Infinite Evolution Hunter - Chapter 252

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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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252
“Get on my back.”
I turned away from Bae Na-young and crouched down on the ground.
“Hmph….”
Bae Na-young reluctantly climbed onto my back.
“Hold tight.”
I prepared to leap free from the crushing gravity and plunge into the darkness. My thighs swelled as if they might burst, and I detonated every muscle in my body simultaneously—my spatial dominion, my aura, everything at once.
The thin Kagrun atmosphere tore apart explosively, creating a shockwave that hurled Bae Na-young and me through Kagrun’s gravitational pull and into the void above.
“Kyaaah!”
The velocity far exceeded her expectations, and Bae Na-young wrapped her arms tightly around my neck.
Once we had traveled a sufficient distance, I no longer felt Cagron’s pulling force.
“Just now…. Kyaaah?”
“What? I’m not allowed to scream?!”
Bae Na-young’s face flushed red.
“No, someone who’s lived over two hundred years shouldn’t be making ‘kyaaah’ sounds…. Gack.”
Bae Na-young choked me, even channeling her aura into the grip. It was far stronger than when we escaped from Cagron moments ago.
“Forget about my age.”
Bae Na-young spoke with a murderous glint in her eyes. As if she hadn’t brought it up first.
The conversation died, and we continued accelerating through the darkness.
Yet because we were following a thread of vitality whose length I could not perceive in this endless black void, there was no way to know when we would arrive.
Moving through a place without wind, light, or gravity meant I could not feel our speed, and unable to endure the silence, Bae Na-young finally spoke.
“Are you actually fast? Everything’s so dark I can’t even tell.”
“We’re still accelerating. If you’re bored, why not enter hibernation through mental control? I’ll pour my vitality into you while you sleep so you won’t die, and I’ll wake you when we arrive.”
“You’re planning to pierce through this darkness alone? Won’t you be lonely?”
“Are you worried about me?”
“Why would I be?!”
“Then just sle—”
“What? You started talking and now you’re looking away?”
“Over there.”
I pointed my finger toward the Abyss.
“What is it?”
“You don’t see it?”
Deep within the darkness, I could see the colossal planet Kagrun writhing. I had thought we had come far, yet the massive Kagrun still remained within my field of vision.
“What are you talking about seeing?”
“Kagrun is moving. Is it hatching?”
Kagrun convulsed, and its crust began to crumble and fall away. From my distance, it appeared merely as a shell shattering and dropping, but for the Exos who had survived within Kagrun, it surely meant a descent into hell itself.
“We need to move faster.”
My heightened sensory skill rang an alarm. I had to distance myself from that entity.
I doubled our speed, but Kagrun’s complete awakening came even faster.
The rugby-ball-shaped shell of Kagrun cracked with the faintest glimmer of light, and an enormous head thrust out into the Abyss.
“A snake?”
Following the massive head, an endless serpentine body writhed out from the shell.
“Where does a snake that size exist? Even dragons don’t come close to that.”
Bae Na-young’s face turned ashen upon discovering Cagron.
A dragon with a shell as hard as Exos, Kagrun’s maw was so colossal it could swallow an entire mountain—or even a small satellite—in a single gulp.
“Damn it… How is something that massive moving so fast…?”
Cagron crawled through the Abyss, where up and down held no meaning, at a speed that defied perspective.
“Running won’t work. We have to fight.”
“Against that thing? Are you insane?”
“Would you rather be caught and devoured while fleeing?”
I turned my body and gathered the life force energy I had received from Earth. Dense, concentrated vitality accumulated around me, growing larger by the moment.
“That’s incredible… If it’s this much…”
Bae Na-young kindled hope at the sight of life force in quantities she had never witnessed before.
As I compressed the gathered power, its size diminished, but its density intensified exponentially.
I extended both hands forward and fired a beam of life force at Cagron.
Kwaaaaaaaa!!!
A brilliant crimson light tore through the Abyss, hurtling toward Cagron’s head.
Squelch.
Cagron’s jaws, which had never opened once while in its cocoon state, remained sealed shut as if locked.
But the moment I unleashed my life force, a nauseating sound of something viscous being forcibly torn away accompanied its gaping opening.
The aura of life force—potent enough to cleave a planet in half—was swallowed whole by Cagron’s maw.
The creature showed no reaction whatsoever. It was as if it had merely inhaled air.
“Of course! Cagron is a being that feeds on life force. Firing your energy at it is the same as offering it a meal!”
Bae Na-young cried out, her hopes dashed as quickly as they had risen.
Just as she said, the life force I had unleashed vanished without a trace, and Kagrun’s body writhed, growing ever so slightly larger.
“Try attacking somewhere other than its mouth.”
I flew toward Cagron’s head as it crawled toward me.
Compared to its size, I was nothing but a speck of dust, yet it struggled to keep pace with my speed. As I darted left and right in sharp zigzags, its head followed my movements. And just before I could land atop its skull—
The creature vanished as if using a blink spell, only to reappear beside me with its jaws wide open, attempting to swallow me whole.
Detecting the threat a beat too late, I threw my body backward in desperation.
“Kyaaah!”
Bae Na-young shrieked in terror, unleashing a barrage of black mana spheres. It was like striking a boulder with an egg—utterly ineffective.
Cagron’s colossal jaws snapped shut with terrifying speed, and as my right leg brushed against one of its grotesquely numerous teeth, everything below my knee simply ceased to exist.
My right foot didn’t tear away physically—it vanished entirely, erased from existence itself.
“Can’t… regenerate?”
“Cagron is that kind of entity! It devours everything!”
Bae Na-young continued to voice her despair, yet her actions contradicted her words as she relentlessly hurled mana spheres at Cagron.
“Damn it!”
I unleashed life force again, and the creature’s jaws gaped open at a speed incongruous with its massive frame, consuming my attack.
Evading Cagron’s incoming assault, I fired my aura. My smaller attacks left only scratches on its body, while the larger ones were devoured entirely.
A sudden thought struck me as I observed the creature’s behavior pattern.
“It devours the life force I shoot at it, doesn’t it?”
“What do you mean?!”
Bae Na-young answered while firing mana spheres relentlessly.
“You said that’s the larva of the Destruction God, right? Then why doesn’t the Destruction God consume planets teeming with life?”
“That’s because….”
“The World Tree has pierced through Cagron’s earth and driven its roots deep.”
I recalled the memory of pulling weeds alongside O-gun and the others.
“So planets rich with life can’t be consumed because the World Tree is there, right?”
“It’s true that the World Tree and Cagron are natural enemies. But what good does that do? We can’t just flee to a world where the World Tree exists to escape this thing.”
“Then we create the World Tree here.”
I pulled a World Tree seed from my pocket.
“There’s no soil! How are you supposed to do that?!”
“I’ll become the soil.”
I stopped attacking and flew close against Cagron’s body, then drove the World Tree seed directly into my palm.
“Feed.”
I opened my blood and life force—which I normally kept sealed tight to prevent leakage—to the seed.
“Run!”
In the moment I lost focus, Cagron’s head came flying toward us as if it would swallow its own body as well.
“Eat!”
As if responding to my command, the World Tree seed split open with a sharp crack, and thin, tender roots emerged from within.
The roots drank my blood like parched earth absorbing water.
My body withered to a mummy in an instant, but I regenerated it with the life force I received from Earth, expanding my form to become soil for the World Tree.
“Kyaaah!”
As I grew larger, I caught Bae Na-young, who had nearly fallen into the Abyss while clinging to my back.
“Hold… tight….”
The World Tree began at my hands and burrowed through my body, spreading throughout my entire form.
Branches pierced through the skin across my entire body.
Branches extended toward Bae Na-young, who couldn’t escape into the Abyss alone, coiling around her body. If her unstable soul separated from me and fell into the Abyss, she would die.
“Bae Na-young… deploy a shield….”
Branches and roots had reached even my head, making it difficult to speak.
Bae Na-young wrapped a shield around her body and placed her hand on my head.
[Get a grip! You promised you’d take me back to Earth!]
Even as Bae Na-young was buried beneath the World Tree’s branches, she spoke directly into my mind.
The World Tree’s roots had penetrated even my brain, making coherent thought difficult, but I focused on Bae Na-young’s desperate voice.
Crunch.
Regardless, Cagron showed no patience. Rather, fearing the World Tree’s blooming, it tried to swallow me whole in one bite.
“If you don’t… want to die together… listen to me!”
I tore away the branches that had even sprouted from my mouth and shouted at the World Tree, uncertain whether it even had will or consciousness yet.
For a moment, the World Tree trembled and hesitated.
“…Fine! Let’s catch that damned worm and kill it!”
Branches erupted from my entire body in brilliant flashes of light, spreading far wider than Cargron’s maw, and clamped down on his jaws from the outside.
“A disrespectful beast needs a muzzle!”
The World Tree’s branches held Cargron’s mouth shut as roots burrowed deep into his body.
I drove roots into what resembled Cargron’s head, but another head burst forth from his torso.
“That’s right, bring it on! Infinite regeneration is my specialty!”
I extended more branches to seal off his newly formed head, but Cargron spawned additional heads throughout his body, ravenously devouring the branches sprouting from me.
I attempted to root myself into Cargron, consumed by the urgency of stopping his consumption.
With the life force I was receiving, crushing Exos would have been trivial. But this wasn’t enough to significantly expand the World Tree, and Cargron’s consumption rate exceeded my regeneration speed.
“Corruption!”
As the World Tree obeyed my will, the branches grew around Bae Na-young, giving her the opening she needed. She unleashed Corruption after her Mana Sphere, withering Cargron’s body. Unfortunately, it had almost no effect on the colossal creature.
“Is this as far as I can go…?”
Bae Na-young’s spirits sank as she watched the World Tree’s branches being consumed and shrinking.
“I haven’t given up yet.”
I was growing increasingly accustomed to controlling this body.
Initially just a tangle of roots and branches, as my will infused it, the World Tree gradually took on a humanoid form.
Transformed into a colossal wooden golem, I drove both hands into his throat and synthesized venom, releasing it from within his body.
As the venom dissolved his body from the inside while roots burrowed deeper, Cargron’s form convulsed violently, and the mouths that had been devouring branches suddenly gaped open in agony.
“Yes! Kill him!”
Encouraged by Bae Na-young’s cheers, I rapidly proliferated roots from my fingertips. They burrowed through Cargron’s body, spraying venom everywhere, quickly reaching toward his core.
A mysterious organ with layers of hardened shell. The life force I had unleashed was converging here, revealing this to be his heart—or perhaps Cargron’s core itself.
I burrowed with roots to destroy the core, but the shell was harder than any other part of his body, requiring more time. I barely shattered one layer, but the shell was like an onion.
I concentrated more power on the core to break through the shell, weakening my poison and attacks.
Cargron’s heads seized the moment my assault faltered, biting into my body simultaneously.

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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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