Infinite Evolution Hunter - Chapter 295

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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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295
Dodging the Spear of Longinus as it fell from the satellite orbit wasn’t difficult. But if Ji-seok evaded it, Earth would be finished.
Based on Veronica’s behavioral patterns so far, that seemed unlikely.
Ji-seok stared at the lens of the robot’s eyes from which Veronica’s voice had emanated.
Even for someone like Ji-seok, it was impossible to read the intentions of a program like Veronica through the eyes of countless robots.
“Damn it!”
He couldn’t gamble with Earth at stake.
With his resolve set, Ji-seok expanded his domain widely. Simultaneously, he drew out carapace from his arms like a shield, blocking the front.
A beam of light descended, pushing through the clouds and fell toward Ji-seok. It was a thin beam of light, no thicker than a single finger.
The light pierced through Ji-seok’s domain as if it didn’t exist.
And finally, the light struck Ji-seok’s shield.
Tong.
Not a high-powered, compressed energy like a laser, but a refreshing sound as if a single drop of water had fallen.
“Oh no… I’m dead…”
Jae-in watched the scene and whimpered.
The Spear of Longinus took a long time to prepare and moved slowly, making it difficult to land on an enemy. If you ran, that was the end of it.
But once it connected, even Ji-seok couldn’t come out unscathed. Still, Ji-seok would probably survive. He was that kind of person.
But after the crisis ended, it was obvious that Ji-seok would beat her to death for creating something useless.
And what if Ji-seok couldn’t block it? Then everyone here would die. Either way, they’d die. There seemed to be no way to survive.
The light that had struck Ji-seok’s arm shield burst outward in all directions, pushing away all matter around it. However, the speed of that push was several times faster than light, so Ji-seok’s shield shattered instantly without even a moment to recover.
This alone possessed destructive power greater than any bomb, but it wasn’t the end. The light expanded and contracted simultaneously. Expansion and contraction shouldn’t exist at the same time.
Ji-seok had no time to scream. His body was torn to pieces by the expansion, and as it contracted, he was sucked in and turned to dust.
If it were merely expanding or merely contracting, he could endure by applying force in the opposite direction, but this was an attack that grabbed and shook violently.
Even with Ji-seok’s judgment and physical abilities, he couldn’t tell when or which part would expand or contract. He was merely dragged through a vortex of complete chaos.
“Krraaaagh!!!”
Unable to endure any longer, Ji-seok swung both arms in a crossing motion, and space tore open. Though Gate magic was sealed on Earth, nothing could prevent Ji-seok from grasping and tearing space itself.
Opening it this way meant not knowing where it led. But his intention was to open space and push that explosive force into it.
“No!”
“No, don’t!”
Seeing Ji-seok tear open space, Jae-in and Alice cried out.
Normally, when something caught in a spatial rift, it would be sucked in, but this mass of light was different.
The expansion and contraction continued to repeat, and the rift grew larger and larger.
Since the light no longer descended to the ground, Ji-seok pulled himself away.
The rift was growing as if it would devour Earth’s sky. The ever-expanding rift sucked in the World Tree’s leaves, soil from the ground, and all manner of debris.
“Huh…?”
Cold sweat broke out at the unexpected situation.
The magic the robots had deployed had been trying to restrain Ji-seok until now, but now its target had shifted to the rift.
[Lee Ji-seok… I didn’t factor your ignorance into my calculations.]
Veronica, having gained will, was flustered for the first time.
Responding to the Spear of Longinus with a dimensional rift? It was like spraying gasoline from a helicopter over a burning building. Of course, it was natural that Ji-seok didn’t know about the Spear of Longinus. But that was also the problem. Responding recklessly to an unknown weapon.
“Veronica, shut up and help!”
I drew the blade whip from my wrist and seized both sides of the spatial rift, pulling them together. I had to close this chasm no matter what.
[I suppose I have no choice. A temporary truce, then.]
The combat robots spread out widely and formed a magical circle to suppress the rift.
Only after half of the combat robots were shattered by the rift and the power of Longinus’s spear did the chasm finally seal completely.
[…Where?]
Veronica had poured so many resources into closing the rift that she’d grown careless with surveillance, losing track of my movements and those of the three people on the ground.
[Searching…]
Veronica deployed her satellites and robots to track me and my companions, but she was growing increasingly overwhelmed.
Though she’d manipulated the media to paint us as villains, the Hunters who fought alongside us at the front lines had already seized a data center and a communications center each with just a word from me and Bae Na-young.
The participation of the S-rank Hunters in particular was enough to overturn the entire situation. Amy alone was relentlessly severing undersea cables, and destroying satellites faster than repairs and production could keep pace.
Even an artificial intelligence program running on a supercomputer had far too much to handle.
* * *
“Did she leave?”
Veronica had departed, but in truth, my group hadn’t gone anywhere. Bae Na-young had simply erased our appearances with magic and concealed our mana and life force.
“Looks like it.”
Alice poked her head out from between the rubble and scanned the sky in various directions.
“Both of you. Sit.”
I, covered in dust, spoke to Jae-in and Alice.
Jae-in and Alice, burdened by guilt, naturally knelt down on the ground.
“Sigh…”
I wished I could give each of them a single hard blow to the head, but doing so would kill them.
Tap, tap!
“Ow! Why just me?!”
I struck Jae-in’s head twice.
“Should I hit Alice instead? And I didn’t even use much force.”
Despite appearances, she’s still a minor. She harbored no malice, and mistakes made while working diligently fall on the shoulders of her supervisor.
“Isn’t some of that the chairman’s responsibility too…?”
“That’s why I already took my beating. Already.”
I brushed the dried blood and dust from my armor.
“What will you do?”
“There’s no need to drag this out. I’m going after the main body now.”
“The main body is currently in the Pacific Ocean Underwater Data Center. That’s probably where the defenses are strongest.”
“What should I do?”
Bae Na-young asked Alice.
“We need to shut down the Robot Production Factory. Given how dramatically the numbers have increased, they must have established a production base somewhere.”
“Okay. Then the three of you head there. Don’t overexert yourselves—once I destroy the main body, this should be resolved anyway.”
“That should be the case.”
Alice was utterly deflated by the weight of her guilt.
“Let’s go.”
Ji-seok flew first toward the direction where the main body was located.
* * *
“Cut them all off!”
The Hunters attacked the Data Center’s power supply units.
[Step back. Lee Ji-seok and his associates are enemies of humanity. You are being deceived.]
“That’s impossible! You hunk of metal!”
A Hunter wielding an axe slashed horizontally across the robot’s body.
“Tsk tsk, you’re just venting because that robot called you out for cutting in line last time, aren’t you?”
A fellow Hunter swung his spear and clicked his tongue.
“D… shut up! How many times have we risked our lives fighting?! Nobody complained about that kind of thing!”
Hunters had traditionally been respected like war veterans or firefighters, and citizens would often yield their place in line for them.
“That day too, people gave way first, but that robot dragged me all the way out and made a scene! If it were a person, they would’ve been flexible about it!”
“Tsk tsk….”
The spear wielder held no grudge against the robot. He simply didn’t suspect Ji-seok because the man had saved him more than once. And there were many Hunters like this one across the world.
Ji-seok always fought on the front lines, and despite his overwhelmingly superior strength, he never oppressed his subordinates with force—which earned him their respect.
Even as the Hunters attacked the Data Center under Ji-seok’s orders, the robots refrained from launching lethal attacks against them.
“This is easier than I thought?!”
The complaining Hunter swung his axe with renewed enthusiasm.
He tried to split another robot vertically this time, but a newly emerged robot approached rapidly and flicked the flat of the axe blade, deflecting the attack.
“Ugh!”
What felt like a light tap shattered both his arms.
The newly appeared black robot operated on an entirely different level in both durability and speed compared to the previous enemies.
“Fall back!”
The spear wielder thrust his weapon into the robot’s chest.
Clang!
The robot felt no impact whatsoever. Instead, it pushed the spear blade forward with its chest and advanced. The shaft bent like a bowstring, and the spear wielder lost his grip.
“It’s a combat robot! The one we fought during the final battle with the Manager!”
Though Earth’s Hunters hadn’t participated directly in combat, they knew the final battle intimately from video records and reports.
During that battle, those robots had been incinerated in the Manager’s meteor flames.
“Flames! Attack with flames!”
Multiple mages unleashed torrents of fire at the black robot.
But what they didn’t know was that Veronica had upgraded its joints.
“It’s not breaking apart?!”
The black robot walked steadily through the inferno.
It kicked off the ground and activated the boosters on its back and feet, launching in a straight line toward the nearest mage.
The startled mage raised his staff defensively, but the robot’s fist shattered it and sent the mage flying.
Then it moved across the battlefield at high speed, striking down Hunters one by one.
“Ugh….”
The last remaining Hunter grasped his axe and barely managed to rise again as the black robot approached.
[Robots serve humanity. Please rest for a moment. We will change your minds.]
Veronica had spared the Hunters not out of cruelty, but because she valued humanity. Yet she knew they would harbor resentment. From the research that Jae-in, director of the Rigen Research Institute, had been conducting and the magical research records of Hunter Bae Na-young, she was aware that brainwashing technology existed. Her plan was to keep them alive and later recycle these Hunters as useful resources.
The expression of the Hunter standing alone, barely supported by his axe, darkened.
Boom!
White light fell from the sky, striking the Data Center’s power supply unit and triggering a massive explosion.
The robots, showing no sign of surprise, slowly advanced toward the epicenter.
“My brother always makes me do the hard jobs.”
Yang Sang-heon, clad in shimmering golden armor, complained as he escaped the blast.
“Still, work must be done. Come on then.”
Yang Sang-heon thrust his sword forward, and the robots, led by the black one, charged at him in unison.
“Even if he’s Hunter Yang Sang-heon, he can’t possibly….”
“Shh…. Get back.”
The surviving Hunter tried to rush to Yang Sang-heon’s aid, but a massive hand gripped his shoulder. It was Hyung-bin.
“But that black robot is formidable.”
“I know. We’re just trying to buy time so it can’t be repaired.”
“If we buy time?”
“Of course the Chairman will handle everything. Just evacuate for now. This isn’t a place for us to interfere.”
Cargron’s carapace and Adamant were already rare materials, and considerable quantities had been consumed in the battle with Ji-seok. Still, a substantial number remained, yet Earth’s Hunters vastly outnumbered those robots.
With so many places where robots needed to be deployed, Veronica’s electronic circuits worked frantically.

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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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