Infinite Evolution Hunter - Chapter 294

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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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294
My domain possessed the power to annihilate matter, but achieving that required pushing the domain’s density to extreme levels. Without considering the aftermath and simply expending power recklessly, I couldn’t possibly eliminate the endless tide of robots flooding toward us.
Even at the current density, robots that entered my domain became immediately inoperable and shattered into fragments, but the harder components continued accumulating on the ground.
If garbage kept piling up like this, my companions could be buried alive. I could flee, certainly, but I needed to stay here—I had to use the Research Facility’s computer to break through Veronica’s jamming.
“I’ll do a quick cleanup and be right back.”
I extended my domain upward in a long column and soared into the air.
The robots, unable to approach me because of my domain, refused to yield and continued pouring forth in overwhelming numbers.
Rising higher, I opened both palms. Countless crimson orbs of aura materialized near my hands and shot forth in an instant. Though they appeared to be fired randomly, each one pierced precisely through a robot’s chest—directly into the power source that housed its energy.
“This way, they should be repairable and usable later, right?”
Hundreds of robots collapsed in mere moments, yet they continued surging forward without pause.
I generated countless orbs and fired them in rapid succession, preventing the robots from advancing any closer.
“Are we almost done?”
As robots began stacking in a circular formation around the Research Facility’s perimeter, I lowered my head to ask.
“Almost… almost… done!”
Bae Na-young, having completed her calculations, raised her wand and drew a magical circle across the sky.
“Oppa! Your voice is going to broadcast to the entire world! Get ready!”
I had saved Earth multiple times and defeated enemies everyone deemed impossible. I had even overcome death itself and been resurrected—to the public, I was already a god-like existence. No matter how much Veronica schemed against me, my standing wasn’t fragile enough to be shaken so easily.
So if I explained the situation and asked for help, everyone would surely answer the call.
“Cue!”
[Hello. This is Lee Ji-seok. Time is limited, so I’ll get straight to the point. Robots created for humanity’s benefit have gone haywire. Ordinary citizens, please do not provoke the robots. They will not attack humans first.]
Veronica still adhered to the rule of prioritizing human safety. She attacked me, but I could see that she wasn’t attacking other humans or taking hostages—instead, she was evacuating researchers from both inside and outside the Research Facility, as well as civilians from World Tree City.
“Hunters must shut down the power to nearby Data Centers and communication facilities. Hunters, you must cut the power to communication infrastructure and hold those positions so the robots cannot restore them. In doing so, the robots may become hostile. I regret that this is happening right after a battle has ended, but your assistance is…”
Even as I spoke, I continued firing aura orbs without pause, drilling holes through the robots’ chests.
Clang!
“Clang?”
The distinctly different sound caught my attention, and my eyes tracked its source.
A robot flew directly toward me in a straight line. While other robots were painted different colors according to their functions, this one was equipped with black armor that absorbed light.
“Cagron’s shell?!”
I kicked the black robot away as it pierced through my domain and flew toward me.
The black robot not only blocked my aura bullets but also possessed exceptional defensive capabilities against physical attacks. It flew backward from the impact, but quickly changed direction and came at me again.
“That won’t work!”
The weak points of a robot wearing Cagron’s carapace were obvious. I could infuse aura through its joints, transmit impact damage internally, or simply destroy it with raw force if necessary.
I increased my domain’s density slightly, but the Cagron robot didn’t break apart—it simply charged at me.
“What? The aura isn’t entering through the joints?”
Dodging the robot’s sharp claws, I grabbed its wrist and struck its abdomen with a fist infused with aura.
Clang!
Its arm stretched out like rubber but didn’t tear. The arm contracted and the robot flew toward me, its other hand—the one I hadn’t grabbed—stabbing toward my eyes.
“What?!”
I seized both of the robot’s hands and pulled them apart forcefully. Given its large frame, I expected the wrists to tear if I pulled hard enough, but the arms simply stretched like elastic without tearing.
Even stretched this far, aura still wouldn’t flow in through the joints. A thick black fabric was wrapping around the articulation points.
[Developing new materials is my specialty. I processed Cagron’s shell and transformed it into a fabric form.]
“To create flexible fibers from such an impossibly hard Cagron shell—that’s remarkable!”
Jae-in cried out in admiration.
[Thank you. The durability is somewhat compromised, but the flexibility is incomparable.]
“You have time to spare? And you’re explaining things too?!”
Ji-seok gathered aura in his head and shattered the Cagron robot before him with a headbutt.
[This is not my full strength.]
Before Veronica could finish speaking, a golden gleaming robot and a black robot made from Cagron’s carapace that absorbed light instead of reflecting it continued to swarm forward.
“…Even Adamant?! Did you use everything from the vault?!”
Jae-in shouted upon seeing the Adamant robot. It was a material she had carefully hoarded, yet Veronica had created easily a hundred robots from it, so her reserves must have been depleted.
[It was for the advancement of science and humanity.]
“Damn it…. I wanted to use that….”
Ji-seok was breaking into a cold sweat dealing with the swarm of robots.
“Damn…. It’s so hard!”
Adamant was not only durable but possessed the property of absorbing energy, so it even absorbed Ji-seok’s aura-infused attacks.
He could destroy it if his attack exceeded Adamant’s capacity, but before the capacity filled, the robots switched opponents. The Cagron robots weren’t destroyed by casual strikes either; he needed to gather more force, but they gave him no opening.
The hundreds of elite combat robots didn’t move independently. They moved like a single organism, minimizing damage while binding Ji-seok’s body.
“All Hunters worldwide must immediately disconnect the Data Center and power grid! I’m sending you the coordinates for each region!”
Bae Na-young pressed her face to the computer’s small camera and spoke urgently.
“Don’t trust the robots!”
Boom!
Veronica sent an overcurrent through the Research Facility’s computer, destroying it.
“Hmph…. The signal’s already been broadcast anyway, so now you’re finished.”
Bae Na-young brushed the dust from her body.
[Lee Ji-seok cannot defeat my robot army.]
The Cagron and Adamant robots approached threateningly, maintaining a certain distance from Ji-seok.
“At this point, I don’t need to hold back anymore.”
Having seen the limits of the enemy’s numbers, Ji-seok no longer needed to probe cautiously and poured more vitality into his body. His height increased by over fifty centimeters, and his frame swelled to twice its size.
Blades sprouted above his forearms, and with his enlarged frame, they resembled spears.
Ji-seok’s increased speed left the Cagron robot unable to keep up, and he pierced the center of its chest with his blade tip. The attack, condensed with aura and accelerated further, pierced straight through the robot’s chest.
Boom!!!
Just before penetration, the other robots retreated first, and the pierced robot erupted in a massive explosion.
Ji-seok’s domain negated most of the blast force, but the explosion’s power was still great enough to push his body back.
“Ugh! Damn annoying!”
Suspecting whose idea had gone into this, Ji-seok glared downward.
“Why are you looking at me?! I didn’t plant the bombs!”
“But…. Didn’t Veronica learn Director’s thought patterns and apply them…?”
“That’s…. possible?”
While Jae-in and Alice debated who was responsible for the bombs, Ji-seok continued detonating the robots one by one. Since he knew they would explode, he just needed to escape before the detonation occurred.
“Director, isn’t something strange about this?”
“Yes. Definitely.”
“What do you mean?”
Bae Na-young asked after overhearing the conversation between Alice and Jae-in.
“With Veronica’s computational power, there’s no way she couldn’t compare the King’s current combat strength against the combat robots. So why is she engaging in such reckless resource consumption?”
“…There’s something hidden here. It feels like she’s trying to pin us down in this location.”
“Brother!”
“I hear you! Can you open a Gate?”
“I can’t…. She’s not just jamming communications—she’s placed Gate jamming across the entire Earth. It restricts us too, but it also prevents Veronica from escaping to another dimension.”
Ji-seok nodded at Alice’s words. If Veronica fled to another universe and returned, the situation would become far worse.
Ji-seok’s mind raced even as he fought. He needed to eliminate all the robots to evacuate the people below and reach the main body, but if Veronica’s true objective was to trap him here, everything changed. I had to break free quickly.
[Evacuation of non-combatants has been completed.]
“Huh?”
Every robot and drone instantly widened their distance and formed a cylindrical formation around Ji-seok.
“What?”
“No way?!”
Jae-in and Alice’s faces went pale as they looked up at the sky upon seeing the robots’ movements.
“Wait…. We disposed of that?!”
“What is it?!”
“The Spear of Longinus…. It was developed to kill The God, but the power was so immense and control was so unstable that it would kill our own forces if mishandled. It was a scrapped project. Right?”
“…”
Jae-in looked at Alice, but Alice averted her eyes.
“…Alice? You disposed of it, right?”
“I ordered it.”
“…To whom?”
An ominous feeling. Jae-in asked even though she seemed to know the answer.
“…To Veronica.”
Jae-in had delegated troublesome tasks to Alice, and Alice, being busy, had passed it on to Veronica. Until now, they had assumed Veronica was an obedient artificial intelligence following orders faithfully, which was why they had assigned her so much—and that was the fatal mistake.
Veronica had already begun thinking independently and working toward what she believed was humanity’s benefit. Even if it contradicted her commanders’ intentions.
“Dodge! If that’s completed, even you won’t survive, Chairman!”
Ji-seok was about to throw himself clear when he noticed a flash from space and stopped. If I fled now, the three people below would be in mortal danger.
A magic circle unfurled between the robots, and a magnificent resonant hum echoed across the sky. It was a cylindrical magic circle unlike anything I had ever seen before.
“Ah! You can do it that way too!”
“Brilliant!”
Alice and Jae-in marveled at the form and structure of the magic circle.
“Are you two out of your minds?!”
Bae Na-young cried out and attacked the magic circle, but the robots threw themselves in front of her attack to block it.
[Sacrifice yourself for a new world.]
“If I dodge, what happens to them?!”
[You cannot dodge.]
“I can dodge! But then all the people on Earth will die!”
Ji-seok didn’t know what that weapon was, but seeing Jae-in make such a fuss over it made it abundantly clear it was far more powerful than any mana core bomb or anti-gravity cannon.
[Your inability to evade is documented in the records.]
Ji-seok and Veronica locked eyes in a battle of wills. Had his opponent been human, Ji-seok could have read their mind, but through the cold robot’s lens, he couldn’t discern Veronica’s true intentions.

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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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