Infinite Evolution Hunter - Chapter 249

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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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249
“You didn’t even realize your friend was under Bae-sho’s curse?”
“Vito, my friend? That bastard is the enemy who threw me into this godforsaken world.”
Hearing such absurd words, fury surged through me.
“Boss, well… it may be a godforsaken world, but it’s our homeland, so if you speak like that…”
O-gun peeked one eye out from the shadows and said something.
“Shut up.”
At my words, his eye quickly retreated.
“Vito wasn’t new to Cagron before. Bae-sho picked up a dying man and experimented with tattoos, creating a body that could survive in this world too.”
“Stealing others’ abilities as well?”
“Stealing abilities? Ah, that’s probably one of Bae-sho’s artifacts that he stole. He took it when he escaped to the original world. He promised to go with me, but that bastard ran off alone…”
Behind Os-na’s mask, I heard a grinding sound of teeth.
“You were betrayed.”
“Yeah. That damned bastard completely forgot my help, betrayed me, and took off on his own.”
Memories of past betrayal shattered Os-na’s composure, and a black aura thickly enveloped her surroundings.
Crack.
Unable to withstand the black aura, her mask fractured.
“A cracked mask—how unlucky.”
Os-na took a deep breath to steady her aura, then swiftly removed the broken mask.
“…! Bae Na-young?!”
She looked slightly older than Bae Na-young, but it was unmistakably her face. At that moment, I couldn’t see souls, and because the way she used her vocal cords was completely different, I hadn’t recognized her voice.
“You… how do you know me?”
When I spoke in Korean, Bae Na-young responded in Korean as well.
“How did you come here? Or… are you Bae Na-young from a different dimension?”
“Was I connected to you in a different worldline? In my world, I was banished. If they hadn’t driven me into a corner, it wouldn’t have happened that way…”
Her face showed both anger at her banishment and regret for the past simultaneously.
“I was only thinking of going back and taking revenge, but now it’s all over. You’ll die, and I’ll rot away in this world. If I’d just had a little more time, I could have stolen the World Tree’s seed…”
“The World Tree’s seed? The World Tree exists in this world?”
“In the territory Chon occupies, the weeds I see are the World Tree. By some miraculous chance, seeds are sometimes found within them. That’s the key to returning to the original world. Only two have been found so far. Vito took one and ran, and Chon has the other.”
“This?”
I pulled out the seed of the World Tree—not a weed—that I’d kept in my pocket.
“Wh… how?!”
“I dug it up last time and it came out?”
“That’s impossible! Only two have been found in hundreds, thousands of years! It can’t come out that easily!”
“Well, it came out. But if Chon isn’t even going to use it, why does he have it? Couldn’t he just give it to you?”
“If I have this, either I or Bae-sho can go back to our world. He wants to be the king of this place for a long time. He doesn’t wish to create a connection with an unknown world.”
“So now that we have the seed, we can return to Earth?”
“No, preparations are necessary. Finally!”
A bright light spread across Os-na’s previously dark face.
“That’s good. Can we go together now?”
“No. I need to prepare. My strength is insufficient to face Chon while preparing at the same time. If you had told me beforehand that you possessed a World Tree seed!”
Bae Na-young glared at me fiercely. For a moment, my body flinched—this wasn’t the Bae Na-young from the original world, but the face of the one called The Witch in my past life.
“How was I supposed to know you needed this?”
“You know the me from another worldline? How do you even manage to live with someone as frustrating as you?!”
“…We got married?”
“What?! With someone like you?!”
Though she was somewhat different, hearing those words from Bae Na-young’s lips stung a little.
“So when are we leaving?”
“We’ll have to finish preparations without Chon or Bae-sho knowing, so it’ll be after the next match. I can forfeit my match. But you need to survive first, or there’s nothing I can do…”
“Is Vito really that strong?”
“Yes. One-on-one, I doubt anyone can defeat him. First, give me the seed.”
“…You’re going to run off with it?”
“…No?”
True to her nature as The Witch, her heart was dark. But just like the Bae Na-young I knew, when she lied, she opened her eyes wider and stared directly at me—that habit was identical.
“I can’t give this to you. I’ll survive on my own terms. Come find me once your preparations are complete.”
“Ah.”
As I tucked the seed into my pocket, The Witch Bae Na-young smacked her lips.
“Boss. What are you saying?”
O-gun, unable to understand our conversation, asked.
“We’re going to escape.”
“B-Boss! Are you abandoning us?!”
“You can just come with us, can’t you?”
“Boss, are you saying the whole world? Is that even possible?!”
“Listen.”
Bae Na-young called out to me.
“Listen to what. It’s Lee Ji-seok. Lee Ji-seok.”
“Lee Ji-seok…”
Bae Na-young repeated my name, and hearing her call my name after so long, my gaze lingered on her face.
“Hmph, names don’t matter much anyway.”
Bae Na-young noticed my gaze and spoke curtly.
“In any case, they can’t go. In our world brimming with life force, Exos cannot survive. Unless they’re as strong as Chon or Bae-sho.”
“If we give them carapaces and drop them on some dead star devoid of life force, they should be fine. The problem is how to take them with us. Damn it, if only this had worked…”
I kneaded the small Infinite Pouch in my hands.
“Hmm? What’s that?”
“A pouch with expanded space inside. But it doesn’t function in Cagron where there’s no mana.”
“Give it here.”
Since even the Exos guards had thought it was just an ordinary pouch and returned it, I handed it to Bae Na-young.
And her hand slipped smoothly into the pouch.
“Huh? It works?”
“I’m spreading a thin membrane of mana around my body. The space inside seems quite spacious, so we can transport what we need with this.”
“Potions! Get the potions out!”
“There are potions in here? I can’t grab anything. How am I supposed to take them out?”
Bae Na-young moved her arm, but nothing came into her grasp.
“If you think about the item you want to retrieve, it will come into your hand.”
Bae Na-young closed her eyes and rummaged around before pulling something out—a supreme-grade potion.
The moment she withdrew it, the potion’s vital essence pierced through the bottle and was drawn down into Cagron’s floor.
“Hurry!”
I extended my hand, and Bae Na-young passed me the potion bottle.
I absorbed the vital essence within the bottle through my palm.
“There are magic stones and mana potions inside too.”
After absorbing a few more bottles and eating some food, the vital essence I’d wasted fighting Chon had recovered somewhat.
“Ah! How long has it been since I’ve eaten human food….”
Bae Na-young, who had eaten the cheap preserved rations, was so moved that tears glistened in her eyes.
“Damn it…. I regret only packing a little for emergencies.”
The quantity of items inside wasn’t much. On Earth, I could traverse space freely, so there was no need to store many things.
“Um…. Boss? So what should we do?”
O-gun, who had been waiting for some time, asked.
“Oh, right. You can fit inside the pouch, so there’s no problem. Want to come with me?”
I asked O-gun and the fighters.
The air inside the infinite pouch was limited, but the Exos, who didn’t require much breathing anyway, could endure in a dormant state for extended periods.
“There’s no telling how long we’d survive here anyway. I’ll follow you, boss!”
O-gun answered my proposal with spirited determination.
“Good.”
“Ji-seok, keep that seed safe. It won’t break under any circumstances, but if you lose it, you won’t be able to find it.”
“It won’t break?”
“It’s a World Tree seed. No matter what you do to it, it won’t break.”
“Hmm….”
I stuffed the seed into the pouch.
“Phew…. I need to go. Placing hypnotic suggestions that override Exos instincts isn’t easy. If I stay any longer, Chon will find out.”
“Why are you so afraid of Chon? Shouldn’t someone like you be able to handle him?”
“It’s not about being afraid of that muscle-brained idiot. He possesses plenty of top-tier rare stones that can increase his stats whenever he wants. On top of that, the forces he’s bought with money he’s scraped together relentlessly can’t be ignored either.”
If I could recover my strength, he’d be easy to deal with, but losing my power was regrettable.
“Understood. Finish your preparations quickly and come back.”
“Don’t die.”
Os-na left, and several days passed, but there was no contact. And the next match arrived before Os-na did.
“B…. Boss….”
“I won’t die. You all stay safe. And remember what I told you?”
“Yes. Then, we wish you luck.”
As I was dragged to the Colosseum and waiting, Vito appeared.
I was wearing the leather armor that Chon had made for this match. My original clothes were in tatters and insufficient to excite the audience.
Meanwhile, Vito was in terrible condition, dressed in tattered rags that had fallen apart.
“Vito, you dragged me down into this wretched world….”
I cracked my knuckles with a sharp sound and released my fists. I had been planning to pour all this resentment and stress onto Vito, but his eyes were clouded and lifeless. His ashen skin was desiccated and cracked.
“You….”
“Uuuugh….”
Bae-sho’s parasite was embedded in his head—he was no different from a zombie. If I lacked regenerative abilities, I might have ended up like that too.
“Tsk….”
He was a man I despised enough to kill, but in a world without humanity, perhaps because we were both human, watching him in such a state left a bitter taste in my mouth.
“At the very least, I’ll put him out of his misery myself.”
I took a step toward Vito.
And just as quickly, I pulled my foot back.
Whoosh!
Vito’s sword—or rather, a jagged club—slashed through the space where my foot had been.
It wasn’t even close enough for a blade to reach. It wasn’t an aura either. The very path the sword traced simply vanished as if erased by an eraser.
My foot and even the solid ground itself.
“An impossible weapon. And that swordsmanship—does his body remember the technique even without his mind?”
Despite being reduced to an idiot by brainwashing, his sword strikes remained as beautiful and chillingly precise as before.
“But without any will behind it, he’s worse than a dog guarding a house. Pathetic creature.”
“Would you like to be bitten by that dog?”
Bae-sho, who had always watched from on high, descended and even stepped into the arena.
“Bae-sho, if I kill you, do I win?”
“That would be nice. If it were possible.”
Bae-sho lifted a ritual vessel and scraped the inside with his finger.
Scritch-scritch.
Flinch.
At that sound, Vito closed the distance between us in an instant and swung his sword, devouring even the thin air in that space.
“Did you embed Met in Vito?!”
Vito’s vertical slash consumed my hair and the ground beneath it. There was no impact sound. It simply ceased to exist.
“It’s far more refined than what’s in your head. We confirmed its effectiveness against your race, and I’ve already created ten million of them to bring to your world.”
Bae-sho grinned widely as he spoke.
Our world already had plenty of enemies, and if something like this arrived, it would be even more troublesome. Even if I couldn’t return, I absolutely had to stop this creature.

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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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