Disaster-Level Player Is Too Good at Broadcasting-Chapter 44: « Cut [3] »

Kang Min entered the subspace.

Thousands of pedestals stretched into the darkness, each holding a fragment of the man Kang Min used to be.

Some pedestals were cracked, their items greyed out and locked behind the iron bars of his sealed narrative, but others were beginning to pulse with a faint, expectant light.

Kang Min walked with purpose, his boots making no sound on the glass-like floor.

He bypassed gleaming armors and staves that hummed with forbidden magic until he reached a specific casing near the quadrant

marked [Floor 48: The Scorched Duchy].

Inside the crystal pillar sat a single,

unassuming black glove.

To a common merchant or a low-level appraiser, it would look like a simple piece of weathered leather.

But to those who knew the fables of the upper floors, this was the Left Hand of Varkas.

In the Old World, Varkas had been a swordsman whose name made the Stars lean in closer to listen.

When he died, the people of the Great Duchy had seen it fit to bury him with his right-hand glove clutched to his chest...a gesture of respect meant to grant him the peace he never found in life.

That left the other half.

The glove granted a terrifying, passive buff: [Aria of the Blade].

Simply wearing it synchronized the user’s nervous system with the pinnacle of swordsmanship.

It didn’t matter if your arm was broken or your mana was low.

With that glove on, you were a Sword God.

But the true power lay in what the glove had absorbed from its master’s final moments.

『NOTIFICATION: DO YOU WISH TO INITIATE THE SYNCHRONIZATION TRIAL?』

『FABLE DETECTED: [THE SAGA OF THE SCORCHED HAND]』

『WARNING: YOUR NARRATIVE ENERGY IS CURRENTLY AT 20% CAPACITY. THE TRIAL WILL BE ADJUSTED TO YOUR CURRENT WEIGHT. FAILURE WILL RESULT IN THE PERMANENT SEALING OF THIS ITEM.』

"Yes."

The subspace dissolved.

The silent void was replaced by the rustle of wind through high grass and the smell of jasmine and distant smoke.

Kang Min found himself standing on a lush, emerald hill.

The sky above was a vibrant, mocking blue.

In the distance, sprawling across the horizon like a sleeping titan, was a medieval capital city.

Its white spires reached for the sun, but even from this distance, Kang Min could see the black stains of Abyssal corruption creeping up the walls.

He reached into his pocket and pulled out his black mask, sliding it over his face.

The familiar fabric felt like a second skin.

「"The story goes like this..."」

Kang Min whispered to himself, his eyes fixed on the distant city.

In the records of the Great Duchy, the name Varkas is written in ink that refuses to dry.

They call it the Saga of the Scorched Hand, though most simply know it as the origin of the Left Hand of Ruin.

It began when the sky bled black.

The Abyss cracked open beneath the capital, and from its depths crawled the Dusk-Eaters.

Demons of smoke and iron who did not just kill, but erased the very memory of those they devoured.

To be killed by a Dusk-Eater was to have your life deleted from the history of the world.

Duke Valerius, a man whose crown was heavier than his courage, watched from his high balcony as his knights were slaughtered, their very names vanishing.

He turned to his finest blade, a common-born swordsman named Varkas, who stood at the back of the hall, ignored until the world began to end.

"Save my city."

The Duke pleaded, his voice trembling like a leaf in a storm.

"And I shall grant you a seat beside the throne.

You shall be a Duke in all but name."

Varkas looked at his trembling steel.

He knew the truth that the scholars refused to admit.

Mortal iron could not cut the shadow.

To save the city, he would have to find a fire that never died.

A flame that burned hotter than the Abyss itself.

Varkas turned his back on the city and climbed the Mount of Eternal Cinder.

It was a place where the air is thin and the rocks breathe sulfur.

At the peak, where the world touches the primordial fire, he stood before the Calamity King.

A being of living magma and shifting tectonic plates, a god whose only purpose was the entropy of all things.

"I seek the strength to slay shadows."

Varkas declared, his voice echoing in the hollow of the volcano.

The Calamity King laughed, and the mountain shook, sending rivers of lava spilling into the vales.

"I will give you my breath."

The being rumbled, its voice like grinding stones.

"But destruction knows no master.

You shall become a God of the Blade, but your hands shall never again know the touch of silk, the warmth of a lover, or the coolness of water.

Everything you touch will be claimed by the pyre."

The being reached into the cooling crust of the world’s core and forged two gloves.

They were soot-black, etched with veins of pulsing blue light.

Varkas drew them on.

The pain was instantaneous.

The smell of his own flesh searing and bonding into the leather...but as he gripped his hilt, the sword roared with a blue fire.

Varkas returned to the capital.

When he drew his sword, the air ignited in a brilliant blue haze.

He moved with a speed that defied the human eye.

A Sword God whose every swing cleaved through demon-flesh and stone alike.

The Dusk-Eaters evaporated, their smoke consumed by the blue inferno of Varkas’s blade.

The citizens cheered as the shadows receded, but their cheers soon turned to screams of terror.

The heat radiating from Varkas’s left hand was uncontrollable.

Buildings caught fire as he passed, the flames a haunting, beautiful blue.

The cobblestones turned to glass beneath his boots.

The demons were gone, but the capital was melting.

Seeing the monster he had unleashed, Duke Valerius offered a betrayal.

As Varkas stood amidst the smoldering remains of the demon horde, exhausted and steaming, a thousand archers loosed their arrows from the city walls.

Varkas did not defend himself. 𝚏𝐫𝚎𝗲𝕨𝐞𝐛𝕟𝚘𝐯𝚎𝗹.𝕔𝐨𝗺

He looked at his hands...the very tools that had saved the world only to burn it.

He realized the Calamity King’s joke.

「Destruction cannot protect...It can only end things.」

As he fell, his youngest apprentice rushed to his side, weeping.

The Right Glove had remained relatively dormant, a symbol of the man Varkas once was...the man who fought for honor and humanity.

They buried Varkas in a tomb of eternal frost, deep beneath the mountains, the Right Glove still clutched to his chest to grant his soul the coolness he had been denied in life.

『CURRENT FABLE OBJECTIVE:』

『THE CAPITAL OF VALERIA IS ONCE AGAIN BESIEGED BY THE REMNANTS OF THE DUSK-EATERS. THE DESCENDANTS OF VALERIUS HAVE FORGOTTEN THE COST OF THEIR SAFETY.』

『CLEAR CONDITIONS:』

『1.ENLIST IN THE DUKE’S ARMY AS A MERCENARY KNIGHT.』

『2.OBTAIN THE "LEFT HAND OF RUIN" FROM THE MOUNT OF ETERNAL CINDER.』

『3.EXTINGUISH THE DUSK-EATERS.』