Chapter 147

Chapter 147
Chapter: 147
Chapter Title: Phantom Revealed

—

It was only logical to conclude that his stamina had finally bottomed out, causing his physical augmentation and special abilities to dissipate.

The damn brat had hit his breaking point as well.

“Ugh!”

A fresh wave of life force surged through his frame.

The Master felt his own strength reaching a literal boiling point.

He desperately required a target to absorb this concentrated violence.

Still looming in his titanic state, the Master swung his fist with every ounce of his soul, activating ‘Domain Destruction Art’ directly at the bastard’s face.

Kuuuung-!

The impact was on a level that made his previous strikes look like child’s play.

It gave the sensation that the fabric of reality itself was being ripped apart and ground into dust.

This was the absolute peak of the Master’s output, his ultimate hidden ace.

There was no doubt in his mind—no living being could survive a direct collision with this move.

Crack!

Crack, crack!

Webs of fractures originated from his knuckles and raced across the firmament in an instant.

The visual effect was as if the entire world had been transformed into a brittle, shattered pane of glass.

Yet, the most horrific aspect of this ‘Destruction Art’ wasn’t merely the vastness of the wreckage.

“……Oh ho.”

The Paladin let out a soft, surprised sound.

One didn’t need to be the target to feel it; the sheer density of the destructive intent was thick enough to taste.

Those jagged fragments and the blackened, ruined sections of the domain began to pull toward a central vortex.

The dark fractures swirled and knotted together in a chaotic mess, vibrating with a tension that seemed ready to detonate.

By condensing the power of those shattered pieces into a single coordinate, the lethality was amplified exponentially.

There was no way to run.

‘Has he just accepted his fate?’

The Master felt a surge of internal mockery.

Had the sight of such total devastation broken the boy’s spirit to fight?

It was a reasonable reaction.

Anyone would be paralyzed with terror if a titan appeared from nowhere to break the world into pieces.

The brat had instinctively brought up his blade, but having reached his limit even in his empowered state, there was no earthly way he could block this Destruction Art.

‘Get pulverized and rot.’

Great Domain Destruction Art.

The Master drove his fist forward once more, targeting the exact spot where the fissures had coalesced.

Kwaaaaang-!

Hitting the thin air as if it were a solid wall, the gathered lines of ruin began to cascade toward the bastard.

Thousands, perhaps tens of thousands of ‘black lines’ tore across the landscape without mercy.

Boom! Boom! Kwaaaang!

Whatever those lines brushed against ceased to exist.

The sheer pressure turned everything within a several-hundred-meter radius into vapor.

The earth collapsed inward, and the domain itself was scrubbed from existence, leaving no remains for a simple mortal to leave behind.

It didn’t matter if ‘the bastard’ was some legendary elite from the Reaper Church; in the end, he was made of flesh and blood.

Actually—even if he were a deity, he wouldn’t be able to stand against this.

“I am the Master. I am the one destined to look down on all you pathetic insects!”

Clouds of black soot billowed in every direction.

Standing in the center of the chaos, the Master let out a triumphant howl.

How dare the Empire and the Reaper Church subject him to such low-class treatment.

The time for his bloody retribution had arrived.

“I’ll start with you, and then I’ll erase the rest of them. No one gets to command me……”

“Not dead yet.”

In that heartbeat, the Paladin’s voice pierced through the Master’s ringing ears.

The Master’s face twisted in an instant scowl.

He survived the Great Domain Destruction Art? The move he was certain could slaughter gods?

Beyond that, his own attributes had spiked, making his killing power even more absolute.

And yet a human had lived through it?

‘……This is madness.’

The Master was floored.

It defied logic, but the evidence was right there.

A human had taken the full brunt of the attack and remained standing.

No, he hadn’t just taken it.

As the dark haze began to thin, the silhouette of ‘the bastard’ became visible.

Positioned right before the boy’s sword, the black lines were snagged and tangled together.

They were trapped as if held within a spherical cage, unable to break free.

He had actually contained the Great Domain Destruction Art itself.

While holding that concentrated mass of death, ‘the bastard’ began to speak.

“Master. There’s something I’ve always found curious. How do people who didn’t even set foot on the Great Expedition get to walk around calling themselves ‘heroes’?”

“……?”

What kind of gibberish was this lunatic spouting now?

Great Expedition? Heroes?

Wasn’t this guy an operative for the Empire’s Reaper Church?

Neither that church nor the Empire had taken any part in the Great Expedition.

Consequently, those words shouldn’t even be in the vocabulary of someone from those organizations.

But the boy wasn’t finished.

“Someone hijacked my legacy, paraded it around as their own, and falsified every single record. I’ve often wondered who the architect behind that entire farce was.”

Hijacking legacies and rigging the game?

What in the world was he talking about?

‘Great Expedition. Heroes. Legacy. Falsification……’

Wait.

For a split second, the Master felt like time had ground to a halt.

There were very few people in this entire realm who could speak of such things.

Specifically regarding the Great Expedition—almost no one had the right to talk.

The ones who didn’t run away were all dead.

And the ones who did flee had turned tail and vanished at the very first sign of trouble.

So, for someone to state with such certainty that ‘the story of the Great Expedition was falsified’……

‘No. That’s impossible.’

The Master shook his head violently.

It couldn’t be true.

Think about it—other players had their doubts, too.

Some players were aware that the Master hadn’t actually joined the Expedition.

But that was information restricted solely to the player base.

‘……He’s one of us! A player!’

Shudder!

Only then did the Master’s limbs begin to tremble slightly.

A player, embedded in the very heart of the Reaper Church—a group that hated and hunted players with religious fervor.

Ha!

Acting like he wasn’t a player while treating the Master like garbage?

What a ridiculous, arrogant bastard.

Then, ‘the bastard’ went on.

“But looking at you now, you don’t have the stature for it. There’s no way you could have managed a conspiracy that complex. So, who’s really behind it?”

“You piece of…… What kind of garbage have you been yelling, you ‘sinner’?”

“Aren’t you the actual sinner here, the proprietor of the ‘Interdimensional Community’?”

“……!”

The Interdimensional Community.

Bringing that up was the same as screaming that he was a player.

If the Reaper Church caught wind of this, the bastard’s life was forfeit.

Shaaaak!

At that moment, a veil of intense lightning flared up around ‘the bastard’.

“Wake up! He’s just trying to buy time!”

Ah.

The Paladin’s shout pulled the Master back to the present.

They were all suffering from the heavy strain of the 12-stack Heaven-Slaying Thunder buff.

If they stalled any longer, their stats would be permanently damaged and their physical bodies would literally crumble into dust.

The boy must have realized that and was dragging things out on purpose.

“Heaven-Slaying Hammer!”

Kwaaaaang!

The Paladin’s massive hammer came crashing down toward the bastard’s skull.

However, the curtain of electricity and the Heaven-Slaying Hammer—

“……”

Both of them simply stopped, frozen in mid-air, unable to even graze ‘the bastard’.

“What in the world…… is that?”

The Insect Sorcerer’s face darkened.

He had spent the entire fight analyzing every move, but he couldn’t make heads or tails of this ‘swordsmanship.’

He wasn’t parrying it, and he wasn’t slipping past it—he was just pinning it in place.

It looked as though the passage of time in that specific area had been halted.

‘A sword style that controls time within a localized space? Is that even a possibility?’

But if it was possible—

Suddenly, the Insect Sorcerer gasped, his brow furrowing in panic.

“Ah……! Get out of the way!!”

The frozen moment began to play in reverse.

Creeeeak!

Kwaaaaang-!

The fractures of the domain, the electric veil, and the Heaven-Slaying Hammer.

Everything snapped back to where it came from.

And they moved even faster than when they were first launched.

“Gah……!”

“Keuk!”

“Hup!”

Upon impact, the forces detonated, sending the casters flying.

It was a literal mirror reflection.

They were struck by the full weight of their own concentrated power.

There was, naturally, no way to defend against it.

‘He reflected my own attack?’

Slammed into the dirt with his transformation shattered, the Master was in a state of pure disbelief.

The Great Domain Destruction Art.

It hadn’t just been stopped—the strike of a legendary giant had been sent right back at him.

Reeling from his own amplified power, he could barely keep his thoughts straight.

‘No player should be able to do this……’

The Master was familiar with almost every player of consequence.

Excluding Gracia, nobody should have been able to overwhelm him.

Hermits?

Granted, there were high-tier players who skipped the Hall of Fame glory to live in the shadows.

He assumed many unidentified powerhouses were simply those hermits.

But how powerful could a hermit actually be?

Even with his own stats through the roof, to have his attack reflected?

‘Not unless they are 4-star or higher.’

At the very least, a 4-star rank, Level 14.

That was a level reached only by the true freaks of nature in Pangeniar.

No players had reached that height.

If one did—

‘A bug user.’

……An actual, genuine bug user.

Someone manipulating the game’s core to toy with everyone.

But labeling him as just a cheater didn’t explain all the weird inconsistencies.

Then—

“Are you…… an admin?”

The Master looked up at ‘the bastard’ looming over him and asked.

An Admin.

There had been whispers before.

Rumors that the person who designed the game Pangeniar was actually present in the world.

Of course, Pangeniar was a physical continent, a tangible reality. This world, sustained by two goddesses, wasn’t some digital simulation.

But the ‘game of Pangeniar’ was another matter.

How could goddesses create a game on Earth?

It only made sense that there was an ‘admin’ who bridged the two worlds and built the system.

Someone who connected the game mechanics to the reality of Pangeniar.

Whether it was one person or a group—people claimed to have spotted this ‘admin.’

‘A being who can see the entire board.’

That was the definition of an admin.

Clad in gear like ‘Hydragon’s Soul,’ which wasn’t supposed to drop until much later, and carrying dozens of other ‘impossible items.’

Owning things that shouldn’t even exist yet!

Moving across the continent without any barriers, even supposedly seen in the depths of the ‘Abyss.’

Feats that were impossible unless you understood the entire structural layout of the world.

Naturally, the players started to believe he was the ‘admin.’

‘Regardless of how I look at it, this guy has to be the one.’

The Master was certain now.

Only an admin would know the true story of the Great Expedition and possess such logic-defying strength.

Furthermore, look at his equipment.

Specifically that blade.

That sword forged from glacial ice was clearly a ‘unique-grade’ weapon that had never been documented.

Even the ‘Crack Tower’ had flagged him as a ‘bug user.’

He was ascending the floors as if the rules didn’t apply to him.

No normal player could manage that.

“Why would an admin…… be bothering to climb the ‘Crack Tower’?”

If an admin was involved, the tower’s appearance itself should be some kind of ‘event.’

Just like the Abyss Labyrinth that came before.

But if it was a scripted event, why would the tower call him a bug user?

Why would the system try to delete its own admin?

“Me, an admin?”

Then ‘the bastard’ let out a mocking smirk.

Was the guess right?

Or did he just find the idea hilarious?

Slowly, ‘the bastard’ leaned down, bringing his face close.

Looking the Master straight in the eye,

He spoke.

“I am ‘Phantom.’”

Randolph is Phantom.

……What?

For a second, the Master thought his ears were failing him.

He had been so absolutely sure it was an admin.

‘Phantom?’

……Phantom.

There was only one person in all of Pangeniar who carried that title.

The legend who had developed more characters than anyone else, hitting mythic milestones that everyone else thought were impossible.

Even Knight King Wilhelm, the man who started the Great Expedition, was rumored to be one of Phantom’s characters.

But ‘Phantom’ had never shown his face.

He never talked to anyone, and no one knew for sure just how many characters he had built.

Yet—

“L-Liar……”

A cold dread crawled down the Master’s spine.

But in his heart, he pushed it away.

He had to deny it.

If the man standing there was Phantom, it meant he was actually ‘Randolph.’

He had clearly become a player after the Wilhelm character died and took on a new name.

But even if he were Phantom, how could he have demolished the four people he considered the ‘strongest’ in such a short window of time?

Topping the Hall of Fame while clearing main quests was impressive—but this level of power was illegal.

Even if he made every possible excuse, this was undeniably far beyond the limits of a 3-star player.