Chapter 131: The Awakened Wizard

[Translator – Aren]

My head was throbbing.

Looking at the world through one eye took more concentration than I would’ve liked. I lost my footing after only two steps, my balance collapsing. If I hadn’t already experienced being one-eyed during the Seoul expedition, I probably would’ve been out of action for quite some time.

Kneeling on one knee, I felt the floor tilt slightly and adjusted my gun first.

As I shifted the sling from my right shoulder to my left, I saw my hand miss a couple of times.

Thinking, ‘This should be about right,’ only to feel my hand actually landing somewhere else was a truly bizarre experience.

It wasn’t until my fingers grasped at empty air instead of the rough sling that I truly realized what I’d lost. Vision was absolute for humans. People went on about the five senses, but in reality, sight accounted for most of them. Now that I’d lost one eye, I could say that with full confidence.

The despair of a blind person had to be greater than that of a deaf person.

My breathing started to falter.

My hands shook.

The more I dwelled on what I’d lost, the more I realized just what I’d sacrificed, and the bitter sense of loss swept through one corner of my chest like the aroma of bitter coffee. But few people called coffee swage just because it was bitter.

I was someone who could savor the aroma of coffee.

-Clench.

After adjusting the sling over my left shoulder, I gripped the hilt of the Four-Tiger Sword and raised my head again.

The sense of loss and lingering attachment I was feeling now didn’t only bring regret. It proved what the human Baek Jemin was capable of offering up for himself. For the sake of my most precious self, I had sacrificed the most precious thing I possessed.

I, Baek Jemin, had sacrificed half the world I saw to magic.

I was different from those bug-like non-wizards who weren’t prepared to sacrifice a damn thing and from those fake wizards who only trusted their shallow knowledge and refused to pay the price. I was different from those pathetic bastards who wanted power without giving up anything in return.

That conviction raised me back to my feet in the middle of this chaos.

The entire hospital, nearly 10 stories tall, had begun collapsing, but it wasn’t pancaking straight down all at once.

Concrete dust coming from shattered walls and ceilings floated through the air like a pale fog, while rebar and H-beams groaned as they bent and stretched, and glass that couldn’t take the strain anymore shattered apart.

-Gnnnnnk...

Beneath the death throes of the hospital’s skeleton, chunks of the ruined building were collapsing at all sorts of angles. Some massive sections had already titled vertically after their floors and ceiling had broken apart, while others had shattered completely, scattering stones and fragments of rebar downward.

They all had one thing in common.

Instead of crashing down and forming a mountain chain of debris, they were slowly sinking through the air, drifting like plastic bags descending through the sea.

Inside the collapsing hospital, but and down had become a complete mess. I was somewhere around the middle, kneeling on a piece of floor that was still able to bear its load. Above me, a huge section of wall jutted up almost vertically, and Father Kang Peter and Gangnam Thousand-Miles Eyes were each clinging to it, bracing themselves against the fall.

In all that chaos, what came through clearly were the breaths through gas masks, a giant laugh, and Father Kang Peter’s benevolent voice as he held himself against the titled wall with the fingernails of his right hand dug into it.

"Go Ryeoha-ssi, why aren’t you attacking anymore?”

-Huuff…

Beyond the hazy clouds of dust, someone’s breathing through a gas mask grew a little rougher. Gangnam Thousand-Miles Eyes was hanging in front of the wall some distance away from Father Kang Peter, a bit below.

Father Kang Peter drew the nuclear warhead cradled in his left arm closer to his chest and gave a short laugh. He was clearly showing off Inverted Hand-branch, Stage 1 [Civilization Desecration].

I thought Father Kang Peter would use that nuclear warhead as a shield.

To shut down Go Ryeoha’s long-ranged attacks using her Fire-spewing Hands.

But even that thought was based on the shabby mindset of a non-wizard. The mindset of an ordinary person.

Father Kagn Peter burst out laughing….

And simply let go of the nuclear warhead.

-Clang!

A chill ran down my spine as I watched the released warhead slide and tumble down through the rubble below my feet like a pinball. Damn it, is it really fine for that thing to just fall? I almost instinctively caught it inside the effect of [Cognitive Imposition] 100%, but the sensation of blood running down my cheek and wetting my lips snapped me back to reality.

He wasn’t doing this to blow himself up. He showed full confidence.

It was a declaration that he could wipe us out even without the damn nuclear warhead.

Father Kang Peter, still holding himself up with his fingernails dug into the wall, and Gangnam Thousand-Miles Eyes below him, with the tail end of his Predator Spine whip-sword embedded in the wall, both turned to look our way as they kept themselves from falling.

That was when Go Ryeoha hero-landed next to me.

-Thud!

Her poncho with the rabbit brooch flustered as she approached.

She must’ve been hiding behind the collapsing hospital rubble before jumping out. I wondered why she hadn’t launched some ranged attacks, but judging from her hands, she’d apparently used up all the bottle caps and smooth stones she normally had with her.

"Jemin-ssi. Father Peter…Isn’t an ordinary wizard."

"I can tell.”

I nearly snapped at her for stating the obvious but did my best to hold it in.

That was when Father Kang Peter kicked off the wall he’d been hanging from and leapt upward, laughing heartily.

-Tap!

Fast. Experienced.

A cold bead of sweat slid down the back of my neck.

I instinctively raised the Four-Tiger Sword and tracked him with my one eye, but even before my depth perception became a mess, he was so good at moving outside a human’s field of vision that even Heart-branch, Stage 2 [Physical Enhancement] had trouble keeping up with him.

He kicked off the nearly vertical wall and jumped across it, flipping through the air several times and vanishing into the dust cloud, then emerged from some completely unexpected angle and direction, crouched down, and looked at us from above.

If I let my guard down even a little bit, I felt like I’d lose sight of him completely.

Normal human peripheral vision couldn't keep up with him. This was on a completely different level from an insect darting out of sight. He’d let himself slide down a titled piece of debris like it was a playground slide, only for a single blink to pass and reveal him calmly strolling far above where he’d just been.

He swept his hands through the pale dust cloud as he moved through it, and whenever his outline seemed to blur for just a moment, I’d find him hanging from a wall and glaring sharply in our direction.

These weren’t even jumps along a normal parabola.

It wasn’t teleportation either, because he clearly left footprints behind, but those prints appeared so scattered that even tracing his route was incredibly hard.

He precisely and subtly exploited human common sense. One moment he would walk normally, then use overwhelming agility and utterly unpredictable movements to slip outside human sight. He was far too adept at that.

This wasn’t instinct. This absolutely came from experience.

You didn’t move like this after killing just one or two wizards.

Even Go Ryeoha focused on silently closing the distance and reducing his blind spots rather than recklessly charging him. Yet instead of attacking us directly, Father Kang Peter lightly jumped onto a piece of rebar snapping apart in real time above my head.

-Ting, tingting…

Standing on that piece of rebar as it continued breaking beneath him, Father Kang Peter raised the collar of his tracksuit and shook the dust from his hands. His wrinkled eyes curved into a gentle smile.

"Go Ryeoha-ssi. If you stay beside someone with all 5 branches, you'll inevitably be exposed someday. That vile ecstasy you felt while executing wizards for the sake of people who couldn't use magic…”

Before he could finish, something tore through the air.

-Paaak!

Go Ryeoha charged at Father Kang Peter on the rebar.

Did that hit a nerve?

With Father Kang Peter’s laughter, explosions began erupting all around them.

The two vanished together into the hazy dust clouds and building debris.

I’d been thinking fighting Father Kang Peter with one eye would be quite hard, so I secretly felt grateful when Go Ryeoha volunteered to schedule the whole burden herself. Right. Other people should take the risks while I just learn magic.

Of course, I considered following them so we could gang up on him, but the moment a loud, clear sound came from the other direction, I quickly changed my mind.

-Shhrrrrrrk...

Up on the wall above me, I saw Gangnam Thousand-Miles Eyes climbing by making full use of his Predator Spine whip-sword, like some kind of cable-car pulley. It seemed like he was trying to get farther up and find some intact patch of ground, but our eyes met along the way.

I wasn’t someone that would just wait around for my enemy to finish their transformation sequence.

-Tap!

I leapt up straight toward him.

I chose another method because I’d probably bawl my eyes out if I swung my precious Four-Tiger Sword and broke the blade. I’d come striking down with the speed and weight of a Heart-branch wizard behind me. Like I’d become one massive meteorite myself!

My poncho flipped up.

I adjusted the sling so it wouldn’t cover my gas mask and placed my left hand against my chest.

A few drops of blood splashed onto the inside of the gas-mask lens.

The drops ran upward across the lens as if they were defying gravity.

In an instant, my stomach tightened greatly and saliva flooded my mouth.

But that didn’t mean I could avoid an impact that was already guaranteed to happen.

-Boom.

A human body made of flesh and blood collided with a heap of concrete made of stone.

What broke was the concrete, though.

The titles that had once made up the hospital floor shattered with a loud crunch, while the rebar inside bent and snapped under the pressure with eerie shrieks. But I didn’t hit Gangnam Thousand-Miles Eyes. I only smashed the concrete right beside where he’d been hanging.

Diminished depth perception due to losing an eye, my concentration dropping from the sudden hunger… I had endless excuses for it.

But Gangnam Thousand-Miles Eyes made a quick decision.

-Whoosh!

He let go of the wall and dropped.

Gangnam Thousand-Miles Eyes threw himself toward the nuclear warhead, falling far below with hollow, tin-can-like clangs.

There was no way I could just sit by and let that happen, so I threw myself after him.

-Boom.

Using the force from crushing the concrete beneath my feet as a springboard, I launched myself into the air.

The moment I spun once with my remaining eye, the motion sickness I’d thought was gone came back. Nausea surged up and made my lips tremble, but an equally intense thrill rose with it, barely keeping me from throwing up.

The collapsing hospital.

Shadows of debris drifting through the air and slowly sinking.

Wizards leaping through the gaps between them.

Below me, amid the hazy dust clouds, falling stone fragments, and shards of rebar pouring down like sand, I saw Gangnam Thousand-Miles Eyes plummeting with one hand desperately stretched toward the nuclear warhead. He was desperately reaching for the cross painted on it with blood.

I couldn’t catch him if I kept falling at just this speed.

So I kicked my legs around like I was flailing through water, hoping my soles would catch on anything at all. Then my feet found a section that hadn’t collapsed yet. A cracking pillar covered in crumbling tiles.

In that moment, I rolled my tongue around inside my mouth without a shred of hesitation.

Upright Alteration-type, Eyes-branch, Stage 3.

[Cognitive Dissonance] 100%.

-Tap!

My floating foot firmly slammed against the crumbling pillar. I immediately took off running. Every step shattered and tore chunks from the pillar’s surface, but the whole building was going to break apart anyway, so I didn’t really care.

Instead, I focused on Gangnam Thousand-Miles Eyes below me, still reaching for the nuclear warhead.

I ran down the pillar toward him and loosened my gun sling. I had no free hand to shoulder the rifle, so I just held it out. I looped the dangling sling around my hand once, grabbed the grip, and placed my index finger over the trigger.

-Suuup, Haaah.

One deep breath.

I’d already killed people plenty of times.

I opened fire immediately.

-Ratatatatatata!!!

Gun smoke swallowed my gas mask. The faint smell of gunpowder seeped through the filter, and spent casings struck my poncho before bouncing upward. Most of the bullets missed, but some hit.

I heard Gangnam Thousand-Miles Eyes curl up and scream.

"Aaaagh!”

This was my chance.

I adjusted my grip on the Four-Tiiger Sword and prepared to charge.

At the moment, the Ears-branch magic that had been useless until now detected a lethal threat.

-Trickle, trickle, trickle, trickle…

The sound of a babbling stream.

Hostility.

I immediately released [Cognitive Dissonance], then kicked off the pillar beneath my feet and sprang upwards, spinning once through the air. That allowed me to see that something had slammed into the exact spot I’d been standing in a moment ago.

-Boom!

A hand.

A wrinkled hand.

It had punched so deep into the pillar that once supported a 10-story hospital that only the area around the wrist remained visible.

Everything below the twist was bone.

A long, fish-spine-like bone whip with almost no human flesh left on it.

Father Kang Peter. He’d vanished into the dust cloud with Go Ryeoha, and now he’d stretched his arm all the way over here to attack me too.

I didn’t waste time making some half-assed judgment.

I immediately threw myself behind a piece of rubble.

Not long after I felt myself float into the air, I caught a glimpse through the gap beneath my feet of what was happening.

Sparks flew.

Something white and translucent, sharp as a fish spine lined with sawteeth, hard as steel, and flexible as a tail, swept beneath my feet. The sound of it scraping through reinforced concrete like a blade grated and echoed around me.

-Shrrrrrrrrrrk—!!!

The concrete shattered.

It was sliced apart like tofu.

Walls, pillars, ceilings, floors…everything, no matter if it was drifting through the air so still supporting the building, was torn apart.

Broken fragments pattered and hit against my poncho.

But the danger wasn’t over.

The sound of a babbling stream rang clearly inside my head.

-Trickle, trickle, trickle…

It was different from before.

I could tell which direction the sound was coming from.

I aimed my rifle through the concrete dust coming from the shattered debris and kept pulling the trigger as I ran across intact pillars. With Heart-branch, Stage 2 [Physical Enhancement], running along walls had become easy for me now.

My stomach was growling uncontrollably, but a thrill every bit as intense as the hunger was keeping my mind as sharp as a blade.

That was when I heard a strange sound.

-Thud!

Something struck out in front of me.

Rather than make some lukewarm optimistic assumption, I slightly tilted upward, I caught sight of what it was at the edge of my vision.

A wrinkled finger.

A finger with a fish-spine-like bone whip attached to the end. Father Kang Peter had fired off one of his own damn fingers.

-Thud! Thud! Thud!

Fingers shot through the hazy dust cloud.

Some were deliberately fired with gaps between them, aimed along the path ahead of me to restrict my movement. Wherever a finger passed, the dust cloud would part slightly.

-Bang, ratatata!

Meanwhile, from another direction beyond the hazy dust cloud, Gangnam Thousand-Miles Eyes’ bullets came pouring in.

Shell casings showered down wherever I passed, and gun smoke lingered behind like long contrails.

-Crack, crack.

A chilling, threatening sound came from behind me.

-Thud!

A finger plunged deep into the pillar I was about to step on.

The deeply embedded finger hooked into it like a grappling hook and began pulling with overwhelming force.

-Creaaaak!

The bone whip connected to the end of the finger joint stretched taut, letting out a bizarre noise.

I was standing between life and death.

I kicked off the wall with all my strength and launched myself upward.

That dizzying sensation I used to feel diving into a swimming pool embraced me.

And once again, I witnessed that milky-white bone whip shred the concrete slaps I’d just left behind.

-Shrrrrrrrrk—!!!

The concrete was torn away in chunks as if fingers were ripping apart raw flesh.

The milky-white bone whip lashed along wherever the fingernail touched, gleaming as it whipped around.

It had enough vicious force to tear human flesh to shreds the instant it touched.

It might not be able to handle tank armor, but couldn't it totally wreck an ordinary car pretty easily?

These stupid thoughts crossed my mind as I fell.

Watching the segments of the bone whip being pulled back, I hid myself among the dust clouds and debris. Calling it a few seconds felt kind of ridiculous. It was an instant that felt like an eternity. I immediately removed the magazine without hesitation.

As I got it out, I roughly dragged my left hand along the gun barrel, almost scraping it.

-Click.

The bone whip reacted to that sound.

At the same time, blood burst from my left hand.

The loud sound of a babbling stream echoed through my head.

-Trickletrickletrickletrickletrickle…

I loosened the hand gripping the handle slightly. Instead, as I fell, desperately clutching only the sling, I quickly wrote words on the barrel. 

Hand-branch, Strage 2, [Enchant]. I wrote [Sturdy] on it.

And I came dangerously close to dropping the gun.

I wasn’t afraid of the backlash.

The only thing that mattered to me was how effectively I could use magic.

Amid the thick dust cloud, I watched the world through gas-mask lenses coated gray by concrete dust and yanked on the rifle sling.

It was coming.

At that moment, I rolled my tongue inside my mouth.

Upright Alteration-type Eyes-branch, Stage 2.

[Cognitive Distortion] 100%.

In the endlessly slowing time, I saw a hazy outline beyond the dust cloud. A single joint of a human finger was flying toward me, covered with gray spots all over. Trailing behind it was a fish-spine-like bone whip.

I pulled on the sling as though hauling it toward me.

Damn fast.

There was a slight delay before the rifle began following the sling.

It tipped sideways before starting to slide toward me along the taut sling.

However, a gap opened between the loose sling and the rifle.

More than enough room for the bone whip to slip through.

-Clack!

Caught it.

Like sliding down a rope, the bone whip caught on the barrel of the K2 and slid along it.

Of course the balance was completely off, and the muzzle tried to swing upward, but I forced it down with my right hand holding the Four-Tiger Sword.

Fuck...

Back in the military, I’d whined to the instructor that I couldn't do this stuff because my legs wouldn’t stop shaking.

But now, here I was doing it on my own without my legs shaking at all. Instead, my chest was.

-Kagagagagahk!

The K2 was being ground away.

Sparks sprayed around violently.

The sudden weight made the bone whip wobble and tilt, but its grotesquely immense force somehow managed to support my entire weight instead.

The distance between Father Kang Peter and me rapidly closed inside the dust cloud.

By the time his blurred outline became clearer, I took my right hand along with the Four-Tiger sword off the muzzle after pressing down on it until now.

The muzzle rose, throwing off my balance and titling my entire field of vision.

As long as I could put the force of my fall behind it, that was enough.

I had something in my right hand that could overcome a one-eyed man’s lack of depth perception.

I let go of the rifle sling and dropped, raising the Four-Tiger Sword and swinging it as I recited the sword verse.

"Slay monsters and banish demons."

Then I closed my eyes.

So that Inverted Ryes-branch magic couldn’t stop me.

"Root out treachery and eradicate evil!"

-Blink.

The chunk of steel bit into flesh.

I felt the tip of the blade scrape against something hard and get deflected.

Few sensations were as unpleasant as a blade slicing through flesh.

At least, that was how it felt to someone like me, who’d never even cut up a fish on a chopping board in my life.

-Clack.

Human flesh and muscle gave way easily before a sharp blade, but bone was another story.

Only then did I realize that master swordsmen weren’t people who simply chopped straight through bone. They were masters of butchering who cut around it. I could feel the edge of the blade getting damaged.

But I had an excuse for that as well.

My eyes were closed. I was just swinging wherever the sword led me.

And yet, I still cut him.

-Slice.

I couldn’t cut through the hard bone, but the blood still sank into the softer cartilage between the joints and severed it. The sensation traveled up the hilt all the way to my shoulder. It was so chilling that my entire body ended up shuddering.

But what sent a greater shiver through me was the brief exclamation Father Kang Peter let out.

"Ah."

A sigh. A dying gasp. Non-wizards might think that was all it was.

Back when I was a non-wizard, I probably would’ve thought the same.

But with the sensation of cutting human flesh traveling up my fingertips, scraping against bone before severing cartilage and running all the way up to my shoulder, Father Kang Peter’s brief exclamation sounded different. The emotion that swung along with it wasn’t anguish.

Approval. Admiration. Respect.

As a fellow wizard, I could understand.

It was a bond only someone who had chosen to sacrifice their humanity and someone who had chosen to sacrifice half their world could understand.

Disgust and recognition swept through me...

And I surrendered my body to the Four-Tiger Sword’s guidance.

-Clang!

The swinging blade knocked the bone whip aside.

Cold sweat streamed down my face as I let the sword drag me along with my eyes closed. The eyelid over my one remaining eye trembled, desperately wanting to open and see what was in front of me.

The fear of death.

Faced with the absolute terror that everything might end meaninglessly, the futile thought crept in that maybe things would be different if I opened my eye.

-Clang! Clang! Clang! Clang!

The force behind the bone whip was truly tremendous.

Fighting with my eye closed made that even clearer. I had to spread my stance, twist my waist, and swing with all my momentum and speed exactly as the Four-Tiger Sword guided me just to barely knock it away. And I had to keep doing it without pause.

If I let my guard down just because I’d blocked it once, I’d be torn to shreds.

It was a brutal assault no ordinary human body could possibly withstand.

-Shrrrrrrk…

The sound of those sawtooth spines scraping across the ground, sliding off my blade but still closing in, echoed inside my mind.

If they touched my bare flesh, they’d tear chunks out like shark teeth. Knowing that only intensified the chills I felt.

Fighting with my eyes closed was just that frightening.

Humans feared what they couldn’t see even more.

-Clang!

The metallic stench coming off the blade mingled with the odor of blood inside my gas mask.

Drenched in sticky sweat, fighting through my gnawing hunger, I began sweating so heavily that thick, sap-like beads streamed down my face.

My legs trembled so badly that I nearly lost my balance, but I held myself up with sheer muscle and bone.

The Go Ryeoha’s shout came from somewhere far away.

"Hubae-nim! Dodge!”

-Claaaaaang...

I knocked the bone whip away with all my strength, then stumbled backward.

I’d almost never tried walking backward with my eyes closed before, so my balance fell apart immediately. Even with the back of my head in danger of cracking open, I desperately kept my eyes shut. If Inverted Eyes-branch magic got me, it would all be over.

If my specialty, Eyes-branch magic, my very perception, was turned against me, there was no way I could ever win.

Knowing that, I bit my lower lip, soothed my already badly swollen tongue with saliva, and landed hard on my ass.

-Boom.

My ass hitting the ground sounded pretty damn loud.

Though in fact, even that was something I couldn’t hear properly anymore because of how badly my ears had been overworked.

-Ruuuuumble……

As the framework slowly sagged and snapped…

-Creeaaak……

As the rebar screamed while breaking apart.

I felt an overwhelming presence shoot past directly in front of me like a thrown spear. Dust beat against the lens of my gas mask first. Then the floor shattered and caved in.

When I suddenly found myself about to fall, my eye opened before I could stop it.

Fortunately, Father Kang Peter wasn’t glaring at me.

Instead, one of his arms had been torn away, making it seem as if he had been hit by a train. So that was why Go Ryeoha had shouted. I had no idea what she’d thrown, but she’d taken Father Kang Peter’s entire left arm with it.

The rubble where Gangnam Thousand-Miles Eyes, Father Kang Peter, and I had been standing was also breaking apart as though it had been struck by a cannonball.

Kang Peter, however, didn’t seem bothered by any of this in the slightest.

Quite the opposite, he was laughing like a lunatic, blood pouring from his exposed ribs, then raised his one remaining arm.

"Go Ryeoha-ssi, why aren’t you using what I taught you? Look at Baek Jemin-ssi. Look at that brilliant resolve!”

Father Kang Peter’s right arm began coming apart and stretching out.

The flesh melted into tendons, while muscles twisted together to bind the pieces of bone into one.

So that was how the milky-white bone whip was made.

I shuddered.

Even as I fell, I couldn’t take my eye off the sight.

That…was probably Inverted Hand-branch, Stage 3.

If Upright Hand-branch, Stage 3 was [Telekinesis], then Inverted Hand-branch, Stage 3 was probably something like [Life Desecration].

If it gave you the power to treat living people to pieces, I’d say that name would be quite fitting.

I twisted in midair.

My stomach felt like it was about to stick to my spine from hunger, grimacing as I panted, but I still forced myself to look around for something I could use as a foothold and kick off from.

At that moment, I was met with a pretty strange sight.

-Clang!

It was Gangnam Thousand-Miles Eyes.

The tail of the Predator Spine whip-sword he was holding was buried in a wall tilted nearly horizontally.

The whip-sword stretched out, cartilage dangling between each segment, supporting the weight of Gangnam Thousand-Miles Eyes hanging below it.

Gangnam Thousand-Miles Eyes was coughing harshly inside his gas mask.

"Cough, kegh, khg..."

His side.

He’d taken one of the bullets I had hit him earlier to the side.

But the hand that had been holding his grimoire was now clutching six human eyeballs instead.

I rolled my tongue inside my mouth.

Upright Alteration-type Eyes-branch, Stage 3.

[Cognitive Dissonance] 100%.

My fading vision wasn’t what mattered right now.

I had to finish this here.

With that murderous intent inhabiting me, I arbitrarily changed the gravity I perceived. My falling body began to float, then started dropping in another direction. Straight toward Gangnam Thousand-Miles Eyes dangling below.

But battered or not, he was still an Ears-branch, Stage 4 wizard.

He probably sensed my intent immediately because even as he coughed, he pulled the Predator Spine whip-sword out of the wall and dropped down further. Falling wouldn’t save him, though.

I immediately released [Cognitive Dissonance] and followed.

Gangnam Thousand-Miles Eyes and I both fell downward.

Through the slowly sinking chunks of rubble, we hurled ourselves endlessly downward, both racing toward a future where we’d be buried beneath the debris.

In the end, Gangnam Thousand-Mikles Eyes tossed the eyeballs he was holding into the air without the slightest bit of hesitation and tore off his gas mask.

A grotesque face covered in burns and V-shaped scars.

A long tongue lolled out from it.

Within that face warped by burns, cuneiform symbols floated through eyes that held nothing but a thirst for revenge.

"Information Alteration! Come alive, breathe, and defeat the enemy!”

At first, I had no idea what he was doing.

Throwing eyeballs around and calling it Information Alteration? Had he finally lost his mind? My non-wizard mindset began to rise to the surface again.

But the moment Gangnam Thousand-Miles Eyes shouted, something bizarre happened.

I could feel eyes gazing at me.

Countless gazes that didn’t belong to Gangnam Thousand-Miles Eyes.

The sound of a babbling stream reached my ears.

-Trickletrickletrickletrickletrickle…

Only then did I turn my one eye away from Gangnam Thousand-Miles Eyes and toward the eyeballs he’d scattered through the air.

That was when my gaze met the eyeballs floating in midair.

All 6 were staring at me.

And the instant I saw their blood vessels bulging as though they were actively boiling, I instinctively shouted the sword verse.

"Slay monsters and banish demons! Root out treachery and eradicate evil!!!”

The Four-Tiger Sword guided me on its own.

My body spun around.

At the same time, a heavy blow struck the blade with a terrifying crack.

-Bang!

The Four-Tiger Sword vibrated strongly.

I barely managed to deflect it.

But there wasn’t just one.

The 6 eyeballs scattered around me all rolled at once, endlessly spraying eyeball juice in every direction through the air.

-Bang! Bang! Bang!

My body spun like crazy, moving wherever the sword led me.

If the Four-Tiger Sword hadn’t shone with a mystic light and forcibly guided my body, I would’ve been pierced through several times already. I didn’t even have the luxury of noticing myself sweat. Maybe it had already been running down my whole body for a while.

Then, at some point, it wasn’t the sword but my own intuition that forcibly guided the hilt into a swing.

That was when I felt it scrape against bone.

-Kagagagagagaghk!!!

Gangnam Thousand-Miles Eyes’ Predator Spine whip-sword had come at me through the eyeballs and was grinding against my Four-Tiger Sword.

His face warped by burns, covered in cuneiform, glared at me as he charged ferociously.

Gangnam Thousand-Miles Eyes.

Breathing heavily, even as he was dying, he was burning through every last bit of life he had left just to kill me.

And the 6 eyeballs circling around us turned toward me again.

"Die!”

-Clang!

I lost my grip on the sword.

I felt the Four-Tiger Sword leave my hand.

But if I couldn’t hold onto it anymore like that, I’d just use another method.

Before the Four-Tiger Sword flew away, I reached my right hand toward its blade.

So that it would cut my right hand.

-Slice!!

The broad flesh between my thumb and my index finger split open, and blood gushed out.

Hand-branch, Stage 1, [Blood of the Right Hand].

Magic that forced humanity’s common sense on monsters.

I scattered the blood, clenched my fist with it, and forcefully flung the drops in every direction.

-Splaaaatter!

3 of the eyeballs were hit.

They burst apart immediately, exploding while spraying their juices everywhere.

Gangnam Thousand-Miles Eyes seized that moment to thrust his Predator Spine whip-sword at me.

But……

Without Father Kang Peter’s bone whip, this much was manageable.

Through the vision of my one remaining eye, already flickering and wavering, splitting objects into doubles, I rolled my tongue inside my mouth to catch the whip-sword shooting toward me.

Upright Alteration-type, Eyes-branch, Stage 2.

[Cognitive Distortion] 100%.

-Shrrrrrrrk......

In this endlessly slowed time, my blood-covered right hand grabbed the vertebrae of the Predator Spine that formed the whip-sword’s blade.

-Crunch!

The Predator Spine’s bones crumbled and crushed like crackers. I merely swept my hand along them, and in an instant, the whip-sword began scattering into bone dust.

Gangnam Thousand-Miles Eyes had lost his weapon, and in that moment, I was reflected completely in those eyes covered in cuneiform.

Just as I had before with the power of Heart-branch, Stage 2 [Physical Enhancement], I willingly drove my hand toward Gangnam Thousand-Miles Eyes’ throat.

-Stab.

Hot.

I never thought about that when I was dealing with low-level wizards…

Human arteries were this strong, tough, and hot.

And all the more so when it was the throat of a high-level wizard burning with vengeance.

Blood and piss ran down Gangnam Thousand-Miles Eyes’ face, filled with burn scars, between the grotesque cuneiform symbols.

There were no tears.

Gangnam Thousand-Miles Eyes’ ruined face was so thoroughly covered in burns and cuneiform that there was no way to find any tear stains.

Only then did it truly sink in.

Today, solely for the sake of my own wish, I would break someone else’s wish.

I will become a Great Archmage.

Someone’s revenge, someone’s despair, someone’s hope…

Even if I have to trample every wish and every dream, I will.

With that resolve in mind, I clenched my hand.

Artery, tendon, nerve, muscle, flesh……

I gathered everything my fist could touch and ripped it all out.

-Cruuuunch!!!!