Chapter 294

The battlefield was razed once the lightning storm swept through it. Hundreds of Chaos Humans were sprawled on the ground like waste, black smoke rising from their bodies.

“Oh, no... I shouldn’t kill them,” mumbled Seong-Hwi, looking down haughtily from the sky.

He had been so drunk on his abundant bloodlust that he had almost forgotten his objective of capturing as many of them as possible.

“Thankfully, I didn’t kill too many of them. There are a few with grit, too.”

He smiled as he turned to where he could hear heavy breathing. A few of them had barely defended against Catastrophic Thunder with the help of a translucent barrier and ten floating swords. They were Havela, Emil Mielke, Zhao Benshan, and Gao Weiguang.

“Huff! Huff!”

“Huuu, we owe you one, Havela and Gao Weiguang.”

“That fucking monster!”

Weiguang remained silent.

Havela, holding a wide-open Dybbuk Box, panted heavily as he stared at Seong-Hwi in disbelief. “Huff! Huff! How does he have that much mana?! Is he a dragon or something?”

He had barely blocked the attack with Dybbuk’s Protection, made with the bloody ghost Dybbuk, but at the cost of eighty percent of his mana.

“Cheon Seong-Hwi!” Weiguang mumbled, grinding his teeth as he looked up at Seong-Hwi, who was looking down at them from the sky.

He had not seen Seong-Hwi’s true power at Lunatic because they had been on different battlefields. He had seen Lee Kang-San in him, but had forcibly denied the feeling and believed they would be equals if he unleashed the full power of his Chaos Mana.

However, he immediately realized from this one attack that Seong-Hwi was in another league, the same as Kang-San.

Just then, a group of people ran toward the Walls of Tallinn. In the lead was Chaya, followed by Seo-Yeon and Charles. The last were Douglas and his subordinates.

“Hyung-nim!”

“Seong-Hwi oppa!”

“Garuda hyung!”

“Ahaha! You sure went all out, my billiards friend!”

“Right on time, guys. Arrest the unconscious ones and try to keep the half-dead ones alive,” Seong-Hwi said.

“Hyung-nim! I will assist you!” Chaya shouted as he unsheathed his kukri.

“What are you talking about? Oppa needs my help!” Seo-Yeon said as she unleashed the power of the blue Foxfire.

“I’ll go!” Charles said, grabbing the green Dragon Heart from his pocket.

“No, I need to take care of this quickly and begin my experiment. I’ll be done in three minutes, so arrest them all,” Seong-Hwi replied.

“That’s enough of your nonsense, you bastard—!” Benshan screamed as he leaped toward the sky with Taowu.

[Activating Unique Skill: Malevolent Beastification.]

[Taowu.]

Benshan transformed into a hideous creature after undergoing Malevolent Beastification with Taowu. His skin was covered in black fur; he had two faces, each with a pig's mouth; withered branches were sticking out all over his body.

“DIE—!” he screamed.

[Activating Unique Skill: Unleash Superhuman Strength.]

It was a unique skill that converted the energy Taowu absorbed into the Strength stat. Benshan’s right arm ballooned immensely with muscles.

“Gahaha! All I need is thirty seconds to kill you!” Benshan shouted confidently, swinging his fist the size of a house.

Seong-Hwi cocked back his fist as he smirked. “So, you’re confident in your strength, huh?”

A rose wreath appeared over his head. The hexagonal veins on the Wings of Evolution vanished, filling the wings with purple vapor.

[Activating Unique Skill: Symbol Embodiment.]

[Rose Wreath of Strength, one of the symbols of No.8 Strength]

[Strength S(32) → S(37)]

[Converting Destiny Force to Titanic Force.]

He tested the synergy between the Rose Wreath of Strength, which temporarily boosted his Strength stat, and the Titanic Force he had recently obtained.

“Haaahh!” Seong-Hwi shouted, swinging his fist at Benshan’s gigantic fist as he felt his fast-twitch muscles condensing wildly.

“You fool!” Benshan said, certain of his victory since his current Strength stat was S(50), albeit temporary.

However, the result was nothing like what Benshan had expected; his right arm had been blown off from his shoulder down. Benshan screamed in pain from his arm being ripped off. Seong-Hwi flicked Benshan’s solar plexus, sending him tumbling across the ground and smashing deeply into the Walls of Tallinn.

“Titanic Force. This thing’s pretty useful,” Seong-Hwi said in satisfaction as he stared at his middle finger with steam rising from it.

“Zhao Benshan!” Havela shouted, panicked by how quickly he had been defeated.

He and Emil Mielke then heard footsteps getting further. They turned around and saw Weiguang quickly fleeing westward.

“Dammit—huh? Gao Weiguang, you son of a bitch!” Emil shouted.

“No, you don’t!” Seong-Hwi shouted.

[Converting Destiny Force to Kinetic Force.]

The Wings of Evolution’s pattern changed into a feather pattern of white and brown, then he suddenly vanished.

“W-where did he go?”

“It doesn’t matter! Dybbuk’s Protection is still intact—”

GYAAAAAHHH!

Dybbuk screamed before Havela was even done talking, and was ripped apart. Seong-Hwi appeared before Havela and Emil, the gold and extravagant Knot-severing Sword in his hand.

“Go to sleep,” he said as he punched the two of them in the solar plexus before they could even react.

“Kurgh!”

“Gurghh!”

Havela and Emil instantly lost consciousness.

“How pathetic, Gao Weiguang!” Seong-Hwi shouted, sprouting the Wings of Evolution and chasing after Weiguang.

Weiguang panted heavily, running against the headwind. He then jumped off the Capital.

“I will not let my dream end here!” he shouted as he used Sword Control to make one of his swords his foothold, getting further away from the Capital.

Just then, he heard the voice of the Grim Reaper behind him.

“Was this as far as you could get after giving up on your humanity?”

“HAAAAAHHH!” Weiguang screamed, drawing out his mana and Chaos Mana to their limit, and sent his swords filled to the brim with condensed sword qi flying toward the source of the voice.

The shards of the condensed qi filled the sky like fireworks. Not even Lee Bong-Seong could completely defend against this attack.

“Ahaha! You shouldn’t have let your guard down! What kind of idiot lets his enemy know their location?!” Weiguang laughed crazily as he flew to the ground and looked back, seeing only dark-red rain. “Ahaha—Gasp!”

Once the storm of mana cleared, he saw Seong-Hwi holding a longsword enveloped with a dark-red aura. Around him were Weiguang’s ten swords, which had all corroded and were scattering like dark-red cherry blossoms. He knew it wasn’t the right thought to have in such a situation, but he thought it was beautiful. However, rage and frustration soon replaced such a thought.

“That’s impossible! How could you have gotten to such a level with the penalty of being human?!” Weiguang screamed.

Since he had given up on his humanity to become powerful, he couldn’t accept Seong-Hwi’s power. It was unfair. Something had gone terribly wrong. He was sure Seong-Hwi had cheated somehow.

“You are a fool who took the wrong path. I sympathize with you,” Seong-Hwi said as he vanished.

Weiguang felt a searing pain in his solar plexus.

“Kurgh!”

Everything faded to black.

***

In the simplest of terms, Chaos Humans were humans who accepted Chaos Mana. People normally became Chaos monsters after being corrupted by Chaos Mana and lost their intelligence, but Chaos Humans were different. They had the intelligence to think and decide for themselves.

There were two categories of such Chaos Humans. One was the Reborn, or those who were born anew. One escaper had been the first to discover this groundbreaking method and spread it worldwide. The moment one couldn’t pay the survival tax and was corrupted by Chaos Mana, they cleared a quest or were given enough Coins to pay the survival tax. They repeated this process to accumulate Chaos Mana little by little to let their body adapt to it.

The second was the Child, the product of high-ranking Chaos monsters using the os skill Ruina to create subordinates. The Child was forced to serve the Parent, the Chaos monster who turned them into a Chaos Human—practically an absolute allegiance.

Although the Reborn and Children were born in different ways, the result was the same. They slowly lost their humanity over time and developed a sense of familiarity with the Chaos. Lastly, one could never return to being a pure human again once they accepted Chaos Mana.

That was common sense in my past life, Seong-Hwi thought as he stared at the hundreds of restrained Chaos Humans on their knees. Even Lina failed to turn them back.

Seong-Hwi recalled Lina’s opinion.

“This is impossible. We could find a way to extract the Chaos Mana from their bodies, but the void that would remain after the extraction is the real issue. Something needs to fill the void, or the imbalance would kill them.”

Since Chaos Humans had accepted Chaos Mana, their body had gone through changes to accept it. It was only natural that the balance would fall apart if the Chaos Mana were extracted. It was why Seong-Hwi had denied Bong-Seong’s desperate request to do so.

I need to experiment so that I know how to do it safely. Humanity can’t lose Lee Bong-Seong here.

The lightning-shaped blood vessels in Seong-Hwi’s right bloodshot eye wriggled as he looked around. He had sent everyone else away, leaving only himself and his test subjects in the area.

“Let’s begin,” he said.

First, let’s try extracting the Chaos Mana, he thought.

***

“GAAAAAHHH!”

“AAARRRGGGHHH!”

“P-PLEASE SPARE M—GURGHHH!”

Agonizing screams echoed from the Walls of Tallinn.

“Mmm... What in the world is he doing?” Douglas mumbled as he tapped his shoulder with his cue stick.

“He must be torturing them. He has quite bad taste,” Jangsanbeom remarked from beside him.

Just then, Chaya, who had been looking at the Walls of Tallinn from afar, quickly turned around and shouted, “Hyung-nim is not that kind of person!”

“Hide?”

“There is meaning in everything that hyung-nim does! I am certain that meaning is for the betterment of humanity! Please take back your statement of him having bad taste!”

Jangsanbeom was left dumbfounded by Chaya’s sudden outburst when he was usually quiet. He mumbled, “I mean, well... Okay, I take it back. That aside, Chaya. I had noticed for a long time that you become a completely different person whenever it involves RB—I mean, SS. What is your relationship with him?”

“I am his younger brother!” Chaya answered without hesitation.

“Hah!” Jangsanbeom expressed, refraining from asking more questions once he noticed Chaya’s sparkling eyes, filled with admiration.

Hyung-nim! I believe in you. You are the savior of humanity, just as you’d saved my little sister and me! Chaya expressed his unwavering faith inwardly as he stared in the direction where the screams were coming from. But... I’m disappointed in myself for not being helpful to you despite doing my best to become stronger.

Two people approached Chaya as he bit his lip. One of them was an Asian woman with black hair that went past her shoulders, and the other was a boy with silky silver hair and blue eyes.

“You’re Seong-Hwi oppa’s little brother? I can’t let that slide.”

“Garuda hyung’s little brother? Hmph! You’re just a chameleon!”

They were Seo-Yeon and Charles.

Seo-Yeon smiled gently as she stared at Chaya, expressing wariness, and asked, “Are you Seong-Hwi oppa’s true family, too?”

***

“As I’d thought, it’s difficult to extract only Chaos Mana, but... I did it!” Seong-Hwi said, smiling as he walked between heaps of corpses.

Desire shone from above him as if urging him to continue.

“Alright, let’s do a review run. Devour only the Chaos Mana, Desire.”

“Huff, huff, p-please...” a heavily breathing Chaos Human begged.

Just then, an invisible mouth devoured the Chaos Human, whose eyes widened as he felt his Chaos Mana being sucked away.

“N-NOOOOO! KURGH!” The Chaos Human suddenly vomited blood and convulsed once all his Chaos Mana was extracted. “Gurghhh...Bleghhh! BLEGGGHHH!”

He vomited blood with such force that one would think he would vomit his intestines out, and the light in his eyes faded. His painful convulsions stopped, and he lay still on the ground like a dead fish. Seong-Hwi calmly observed the experiment and nodded in satisfaction.

“Good job. You devoured only the Chaos Mana. As I thought, they die from the imbalance in their body,” he mumbled as he stood up and turned to the four Chaos Humans he had gathered at the center. “Now, all that remains is trying to inject my Chaos Mana into the void formed where the existing Chaos Mana was extracted. Will it be a viable substitute?”

Benshan, Havela, Emil, and Weiguang saw Seong-Hwi’s shining, goal-oriented eyes. They grew dizzy from seeing his boundless madness.

“Hurgh...Urghhh...”

“H-he’s... the Devil...”

“Kill... me...”

Weiguang remained silent.

However, they were more shocked by what they saw next.

[Operating Wings of Evolution.]

[Sixteen Wings.]

[Converting Destiny Force to Chaos Mana.]

The sixteen iridescent wings sprouted from Seong-Hwi’s back, then a cosmic aura, resembling stardust sprinkled onto the night sky, wrapped the wings instantly.

“T-that’s—”

“C-Chaos Mana?”

“Not just any Chaos Mana, but one exclusive to the Bachtasha!”

“The... Cosmos.”

Seong-Hwi raised his right arm, wrapped in the Cosmos, as he stared at the four shocked Chaos Humans.

“This is the final experiment. Endure the best you can,” he said.