Chapter 93
A morbidly obese Southeast Asian man over two meters tall arrived at the Vivienne Information Center with around a hundred subordinates. He was Budiono, a Semi Ranker from Clan Hard Drug.
“Are you sure this is the place?” Budiono asked as he stared at the air.
A voice sounded from the direction he was looking, “It will be, as long as you keep your promise.”
“Dammit! Do you think I’ll go back on my word? You can take the East Earth business site, or whatever you want!” Budiono shouted.
It pained him to give up his business site, but he had no choice.
There’s only a day left until the ten days the boss gave me are up. I can’t fail him again!
If he did, he would be immediately decapitated.
“I’m sure. He’s hiding here,” the voice in the air said.
“Alright! All forces, prepare to attack! Blow that building to b—”
The store's front door suddenly opened as Budiono was about to give the order, and a man walked out.
Seong-Hwi said, “What is this, a pigpen?”
“YOU BASTARD!” Budiono screamed in rage after seeing Seong-Hwi.
The Asian man had black hair and eyes and wore a black hoodie and combat boots. Budiono was sure he was the one who had been raiding the Hard Drug workshops.
“You must be Cheon Seong-Hwi!” he shouted.
“What if I am?”
“I’ll kill you, of course!”
Budiono did not entertain Seong-Hwi further and summoned a slice of pizza in each hand. It was his D Weapon, Happy Pizza. He owned a pizza place named Happy Pizza in Bali before he was Lost. In Bali, anything with the word happy in the name usually contained magic mushrooms.
Budiono voraciously ate the pizzas.
[Absorbing Psilocybin.]
[Activating Unique Skill: Happy Delusion.]
“Ehehehehe! Bwehehehehe!” He had been raging at Seong-Hwi mere seconds ago, but now he was laughing like a madman. He voiced his absurd imagination, “I’m super strong! I have the strongest muscles!”
[Adjusting physique as per the effect of Happy Delusion.]
[Drastically boosting Strength.]
Smoke rose from the morbidly obese Budiono, converting his fat into muscles.
“Ehehehe! Do you see these? These muscles will kill you!” Budiono boasted as he stared crazily at Seong-Hwi.
He has an internal manipulation D Weapon, a drug-doping type. It must have a hallucinogenic rule that embodies one’s imagination, Seong-Hwi surmised.
He could tell what Budiono had done from his current state. His D Weapon, Happy Pizza, contained psychedelic psilocybin mushrooms, and Happy Delusion could embody his delusions into reality. Embodying hallucinations in the real world was a hallmark rule of hallucinogenic drug D Weapons.
“Ehehehe!”
Budiono, who had become a muscly monster, stomped on the ground and shot forward like a cannonball.
Seong-Hwi simply stared as Budiono flew at him and thought calmly, I raised the trait, Natural Enemy of Chaos, to B-rank, but he unfortunately isn’t a Chaos. I guess the Wings of Evolution is all I’ll get to test today.
He did not consider Budiono a threat. To him, Budiono was just a sandbag he could use to do a thorough check of his changed body. It might have been a challenge before he heightened his caliber through the Wings of Evolution, but a Semi Ranker in the nine-hundreds was no match for Seong-Hwi anymore.
***
“Wow! H-how can this be? He was just a newbie a few months ago!” Jurie expressed amazement as she watched the battle after leaving the store with Gerard. “Is that possible, Gramps?”
“No, it’s impossible. He’s not a superior race. A normal human couldn’t possibly...” Gerard trailed off as he watched the battle between Budiono and Seong-Hwi with deeply sunken eyes.
Forget months, his stats were still of inferior caliber just weeks ago. But the aura he’s exuding is at least of intermediate caliber. How is this possible? Gerard wondered.
Basic stat ranks could skyrocket if one hit a dungeon jackpot, but raising one’s stat caliber was on another level entirely.
Could it be?
Gerard knew of one way a human could rapidly raise their caliber; it was a humiliating and bloody method.
No... he wouldn’t have.
“Argh! They’re so fast that I can barely see what’s happening. Why isn’t he using his wings? That’s what I wanted to see!” Lina mumbled beside Gerard as she restlessly moved her pen.
Gerard sighed and looked around. A crowd had gathered due to the loud battle.
The brat sure grabs all the attention wherever he is. Could he have aimed for this?
Cheers from the crowd echoed.
“Whoa! What are those?!”
“Holy crap! They’re so beautiful!”
“Is it an item or a skill?”
“What the hell is that guy’s D Weapon?”
Gerard shifted his gaze toward the battle again, and an iridescent light reflected from his retina.
***
Seong-Hwi had 2,948,084 Karma remaining; he could open two more B-rank stat cubes. Hence, he decided to test his basic stats against Budiono to assess which to reinforce.
“Bwehehe!” Budiono laughed crazily as he swung his fist so fast that it created a sonic boom, aimed at Seong-Hwi’s solar plexus.
“Hup!”
Seong-Hwi took the attack head-on. He felt pain in his abdomen and felt his stomach churn.
My Health stat caliber has undoubtedly reached the intermediate level. My red muscle fibers are far denser, and my recovery speed is much faster.
“Die!” Budiono shouted, barraging Seong-Hwi with punches.
This time, Seong-Hwi sensed each attack and dodged all of them. His feet moved so fast that they were hard to see with the naked eye, and he maintained his balance even in positions that should have been impossible to recover from.
Sense and Dexterity are also good enough, Seong-Hwi said inwardly as he easily grabbed Budiono’s fists.
“Heheh?” Budiono expressed confusion.
“Strength is also tolerable.”
Seong-Hwi kicked Budiono’s flank. He could feel Budiono’s ribs breaking.
“Gah!” Budiono grunted as he was blown away.
“I kicked too hard,” Seong-Hwi remarked, reducing the discrepancy between his body and mind.
Budiono sprang up, seemingly unable to feel pain. “That didn’t even tickle! Bwehehehe! Now, I’m just as fast as I’m strong!”
[Adjusting physique as per the effect of Happy Delusion.]
[Drastically boosting Dexterity.]
Budiono’s lower body compressed to resemble a horse’s legs, granting him agile and dynamic movements. He charged at Seong-Hwi again, but his movements were far faster than before.
“Gehehe! Too slow!”
“Kurgh!”
Seong-Hwi quickly raised his guard to the left, which Budiono’s kick smashed into. He smirked as he was pushed back.
“You’ve gotten faster. In that case...”
[Operating Wings of Evolution.]
[Five Wings.]
Five pointed-oval wings sprouted from Seong-Hwi’s back, the iridescent lights from them illuminating him from behind.
“Bwehehe! Stop acting tough with your dragonfly wings!” Budiono laughed mockingly and charged at Seong-Hwi.
Humans who established wing skill rules to their D Weapon were brainless morons. They imitated superior races with wings because they admired them, but the difference between them was like night and day. Not only did the skill guzzle mana, but it was highly inefficient for the amount of mana it consumed.
Unfortunately for Budiono, Seong-Hwi’s Wings of Evolution was different. After all, his wings were real.
“Haha! Nice!” Seong-Hwi laughed ecstatically.
His Health, Strength, Dexterity, Sense, Magic, and Destiny Force stats were amplified by fifty percent. It need not even be mentioned how insanely useful that was in combat.
“Bweh?”
Budiono’s eyes widened as Seong-Hwi easily dodged his punch. Seong-Hwi flew behind him and kicked him, his leg enveloped in amplified mana. The kick was so fast that Budiono had no time to react, and he vomited blood as he was blown back toward his subordinates.
“Kurgh! Gah! Urgh!”
“Sir Budiono!”
“Get the fuck out of my way! Bweh... Bwehehe!”
Budiono grotesquely cycled between rage and maniacal laughter as he vomited blood. He glared at Seong-Hwi with beautiful wings, examining himself as if he thought nothing of Budiono.
“Bwehehe! Ehehehehehe!” He continued to laugh maniacally and suddenly stopped, his eyes blazing. “You son of a bitch! I’ll kill you!”
He grabbed a steel kit attached to his waist and opened its lid. The kit contained various pills and syringes. It was a drug kit provided to Hard Drug combatants—in other words, it was a portable box of drugs.
“Take your anabolics! Bwehehe! I’ll reward a workshop to the one who kills that bastard!” Budiono shouted.
Over a hundred of his subordinates opened their drug kits. Budiono was indeed enraged, but his life was also on the line. He was not idiotic enough to think he could effortlessly defeat Seong-Hwi. If he couldn’t win one-on-one, he would just have his subordinates support him.
If I lose, the boss will kill me anyway! Budiono shouted inwardly.
He grabbed a white pill engraved with the letters AN. It was an anabolic steroid, a Hard Drug steady seller. No matter how much people criticized it for being a shortcut, any human who got a taste of it was bound to become a loyal Hard Drug customer.
High-ranking anabolics were a premium, costing astronomical amounts of Coins. Of course, as an executive member of Hard Drug, Budiono possessed high-ranking anabolics.
[Anabolic Steroid (Consumable Item)
Rank: B
Description: Ingestion boosts skeletal muscle mass, durability, and mana capacity. However, side effects include the possibility of permanent stat loss, myocardial infarction, and loss of one’s sanity.]
...
Budiono and the other Hard Drug clansmen ingested the anabolic steroid.
“Haaaaahhhhh!”
“Raaaaahhhhh!”
Its effects were instant. Their muscles wriggled and expanded like a balloon. It wasn’t just a rise in muscle mass; their frame also grew. Their veins disgustingly squirmed, and their eyes turned bloodshot. All of them smiled confidently.
“Urgh... Crazy bastards.”
“This is why I hate Hard Drug.”
“Cheon Seong-Hwi, was it? I feel bad for the super rookie.”
The bystanders, who now numbered in the hundreds, clicked their tongues as they stared at the Hard Drug clansmen who became massive after ingesting the anabolics. Hard Drug’s slogan was to obtain power today with the future as collateral. Such an attitude wasn’t easily imitated, but unexpectedly, many youths were infected by it.
The Union was hesitant to clash against Hard Drug due to their countless drugs and influence. Albeit a double-edged sword, many humans possessed at least one for emergencies because the Mirror World was run by power. After all, tomorrow came only to those who survived.
“Gehehe! Munch, munch! Gyaaah!” Budiono went between screaming and laughing, his face covered in tears and snot.
He restlessly ate his Happy Pizza.
[Bodily psilocybin levels have exceeded their limit.]
[Failure to excrete it within three minutes will result in insanity or death.]
[Activating Unique Skill: Maniacal Spores.]
Mold-like mushroom spores grew from Budiono’s skin and scattered throughout the surroundings. Maniacal Spores was Budiono’s trump card, having internal and external manipulation components.
[Stimulating potential as per the effect of Maniacal Spores.]
[Applying Debuff: Madness due to psilocybin overdose.]
“Hell yeah! Kill him!”
“He’s mine! Mine!”
“El Chapo will reward us handsomely if we kill him!”
The humans whose fears were extinguished as per the effects of Anabolic Steroid and Maniacal Spores charged at Seong-Hwi.
“It’s over for him.”
“Urgh, he shouldn’t have messed with Hard Drug.”
The crowd of bystanders expected Seong-Hwi to be torn apart limb from limb. They couldn’t see how one unranked man would defeat over a hundred painless and fearless Hard Drug clansmen, and the Semi Ranker Budiono.
“What are you doing, Gramps?! Join the fight! Save Seong-Hwi!” Jurie shouted at Gerard.
“It’s okay, my lady.”
Jurie glared at Gerard. “What? Gramps! I know you don’t like Seong-Hwi, but—”
Gerard smiled bitterly and interrupted, “I meant there is no need. He doesn’t need my help.”
“He... doesn’t need your help?” Jurie asked in confusion.
Lina fixed her glasses and said, “If he wasn’t lying about his stat specs... there’s no issue. Oh! So, that’s the secondary force conversion he told me about! Look!”
Jurie looked to where Lina was pointing, at the five wings on Seong-Hwi’s back.
“The pattern... changed?”
The hexagonal pattern on the wings changed to an inverted ginkgo leaf pattern, resembling dragon scales. The iridescent wings suddenly flashed with a golden light.
[Converting Destiny Force to Draconic Mana.]
[00:01:15]
[00:01:14]
...
“I have over a minute for Draconic Mana,” Seong-Hwi remarked.
He smiled and felt the Draconic Mana, the secondary force of dragons, coursing throughout his body. The energy, which felt like it could dominate anything, moved proudly as if refusing to be controlled by Seong-Hwi.
“It’s a bit unruly, but... I can use it!”
Seong-Hwi moved his wings. There were three on his right and two on his left, but they all moved to the right. His right arm, from his shoulder to his fingertips, was enveloped in golden Draconic Mana. Six cards flew out from the Tarot Deck of Destiny.
[Activating Unique Skill: Symbol Embodiment.]
[Ace of Wands]
[Two of Wands]
...
[Six of Wands]
Twenty-one red wands were embodied and fused into one. Seong-Hwi grabbed the wand and infused it with Draconic Mana, causing golden flames to linger around it. Seong-Hwi pointed it at Budiono and his subordinates, charging at him. The wand, his right arm, and the five wings were lined up straight.
Seong-Hwi unleashed the Draconic Mana he had been suppressing. The golden flames poured out of the wand, resembling a dragon’s exclusive skill, Breath.
“Argh! It burns!”
“Get out of the way!”
“That crazy son of a bitch is pulling even us into this!”
The golden firestorm was hotter than a blast furnace. It melted the street, the Hard Drug clansmen, and its heat wave spread everywhere. The spectators rapidly retreated as they were hit with a heat wave hot enough to burn their faces.
“Holy crap!”
“How much mana does he have to do something like that?”
“How is that a super rookie? He’s as strong as a Ranker!”
The bystanders stared dumbfoundedly at the golden flames engulfing the street of South Earth. They had cheered for Seong-Hwi in his battle against Hard Drug, but did not expect him to win. However, Seong-Hwi displayed his true power as if proving them wrong. He was powerful enough to overwhelm a Semi Ranker in the nine-hundreds and over a hundred of his subordinates.
The gathered humans witnessed the birth of a new Ranker.
***
The golden flames were extinguished after a minute passed, and only Seong-Hwi was left standing. The Wings of Evolution returned to its hexagonal pattern, and the wings were redistributed to three on the right and two on the left.
Seong-Hwi canceled the embodiment of the wands and silently looked down at his hand. He had not expected this level of power. He could now take the evolutionary traits of every race as his own, use them to heighten his caliber and boost his stats, and even use the secondary forces of other races.
“With this, I can do it!”
Seong-Hwi clenched his fists. He had only been in the Mirror World for five months. Although he was still lacking, he was sure he had taken the first step toward the Ten Lords and Fiends.