Ch.21Entry – 4

“That’s strange, how are you still fine after taking a direct hit like that?”

Though I wasn’t fine but rather completely shattered and then recovered, I decided not to correct him. Scarface casually swung his hammer, completely demolishing the wall that had been barely holding up.

No, it wasn’t just the wall that collapsed. With a single hammer strike, half the house crumbled.

The roof, having lost its support, sagged toward the ground, dragging surrounding materials down with it. Sunlight streamed through the shattered roof into the house.

Even as wooden planks rained down on his head, Scarface looked at me with a smirk.

He appeared completely unfazed, as if it were nothing more than a tickle. And that was accurate, since he didn’t have even a single scratch.

“Hmm? Or were you hiding something?”

Thud, thud—the floor trembled with each step as he walked toward me. The scattered debris of the house crunched under his shoes.

His shadow fell over me. The muscles on his bulging forearms and protruding veins writhed with each movement.

An enormous hand, large enough to cover almost my entire joint, landed on my shoulder. His fingers, filled with strength, squeezed my shoulder. Did he really think he could break me with this pathetic pain?

I glared at Scarface. He returned a look that seemed to say, “Get a load of this guy.”

Apparently disliking my defiant glare, he tightened his grip even further. I tried to grab his wrist to free myself, but it wouldn’t budge. It was like solid stone.

“You should answer me.”

Scarface lifted me up. Casually grabbing an adult man and lifting him with one hand—his strength remained as absurdly overwhelming as ever.

If he was this strong without even channeling mana, those muscles clearly weren’t just for show.

“Why should I?”

“‘Why should I?’ Ha! This bastard, what makes you think you can talk back?”

I heard sounds from my shoulder that shouldn’t be heard. His already menacing face grew even more threatening. He looked ready to smash my head with the hammer in his right hand.

“What makes me talk back? I talk back because you can’t kill me.”

There was no need to hide my ultra-regeneration ability from him anymore. Serena was here.

Serena could give Scarface a three-day head start and still catch up to him within hours to take his head.

Besides, I had already decided to kill him. The entire city was in chaos, the Adventurers’ Guild building was locked, and yet he was wandering around freely?

And his gang was trying to kill people who were just walking outside? There was only one conclusion I could draw.

“Kahahaha! I can’t kill you? Are you dreaming? Huh?”

“Then try it.”

My provocation cut his laughter short. Scarface’s eye twitched.

Crack—the hand gripping my shoulder tightened further, breaking my collarbone, and my feet lifted off the ground. My vision spun.

My back was slammed into the ground with full force. The same sound I heard when my collarbone broke now came from my spine.

This time, he grabbed my ankle instead of my shoulder. My body flipped upside down before flying through the air.

My head pierced through a wooden plank wall, and I felt warm liquid on my scalp, likely from my head being split open by the shattered wood fragments.

After floating in the air for who knows how long, my momentum slowed and my body rolled across the tiled floor. My left arm scraped against the tiles, stripping and abrading the skin.

I heard footsteps approaching from a distance. My body automatically healed itself, fixing my backward-bent elbow joint and stopping the warm sensation flowing from my head.

I never thought I could win one-on-one anyway. Before I could stagger to my feet, Scarface grabbed my right arm and lifted me up.

His eyes scanned my body, which showed no signs of injury.

“Hey, this is interesting. If you had such a fascinating ability, you should have reported it to your big brother right away.”

Each time Scarface swung his fist at my head, my neck bones shattered with a crack, causing my head to flop around.

My left face caved in and regenerated, my jawbone shattered and returned to normal, my skull broke and reconstructed itself.

I spent more time unable to properly open my eyes than able to.

My right arm, caught in his iron grip, showed no sign of coming loose. I considered severing the arm, but I had no suitable weapon.

It’s not like I could voluntarily detach my limbs like a lizard dropping its tail.

It was time to use another method I had in mind.

I looked at Scarface with my left eye, which had just regenerated after being completely crushed into my skull. Smack—immediately a fist struck my face. I tasted the familiar metallic flavor in my mouth.

“Seeing how you’re still giving me that look, I guess you haven’t been hit enough?”

“Getting hit more or less… means nothing to me… you idiot. I guarantee you’ll tire out before I die.”

My teeth were completely shattered, so I stumbled through the first phrase, but they regenerated as I spoke, allowing me to finish the sentence without further stumbling.

As soon as I finished speaking, a fist plunged into my stomach. My abdomen shook violently. Judging by the blood rushing up to my mouth, my internal organs were wrecked.

As I coughed and continuously spat out the blood flowing back into my mouth, Scarface shook his hand in the air a few times. His glare was filled with irritation and anger.

“Ha, this little shit keeps talking back. Disgusting.”

“Should I make it even more disgusting for you?”

Just as I said that and tried to reach for my inner pocket with my still-free left hand, my wrist was caught.

As soon as he grabbed it, my wrist bones shattered with a sound, and my arm was pulled in the opposite direction. The ache in my shoulder suggested the joint had dislocated from being pulled.

In that brief moment, he had understood the meaning behind my words and prevented what I was trying to do—a reaction speed befitting a high-ranking adventurer.

A mocking expression briefly crossed Scarface’s face. Blue mana began to envelop his body, and my two captured arms repeatedly broke and healed due to his grip.

“Look at this. What were you trying to do just now?”

“…A scroll. I was going to set it off and mess with you.”

“Wow, you even prepared a scroll? How very thorough of you.”

It was a method I often used. Scrolls are certainly very useful in most situations, but unlike spells cast by mages, they could potentially involve the caster as well.

Due to their activation method, offensive magic scrolls often risked becoming self-destructive, which is why most scrolls contained only supportive magic.

Except for mine.

For me, self-destructive magic was essentially no-risk, high-return. If I got close to an enemy, tore a scroll, and self-destructed, the opponent caught in the blast would be reduced to shreds while I would regenerate perfectly fine.

If one blast wasn’t enough to finish someone, I could detonate three or four to finish them off.

“But what a shame, I caught you. Did you really think I wouldn’t notice, you idiot?”

His face was triumphant. Considering the nature of scrolls, in normal circumstances, his thinking would be correct.

Magic used by mages can be canceled by interrupting the incantation, or in extreme cases, by forcibly cutting off the mana supply to disperse the spell.

Although the latter method carries significant risk for the mage themselves, the key point is that cancellation is possible.

But scrolls were different.

Scrolls couldn’t be canceled like a mage’s incantation, and since the mana required for the spell’s activation was already supplied to the scroll, it was impossible to disperse the magic by blocking mana.

To stop a scroll once its magic was about to activate, the only option was to overwhelm it with an even more powerful spell—which, considering that most scroll users were ordinary adventurers with little connection to magic, was impractical.

That’s why the vast majority of scroll makers adopted a mechanism where the inscribed magic activates when 40% or more of the parchment is torn.

To prevent accidental activation when a scroll is damaged, the tearing process requires a temperature around human body heat, and special treatment ensures it doesn’t react to ambient mana.

Yes. In normal situations, the vast majority of scrolls work that way.

“I showed it to you openly, so of course you’d notice, you stupid bastard.”

“Ha, seems like you haven’t been beaten enough. Fine, this time I’ll rip out your tongue first.”

“Rip out my tongue? You still don’t understand the situation.”

Since he was holding both my arms, he had no free hands, so this time he kicked my thigh.

Crack—my thigh twisted in an unnatural direction. Apparently not satisfied, he only calmed his heavy breathing after breaking my bones three or four more times.

“Why don’t you try thinking with that thick skull of yours about why I openly showed you reaching for my inner pocket? Oh, is it too hard because your head is made of stone? If so, I’m quite sorry.”

“You son of a—”

He lowered his voice. Taking a deep breath, he focused his eyes straight ahead. I could see his distorted, menacing face and his fist, which was about to strike my face after releasing one of my arms.

I recalled advice I’d once heard. The scroll Charlotte had made for me had another activation condition besides tearing it.

To avoid suspicion, it looked identical to other ordinary scrolls on the outside, but it had a special condition that could trigger a completely different spell.

And the activation condition for this scroll was my will.

—Explode.

A blinding flash erupted from my inner pocket. Scarface, who had been about to swing his fist, let out a death cry, released my arm, and covered his eyes against the intense light.

I wasn’t unscathed either. My optic nerves began burning from the inside out after directly facing the light. I couldn’t tell if the liquid flowing from my eyes was blood or tears.

Flames engulfed my entire body. Before this purgatorial fire that devoured everything, humans were as nothing, and even stone, wood, and metal were mere trifles.

Any body part that touched the flames of purgatory didn’t just burn—it vaporized.

The fire raged. Though I couldn’t see, I could sense it.

The hellish flames, swirling around a small sphere, were reducing everything nearby to something that wouldn’t even leave ashes.

As if my entire body had completely burned away, I no longer felt any sensation from anywhere.

But it never reached the end.

My body began to regenerate. From the ashes, eyes, mouth, nose, and ears formed, taking on human shape.

I blinked. The sky, tinged with a pale color, and the burning hot air told the story of what had just happened here.

After staring blankly at the sky where ash and sparks mixed and flew away, I raised my upper body.

The regeneration had long since finished. Staggering, I placed my hand on the ground and felt the hard stone—the sidewalk tiles. It seemed I had been thrown quite a distance when the sphere exploded at the end.

“It’s definitely a reduced version.”

Purgatory.

Among the spells developed by Charlotte, this one had the potential to compete for the title of most powerful in terms of raw firepower.

Even a dragon’s breath was slightly inferior to Purgatory in terms of pure destructive power. That’s my assessment after having experienced both, so it’s accurate.

Her comment about it being a “reduced version” when she handed me the scroll was certainly no lie, as the area of effect was much smaller than I had expected.

If Charlotte had used this magic herself, an area equivalent to dozens of cities would have disappeared from the continent.

Of course, that doesn’t mean its absolute power was weak. The place where Scarface and I had been standing was melted beyond recognition.

To someone unaware of what had happened, it would look like a scene where a demon had crawled up from hell.

A bottomless black hole had opened in the tiles, which had maintained their shape despite being covered in all sorts of garbage.

There was no fire because everything had vaporized before it could catch flame, but that made it even more terrifying than if ashes had remained.

In a radius of about 10 meters around the black hole, everything had cleanly vaporized. It seemed that only the soil and stones had barely managed to withstand it.

If even those hadn’t held up, that gaping black hole in the ground would have been much wider.

The superheated soil and stones were still radiating heat. The heat mixed with the gentle breeze made my skin tingle.

Nearby houses were engulfed in flames.

The fact that they had caught fire simply from the heated air, without being directly touched by Purgatory, revealed just how powerful the magic that had appeared here was.

“As if things weren’t chaotic enough, I’ve made it worse.”

I sighed as I looked at the surroundings.

Having already destroyed houses while being thrown around by Scarface, and now with a fire on top of that, it would take quite a while to restore this place.

It’s not like there was a mage around to put out the fire.

‘Should I tell Charlotte?’

If I told her, “I met an idiot and melted him with the scroll you gave me,” she would be delighted that her scroll had helped me.

She had insisted on providing support despite my protests that I didn’t need it after wandering alone for hundreds of years, saying it was like a wife supporting her husband and even placing a sealing spell to make sure I took it.

The fact that Serena hasn’t come to me yet suggests she’s diligently performing her duties at the lord’s mansion.

Now that Scarface, who had been causing trouble here, was dead, I was wondering if I should try knocking on the Adventurers’ Guild building door again.

That’s when a strange hand emerged from the black pit, digging its nails into the ground.

The black, metallic skin that resembled armor and the elongated nails indicated that the being emerging from the pit was certainly not human.

Soon, another hand shot out and gripped the ground, and then its head emerged from the pit. Eight eyes rolled their pupils in all directions. Each had a purple, vertically slit pupil.

The black substance covering its body must have been close to actual armor, as a metallic sound rang out each time it moved its arms.

Its surface wasn’t smooth but rough, as if modeling muscles, with numerous bumps protruding.

Finally, as its legs came out of the pit, its complete form was revealed.

A height twice mine, limbs with almost no difference in thickness, enormously large feet with three-pronged toes ending in thick claws, and a tail as thick as my torso thrashing in all directions.

Below its eight eyes, a long-split mouth opened wide. A dull purple tongue appeared between pointed teeth.

The mouth was split so wide at the sides that it looked like it was smiling. Drool dripped between its teeth.

“A monster…?”

—KUAAAARK!

A tearing roar erupted from the creature’s mouth.