Infinite Evolution Hunter - Chapter 272

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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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272
“Amy, snap out of it!”
Baldri stood before Amy, who was reverting to human form, shouting in agitation.
[Step aside, Spirit Mage.]
Kurban approached and created droplets of regenerative water, but Amy’s body was dissolving faster than it could be restored.
“My heart’s already… melted away… Let it go now.”
Her vital organs had already dissolved, and she had crossed the threshold between life and death. Amy was prepared to accept her fate.
“No! Someone like you can’t die!”
Baldri poured what little mana she had left into Amy, but she couldn’t slow the dispersal of Amy’s body.
“Goodbye…”
Perhaps it was the sense of accomplishment that her death had saved the world—Amy felt no fear as her eyes closed.
A layer of regenerative water pearls formed around Amy’s body, and the dissolution of her form ceased.
Arnabel had created it, but it was different from the droplets she normally used for physical recovery.
[I cannot allow my benefactor to perish.]
As Arnabel exerted power to save the human who was certainly dying, his already diminished form shrank further.
[Arnabel, that human has already crossed the line of death. To tear away your own body to save her—that too is forbidden.]
[Without this child, we could not have won. Would you have me become an ungrateful being?]
[Tch… If you pour out your power alone like this, you’ll die. I will help as well.]
Halitus also poured his strength into the effort. Wind wrapped around the blue pearl in spiraling streams, and Amy’s body gradually recovered.
[Mm.]
Even the taciturn Umbel joined in.
The pearl enveloping Amy’s body was dyed in the colors of the three Spirit Kings, and when the light faded, her body was completely restored.
“Hehe. I’m alive? Thank you, Spirit Kings.”
[We are the ones who should offer thanks. Small human, we are grateful.]
“Hehehehe.”
“Amy, let’s head back now.”
Baldri worried about the embarrassed Amy. She couldn’t tell the Spirit Kings, but Amy’s body might not be completely healed.
“Yeah. We can go now.”
[Little gnome child, would you not form a contract with the Water Spirits as well going forward?]
“Yes. I’ll practice more. If it’s fire from now on, I’ll shudder.”
Baldri shivered.
[Will you have need to practice?]
A small pearl shot from Arnabel embedded itself directly into Baldri’s forehead.
“Amy! I’ve received the blessing of a Spirit King!”
Baldri had never used water attributes before due to poor compatibility, but having received the blessing of a Spirit King, summoning and transforming into Water Spirits would become far easier from now on.
[Until we meet again.]
With Arnabel’s brief farewell, the pearl surrounding Amy expanded and swallowed Baldri as well. Then it slowly moved away.
“Thank you~”
“We are grateful!”
Amy waved her hand to the Spirit Kings, and Baldri bowed deeply.
The orb’s movement speed accelerated, traversing the winding cavern passages of the Spirit Realm with increasing velocity.
Splash!
Bursting through the Water Cavern wall, we emerged back into water.
The moment we surfaced, water droplets scattered around us, and we were plunged into the crushing pressure and frigid cold of the Deep Sea.
The two of us exchanged glances and smiled.
Compared to the pressure and temperature of the Spirit Realm, this was barely a tickle.
We swam toward the surface.
* * *
“Wait, Amy. You killed the Fire Spirit King?”
Upon hearing the report after their return, Ji-seok doubted his own ears. He had sent them to assess the situation and negotiate, yet he was hearing that they had killed the very source of the problem—the Fire Spirit King who governed all flames across every dimension.
“Yeah, it’s fine~~. He’ll be reborn anyway~~.”
Amy’s speech, already slow from the prolonged electrification, had become even more sluggish.
“So what happens now?”
“Who knows~~?”
“Yang President, I’m not sure about other changes, but thermal and nuclear power generation are finished.”
“Why?”
“Last time when the Fire Spirit went berserk, efficiency jumped by 14 percent, remember? Now it’s dropped 50 percent from baseline.”
“So?”
“The thermal efficiency isn’t there anymore, so we can’t operate even if we wanted to. We were using nuclear power cheaply, but now it’s no longer economical.”
“So Earth is going to get colder? An ice age coming?”
“That’s the strange part. Before, the entire Solar System’s efficiency dropped, but now the sun’s light hasn’t decreased—it’s coming through just as before. It’s as if someone is controlling the power.”
At Jae-in’s words, Amy and Baldri’s eyes met.
“It must be Arnabel~~”
“Right. He kept his promise.”
Arnabel had promised to control the Fire Force going forward, and with minimal consideration, he maintained the most crucial power of the sun.
“Everything worked out well. You both did excellent work.”
“We’re back~~.”
“…But what is this smell?”
“Oh, that… Come on, I’ll show you.”
The two of us covered our noses and followed outside, where an endless mountain of garbage was piled up far beyond the World Tree.
“We collected all the waste from the water, and the quantity is substantial. Even from this distance, the smell won’t dissipate.”
We had sorted it and placed some in the Infinite Box, but we lacked sufficient storage containers to seal such a massive amount.
“Why did you bring all of that here?”
“No one wanted to take it, so we gathered it here for now. Recycling facilities worldwide are already running at maximum capacity, and the World Tree is absorbing it too, but the volume is just too much.”
“Ji-seok, can’t you absorb it~~?”
“There’s barely a speck of life force in it, so there’s nothing for me to absorb.”
Garbage like plastic and styrofoam contained nothing worth absorbing.
“No life force at all?”
Hearing Ji-seok’s words from behind, Violet pondered thoughtfully.
“Not a trace.”
“Then they’re happy about this, aren’t they?”
“They? Oh!”
O-gun and the other Exos Warriors, along with Violet’s subordinates, were kept inside the Infinite Box.
I’d tried to let them out once, but they suffered from just the life force in the air, so they returned to the box.
I’d moved them from a cramped box to a larger one, but it couldn’t be called comfortable living quarters, and without proper sustenance, they remained in a near-dormant state.
“I’ll go take care of it.”
Ji-seok grabbed a pile of plastic waste and entered the Infinite Box directly.
O-gun, who had been sleeping, struggled to open one eye and check who had entered.
“Boss!!!”
Recognizing Ji-seok, O-gun sprang up and clung to him.
“Did you forget about us?! Is this why you brought us here?!”
“Ah… no. I’ve been busy. Really.”
I had indeed forgotten about the Exos for a moment, but I truly had been occupied. I’d been consumed with resolving the Administrator’s avatar issue and the Spirit Realm problem.
“Then, have you found us a place to live now?”
“Mars. I’m preparing it now.”
“Ah… we’ll have to wait longer then.”
O-gun slumped back down to the ground.
“But you must be hungry, right?”
“…Boss, the food from your world isn’t something we can eat, is it?”
O-gun trembled as he recalled the memory of nearly dying after taking one bite.
“How about this?”
Though I felt somewhat awkward offering garbage as food, they were fundamentally different beings, so I couldn’t apply the same standards.
“This is…”
O-gun showed interest upon seeing the plastic fragments.
He carefully picked up a piece and brought it to his mouth.
Crunch.
“Oh! Delicious!”
“…That is?”
“Yes. Premium-grade sustenance. I think we could even make armor from it.”
“From that?”
O-gun chewed the plastic and spat it out. It had become a pulp.
“We shape it this way and harden it into the desired form.”
“Ah, so that’s how you originally made your carapace?”
“Yes. When I was a Warrior, we didn’t have enough sustenance to make new carapaces.”
“I’m glad it suits your taste. I’ll give you plenty.”
When I also provided petroleum and waste oil, O-gun was completely satisfied.
“With this, we could create incredibly sturdy carapaces. It’s light yet durable. Don’t humans use this?”
“We did. But we used it so much because it was convenient that now it’s become a disposal problem. You all eat it up.”
Plastic made up a significant portion of the waste, so this alone was a tremendous help.
Having started the task, I went to check on the place being prepared for the Exos’ residence. It was the Mars North Pole.
Exos’s dwelling was being constructed with careful consideration of aspects different from other outposts on Mars.
“As you instructed, I’ve placed magic circles around the perimeter that absorb life force and mana.”
Jae-in briefed the current situation while reading through Ji-seok’s requirements one by one. For this project, Jae-in had created the magic circles together with Violet, who possessed extensive knowledge of Cagron.
“That’s right. Since life force and mana are poison to Exos, we had to cut them off completely.”
“There’s no air or temperature control system either. Gravity is set to ten times Earth’s, but we can adjust it higher or lower if needed.”
“You’ve done well. We can move in now.”
Ji-seok entered the magic circle and retrieved the Exos from the Infinite Box.
“Oh! Is this our new home?”

“That’s right. It’s empty now, but once you decorate it, won’t it be better than the Underground Prison?”
“Of course. Since there’s no fighting, we’ll build the house ourselves. But the food supply….”
“There’s plenty of it.”
I opened a Gate, and large construction equipment carried mountains of plastic waste and piled them in one section of the residential area.
“My goodness….”
“Is this a dream?”
The many eyes of the Exos glistened with tears as they beheld the food piled like mountains, but being Exos who didn’t waste water, they didn’t actually cry.
“…I’m glad they’re pleased.”
“If we couldn’t find a disposal method, we were planning to launch the waste into space or toward the sun, so I’m relieved we found a solution everyone’s satisfied with.”
Hundreds of Exos melted the plastic with their saliva, first creating carapaces, then building their own homes.
* * *
A tangled hologram of the World Tree materialized in the center of the conference room.
“This is a World Tree map created by cross-referencing the map Gaff showed Yang President and the map Amy Hunter saw in the Spirit Realm.”
Images were extracted magically from the brains of the two individuals who possessed abnormal instant recall.
“And this is his location.”
Jae-in pointed to a black mass clinging to one of the countless branches of the World Tree.
“Gates move within the branches of the World Tree. There are many ways to obstruct movement, but the coordinates disappeared entirely, which seemed strange. He separated his own world from the World Tree and, still requiring minimal life force, clings to the World Tree like a cancer, draining only its life force.”
“Such a thing is possible?”
“You mentioned there were many identically-shaped trees on the planet, right? Those are trees created by the Manager to absorb the World Tree’s power. If we burn them all, that world will become completely isolated and wither away.”
“Hmm. Since they’re spread across the planet’s surface, we’ll need to set them on fire or something. But can we reach that place?”
“We can’t. If we leave the World Tree and venture into the outside world, we can neither survive nor maintain our bearings.”
“But Vito managed it, didn’t he?”
“He fell to Cagron once, so he must have some method. But I don’t know what it is.”
“We need to find a way. We can’t just wait indefinitely like this.”
“That’s right. The best defense is offense.”
Everyone in the room nodded at Ji-seok and Violet’s words.
“What if we ask the Spirit King? We could go through the Spirit Realm.”
“Baldri, aren’t we unable to enter the Spirit Realm?”
“Right. But if Arnabel protects us with water droplets, we can go.”
“Good. Let’s try asking.”
Baldri, blessed by the Water Spirit King, sent a water droplet skyward. The droplet became like a screen, connecting to the Spirit Realm.

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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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