Chapter 157. Demigod

A black marble the size of a fist.

The surface glowed, reminding me of a black pearl.

Other than that, nothing looked out of the ordinary.

I thought back to the time I defeated Joker and obtained the King’s Marble.

I have taken good care of it all this time, still being held within my armor.

The marble was much smaller than the black marble I’ve obtained, but the effect was insane enough to make the size of it not matter at all.

Not only did it restore my health and mana to full, but it made me immortal for a minute, and on top of that, it granted me twice my strength for a full minute.

It was a very powerful item.

Currently, via hunting in the Unknown Dungeon, I had 11 of those marbles with me.

However, unlike Status Denial and the ring that allowed the wearer to come back to life, I wasn’t using them as a survival method.

It was because I had to consume the marble in order to activate the effect.

After all, I couldn’t use this when the situation turned critical, unless I had it in my mouth to begin with.

Not only that , but the Demon King’s attack power wouldn’t even give me the time to swallow one of them.

Also, even if I succeed in swallowing the marble and increasing my attack power by twofold, my attacks wouldn’t hit the Demon King.

If I was only a bit stronger…. If only I had an attack that could break through his defenses.

The King’s Marble will still massively affect this battle though.

This was pretty much my final card against the Demon King after all.

If the King’s Marble provided both offensive and defensive benefits, this black marble seemed to only benefit me offensively.

However, this item wasn’t lacking by any means.

No matter how weak the owner was, it would allow them to rise as one of the strongest.

Like the ring in the movies.

It was that incredible.

The information that the Eye of Insight showed me regarding the black marble was as follows.

-A Piece of Space and Time-

*All attacks have a 100% chance to succeed.

*Ignores all enemies resistances.

*Prevents opponents hit by attacks from recovering.

*Allows the user to wield all of their strength.

*However, effects are activated only after passing a god’s test.

“Using Eternal Rest didn’t feel like a waste at all…… Chimera, you clever little thing.”

Once I consumed the marble, I would obtain amazing abilities.

Isn’t this enough to make anyone exclaim with glee?

Just from looking at the first effect, anyone could tell that this was no ordinary item.

My main attacks involved using skills.

Each of these skills had their own ranks.

Depending on these ranks, an opponent’s defensive capabilities and resistance can make the attacks deal no damage.

However, this single effect allowed my attacks to bypass that wall.

This meant that even if I used Frost Orb, it would deal some form of damage to the Demon King.

Secondly, ignoring resistances.

Monsters have some form of innate resistance, either physical or magical.

Holy damage ignores resistances, but they usually don’t deal a lot of damage.

This basically rewrote the rules of what was and wasn’t a viable attack method.

Even an enemy with a 100% resistance to physical attacks could be defeated with sword skills.

I could laugh at an enemy’s 100% magical resistance while killing them with magical attacks.

Thirdly was the ability to prevent healing.

I already had a skill that had that effect.

It was a necromancer’s B ranking debuff skill that prevented the opponent from healing themselves.

However, due to the fact that it was only a B ranking skill, not only did it not work on most Awakened, but most monsters as well.

If the effect of all attacks succeeding was true, it would allow the Unrecoverable spell to go through as well.

However, this saved me the trouble of having to cast it every single time and also being at the mercy of the spell’s duration.

With the three effects I went over so far and properly spacing out the use of the King’s Marbles, I would not only be able to beat the Demon King, but even his grandpa if he were to exist.

But that wasn’t the end of it.

The best one was saved for last.

The fourth effect was hard to believe.

It allowed the user to use all of their powers.

To put it in simple terms, it allowed me to freely use my magical energies, which was something I still couldn’t control or even see.

From my travels throughout Earth and the demonic realm, I had slaughtered countless monsters and have obtained their magical energies.

Me, while being a human, had enough magical energy to be considered the one with the 3rd most amount of it in the demonic realm.

If I was to obtain the ability to wield it as I pleased?

I would be able to attack with both the abilities of the Awakened and the power of magical energies at the same time, obtaining combination attack capabilities.

In other words, the Demon King would be toast.

Not only that, but I had Archangel’s Fall, which allowed me to deal bonus damage against monsters.

Each line of the descriptions on the marble artifact were amazing.

However, the last line filled me with doubt, almost as if throwing a question at me.

“A god’s test? I thought everything was going smoothly, but what is this nonsense? If you’re going to give me abilities, should just give it to me without all this hassle…..”

To be able to use the artifact’s effects, it seemed that I had to meet the requirements, similar to how a skill book beyond ranking does.

As confirmed with the Eye of Insight, the requirement here was to pass a test, and that test was from a god.

I couldn’t fathom if this was some kind of joke or not.

There probably wasn’t anyone who had information regarding this item either.

The informant of the demonic realm, Karin, and the one who is in a shaky alliance with us, Belkoseu, wouldn’t have intel on this.

After all, artifacts were only related to humans.

“So there isn’t anyone who could give me a clear answer….”

I did have my worries about this, but I was leaning more towards just consuming it.

No matter what angle I look at this from, there just wasn’t any other way out for me.

The Demon King. Ladin. Belkoseu.

Just hearing their names gave me a headache.

Not only that, but it wouldn’t be long before the Gate that leads to Earth would be discovered.

As time passed, it was us that would be at a greater disadvantage, and it was us that were in a hurry.

Since I’ve used up Eternal Rest already, I had no way of stopping Belkoseu after I defeated the Demon King.

My only way of annihilating Belkoseu had disappeared altogether.

And I couldn’t even face that problem until things worked out well enough for us to defeat the Demon King in the first place.

I held the orb up.

With a slight moment of hesitation, I moved it towards my mouth.

It was then.

“Min-Cheol!”

“……”

“Keruuu….. Min-Cheol!”

“Has that much time passed already?”

Jong Ho and Karin yelled while being carried by Belkoseu at incredible speeds.

I thought for a second how lame they must’ve felt when I carried them like that.

Karin’ face was wet from something that I couldn’t tell if it was drool or tears.

Jong Ho’s expression was calm, as if he couldn’t be surprised anymore.

He must’ve known that I was alive via Karin’s ability.

And seeing that the orb in the sky hadn’t disappeared, Jong Ho must’ve have foreseen that I would use the skill on the Chimera.

That was probably why he had kept that expression.

Arriving near me nearly in an instant, both of them hopped off from the arms of Belkoseu and landed on the ground.

“Whew. I didn’t know that being carried around while being held looked so ridiculous, you know?”

“You! Only good at running your mouth.”

“So, how does it feel to be taxied around by him?”

“Yeah! A lot more comfortable than you, that’s for sure. You okay?”

“Of course. It doesn’t seem that you were worried at all by the looks of it, right?”

“You think you’re a normal person? At this point, I’m not even surprised anymore at these day to day occurrences.”

Jong Ho snuck a glance at Belkoseu while carefully speaking to me.

After all, he knew what I was thinking better than anyone else.

The missing Chimera. And I was alive, completely fine to boot.

With an expression that anyone would be able to tell it was filled with suspicion, Belkoseu spoke.

“Human…. What happened?”

“What?”

“Why has the Chimera stopped its activities, and how are you alive without a scratch.”

“Hm….. Are you saying that I should be dead or something? I feel a bit sad, but since it’s something to be curious about, I’ll let it slide.”

“…….”

“I escaped the Chimera. Of course, it is hard to believe.”

“Kuhum……”

“You don’t think I actually killed the Chimera, do you?”

I pointed at the sky while asking.

The sky still had one of those burning orbs floating there.

Looking at it, Belkoseu cleared his throat in an attempt to regain composure in his voice.

“That’s right. I didn’t believe for a moment that you defeated the Chimera. However……”

“What did you want to ask?”

“Maybe! Are you hiding your true strength?”

“Do you think I came here to waste time playing hide and seek with the Demon King?”

“…….”

“Of course not. I’m pretty sure that you saw yourself? I had received a severe injury from the Demon King’s attack before while I was trying to go through the Warp. I’m not into getting hit. Stop wasting your time pointlessly doubting me, okay?”

“Hm…….”

“Well, I have something to discuss between the three of us, so leave us be for now.”

“……”

Without even hearing his reply, I turned his back and brought Karin and Jong Ho with me.

Belkoseu seemed pretty shocked, but since these kind of situations were common, he didn’t make much of a fuss.

Casting Silent, I continued the talk between us.

After all, what we were about to discuss wouldn’t do us any good if Belkoseu heard them.

“Hyung-nim, as you are aware, I used Eternal Rest.”

“Right. There wasn’t anything else you could’ve done. You did well.”

“Yes. I did survive the Chimera, but…..”

“Now we lost the only way to defeat Belkoseu…..”

“Thankfully that’s not the case.”

“Hm? I thought that Eternal Rest could only be used once? Or perhaps… Nah. There’s no way that the Chimera, who doesn’t even have any magical energy to begin with, could drop any gear.”

“No, that’s what happened.”

I took out the black marble that was tucked away in my chestplate and showed it to Jong Ho.

I told him about the marble’s effects.

Each time he heard one of the effects, he couldn’t help but be surprised.

However, as expected, his expression did look too good when he heard about the last line of description that mentioned a test.

Jong Ho asked as if he knew what I was going to say next.

“You’re going headfirst into an unknown territory again. Are you confident?”

“You know that Jong Ho’s dongsaeng is just a corpse if you take out his confidence, right?”

“I’m an idiot for asking. So what do you need to do?”

“Not sure. I wouldn’t know unless I consumed this….”

“I think we need to move to a safer location. We’ll also need Belkoseu’s ability to hide our magical energy signature.”

“Yes. However, there is one thing I’m concerned about.”

“I’m more surprised that you only have one thing to worry about. You little! What is it?”

“How do I swallow something this big?”

“Listen well. Be glad that you’re stronger than me. If that wasn’t the case… you would’ve died.”

We headed towards where the demon god Ifrit resided before.

If we hide our magical energy signatures here, we would be able to completely avoid the Demon King.

He would never expect us to go back to a place where we already did our business and hide there.

After arriving, I consumed the marble.