Escape

‘Thankfully it’s just taking the attacks passively.’

Though energy might be infinite, there was a limit to how much could be unleashed at once.

Things could have gotten complicated if the Brain Eater had been aggressive, but fortunately it focused solely on defense, allowing Yuseong to steadily chip away at its telekinetic shield.

Yuseong casually dodged Brain Eater’s blind telekinesis while channeling Infinite Origin Force even more intensely.

He fired bullets wildly with both hands, unleashed Flash Step non-stop with both feet, and released enough Cloud Mist to blanket the entire city and then some.

The nine clones popping up randomly to confuse the Brain Eater’s vision were just a bonus.

An enormous amount of energy that even the original body could barely handle was being consumed every second, but with the infinite energy cheat activated, Yuseong only had to worry about stamina.

‘And Kim Ganghyeon is a physical enhancement type esper.’

The stamina recovery rate exceeded the consumption rate from energy manipulation.

One hour?

If he wanted, he could maintain this state for half a day, no, even a full day.

Woong!

The Brain Eater fell into deep contemplation as it observed the mist that had somehow risen right beneath it.

This human’s energy reserves were beyond imagination.

While there was no possibility they exceeded its own, there was always that slim chance.

Having this much trouble against a single human was unexpected to begin with.

The Brain Eater decided to take a risk to eliminate uncertainty.

Swoosh!

As the Brain Eater soared high into the sky slicing through the wind, it drew forth its telekinesis with such force that clouds scattered and space itself began to distort.

But the Brain Eater wasn’t satisfied with just that and pulled in all the telekinesis comprising its telekinetic shield as well.

The opponent was a human with unknown power.

To eliminate uncertainty, it had to go all out.

The Brain Eater simultaneously released the compressed telekinesis while scanning the entire city with dozens of eyes.

Swish.

Skyscrapers, utility poles, trees, cars, roads.

Everything touched by the Brain Eater’s gaze began disintegrating into dust.

Overwhelming destructive power that could completely erase an entire city without leaving a trace.

This was the real reason the Brain Eater was called a calamity.

Woong! Woong! Woong!

The Brain Eater released cries of joy as it looked down at the city that had been transformed into a plain.

Though its brain throbbed from going all out after so long, it had definitely eliminated the uncertain factor.

Now it just needed to recover its depleted mental energy by consuming human brains…

Crack!

The Brain Eater’s thoughts were briefly interrupted by an unidentifiable sound.

A strange sensation it had never felt before, like its head was being torn apart.

Vision violently shaking up, down, left and right.

Even its consciousness, which had always remained clear since gaining self-awareness, was growing hazy.

When Brain Eater moved its eyes toward the source of the unfamiliar sensation to determine the cause, it received a shocking realization.

“Hup!”

It was the human.

The human who had been unleashing attacks at its telekinetic shield until just moments ago was now riding on top of its body, destroying it.

In that instant, countless thoughts flashed through the Brain Eater’s mind.

How this human had gotten on top of its head and such didn’t matter.

What mattered now was how to overcome this crisis.

Telekinesis was out of the question.

In its current state, it was impossible to control telekinesis precisely enough to extract just the human, and it didn’t even have enough telekinesis left to levitate.

Tentacles wouldn’t work either.

It had been continuously shooting out masses of tentacles since detecting the human’s presence but couldn’t even scratch the energy construct enveloping their body.

Then what remained was…

Shriek!

Having finished its calculations in an instant, the Brain Eater swung its leg toward the human’s back with full force.

Though it would suffer terrible damage with about a fifth of its brain being severed, it was better than dying like this.

However, halfway through swinging its leg, the Brain Eater realized its attempt had failed.

“Getting hit by the same attack twice would make me an idiot.”

Slash!

Woong!

As if predicting the future, the human smoothly moved forward and dodged the attack coming from their blind spot.

Part of its brain detached and a portion of consciousness was lost.

Though shuddering at that horrific sensation, the Brain Eater continued swinging its legs trying somehow to shake off the human.

Slash! Slash! Slash!

With each leg swing, it could feel its very existence gradually disappearing.

Through fading consciousness, the Brain Eater released a final cry as it saw the ground rapidly approaching and the human leaping into the air.

Splat!

The sound of a mass of flesh over a hundred meters in diameter colliding with the ground was indescribably grotesque.

Landing on the gray matter, Yuseong frowned at the squishy sensation transmitted through his feet and lifted his body slightly.

“…Having overflowing energy makes even this kind of thing possible.”

The moment the Brain Eater soared into the sky, Yuseong had jumped up with all his might then released internal energy to keep his body airborne.

It was a crazy stunt using simple internal energy emission rather than skills containing the principles of flight like Void Walking or fly magic, but infinite energy made such madness possible.

Clicking his tongue, Yuseong manifested ki before firing bullets in all directions.

And after quite some time passed, Yuseong sighed as he looked around at the crater-filled ground.

“Just as I thought.”

-W-what do you mean just as you thought? Don’t tell me this bastard is still alive?

Kim Ganghyeon, who had been dumbfounded at the unbelievable sight of an unstoppable calamity reduced to a mere lump of meat, anxiously asked upon hearing Yuseong’s monologue.

“No, it’s definitely dead.”

It had taken damage from self-harm before crashing into the ground at uncontrolled speed.

Its brain had scattered in all directions, and after completely destroying the remaining fragments with ki and confirming with Eye of Truth, there was no doubt.

Brain Eater was definitely dead.

“Then why that reaction?”

-No window appeared.

“Window? What window?”

For quests with both basic and additional clear conditions, a window appears when the basic clear condition is met asking whether to end the quest or continue.

The basic clear condition for the [One Day Suddenly] quest was to deal with the calamity.

However, despite killing the Brain Eater who was called a calamity, no message window appeared.

Normally he would have accepted this with disappointment, thinking the Brain Eater simply didn’t qualify as a calamity, but having seen this world’s truth with Eye of Truth, Yuseong reached a different conclusion.

‘If the first Brain Eater that appeared wasn’t a calamity, then Mad Magician, Leviathan, Magical Girl of Death, Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse – the other calamities likely aren’t what the system calls calamities either. Then there are two possibilities. One is that a real calamity is hiding somewhere in this world. And the other is…’

“That the calamity exists in the real world, not this one.”

-Real world? What do you mean?

“Be quiet for a moment, I need to think.”

After silencing Kim Ganghyeon, Yuseong sank into thought.

The former possibility wasn’t impossible.

But finding and killing a real calamity hidden somewhere in the world was practically impossible.

It would likely take at least decades, maybe even centuries to find, but he didn’t have much time.

Unless this world’s time ratio was thousands of times that of Earth’s – no, even then he couldn’t spend that long searching a single world.

‘At that point I might as well just give up on the quest.’

Excluding the former naturally left the latter.

The problem was finding a way to escape this virtual world and reach the real one.

Even movie protagonists who could control the virtual world’s laws at will and display superhuman abilities needed a medium like a landline phone to reach the real world.

Obviously some special method must exist to log out of this virtual world into the real one, but he had no idea what it might be.

‘Should I try causing chaos? Maybe if I randomly kill people and run wild, something like an administrator might appear… No. The Brain Eater was an existence impossible to capture with this world’s power. The fact that nothing happened even after killing such a being means there’s either no administrator, or if there is one they won’t appear for anything short of extreme circumstances. Eye of Truth is difficult too. It took a week just to barely decode one energy-related code, who knows how long finding the logout method would take.’

After pondering for a long while, Yuseong bit his lip.

Actually, there was one method he’d been considering.

Given the nature of the method, he didn’t want to try it unless absolutely necessary, but there were no other options.

“Kim Ganghyeon.”

-What?

“I want to apologize in advance for what I’m about to do. I’m sorry.”

-W-wait. Just what are you planning to do?!

“You’ll see.”

As he circulated magic power, Thorny Vine began growing from his fingertips.

Staring at the writhing Thorny Vine with dead eyes, Yuseong took a deep breath before shoving it up his nostrils.

-Hey!

“Ugh!”

Kim Ganghyeon said something but Yuseong couldn’t hear any of it.

The sensation of something writhing inside his nostrils was even more horrific than he’d imagined, but this was just the beginning.

The Thorny Vine that entered his nostrils climbed up the nasal cavity, made a small hole, and traveled through the pituitary gland and hypothalamus to reach the brain.

“Nggghh…”

There are no pain receptors in the brain.

Nevertheless, he could strangely clearly feel something writhing inside his head.

But Yuseong didn’t stop there and sent his will through the magic power into Thorny Vine.

“!!!”

A shock so intense he couldn’t even scream.

No, a sensation.

His body moved on its own beyond his will and his five senses became completely jumbled.

The world appeared completely distorted, he could taste through his skin, and smell through his ears.

Even after thinking it himself, he couldn’t understand what it meant.

But he couldn’t stop.

What Yuseong was doing now was a kind of shock therapy.

No matter how elaborately crafted, this world was still virtual, not reality.

And when unexpected situations occur, programs can develop errors.

‘The problem is creating that unexpected situation…’

This was a world that could implement even S-rank skills without issue.

Creating an error through normal methods was impossible.

After much contemplation, what Yuseong came up with was using Thorny Vine to perform the Puppet skill.

The theory was that using the Puppet skill on himself then sending as many signals as possible to cause sensory overload might create a program error.

The success rate was unknown and it was practically suicide, but with neither time nor information, Yuseong had no choice.

“Ugh, urk, guh!”

Vision and smell merged, hearing and touch and taste combined.

And finally when he could no longer tell what was what-

Flash.

The world went dark.