WeTried Translations
Translator/Editor: WeTried
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◈ I Made a Tier List the Transcendents Are Obsessed With ◈
Chapter 47: Epnol Company (1)
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Epin had been feeling strange lately.
"Am I some kind of transportation?"
It felt like she had become a delivery service.
The culprit was easy to identify.
Even now, Nirvakh was standing in front of her, shrugging with shameless confidence.
"What choice do I have? I'd like to travel around by myself if it weren't for that damn Restriction, but it isn't easy for me to move around outside the Void."
"...Unbelievable."
Nirvakh had always been hot-tempered, and sometimes stupid and childish, but not this hopeless.
Wasn't Oz largely to blame for how far gone Nirvakh had become...?
Just as that thought crossed her mind, Nirvakh pointed into the distance.
"Oh, look over there. I was right."
Following the gesture, she looked toward one point on the Blue Hand's barrier, hundreds of light-years away.
Epin's spiritual perception was not particularly strong for one of the highest rank, but even she understood what Nirvakh meant.
"...It really is strange. How do you even know?"
"Hmph. You still doubt me? Just trust me."
"What are you talking about? Anyone would think you figured it out yourself."
The Blue Hand had not allowed a single intruder inside until now.
Yet they had received information that there was a weakness somewhere in the curtain surrounding it.
Naturally, that information had come through a Gallery DM.
And naturally, the source had been Oz.
Just who was Oz?
She had wondered before, but she wondered several times more intensely now.
It had already seemed impossible to figure out how Oz learned such things. At this point, it felt beyond the question of whether it was even possible.
"All right, put me down."
"...There."
Under the control of Epin's Authority, Nirvakh was released. The being that had been swiftly gliding through space manifested its True Body.
Rumble...!
The avatar body's shape twisted into a mass of black darkness. Its released presence formed a hazy mist.
As it grew larger and coiled itself up, Epin sensed the divine senses of other Transcendents attacking the barrier from a distant direction.
They appeared to be Transcendents from the First Dimension, attacking the palm.
"It's fucking huge. Seriously."
Epin could only stare in disbelief.
Nirvakh continued to grow, until its body was nearly the size of one joint of the Blue Hand's thumb.
It might have been only a thumb joint, but it was nearly the size of a dwarf galaxy.
It felt roughly twenty percent larger than the last time she had seen Nirvakh's True Body.
A predator that had devoured thousands, tens of thousands of worlds.
The laws and Authorities of gods that had ruled an age, the final miracles of fallen civilizations, even principles that had formed the foundation of worlds, all still existed within its stomach.
And now.
All of it began to move under a single will.
Rrrrrumble!
Authorities from different deities rose up.
From one magic circle came blue-white tribulation flames capable of burning a sun. From another spread invisible waves that traveled back through time and gnawed away at a being's past.
The laws of Death that denied life.
The Authority of annihilation that severed causality.
The great law of space that expelled all things from where they stood.
Hundreds of Authorities that should have collided and destroyed one another flowed over the giant serpent's scales, woven together into a single spell formula.
"N-No way...!"
"Hah... As expected of the Black Python of the End..."
It was only natural for the onlookers to be stunned.
Even fully mastering one Authority from one deity required the training of countless eons. Yet that monster controlled the Authorities of fallen gods as if they were its own limbs.
The spectators' cries of dismay passed through their divine senses.
At the same time, Nirvakh's innate Authority, Devouring (呑食), was at work.
The giant serpent slowly opened its mouth.
Endless darkness made from the regrets and resentment spat out in the final moments of countless dying worlds, from unfulfilled wishes and the despair of beings who were never saved, poured onto the Blue Hand's barrier.
Whoooosh!
Crack!
Hairline fractures spread across the barrier's surface.
Crrrack!
The fractures spread, growing into a web.
The spiritual power that formed it began to flow backward, and the laws of protection within the barrier denied their own existence.
Kraaaash!
Then, at last, the barrier began to collapse completely.
The shock of the rapidly spreading collapse made all nearby space tremble.
As the spiritual power contained in each fragment exploded and scattered, Nirvakh had already returned to its avatar body.
The boy looked utterly exhausted.
The words that came out of his mouth hardly suited the monster that had created that spectacle moments ago.
"Ugh, I'm hungry. Did I use too much power...?"
He was not just saying it. His cheeks were visibly sunken.
It might have been an obvious weakness, but the barrier had remained intact despite the attacks of the other highest-rank beings.
Epin knew well that the Authority of Devouring came at a tremendous cost, so Nirvakh's frail appearance was no act.
"...Here."
"Ooh, thanks. When did you bring these?"
Epin pulled out the spirit fruit and snacks she had prepared. Nirvakh's eyes lit up as he grabbed them and began eating.
After stuffing his mouth full, Nirvakh mumbled,
"Take a picture and send it over."
"You make me do all the errands. You crazy bastard."
After grumbling once, Epin shook her head and "recognized" the collapsing barrier and the revealed Blue Hand.
Then she sent the image by DM.
Naturally, the recipient was Oz.
* * *
The inside of the Blue Hand had finally been revealed.
And after all that time, what lay inside was...
-What's this? It's a Phase World?
-At least it isn't dangerous, then... yeah.
A Phase World.
It referred to an independent world existing on a different phase from the existing universe. It did not inherently possess any special qualities or laws.
It was simply spatially separated from the outside world, and its environment and scale were not much different from ordinary worlds.
One of the largest examples was the Underworld.
Considering that parts of the Underworld occasionally appeared in several Dimensions when interdimensional pressure weakened, it was not especially remarkable.
The problem was that this was a Phase World that had never been discovered before.
Worlds with a humanoid form were common enough, but this one was overwhelmingly large, and no one had known it existed.
-There aren't any living things inside, apparently.
-There are traces of them, but... nobody knows when it formed or when it was destroyed.
-They say the civilization level wasn't that high either.
ㄴThe ones on the middle finger were the most advanced, around Grade 8 at best. Yeah...
Of course, being unusual and being useful were clearly different things.
There were traces of civilizations that appeared to have died out long ago, but their inhabitants had not even seemed to realize that the world they lived on was a single hand.
Put simply, there were only traces of people whose civilizations made one wonder whether they had even possessed beings at the Transcendent level or above.
So, unlike the Transcendents of the First Dimension who continued their investigation, most of the Transcendents from other Dimensions withdrew.
Only a few continued searching the inside.
"Ugh, seriously. Why are the blood and bones still alive... Blegh."
"I keep telling you, you need to get a stronger stomach."
Incidentally, those few included Nirvakh and Epin, who entered the hand immediately after breaking the barrier.
Leaving Epin behind as she gagged at the disgusting scent of blood coming from every direction, which directly reached her true soul due to the dense spiritual power, Nirvakh moved forward. Soon, he smashed through a bulkhead before them and shouted,
"Hey, I found it. Ginseng!"
"...Really? Ugh. Then hurry up and get it over with. I don't want to stay here any longer."
The "ginseng" Nirvakh had shouted about was not some wild ginseng.
It was the hand's core, shining throughout the area like a blue crystal.
* * *
Unlike matters in the Lower Realm, events in the Great Heavenly World could not be known unless someone shared their progress.
Fortunately, Nirvakh and Epin kept sharing updates. It seemed they had already reached the core inside the hand.
"Fast. Really fast."
Then again, perhaps that was only natural.
They were both highest-rank beings from the Void Region, among the strongest fighters in the thirteen Dimensions, and they made a perfect pair who could cooperate openly.
They were close to completing their conquest of the Blue Hand in only half a month.
"Then why is this one still like that?"
In contrast, things with Lee Hamyung had made almost no progress.
His face in the crystal ball was filled with nothing but embarrassment and anxiety.
I had sent him to an island south of Haedong.
If I compared it to the original Earth, it was something like Jeju Island. He was struggling because he was not particularly good at handling this sort of work.
"Honestly."
The task I had given him was to deal with an incident that would later shake all of Haedong in advance.
A company known as an ordinary pharmaceutical business was, in truth, illegally testing spiritual medicine and enhancement drugs on people. Its failed experiments would seize control of the island.
The problem was that Lee Hamyung had completely failed to carry out my instruction to handle it without repercussions.
It was fine that he had been excited to use his new swordsmanship, but his cleanup had been sloppy enough for the survivors to learn its distinctive traits.
As a result, he had ended up being hunted instead. It seemed he would need support.
"If it was going to be like this, I should've gone myself."
Of course, I did not really mean it.
There was no need for me to step in myself.
It was dangerous, even if only a little...
Footnotes:
"심봤다" is a cry made upon finding wild ginseng. The line plays on 심, meaning "heart" or "core," when Nirvakh finds the hand's core.
The spectators' lament and Nirvakh's Devouring are homophonous in Korean. The ability is specified with characters meaning "swallow and consume."
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