Chapter 46. Madness 100 (1)
[Madness: 100 (MAX)]
[Critical threshold reached.]
[Value corresponds to an Absolute Ruler.]
[Target has completely escaped the system’s range of control.]
Escaped the system’s control?
Delaira panicked and activated the city’s power.
The Authority of this City of Madness, designed for her by Betrayne through the Dionysus Artifact.
[World Rule activated.]
[Effect: Intoxication Erosion.]
[Effect: Perception Distortion.]
[Effect: Banishment.]
Nothing happened.
[Warning: Target is outside the system’s sphere of influence.]
[Effect cannot be applied.]
“...What?”
Delaira sucked in a breath.
Gritting her teeth, she threw every method available in this world at him.
[Madness Infliction.]
[Mental Corruption.]
[Induced Ego Collapse.]
None of them reached Jooheon.
[Failed.]
[Failed.]
[Reason: Madness 100. Target already qualifies as a contaminant.]
Delaira finally realized what was happening.
The powers of this city had been designed by Betrayne to corrupt normal citizens and drag them down.
But Jooheon was already beyond normal.
No.
There was no reason to use those powers on someone like him in the first place.
The system had never been designed with an existence like him in mind.
Damn it!
Jooheon tilted his head with a vicious grin.
“What’s wrong?”
“Keep going.”
He genuinely looked curious.
“You said Cynthia, the former Majesty of this city, was nothing but a tenant farmer.”
“And you’re the true lord.”
He spread his arms.
“Then go ahead and kill me.”
Delaira’s hand trembled.
The Artifact facilities Betrayne had built for her...
They weren’t listening?
Only now did she understand why the Divine-Grade Artifacts were so desperate to eliminate this man.
Then Delaira screamed:
“Banish!”
“Get out of this territory right now!”
She violently swept one hand through the air.
[Banishment Artifact activated: Signboard of the Onibaba.]
This Artifact came from folk tales about placing signs at village boundaries to drive away beings that didn’t belong.
Ghosts.
Monsters.
Especially outsiders.
Its power of rejection was exceptionally strong.
At last, the Banishment Artifact’s energy wrapped around Jooheon’s feet.
But one of the Artifacts forming the city announced:
[Forced Banishment cannot be used.]
“What?”
Why?!
[Reason: Under the design parameters of this city...]
[Valid Madness range for Banishment: 0–99.]
Delaira’s gaze trembled.
This fucking lunatic...!
Banishment required the target to ‘exist.’
A coordinate.
Something recognizable.
Something registered within the system.
Only then could it be pushed away.
But Seo Jooheon, who had reached Madness 100, had already fallen outside the system’s own standards.
A nonexistent person.
Or an error that should not exist.
How could you expel something the system could no longer even define?
Delaira’s voice cracked.
“You fucking—!”
Jooheon tilted his head.
“Told you.”
He smiled calmly.
“If this city’s system could handle me, it should’ve done it already.”
As Jooheon approached with a vicious smile, Delaira frantically unleashed the system’s powers.
“Intoxication!”
“Madness!”
“Oblivion!”
“Damn it!”
“Take all of it and lose your fucking mind!”
The unique debuffs of the Dionysus worldline descended upon Jooheon like a storm.
Purple mist that melted sanity and devoured memory engulfed his body.
An ordinary Majesty would already have lost their identity and been reduced to crawling on the floor.
But Jooheon calmly inhaled the mist as if taking a drag from a cigarette.
[‘Intoxication’ is absorbed into the target’s ‘Madness.’]
[The wave of ‘Oblivion’ collides with the target’s mind and dissipates.]
“Smells like booze.”
Jooheon smiled.
“But what can you do?”
“I’m already drunk. There’s nowhere left for me to get any drunker.”
Then he placed a hand on one of Delaira’s structures.
At that moment—
[Hand of Redefinition activated.]
[Redefinition: Delaira’s private property → Waste subject to disposal for illegally invading my world.]
BOOOOM!!!
The structure collapsed.
Jooheon smiled.
“See?”
“Looks nice on the outside, but it’s rotten all the way through.”
He stepped over the shattered pieces and walked right up to Delaira.
She was trembling in fear now, seemingly unable even to speak.
“All of this was built with this world’s capital, right?”
“You stole someone else’s property and built this cheap garbage with it?”
Jooheon smiled.
“That’s going to be one hell of a fine.”
Then a voice rang from the sky.
Rulebook.
[Dionysus Worldline ‘Madness’ has resonated with Majesty 187487’s <Slaughter> tendency.]
[A temporary Authority has been generated.]
[Berserk.]
[‘Destroyer’ has been engraved into the narrative of the 187487th Majesty.]
Rulebook.
The bastard had claimed it couldn’t break its own rules.
At least it was still doing its job.
Dark aura erupted from Jooheon’s <Hand of Redefinition> like flames.
This was no longer merely changing the attributes of Artifacts.
Jooheon’s Madness swept across the entire Dionysus city.
Artifacts abandoned in remote warehouses and construction sites began being forcibly summoned.
[Majesty Unique Authority forcibly drafts Artifacts.]
[Nameless Laborer’s Crowbar (C-Grade)]
[Logger’s Used Chainsaw (B-Grade)]
WHOOOSH!
BOOM!
Black objects flew through the air like missiles and embedded themselves in the ground at Jooheon’s feet.
Normally...
He wouldn’t even have looked twice at such junk Artifacts.
