Chapter 92

Chapter 92.

“Aaaahahahahahahahaha!”

Iranshu felt the greatest high imaginable.

No, his reason had long since crossed far beyond its limit and collapsed.

It felt as though his brain had been completely wrecked by dopamine surging madly through the blood vessels in his head.

‘That look of confusion on Master’s iron-fortress face!’

KRAAAAASH—!!!

The moment his emotions ran out of control, the mud went berserk along with them.

The things clinging to the walls fell away, the things soaked into the shadows revealed their forms, and even the things crouching within the thick shadows spread across the floor...

All of them.

RUMBLERUMBLERUMBLE!

Burst out all at once.

From above, from below, and from the walls to the left and right.

Room to flee? Space to dodge?

No such thing existed.

What covered every side was a black tidal wave that swallowed his field of vision!

‘Die!!!’

Iranshu’s eyes flashed eerily with murderous madness.

From the absurd mass and pressure of the pouring mud alone, the special-alloy walls of the sturdy fortress screamed and crumpled helplessly like sheets of paper.

But the truly terrifying thing about the mud was not its physical force.

It was its killing ability that erased life with even greater certainty, the cursed ‘poison’ steeped deep within the mud.

The Mud of Degradation, which could only grow by catching, devouring, and chewing up one’s own kind alive!

From its very foundation, this magic possessed the traits of a predator.

Just as a natural predator evolved to carry a deadly poison most effective for slaughtering its prey, any human whose bare skin touched that black mud would instantly melt away without even leaving bones behind and die on the spot.

No matter how great his master had once been, having conquered the Tower in the past, he was ultimately still a ‘human’ wearing a shell.

If he was crushed from every side with this level of deadly poison and mass, no matter how superhuman he was, there was no way he could endure it.

After all, even the space to dodge had been sealed off perfectly, without so much as a gap for a single ant to escape through!

‘Now, there’s nowhere to run, and even a graze will kill you! What are you going to do?’

SCREEEEEECH—!!!

The steel screamed.

It crumpled weakly like an empty can, and the space compressed.

What he had aimed for from the start was Master lowering his guard.

Now, while Master had misjudged Iranshu’s level and failed to draw out his full power—

this was his one chance to drive in his trump card!

“Diiiiiie—!!!”

The mud that boiled endlessly from Iranshu’s shadow soon transformed into the savagely gaping ‘maw’ of a Demonic Beast.

At the same time as the violent mass and pressure, enough to crush the fortress, moved to engulf Master, Iranshu condensed all the mud and rage into a single point and fired it toward Master’s heart.

RUMBLERUMBLERUMBLE—!!!

Amid the tremendous vibration and roar of alloy walls being torn to shreds and the thick floor caving in, Iranshu opened his eyes wide.

The ultra-high-density compressed mud erupted with a heavy impact.

Even the deadly poison that melted flesh with the slightest graze had struck him directly without the slightest deviation.

‘...But there’s no way this ends with that.’

No matter how sudden a point-blank bombardment it had been, the opponent engraved in Iranshu’s memories was the most unreasonable monster in the world.

Before the dust cloud could even settle.

SLASH-!

Sure enough.

The thick mud split neatly in the shape of a cross, and a flash of light burst out.

Through the gap in that cross, Master walked out, neat and composed, not even a wrinkle on his collar.

...And in his right hand, he held a shabby ‘tree branch’ that had not even been stripped of its bark.

“Yes! That’s how my master should be!”

A desperate strike that had made full use of a surprise attack had been easily blocked, but there was not the slightest disappointment on Iranshu’s face.

Instead, the corners of his mouth split eerily all the way to his ears, and a smile of ecstasy appeared.

The relief that the untouchable master in his memories had not been worn down by time and fallen pathetically.

The fact that he still existed as a distant ‘wall’ that Iranshu had to risk his life to overcome.

A twisted delight and joy that could not be described in any words ruled Iranshu’s entire body.

“Hahahah!”

Iranshu’s hands twisted grotesquely, as though wringing the air.

Then the mud spread across the floor rose with a wet gulp as if answering him, and in an instant, it changed into a pack of dozens of black wild dogs with sharp teeth and rushed at Master.

“Tear him apart!”

But Master did not even stop walking.

The wrist holding the tree branch moved lightly, as though brushing off dust.

SLAAASH-!

Crescent-shaped blue Sword Energy swept across the floor and sliced every wild dog in half at the waist.

In the very instant that the pack of wild dogs briefly disturbed Master’s vision, the clump of mud that had been cut into a cross split into fine pieces.

The scattered fragments instantly transformed into hundreds of sharp black spearheads and rained down toward Master’s blind spots.

PAPAPAPAPAT-!

“Try blocking this too!”

Above the right shoulder, below the joint of the left knee, and the nape at the instant breathing cut off and the chest cavity expanded.

In the hellish Tower of the past, those were the ‘absolute blind spots of a humanoid enemy’ that Master had beaten into Iranshu’s body by breaking his bones.

Iranshu returned that lesson to Master exactly as he had learned it.

“You’re the one who taught me!!!”

Slip-

Master’s wrist swayed lightly.

It was only a single tree branch.

Yet every time it left a blue afterimage in the air, hundreds of black spears were cut apart helplessly.

It was still... horrifying swordsmanship.

The Mud of Degradation was extremely strong against external physical force, durable enough that even a strike from a highest-grade famous sword could hardly scratch it.

And yet he was cutting the Mud of Degradation apart this easily with a single ordinary tree branch!

But even that absurdity stimulated Iranshu’s dopamine.

‘I know! The timing when you breathe in, the trajectory of your sword, even the tiny gap when your muscles relax! There’s no way I wouldn’t know that!’

Master’s movements were perfect.

But because they were perfect, they could be predicted.

Just before the mud fragments deflected by the Sword Energy could hit the ground, Iranshu detonated them all at once in place.

BOOOOM!

A black poisonous fog that completely blocked vision.

The moment it entered the respiratory tract or touched even the smallest bit of bare skin, it meant instant death.

No matter how outstanding his swordsmanship was, if it was a deadly poisonous gas that ‘could not be cut,’ he had no choice but to dodge.

“You won’t even have time to breathe!”

Inside that lethal curtain, Iranshu’s voice echoed in every direction, disrupting his sense of direction.

Before his voice could even scatter fully, Iranshu used the shadow on the floor as a medium and instantly moved behind Master, then drove in a surprise kick.

“......!”

But Iranshu’s kick cut through empty air.

No, to be precise, with one smooth half-turn of Master’s body, the heavy blow missed futilely, as if it had struck only an afterimage.

“You still haven’t fixed that habit of making your movements simple when your vision is blocked.”

Even inside the poisonous fog, Master was precise and composed, as though he could see everything.

Master did not miss Iranshu’s opening and lightly kicked up his foot.

THWACK-!

“Keugh!”

Master’s foot struck Iranshu squarely in the abdomen.

Iranshu rolled across the floor, coughed up blood, and ground his teeth.

‘He has reflexes like this while he’s practically blind? Then I’ll crush you with mass you can’t even dodge!’

If Master had no blind spot, then Iranshu could simply force one into existence.

Iranshu condensed an absurdly massive amount of mud around his right arm in the shape of a greatsword, then burrowed straight into Master’s space.

“Diiie!!!”

It was a rapid leap that was hard to believe had come from a boy’s body.

But the greatsword of mud hanging at the end of that swift trajectory fell toward Master’s crown, bearing a mass that seemed capable of crushing space itself.

A trajectory that could not possibly be dodged.

Therefore, instead of retreating, Master chose to defend.

‘Hahahahat! I knew you would!!!’

Master raised the tree branch upward and received that attack head-on.

KWAAAAAANG!!!

The shock wave, as if it would vaporize the surrounding air in one burst, tore a circular section out of the fortress’s lower steel floor.

Through the hole opened in the floor, the cold sea wind of the Yellow Sea swept away the dense dust cloud in a single breath.

And in the brightened field of vision, Iranshu could not help doubting his own eyes.

A killing blow into which he had poured all his Mana and the vengeful spirits of tens of thousands of people, certain that it could never be blocked.

Master was blocking that merciless attack in its entirety with nothing but a single tree branch wrapped in blue energy.

Master’s ankles had punched through the steel floor and sunk deep into it, but his upper body did not waver by so much as an inch.

‘Monster bastard...!’

Master’s eyes, seen up close.

Those dark eyes were still as calm as a tranquil lake, even before Iranshu’s all-out strike.

It was a horribly arrogant and indifferent gaze, as if looking down at a child.

A gaze he had seen countless times inside the Tower.

A silent contempt that seemed to say, ‘A desperate struggle from the likes of you poses neither a threat nor a variable to me.’

The inferiority complex clotted at the very bottom of Iranshu’s heart erupted explosively, as if a powder magazine had been set ablaze.

The cord of reason evaporated white-hot, and crimson killing intent swallowed the space it left behind.

“Don’t make me laugh! Fuck, let’s see how long you can keep acting so relaxed!”

CRUUUNCH-!

Until now, Iranshu had used other people’s life force as the price, but this time, he shaved away his own life force and wrung his Mana to its limit.

At the contact point between the black blade and the blue Sword Energy, a life-gnawing poison rose like a shimmer of heat.

Then the pitch-black deadly poison began to greedily dig into Master’s weapon.

“Heh, hehehe!”

Iranshu laughed, blood pouring from the corners of his mouth.

No matter how perfect Master’s Sword Energy was, the main medium itself was nothing more than an ordinary tree branch, as if picked up from some hill behind the neighborhood.

‘There’s no way a mere branch can withstand the corrosion of Degradation!!!’

—Once that breaks, Master is finished too!

The instant Iranshu clenched his teeth.

Crack.

The most intoxicating sound of rupture in the world rang in Iranshu’s ears.

‘......!’

Fine cracks spread along the surface of Master’s tree branch.

The Sword Energy could not hold, and the deadly poison was corroding the essence of the wood.

CRUMBLE...!

Soon, the tip of the branch blackened and died, then scattered helplessly on the rough wind of the Yellow Sea.

After confirming that phenomenon, Iranshu’s pupils dilated with ecstasy.

“Ahaahahaha! It’s breaking! Your weapon is breaking!”

The sense of victory from finally breaking through Master’s iron-fortress defense.

Master was, after all, a swordsman.

A swordsman who lost his sword was nothing more than a toothless tiger!

At the very moment Master’s only weapon was destroyed, that arrogant body would also be swallowed by the tidal wave of mud, leaving not even bone powder behind.

“Ahaahahahahahaha!!!”

Iranshu let out a scream of mad delight and burned even more of his life force so the deadly poison could dig in faster.

‘It’s over...!’

Today, I surpass my master!