Infinite Evolution Hunter - Chapter 153

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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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153
“Alex, I’m just going to check on Bae Na-young and Jae-in, then head straight to the advancement ceremony. Don’t worry.”
I patted Alex’s shoulder as he fretted over the drought and heat ravaging Newus and the Allied Forces, infusing him with vitality as a bonus. Alex still had many years of hard work ahead of him.
“As you wish.”
While speaking with Alex, I observed what Jae-in and Bae Na-young were doing—nothing had changed since I’d left.
Jae-in was absorbed in designing weapons and shields to prepare for the upcoming match against the Dwarves, while Bae Na-young, as always, read while weaving geometric patterns and magical circles through the air with mana.
Beside them, Alice sat at an adult-sized desk, her feet swinging above the floor as she read.
“Alex, are those three eating?”
“They barely eat, sir.”
“The two adults are one thing, but force Alice to eat even if you have to take her book away.”
“Understood.”
“Jae-in, I’m taking the core with me.”
“Sure.”
Without looking at me, Jae-in placed her palm on the touchscreen desk, and light emanated from the display as it scanned her hand.
[Fingerprint recognized. Palmprint recognized. Scanning veins. Vein pattern, normal heart rate, and blood pressure confirmed. Opening core storage.]
A mechanical female voice accompanied the opening of the floor in the center of the spacious office as a pillar rose upward.
A blue core rested atop the pillar, with frigid air rapidly circulating around it.
Since anyone couldn’t simply take it, Jae-in and Bae Na-young had combined their power to create a security barrier of extreme cold—so intense that flesh would be ground away like ice in a shaved ice machine the moment it made contact.
I thrust my armored hand, wrapped in aura, into the vortex of cold.
The aura-wrapped armor was shredded and frozen.
The vortex didn’t merely cut and freeze; it pushed back against my arm with tremendous force.
I anchored my center and forced through with raw power, seizing the core.
The cold vortex only dissipated when it absorbed the core’s energy, which meant only I could dispel this security magic.
Holding the Dragon Heart Core, I headed toward the high-altitude, low-speed airship Jae-in had created.
Initially, we filled rivers and lakes, but recently we’d been spraying directly over populated areas from the sky.
Since I’d installed a Gate in the Deep Sea, connecting it to the airship allowed us to distribute cold seawater across vast regions as we traveled.
“William, you’ve been well?”
William, who handled the airship’s controls and Gate manipulation, was waiting aboard.
“Yes, sir!”
“Let’s depart.”
“Yes! Departing now!”
The airship slowly gained altitude.
Even from the sky, the day was cloudless and clear—the problem was that such clear days had persisted far too long.
Rain had barely fallen across all of Telus. Moisture evaporated from the ground only to evaporate again before falling as rain, repeating endlessly.
The relentless sun felt far hotter than usual.
At high altitude, I opened a Gate and poured seawater down. Jae-in had designed it to disperse as widely as possible—dumping it all at once would obliterate everything on the ground. It was essentially indistinguishable from rain clouds.
I slowly circled through the Allied Forces’ skies.
I could have sent William alone, but someone might steal the core, so I accompanied him as an escort.
Even after spraying for quite some time, I hadn’t covered half the Allied Forces’ territory. I worried whether this would be enough, whether we’d ever finish.
“By the way, Jae-in—what exactly are you making with those weapons and shield designs?”
I returned and examined Jae-in’s designs.
What Jae-in was creating wasn’t a sword or shield, but some sort of mysterious mechanical device.
It stretched at least ten meters in length, and the cylindrical shaft running through its center had a diameter of three meters—hardly a modest size.
“What is it?”
“The size is….”
“You didn’t impose any size restrictions, did you?”
“Well, that’s true.”
I wondered if the dwarves would lodge complaints. Hard to say.
Meanwhile, Bae Na-young remained absorbed in books alongside Alice.
“Bae Na-young, how’s it coming along?”
“Fine, no problems.”
“And Alice?”
“…”
Her eyes were completely fixed on the page.
Fine, carry on as you see fit.
“Alex.”
“Yes, Your Majesty.”
“This sort of weather doesn’t seem historically common. Do you have any suspicions about the cause?”
“Unfortunately not. As you say, nothing like this appears in the entire recorded history of both continents. It’s the sort of weather that belongs only to mythology.”
“Mythology?”
“It’s from a portion of Telus’s creation myth.”
Alex withdrew a book and opened it before me.
In the primordial age when only darkness existed in Telus, a single ray of light descended.
At first the light was faint, but it grew ever more intense, kindling life upon Telus.
Yet the light did not cease its growth, intensifying without end, and it burned away all the newly sprouted life on the ground.
To protect the world from the rampaging light, darkness divided the light into light, fire, and lightning, weakening its power, and thus balance between light and darkness was finally restored to the world.
I closed the book Alex had given me.
The last time I was summoned to Eres, the Spirit of Light was certainly imprisoned. But what if he escaped? And what if, conversely, he now holds Eres captive?
I had no certainty, but the pieces fit together.
“Your Majesty, where are you going?”
“The Royal Palace Underground Storage. All of you, continue your work.”
I intended to descend into that lightless underground storage and speak with Eres.
I hurried down the spiraling staircase. Despite being the royal palace, it hadn’t been properly maintained lately—the air reeked of damp mold, and the sense of foreboding grew more intense.
I arrived at the storage. All the lights had been extinguished, leaving it pitch black, unable to see even a hand’s breadth ahead.
Unlike the Dark Temple, there was no statue of Eres here, but I closed my eyes as if in prayer.
‘Eres. Eres. Please answer me. You’re all right, aren’t you?’
I continued calling out, but received no response. Since it had taken time the last visit as well, I persisted in calling.
To avoid wasting time on prayer alone, I trained my body alongside Eres—the same movements we had attempted before, though unsuccessfully.
By day I summoned rain, by night I prayed, while Bae Na-young and Jae-in busied themselves preparing for the competition, each spending their time productively.
* * *
“Are we just going to sit back and watch?”
Hours after Ji-seok and the Elves departed, Dallobit placed a call to Phillarion.
“What do you propose?”
“We combine our strength and crush those bastards!”
“Ha! Merely suppressing a human with magic, and you want to join forces? Have you no pride?”
“Pride only surfaces when it’s convenient, doesn’t it? I’ve seen you drop to your knees faster than wind magic travels.”
“Silence… Should I pulverize you before the two weeks are up?”
“I misspoke. My apologies. But I say again—this is not the time for us to fight each other.”
“I have no intention of cooperating. If you don’t want the Dwarf Kingdom falling into those humans’ hands, you’ll have to do your utmost on your own.”
Phillarion cut off the communication device unilaterally.
“Damn those pointed-eared bastards!”
Dallobit hurled the communication device to the floor.
“Keldric! Where are you?! Keldric!”
“Yes, Your Majesty.”
A young dwarf entered the king’s office in response to Dallobit’s frantic summons.
“How much flame ore have we mined?”
“We’re operating the mines at maximum capacity, but I fear we won’t meet the target quantity in time.”
“Damn it! I should never have listened to you and killed Jerex!”
“There was no way to extract him at that time.”
Keldric felt wronged. How could anyone extract Jerex from the most heavily fortified place on the Western Continent? Besides, summoning Salamander to kill Jerex hadn’t even been Keldric’s suggestion.
“Shut your mouth! This is all your fault. Without flame ore, I can’t smelt the alloy!”
For this competition, Dallobit had planned to craft weapons and shields using precious raw stones he’d normally kept in reserve.
Since the match only required single attacks and defense, he’d intended to increase weight and size. Even creating smaller pieces was difficult, but as the size grew, the crafting difficulty increased exponentially, requiring far more flame ore.
Knowing the king’s temperament, Keldric simply bowed his head and remained silent.
“There’s no choice then. Reduce the goblins’ rest and sleep time.”
“Pardon? They’re already working under a grueling schedule. If we reduce their time further, they’ll die.”
“So what if they die? They breed among themselves and multiply anyway. Would you prefer to see Ailstobic, which has endured for millennia, fall into that madman’s hands?”
“That could never happen. That’s precisely why we should simply comply with their demands….”
“What?! Free all the slaves and have you mine stones instead?! Will you enter the mines yourself?!”
“I would gladly enter the mines.”
Dwarves were beings optimized for mining labor. If dwarves didn’t enter the mines, who would? Keldric believed his people had forgotten their true purpose while enslaving goblins and powerless lesser races.
Keldric had pleaded with Dallobit countless times to improve the treatment of slaves, only to be ignored each time.
Though foul-tempered Dallobit disliked Keldric’s nagging, he couldn’t dismiss him—Keldric possessed the finest forging skills among the younger dwarves. Had Dallobit been indifferent to craftsmanship or Keldric lacked ability, his neck would have been severed long ago.
“So you want me to mine stones alongside you?! Will you send all your brothers into the mines?! Shut up and work the goblins! By any means necessary, gather that flame ore! If the goblins currently working become useless, slaughter them all and capture new ones!”
“Understood….”
Keldric trudged back toward the mines with heavy steps.
Using a skilled craftsman like Keldric for slave management was a waste of human resources, yet Keldric had volunteered for the role. The other dwarves treated goblins far too brutally.
“Keldric!”
A young goblin came scurrying out.
“Ah, Chabuz.”
Keldric couldn’t meet Chabuz’s eyes directly.
“…Why are you like that?”
Chabuz recognized at a glance that something was different about Keldric today.
“…I think we need to increase the mining pace.”
“More than now?! There are already so many people collapsed!”
“I’m sorry.”
Keldric bowed his head deeply in apology. I didn’t want to do this, but I had no choice. If I couldn’t meet the production quota, Dallobit might very well slaughter all these goblins and bring in new slaves to replace them.
The goblin Chabuz watched Keldric with his head bowed.
Keldric was different from the other dwarves. He brought them food and never struck them. It was obvious that if a different dwarf came instead of Keldric to oversee the work, the situation would be far worse than it was now.
But this young goblin didn’t know that Dallobit would kill them all if the quota wasn’t met.
“Let’s go tell Father.”
“Okay.”
Keldric went with Chabuz to Chabkitz, the patriarch of the goblin slaves and the work foreman.
“Lord Keldric. You’ve arrived?”
“… Foreman.”
“Another order to increase the work quota, then.”
“Yes.”
“Understood.”
Chabkitz said nothing more to Keldric and went to the other workers to relay his words.
Seeing the resentful glances the goblins cast toward me upon hearing the news, my chest grew heavy.

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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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