My Bugged System Made Me Too OP!

Chapter 147: Vanished

Varis hadn’t seen it directly on that fateful day, having been stationed at the central capital headquarters during the initial fallout, but he had spent hours reviewing the transcribed magical testimonies and the frantic reports drafted by the local scouts.

To finally see the legendary construct with his own eyes, burning with a quiet, absolute dominance, sent a genuine chill down his spine.

Yuan, on the other hand, had been fortunate enough to see it that day in the flesh, standing just meters away from the epicenter of the conflict.

He could still remember vividly how powerful it was, peeling through layers of dense, shadow as if it were nothing more than common silk.

To see it deployed again now, in the middle of a seemingly peaceful street, meant the legendary Mr. White had found something truly monumental.

Noah didn’t offer a single word of explanation to his trembling companions, his features remaining completely hidden behind the static, matte-black cat mask.

He shifted his weight, his boots pressing firmly against the granite pavement as Noah walked towards that alley, his long travel cloak trailing behind his heels like a wake of liquid shadow.

He crossed the open space of Ter Street with a slow, deliberate, and entirely unbothered momentum, his glowing right hand held slightly forward.

’Let’s see... what they’re really trying to hide here.’ he thought.

He stopped right at the threshold of the narrow passage, where the cords of reddish-purple energy were thickest and most condensed, hanging in the air like a heavy, invisible curtain.

He raised his right hand, aligning his index finger with the absolute center of the magical convergence.

With a sudden, snapping motion, he stabbed his finger into the empty air there.

At first, it seemed like he was doing absolutely nothing as nothing happened.

For three long, agonizing seconds, the silence of the alleyway remained unbroken.

His golden-gloved finger remained extended into the blank space between the multi-storey warehouses, and the normal residents of the street continued to walk up and down the avenue in the distance, entirely unaware of the confrontation occurring just meters away.

Varis and Yuan held their breath, their eyes darting between Noah’s hand and the empty air, wondering if even an S-rank arch magus could miscalculate a trail.

Then, the world shattered.

Suddenly, a powerful yellow pulse bursted out of his hand, a colossal shockwave of pure, high-density neutral mana exploding outward from the tip of his extended finger with a sound like tearing thunder.

The golden energy expanded with a violent, geometric velocity, traveling rapidly in every direction until it covered the whole street from one end of Ter District to the other.

The wave passed right through the bricks, the wooden signposts, and the granite paving stones without harming a single blade of grass or breaking a single window pane, acting solely as a massive, world-clearing dispelling array that stripped away any hidden illusions.

The next thing they knew, the true reality of the district forced its way into the physical world with a sickening, horrific violence.

Thick, volatile plumes of pitch-black smoke started appearing in the air around them, bubbling out from the gaps in the granite stones, pouring from the lower cellar gratings of the houses, and bleeding out from the very walls of the repositories.

The black fog was dense and foul, carrying a suffocating, baleful odor of decayed copper and tortured souls that instantly choked out the pleasant scent of evening hearth fires.

The sheer suddenness of the transformation caused Yuan and Varis to stumble back in shock, their boots skidding frantically against the stone as their master-level defenses flared instinctively into life, their faces turning completely pale as they realized they had been walking on top of a living nightmare all afternoon.

The black smoke began to swirl violently, coiling around the street like a living, hungry entity that threatened to swallow the light.

Terrified by the sudden, suffocating pressure of the corruption and realizing that their own defensive barriers were struggling to process the baleful energy, the two veteran adventurers made sure to stay as close to Noah as possible.

They scrambled forward through the darkening fog, their shoulders pressing tightly against each other as they crowded right behind the heels of the masked arch magus, using his brilliant, glowing golden glove as their only shield against the rising tide of absolute darkness.

The pitch-black smoke continued to billow violently from the seams of the granite pavement, curling around the three men in thick, oily ribbons that seemed to devour the remaining fragments of the afternoon sun.

The air grew heavy, thick with the foul, copper-like stench of a deeply buried abomination that had finally been forced to the surface by Noah’s dispelling pulse.

Yuan and Varis pressed themselves tightly against Noah’s flanks, their breathing shallow and rapid as they kept their eyes locked onto the brilliant, reassuring glow of the golden-yellow mana glove.

Compared to him, who was an arch magus commanding an absolute, near-infinite reservoir of elemental and system power, they were only master magus level casters, and they feared what might happen if they got too far from him.

They knew with absolute certainty that their personal defensive barriers, while formidable against standard battlefield curses or high-rank beast attacks, were entirely unequipped to process the raw, baleful pressure of this localized corruption.

If a stray tentacle of that black smoke managed to breach their proximity without the protective canopy of Noah’s arch magus aura, it could infect their mana channels, warp their senses, or dissolve their souls before they could even formulate a counter-spell.

Yet, as the horrific, corrupted fog threatened to swallow the narrow alleyway completely, Noah’s golden eyes tracked a profound anomaly occurring just beyond the threshold of the passage.

The people around didn’t seem to notice anything different, and simply kept going about their day.

Out on the main expanse of Ter Street, the common laborers continued to carry their heavy wicker baskets, the low-ranking clerks kept their eyes glued to their paper ledgers, and the families inside the multi-storey brick houses continued to chat idly beside their open windows.

The billowing black smoke, the suffocating stench of decayed mana, and the brilliant, flaring golden light of the mana glove were entirely invisible to them.

To the ordinary citizens of Vale, the alley was empty, peaceful, and entirely devoid of drama.