The Simulacrum Watcher could not help but be shocked. An ability that instantly “neutralized” errors?
It was not evasion. The function of the Black Heaven Return-to-Origin Art, which literally erased them, could in some ways be considered its natural opposite.
CRACK!
After erasing the error, Jeong Hyeon-su’s palm flew in and seized the Watcher’s face with tremendous force.
Mountain-Uprooting Strength, World-Overturning Spirit. It was the moment when the Heavenly Tyrant Ghost King Art, maximized by the Trait Overlord’s Talent, displayed immense physical strength.
CRUNCH!
At this rate, an overwhelming victory was certain.
However, the slaves who had been captured by the Watcher tightly shut their eyes.
BOOM!
The Watcher’s head suddenly exploded. It was truly a surprise impact. They thought Jeong Hyeon-su, who had clearly not prepared for it, would have no choice but to suffer grave damage.
It had been the Watcher’s exceedingly cunning trap. By making him think it was a humanoid similar to the other Digital Pirates, the Watcher had used a deceptive technique that exploited the assumption that destroying its body would succeed in clearing it.
“…!”
The Hunters, who had thought he would suffer the same fate as them, could not believe their eyes.
Jeong Hyeon-su, surrounded by a black haze like a shield, was standing perfectly unharmed with his arms crossed.
“Are you done?”
“Wh-what nonsense is this…!”
The shock was incomparable to when its errors had been erased by the function of the Black Heaven Return-to-Origin Art.
[How could a human of a primitive level…?]
It was the shell of a Digital Pirate, covered in an error disguise and realized almost perfectly by using the lingering magical thoughts in the area.
The explosive magic that counterattacked the instant it was struck was something one could never respond to unless one knew about it in advance.
Yet that human’s attitude looked, no matter who saw it, as though he had known beforehand.
The Watcher had clearly seen it. The moment he crushed its head, the intruder had wrapped himself in black energy.
A current of mana flowed around the Watcher as it returned to its original form.
A giant eye-shaped floating surveillance orb.
The Watcher had manifested its main body, the surface of which was densely engraved with Rune-shaped data code.
ZZZT!
Around it wandered the replicated images of the Hunters it had devoured until now.
Like insubstantial ghosts, the Watcher, draped in hollowly echoing images, writhed.
At the same time, the inside of the Gate began flashing red.
[The Watcher’s main body is descending.]
[Hidden condition achieved.]
[The true grade of Netracta Polis has been opened.]
[Difficulty: C-Rank.]
The Hunters who had fallen into slavery also received that message exactly as it was.
No wonder something had felt strange.
For an F-Rank, the boss’s strength had been bizarre.
Even if it was Undead, it made no sense for an ability that distorted and altered a Hunter’s abilities to appear.
RUMBLE!
At the same time, a data explosion erupted, and the ground collapsed. As the terrain crumbled like a sinkhole, the Hunters were thrown into panic.
The first to be sucked in was the Simulacrum Watcher, who shouted.
— I will make you taste hell!
[You are proceeding directly to the final sector, the depths of the Necro Interface!]
“Aaaaaaagh!”
The Hunters flailed in the air to keep themselves from falling.
Even as Jeong Hyeon-su fell headfirst downward, he merely closed his eyes and contemplated himself.
CLICK.
He simply used the speed of his fall and aimed the tip of his greatsword downward.
SWOOOOSH!
Jeong Hyeon-su’s attack, carrying all that force, pierced through the Simulacrum Watcher.
BOOM!
This entire place was a data field. It was a space where magical mana dwelled within ordinary physical force.
At the moment of landing, Jeong Hyeon-su operated the Black Heaven Return-to-Origin Art, swallowed the malicious errors targeting him, and succeeded in landing through the explosion created in the process.
To him, every space related to Gates was something he had already experienced to the point of boredom, so responding skillfully like this was nothing difficult.
The Simulacrum Watcher flickered repeatedly while split in half.
At that moment, countless tentacles began stretching toward the Watcher from the surrounding area.
‘Fusion, is it?’
In the past, Palbongsan Gate had been cleared by one of his comrades, another black-warrant criminal known as the Mage Butcher.
Afterward, that comrade had raged endlessly upon learning that if one saw through the Watcher’s errors, one could skip the second area and shorten the clear time.
It was clear information that would be difficult to know at this point in time, since it had only been revealed later through connections with other cyberpunk worldviews.
‘Thanks to that, things are easy for me.’
Since he would definitely meet that person again later, he could simply buy him a good meal then.
Beef should be enough.
— This is astonishing for a species close to primitive. The source of that power. Is it truly something a primitive species can obtain?
In the meantime, the tentacles transformed once again into a single fused body.
It was the true form of the Simulacrum Watcher.
Its upper body was that of a grotesque digital witch, while its lower body floated in the air as a giant surveillance-lens mechanism.
Several floating orbs in the form of the Simulacrum Watcher it had just fought stood nearby as though assisting it, and at a glance, it did not look easy.
“D-damn it…”
Although they had been momentarily freed from slave subordination, the faces of the liberated Hunters were still dark.
How could they be happy when they had to face a C-Rank Dungeon boss?
— I will devour you and make you the power of reorganization.
[The Protocol Observer reveals the power of its true body.]
The function of the Protocol Observer, the leader of the Watchers, was activated.
A disruption wave was fired, casting a powerful illusion through basic visual distortion and clone creation.
Jeong Hyeon-su immediately swung his greatsword upward from below.
BOOOOM!
With the manifestation of the nothingness function of the Black Heaven Return-to-Origin Art, the energy wave that caused distortion scattered, and Jeong Hyeon-su rushed into it.
“If any of you try to hold me back, I will cut you down first.”
As he did, he left those words to the Hunters who did not know what to do.
There were no flowery words about saving them or joining forces to plan a strategy.
At the same time, the Watchers began closing in from the left and right.
The Hunters, who had been unable to handle even one of them and had fallen into slavery, felt a moment of helplessness.
“Damn it, if we are going to die anyway, I might as well struggle!”
One Hunter immediately began running after Jeong Hyeon-su.
Then the Protocol Observer fired a laser beam.
‘An omnidirectional recognition barrier?’
Based on his abundant experience clearing cyberpunk worldviews, Jeong Hyeon-su saw through the technique at once.
It was a defense device that automatically fired tracking lasers according to detected movement and annihilated its target.
But Jeong Hyeon-su possessed the Black Heaven Return-to-Origin Art, which was nothing less than a hard counter against this cyberpunk worldview, especially against mages who used mana as a foundation.
Even if the difficulty had risen to C-Rank, its function, which would not be lacking no matter where it was used, did not go anywhere or become degraded.
A master did not blame his tools. And a master, in truth, did not use just any tool either.
The nothingness function possessed by the Black Heaven Return-to-Origin Art. The more Jeong Hyeon-su used it, the more mature he became, and the more efficiently he could draw results with less mana.
SSSSS.
With only a light touch, he erased part of the data code possessed by a Watcher, and in reverse, he was able to create the very disruption it boasted of.
Because of that, the lasers fired from the Protocol Observer’s entire body pierced through the Watchers it had summoned.
KABOOM BOOM BOOM!
“Uh, uh?”
“Waaaaaah!”
The Hunters cheered. By contrast, the Protocol Observer naturally could not help but burst with rage.
— You lowly creatures of primitive civilization!
“Then what are you, being beaten by that lowly creature?”
— Sh-shut up! This time, I will truly crush you properly!
The Protocol Observer was the prototype of a high-intelligence AI. For that reason, it had the ability to learn immediately and instantly calculate countermeasures.
It analyzed Jeong Hyeon-su’s fighting pattern. It acknowledged that the nothingness function he possessed was its natural counter, but even so, it succeeded in calculating a method.
— What about this?
The Protocol Observer compressed and collapsed the memories of the Hunters it had absorbed.
Based on logs, it intended to summon countless clone Hunters in various forms and throw them among the Hunters.
All it needed was a single command. And if the nothingness function of the Black Heaven Return-to-Origin Art came in aiming for that single command…
The bastard would surely taste hell, and just as expected, it came.
An overly honest strike. An obvious black haze.
— This is precisely the difference between a primitive species and advanced civilization… Huh!
“What? Chinese? Were you made in China?”
ROOOOOAR!
A completely unexpected, pure, overwhelming physical force pierced through the Protocol Observer.
[Mountain-Uprooting Strength, World-Overturning Spirit is activating.]
[The power of the Heavenly Tyrant Ghost King Art is increased by ten percent.]
[A critical hit that perfectly defies the opponent’s prediction!]
[You have inflicted a critical wound.]
[The Protocol Observer’s core has been struck, and all sections of the Netracta Abyss are opened!]
The Black Heaven Return-to-Origin Art was not the only thing Jeong Hyeon-su possessed.
The Heavenly Tyrant Ghost King Art, which had perfectly struck the blind spot of the Protocol Observer while it was distracted by the Black Heaven Return-to-Origin Art, smashed through the defensive barrier it had created, the Simulacrum Regeneration Array, with pure force and pierced the core beyond it.
ZZZT! ZZZT!
Black smoke rose from the Protocol Observer.
“Waaaaaaaah!”
It was truly a subjugation that had ended overwhelmingly in the blink of an eye.
The Hunters went wild for Jeong Hyeon-su, who had overturned the despair of a C-Rank in an instant, and they began surrounding the remaining Watchers and ganging up on them.
Jeong Hyeon-su left his greatsword embedded in the Protocol Observer like a stake and walked to the opposite side.
‘What is he doing?’
The Hunters were puzzled. Why was he not finishing off the final boss here?
Without paying the slightest attention to the Hunters’ gazes, Jeong Hyeon-su headed toward a massive machine.
It was a machine that looked as though its operation and purpose had stopped long ago.
Power was running through it, but it was strongly locked.
[Heh heh. Do you want the object inside it? Even… if you defeat me… if you cannot decode the cipher code… you will… never be able to open… it…]
But Jeong Hyeon-su already knew the answer.
“Is it here?”
After confirming the location where the ANP was stored, he immediately thrust out the center of his palm.
— Wh-what are you doing? You will use that power of erasure? Do not make me laugh! That place is everything in this space! Do you think we designed it carelessly?
Jeong Hyeon-su answered as though he already knew perfectly well.
“Well, if I touch even a single circuit incorrectly, there will be a massive explosion that blows away the entire area.”
— Th-that is right. Even if you possess that authority, you will never come out unscathed!
If he had a deep understanding of mana and the Black Heaven Return-to-Origin Art, there was a possibility that he could erase even the explosion. But for now, the Observer’s words were also correct.
“Sir… what exactly are you doing right now…?”
“No matter how good the reward is, if you die… it would be meaningless, would it not?”
Jeong Hyeon-su pretended not to hear the Hunters’ fearful words suggesting that he stop here and leave.
In the first place, because the Protocol Observer was still alive, the Hunters were also busy dealing with the remaining Watchers.
But Jeong Hyeon-su had already done this kind of work countless times.
The mana circuits designed into the machine could resonate with human mana thanks to the highly advanced civilization.
Aiming for that point, the Black Heaven Return-to-Origin Art flowed along the mana circuits and began advancing precisely in the direction he desired.
— H-how can this be…?
“Well, perhaps it is because I am a primitive, Chinese product.”
Jeong Hyeon-su smiled faintly and picked up a very small button-style remote control that appeared inside the opened machine.
[You have acquired the hidden reward, ANP!]
[Magic-Nullification Pulse (Unique): Fires a powerful pulse that nullifies all magic within a radius of 100 meters.]
[Remaining Uses: 5]
It was the moment he obtained a sure-kill interceptor meant specifically for Archmages.
But Jeong Hyeon-su did not stop there.
— Wh-what are you doing, human?
He immediately began extracting the Protocol Observer’s core as well.