Chapter 131
I had certainly experienced a similar situation before.
That day when I screamed for my life.
Through a haze of consciousness, there had been someone who saved me without asking for anything in return.
Someone who rescued me from demons and gave me a new life.
After that day, Han Min-oh changed.
He reflected on the life he had turned his back on and worked harder, giving his best.
He no longer cowered before that damned fate.
He no longer felt inferior to his brother Han Shin, nor did his father’s indifference bother him anymore.
“You are…….”
Han Min-oh forced his mouth open despite the fact it wouldn’t stay open.
Blood gurgled in his throat like phlegm, but he paid it no mind.
There was no doubt who the owner of this voice was.
The man who’d passed by.
The man who had saved him three times already!
“Why… do you keep saving me?”
He didn’t ask for anything in return.
Han Min-oh had never received help like this in his life.
People only ever approached him lecherously after seeing the label that he was the second son of the Han Yeon Group, and then hurriedly looked away once they realized he was an empty shell.
They pointed fingers and ignored him.
No one had ever reached out first.
Not even once, let alone three times.
…Why.
When he had been kidnapped he hadn’t been aware enough to notice.
But the man hadn’t cared at all.
He even advised him that going out would mean death.
He didn’t expect repayment for his good deed.
“Do you… expect something from me?”
Han Min-oh didn’t trust a kindness that came with no strings attached.
The first time could be an accident.
But if it happened twice, three times, there had to be intent.
There’s no such thing as a free lunch in this world.
That’s what he’d learned.
“There is.”
Then the man, Park Chan-woo, spoke for the first time.
He said he wanted something.
…As expected.
If it weren’t for him, the breath that now barely hung in Han Min-oh would have ended long ago.
He had saved him three times — if he asked for his life, Han Min-oh would give it.
“Take it all… please tak—”
But he couldn’t finish the sentence.
His mind, already fading, reached its limit despite his desperate attempts to hold on.
Han Min-oh bowed his head deeply.
He fainted.
Watching that, Park Chan-woo thought.
‘I’ll take it. Your life.’
—
Park Chan-woo kept watching Han Min-oh.
He was judging whether the kid was a hypocrite, whether he was worth saving.
And an important point was whether Han Min-oh might be carrying the [Egg of the Divine Beast].
‘He seems different from Han Shin.’
Park Chan-woo observed Han Min-oh’s actions, his personality, his speech, and the instincts that slipped out, then drew a conclusion.
Han Min-oh was different from Han Shin.
They were so unlike each other that it was hard to believe they shared the same blood.
If it had been Han Shin, he wouldn’t have mingled with a civilian crowd to genuinely ask for help.
He would have procured the items they needed and tried to trade them.
And when the [Incarnations] chased after them, Han Shin would have fled without hesitation with the group.
The result was obvious.
There would probably have been over five hundred casualties.
But Han Min-oh didn’t do that.
‘Sacrifice.’
Something Han Shin didn’t have.
If the selfish, personal, calculating one like him ever spoke of self-sacrifice, Park Chan-woo would laugh his head off.
So he saved him.
He judged Han Min-oh worth saving.
At least Han Min-oh seemed to walk a different path than Han Shin.
He was the type who could never become an [Incarnation].
Park Chan-woo placed his hand on the chest of the fainted Han Min-oh.
Ziiiiiing—
For an instant, he sensed a vibration at his fingertips.
But the waves emitted from within were wildly unstable.
‘This vibration… is not ordinary.’
It was nothing like the mana wave he had felt when he touched him before.
Its size, strength, even its shape were different.
It was a kind of wave he had never sensed.
‘The Creators judged that Han Min-oh was not the contractor of the Divine Beast.’
They had left the hunting of Han Min-oh to all the [Incarnations].
Because the Creators had agreed.
Han Min-oh had not shown any of the signs that a Divine Beast contractor would show.
Even facing death, he had simply swung a sword as if ordinary.
So they had intended to kill him.
They had judged him worthless and likely canceled preparations for the ‘large-scale sniper Abyss’.
However, the Creators had overlooked something.
‘He is brooding an egg.’
Seeing the wave grow stronger little by little, it seemed Park Chan-woo’s suspicion was correct.
Han Min-oh wasn’t the Divine Beast’s contractor, but a nest.
He had become the vessel in which the Divine Beast’s egg was brooded.
And that egg—
‘It’s hatching now.’
…the egg cracked.
A strange vibration flowed out from the broken shell.
That vibration was rapidly enveloping Han Min-oh’s mana waves.
Once the egg fully hatched it would devour Han Min-oh’s life and reveal itself to the world.
Not only that.
‘The wave of the Divine Beast incubating the egg is also mixed in.’
There were two kinds of newly perceived waves.
They were devouring Han Min-oh’s life with tremendous momentum.
How could a mere human body withstand the emergence of such a colossal being?
‘…What to do.’
Park Chan-woo deliberated.
He himself knew little about the ecology of Divine Beasts.
Divine Beasts lived in the fissures that were gaps of the Abyss, and each time they appeared they were treated as calamities, so it had been impossible to study them properly.
Naturally, information about Divine Beasts was extremely limited.
But if he did nothing, Han Min-oh would surely die.
‘To save Han Min-oh, we must remove the egg.’
Of course, even then there was no guarantee he would survive.
But he couldn’t just stand by doing nothing after choosing to save him.
Once he decided to save him, he intended to see it through.
Park Chan-woo traced the stream of mana waves back to their source.
He could isolate the wave’s intensity in Ahheta, the Moon Lord’s treasure vault, maximizing it, but finding the precise origin of where the waves were leaking from was more difficult.
Frankly, he’d never tried.
‘…It’s similar to contamination.’
It resembled mental contamination.
Park Chan-woo had had a similar experience.
He had nearly reached mental corruption once when encountering a dimensional being, White Whale Charpham, so he’d gained some understanding of the essence of mana waves.
So…
‘I can do it.’
He would not only find the source.
That alone was insufficient to remove the egg.
[Han Min-oh and ‘synchronization’ begins.]
He clashed his wave with Han Min-oh’s, letting them meet and slowly intermingle.
But manipulating waves was extremely dangerous.
If he made a mistake, the Abyss’s poison could turn Park Chan-woo himself to dust.
Yet… he seemed to have an inkling.
That was why the [God of Offerings] had said reading mana waves was the quality of a [Archmage].
‘Mana waves are not merely a shield that protects existence from the Abyss’s poison.’
Mana waves are existence itself.
They protect existence and make it possible for it to be.
This wasn’t something humanity gained upon awakening; it had been there from the beginning.
Everything shared it.
If there were no mana waves, things would blend together.
They would become one, and their essence would be unrecognizable.
In short.
‘It is the form of the soul.’
If innate mana is the form of life, then mana waves are the form of the soul.
Reading a wave meant understanding the soul.
And that understanding is the mark of a [Archmage].
The exploration of the root of all existence.
One must be capable of that to be called a [Archmage].
Chiiiiik!
It felt as if the tips of his fingers were burning.
His whole body’s cells seemed to expand like mad.
He felt his heart beating at his fingertips.
His body instinctively detected danger.
What he was attempting was itself a [taboo].
‘Break the taboo. That is the path a mage should aspire to.’
To mix one’s soul with another’s.
Even if successful, what aftermath might appear was unknowable — a deadly gamble.
Still, Park Chan-woo smiled.
If one never attempted what was reckless or impossible, one would stagnate forever.
One’s talents would be reduced to kindling.
[‘Synchronization Rate’ 100%]
It seeped in. Waves harmonized and merged.
Park Chan-woo opened his eyes to another ‘world’.
It was Han Min-oh’s world.
He could see his memories. He felt his mind, his soul.
The person Han Min-oh was — every element — touched his fingertips.
Dangerous.
If he stepped one more foot in, he would be unable to tell Han Min-oh and himself apart.
They might become a completely different being, neither Park Chan-woo nor Han Min-oh.
So he needed to step back and survey the surroundings.
He didn’t want to become wholly one with Han Min-oh; his goal was to destroy the Divine Beast’s egg.
That was the only way to possibly save Han Min-oh.
‘There it is.’
…When he took one step back, he saw it.
The Divine Beast’s egg.
It was already half-cracked.
It was revealing itself little by little.
If this continued, it would hatch soon.
To destroy the egg, he had to synchronize with it as well.
In other words.
‘Share his wave with two existences simultaneously.’
He felt he needed to raise the synchronization rate a little more.
Dangerous, but he could think of no other method.
Park Chan-woo amplified his own wave more strongly.
At that moment—
[Intruder who has invaded the Destroyer Cygnus’s nest.]
A voice resounded.
A majestic voice, as if that of a god.
Only then did Park Chan-woo detect another ‘existence’ besides the egg.
It was so vast he couldn’t see it by merely stepping back.
The owner who laid and brooded the egg.
‘The Destroyer Cygnus?’
The Divine Beast that had laid an egg in Han Min-oh’s body was the Destroyer Cygnus?
Park Chan-woo shuddered.
He had never seen it directly, but Cygnus’s lore was immensely famous even within the Abyss.
A destroyer that obliterates all creator Abysses.
A supreme Divine Beast that even the Lords feared.
[Stop. If you continue to mix souls further, you too will not remain unharmed, O master of the Void.]