Infinite Evolution Hunter - Chapter 239

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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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239
Vito’s assault transcended human speed, yet compared to my usual velocity, it felt painfully sluggish.
However, within Vito’s Domain, all beings lost their supernatural abilities, which made his speed relatively formidable by comparison.
Combined with swordsmanship so ruthlessly practical it sent chills down my spine—the blade technique of a serial killer who had spent countless ages imprisoned in this realm, carving through flesh.
But I, too, had traversed battlefields of carnage. Even stripped of mana-infused flesh and astral form, even bereft of all supernatural gifts, my tempered body and soul remained undiminished.
Rather than dodge, I dropped low and slipped beneath the horizontal slash, then drove my shoulder into a tackle.
He withdrew his blade mere inches before it grazed my scalp, stepped back, and thrust the recovered sword toward my collarbone.
The blade shattered through bone and pierced my body; before agony could register, the sword rose, splitting my shoulder open as blood erupted forth.
A sensation like being seared by flame consumed me. Even my formidable mental fortitude vanished, and my vision whited out for an instant.
“Die.”
Through the haze, I heard Vito’s voice and rolled my body to evade the blade descending toward my throat.
Bracing for follow-up strikes, I clenched my teeth and forced myself upright.
The shoulder that had split vertically already knitted closed, though blood still trickled from my neck where the blade had caught it. Yet even that wound sealed almost instantly.
“…How? All supernatural abilities should be sealed within my Domain….”
Though my mental connection to my body on Earth had severed, my soul remained linked. Through that connection, a faint trickle of power flowed into me—just enough to barely regenerate my form.
“This might be worth attempting.”
My original goal was to gather intelligence about my limits within Vito’s Domain and transmit hints to my earthbound body before death claimed me. But at this rate, I could do far more than merely gather hints—I might actually capture that cursed bastard.
“Cockroach!”
Vito’s blade came at me from all directions.
From the previous exchange, I understood: I couldn’t evade his attacks completely.
So I would rely on my regeneration, accept the minor cuts, and dodge only the strikes aimed at vital points.
“Some knight you turned out to be—fighting like an assassin in the shadows!”
I taunted him while weaving through his assault.
“You had to survive, after all!”
Vito accelerated his blade speed; it carved across my chest. Another centimeter deeper and my heart would have been cleaved.
Ignoring wounds everywhere but vital areas, I charged at him, but something unexpected seized my ankles.
My skills had vanished—not just physical ones, but even my formidable mental fortitude.
The raw agony of flesh being cut by steel froze my body, and that paralysis allowed countless follow-up strikes to land.
“Relentless creature….”
Slashed and lacerated across dozens of wounds, my body tattered, Vito’s expression turned to disgust as he watched me slowly regenerate.
He paused to catch his breath, his gaze flickering toward the edge of his Domain, and I followed his eyes.
Vito’s white Domain was gradually contracting.
“Sealing such tremendous power isn’t easy, is it?”
When exerting influence over an entity within a Domain, the power required scales with that entity’s magnitude. Even if I were fortunate enough to trap Eres or Gaff within my own Domain, I couldn’t hold them for long with my current strength.
“You call yourself mighty? How arrogant.”
“You’ve got only minutes left, don’t you?”
Ignoring Vito’s words, I continued my provocation, and he gritted his teeth before charging again.
I didn’t know exactly how much time remained, but the moment this Domain dissolved, all my power would return.
I only needed to stall, so I felt no compulsion to counterattack, and I stopped rushing toward him.
I tried to retreat toward the Domain’s edge, but as he moved, the Domain followed, making escape impossible until I could shake him off.
“You pathetic rat!”
But as Vito’s panic intensified, his attacks grew increasingly sloppy, making them easier to evade.
“Your focus is slipping?”
“Tch… Damn it….”
As his strength waned, the space around him warped, and my connection to my soul grew stronger, accelerating my recovery.
Some of my power returned, and the incoming blade appeared sluggish. I caught Vito’s sword with my bare hand.
Vito’s blade only grazed the back of my palm—it couldn’t cut through my hand. My strength had returned.
“You’ve touched something you shouldn’t have.”
“So have you.”
Vito spoke with a bloodstained smile, and the ground beneath us began to glow.
“Did you lure me here?!”
The location I’d moved to while evading was actually where he’d drawn me. Obscured by his white domain, I hadn’t noticed what lay in the original space.
“That blade is a gift. Take it.”
Vito released his sword and leaped backward, escaping the magic circle on the ground, but I was caught by its powerful suction and couldn’t move.
“I can’t face this alone!”
Adapting the technique I’d used to create a demon’s tail, I pulled a whip from the back of my hand and wrapped it around Vito’s ankle as he fled.
My whip, made of densely connected blades rather than leather like a chain sword, dug deep into Vito’s ankle flesh.
“Ugh! Let go, you bastard!”
When Vito opened a spatial rift and drew a sword to slash down at the whip, my hastily constructed weapon became half-shredded.
As he raised the blade high once more, his body began to turn dark and ashen from the ankle up.
“Is… is this poison?!”
He opened a spatial rift and retrieved a potion.
“I don’t know where you’re trying to send me, but you’re coming with me.”
“No… this can’t be… if I go….”
Vito’s gaze turned toward where Rachel was.
The suction from the magic circle grew increasingly powerful, and not just Vito and me—the surrounding space itself warped and was pulled in.
Inside the magic circle, like traveling through a Gate, stars rushed past in a blur, and then the world suddenly vanished.
A void where space, time, and even darkness had ceased to exist. I couldn’t breathe, and my senses disappeared. My very existence was fading.
Just before my existence vanished completely, stars appeared again, and Vito, myself, and a heap of earth crashed onto the ground with a heavy thud.
“Gasp… cough….”
I didn’t know where we’d fallen, but it wasn’t Vito’s Domain—and all my abilities had vanished.
In Vito’s Domain, I’d drawn a trace of life force from my body on Earth, but here, even that was gone.
Not only that, but it was so dark I could barely see, the air was thin and suffocating, and gravity was several times stronger, making my body feel impossibly heavy.
“Damn it!”
Vito, having neutralized my poison with a potion, cursed bitterly.
“You son of a bitch!”
Then he rushed at me, unable to control his body, and delivered a kick.
His leather shoe struck my ribs. From just a kick, I felt my ribs tearing apart in agony.
“Where… where is this place….”
My lungs felt like they were being torn apart from the lack of air.
“This is your grave!”
Vito’s fury knew no bounds as he continued his relentless assault. Unlike me, he moved freely through this space without constraint.
“Because of you, my younger sibling! My homeland!”
“Hah… serves… you right… kekeke….”
“Shut up!! Die!!”
Vito’s beating continued for what felt like an eternity.
Pain had raced through my entire body, but eventually, I could no longer feel it at all.
“Huff… huff… damn it… how long will it take to get back this time?”
Vito finally stopped, gasping for breath. He walked toward the mound of earth that had been pulled down with us and retrieved his sword from within it.
“For stealing my last remaining family and my homeland, you will pay with your life. And I swear this to you—when I return to Earth, I will reduce your homeland to the same ruin.”
I wondered what expression would cross his face when he saw me again on Earth. Most of the information about him had already been transmitted to my body there. If it took him time to return, Jae-in and I would find a way to prepare.
I had thought death held no terror with a spare body, but whether from the severed connection to my Earth body or the loss of my formidable mental skill, the sight of Vito’s blade made my body tremble with the primal fear of death.
Vito, who had been approaching with sword in hand, suddenly stopped and looked around.
“…Damn! Cursed insects.”
Vito muttered while fixing his gaze on one direction.
“Being torn apart by insects isn’t a bad way to go. Die as painfully as you can.”
Vito sheathed his sword and rushed away.
As he receded into the distance, my pain intensified. Bones shattered in multiple places, and blood spilled forth.
I had to recover quickly. Vito’s escape meant something was coming.
But regeneration barely worked. Had my regeneration skill completely vanished?
I tried to sense and draw in life force from my surroundings, but felt nothing. The pitch-black sky held not a single star, and both the atmosphere and earth were as parched as desert sand.
I turned my head to search for something to absorb. I spotted the mound of earth where Vito had retrieved his sword.
This world’s soil held no life force, but soil from the original world would surely contain something.
With my ruined body, I crawled across the ground. Broken bones and split wounds scraped against sharp stones, and waves of agony crashed over me—my vision flashed white for a moment.
In this moment, I desperately missed that formidable mental skill more than any other ability.
After barely crawling nearly there, I found earth and grass frozen solid. I tried to absorb from a distance, but my power had weakened so much that I had to place my hands directly on them to draw in life force.
My body recovered with agonizing slowness, as if I had just acquired an F-rank regeneration skill.
What was fortunate was that my evolutionary trait remained intact—as my body regenerated, it immediately hardened. On Earth, my body had been strengthened primarily through mana’s power, but in this space devoid of mana, my flesh became physically more resilient.
I absorbed everything around me that could be absorbed, yet my body still remained far from complete recovery.
With nothing left to absorb, this space’s gravity was several times stronger, and the thin air meant life force was now leaking from my body.
I sprawled on my back, stretching my hand toward the pitch-black sky.
The agony and terror of death overwhelmed me. I reached into the void, desperately hoping someone—anyone—would help.
Who heard my plea? From the utterly black sky, I saw an impossibly thin crimson thread fluttering down.
Was it a hallucination? Or something dangerous? But it didn’t matter. In this state, I would die regardless.
I grasped the crimson thread with my hand.
The moment the red thread connected to my body, I realized it was linked to my body on Earth.
My consciousness hadn’t reconnected yet, and I could only receive the tiniest trickle of life force, but it was enough to barely survive in this environment.
As my lungs regenerated several times over, my breathing gradually returned, and with my wounds healing, my mind began to clear.
“Status window.”
As expected, nothing appeared. The abilities Earth had granted me—they had completely vanished.
“Just how far have I come…?”
My eyes had grown somewhat accustomed to the darkness, so I rose to my feet and surveyed my surroundings.
Hard, jagged black stones lay scattered everywhere, and there was no trace of flora or fauna.
As I pondered my next course of action, I noticed a black sphere roughly a meter in diameter hurtling toward me from the opposite direction Vito had gone.

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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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