeing a boa constrictor swallowing an elephant.
“Ahahahaha! Heretics who stand against Orbis will be forever kept as my secret!” Raziel yelled as he stretched his nine pairs of wings widely.
However, he couldn’t see silver sparks flickering in the darkening sky in this disastrous situation. The silver sparks slowly began to take form and turned into a star resembling a spiky konpeito[1]. The star trembled as if licking its lips and looked down. Seong-Hwi’s star, Desire, had shown itself to the Mirror World for the first time.
Seong-Hwi groaned, instantly returning from his tree-like appearance to himself, and opened his eyes. The blood vessels in his right eye, which looked as if they were splitting his eye in half, wriggled like red worms. “What the—”
BWOOOOO! Bulgasal trumpeted desperately.
Seong-Hwi quickly realized the current situation from seeing the crazily laughing Raziel, a book that was sucking in everything around it, and the silver star in the sky.
He shouted, “Desire! Give me the power of the Fruit!”
Desire trembled, and a golden spotlight that looked as if it were formed from gathering the Fruit of the World Tree’s power fell on Seong-Hwi’s head.
“GAAAAAHHH!” Seong-Hwi screamed in pain as the power of the Fruit of the World Tree, which Desire devoured, coursed throughout his body.
[Strength A(80) → S(2)]
[Magic S(1) → S(6)]
[Destiny Force S(4) → S(10)]
[Magic S(6) → S(12)]
[Dexterity A(25) → A(99)]
...
The overclocking commenced, but it was different from before—his stamina consumption had decreased dramatically. When he had used the Fruit’s power before Desire devoured it, he felt excruciating pain as if fire ants were eating him from the inside, and he felt exhausted after just a few minutes.
However, now that Desire had absorbed the Fruit, although it was still painful, it was more than manageable, and his stamina consumption had noticeably reduced. To use the blood doping example again, if Seong-Hwi had been injecting blood of various types before, he was now injecting blood that wouldn’t cause a reaction. He had fully absorbed the Fruit of the World Tree.
As Seong-Hwi felt his stats rising like the numbers on a slot machine and that his body couldn’t endure any more, he disconnected his connection to Desire, and the spotlight disappeared.
[Cheon Seong-Hwi
Health: S(17+15) Strength: S(15+15)
Dexterity: S(25) Sense: S(24)
Magic: S(53) Destiny Force: S(66)]
His stats had risen exponentially, and he was now a Hexa-S with his Magic and Destiny Force stats having surpassed S(50). He placed his hand on one of the giant tree branches and activated a skill.
[Activating Unique Skill: Borrowing Destiny.]
[Unabomber]
[Activating Exclusive Skill: Nature’s Judgment.]
A vibration traveled from Seong-Hwi’s hand throughout the branch, turning it bright red, and it exploded as flames and the branch’s pieces flew everywhere, forming a giant mushroom cloud.
“You fool!” Raziel shouted.
Secretus Concludo was both an offensive and defensive skill. The flames and dust swirled into Raziel’s Book, obstructing Raziel’s vision. Seong-Hwi took that chance to get behind Raziel and activated various traits and skills.
[Activating Trait: Thousand-Man Killer.]
[Activating Trait: Mystery Killing.]
[Activating Trait: Foul Play.]
[Activating Unique Skill: Symbol Embodiment.]
[Harvesting Scythe, one of the symbols of No.13 Death]
A large black scythe that resembled the crescent moon appeared in Seong-Hwi’s hands.
“Die!” he shouted as he accelerated and swung the scythe.
“Hup!” Raziel belatedly activated a defensive skill, his reaction having been too slow from being too busy sucking Bulgasal and the firestorm.
[Activating Race Skill: Tutatio.]
A white shield appeared behind Raziel, made with Holy Force that rejected all things. Raziel smiled, believing Seong-Hwi couldn’t break his defenses. However, Seong-Hwi smiled the same way as he stared at the shield.
[Converting Deathly Aura to Penetration Aura.]
[The Reaper designates the target’s weakness.]
[The next attack must strike the Reaper’s Seal.]
A translucent blood-like aura wrapped the Harvesting Scythe. The Grim Reaper’s bony finger pointed at the center of the Holy Force shield, and the skull-shaped Reaper’s Seal appeared on it. Seong-Hwi’s attack struck the seal perfectly, and the Harvesting Scythe ignored Raziel’s defense, piercing his back.
[Farewell Strike has succeeded.]
[Sealing No.13 Death for 4,444 hours.]
“Kurgh! You... bastard!” shouted Raziel, vomiting blood as he tried to turn Secretus Concludo around, but Seong-Hwi acted faster.
[Activating Unique Skill: Borrowing Destiny.]
[Chok Chun-Gyong the Unfortunate Martial God]
[Activating Unique Skill: Symbol Embodiment.]
[Sword of Koksan.]
[Activating Exclusive Skill: Chok’s National Sword Technique.]
Seong-Hwi swung the Sword of Koksan, cutting Raziel’s neck from right to left. Raziel’s severed head, expressing disbelief, spun in midair as a fountain of blood poured from his neck like a water rocket. His eyes were opened at last, revealing empty sockets as if a crow had pecked them out.
Just then, a skill was activated before Seong-Hwi had realized it.
[Activating Star Power: Gluttony.]
An invisible giant mouth appeared in midair and devoured Raziel’s corpse.
[Heightening the caliber of Destiny Force.]
[Heightening the caliber of Magic.]
[Heightening the caliber of Health.]
[Heightening the caliber of Holy Force.]
...
[Recording the story of Overcoming Deficiency in the Akashic Records.]
[Desire devoured Raziel, the Angel of Secrets, forever burying the countless secrets in his care with him.]
...
[The Readers nod at the entertaining history.]
[300,000,000 Karma obtained.]
[Causality accumulates within Desire.]
Seong-Hwi panted heavily after canceling the overclocking and stared at his trembling hands. He smiled widely, each wrinkle filled with ecstasy.
“At last... I’ve caught up to the frontrunners!” he said.
He had killed a first-grade angel—a commander of one of Orbis’s legions, no less. Desire shone brightly with a brilliant splendor of silver light, just like the name Seong-Hwi.
***
“Ahahahaha! What an amazing junior!” Kang-San smiled delightfully as he stared at the silver star that had risen from afar.
Gabriel and Biphatogenes had also witnessed it.
“Raziel... The fool!” Gabriel mumbled.
“A star? Has another Recorder been born among the humans?! That is impossible! How could a human, an inferior race who had only started being Lost to the Mirror World a decade ago, have accomplished such a thing?!”
Kang-San was already considered an exception, yet another human acquiring their unique caliber was absurd. Even the almighty dragons took millennia to have the possibility to reach that point, and that standard was based on the royal dragons, the most pure-blooded.
However, a human, who lived for a century at most, had accomplished it in only a decade. Even if everyone in the Mirror World could get stronger through status windows, cubes, and such, it was still hard to believe.
“Do you get it now? Humans are the most almighty race. We are masters of adaptation and evolve in an instant,” Kang-San said.
The expressions of Gabriel and Biphatogenes hardened. One person to accomplish it could be considered an outlier, but two or more was a different story. Kang-San’s words no longer felt like a bluff.
“The God of Heaven was correct, after all. Insects must be trampled before they are given the chance to climb up!” Gabriel shouted, his expression crumpling intensely.
The order in the Mirror World would crumble if these insolent worms were given more time. Thankfully, they were still a weak race; there was no better time to exterminate them than now.
“You handle Lee Kang-San, Biphatogenes. I will kill the new unique caliber holder,” Gabriel said as he sprouted his nine pairs of wings.
“You’re not going anywhere!” Kang-San shouted as his tortoise armor was removed from his body and scattered throughout the surroundings.
Each piece grew as large as a castle gate, becoming a sphere trapping Gabriel and Biphatogenes inside. Gabriel and Biphatogenes scoffed as they stared at Kang-San, who had trapped them with him.
“Your judgment has dulled, Tortoise Emperor. Do you plan to take our attacks defenselessly?” Gabriel asked.
“Hah! Do you seriously think this is enough to hold me?” Biphatogenes shouted.
They did not deny that the Tortoise Emperor’s shell armor was nearly impenetrable, but its defensive power would plummet when spread so thinly. Kang-San smiled; he naturally knew that, too. This had been nothing but preliminary work.
“I can rest easy thanks to my amazing junior. I can entrust the future to you, Seong-Hwi. Shine brighter than me!” Kang-San shouted.
Communication, the dark green star with white borders, shone so brightly that it seemed like it was about to explode. Cracks began to form on the star, but Kang-San was as calm as ever. He had already made his resolve and had written the conclusion to his story.
“Bastard! What do you think you’re doing?!” Biphatogenes shouted.
“You’re destroying... your own star?!” Gabriel mumbled in confusion.
“A new era will begin from here on, but I will have you, who will only get in humanity’s way, come with me!” Kang-San yelled.
[Activating Star Power: Autism.]
You’re the first son now, Cheon Seong-Hwi! Kang-San shouted inwardly.
1. Konpeito is a Japanese sugar candy with a bumpy surface. ☜