Infinite Evolution Hunter - Chapter 161

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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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161
“Are you ready?”
Finally, when the rain ceased and I had managed to restore the flood damage to some degree, Eres arrived.
“Ready for what?”
“What else but to make those cursed bastards pay the price?”
“If that’s the case, I’m ready anytime. How will you do it?”
“We simply reverse the Gate they tore open into Telus and breach it from the other side.”
“You can open it?”
“I can.”
“Then why didn’t you do it before?”
“In the past, there were several occasions when I intervened in the human world and greatly disrupted causality. This time, since the catastrophe was not caused by Telus’s lifeforms, I intended to intervene. However, Aither invoked those past instances where my intervention had twisted events and used them to stop me.”
“So he was already a traitor from that point. Aither is a powerful incarnation himself, so that means the enemy was strong enough to prevent even him from resisting?”
“Insignificant wretches, the lot of them.”
“So you’re saying we should just charge in recklessly?”
I may be reckless myself, but Eres took it to another level entirely.
“Will sitting idle here provide any answers?”
“Let’s go.”
In truth, with Eres at my side, I had nothing to fear, so I rose from my position.
“Which specific Gate should we enter?”
“Any will do—let us proceed to the nearest one.”
We entered an intermediate-level Gate near Derham, a B-rank Gate by Earth’s standards.
From the D-rank Gate, Ogres that normally acted alone came rushing at us in coordinated groups under the Ogre Lord’s command.
“I’ll….”
The moment I took my stance to handle the Ogres, they were instantly crushed like they’d been pressed in a vice, transforming into bloody pulp.
I, who had been about to dash forward, found myself frozen in an awkward posture.
“Are you not coming?”
Eres disposed of the Ogres as casually as brushing off dust and pressed forward without hesitation.
Following Eres, I ventured all the way to the Deepest Level of the Gate.
“Do you see it?”
After eliminating every Ogre in sight, Eres suddenly stopped and spoke.
“See what?”
“It is right here. Precisely here.”
I stared intently at the spot Eres was pointing to with her finger.
“Ah!”
The path to Eres and Aither’s Origin had been a long, narrow fissure, but what Eres was indicating now was almost like a pinprick—a barely visible point.
“You will open it.”
“Me?”
“Was it not you who opened the fissure between me and Aither’s Origin?”
“That’s true.”
At Eres’s words, I positioned myself before the point.
I grabbed the elongated gap on both sides and tried to tear it open, but I had no idea how to proceed, so I examined it for a moment.
With no other method available, I gripped both sides of the elongated gap just as I had before.
Then I swelled my body and exerted all my strength.
“…Good heavens….”
Eres’s eyes widened like never before.
I pulled with all my might until the gap became large enough for a single finger to slip through, but it was dozens of times heavier than when I had entered Eres’s Origin.
Even using my muscle and life force boost at maximum capacity, the gap refused to open any further.
Unable to exert more strength without risking my body, I released my grip and stepped back. The moment I let go, even the barely opened hole sealed itself shut.
“You opened it that way?”
“Yes.”
“I knew you were crude, but it’s worse than I thought.”
I thought she was impressed, but she was actually appalled.
“…This won’t open because it’s too heavy?”
“The gap to the Origin was never sealed—there was no one to seal it against. But this one can be made even sturdier to block those coming from the other side. I was curious how you opened the gap, so I had you try, but you’ve only wasted your effort.”
“…”
“Step back.”
Darkness spread from Eres’s body and gathered around the point, forming a wide disc.
The disc rotated around the point, transforming it into a hole and gradually enlarging it. Soon, a gate several meters in diameter was completed, formed by a ring of darkness.
“Can’t you do this more elegantly?”
“If you let me absorb more spirit essence, perhaps I could.”
“A king of a nation trying to live off others like this. You must cultivate your own strength yourself.”
Eres entered the gate first, and I followed immediately behind her.
As I passed through the gate, I found an endless line of ogres standing rigidly in a desolate landscape. The ogres, now turned gray, neither breathed nor moved, appearing like statues.
I could see the device connected to the gate we had forced open, and there were several other gate-opening devices scattered throughout.
“It seems to be a forward base or warehouse planet where ogres are sent through each gate?”
I had tensed up thinking we were storming their headquarters, but my spirits deflated somewhat.
“It appears so. But they’ve certainly captured quite a lot.”
Eres had shrunk again, becoming a small child.
“So you can fight them?”
“Even so, I’m far stronger than you. Arrogant creature.”
“You said there’s no way to save the monsters?”
“That’s right. This isn’t brainwashing. Their brain structure has been completely altered, so even if we could restore them, they’d have nothing left in their minds but the awareness of a newborn. Killing them would be the mercy.”
Darkness spread around Eres. Rather than crushing with overwhelming pressure, she was using darkness itself, which suggested her power had diminished considerably, yet it was more than sufficient to kill ogres.
The darkness spread across the ground like a cloud, engulfing thousands of ogres, and where the dark cloud passed, only ash-gray ogres remained, collapsed on the ground.
Eres floated into the air and moved forward first, and I followed behind her.
With no enemies and Eres casually slaughtering the ogres, my tension eased—but suddenly, a presence felt from behind sent chills down my spine and cold sweat trickling down my face.
“How dare you trespass upon my domain….”
Upon his neck, instead of a living man’s head, sat a skull. In the eye sockets of that skull, eerie blue flames burned ominously where eyes should have been. He wore a flowing black robe that hung like a jellyfish.
“The Lich….”
The Lich—the last of the Legion commanders to appear in my previous life. That accursed creature had resurrected all the dead monsters, causing the final bastions of every nation to crumble.
“Do you know him?”
Eres asked, noticing my darkened expression.
“He’s one of the Manager’s subordinates.”
I thought I had overcome my primal fear of the undead, but my body recoiled instinctively—perhaps because this creature was the king of the undead legion that had slain me in my previous life.
“Hmm….”
“I shall bury the answer to how you came here within your corpses….”
Violet mana radiated from the Lich’s body, spreading across the earth. Bae Na-young possessed violet mana for her curses as well, but this was purely ominous.
From the cursed earth, drained of vitality by his malevolence, the dead erupted forth.
Countless ogres emerged—armored Ogre Knights and Ogre Mages among them. And beyond that, even the petrified ogres began to move.
Their numbers easily exceeded tens of thousands.
“…There are far too many, aren’t there? That skeleton must have underestimated us.”
“Us?”
“You, Lady Eres.”
“With this many, I cannot dispose of them as easily as before.”
Hearing Eres speak with such restraint, it was clear her power differed greatly from when she wielded the full strength of Telus.
As I began to subtly retreat from the overwhelming numbers that even Eres found daunting, she descended to the ground.
“Aren’t you running away?”
“You stay there and do not move.”
Eres gathered the scattered clouds of darkness scattered about, drawing them into her form.
As she did so, the charge of tens of thousands of ogres shook the earth as though an earthquake had struck.
From Eres’s body, a circular wave of thin darkness rippled outward like a sonic pulse.
The darkness emanating from Eres passed through the ogres’ heads, necks, and torsos without sound or vibration.
“Seize that skeleton.”
The moment Eres finished speaking, the ogres’ bodies were severed vertically, top and bottom, and they collapsed.
Even undead ogres made no difference. Once their bodies were bisected, even the undead could not survive.
The Lich, recognizing Eres’s power, retreated, and I hurled myself toward him.
Though the Lich flew through the air like a phantom and was swift, he could not escape from me—my speed had increased since I gained the ability to manipulate spectral forms.
Seeing him flee, the fear I had felt moments before dissipated.
I fired an Aura Beam at his body.
“Kyaaaagh!!”
For a being that carried death itself, life force was the ultimate antithesis. The aura pierced through his body, scattering it.
“Is that all there is to him?”
No. No matter how much strength I had gained, I would have been exhausted dealing with the endless tide of ogres that kept rising and attacking.
I brought my heel down upon the Lich’s skull, now frozen in place by the aura’s penetration.
I drew a blade from my gauntlet and stabbed it into the Lich’s head, pinned to the ground.
“I told you to seize him. Why did you lose yourself?”
Eres caught my blade—sharpened by aura—with her bare hand.
“…My apologies. Are your hands alright?”
“Such trivial attacks from that wretch are merely ticklish.”
On Eres’s hand, where red blood should have seeped, thin cuts wept black darkness instead, though they sealed themselves moments later.
“Open the door to the Manager.”
Eres, appearing as a small girl, gazed down at the Legion Commander who had destroyed Earth and issued her command.
“You cannot win.”
Crack!
Eres flicked her finger, and the Lich’s head snapped backward.
“Ugh… Argh….”
That tiny finger had split a fissure across the Lich’s forehead.
“There will be no second chance.”
“They will kill you—”
Smack.
Another flick came, and the Lich’s head shattered as his body crumbled to dust. The Lich, who had terrorized countless souls, died by a child’s casual gesture.
“…I thought you said to bring him in for interrogation?”
“Did I not?”
She hadn’t even asked a few questions. If this was going to happen, I didn’t understand why she’d stopped me from killing him earlier.
“It will be faster if I search myself.”

Eres, who had killed the Lich as easily as twisting a child’s arm, rose back into the sky. And just as when we first arrived, she slaughtered the Ogres with clouds of darkness.
“…It never ends.”
“Indeed.”
I couldn’t fathom how vast this planet was, but Ogres filled the horizon in every direction. How many dimensions had been consumed to trap so many Ogres here?
And this was merely one planet. Considering the number of Gates, there had to be hundreds, thousands of worlds like this.
Eres continued her massacre for a while, but this dead planet held only Ogres and weaker monsters frozen in place.
Without any response from her opponents, Eres’s fury soon cooled.
“You should return.”
“Just me?”
“There may be a spatial rift here leading to their main base. I will liberate these wretched creatures and search for that rift. You go back.”
No matter how overwhelming her power was, how long would it take to kill every monster filling the planet?
“Let me help too.”
“You are too slow to be of use. Besides, you cannot even detect small spatial rifts, can you? Once I find it, I will call for you. Wait.”
She didn’t even wait for my response before shooting off into the distance. Behind her rapidly moving form, Ogre corpses materialized as if she were the Grim Reaper itself, ushering in death.
Once Eres vanished from sight, I returned to Derham.
“Brother!”
As I stepped out of the Gate, Bae Na-young, who had been waiting outside, rushed toward me.

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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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