Hell’s Handbook

This was a person Su Jin would never forget. Even his voice was unforgettable. The person who had appeared was a clown with a bright red nose, or the incarnation of the Handbook.

The clown bowed toward Su Jin with a crazed smile on his face and spoke with that voice that could make a person lose their mind, “Hello there, insurgent! And goodbye, insurgent!”

The clown threw his giant fist at Su Jin. Su Jin tried to dodge, only to find that he couldn’t move at all. The clown was basically the Handbook itself, so he could use any Spirit Power he wanted, including those that could immobilize an owner. That wasn’t difficult.

“Move!” shouted Su Jin as a colorful glow surrounded him. He couldn’t use any powers within the Handbook’s system to fight the Handbook. Using maniacal power was the only choice he had.

Once his body was filled with maniacal power, he could move again and he managed to escape the clown’s fist. The fist did not land on Su Jin, but it still managed to crack part of the space they were in. The clown was strong enough to make a hole in space with just one punch.

“Resistance is futile! You will eventually have to die!” The clown wore a revolting smile as he rushed at Su Jin like a beam of light. All sorts of Spirit Power enveloped Su Jin, making it impossible for him to escape.

“Whether I live or die is not up to you!” Su Jin used the colorful glow around him to break through the layers of Spirit Power. He retrieved his boning knife and swung it outward, lopping the clown’s head off.

“It’s useless! Regardless of where I am in the universe, I am immortal!” The clown’s head started spinning in midair and turned into a huge whirlwind in space.

Meteorites, big and small planetary objects and even light were all sucked into the whirlwind. Su Jin was not spared either. The immense force created by the whirlwind sucked him in. This was not the work of some Spirit Power, but a pure force based on physics that was strong enough to destroy everything that was sucked into it.

Su Jin felt his body slowly get crushed. Every drop of blood, every inch of flesh, every capillary. He couldn’t fight back at all. Not even his maniacal power could get him out of this.

His body was completely crushed and not even a drop of blood was left behind. There were some owners that could regenerate from just one droplet of blood, like Durand. But if you didn’t even have that left, even Durand would have to resign himself to death if this happened to him.

Su Jin’s physical body was truly dead now, but his soul was still around. His soul had become super resilient after being nourished by so much psychokinesis, so it was stronger than anything in this world.

“Destruction of the physical body confirmed! Next step, destruction of the soul!” The clown grinned as he clapped his hands, as though he had done something incredibly noble. Then again, he had killed the only insurgent that had managed to escape detection, except that he hadn’t killed all of Su Jin yet.

Inside the whirlwind, Su Jin’s soul was like a tiny wooden boat in the middle of the ocean that could be destroyed at any moment. He could sense that the clown had locked on him. The clown wanted to destroy him completely. The clown wanted to destroy not only his physical body but his soul and consciousness as well!

“This is destruction, but it could be transcendence too!” Su Jin’s consciousness solidified into a body, each wisp gleaming a brilliant silver. It was unaffected by physics at all, so Su Jin walked out of the whirlwind easily.

“Just nice!” The clown clapped his hands and a long spear that glowed a bloody red appeared in his hand. He cackled and said to Su Jin, “Do you like it? This is the Spear of Fate, and it’s a limited edition piece! It killed the first, and the only god among the primordial deities!”

The spear whooshed toward Su Jin like a red beam of light. Su Jin could sense the terrifying power emanating from the spear. He knew that his soul would immediately shatter if it struck him.

Su Jin stared intently at the spear, then the silver glow around his body disappeared. He had given up his psychokinesis. From this moment onward, he no longer possessed any powers from the Handbook.

The spear suddenly stopped midair, as though it had lost its target. The clown frowned and said, “Very clever, huh. You’re right, the Spear of Fate needs something in order to follow and find its target. You’ve decided to give up the power I gave you, and I think it’s such a pity!”

Su Jin’s soul was like a candle in the wind, but he was filled with indescribable joy. His psychokinesis had become so powerful, he was on par with deities. If he was asked to give it up in the past, he would not bear to part to part with it. But now that he had given it all up, he realized that it was not a power that could help him, but a power that enslaved him.

Using maniacal power to replace psychokinesis, Su Jin used it to envelope his soul and regenerate a physical body. Su Jin had been reborn, but he now had a body that was different from anything else in the world. A body that was not bound by the Handbook.

The clown’s gaze grew grim as he caused his own body to explode. The exploded flesh glowed bright red as they zoomed toward Su Jin. Su Jin frowned slightly because he knew he was not in the best shape to fight the clown now. He had just formed a new body and it needed some adjustments. But since he couldn’t get away now, he decided that he’d make those adjustments while fighting!

Su Jin dissolved his body once more and turned into colorful beams of light that collided with the bright red ones coming for him. The two lights fought each other and swallowed each other up. This was no longer a battle between two powers or two people, but a battle between two laws of two different worlds.

The Handbook represented the will of the universe, while Su Jin represented himself, and represented a transcendence from the Handbook. After some time, the red lights began to wane and die off. The clown was just a subset of the system, so it wasn’t as powerful as the system itself. A battle between Su Jin and the will of the universe would have been more equal.

After the last red light was killed off by Su Jin’s colorful ones, he gathered the colorful light to form a body again, then closed his eyes slightly as he began to absorb the information from the red lights and analyzed everything.

A moment later, Su Jin reopened his eyes. He shook his head slightly and said, “He was really powerful. This clown was created by merely combining the core of those 48 owners, and he could already become this powerful. If he… gosh, I can’t even imagine!”

Su Jin let out a long sigh. Compared to the Handbook, which had managed to run countless cycles, the clown was simply too weak. The Handbook had not been counting on those owners to do anything about Su Jin in the first place. Those owners were meant to be sacrificial pawns right from the start.

Sacrificing these owners had not allowed the clown to become that powerful, but the clown had become powerful enough to push Su Jin into a corner. If the clown had become more powerful than this, Su Jin might have had to really run for it.

All the planetary objects within a few thousand light years were gone, leaving only the darkened universe, Su Jin, and that Spear of Fate.

Su Jin grabbed hold of the spear and wisps of red light appeared in his eyes. This was the good part about defeating the incarnation of the Handbook. The red lights he had swallowed were like parts of the Handbook’s data. Su Jin was now like a super hacker, because he could use these bits of data to connect himself to the Handbook’s system without being discovered. He could even do a few minor tweaks if he wanted.

“The only god among the primordial deities, and also the very first god of the Handbook. Yet, they died by this spear,” said Su Jin with a sigh. Darkened bloodstains could still be seen on the spear, and still carried traces of godhood despite the passage of time. That was a testament to how powerful such a god had been back then.

But Su Jin was quickly stunned by his next discovery. This Spear of Fate was actually something that existed outside of the Handbook. It was made from a material that the will of the universe had specially extracted, and there wasn’t any more of this material left in the world. It was no wonder the clown had tried to use this to kill him. Thankfully, he had quickly given up his psychokinesis so the spear could no longer track him. Otherwise, he would have died immediately without any chance of escape.

A colorful glow appeared on his arm before enveloping the Spear of Fate. The spear disappeared, then Su Jin grabbed the air such that a wisp of black stuff came together to slowly form a boning knife.

The whirlwind created by the clown had shattered everything Su Jin had, but thankfully, the boning knife had been created by many gods and had Su Jin’s mark, so he was able to forcibly put the shattered pieces of the knife together again.

“I have to build my own temple as quickly as possible. If I have to face such sneaky attacks again and again… I don’t know how long I’ll hold up for!” Su Jin sighed. For as long as he didn’t have his own temple, he would never be able to get away from the Handbook. He couldn’t guarantee he’d win the next fight against it.