BXBX NOVEL Chapter 260 - Tournament Chapter (8)
[Lee Hochi]
A lot was happening right now. I couldn’t believe that someone was picking a real fight with me. It was too sudden. There was no way I could have done anything to make him hold a grudge. Oh, he must have thought I was Ho-jae.
I was immediately convinced. No matter who it was, if you were famous, you were bound to bear hatred and grudges. Ho-jae’s power was recognized among other planets as well. Perhaps that was why the silver-faced man looked like he was out for my blood.
[Don’t overthink it and focus on how you’ll deal with it.] Ho-jae’s calm voice rang in my mind.
You want me to deal with him? And how exactly do I do that?
While I was thinking about this, my opponent, who had been silent all this time, opened his mouth.
“I never thought I’d get to meet the famous scammer.”
What? What scammer?
[You know, you stole power from the gods back then, when you lied about being an apostle.]
Oh right. There was that.
I ran away from home before the 61st floor became Ho-jae’s domain and became exposed to the gods’ eyes for the first time. Naturally, countless gods’ eyes fell on me, their interests peaked, and they gave suggestions
At that time, when I had a lot of worries about myself, some of those suggestions sounded very tempting. As I pondered over some of the proposals, there was a competition between the gods without my knowledge. The gods, who had repeatedly asked me to come under them, eventually offered power as a bait.
I came to my senses at that point. It occurred to me that if I followed anyone, I might walk the wrong path, so I decided to go back to the 60th floor after accepting the powers.
The gods had no idea what I was thinking. When one god presented me with power, the other gods offered more, and I returned to the 60th floor, grateful for the powers.
[It was a clever move.] Ho-jae murmured.
It was Ho-jae that benefited from those powers, not me. After all, I had never used them before, and above all, I wasn’t interested. Ho-jae participated in the research of those powers, but that was all.
“I can’t believe you stole so many powers and disappeared,” the silver-faced opponent continued.
Excuse me? Stole? Who stole it? I just took what I was given.
“Did you know that there are only two chances for a single god to present power to a challenger? One chance is used up when they ask you to be an apostle.”
Of course, I knew about it. Ho-jae had received similar offers countless times. He was a professional in that area.
“Do you know how many people didn’t get a chance because of you?!” the opponent suddenly shouted, eyes blazing with anger.
[He doesn’t seem to have the powers. Hey, ask him if he has any powers.] Ho-jae urged me.
“Do you have power?” I questioned, following Ho-jae’s advice.
The opponent did not answer immediately. From that, I could figure out the answer.
“Oh. So you’re powerless, too. Is that why you’re angry? Because you don’t have power? Do you feel it was my fault? Don’t you think it was because of your poor abilities? “
I had never been in a battle since I was born, but Ho-jae had taught me enough. If I met with an enemy, I was to weaken the enemy’s confidence if I had the chance. And I was confident that I could do this well, even if I didn’t know anything else.
“No matter how much power I’ve stolen, I didn’t accept the apostle proposal. Oh, have you been offered the position of an apostle yet?”
[Aye. No way.] Ho-jae chimed in.
“Hmm? Just by looking at you, I can tell that you’ve crossed 50 floors of Hell’s Difficulty, but you haven’t even gotten an offer? Oh, my God. That can’t be true. No way. Have you not been getting apostle offers from the sixth floor?”
“Shut up,” the silver-faced man growled.
“Huh? What?”
“Shut up!” my opponent shouted again.
“Huh? I couldn’t hear you. I can’t hear the weak cries of a powerless person.”
╔═══════════════╗
[After 30 seconds, the duel will begin.]
╚═══════════════╝
I had been teasing my opponent for a long time before a message appeared.
Damn it. Give me about 300 more seconds.
“I’ll kill you,” the pissed-off man mumbled to himself. Phew, what a crazy guy.
“Hey, what should I do?” I tried talking to Ho-jae again.
[What to do? Kill him.] A simple answer came back.
[The Earth’s challengers have just come up. You know, if you let him go, he’ll come at them instead. Just kill him. Wipe out the issue.]
While I was talking to Ho-jae, I heard the sound of paper tearing from the air, and Yong-yong’s head popped out.
“Uncle!”
“Yong-yong!” Our pretty Yongyong.
There had been so many layers of barriers, but he had ripped through them all.
“Would you like some help?”
“No. It’s alright.”
It seems that he had sensed my danger and broke through the barrier. I was very grateful for his concern, but I had no intention of asking Yong-yong to fight for me.
“Huh? Is that a Hatchling? What are you going to do by summoning a little Hatchling, who has not even lived for 100 years? You don’t even know how to wield the enormous power you have. You certainly don’t even deserve the power.”
“Yong Yong is not a baby!”
Yong-yong tried to display maturity by shouting, but it didn’t work out very well.
“Yong-yong, go back to Baek Sung-woong,” I said, stroking Yong-yong’s head.
Yong-yong asked back with a worried face, “What about Uncle?”
“I’ll join you soon.”
Yong-yong thought for a moment and then disappeared, saying, “Okay.”
I was glad to see him go.
[What’s good about it? It would have been good to let Yong-yong experience it.]
“I don’t want to let him.”
Of course, I knew well that Yong-yong had little resistance to fighting and wouldn’t hesitate to kill someone. Still, I hated it.
[Then how are you going to take care of that?] Ho-jae asked.
“Well...”
[What? You can deal with this quickly. Even if you don’t kill him, you can still subdue him.]
“Still....”
It was hard to explain, but I didn’t want to deal with him.
Ho-jae sighed and said, [Yes. Even a tiny dog will bark and run, but who’ll deal with it sincerely? They’ll either shoo it away or ignore it. No matter how much you fight, you will win anyway. You don’t have to fight assholes if you have nothing to gain.]
Yeah. That was precisely how I felt right now.
[But it’s not always possible to avoid fighting like this. Someday you’ll end up fighting too. If I can’t help you, then you might regret not having experienced combat in advance.]
I thought so too. I might regret it someday.
[Okay? Well, if I were there, I’d have to show my strength anyway. That way, those flies would be less annoying.] said Ho-jae.
The message appeared at the same time as the words.
╔═══════════════╗
[In 10 seconds, the duel will begin.]
╚═══════════════╝
Less than 10 seconds before the message appeared the space in front of me began to compress. Darkness flowed from the tear in space and soon engulfed my opponent and me.
“I’ll kill you this time.”
* * * * * *
[Isad]
Looking at the oblivion in front of me, I thought about where this all had started. Was it when I was asked by the gods to test that power? Or when I was ordered to contact a challenger on the 57th floor? Maybe it was when I first received an invitation message from the Tutorial? I went back in time and slowly swam up in the river of my memories.
It was from that day when everything started. When the parasitic monster that the source vomited made our family a host. Since that day, I began to live with the idea of killing and destroying all the sources that exist in the world.
Although I was late, I chose Mado’s path and succeeded, beginning to conquer the sources one by one. Before I knew it, my name was spread all over the continent, and I was labelled a hero. Nevertheless, there were countless sources left on the continent, and there was still a long way to deal with them all.
Then the Tutorial appeared. The people who were invited there came back strong. Gradually, they began to root out the source.
I was happy, but I felt deprived. That had been my job; my duty; my role. It was not for those who used to plough fields and feed cattle.
While I was thinking about it, I was invited to the Tutorial. I thought the gods had finally recognized me. Of course, I chose Hell’s Difficulty. No matter how difficult it was, I didn’t have any difficulties.
Basic magic alone could clear most of the stages. Of course, the level of difficulty had increased rapidly, but so far, there had been no stage that tested my limits.
Even now, when I reached the 60th floor, I felt impatient. I was not much different from how I had been before the Tutorial. The only thing that mattered here was whether or not the gods granted me power. But no god gave me any power.
I blamed them. The gods were unaware of my abilities, even though they were gods. It seemed as though all hope crumbled around me. I had given up. For some reason, I may never be able to grasp that power.
Meanwhile, the Dragon, whom I had met on the 56th floor, made a suggestion.
“If the gods don’t care, why don’t you work for the Tutorial?:
I readily accepted the authority that may be rewarded according to my performance.
According to the mission they gave me, I contacted a female challenger on the 57th floor and created a link with several challengers who were in a similar position. When I came in here, I was assigned to meet that wicked scammer on the duel stage and test his strength.
I was confident. Until I met that scammer, the duel opponents I encountered were all rubbish. Before entering the Tutorial, they had all been worse than the low-ranking mercenaries. It was disappointing.
When I faced the scammer, similar feelings of disappointment and disgust washed over me. He was the same as everyone else, no more disappointing than the rest of the population. The gods had granted him such enormous strength, but he didn’t know how to deal with it. In all ways, he was useless. He didn’t do anything.
I was furious that such tremendous power was gifted to such an incompetent b*stard. So when the message notified me that the duel was about to begin, I was delighted.
And then, darkness came.
The oblivion, which veiled my eyes, hid the scammer and gave off an ominous feeling. It reeked of danger. My self-confidence evaporated, and thoughts of survival were the only thing that filled my head.
But I couldn’t. I couldn’t escape or turn my eyes from it.
An outstretched hand, reached to me from inside the dark, made me tremble in horror. I became paralyzed in a moment of terror, unable to look away.
What I felt was beyond fear. It was despair clutching at every fibre of my being. What had I been thinking? From the beginning, I knew nothing.
The hands, wrapped in the dark currents, had several colourful bracelets, and as I watched, the bracelets vanished one by one. I was sure. This was my end.
“Die, wizard,” the oblivion spat.
* * * * * *
[Lee Yeon-hee]
Blergh.
I grabbed the stand and bent down to hurl my stomach’s contents. Many people were throwing up like me or were utterly unconscious. Most of them were high-level challengers. The low-level challengers would not even be able to sense what had just happened.
It was only I in this arena who knew what was happening now. For most people, only two words that came out of the darkness would show that the other person’s body had disappeared. The problem was the way.
It was not that hard to kill a person with a word. You could chant a spell to burn them, freeze them to death, stab them to death, or push them to their end. But you couldn’t just kill them directly.
Converting death to life was not a surprising ability, albeit rare. The gods could heal, revive, and resuscitate.
However, the ability to convert life into death, and to force one to end, was an ability that one had never thought of or even imagined.
If the finger hadn’t been pointing directly at Isad after saying those two words, the power could have affected everyone. Could I have survived that power then? It was hard to tell.
“Are you still sure?”
Before I knew it, my hand holding the ring was full of sweat. It felt uncomfortable holding the ring.
No answer came from the ring.
“Answer me, are you still sure?”
I clenched the silent ring in frustration and slammed it on the floor. The despair that I had imagined in my head finally materialized before my eyes. It was horrifying to see Ho-jae’s ambiguous power surface, and I stepped out of the stage in a gloomy mood.