I Start with 13 Hidden Traits Chapter-147

Ch-147

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It was only reasonable to conclude that his transformation and skills had been undone because he’d exhausted his strength.

The bastard had also reached his limits.

“Uuuhhhm!”

Vigor surged throughout his body.

It felt as though power was boiling over, threatening to explode out of him.

He needed somewhere to release this power.

The Master enlarged himself like a giant and unleashed *Domain Destruction Art* straight into the bastard’s face with all his strength.

KWOOOOOOOOOM—!

Its scale was incomparable to anything before.

It felt as though the entire world was being torn apart and smashed.

It was the greatest technique the Master could wield—his concealed secret art.

There was, without question, no one who could take this head-on and survive.

Crackle!

Cra-cra-crackle!

Cracks that started at the tip of his fist spread in an instant, covering the entirety of the sky.

The whole world now looked like a shattered glass window.

But the terrifying aspect of this *Destruction Art* wasn’t the sheer magnitude of destruction.

“…Ohh.”

The Paladin murmured in quiet awe.

At the overwhelming intensity—at that destructive force—so potent one could feel it without ever experiencing it.

The fractured shards—those parts of the shattered, blackened domain—began gathering into a single point.

Black lines tangled and writhed, trembling violently as though they might burst.

Destructive force gathered into one point always multiplies.

Escape was impossible.

*Has he given up on running?*

The Master let out a faint, mocking laugh.

Had he lost the will to fight after witnessing destruction of this magnitude?

He supposed even he would.

When a giant suddenly appeared and tried to destroy the world itself, anyone would freeze in shock.

Even if the bastard had reflexively lifted his sword, there was no way someone who had already hit the limit—even in a transformed state—could endure this Destruction Art.

*Be pulverized and die.*

Grand Domain Destruction Art.

The Master swung his fist once more at the point where the fractured dimension converged.

KWA-A-A-A-A-ANG—!

As though striking an invisible wall, he punched the air, and the gathered cracks rained down toward the enemy.

Thousands—no, tens of thousands—of black lines swept wildly across the ground.

Boom! Boom! KWA-A-AANG!

Everything they touched was obliterated.

A radius of hundreds of meters simply evaporated.

The land was gouged out and the domain itself was deleted—no human body could leave a corpse.

No matter how strong the bastard was, even if he were a top fighter from the Reaper Cult, he was still ultimately human.

No—even if he claimed to be a god, he would not withstand this.

“I am the Master! I am the one who stands above your worthless heads!”

Black dust scattered in all directions.

Standing amidst it, the Master roared.

For the Empire—mere insects—and the Reaper Cult—mere heretics—to dare humiliate him.

Now was the time to return that humiliation.

“Starting with you, I’ll wipe every last one of you out. No one will ever stand above—”

“He isn’t dead yet.”

At that moment, the Paladin’s voice struck the Master’s eardrums.

The Master’s expression twisted.

He took that attack—an attack that even a god wouldn’t survive—and yet he wasn’t dead?

And right now, with stats explosively increased, his destructive power had grown even further.

There was no way a human could endure that.

*…This is insane.*

The Master was aghast.

Impossible—yet before his eyes, the impossible existed.

A human who had taken it head-on without dying.

No—he hadn’t “taken” it.

As the black dust cleared, the bastard’s form emerged.

And in front of his sword, the black lines—those destructive fractures—were tangled, coiled, and held in place.

Trapped, as if sealed inside a spherical barrier.

He had imprisoned the Grand Domain Destruction Art itself.

In that state, the bastard spoke.

“Master. I’ve always wondered—how those who didn’t even participate in the Great Expedition have the gall to call themselves ‘heroes’ and flaunt it.”

“…?”

What the hell was he suddenly talking about?

The Great Expedition? Heroes?

Wasn’t this bastard from the Empire’s Reaper Cult?

The Reaper Cult and the Empire never participated in the Great Expedition.

They were the last people who should speak those words.

But it didn’t stop there.

“Someone stole my achievements—took credit for them, twisted every story to make it seem like their own. I’ve always wondered who set up that stage.”

Stealing achievements? Setting up a stage?

What was he talking about?

*Great Expedition. Heroes. Achievements. Distortion…*

Ah.

For a moment, the Master felt time freeze.

There were only a handful of people in the world who could say such things.

Especially anything about the Great Expedition—almost no one could speak of it.

Because those who didn’t flee had all died.

And those who fled had all turned their backs in fear at the very beginning of the Expedition.

So someone who could confidently say “the stories of the Great Expedition were distorted” was…

*No. Impossible.*

The Master shook his head.

Yes. Impossible.

Now that he thought about it—other players had speculated something along these lines.

There were players who knew that the Master had never participated in the Great Expedition.

But that was knowledge only a player could know.

*…You were a player!*

Brrrrrr!

Only then did the Master’s body begin to tremble.

At the very heart of the Reaper Cult—an organization that despised players and sought their extermination—there stood… a player.

Ha!

And he had dared look down on the Master while pretending *not* to be one?

He was utterly laughable.

Then the bastard continued.

“But seeing you now, you don’t have the capacity. You’re not someone who could orchestrate such a precise manipulation. Then who was it?”

“You… a ‘criminal’ daring to spout nonsense since earlier?”

“You, the owner of the ‘Interdimensional Community,’ aren’t a criminal yourself?”

“…!”

Interdimensional Community.

Mentioning that was essentially confessing he was a player.

If the Reaper Cult learned this, his death was guaranteed.

SHRAAAAAK!

In an instant, a veil of powerful electricity surged and swallowed the bastard.

“Get a hold of yourself! He’s trying to stall for time!”

Ah.

The Paladin’s voice snapped the Master back to reality.

All of them were in an overloaded state with 12 stacks of Heaven-Annihilating Thunder.

If time dragged on, they would suffer permanent stat loss and their bodies would crumble into dust.

The bastard clearly knew this and was deliberately buying time.

“Hammer of Heaven’s Ruin!”

KWA-A-A-A-AANG!

The Paladin’s enlarged hammer struck the bastard’s head.

But neither the electrical veil nor the Heaven-Annihilating Hammer…

“…”

None of them reached the bastard. They were suspended in midair.

“What is… that?”

The Bug-Sorcerer scowled.

He had deciphered everything so far, but this *sword technique*—this was the one thing he could not understand.

It was neither deflecting nor dodging the attacks—it was simply holding them in place.

As though time itself in that space had stopped.

*A sword art that manipulates the time of a fixed space? Is that even possible?*

But if it were possible—

At the same time, the Bug-Sorcerer’s face twisted in horror.

“Ah…! Get back!!”

Time, which had stopped, began flowing backwards.

CLAAAAANG!

KWA-A-A-A-AANG—!

The fractured lines, the electrical veil, the Heaven-Annihilating Hammer—

Everything returned to its original owner.

At a speed far greater than when they had been launched.

“Guhk…!”

“Graaaahh!”

“Hhk!”

The returning forces detonated the instant they touched their casters, hurling them away.

It was, in every sense, a reflection.

They had received the full brunt of their own power.

Blocking it was impossible.

*He reflected my attack?*

Buried in the ground, his giant form undone, the Master could not believe what he was seeing.

The Grand Domain Destruction Art.

His attack unleashed in the form of a legendary giant—not merely blocked, but sent back at him.

Struck by an even stronger version of it, his mind reeled.

*There shouldn’t be a player capable of something like this…*

The Master knew almost every player worth knowing.

Aside from Gracia, there was no player who could defeat him.

Hermits?

Yes—there were powerful hermits who avoided the Hall of Fame rewards and lived hidden lives.

Many of the strong ones the Master couldn’t identify were indeed hermits.

But how strong could they possibly be?

And for someone to reflect his attack when all his stats were massively boosted?

*At least 4-Star strength.*

Bare minimum, 4-Star—Level 14.

A level achievable only by the monstrous freaks of Pangaenia.

No player had reached that.

If someone had…

*A bug-user.*

A literal bug-user.

Using glitches freely and toying with everyone.

But even calling him a mere bug-user didn’t fully explain the absurdities.

In that case—

“You… are you a GM?”

The Master lifted his head and stared at the figure standing before him.

A GM—Game Master.

Rumors once circulated about such a being.

That the GM who created the game *Pangaenia* existed somewhere.

Of course, Pangaenia was a continent—a real place.
A world upheld by two goddesses, undeniably real.

But the *game* Pangaenia was different.

How could the goddesses create a game from Earth?

It was reasonable to assume someone—the GM—created its structure.

Someone linked the game and the continent.

Maybe one person, maybe many.

There were even people who claimed to have seen the GM.

*The one who reads the entire board.*

Such was the GM.

The being who wore items like *Hydragon’s Soul*—which never appeared even once throughout the entire midgame—along with countless “never-before-existing items.”

Someone who possessed things that should not exist!

Someone known to have traversed the entire continent without restriction—and was even reported to have been found in the “Abyss.”

Miraculous feats impossible unless one was reading the entire board.

Naturally, players suspected he was the GM.

*No matter how I think about it—this bastard must be the GM.*

The Master was certain.

If he was the GM, he could know everything about the Great Expedition—and display power like this.

And that equipment.

Especially the sword.

A blade of icy frost—clearly a “Unique-grade” weapon that had never appeared before.

And considering even the Tower of Rifts had declared him a “bug-user”—look at how he scaled the floors at will.

No ordinary player could do that.

“GM… why are you climbing the Tower of Rifts?”

If the GM intervened, then the Tower itself appearing must be an “event.”

Like the Abyss Labyrinth before.

But if it were a planned event, why would the Tower label him a bug-user?

Why would the Tower try to eliminate the GM?

“You think I’m a GM?”

The bastard let out a faint laugh.

Was it because the Master’s guess was correct?

Or because the idea was laughable?

The bastard lowered his posture, bowing his head slightly.

Then, lifting his gaze directly into the Master’s—

he spoke.

“I am *Phantom*.”

*Randolph is Phantom.*

…What?

For a moment, the Master doubted his ears.

He had been so certain the bastard was a GM.

*Phantom?*

…Phantom?

There was only one person in all of Pangaenia known by that name.

The one who had raised more characters than anyone else, who had achieved countless legendary feats that everyone believed to be impossible.

Rumors even claimed that Wilhelm, the Knight-King who launched the Great Expedition, had been one of Phantom’s characters.

But *Phantom* never revealed his identity.

He never interacted with anyone, and no one even knew exactly how many characters he had raised.

And yet—

“Th—that’s a lie…”

A chill ran down his spine.

But inwardly, he rejected the notion.

He had no choice.

Because if the man before his eyes truly was Phantom, then that would mean he was *Randolph*.

It made perfect sense that after his Wilhelm character died, he would become a player and change his name.

But even if this man really were Phantom, was it truly possible for him to crush the four of them—who had believed themselves to be “the strongest”—in such a short time?

Yes, he was sweeping through the main quests and monopolizing the number-one spot in the Hall of Fame, but this was strength that “crossed the line.”

Even if he gave an inch—no, a hundred steps, a thousand steps, gave everything away—

there was no denying it.

This was power exceeding 3-Star combat.

 

 

 

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