Infinite Evolution Hunter - Chapter 248

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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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248
“Leave? Where to? We can fight right here.”
Chon spread both arms wide in the cramped Underground Prison filled with fighters.
“This space is too narrow for me to use my full strength. Why are you afraid to give me room?”
“If we fight up there, inferior fighters get to watch me fight for free? Choose. Fight, or we forget this ever happened.”
His tone suggested he had nothing to lose, and truthfully, he owed me no favors.
“No, let’s do this.”
I assumed the ready stance of Tai Chi, hands relaxed and open, left hand forward and right hand drawn back toward my body, knees flexible and responsive.
Chon simply stood motionless.
My foot pushed off the ground first, and I channeled my life force abundantly into a palm strike aimed at Chon’s abdomen.
While I enjoyed using my fists, the palm technique—fingers gathered and extended—was more efficient at releasing the aura circulating through my body without waste.
The impact and life force rippled through Chon’s body like waves. I thought the shock would pierce his shell and reach deep inside, but Chon smiled with a bloodthirsty grin.
The impact I’d delivered flowed backward as if time itself had reversed, returning directly to my hand.
I neutralized the reflected shock by spinning my body sharply, then used that rotational momentum to execute a spinning heel kick.
My heel struck Chon’s temple, but he didn’t budge an inch. As expected, the impact returned to my foot, and I was sent flying backward.
I regained my balance mid-flight and created distance between us.
Chon’s carapace returned my force exactly as given—both the physical impact and the aura of life force itself.
The returning aura was reabsorbed as life force, but the physical impact was difficult to completely dissipate with my current body, so the shock accumulated within me.
“Do you understand now? The difference in our power. You can’t even touch a hair on me.”
“Is this all Exos can do—hide inside your shells like cowards?”
“You bastard!!!!”
Rockrel couldn’t contain himself and let out a roar.
“Chon! Please, give me another chance!”
“Rockrel.”
Chon simply called his name without saying anything else. Yet Rockrel immediately pressed his head to the ground and sealed his lips shut.
“A coward, you say. So you’re trying to provoke me—but if that’s the truth, there’s no reason for me to be angry.”
If he lost his composure like Rockrel, he’d be easy to handle, but he remained calm.
“A businessman must be bold when boldness is called for, but when it’s time to preserve himself, he must hide like a coward. Always being bold isn’t being a businessman—that’s being a gambler. Like those fools lurking in the shadows back there.”
Chon gestured with his chin toward the fighters concealed in the darkness.
“You rob them of their lives with contracts they don’t even understand, yet you speak so eloquently.”
“I explained the contracts thoroughly before lending money to those who needed it. Is that my fault?”
“Enough. Don’t say another word. It stinks. Oh, you don’t have a nose on the outside, so you can’t smell it? You reek.”
While Exos have no external nose, they can smell through an organ inside their mouths when eating.
“… You seem to think I’ve only been defending.”
Chon, who had been dismissing everything else with a chuckle, changed his tone the moment I mentioned the smell.
“Let me show you the true power of a Colosseum master.”
He raised both hands high into the air, and I resumed my stance.
This wasn’t my first time encountering magic that reflected attacks. The spell itself had a high cost, and if the damage exceeded what he could withstand, it would be game over—so it wasn’t an invincible technique.
In other words, I just needed to strike with force exceeding Chon’s reflection capacity.
Even if I defeated Chon, Rockrel and the soldiers behind him remained, so I’d been holding back my strength. But now that we’d come this far, I decided to gamble.
As I approached to strike again, he slammed his fist down on his own chest, concentrating the shockwave into a single point and firing it at me. It resembled Si-hwan’s sonic attack, but its power was dozens of times stronger.
Weak vibrations merely shake a target, but when the intensity increases, they tear it apart. Had my body not adapted to Cagron and become more resilient, his attack would have shredded me as well.
Now, the fact that my body wasn’t as hard as an Exos actually worked in my favor. But prolonged exposure to such attacks would be disastrous.
I leaped to the side, escaping the center of the shockwave, then zigzagged through the incoming waves while closing the distance.
I shaped my aura into a sharp horn on my fist and stabbed at his ribs.
The impact from the armor reflected back, so I’d planned to shatter the carapace using only aura this time, but the carapace held firm while my aura shattered into fragments.
Aura applied directly to bare hands was weaker than when layered over weapons, and I didn’t have enough vitality to overwhelm him through sheer volume right now.
He swung both hands at me like swatting a fly, and when I dodged, he ended up clapping his hands together.
Another shockwave erupted from his palms.
I wrapped a thin layer of aura around my body’s surface for defense and targeted his ribs again.
This time, instead of shaping the aura into a horn, I wrapped it around my fist like armor—thin yet incredibly dense aura.
Boom!
“Useless…. Ugh!”
Chon’s carapace reflected my impact using the wave technique, but that reliance on waves created a momentary delay. From my striking stance, I unleashed aura in rapid succession from my entire body through my fist.
Boom-boom-boom-boom-crash!
I poured aura like a jackhammer used in road construction.
His carapace couldn’t reflect all the continuously cascading aura. Since I stood my ground, I took the reflected impacts directly, and my arms became tattered.
Chon, startled, flailed his hands wildly and retreated backward.
Combat is about momentum. I pursued him as he withdrew, dodged his attacks with minimal movement, and struck his ribs again with my already-regenerated hand.
In that instant, I drove dozens of aura strikes into his ribs, and I took the reflected attacks on my body once more.
“Tch! This bastard!”
Chon, writhing in pain, vibrated his carapace, making the segments clash and resonate, sending waves of force in all directions.
The small Underground Prison shook as if it would collapse.
The unfocused waves merely pushed me back without causing serious damage.
“Cough….”
But behind me, the fighters who’d taken Chon’s shockwaves directly were dying.
“Chon! Stop!”
If I didn’t end this fight quickly, all the fighters would perish.
I tried to advance, but a vibration barrier like a shield prevented me from reaching Chon.
“Gurgling….”
The Exos with carapaces that absorbed damage were barely holding on, but the fighters without carapaces were foaming at the mouth and spitting black saliva.
In a world where water itself was precious, spitting like that meant their bodies were being crushed.
“Stop! I concede!”
I shouted, but Chon didn’t hear me or refused to stop.
Abandoning all thoughts of consequences, I gathered every ounce of aura I possessed and concentrated it into my feet and fists.
I’d stake everything on this single blow.
I stomped the ground until it cracked, then unleashed all my power. My attack, condensing every bit of strength I’d accumulated, pierced through Chon’s vibration barrier, and my fist shot toward his solar plexus like a beam of light.
Crack!
Rockrel’s head carapace, wedged in the way, shattered and sprayed onto Chon. I’d aimed for Rockrel’s abdomen, but because he was short, his head broke instead, protecting his vulnerable torso.
Rockrel maximized the repulsive force between my fist and his body, but the power I’d unleashed was everything I had left, so his technique couldn’t stop it.
“Rockrel! You bastard! What are you doing?!”
Rockrel’s eyes and mouth had migrated to where his head carapace once was. Half of it was crushed, as if he hadn’t dodged in time.
“Master Chon, that one has already surrendered.”
“What?”
“That’s right. I lost. Stop now.”
With my final desperate strike rendered meaningless, I had no strength left to continue fighting.
“Ahahaha, that’s what I thought! How dare you defy Master Chon?!”
He laughed exaggeratedly, trying to mask the crisis he’d just faced. At that booming laughter, the fallen fighters flinched.
“As promised, you’ll fight as my slave until death! The moment you try to escape, every last one of these wretches dies!”
Chon pointed at the fallen fighters.
“They’re already on death’s door anyway. Save them. That way, I won’t even use them as leverage against you.”
“Hmm… Fine. Guard! Treat them with Rare Stones. But only enough to keep them barely alive.”
“Y-yes…”
The Guard who answered was also injured by Chon’s attack and stumbled.
Chon left the prison with Rockrel.
* * *
“Damn Outer bastard!”
Chon crunched through Rare Stones from a box.
“Master Chon… consuming such large quantities at once will damage your health.”
Rare Stones granted special abilities or stat increases to Exos who consumed them, but if the consumer wasn’t prepared, they could become poison and cause death.
“Hmph! Who am I?! The King of the Colosseum! These pathetic Rare Stones mean nothing! I’ve been saving them for profit until now, but a mere slave dares challenge my power?!”
Chon crushed a Rare Stone in his fist and shoved the fragments into his mouth.
Crumbs scattered across the floor. For other Exos, fragments of a high-grade Rare Stone were worth risking their lives to obtain.
“What are you doing? Eat some too.”
Chon gestured at the crumbs with his chin.
“It is an honor.”
Rockrel crawled across the floor and picked up the scattered Rare Stones, consuming them.
“I am the king! Me!”
Chon crammed more Rare Stones into his mouth, his carapace and internal muscles expanding with audible cracks.
* * *
“Maybe I should just die…”
“Boss! You can’t give up!”
At my murmur, O-gun panicked and shook me.
“No, I don’t see a way out. I’ve exhausted all my accumulated power.”
“Right. You’ll die in the next match.”
Os-na stood beyond the bars.
“Os-na, you’re back?”
At Os-na’s appearance, the fighters scrambled into the shadows. The aftermath of Chon’s assault had etched fear of the strong back into their bodies.
“It’s all over now.”
“Why are you so pessimistic?”
“I ended up fighting Chon and the Colosseum Organization’s leader for their positions. But the next opponent Bae-sho put forward is someone neither you nor my fighter can possibly defeat. You’ll die, and I’ll lose the Colosseum Organization’s seat.”
“Who is it?”
“The human who came over with you.”
“…Vito?”
“Yes. Bae-sho implanted a parasite in Vito’s mind and cast a curse on his sword. Chon still doesn’t seem to know, but that man is unbeatable.”
“Vito wouldn’t have fallen so easily….”
“He already had Bae-sho’s curse embedded in his body from the beginning. There’s no way he could have won against Bae-sho.”
“What are you saying? Vito had Bae-sho’s curse on his body?”
Os-na knew the secret behind Vito’s power.

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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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