Infinite Evolution Hunter - Chapter 124

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This chapter was translated by Lunox Novels. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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124
“It’s wonderful when hunters from other nations grow stronger. We’re all hunters protecting Earth together, so their progress brings me great joy. However, it saddens me that we’ve fallen behind. Once a gap like this opens, can we ever recover?”
“No! We’ll work harder!”
The hunters responded loudly in unison.
“Truly? Can you all give your absolute best?”
“Yes!”
“I’ve heard your resolve. From today onward, I will personally assist in your training.”
“Is this for real?”
“My goodness, training under an S-rank hunter!”
“This is an opportunity money can’t buy!”
“I heard Yang Sang-heon became A-rank after receiving instruction from Lee Ji-seok.”
None of them could hide their excitement.
“I hope you maintain that passion for a long time.”
Sang-heon stood behind me, watching the hunters with sympathetic eyes.
I pulled on my training instructor’s cap.
“Alright! Stand straight! Training begins now!”
When I shifted my tone and raised my voice, the hunters flinched in surprise. I hadn’t even used Aura, but since becoming the Dragon’s vessel, my mere raised voice was enough to make weak-willed people’s legs buckle.
“First, let’s warm up lightly. From now on, you’ll run the Obstacle Course in full gear. Today, you’ll use only basic physical abilities—no skills or special powers. Begin!”
“Begin!”
The hunters responded energetically and took off, each shouldering gear weighted to their individual capacity.
“Huh? This is the same as before?”
“Yeah, nothing special about it.”
I confirmed all the hunters had started.
“Now give it everything you have. For those not putting in effort, I’ll provide special motivation and encouragement.”
“Motivation? Encouragement?”
“What does that mean?”
“Stop wondering and run!”
The hunters’ pace quickened.
But they weren’t at full capacity. By observing their muscle movements, expressions, breathing, and heartbeats, I could tell they were working hard in their own way, yet they weren’t pushing their bodies to their absolute limits.
I dashed to the back and kicked the trailing hunter in the back.
“Aaaah!”
“What?!”
The hunter I’d kicked went flying and collided with another like a bowling pin, knocking them unconscious. Seeing this, the other hunters stopped running.
“Who told you to stop?”
When I glared at them, they all sprinted forward at full speed.
“Gasp… gasp… Is it true you put prisoners through inhuman training?”
“So you’ve heard the rumors already—word travels fast. From now on, I plan to push you all to your limits. Don’t worry. As long as you don’t die, you’ll definitely become stronger.”
“As long as we don’t… die?”
“Run!!!”
I moved at a leisurely pace. Of course, leisurely by my standards—to hunters at most B-rank, I must have seemed as fast as an arrow.
“Gack!”
“Aaah! Mom!”
Various anguished screams echoed across the field.
“You bastard!”
One hunter even cursed—still had plenty of energy left, so I’d need to give that one some special additional training.
The Obstacle Course featured diverse challenges: scaling walls, climbing ropes, crawling across the ground. The entire course was fundamentally a mud pit.
Even that alone drained stamina, but they had to endure the added psychological pressure of carrying absurdly heavy packs while an S-rank monster pursued them from behind.
“Beneath the World Tree’s shadow! Push yourselves to your limits! No one has died here yet!”
“Haa… kaa… haa… today… I’m the first… to fall…”
The first dropout appeared. He collapsed face-first into the mud and couldn’t get up.
The hunters looked at me with hopeful eyes. One person down, so surely we’d stop? That shallow expectation was written all over their faces.
“Who told you to stop? When one person falls in a Gate, do the monsters wait?! Keep running!”
“Damn it….”
“Shit… so this is what an S-rank hunter is.”
“I’m quitting the fan cafe when I get back.”
The hunters whimpered and ran again.
Within just ten minutes, most had been kicked by me at least once. I carefully controlled my strength to deliver blows near the limit of what each hunter could endure.
“Once you’ve recovered, don’t just lie there—get up! Monsters won’t wait for you to rest!”
“Who was happy about Lee Ji-seok coming?!”
The hunters’ screams of anguish filled the air from all directions.
For three hours, I pushed them through training that transcended human limits. Even for hunters, all-out sprinting had a limit of mere minutes, yet they ran like that for three hours.
Without the World Tree’s shadow, no amount of pushing would have made this possible.
The World Tree healed the damaged hunters’ bodies and even relieved their fatigue. But the rate of depletion exceeded the rate of recovery, so everyone was completely exhausted.
“Well, now that you’ve warmed up nicely, let’s move to the next course.”
I spoke to the hunters sprawled across the ground. No matter how quickly their wounds healed, mental fatigue remained and their stamina was depleted.
“Don’t we get a break…?”
“What… about food?”
“Near the World Tree, you won’t die from not eating for a day or two. If you don’t move….”
As I approached the hunters, they all scrambled to their feet.
“See? They’re moving just fine. We’re heading to the Cliff Course.”
The Cliff Course featured an artificial cliff bent beyond ninety degrees to one hundred twenty degrees, waiting for them all. Of course, a forty-meter cliff wasn’t a major problem for hunters.
If they were unarmed.
Every hunter had weights attached to their wrists, ankles, and waist. These too were adjusted to match their level and abilities.
“Aaaaaaah!!!”
One hunter flailed his arms in midair and plummeted into the Artificial Lake below the cliff, sending up a water column several meters high.
The impact of falling into the lake water was minimal, but the weights made it difficult to climb out.
I had deliberately installed only very small holds on the artificial cliff. They were so small that most hunters could only use two fingers, and some could only hook a single finger. They had to support their own body weight plus the weights with those. The distance between holds was also reduced, forcing them to jump across many sections.
Hunters continued to fall like leaves from a tree in winter.
One hunter with particularly heavy weights gave up swimming and walked out along the shallow lake bottom while holding his breath.
“Come on! Get up there! Any hunter who’s late will have additional training waiting tonight!”
At the announcement of additional training, the hunters scrambled up the wall like cockroaches. Adaptive creatures that they were, they climbed swiftly and steadily.
“There, not so difficult, is it?”
From below, I grabbed a rubber ball the size of my fist. Not a soft, pliable rubber ball, but one with a density similar to a tire—hard enough to snap wood.
Thwack!
“Cough!”
A hunter who had nearly reached the top plummeted from the forty-meter cliff.
Splash!
An overwhelmingly massive column of water erupted from the Artificial Lake.
“Gasp… I’m dead… glub glub glub…”
I dove into the Artificial Lake.
I seized the sinking hunter, pushed off the lake bottom, and burst through the surface.
The hunter I’d pulled out vomited water.
“I can’t! I won’t!”
One of the hunters waiting to climb the cliff again cried out upon witnessing the scene.
“So? Are you giving up?”
“… This isn’t training. It’s torture.”
When I approached and asked, the pressure of my presence made their speech formal, yet their will to train was utterly shattered. The hunters behind them bore the same look in their eyes.
“You’ll definitely grow stronger from this. As long as I’m watching, you won’t die. Hunters from other nations are growing stronger—don’t you want to grow stronger too? Can’t you endure this much training for that?”
“… I’m not as strong as Lee Ji-seok.”
“That’s right. Our country is a free democracy. I have no right to force anyone who refuses to continue.”
Hope flickered in the hunters’ eyes—the hope that they could finally end the training. Because I was an S-rank hunter, they had endured the suffering in silence.
“I’ll quit too.”
“Me as well.”
The hunters removed their weights one by one, letting them clatter to the ground.
“One hundred million won.”
“Pardon?”
“I’ll give you one hundred million won for every point increase.”
“One hundred million won…”
Currency had depreciated considerably, but one hundred million won was still substantial money.
“Anyone who raises ten points gets one billion won.”
“…”
“Additionally, I’ll grant you wholesale purchasing rights for Rigen items.”
I had already obtained the hunters’ level information before training began.
“…”
Gulp.
The sound of swallowing echoed.
“You know the scoreboard point system, right? When a level 30 hunter raises one level, that’s 3 points. So how much is that?”
“… Three hundred million won?”
“Correct. Of course, since our country is a democracy, I can’t force anyone to train…”
“If you’re not doing it, get out of the way!”
The hunter who had been the first to consider quitting moments earlier now hung from the cliff face with weights strapped to his body.
“200 million! 200 million! If I reach level 10, that’s 2 billion! An apartment in Seoul! An apartment!”
He hummed the tune as he climbed the cliff, and at that signal, all the hunters rushed back to hang from the rock face.
“Alright, that concludes today’s training. Remember, eating well and resting properly are also part of training—go grab a meal and get some proper rest.”
I spoke to the hunters sprawled across the ground like wet rags.
* * *
“…Money… do I really need money? I’ve lived fine without it so far, haven’t I?”
“You’ll be dead before you ever collect it. What good is money if you’re dead?”
Even after I left, the hunters remained motionless on the ground. I had drained every last drop of stamina from each of them fairly, proportional to their level and abilities.
“But isn’t it great that we’re getting stronger?”
Hee-chul raised his arm while lying down and clenched his fist. He had always been tall and muscular, but in just one day, the veins in his arm muscles had become far more pronounced.
“Exactly. I don’t think people realize how fortunate it is to have Lee Ji-seok paying attention to us. Today’s training was worth far more than running through the Gate multiple times. And there was no risk of dying.”
Jung Jang-mi, who had recovered somewhat by then, dusted herself off and stood, adding to Hee-chul’s words.
Jung Jang-mi, the only daughter of Jung Min-gi, already had plenty of money, so she wasn’t here for that reason. She had already gone through one of my training sessions, overcome her trauma, and grown. She wanted to train once more and take the next leap forward.
“But….”
Still, most of the hunters remained skeptical. They had endured one day, tempted by the money, but could they really last two weeks?
“If you don’t want to do it, don’t. Then I’ll have Lee Ji-seok all to myself.”
Jung Jang-mi, Oh Brothers, Ye-seul, and Hee-chul—those who had trained under me before—left the Training Facility first, and the remaining hunters trudged one by one toward the Cafeteria.
“I’m… going to quit. I don’t think I can do it. And I don’t even understand why a mage needs this kind of training.”
In the Cafeteria, Han Byung-hyun, a D-rank mage, emptied his rice bowl and spoke.
“But you leveled up once today, didn’t you? Your stamina stat increased too, right?”
“Well… I suppose so.”
Mana settling into one’s body naturally benefits mages as well. And needless to say, raising stamina makes it easier to operate in the Gate.
“Ah, it’s because Lee Ji-seok always emphasizes stamina, so he did this on the first day. Starting tomorrow, we’ll do skill training too.”
Ye-seul, who had been listening, spoke up.
“Still… it’s just too exhausting. There’s no need to rush like this, is there? We’re young—we can train slowly later.”
The other Korean Hunters nodded at that. Why suffer so much when they’re still young? They’ll level up eventually, whether they train intensively or just run the Gate casually.
“Ha! You Korean Hunters sure have it easy with all that time. We have to pay massive fees every month just to come here, so we have to train hard. Lucky bastards, having such a good hunter.”
Peter, a United States hunter passing by, frowned at the Korean hunter’s complaint.
“Calling those guys hunters too… Tsk.”
“Hey, Peter, watch your mouth, will you?”
Tyler, another United States hunter, grabbed Peter’s shoulder.
“What?”
“What if you end up running straight to Lee Ji-seok and tattling? Hehehehe.”
The two burst into raucous laughter.
“Those bastards….”
Han Byung-hyun, who had been complaining the most, pushed his chair back and stood up.

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This chapter was translated by Lunox Novels. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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