Infinite Evolution Hunter - Chapter 278

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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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278
I regarded the S-rank monster Earthworm with calm indifference as it resisted my domain, its massive maw gaping wide to reveal rows of jagged teeth.
“Even if it’s faint, the fact that it resists my domain at all confirms why it earned the S-rank designation.”
I extended my palm forward, and a beam of life-force aura erupted from it, pushing the air outward in all directions.
The aura, several meters thick, pierced straight through Earthworm. Without pause, I spun in a complete rotation, incinerating thousands upon thousands of monsters in a single sweep before gouging the earth itself.
The ground where the aura passed was carved into only the shallowest of grooves.
“Hmm… Is something rigged here?”
An attack potent enough to obliterate an S-rank monster in an instant should have left far deeper scars in the earth—this was decidedly abnormal.
Before I could contemplate further, Gates opened from all directions, replenishing the monsters I’d just slain.
The monsters didn’t walk out of the Gates—they poured forth like an overflowing deluge. Smaller creatures were crushed beneath the torrent as they emerged, yet the horde pressed on relentlessly, indifferent to their own casualties.
From every direction, monsters surged toward me, their fangs and weapons raised high.
“This is endless.”
Maintaining my domain, I took flight toward the Tower.
Wherever my domain touched, only desiccated monsters remained, withered like dried fish. Though my domain burned with crimson life-force, to my enemies it was nothing less than the curse of death itself.
As I absorbed the massive aura, my body couldn’t contain it all, so I released it outward through both hands in all directions, obliterating the S-rank monster and those surrounding it before carving through the Gates themselves with aura and detonating them.
As I annihilated the monsters, I drew ever closer to the Tower. Several kilometers around it were guarded by different varieties of creatures.
“Seeing you all makes it feel real—this is the final battle.”
Before me stood the Death Knight that had killed me in my previous life, flanked by an undead monster legion that made even that Death Knight seem like a mere foot soldier.
Lich, Balrog, Bone Dragon, Undead Titan, King Mist—a veritable compendium of undead monsters whose names alone would make a novice Hunter soil themselves.
“But this time will be far different from my last life.”
I swept my hand horizontally, unleashing a crescent-shaped aura. It was a technique primarily used by Hunter Jung Min-gi, who now lay bedridden.
Countless undead monsters were bisected cleanly in two. Yet leaping over the corpses of the fallen, even more undead surged toward me.
“Damn, there are so many!”
I unleashed my domain to incinerate those charging in, but their numbers were so overwhelming that even as their bodies melted away, they continued advancing toward me.
Undead monsters poured endlessly from the Gates, and Lich gathered the bodies of the fallen to construct golems.
None of them posed a genuine threat to me now, but a war of attrition against undead that offered no life-force to absorb was hardly appealing.
“Manager?! Are you frightened?! Stop hiding and show yourself!”
Instead of answering, the Manager opened a Gate hundreds of meters in diameter above the Tower. F-rank monsters—zombies and skeletons—rained down from the sky like a downpour.
Naturally, they couldn’t inflict direct harm on me, but being buried under an avalanche of descending monsters was a genuine possibility.
“How tedious. I never thought I’d need to use this here…”
I reached into my infinite pouch and withdrew a single chicken.
“Even Jae-in couldn’t replicate you. What exactly are you?”
The chicken clucked obliviously and bobbed its head, yet I was certain this creature possessed intelligence.
“Well, it hardly matters. Go ahead and crow with all your might.”
“Cock-a-doodle-doo!”
Understanding my command, the chicken crowed with full force, and waves of light rippled outward from its center.
The undead falling from the sky touched the light and crumbled to dust before ever reaching the ground. The high-rank undead on the earth were no exception, dissolving into powder.
“…There were even S-rank monsters among them…”
Against undead specifically, this chicken possessed destructive power that surpassed even my own.
With the chicken’s purification attack clearing away the undead, the Tower finally came into view, and I burst through the first-floor doors.
“Manager!!!”
I shouted, but the Tower remained silent. The books were still there, yet not a single Scholar was visible among the many who had been present.
The chicken I’d been holding in my arm leaped down and began pecking at the floor.
“Underground?”
I clenched my fist with aura and drew my arm back to shatter the floor.
Concentrating my aura to its limit, I drove it downward. The aura burned through the floor like a tunnel, without a massive explosion.
A hole slightly larger than my torso opened up dozens of meters below ground.
“Come here.”
I extended my hand to the chicken, but it gazed toward the entrance I’d come through. Undead were lingering just beyond the barrier of light the chicken was emitting. Once the chicken disappeared, they would surge forward again without question.
Other monsters might swarm in as well, but the countless Undead blocking the way would keep them at bay for a while.
Besides, my instincts told me this chicken possessed something far greater than merely holding back the Undead.
“You’ll hold them back? Fine then.”
I threw myself into the hole in the floor.
As I burrowed vertically downward, burning away the earth repeatedly, a space finally appeared within the soil.
I unleashed my domain and hurled myself into the underground chamber.
In a room made of stone, an elderly man lay upon a stone altar.
“How much longer will you pretend to sleep?”
At my words, the old man’s eyes snapped open. His body shot upright, then slowly descended in a cross-legged position to sit upon the altar.
“My grand design has been wasted on a savage who can’t even use stairs.”
The old man gazed at the hole I’d torn and the staircase behind the chamber.
“There was no signpost.”
I spoke shamelessly, as if it were obvious.
“Do you understand what you’re doing right now?”
“Surviving.”
“Surviving? No—it’s destruction.”
“Since this is the end, I’ll humor your rhythm. Why is my will to survive destruction?”
“Did I not tell you? Did you not see? Your world is but dust compared to the greater cosmos. I sought to become a god and guide all life within the World Tree toward eternal existence, yet you—a rabid beast—can only chase the prey before your eyes.”
“Is being absorbed without a body eternal existence? I have no interest in such immortality. I’ll simply live with my family and die when the time comes.”
“Time? This very universe could collapse at any moment.”
“You mean our dimension? We don’t know if it’ll take a hundred years or a thousand.”
“Fool. I speak of the Mother Tree in its entirety. That moment could be one second from now or one year from now.”
“…”
“Did you truly not know? Did you think only the World Tree and the Destruction God existed in this world? They too are merely fragments of something greater. Even the creature from the Void that now holds back the Destruction God—I refined it myself.”
The Manager continued speaking even as I remained silent.
“Just as we are dust within the World Tree, the Mother Tree itself is infinitesimally small. It could crumble at any moment. This… speaking with the ignorant drains my strength.”
Light poured from beneath the altar and flowed into the old man’s body.
“I shall become a god with the power I have gathered.”
Now that I’d descended this far, I could sense the writhing power beneath the ground more vividly. The spiritual form and thought-form of the primordial Manager, merged with that old man after abandoning his flesh, were stored here underground.
I had believed the spiritual and thought-forms were the Manager’s true body, but ultimately, that old man was the source of all this calamity.
“A god who abandoned his body to his own kind but preserved only his own flesh?”
“…I cannot ascend to godhood while preserving everyone’s physical forms. However, their memories will live eternally within me.”
“You couldn’t have done it, but I will save them all.”
“How arrogant! You, who haven’t even grasped the nature of divinity?!”
“What exactly is a god? Someone like Metatron?”
“Metatron is hardly worthy of being called a god. A true god is an existence freed from all constraints. An existence without limitation.”
“If you hadn’t touched me, I would have become that great god.”
“My plan to become a god remains unchanged. It will simply take a bit more time. Whether the World Tree lives or dies in the interim… that is merely the will of a god.”
“Will you be given such time?”
“You fail to comprehend. Until now, I have been gathering power to become a god, carefully conserving it without unleashing my full strength. Since time has already been delayed, there is no longer any need for restraint. Do you truly believe someone like you could defeat me now?”
The light pouring from the altar intensified. Flesh clung to the Manager’s skeletal frame, and wrinkled skin gradually smoothed. The body that had resembled a centenarian transformed, growing younger until it appeared to be in its thirties.
“Ahhh….”
The Manager closed his eyes, intoxicated by his own power.
“Even among the scholars of my planet, I stood apart in my pursuit of truth. No matter how many books I consumed, my thirst for knowledge could never be quenched.”
Now fully rejuvenated, the Manager bore the slender appearance of a scholar.
“Then I came to understand. I—we—are nothing more than parasites infesting this cursed World Tree, and no matter how desperately we struggle, when the World Tree dies, so do we.”
As the Manager reflected on his existence, spectral forms and fragments of consciousness were drawn up from beneath the planet, pouring into his body.
Ji-seok alone sensed that this could not be allowed to continue.
Ji-seok released an aura from his palm.
Though he had expended some of his life force against the undead, vitality still surged abundantly through his body.
The desperate strike he unleashed was dozens of times more penetrating than the attack that had slain the S-rank Earthworm in a single blow.
Yet the Manager deflected the beam with a casual gesture, as though swatting away a mayfly, and Ji-seok’s aura dissipated without a trace.
He had not blocked it with an aura barrier, nor reflected or absorbed the force. The aura simply ceased to exist, as though it had never been.
“How discourteous. To dare interrupt a god’s words.”
The Manager slowly opened his eyes.
“A life that ends when the World Tree dies? How fleeting. Never knowing when death will come, trembling in fear each day? What difference is there between you and me? I too merely struggle to survive.”
“There is a difference. I don’t kill others to survive like you do.”
“Had I possessed another method, I would have taken it. I researched survival. I even discovered ways to escape the World Tree and reach other worlds. But what meaning did it hold? The difference between being a parasite of a tree and a parasite of a beast. Then! Why not become a higher existence instead of remaining in this lower realm? For that purpose, I gathered souls from multiple planets. Now, if I could just gather a little more… just a bit more.”
“A creature like you calling itself a god? Even dogs would laugh.”
“Impudent wretch…. Waiting is inevitable now, but I shall vent my frustrations. You, the insects thrashing about above, and that precious star of yours—I will reduce it all to nothingness.”
The Manager’s eyes gleamed with a cold, piercing light.

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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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