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[Translator - Kiteretsu]
[Proofreader - Kyros]
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Chapter 43
Royen thought Christian had just barely reached the lower 2-star level.
It was natural to think so.
It hadn’t even been a month since Christian informed the main family that he’d reached 2-star.
Yesterday and today, he had shown fairly impressive skills, but the limits of a lower 2-star were clear.
‘Would’ve been nice if he ended up crippled or something.’
Royen thought cruelly.
This was the Shadow Dimension.
There was no one here except the challengers.
Accidents that caused casualties were common occurrences.
‘Shame I can’t watch the bastard suffer with my own eyes.’
Beasts kept appearing in front of him, but Royen didn’t stop.
Boom! Bang!
The beasts exploded from Royen’s fists wrapped in demonic energy.
‘Obviously, I’ll be the first one there.’
The faster one arrived compared to the other competitors, the more Sacred Darkness they could absorb.
At the speed he was moving, it was certain he was far ahead of the idiot branch family members.
And finally, the space changed.
The surroundings grew even darker.
It was the Sacred Ground where the Sacred Darkness was erupting.
‘As expected, I’m the fastest. Now I’ll absorb the Sacred Darkness—’
Just as he confidently approached the Sacred Darkness—
An unexpected voice called out.
“You’re late. What took you so long?”
“!!!”
Royen’s eyes widened as if they would tear open.
Ahead of him—
A silhouette was buried in the darkness.
It was Christian.
Whether he’d been napping or not, he stood up with a long yawn.
“I was so bored waiting, I almost died.”
“You, you… how did you get here so fast?”
“Fast?”
Christian tilted his head.
“Wasn’t much, really. If anything, how little have you been training for it to take this long to handle beasts like those?”
“What… That’s ridiculous…!”
Royen shouted in disbelief.
Along the path Christian had taken, there should’ve been beasts of mid-2-star level and above.
Even he couldn’t break through those easily—so how the hell did this happen?
“In any case, it’s just the two of us now. You know, in this Shadow Dimension, only we are here, and no one will come to help no matter what happens inside.”
“…What are you saying?”
Christian’s demeanor changed.
A cold smile surfaced.
“I'm saying it’s time someone fixed that rotten attitude of yours. Ready for your lesson, you bastard?”
* * *
Royen’s face hardened.
“What… did you just say to me?”
“Didn’t quite catch that? I said it’s time you got your face smashed in.”
“…You’ve lost your damn mind.”
Royen’s gaze turned cold.
He didn’t know how this guy had cleared the trial so quickly. He couldn’t understand it at all, but that no longer mattered.
“Normally, it's forbidden for competitors to fight during the Sacred Darkness Ceremony… but looks like I have no choice. Even if it costs me a bit, I’ll crush you.”
No one was stupid enough to pick a fight during the Sacred Darkness Ceremony.
The sooner you began absorption, the more Sacred Darkness you could obtain.
Delaying absorption just to mess with someone could lead to a fatal loss.
But Chris replied with a crooked grin.
“Loss? Don’t worry about that. You won’t be getting a single speck of Sacred Darkness today anyway.”
“…What?”
“Actually, not just you. No one—none of the challengers besides me—will be getting any of it. Not even a grain.”
He meant it.
Christian planned to monopolize the Sacred Darkness today.
‘Why should I share something this valuable? Even hoarding it all to myself won’t feel like enough.’
How?
By crushing and knocking everyone else out.
Start absorbing faster than the others?
Why bother?
He could just take them all down and leisurely monopolize the Sacred Darkness alone.
In other words, Christian had been waiting here to eliminate every other competitor but himself.
“…I thought you were just a reckless bastard, but turns out you’re insane too. Fine.”
Royen let out a hollow laugh.
Demonic energy flared from his body.
“I’ll make sure you come to your senses. But don’t blame me if you end up crippled—an arm, a leg, at least one of them.”
He extended his hand, and—BOOM!—a fiery explosion erupted in front of Chris.
It was destructive black magic.
Thick black smoke spread, completely obscuring the already dark field of vision.
Fwoosh!
Royen didn’t miss the opening and disappeared.
A speed unimaginable for a 2-star demonic fighter!
Bloodshot eyes gleamed.
He entered the fog—his vision was obscured, but it didn’t matter.
All he needed was to sense his opponent’s demonic energy.
Even with his eyes shut, Royen locked onto Chris’s direction and struck.
Royen specialized in demon martial arts.
Especially joint techniques executed at close range—his specialty.
He had never failed once to land a hit when the opponent entered his range.
‘First, the wrist.’
Royen’s face gleamed with a cruel light.
Now that it had come to this, he had no intention of ending it lightly.
He planned to start with the wrist and methodically shatter every joint in his opponent’s body.
Chris tried to pull his right hand back to avoid Royen grabbing his wrist, but he was too late.
Like flowing water, black magic spread out.
It was black magic meant to restrain Chris’s movements.
Tap.
Royen’s hand grabbed Chris’s, and just as he was about to twist and snap it—
“Foolish.”
A cold voice fell like a blade.
“…What?”
In that instant, a chill ran down Royen’s spine.
It was an instinctive sense of danger.
Tap.
Chris’s right hand slid smoothly.
A motion completely unaffected by the black magic Royen had unleashed.
‘How?’
No, that didn’t matter.
Chris reversed the grip and seized Royen’s hand, the one holding his wrist.
Royen’s eyes were wide open, and yet his wrist had been grabbed in return—he couldn’t comprehend how it had happened.
The principle itself was simple.
He’d combined a basic counter move with a joint-lock technique.
But even with the same basic movement, everything changes depending on whose hands perform it.
Chris’s basic move was more elegant, more refined, and superior to even Royen’s secret martial techniques imbued with dark magic.
To a martial arts expert, it would’ve looked like a masterful, awe-inspiring feat.
Royen, who failed to avoid Chris’s hand even while watching it, turned pale.
He realized what was coming next.
“W-Wait—”
But it was too late.
“It’ll hurt, but no crying, okay?”
Chris applied force.
Crunch.
The sound of bone breaking.
“GAAAAAAAH!!!”
A scream rang out.
Unfortunately, this was only the beginning.
It was the start of a true lesson.
* * *
Chris brushed off his hands.
Royen lay collapsed in front of him like a lump of meat, unconscious.
He hadn’t killed him.
‘Killing him would be a bit too much.’
Instead, he made sure to go far enough that Royen wouldn’t come back for revenge. Dealing with that later would be annoying.
He lightly damaged his core.
In other words, “slightly.”
Just enough damage to be believable in the context of a duel.
Enough that even the elders of the main house couldn’t fault him for it.
But in reality, Chris had done it in a way that made proper recovery nearly impossible.
At first, it would seem like a light injury, but once real treatment began, it would take at least five years to fully recover.
It was a crafty move only possible because Chris possessed exceptional knowledge of healing arts.
For the guy, it was practically a half-death sentence.
Being out of the competition for five years meant just that.
More than anything, by then, Chris would have reached a place no one could touch.
‘By then… I’ll have the Dark Magic Mastery beneath my feet.’
A vow so absurd anyone else would question their hearing if they heard it.
Chris was only fifteen years old now.
His current level was just 2-star.
And yet, he claimed he’d grasp the Dark Magic Mastery in five years?
But he could do it.
No, he had to do it no matter what.
Because in five years, the first Great War with the Alliance would begin.
Chris didn’t have much time left.
‘Stopping the first Great War is impossible. But I have to end it with the least damage possible.’
The Alliance would suffer massive losses in the first war.
And because of that, they’d be helplessly overrun and destroyed in the second war that followed.
He had to change that future.
‘To do that, I need to monopolize the Sacred Darkness.’
Chris struck down every challenger arriving one by one with overwhelming force.
“Ugh… How?”
The challengers were shocked and terrified by Chris’s sheer strength.
It was one-sided.
“I’m a genius. It won’t hurt too much.”
Thud!
The last remaining challenger, Alros, turned pale.
All the other challengers, including Royen, had fallen at Chris’s hands.
None had lasted long.
How was this possible?
In the long history of the Dark Magic Mastery, there had been attempts like Chris’s—to defeat all challengers and monopolize the Sacred Darkness.
But not a single one had ever succeeded.
No matter how skilled, all competitors were 2-star, making it impossible for any one person to overpower everyone else alone.
Yet Chris was displaying a completely different level.
Anyone watching would think an adult was beating up a group of children.
That’s how overwhelming it was.
How could someone at the same 2-star level be this different?
Chris kindly explained the reason.
“It’s because you’re all idiots.”
“…What?”
“You have power, but you don’t know how to use it. Your movements are big, you waste your demonic energy, and you use black magic in all the wrong ways.”
Half of it was true, and half of it wasn’t.
In truth, the power Chris possessed wasn’t overwhelmingly superior compared to the other competitors.
They were all 2-star, after all.
He was certainly better, but not to the point of this kind of dominance.
However, despite being the same 2-star, Chris was far superior in practical combat—movement efficiency, demonic energy control, timely judgment, and application of black magic.
Even if the raw power wasn’t vastly different, the level at which he wielded it was on an entirely different scale.
Originally, at the 2-star level, lacking in movement was natural.
It wasn’t just a matter of instinct; they simply hadn’t achieved enough yet, so their movements were lacking.
Chris was just the strange one.
“Anyway, what will it be? Want to pass out quietly? Or are you going to try something?”
Alros was crying inside.
‘Damn it. Why did I even show up for the Sacred Darkness Ceremony? I should’ve postponed.’
But now it was too late to back down.
Grinding his teeth, he hurled himself forward with resolve.
“I didn’t just sit around for the past two weeks after losing to you! Get ready!”
Thud!
Alros let out a yelp and collapsed unconscious.
One hit and he was out.
Chris had even held back a little, since they’d bonded a bit from their previous meeting.
And so, every competitor collapsed unconscious.
But Chris didn’t stop there. He used black magic to make sure they couldn’t get back up.
He cast it with precision and strength.
To keep them asleep for a long time.
They wouldn’t be waking up for at least a week.
‘Now I just need to absorb the Sacred Darkness.’
Chris turned around.
The Sacred Darkness.
A darkness so deep, so profound, it was considered holy.
That dense darkness swirled beyond, beckoning him like a wave.
Chris slowly walked toward that pure darkness.
He reached out and gently touched the rippling shadow.
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[Translator - Kiteretsu]
[Proofreader - Kyros]
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