Chapter 101

Chapter 101.

I watched Lee A-un sink into Dark Mana with mixed feelings, both pleased and sorry for him.

Lee A-un had suffered whenever he handled Dark Mana, so he was probably in quite a bit of pain right now, but...

‘It hurts because it’s EX-rank.’

With great power comes great responsibility.

The moment Lee A-un put on the crown called EX-rank, the path ahead of him was set to become a thorny one.

EX-rank, the strongest on Earth.

It was a mistake to think that road would be lined with roses.

If this era had been stable, perhaps it might have been.

In an era like that, he might have farmed, sold Mana Stones and Artifacts, and lived as an idol of the Hunter age.

But what about now?

Earth was a terminal patient.

In truth, the Republic of Korea was a trial version that offered a glimpse of Earth’s future.

Even the United States, which was flourishing right now, would hit a wall somewhere around the 90th floors unless it had an asymmetric force like me.

Then that hellish Break would erupt... and it would end up like the Republic of Korea in an instant.

If the United States fell? What about Japan or China?

It was only a matter of when it began. Their strategy would stall, and they would be destroyed by a Break. That was already decided.

In other words, from the moment this shitty Tower appeared.

Earth’s destruction had been confirmed.

‘This is an age where survival has become a vulgar joke.’

There was exactly one way to overcome this destined destruction.

Clear the Tower to the very end.

Specifically, the 100th Floor...!

Which party currently had the highest chance of clearing up to the 100th Floor?

The only possibility that could save the Republic of Korea, and beyond that, Earth itself.

That was my climbing party.

‘I said it as a joke, but this really is a hero party.’

Lee A-un was a member of that party.

On top of that, he was the Tanker, said to be the most important role.

There was a reason I had given him Spirit Sorcerer as a Dual Class on top of being an EX-rank Deathlord.

Saving humanity.

Before that great imperative, no human could afford arrogance.

That included me.

Therefore, Lee A-un’s path could not be peaceful.

Nor should it be peaceful.

He had to keep walking a path of thorns from now on.

That was Lee A-un’s fate.

***

When the aura she sensed from Lee A-un grew suspicious, the Elf Queen drew out the power of the World Tree.

She was the only being who could draw directly on the World Tree’s infinite life force.

Here, the Elf Queen was the strongest and invincible.

Because of that, she had never imagined she would struggle against humans less than insects. She had merely been ‘playing along,’ intending to put them to a painful death for the crime of invading Mother’s Forest.

But that black Mana fiercely provoked the Elf Queen’s wariness.

It looked like a small and lowly power.

But the caliber possessed by that power felt not so different from that of Mother World Tree!

On top of that, immediately after that power revealed itself, a blood-colored lake formed underfoot, and a gigantic dragon of bone suddenly appeared.

At this rate, the tide of the battlefield would turn.

‘I have to kill him right now!’

WHOOOOOSH—!

Behind the Elf Queen, the wind howled and formed the magnificent shape of a giant.

The most powerful magic the Elf Queen could wield, and the extreme of spirit sorcery: Spirit King Summoning.

Among them, this was the ‘Wind Spirit King.’

“O wind! Grind those filthy bones to dust!”

The Elf Queen pointed a finger toward the Bone Dragon.

The Wind Spirit King, manifested as a giant with a storm contained within its body, responded to her wrath and drove down a fist as large as a house.

THWAAACK!

A thunderous roar of compressed air tearing apart rang out as if it would burst their eardrums.

CRRRAAACK—!

[GRAAAAAAAH!]

“What?!”

But the one who screamed was not the crushed dragon, but the attacking Wind Spirit King.

Part of the impact damage had been reflected by the effect of [Authority: Thorns] and struck the Wind Spirit King directly.

The Bone Dragon was not unscathed either.

Under the Spirit King’s absurd destructive force, the ribs in its chest were horribly shattered and dangled loose.

However, the blood-colored lake rippling across the floor.

[Authority: Ocean of Blood] was constantly restoring the dragon’s broken bones.

The broken bones clotted together with the blood and were restored to their original shape at a speed clearly visible to the naked eye.

The Elf Queen gritted her teeth.

“Press harder! Crush it until not even its shape remains!”

GRRROOOOH!

The Wind Spirit King unleashed a fierce barrage of punches.

Blade-like storms hacked across the Bone Dragon’s entire body, and its massive fists hammered the joints like forge hammers.

BOOOOM—!

The storm howled.

Thunder battered the ears.

The Bone Dragon tried to resist by spewing Breath, but the Spirit King’s violent barrage blew off its jawbone and snapped its wings.

The Elf Queen glanced sideways at Lee A-un.

The human man was still submerged inside the black cocoon.

An ominous alienness emanated from the black energy flowing across the cocoon’s surface.

‘Before that thing opens its eyes, I will deal with this familiar first!’

The problem was that the Wind Spirit King was scattering far faster than the Bone Dragon was breaking.

The blows landed. The bones broke.

But the recoil of those impacts returned in full, wounding the Wind Spirit King that had dealt the attacks.

Meanwhile, the Bone Dragon regenerated on top of the blood without a single scratch.

Perpetual motion.

An absolutely unbreakable thorn shield...!

“You are stubbornly holding out like a beast to the very end.”

An arrogant sneer curled over the Elf Queen’s lips.

“Let us see how long that paltry regeneration of yours can last.”

If this was a contest of regeneration, she had nothing to lack either.

The Elf Queen drew out the World Tree’s infinite vitality to the maximum and poured it into the Wind Spirit King without hesitation.

WHOOOM—!

The instant the Bone Dragon charged, a massive gust of wind surged, and the Wind Spirit King’s size doubled in an instant.

CRUNCH!

The merciless fist of the Spirit King, now as huge as a mountain, crushed the Bone Dragon’s entire body.

The layered currents of the typhoon coiling around its fist ground the Bone Dragon’s entire form away like a crusher.

It was perfect destruction, enough that the creature would never rise again.

GRRROOOH...

At the same time, the Spirit King, having received reflected damage as immense as that blow, could not endure and scattered as well.

“Phew. Then... hm?

Click. Clack, clack.

The Elf Queen, who had been sighing in relief, hurriedly turned her gaze toward the Bone Dragon’s remains... no, toward the blood-colored lake where its bone fragments had been scattered.

‘...It is regenerating? Surely not in this state?’

It was a sight the Elf Queen’s common sense could not possibly comprehend.

An Undead was supposed to require a ‘core’ containing Mana, or at the very least, the remaining ‘form’ of its skeleton, in order to restore itself.

The Wind Spirit King’s final blow had been a thorough destruction that left not only the core, but not even a shard of bone.

The medium of regeneration itself had vanished, so how?

And yet the blood pooled on the floor bubbled up with a wet, sticky sound, then gathered and pulled in the bone dust drifting through the air like a powerful magnet.

As if the very concept of death itself refused annihilation.

[...]

Without any roar at all.

The revived Bone Dragon silently glared at the Elf Queen.

***

If Frost Type Mana tore through the body and froze blood vessels, Dark Mana was fundamentally an energy of negativity and death that gnawed away at reason and the soul.

Death, despair, pain, fear.

A dangerous power that burned by feeding only on such negative energies.

For that reason, the instinctive ‘safety mechanism’ of a human who wanted to live could only be the perfect opposite of Dark Mana.

The more Lee A-un tried to control Mana safely in order to survive, the more Dark Mana rebelled, sneering at its master’s weakness.

How could a lord who commanded death ever fully wield that power if he feared his own death?

The moment Lee A-un finally severed his own lifeline, accepting that he could die.

Paradoxically, in that instant when he fully planted both feet on the threshold of that despairing death, Dark Mana finally acknowledged its master.

Only one who did not fear death could rule over death in its entirety.

Inside Lee A-un, who had abandoned his shallow attachment to life and assimilated himself into the abyss of death, Dark Mana howled with joy.

The horrifying pain that had been tearing his blood vessels apart stopped as if it had been a lie, and in its place, a bottomless, pitch-black Authority began to fill him like a waterfall.

The blue will-o’-the-wisps flickering in Lee A-un’s eyes blazed up enormously, as if they would cover the battlefield.

It was the true advent of the Deathlord.

***

‘So far away.’

Infinite power overflowed through his entire body.

And yet, strangely, a terrible sense of helplessness swept over Lee A-un at the same time.

Brother’s broad back.

When he had not known, he had merely thought that back was simply ahead of him.

But now, at the moment he awakened the power of the Deathlord and stepped into its caliber, that back had grown so distant he could no longer see it.

Could he truly, like Brother, turn the Resonant Entity Resonar into an Undead?

Impossible.

He could not understand how that could possibly be done.

He could not comprehend Brother’s strength.

To the point that he wondered whether Brother was even human.

‘He really is far away.’

His loyalty toward Brother burned even hotter.

A man who always moved ahead.

Just by running after him, Lee A-un evolved to a degree incomparable with before.

Beyond simply becoming stronger, he felt the sensation of becoming something beyond himself... a ‘Transcendent.’

But when he looked back.

There was Lee A-un, filled with vengeance over losing his younger sibling, tormented by the Heaven’s Curse he had been given, and cursing the heavens.

In terms of time, it was not a distant past.

And yet it felt incredibly... unfamiliar.

‘Is this what it feels like to become stronger?’

Brother’s indifferent, settled eyes.

Were those eyes possible because, the more one transcended, the more the human heart vanished?

Or was it the reverse? Could one transcend only by shaving away the human heart?

‘I don’t know.’

So.

Open your eyes.

Look at the present.

“You... demon-like bastard!”

The Elf Queen stood before him.

A fierce storm of Mana was surging behind her.

Though they had neither form nor sound, countless strands of murderous intent sharp enough to prick the skin were being created and aimed at him.

Giants formed from fire, water, wind, and earth each displayed their majesty.

Above the Queen’s head, a magic sphere flashing pale green vibrated heavily.

‘....’

It was a hair-trigger situation.

But Lee A-un...

Felt bored.

What he had just seen after closing his eyes was Brother’s back.

Compared to that distant, unreachable thing... ‘this.’

How small and insignificant it was.

“Authority.”

“Die!”

BOOM-BOOM-BOOM—!

The moment the Elf Queen’s full power came crashing down on Lee A-un.

“Avatar of Demon.”

BOOM—!

[Authority: Avatar of Demon] activated.

A storm of Dark Mana devoured the surroundings, pronouncing death upon the Elf Queen’s magic.

At the same time.

CRUNCH!

The Bone Dragon’s massive body scattered, and its remains shot toward Lee A-un like arrows.

CRACK, CRUNCH!

The bones compressed and gathered, forming the shape of thick bone armor.

The bone armor wrapped snugly around Lee A-un’s body without a single gap.

Finally, the Bone Dragon’s skull settled onto Lee A-un’s head like a helmet.

Blue ghost fire lit in its eye sockets.

The Bone Dragon’s tailbone was gripped as if it were being sucked into Lee A-un’s hand.

Soon, it spewed streams of pitch-black Dark Mana and transformed into a sword with a white bone frame and a black blade.

‘For now... this is my limit.’

The Deathlord’s Level 80 Authority magic.

Avatar of Demon was a fusion and mutation skill that borrowed the ‘Warlock’ Ultimate Skill.

The target Lee A-un chose for fusion was the Bone Dragon.

Above this was the Authority magic Metamorphosis.

And above that existed the Ultimate Skill, Grand Necromancy: Great Harvest.

Using those two spells was impossible at his current level.

But.

‘I can become stronger...’

Lee A-un swung the Bone Dragon’s tailbone.

SCREEEEEE—!

A skin-crawling wail of ghosts erupted, and Dark Mana stretched like a whip and slashed the Elf Queen.