I Feel Like I’ve Found A Hobby

After checking the Gate at Ganghwa-do, I ended up talking with a government official.

“It’s about 10 hours until the closure time; is it possible alone?”

“It’s plenty. I plan to handle it as quickly as possible, so you’d better arrange for many transporters.”

“I’ve heard the stories. The Yongsan incident… it’s quite famous.”

“If you want it handled that quickly then…”

“A-ah, no. Rather, please do it a bit more slowly. Arranging the transporters themselves isn’t hard, but it’s difficult for many vehicles to enter this far at once.”

It was a Gate located halfway up Mount Mani.

“Isn’t it simple if I move them down to the base of the mountain?”

“It’s a famous mountain with quite a lot of people coming and going. If a procession of corpses suddenly continues, they’ll flip out thinking a Gate Break occurred.”

In the end, after conveying that I would stack them nicely in block forms on one side, I entered the Gate.

Afterward, while emitting mana, I first began to identify the quantity and location of the monster corpses.

‘Is it a forest terrain, or was it just hard to deal with them all?’

No matter how many Pathfinders or Trackers there were, it was too much of an open field, so if they ran away here and there, it was hard to chase them all down.

Thus, it seemed they couldn’t hunt all the monsters that were running away in fear.

The presence of some living monsters was felt in various places.

If the boss and the core were handled, it wasn’t a problem. Because the Gate would close sufficiently even if monsters remained.

So I judged it wasn’t a big problem and immediately began to engrave patterns into the mana I had spread for exploration purposes.

It was to raise everyone as zombies using Dead Rise.

Then, I gave the command to move toward the Gate entrance.

Next, I began to meticulously search for hidden places or if there were victims, like the case where the Cultists of Ruin were active before.

Since the movement speed of zombies was quite slow, it was expected to take about 4 hours for all the byproducts to move to the entrance; it was just as I was calmly observing.

“As expected, your skills are as great as the rumors say?”

A government official spoke to me as if he had followed me into the Gate.

“Do you have something to say?”

“I wanted to see you. The Worst Black Mage. Because the rumors described you as a monster with three heads and six arms, I couldn’t really imagine it.”

Something about his vibe was strange, and because he clearly knew my identity, it seemed he wasn’t just a simple government official.

“What is your purpose?”

“Thanks to you, our position has become quite difficult. And our standing has also diminished significantly.”

“Are you a Cultist of Ruin?”

“Correct, but a bit different from the low-level ones. And… we, who have received God’s choice, are not the simple Cultists of Ruin you speak of.”

At that moment, the government official explosively emitted his momentum.

‘It’s an outright trap.’

The reason for saying such things was that those who were secretly hiding their forms appeared all at once.

“You seem to have used quite expensive artifacts; am I worth that much investment?”

“For someone like you?”

Tsking my tongue, I thought those Cultist of Ruin bastards were truly out of their minds. Then, just as I was about to move the mana scattered for exploration, a new figure appeared and plunged a large staff into the ground.

Then, the mana in the area froze as if it had been congealed.

“You must have heard of it. It’s called the Magician Killer…”

Since the identity of the item was an old one, I had been half-doubting.

“It’s an item used at the end of the Upheaval. But it’s troublesome if you act so proudly after bringing an item that was treated as the lowest grade back then.”

“Nonsense, you who don’t even properly know the value of this item…?”

“Why do you think I wouldn’t know?”

He was a fellow staring at me while laughing fishily.

“At the end of the Great Cataclysm, each country wanted to weaken the national powers that had become too strong; so a piece of trash bastard called the Great Sage back then developed a weapon to hunt mages despite being a mage himself, and the place it was first used was our country.”

The countries that used it were Japan and China, and the reason they targeted South Korea was simply because too many heroes had survived.

Compared to the size of the small country, there were quite a lot of Awakeners classified as ‘heroes,’ so they needed to be kept in check.

As a result, the number of heroes, which was over thirty, was reduced to a mere seven, and thanks to that, the relationship between the three countries skewed toward the worst.

Afterward, the competition intensified between those trying to widen the gap and those trying to narrow it, and the relationship has not improved until now.

“I experienced that too.”

There was only one reason I survived.

“Nonsense!! Kill him!!”

The enemies, sensing something strange, rushed in.

I glanced at the twenty-odd human figures swarming from each direction as if watching a panorama, pushed the mana remaining in my body to the extremities of each body part, and began to engrave patterns one by one from the tips toward the heart.

The method of drawing mana patterns inside the body caused massive pain, but it was a method with an incredibly great advantage.

‘Doing this for the first time in a while, it’s terrible, isn’t it?’

At first, it began with a tingling pain as if an ant were lightly biting, and as the amount of mana patterns increased, a pain like being poked by needles heated in fire encompassed the entire body.

However, if one endured such pain, there was a maximum advantage to be gained, and that was none other than an unbelievable manifestation of magic and power enhancement.

Furthermore, the speed was at a level that needed no explanation; before the rushing Awakeners could even take two steps, I completed a magic spell that could emit a dark wave centered on my entire body, and with a single word that lightly flowed from my mouth, the surrounding area was torn to shreds centered on me.

“Dark Nova.”

The Cultists of Ruin were horrified; they screamed and struggled in the pain of being torn to pieces whenever their bodies touched the dark attribute, but that struggle ended in a mere attempt, and in the moment they were scattered as pieces of meat, the government official fellow, who had somehow succeeded in defending while widening the distance, screamed in horror.

“This is impossible!!”

“I didn’t intend to just die simply either, I just found a way. It’s rude to underestimate someone who survived the war.”

Then, after using Blink to block the Gate entrance, I proceeded to identify how many of the bastards had survived.

‘Did about five survive?’

Four lucky ones and one who endured with skill.

I felt as if I had confirmed the fact that those around the middle line of the Cultists of Ruin possessed this much skill, and I suddenly wondered if the detective who gave the information was okay.

‘It would be a relief if he hadn’t died?’

They were Cultists of Ruin who had no future once their identities were revealed. And along with the Dark Nova, the Magician Killer also seemed to have broken as the mana began to move.

So I thought of two options.

‘Should I kill them like this and pull information out in their soul state, or should I use Paralyze to torture them directly?’

Anyway, if it was a case involving the Cultists of Ruin, I could just bury all circumstantial evidence using the Gate closure as a reason.

Conversely, I could also take credit for capturing the Cultists of Ruin and obtaining information on the middleman.

“Do you think I’ll be defeated like this?”

Just then, he recognized the fact that the entrance was blocked, and the Cultist of Ruin triggered his power as if he felt something the moment I moved my mana.

“It is a method that allows one to obtain power worthy of being called a hero for a short time; it is proof that God has chosen me!!”

All the veins in his entire body were bulging as if they were protruding, and he was sitting there laughing as if something were so great while looking like every vessel was about to burst from blood pressure at any moment.

However, since the pressure felt was also unusual, I couldn’t take it lightly.

Boom!!

With an explosive sound, the Cultist of Ruin, who had been quite far away, reached right in front of my nose in an instant.

“Dark Shield.”

As I used a defensive magic I had Memorized, a darkish film appeared, and in that moment it hindered the advance of the Cultist of Ruin who had rushed in, it was to the extent that I could feel a ‘crack’ forming with a tremendous roar and shockwave emitting in all directions.

“Do you think you can stop me with this kind of defense?”

“It’s to buy time.”

The moment I snapped my fingers, a single engraving formed in the mana that was gathering from all directions.

In an instant, the mana covered in mana patterns was sublimated into magic, and as it immediately manifested its power and enveloped the Cultist of Ruin in front of me, the Cultist of Ruin, who realized at once that I was casting a curse, abruptly struck the ground hard with his fist.

Crack!! It was the earth surging up with tremendous destructive power, and thanks to that, in the moment I was pushed slightly by the wave of surging mana power, he was a fellow who slipped through that gap and narrowed the distance even more.

‘Does he have a lot of experience?’

It was too excellent to be called mere improvisation. Judging that he might be one of the figures who was active in the war, I revised the strategy entirely and soon reached out to pull out the second Memorized magic.

“Fatal Shock.”

It was a powerful shock magic. It was literally an overwhelming black magic that drove the opponent into death rather than for the purpose of suppression.

If I had to specify, it could be seen as a combination magic of the two attributes of darkness and lightning.

It was a destruction magic that shot out in a split second, and for the Cultist of Ruin who had dug in while inducing super-close combat, it was a disaster that fell upon him with the worst compatibility.

“Damn i-i-it!!”

The Cultist of Ruin took a full-force offensive stance while screaming. However, the result was that his entire body burned black with a short popping noise and he collapsed abruptly.

“That’s a pity for you.”

“Sh-sh… it… What, are you… exactly?”

“If you said with your own mouth that I’m The Worst Black Mage, you should at least have identified my identity?”

“D-damn it… You’re… like an urban legend…!”

“An urban legend that’s alive; that’s quite pleasant, isn’t it?”

I lightly patted his shoulder, and with just that impact, his body collapsed vainly and then his form was crushed as it piled up like a heap of ashes.

Furthermore, it was just when I was thinking there were four more Cultists of Ruin who had survived.

“Guh… F-for God…”

“Ahem…!”

“K-keugh…!”

“God will punish you!!”

Watching the bastards who committed suicide at the same time, I had to hold my throbbing head.

“Anyway… I just can’t take a liking to those Cultist of Ruin bastards. Just can’t…”

However, the work was not over yet. Choosing death in front of a black mage who can handle the souls of the dead?

Although it was limited information, it was no different from saying they would vomit out almost all information.

If they were alive, they could somehow endure torture and scream until their minds and bodies broke, but after death, that was impossible.

This was because a soul receives damage dozens or hundreds of times greater than the impact when it has a body, even from a small shock.

When the moment to trample them, who were like fragile flower petals, arrived, my sense of duty as a black mage reared its head.

“Now, shall we begin… Call of Spirit!”

The magic was quickly cast, and at the same time as countless souls formed before my eyes, their screams as if they were having fits fell and rang loudly in my ears.

But there was one thing I felt every time this happened.

‘I, I really liked torture, didn’t I?’