Infinite Evolution Hunter - Chapter 181
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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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181
“You won’t massage my legs?”
Seeing Bae Na-young’s glare, I pushed Hee-chul aside and massaged her legs myself. It was hardly difficult.
We rested while watching a variety show together, snacking on fruit that Mother had peeled for us. With my family expanded, I felt a fresh sense of emotion at how different this life was from my previous one.
In my past life, I had focused solely on surviving each day. This life too was cursed with formidable enemies at every turn, but these peaceful moments made it possible to keep fighting on.
Of course, I was momentarily shocked by the unexpected pregnancy, but my anticipation for the child’s birth was equally great.
“Brother, aren’t you hungry?”
“Hm? What would you like to eat?”
“Hot dogs.”
“Hot dogs?”
“Yes, Boston hot dogs.”
“Ah, that chain restaurant?”
“No, the original location.”
“…”
“Ah, I’m so hungry.”
“…I’ll go get them.”
“Hurry back since I’m starving~”
I considered launching a fighter jet, but even at maximum speed it would take several hours round trip, so I grabbed an insulated bag myself and flew through the sky.
In an instant, I crossed the Pacific Ocean and descended through Boston’s sky.
As I landed from above, passersby were startled.
I casually lined up, bought a heap of hot dogs, and returned.
“Mmm~~ delicious!”
Bae Na-young grabbed several of each variety of hot dog I’d brought. She had always eaten well, but she was consuming even more than usual.
“And no morning sickness either—how wonderful~”
Mother was always delighted when someone ate well. Fruit and snacks were constantly replenished beside Bae Na-young.
“Pizza really should be from Italy, right?”
Less than two hours after finishing the hot dogs, Bae Na-young was already craving pizza. She’d even snacked in between, so she was essentially eating non-stop.
“The World Tree Academy has an Italian head chef!”
Hee-ah raised her hand enthusiastically.
“But it can’t compare to the authentic place, can it?”
“…I’ll go get it.”
That’s how I spent the day running errands across Earth, fetching five meals a day.
“Jae-in?”
When I returned home after going to Germany for sausages as a late-night snack, Jae-in was there.
“President, hello.”
“Take it easy with work. Your face looks terrible.”
“Yes…. Haha….”
‘Bae Na-young, what’s going on with her?’
I spoke to Bae Na-young silently in my mind.
‘She’s running away from Chae Ji-hae.’
‘Chae Ji-hae, the vice director? Running away? Why?’
‘Well…. Everyone got pregnant from the World Tree’s blessing, didn’t they?’
‘So Ji-hae got pregnant too?’
‘No, it’s the opposite. The two of them have been living together but haven’t gotten pregnant. Other people got pregnant just from sleeping together, even with contraception or bad timing, but those two haven’t.’
‘So they haven’t been intimate at all during the months they’ve been living together?’
‘Ji-hae was so embarrassed he couldn’t stand it and kept refusing….’
“Could you two stop using telepathy in front of people?”
Jae-in noticed my telepathic exchange with Bae Na-young and spoke listlessly.
“Ah…. Sorry. Have some sausage.”
I picked the largest one and slid the plate toward Jae-in.
“So…. Why don’t you take work a bit easier….”
“…The president always brings work to me anyway.”
With nothing to say, I cracked open a beer and slid it over, and Jae-in let out a sigh so deep it seemed the earth would cave in before taking a long swig.
* * *
For a while, I traveled the world delivering food for Bae Na-young.
“I’ll forgive you now.”
Bae Na-young had been angry that I didn’t react properly when she told me about the pregnancy, so she made me deliver food as payback. But now it seemed her anger had subsided.
“…Thank you.”
I pulled Bae Na-young into my arms and placed my hand on her belly.
“Does the belly bother you?”
“It’s only beautiful, so what’s the problem.”
Since Bae Na-young’s body was so lean, only her belly protruded noticeably.
“Ah!”
Bae Na-young placed her hand on her belly and furrowed her brow.
“What’s wrong?”
“My belly…. Ugh!!”
I infused her with life force as she cried out in sudden pain, then lifted her up and flew to the Obstetrics Clinic.
“There’s nothing wrong at all.”
“Then why did it hurt?”
Bae Na-young tilted her head at the Doctor’s words.
“Sometimes it hurts for no reason. But if it happens again, please come back right away.”
Back home, I continued infusing Bae Na-young with life force.
“Oppa, I’m fine now. This must be hard on you.”
“It’s not hard at all.”
“But…. My belly feels so tight….”
Bae Na-young broke into a cold sweat, and we headed to the Obstetrics Clinic again.
“…How…? This shouldn’t be possible….”
The Doctor at the Obstetrics Clinic frowned and kept retaking the ultrasound images.
“The child is fine, right?”
At such a reaction, neither Bae Na-young nor I could calm down.
“Yes… But the child has grown.”
“Pardon?”
“Compared to two hours ago, it’s grown. It’s as if weeks have passed.”
Detailed examinations confirmed that the child was developing at dozens of times the normal rate.
The problem was that Bae Na-young’s body couldn’t keep pace with that speed, and as the child grew, it absorbed the necessary nutrients from Bae Na-young’s body, causing her condition to deteriorate rapidly.
“Don’t give it life force! It will grow even faster!”
“But…”
If I continued giving life force, the child would grow more, and with it suddenly enlarging inside her womb, it would strain Bae Na-young’s body. If I didn’t, her body would be damaged.
“We need to extract the child.”
There was no other way.
“No!”
Bae Na-young gripped my hand, cold sweat dripping from her face in agony.
“Bae Na-young, the child will be fine.”
“At this stage, it can enter an incubator.”
“No! It’s still too small. I’m going to carry it to term!”
“I can’t watch you die. Do it now, please.”
“Brother… I’ll never forgive you.”
Bae Na-young had always been illogical in many respects, but now it was worse.
“Don’t you understand that if you die, the child becomes even more endangered?”
“Freeze me.”
“What?”
“There’s an item we took from Brixel, right? Use that to freeze me.”
Since it was an item that stopped time for its target, it would certainly have no effect on Bae Na-young or the fetus.
“That’s just buying time. It doesn’t solve anything.”
“In that time, you’ll find a solution.”
“What if I can’t?”
“You will. You must. I’ll wait. Ugh! Hurry!”
“Soon… I’ll wake you up.”
“Okay… I trust you.”
Unable to overcome Bae Na-young’s stubbornness, I froze her time.
Bae Na-young went rigid, cold sweat still glistening on her skin.
Beeeeeep—-
The devices attached to Bae Na-young’s body all flatlined simultaneously, their alarms blaring in unison.
The Obstetrics Clinic Doctor quickly silenced them, but my mood didn’t improve knowing I had frozen my wife and child.
“Ye-seul.”
Upon hearing the news, Ye-seul arrived.
“I’ll do my best to find a solution.”
Ye-seul, a Healer, was also proficient in medicine. Beyond that, I gathered doctors and Healers from around the world to pool our knowledge and discuss possible approaches.
“What if we put the child into a comatose state?”
A Doctor from World Tree Hospital made the suggestion to me.
“That won’t work. Even if I fall into a comatose state, I’ll continue absorbing life force. I might actually perceive it as a threat and absorb even more aggressively.”
The other doctors exchanged opinions actively.
“Artificial womb research is being actively pursued. What if we transferred her to an artificial womb?”
“If we were starting from the beginning, it might work, but transferring midway carries significant risks.”
Various opinions were exchanged and several days were spent on verification, but since this was an unprecedented case, we still hadn’t found a definitive solution.
To find Eres, I returned to Tellus and visited the Dark Temple and the Gate, but I couldn’t find any trace of her.
“How far has she gone…?”
Returning to Earth without results, I searched across the globe for traces of Gaia, Earth’s incarnation, but since there were no clues to begin with, this too proved fruitless.
Just as despair threatened to overwhelm me—that no matter how much my power grew, it would never be enough—Jae-in came to find me.
“Chairman, I found information in Brixel’s spirit that could help us save Bae Na-young.”
I rushed immediately at Jae-in’s call.
“What is it?”
Brixel’s fragmented soul had almost no personality remaining, making it essentially a mass of information. After Bae Na-young began her research, I learned it posed no danger, and then became too busy with pregnancy and marriage to continue, so I handed it over to the Research Facility.
Information accumulated over decades by someone with talent that appears once every few centuries, combined with knowledge gathered over thousands of years of wandering afterward—all of it fragmented and displayed on the screen.
“Your Majesty.”
Alice greeted me as I entered the laboratory.
“Alice, what are you doing here?”
“Alice has been helping recently. Soon she’ll grow to a level incomparable to me.”
Whether that was modesty or fact, it wasn’t what mattered right now.
“Thank you, Alice. Will you show me what you found?”
“Of course! It’s here.”
Alice, wearing augmented reality glasses, swiped the screen, and an image materialized in the air. It was technology I’d never seen before, but what concerned me more was the image displayed on the screen.
“This is… the Tower of Knowledge?”
“That’s right. These are things Brixel researched over decades in that place.”
Alice swept her arms rapidly, fast-forwarding through what he had learned, and the information he’d acquired was summarized and organized around the central display on all sides.
“Here.”
Alice stopped at a screen showing Brixel viewing a certain book.
“There’s information about sealing.”
“Sealing?”
“Research for sealing the abilities of some massive existence.”
The thought of sealing the child inside her womb didn’t seem like a good method, and my expression hardened without my realizing it.
“Your Majesty, please don’t worry. It’s not sealing the life form itself, but only the abilities. According to this book, no matter how powerful someone is, they become ordinary. What if we seal the power until birth and then gradually return it after she’s born?”
Sealing was the method with the fewest side effects I’d heard of so far.
“Alice, how would we do it?”
“But… there’s a problem. I found out that ability sealing exists, but the detailed sealing method that comes after is completely destroyed in the information. So…”
Alice looked at me and Jae-in with worried eyes.
“Keep talking, Alice.”
“We need to go to the Tower of Knowledge.”
“To the Administrator’s Planet? Can we go there?”
“I found the way to get there in Brixel’s memories.”
“Jae-in?”
“I’ve confirmed everything. There’s a possibility, but it’s extremely dangerous.”
“Prepare immediately. I’ll go and gather the necessary information myself.”
“Your Majesty, the Administrator is a formidable being. Even Brixel could do nothing but flee. We have no sense of how powerful they truly are.”
“I’m aware of the Chairman’s strength, but in Brixel’s memories, the Administrator was regarded as an evil god. They must possess tremendous power.”
“This time, I’m not going to fight the Administrator. When Brixel escaped the Tower, they didn’t even know about it, so I’ll simply slip in and extract information. When can I leave?”
Even though I had frozen them, I had no intention of wasting time.
“Alice, didn’t I tell you this would happen?”
At my words, Alice looked at me with worried eyes, thinking I had discovered something unnecessary and put myself in danger.
“It’s fine, Alice. I’ll return safely.”
I stroked Alice’s head, and Jae-in immediately began explaining the operation.
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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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