Infinite Evolution Hunter - Chapter 286

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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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286
“Who are you, sir?”
As Ji-ho walked forward toward Valefor, the defensive barrier that Bae Na-young and Violet had erected moved along with him.
The droplets of blood Valefor had hurled were pushed backward before they could even touch the barrier.
Bae Na-young and Violet widened their eyes in bewilderment, exchanging glances as they tried to comprehend what was happening.
“Ugh….”
Valefor’s body gradually lowered as if crushed by an invisible giant’s hand, and soon he fell to his knees on the ground.
“I am… Valefor, your humble servant. My Lord.”
Veins bulged across Valefor’s ashen face.
“Ah! So that’s why—you’re Ji-seok’s son! The blood contract has been inherited, hasn’t it?”
Violet clapped her hands with a sharp sound.
“Perfect. Son, would you tell this gentleman to listen to what your mother says?”
“Okay.”
Ji-ho, who listened to everything his mother said, nodded vigorously.
“Sir, you’ll listen to what our mother says, right? Our mother is really scary when she gets angry.”
“No… what am I….”
At Ji-ho’s words, Violet giggled.
“….Yes, My Lord.”
“Thank you.”
Valefor, who had been cursing inwardly at this wretched situation, heard Ji-ho’s gratitude and thought that perhaps this was better than his previous master. A Vampire Lord, yet such a simple demon.
“Good. Valefor. Go to the Demon Realm immediately, assess the situation, and report back. What is Gaff searching for?”
“I shall return shortly.”
Following Bae Na-young’s command, Valefor returned to the Vampire Castle in the Demon Realm and dispatched his subordinates to investigate the situation.
As the Demon Lord of the Eastern Region, Valefor had many subordinates at his command, so the investigation did not take long.
“It appears that a human soul Gaff cherished has escaped.”
Valefor, who had returned in less than a day, reported to Bae Na-young.
His tone was extremely polite, but his posture was not. Valefor, who was far taller than Bae Na-young, held his head stiffly high and looked down at her.
Standing with such arrogance was the minimal resistance Valefor could muster. Bae Na-young, however, paid it no mind.
“Is it a soul that was on Earth in our dimension?”
“Judging by the fact that they are only searching the Demon Realm and Earth, it appears so.”
“Could it be….”
“No. The former Lord did not venture into the Void, did he? He has been severed from the cycle of the Mother Tree. Now, even if he dies in the Void, his soul cannot return to the Mother Tree.”
“I see….”
It was merely a fleeting hope, yet the magnitude of loss did not correspond to the time spent harboring that hope. Bae Na-young bowed her head deeply.
“For a soul to escape while under Gaff’s watch—it must possess considerable power.”
Violet spoke, attempting to redirect Bae Na-young’s attention.
“Indeed. In their attempts to capture that soul, the demons of the Western Region made many contracts with humans, incurring losses. Such contracts are unprecedented for demons.”
“Of course—they needed to make contracts to pierce through Gaia’s interference and bring their true forms down to Earth.”
“Precisely.”
“Even though the avatar has vanished, Gaia’s defensive barrier remains effective, it seems.”
“Demons twist contracts from time to time, but fundamentally, they are a race that deals in fair exchange. The fact that they made a losing bargain for this search means that escaped soul must be quite important.”
A helpful explanation. Yet my stubbornness remained unmoved.
“I don’t know what it is, but I can’t stand demons poking around the Earth that my brother protected. Let’s catch that soul first.”
Bae Na-young lifted her head and spoke to Violet.
“What would we do with a soul that escaped from the Demon Realm? It’s bound to be evil anyway?”
“Since Gaff would go to such lengths for it, it’ll be a bargaining chip. We’ll use it to make a contract where demons can never set foot on Earth again.”
“Then I’ll be on my way….”
Valefor tried to slip away.
“Where do you think you’re going?”
“Hmm? Haven’t we finished our business? I should return to the Demon Realm….”
“You’re watching over Ji-ho from now on.”
“All day long?”
“What else do you have to do? Planning to go suck some blood somewhere?”
It was a threat—do that again and I’d kill him.
“…Understood.”
Si-hwan was helping with Ji-ho’s care too, but in this situation, he wasn’t entirely trustworthy. As a vampire bound by a blood oath, he would prioritize Ji-ho above all, and even if he couldn’t fight Gaff, he could at least spirit the boy away.
With one additional caretaker, Bae Na-young and Violet headed to the Research Institute.
“Oh? What brings you two here?”
Though the Manager and Gate had both vanished, Jae-in spent even more time at the Research Institute than before. Reconstruction was demanding, and having heard that the world could collapse at any moment, her research workload had only multiplied.
Jae-in worked so much she wondered if she’d die right there in the Research Institute.
Bae Na-young and Violet relayed the information they’d gathered to Jae-in.
“A soul from the Demon Realm, you say? I was already researching souls anyway.”
Jae-in rummaged through the scattered miscellany covering her wide workbench.
“Here it is. A soul detector.”
“Could it find the escaped soul?”
“No. It’s still unstable. It wasn’t a priority. Even if it succeeds as is, it can’t cover Earth-scale distances. At best, it can detect souls within a few kilometers radius?”
“Let me take a look.”
Violet and Bae Na-young examined the magical formations carved into the machine’s interior.
“There’s too much noise, I think? What if we added a filter?”
“I’ve thought about it, but how?”
“If we restructure the magical formation like this, we can filter out non-soul information as noise.”
Bae Na-young improvised a magical formation and suspended it in the air.
“Oho….”
“And if we set it to filter out souls below the animal level, we can see even further.”
Violet refined Bae Na-young’s magical formation slightly.
“Director! I have lots of ideas too!”
The researchers each had their own duties and conducted separate investigations, but when someone brought something interesting, they couldn’t resist and rushed over. These were people for whom research was their calling.
Thanks to that, a soul detector synchronized with satellites and covering the entire Earth was completed in half a day. Though it did push back the mounting backlog of work.
“To think they could make something like this….”
Jae-in herself possessed considerable ability, but she couldn’t match Bae Na-young and Violet when it came to magical formations. Conversely, Jae-in and Smith were overwhelming with machinery, and Alice excelled at everything overall.
“Excellent! Let’s activate it!”
“Right away.”
Jae-in activated the scanner, and countless white lights materialized across the holographic Earth’s surface.
“There are so many. Does this mean it worked?”
The white lights clustered so densely that individual souls couldn’t be distinguished.
“Just a moment. Let me zoom in.”
As Alice magnified the hologram to Korea and then the Research Institute, the souls of everyone inside the facility appeared with perfect clarity.
“It worked! The numbers match exactly! My goodness, the Director’s and Bae Na-young’s souls are the brightest!”
“Your soul is pretty enormous too, you know?”
Perhaps because of her youth, Alice’s soul shone with a brighter, purer white than anyone else’s.
“Wait… Violet’s soul seems a bit damaged.”
Unlike Alice’s soul, Violet’s surface was rough and uneven, its light dimmer.
“I’ve lived far too long for that.”
Violet spoke with a bitter expression. Though magic had halted her body’s aging, it could not prevent her soul’s erosion.
This was why the dead journeyed to Heaven to shed their soul’s burdens—memories, personality, and all—before receiving soul energy and being reborn anew.
“I’ll fix it for you soon.”
Alice said, looking at Violet.
“Even just hearing that means something.”
Violet gently stroked Alice’s head.
“Anyway, enough about my soul. We need to find the escaped one.”
“Right. It’s probably a powerful soul. Let’s exclude ordinary people from the search.”
“Understood.”
As Alice manipulated the scanner according to Bae Na-young’s instructions, the white dots reduced to one-hundredth their number.
“Still too many. Let’s view only the top one percent by soul magnitude.”
The dots decreased considerably.
“Good. Now we just need to filter out the souls we know and identify the locations of the unconfirmed ones.”
“Understood. I’ll contact the Hunter Bureau to verify their positions.”
Because hot-blooded Hunters constantly caused incidents, Hunter management had become far stricter. While real-time tracking wasn’t implemented, the government maintained a general awareness of their whereabouts.
Alice contacted the Hunter Bureau and methodically removed each Hunter’s location from the display as confirmations came in.
“If we record the soul’s characteristics, we’ll be able to find anyone next time.”
“It’s like putting GPS into a fingerprint.”
Once registered in this system, anyone on Earth could be located instantly.
“This… we can’t keep this at the Research Institute.”
Jae-in rubbed her stubbled chin—she hadn’t shaved in days.
“Why not?”
“It could be abused. Once today’s situation is resolved, I’ll hand this over to Director Baek and have him find a proper use for it. If he can’t, we’ll keep the technology but destroy the device itself.”
“What a waste…”
“Alice, technology without consideration for others will corrupt us just like the Administrator.”
“Isn’t that a bit of an exaggeration?”
“Everything starts small, then grows. So we must be careful.”
Jae-in was carefully watching over young Alice to ensure she didn’t stray from technique and lose her way.
Jae-in herself had conducted research that crossed ethical lines under the guise of preventing catastrophe, but the result could not be becoming an Administrator. That’s why, after the war, Jae-in had destroyed every research project that even slightly overstepped those boundaries.
Alice wasn’t entirely convinced by Jae-in’s words, but because they came from her benefactor and someone she deeply respected, she nodded and began searching through the souls.
“Ah! This soul here—something’s strange about it!”
At Alice’s words, everyone rushed over.
“This gray dot. It’s moving at an incredibly fast speed, but no one has been able to identify it.”
“Why is it gray instead of white?”
Bae Na-young leaned her face closer to the hologram.
“It’s because it’s a fallen soul. More importantly, do you see that black dot behind it?”
“What is that?”
“The darker a human soul’s color, the more evil it was. But there’s no human this black, so it might be a demon. Let me switch to the satellite feed.”
The hologram transitioned from the soul-tracking display to live satellite imagery.
A figure flying over the ocean was being pursued by dozens of demons.
“Is that even a person? Looks like a demon.”
On the soul tracker it showed as a gray dot, but the one in the lead was pitch-black—unmistakably demonic. Even when trying to get a clearer view, the figure moved so rapidly that all she could see was a dark silhouette streaking across the screen.
“It seems evil for a human, but it’s ambiguous to call it a demon outright.”
Alice scratched her full head of hair behind her pen.
“Let’s go check it out.”
Violet stood up first.
“Will you two be alright?”
“Who are you asking?”
Bae Na-young and Violet each picked up a wand. Though small in size, both were wands embedded with mana cores.
“Right. With the two of you, even the King wouldn’t stand a chance… Oh, I’m sorry.”
Alice had mentioned Ji-seok before suddenly gasping and covering her mouth.
“I’ll be back.”
Bae Na-young smiled bitterly and spun her wand to open a Gate.

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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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