I Became A Thief Who Steals Overpowered Skills

A sudden flood, caused by the overflowing acid rain, swept over them without warning.

There was no time to react as the torrent surged, threatening to drown them all.

In that critical moment, Muzkang, the mage, unleashed all of his magic to hold back the deluge within the forming lake.

The effort cost him his life. He expended every last ounce of his strength, leaving him lifeless once the floodwaters receded.

On his face, there was no sign of regret.

The burden of regret was left for those who survived.

「You idiot, you absolute fool…」

Ruzrang was hit the hardest, her voice shaking with grief.

「…We can’t bring his body.」

Before his death, Muzkang had emptied his subspace of everything it contained, knowing the team would no longer have a mage to carry their burdens.

Now, everyone had to shoulder their own share of the supplies. There was no longer any magic to protect them.

「I’ll… I’ll carry him.」

Ebelasque offered, her voice trembling.

「No, leave it.」

Ruzrang replied, shaking her head with tears streaming down her face.

「You’re not some endless well of power. This… this is enough.」

Ruzrang placed a hand over her abdomen, and Ebelasque immediately understood what she meant.

In the midst of the acid rain, Muzkang’s body dissolved, leaving behind only the memory of his sacrifice.

The remaining three continued their journey, but it wasn’t long before the second casualty struck.

This time, it was Ruzrang.

Though she had demonstrated the peak of her skill as a one-armed swordswoman, her missing arm ultimately sealed her fate.

A group of monsters unleashed their venom, and one attack struck her at the exposed shoulder where her arm had been severed, reaching her heart.

「Ruzrang, no! No!」

Ebelasque screamed, frantically using every bit of medicine she had brought, trying to save her.

But Ruzrang’s life faded rapidly.

「Haha… couldn’t even protect what Muzkang left behind…」

She coughed up blood, her expression filled with regret as her eyes slowly closed.

「If only I had been alone…」

With her hand pressed against her abdomen, Ruzrang passed away, her final thoughts laden with guilt.

Once again, they couldn’t bring the body with them.

Ebelasque’s mana was already nearing its limits.

「…Let’s go.」

Now, only Iron Lion and Ebelasque remained to continue the journey.

Their conversations grew fewer and fewer as the days passed.

Noticing this, Iron Lion began to talk about his daughter, Venapoitch, almost as if speaking to himself.

Through his quiet stories, the weight of their dwindling hope became painfully clear as they pressed on, step by step.

Ebelasque could do nothing but silently listen to Iron Lion’s stories, unable to muster any words of her own.

Then came that day.

As she proceeded cautiously, using corpses to test the stability of the path ahead, the ground beneath her collapsed.

Unluckily, the subterranean acid water beneath the surface had eroded the area, dissolving the foundation in an instant.

The collapse pulled Ebelasque into the abyss.

Ah, so this is how I die, she thought as she watched the sky grow farther and farther away.

She had wanted to see Aimy again, but it seemed that wouldn’t happen now.

Her heart, already broken long ago, and her body, utterly exhausted, left her with no strength to resist.

She closed her eyes, resigned to her fate, holding onto her regret.

Just as she was about to fall into the acidic lake, something grabbed her.

It was Iron Lion.

In the blink of an eye, she felt herself being thrown upward.

Ebelasque opened her eyes wide as she realized her body was now on solid ground, rolling across the surface.

After tumbling for a while, she coughed and slowly raised her head.

All she saw was the empty, desolate surface stretching before her.

「…Iron Lion?」

She called out for him.

But there was no response.

Panic-stricken, Ebelasque scrambled back to the spot where she had fallen.

All she found was the rushing torrent of subterranean acid water.

At the last moment, Iron Lion had thrown her to safety while sacrificing himself to the acidic lake.

「Ah… no…」

Ebelasque’s face turned pale as despair gripped her.

This had happened because of her mistake.

Iron Lion had come all this way to save his daughter.

Yet, instead of prioritizing her, he had saved Ebelasque.

Deep down, she understood.

Iron Lion had unconsciously come to see her as his own daughter.

Their similar age had likely caused his paternal instincts to surface unintentionally.

She remembered the mix of sorrow and tenderness in his gaze whenever he looked at her.

And in his final moments, he had chosen to save her instead of himself.

Ebelasque rose to her feet.

Her skin and legs, corroded by acid rain, burned with pain, but she moved forward once more.

Iron Lion had given his life to save hers.

If nothing else, she had to accomplish the goal he had lived for: to save his daughter.

And beyond that, to achieve the goal of Benapotchi: to save the city.

Living up to the name of hope, she refused to give up and pressed on.

It was agonizing.

The world, on its path to destruction, seemed intent on binding her feet, dragging her down.

Her body grew more battered with each passing step.

「Cough… cough…」

Finally, her body reached its limit.

Death loomed, only moments away.

However, she could not die.

Everyone had sacrificed themselves to send her this far.

So, she decided to become a corpse herself.

「Aaaaargh!」

With a scream, she extracted her heart and cast necromancer magic.

As a result, she became a monster—human yet not human.

Grasping the heart, dripping blood, she began to move her lifeless body.

Her body, now distant from death, could no longer stop and continued to advance.

「Soon, very soon.」

The signal was growing stronger and stronger.

Therefore, she pressed on with all her might, advancing and advancing.

And.

And at the end.

Finally, her journey came to an end.

Thunk-

She slowly lifted the magical signal device that had been buried in the sand.

There, the acid rain had indeed stopped.

As expected from the location the previous expedition had risked their lives to uncover, there was no acid rain.

However, it was not a place where humans could live.

Truly, it was just a place without acid rain.

The sun, blazing down without the acid rain, melted and erased everything.

Ebelasque thought the sun she saw on the first day was warm.

However, before the sun that shone directly, with the ozone layer and even the atmosphere itself destroyed, humans could not survive.

The expedition, seeing the empty sky without a single cloud, believed that the surface had recovered.

But the reality was as it was now.

The corpses of the first expedition were nowhere to be found.

With their food completely gone, unable to return due to the storm of acid rain and magical storms, they ultimately melted away under this sun, becoming nothing but sand. ŔаℕƟ₿Ê𐌔

The remaining mana in the rescue signal device, imbued with their final will, barely maintained the protective magic.

「This is, too much.」

Ebelasque began to sob uncontrollably, her cracked voice breaking the silence.

She had risked her life alongside four others to reach this place.

Someone came for their daughter.

Someone came for a friend.

Someone came to become hope.

Someone came seeking paradise.

They had all come this far.

And yet, this was the result.

Ebelasque was consumed by an unbearable, overwhelming emotion.

It felt as if all their efforts had been for nothing.

Ssshhh—

Boom!

As if signaling the end, a storm of acid rain began approaching the path she would need to return.

Seeing it, she laughed as if she had come to terms with her fate.

Then, she began walking aimlessly under the sun she had once believed to be paradise.

All she wished for now was for a small piece of paradise to exist here.

Amid the ruins, she wandered aimlessly.

When she had expended every ounce of mana to maintain the protective magic and had nothing left, she finally collapsed.

The scorching sun began to melt her body.

Yet she no longer had the strength to resist.

She thought to herself that perhaps she should have done this sooner.

To see her companions again.

To see her friend, Aimy, once more.

It was when she closed her eyes for the last time.

The sand beneath her suddenly gave way with a thud.

Her powerless body was sucked into the collapsing sand.

When she opened her eyes again, cold water touched her forehead.

As she regained her senses, what she saw was a lake and a forest.

Staring blankly at the sight she had only read about in books, the word “paradise” crossed her mind.

「Everyone!」

Ebelasque hastily raised herself.

But all that greeted her was the same forest.

She took a step forward in a daze.

Nothing.

The scorching sun that had beaten down so fiercely, the acid rain—none of it was there.

And neither were her companions, nor the world she had once known.

Even though she had found paradise, there was nothing left for her anymore.

When the reality sank in, a chilling loneliness crept into her.

Cold.

So cold it felt as if her insides would rot from the frost.

The feeling of being abandoned, utterly alone in the world, began to consume her.

「No, no! That’s not true! I’m here! I’m a necromancer!」

And soon, she began denying reality itself.

She was a necromancer.

One who dealt with corpses.

The ultimate goal of a necromancer was to revive corpses so perfectly that they would be indistinguishable from the living.

If she could reach that level, she could be with her companions again in paradise.

In the paradise they had longed for so desperately.

But denying the reality of her current situation—that there wasn’t even a handful of corpses left to revive—she clenched her fists tightly.

Ebelasque Benapochti.

The world’s only necromancer.

Thus, she became the World Eroder.

And now, that World Eroder stood face to face with a boy.

“Ebelasque Benapochti.”

The boy looked straight at her with piercing blue eyes.

“How long are you going to keep living in denial?”

Kraush’s words struck deep into her chest.

Her hair trembled slightly.

She knew.

She had been living in denial for far too long.

She didn’t want to face reality, which was why she had locked herself away, shutting out the world entirely.

“What do you know? What could you possibly know?”

Thick tears began to stream down Ebelasque’s face.

It had been such a painful journey.

And yet, she wanted to return to it.

No time in her life had felt as forward-moving, as purposeful, as those days.

Here, she was nothing but an Eroder.

An outsider.

“I know.”

Kraush gave a faint laugh, looking at her with a knowing gaze.

He had heard it countless times—so many that it almost made him sick.

Trapped alone in her prison, she recounted her past daily, without fail.

At the time, Kraush couldn’t understand Ebelasque’s feelings.

But now, he did.

Even as he stubbornly endured the deaths of those he had known, clinging to life with everything he had, in the end, he had failed to prevent annihilation on that fateful day.

The weight of carrying everyone’s hope inevitably crushed a person’s shoulders.

“I also lost everyone I spent time with. None of them exist in this world anymore.”

Even if they were the same people in a different form, the ones Kraush remembered no longer existed.

They couldn’t return from the destroyed world they had perished in.

Just as Ebelasque couldn’t save a single one of her comrades, Kraush, too, couldn’t save any of his.

All that remained were memories.

“But I still live on. Because they saved me and brought me to where I am now.”

He pushed forward to ensure he wouldn’t make the same mistakes again.

Kraush believed that living with all his strength was the only way he could repay those who had given him that chance.

“And isn’t it the same for you? You’ve lived this long, clinging to your goals without ever letting go.”

Kraush took a step forward.

Ebelasque flinched, her body trembling slightly.

“It’s terrifying, isn’t it? Being left completely alone.”

Loneliness was cruel.

The loneliness of a world where no one remembered the one you had known was indescribable.

That was why Ebelasque had denied reality.

Because otherwise, she would be eternally alone in this world.

“That’s why you hid. Afraid that even if you left something behind in this world, you’d just lose it all again.”

Ebelasque’s eyes wavered.

Snow began to fall softly from the sky.

Through the falling snow, Kraush’s blue eyes glimmered faintly.

Amid the drifting snowflakes, Ebelasque’s lips quivered.

“Ebelasque.”

Kraush spoke to her, who was now unable to utter a word, her tears brimming over.

“Let’s make a deal, just like back then.”

The deal Kraush referred to was entirely different from the one they had made before.

「Kraush, let’s make just one deal.」

Back then, after the death of the Black Witch, she had made that request of Kraush from inside her prison cell.

「I’ll tell you one of the secrets hidden by the Ephania Imperial Palace.」

With a resigned smile, she had leaned her head against the iron bars.

「Destroy the heart Arthur holds for me.」

At the time, Kraush had agreed to her request for death.

“I will inherit the immortality of Crimson Garden.”

But now, the deal he spoke aloud was entirely different.

Ebelasque’s eyes widened in surprise.

Ebelasque was immortal in a different sense than Crimson Garden.

She could choose to destroy her heart and die if she wanted.

But she had chosen to live, struggling against death for the sake of her former companions who had saved her.

She was a half-immortal.

Crimson Garden, however, was different.

She was truly immortal in every sense.

And Kraush, who would inherit that immortality, would be the same.

“Even if you crumble into nothing, I will continue living in this world.”

Everyone who had been by her side until now had crumbled and vanished.

Her comrades, her friends, and even her world—none of it remained.

Terrified of that loneliness, she had clung to resurrection, fleeing from reality.

Even now, she was afraid.

Afraid of the sight of those by her side leaving her.

Afraid of the loneliness that would inevitably follow.

Amid her endless solitude, a boy had unknowingly stepped into her dark, lonely world, painting over the blackness of her despair.

Kraush placed his hand on Ebelasque’s head.

The warmth imbued in his hand, enhanced by Annihilation Erosion, seeped into her through her hair.

Ebelasque looked up.

Through her tear-filled eyes, she saw the boy smiling innocently at her.

“If you’re lonely, just stay by my side. I’ll stick so close you’ll be sick of me.”

A tear slid down Ebelasque’s trembling eyes, tracing her cheek and falling.

Kraush was willing to inherit the loneliness she had endured.

After all, stealing curses was his specialty.

“So help me out a little.”

Kraush pointed to the mountains beyond.

“This time, how about we save the world together?”

On the snow-covered mountain, where snow gently piled up. 

The two who had experienced a destroyed world and lost everything. 

Now stood together in the present world, facing a new moment.

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