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Translated By Arcane Translations
Translator: FusionX
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Rage and hatred surged from deep within him, and his rationality seemed to melt away under the onslaught of his destructive urges. A voice echoed repeatedly in his mind,
Every time he heard that voice, the demons around him were obliterated.
At the same time, his consciousness faded, as if someone was dragging him down.
‘…I finally understand.’
Why Asuka and Seo-yeon were so terrified when they couldn’t control their talents.
‘This is what it feels like to be consumed by a talent.’
Like some foreign entity was invading his soul, like a symbiote taking over Spider-Man as its host.
‘…If I lose consciousness now, I’ll be consumed.’
So he desperately clung to his sanity as he slaughtered the demons, constantly reminding himself.
Whoosh, whoosh!
The ground was ablaze with hellfire.
This barren earth couldn’t sustain even a single blade of grass.
The stench of sulfur stung his nostrils.
That’s impossible; the armor’s purification filter should be blocking any smells.
Lava, not water, flowed in the Yalu River.
Mount Baekdu hadn’t erupted yet. The river should be dry, not flowing with lava.
Therefore, the hellish landscape he was seeing was an illusion, a fabrication of the talent.
He told himself this as he chased a fleeing demon.
“Where do you think you’re going?”
He reached out towards the demon’s head with his right hand.
He couldn’t see Thunderbolt anymore, but it didn’t matter.
He could kill demons with his bare hands.
Grab!
He seized the fleeing demon by the head…
…and ripped it in half.
The demon’s head and upper body were split in two, vanishing into ash before it could even scream.
『……!!』
The surrounding demons shrieked in terror.
He brushed the black ash from his hands…
…kicked off the ground…
…and lunged at another demon.
『…! ……!!』
The demon shrieked in an unintelligible language.
“Shut up, demon.”
He frowned, disgusted, and threw a punch.
Boom!
The demon’s head exploded like a balloon.
Thud. Poof.
The headless demon collapsed and turned to ash.
He turned to look for his next prey…
Thump, thump, thump!
…when several attacks struck his body.
He felt the impacts, but no pain; he wasn’t taking any damage.
He clenched his fists, exhaling a hot breath and began to unleash overwhelming violence upon the demons.
He kicked the nearest demon.
Bang!
The demon’s waist exploded with a deafening roar, disproportionate to a simple kick.
As soon as the demon vanished into ash he kicked another into the air and brought his elbow down on it.
He brutally and mercilessly ended the demons’ pathetic lives.
He pierced a demon’s chest and grabbed another and smashed its spine with his knee and ripped a demon’s head from its body.
As he continued his slaughter, relying solely on his physical strength the demons stopped charging at him and began to back away hesitantly, trembling with fear.
And when one demon turned and fled…
『……!』
『…! ……!』
『……! ……!!』
…the demons around him… no, the demons who had witnessed his carnage… fled, screaming in unintelligible shrieks.
He brushed the black ash from his hands, opened his inventory and took out two miniguns and 33 Thunderbolts.
Click, click.
He held a minigun in each hand and simultaneously used telekinesis to lift the 33 Thunderbolts that had fallen to the ground.
He chose Thunderbolts over more miniguns because they were lighter, despite having comparable firepower.
He wasn’t proficient in telekinesis yet, and his mana could only sustain 33 Thunderbolts at a time.
It was his optimal setup for slaughtering demons.
『……! ──!!』
The demons, seeing his weapons, shrieked in terror and desperately tried to escape.
But the demons were packed together like a colony of ants, so those trying to flee couldn’t easily squeeze through the crowd.
Some demons, giving up on escaping, charged towards him.
Rumble, bang, bang, bang─!!
Of course, the suicidal demons were obliterated by the 33 Thunderbolts circling him like a Gundam’s funnels, leaving not even ash behind.
Whir!
The barrels of the miniguns in his hands spun.
The demons’ attempts to escape became even more frantic and the moment a demon, realizing it couldn’t escape through the horde, leaped into the air…
BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOM!!
…he unleashed a barrage of white flashes of light from the two miniguns.
At the same time, the 33 Thunderbolts roared, unleashing a storm of lightning upon the demons.
The demons, caught in the crossfire of white flashes and lightning, exploded.
He was overwhelmed with a sense of elation and euphoria, surpassing even exhilaration, as he watched the demons vanish without a trace.
Lost in those feelings, he started brainstorming even more efficient and brutal ways to slaughter the demons.
He was devising ways to inflict maximum pain and ensure a swift death…
Ding
A skill activation confirmation message appeared in his vision, along with a system notification.
‘Ah.’
He felt a chill run down his spine.
He immediately activated the 1st injector on his Potion Auto-Injector.
Stab.
The injector’s needle pierced his side and a refreshing energy, brimming with vitality, spread through his body.
As it reached his head the cruel and merciless demon-slaughtering ideas vanished, replaced by clarity.
‘…Wow, I was really swept away.’
Those were thoughts he would never have entertained under normal circumstances.
And while he could understand feeling exhilarated he would never feel joy or pleasure from killing Fallen.
‘…When did I start losing control?’
He pondered this as he eliminated the demons… no, the Fallen… around him.
At first, he had been desperately trying to hold onto his consciousness by negating each element of the altered landscape.
The ground, the river, the smell…
He dismissed the hellish scenery as illusions and then he started killing the fleeing demon… ah, that’s when it started.
He realized he had started losing control to the talent when he began tearing apart the demons with his bare hands.
‘Ah, I was trying to control the talent with my own strength…’
It wasn’t working.
He decided to actively use the Potion Auto-Injector, which he had been trying to save for emergencies.
As if refusing to obey… Demon Slayer (S), suppressed by the energies of the Golden Apple and the Spirit Energy Pill, began to resist violently.
He scoffed and activated the 2nd injector.
Stab.
The two energies spread throughout his body as the injector activated.
The talent’s emotions – the rage, the hatred, the destructive urges – were suppressed, as if weighed down by a boulder.
The talent still struggled to control him but it was rendered immobile, pinned down by the energies of the elixirs and the divine elixir.
The hellish landscape began to revert.
The ground, ablaze with hellfire, turned back into ordinary earth…
…the stench of sulfur disappeared…
…and the Yalu River, flowing with lava, returned to its watery state.
The Fallen, who had looked like demons, returned to their human forms.
『…Uwaaagh! Run─!』
He could understand their unintelligible language again.
As he obliterated the Fallen with his miniguns and Thunderbolts he pondered what to do about the talent.
‘Hmm… this means I can’t evolve the talent to S+ rank.’
The conditions for evolution required controlling the talent with pure physical and mental strength, not through external means like potions or items.
But he didn’t think he could control it at his current level…
…so he had no choice but to rely on potions for now.
He thought this and replaced the Potion Auto-Injector (A) with a fresh injector.
‘Terra.’
– Master!
Terra’s voice responded immediately, as if she had been waiting.
– You can finally hear me.
Her voice was still monotonous, but he could sense concern and relief in her tone.
He apologized, explaining that he hadn’t been able to hear her because he had been under the talent’s influence.
‘…So it seems I’ll have to rely on potions to control the talent for the time being.’
– I agree.
He sighed as Terra readily agreed and asked,
‘Terra, what rank do I need to reach to control Demon Slayer?’
– Master’s current rank is mid-high… Master, a Fallen is attacking you from behind!
‘Yeah, I know.’
He knew even without Terra telling him, thanks to his killing intent detection.
And the moment he sensed it, he turned around and obliterated the charging Fallen with his minigun.
Seemingly relieved by his quick reaction, Terra continued where she left off.
– …rank. So, to control Demon Slayer, you will need to reach at least mid-high rank.
‘Mid-high rank… I see.’
It was the answer he had expected.
After all, Demon Slayer (S) was a high-grade talent, starting at 1 million points and costing a hefty 4.5 million, which was quite high even among S-rank talents.
So he had assumed that he would need to be at least mid-high rank, the minimum rank required to control S-rank talents.
‘Wait… then what about Seo-yeon? She evolved her talent when she was at the same rank as me, mid-high, right?’
Seo-yeon’s innate talent, ‘Sword Prodigy’…
When he had checked the point price for Demon Slayer, he had also checked Sword Prodigy’s, it cost 3 million points.
She had evolved that talent at the measly rank of mid-high.
Even if she had his help(?), it was an incredible feat.
He voiced his thoughts, and Terra, for the first time, sighed.
– Haa… Master, you should consider Black Fox an exception.
An exception?
Why?
– The reason Black Fox was able to evolve her talent was because of you… never mind.
‘Hey, why did you stop?’
– …It’s better for your own well-being to just consider her an exception, Master.
‘…Is it that serious?’
– Yes, it is.
…Then he had no choice but to consider her an exception.
He nodded at Terra’s warning and stopped walking.
He was currently in the middle of the black wave…
…barely outside the blast radius of the explosions that would soon engulf the demonic energy bridges.
『Block him! No, protect it!』
『Stop that monster and the golems from reaching the demonic energy bridges!』
『Hey, you asshole! How are we supposed to stop him?! How are we going to get through that barrage?!』
‘Yeah, how are they going to stop me?’
Or rather, how were they even going to get past the barrage surrounding him?
How were they going to get through the hail of bullets from two miniguns and 33 Thunderbolts firing non-stop?
He spun in place, shouting a rhetorical question they couldn’t hear.
…He had to spin.
The effect of ‘Super Accuracy’ guaranteed a 100% hit rate on whatever he ‘focused’ so he had to fire while spinning, even if it looked awkward.
Of course, he could use ‘Clairvoyance (A)’ instead of spinning but he was currently controlling 33 Thunderbolts with telekinesis.
And Clairvoyance consumed a considerable amount of mana.
So he couldn’t use it in this situation.
As he was thinking this a group of Fallen charged towards him, as if they had some kind of plan.
Their bodies turned as hard as steel, suggesting they had physical enhancement skills.
But unfortunately for them they were charging towards the minigun, not the Thunderbolts.
And the minigun, Angel of Death, had ‘Special Armor-Piercing Rounds (B+)’, with the effect, Deals additional and fixed damage to ‘enemies’ with armor.
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[This is part 1 of the chapter part 2 will be release as the next chapter since the chapter is approx 4k words long]
