Infinite Evolution Hunter - Chapter 171

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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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171
I grabbed the startled Jae-in by her collar and hurled her behind me.
Brixel’s flesh erupted from where Jae-in had been standing, engulfing my body.
“President!”
The mass of flesh proliferated rapidly, but lacking density and strength, I tore through it and soared skyward.
Brixel’s flesh clinging to my body attempted to fuse with my skin.
I ignited my aura, spreading it across my entire body to incinerate even the fused portions.
“So he won’t die that easily….”
I’d thought his soft body might be vulnerable to bombardment, but he proved far more formidable than anticipated.
Flesh burrowed through the ground, writhed upward from all directions, coalesced, and proliferated anew—within moments, he’d recovered his colossal form.
“Damn it.”
I hurled myself backward, evading the undulating, multiplying Brixel.
Brixel opened a massive Gate beneath his body, devouring earth and seawater once more.
The accelerated absorption rate pulled dozens of abandoned fishing vessels, moored far offshore, into the current.
Brixel’s body proliferated endlessly as he pursued me. Rather than moving to capture me, he followed by multiplying—his regenerated mass remained wherever his tendrils had passed.
“Brother!”
Bae Na-young arrived with another S-rank hunter in a transport aircraft.
“We have to stop the proliferation! Attack!”
I was relieved to see them, but the dire situation left no time for greetings.
Bae Na-young’s violet curse necrotized vast portions of Brixel’s body, while Amy unleashed dozens of lightning bolts in succession like a descending thunder god, incinerating the flesh.
Hunter Jung Min-gi’s blade swung relentlessly, cleaving the body into fragments, while hunters like Hong Long, unable to engage at range, confronted the gargoyles.
The concentrated barrage from multiple S-rank hunters overwhelmed his proliferation rate, yet my fellow hunters couldn’t sustain such output indefinitely against his boundless regeneration.
‘Brother! This can’t be truly infinite! He must be drawing power from somewhere. We have to find it!’
‘I tore through his body earlier, but found nothing.’
‘It might be extremely small.’
If it were small, a point-blank attack wouldn’t locate it. I needed to strike broadly like Bae Na-young, but with greater force.
To engulf the enlarged creature entirely, I dispersed my life-force aura in all directions.
If he came at me recklessly, I’d respond in kind.
Within my aura’s domain, his body burned away. Yet my aura’s radius remained dwarfed by his massive form.
Beyond my domain’s reach, Bae Na-young, Amy, Jung Min-gi, and Jae-in bombarded his body from all sides with explosives.
Deploying my aura omnidirectionally to expand the domain was my first attempt, leaving me underpowered—but positioning favored me. Forest and sea surrounded us, offering endless absorption. I expanded the domain by drawing life-force from the core and surroundings alike.
‘Just a little longer! We can’t miss a single fragment!’
Bae Na-young’s telepathy resonated through every hunter’s mind as we mustered our final strength, annihilating Brixel’s flesh beyond my domain.
At last, all flesh outside my domain crumbled to dust, and Brixel’s body within my domain reduced to ash and vanished.
Where his colossal form had been, a black Gate appeared. Flesh erupted from it like a burst dam, endless and torrential.
Though pouring forth at tremendous speed, it incinerated before escaping my domain.
Approaching the black Gate, I contracted my domain’s size while intensifying the aura’s concentration.
Realizing further flesh expenditure was pointless, the black Gate ceased its discharge.
Beyond the dark aperture, dozens of eyes of varying sizes glowed.
[… Do not grow arrogant merely because you’ve captured my avatar. The battle you’ve begun is only starting.]
“The sea you’ve longed for. Wash your neck up there and wait.”
I struck the black Gate with a hand blade reinforced by my spiritual form, and every Gate opened by Brixel shattered into dust.
“Phew….”
My head spun from exerting so much power.
“Growing this strong, I can’t even complain about falling behind anymore.”
Jung Min-gi trudged over, followed by the other Hunters. We’d already disposed of all the golems, and the gargoyle hunt was complete.
“Min-gi.”
“What is it?”
“That’s a clone.”
“…”
“The real body is probably on the Ark, right?”
“We should attack the core immediately—”
“I want to as well, but a considerable number of Earthlings are being held hostage there. I told them to do as they pleased, but those who blindly followed the leader without thinking… we should try to save them if possible.”
“This is getting complicated.”
“Chairman!”
Jae-in brought over a half-destroyed golem, gripping its neck as she carried it—its limbs were shattered and it couldn’t move properly.
“What are you planning to do with that?”
“If we understand how it moves, it could be helpful.”
“I’ll leave that to you. What about the other Gates? Have you heard anything?”
“They all closed when Brixel retreated.”
“That’s fortunate.”
“Sang-heon, Akiko is caring for the remaining Japanese people near Tokyo, so help her out. If they want, we can relocate everyone near the World Tree. You’ll need to manage the remaining Gates in Japan so no Breaks occur. Can you take responsibility for that?”
“Leave it to me!”
Akiko had been shocked that most of Japan’s citizens abandoned their homeland and fled. She’d been shocked again learning they’d left the sick behind. Now, hearing they’d been taken hostage, she couldn’t collect herself.
Sang-heon needed to be her strength.
* * *
“How… does this even work….”
Jae-in tore open the golem’s head.
“There’s a faint spiritual form reaction in the center of its chest.”
I watched from beside her.
“You mean it’s alive?”
“I’m not sure. I still don’t fully understand spiritual forms. Since monsters like plants and ghosts also have spiritual forms, the definition of being alive becomes ambiguous.”
“Fascinating… how does it move….”
After disassembling every part of the golem, when I finally cut open its chest, a black sphere small enough to fit in both hands lay inside.
“That’s it—the power source. Oh, so it controls the entire body with this… but what kind of power source is this strong? It’s not mana, and there’s no heat….”
Jae-in murmured as she examined the sphere.
“I wanted to try reprogramming it, but I can’t get a grasp on it at all.”
“Let me take a look.”
Bae Na-young examined the golem’s black core. Though their fields differed, these two were unparalleled geniuses among humans.
“My… brother, this has emotion.”
“Emotions? You mean it’s actually alive?”
“Yes. It’s faint because it’s sealed in multiple layers, but I can feel emotions. Immense rage.”
“… Directed at us?”
“Doesn’t seem like it. Let me get closer and investigate.”
Bae Na-young extracted the sphere from the golem’s body and examined it from various angles.
“The seals are incredibly dense. As if someone feared someone like me would access it.”
“You hesitated to touch the golem last time, so he prepared this afterward? Can you manage it?”
“Yes, it’s not difficult.”
Bae Na-young studied the patterns carved into the black core as if solving a puzzle, rotating them this way and that. Then she aligned her fingers with the patterns at various points.
And she listened intently to hear the voice coming from within.
“… Brother, you need to hear this with me.”
Bae Na-young began relaying the transmission telepathically to my and Jae-in’s minds.
[Let me fight. Earthlings.]
A deep, growling voice filled with rage resonated like that of a colossal beast.
“Fight? Against whom?”
[Brixel, that accursed bastard. Who else could there be?]
“What are you? I thought golems were supposed to be without emotion?”
[I am of the Giant Race from Dragia Planet. I am Ricaros, the Giant Commander. I was imprisoned here by Brixel and the traitors of my clan.]
“Brixel can trap souls in golems?”
[It’s not Brixel’s own ability. The magical tool he possesses can extract spiritual entities. And he uses that power on golems and the Ark.]
“I knew it. It was too sweet to be true.”
[As the number of refugees increased, resources including food became scarce. When accepting refugees from other worlds, he received resources. When that still wasn’t enough, he extracted some of the refugees and converted them into golems.]
“Since golems don’t eat, it was killing two birds with one stone.”
[Exactly. When a soul is used as a golem for a long time, the soul itself wears away and disappears. Eternal annihilation.]
I felt Ricaros’s rage.
“We’ll have to kill Brixel to save the refugees.”
[Refugees? Those aboard that ship are the same.]
“What? Weren’t they virtuous citizens?”
[Virtuous?! Ha! They said food was scarce! They said there weren’t enough golems to serve them! They’re the ones murdering fellow refugees?!]
“But from what I saw with mind reading….”
[Those on the middle level you visited know nothing. The traitors and hypocrites live on the upper levels, and on the lower levels, they convert captured slaves into golems.]
“So what I saw was only one level?”
“Brother, the Earthlings must be on the lower level too.”
“President, they’re already dead….”
[Extracting souls requires much preparation and time. If many went down, most would still be alive, just frozen.]
“Then how do we get in?”
[There’s a waste disposal chute at the rear of the Ark.]
“I thought you recycled all resources?”
[If that were true, there’d be no reason to extort this many resources.]
“There wasn’t a single truth among them.”
[We can enter the lower levels through the exhaust port. However… Brixel is always watching, so sneaking in won’t be possible.]
“What if we draw his attention to the front while we slip in from behind?”
[Hmm, it would take something extraordinary to divert Brixel’s gaze.]
“Then we’ll create something extraordinary. While we do that, Bae Na-young and Jae-in can slip in from behind and rescue the people and golems.”
Bae Na-young and Jae-in nodded at my words.
[I’m coming too.]
“…. Can’t you see the state of your own body?”
The golem’s body, already tattered to begin with, had been completely dismantled by Jae-in.
[Extract the soul from the core of the golem destroyed in the last battle and bring it to me. It’s difficult to remove it from the physical body, but once a soul is already extracted, I can merge with it simply by bringing the core close to me.]
“If your soul mingles with another’s, your original essence cannot be preserved. And can you even fuse with another being?”
[My soul is something I can discard for vengeance. All those who became golems surely burn with rage toward Brixel—they will definitely fuse with me.]
“Hmm…. Having you come along would be helpful, so let’s try it.”
Jae-in picked up the core of the nearby golem. It was fainter than Ricaros’s, but it unmistakably contained a spiritual entity.
[Bring it close to my core.]
Jae-in brought the two golem cores into contact, and Ricaros’s core resonated in response to the other.
“Ricaros and that small spirit are communicating with each other.”
Bae Na-young explained from beside me.
The resonant hum continued briefly before the faint spirit transferred into Ricaros’s core and was absorbed.
Ricaros’s core pulsed like a beating heart.
[More…. More spirits! For vengeance!]

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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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