Infinite Evolution Hunter - Chapter 62

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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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62
The Axe Wielder unleashed a relentless barrage of attacks, but I had already grasped his patterns from our clash yesterday. The nature of his weapon—an axe—made him predictable; without thrusting strikes, his movements were even easier to read.
Moreover, I didn’t need to hold back like I had yesterday to avoid killing him.
Unlike yesterday’s restraint, I unleashed my toxic mist at maximum intensity. The ten-meter cloud of poison that billowed toward him resembled a massive crimson mass suspended in air.
The Axe Wielder hastily retreated and held his breath, burning away the toxic mist with a broad hemispherical aura just as he had yesterday. But this poison was several times more concentrated than before, forcing him to maintain his aura longer to incinerate it completely.
In that window, I pierced through the toxic mist, circled to his flank, and swung my fist toward his ribs. Before he could react to both the poison and my simultaneous strike, I would land the first blow—or so I thought.
My keen senses detected killing intent from Tian Fei. I twisted my body urgently to evade the arrow, and as the Axe Wielder finished burning away the toxic mist, he swung his axe at me.
Attacks from both the Axe Wielder and Tian Fei came without pause. Each was a formidable opponent on their own, but with both assailing me simultaneously, I couldn’t find an opening to counterattack.
“What happened to that cocky bastard? Why so quiet now?!”
The Axe Wielder grew arrogant as arrows arrived at perfectly timed intervals, scratching every itch I had.
I tried to position the Axe Wielder between myself and Tian Fei to use him as a shield, but he recognized my intent and a fierce positional struggle ensued.
While I held these two at bay, more hunters continued to arrive near the Gate. If I could just endure, reinforcements would come. The problem was that I had no idea how many hours it would take for the Gate to close, and if a B-rank monster like a Troll emerged, our current numbers wouldn’t be enough to handle it.
“Why do you look like you’re expecting someone to arrive?”
As I glanced backward, the Axe Wielder, reading my thoughts, stopped attacking and asked.
“Even if someone comes, there’s no one worth having. I confirmed that Jung Min-gi entered a Gate in South Korea.”
He chuckled darkly.
“A bandit-looking bastard actually capable of thought, pulling off something like this. Or did someone advise you? That Chinese bastard over there?”
Veins bulged across his forehead.
“I’ll shred you to pieces and throw you and your girlfriend out together.”
“What?”
“I’ve captured the woman coming up from Seoul. You’ll pay the price for cursing me.”
“Where?”
“Why would you need to know? You and she both die today. Ah, but she’s quite the looker—if she obeys me well, I might keep her alive longer and grow fond of her instead of you.”
It was clearly a provocation meant to infuriate me, but the fact that I couldn’t reach Bae Na-young was real. Until now, I’d assumed communication problems were due to the Gate Break incident.
Bae Na-young excels unparalleled in area attacks and special techniques, but capturing her isn’t actually difficult. She’s extremely vulnerable to long-range attacks, and even someone like me with strong vitality could catch her off-guard while wearing mental defense items.
“I was fighting too cautiously. That was my mistake.”
I charged directly at Tian Fei. I had to capture that bastard first.
“Where do you think you’re going!”
The Axe Wielder’s swing split my back open deeply.
Normally I would have regenerated immediately to stop the bleeding, but this time I let blood fountain out instead.
Spraying blood directly rather than mist drained my moisture rapidly. Strategically it was a poor choice, but my mind had gone feral.
The Axe Wielder dodged the blood spray and charged again, slashing my back and arms. Since I was running at maximum speed, his attacks weren’t deep.
Tian Fei unleashed a barrage of arrows at me. I raised both arms in a boxing guard to protect my face, neck, and heart as I ran.
The moment my left foot left the ground, an arrow pierced my knee, shredding it, but by the time my right foot landed and my left foot stepped down again, it had already regenerated.
My keen senses detected an attack from behind. The Axe Wielder’s strike with all his might. I couldn’t take this one. I sprayed toxic mist in the direction I was running and plunged into it. While the Axe Wielder detoured to avoid the poison, I closed to arm’s length of Tian Fei.
Tian Fei retreated while firing arrows, trying to create distance. The longbow wasn’t designed for close combat, so both accuracy and power suffered.
Tian Fei had good strength from wielding the longbow, but his speed didn’t match mine. Worse, as he retreated, the distance shrank rapidly.
In a final desperate move, he swung his bow. I blocked it with my arm and sprayed toxic mist at Tian Fei’s face. My body had lost so much moisture that the cloud wasn’t particularly large.
“Gaaahhhhh!!!”
Tian Fei twisted to evade, but the poison caught his right face and neck. He screamed in agony as his flesh melted and the inhaled toxin wracked his body with pain. As he writhed on the ground, I took one final step to finish him—
“Stop right there, you bastard!”
The Axe Wielder, with the child clinging to him, swung both axes simultaneously. The accumulated damage would be catastrophic if I took the full brunt, so I pivoted backward and deflected his axes outward using the armor wrapped around my forearms.
As my arm snapped back, I drove my fist into the Axe Wielder’s exposed chest, but Tian Fei, whom I’d thought was utterly broken, drew a throwing dagger and hurled it at my back.
Fortune favored me—it missed my head and heart—but it slipped between my ribs and lodged in my lung. Then came a relentless barrage of axes. I rolled my body across the ground to create distance.
My body was a ruin.
“What’s wrong? Starting to hurt now? I saw last time that you don’t recover infinitely, do you? I’ll hack you to pieces until you’re dead.”
Behind me, I could hear hunters and soldiers dying in real-time as monsters poured from the Gate. Bae Na-young might have been captured by those damned creatures. The Axe Wielder unleashed his Acceleration and Berserker skills, swinging his axes with such ferocity that I couldn’t even spare a moment to deal with Tian Fei. Tian Fei drank a potion and recovered.
This was what they meant by total chaos.
I had to move. Faster. Stronger. To obliterate these two bastards.
[Regeneration skill has advanced from B-rank to A-rank.]
[Regeneration A: Burn life force to increase all stats.]
The extreme stress of the situation and the relentless physical trauma had elevated my Regeneration skill. A-rank Regeneration—a threshold I’d never reached in my previous life.
I craved speed, craved strength, and I felt my life force ignite like fuel, burning through my entire body.
The Axe Wielder charged. His axes seemed slightly slower now, and my movements had accelerated beyond what they were moments before.
I caught the incoming blade with my left hand and squeezed. My fingers sank into the metal. Without hesitation, I brought my right hand down like a blade, severing his arm at the joint. Before he could even scream, I struck his face with my right palm, and the Axe Wielder’s head caved in as he flew backward.
Before the Axe Wielder even hit the ground, I was already charging Tian Fei. Seeing what had happened to his partner, he didn’t even look back—he bolted. These two had only come together for their own gain; there was no camaraderie between them.
I was faster than before, and I was faster still now. The distance between us was mere meters. Tian Fei dove backward, throwing daggers aimed at my head, neck, and heart. With the agility boost from A-rank Regeneration’s life-force burn—dozens of points higher—none of them posed a threat. I swatted each one aside.
As I deflected the last dagger, I saw Tian Fei smiling despite the cold sweat dripping down his face.
Boom!
The moment I deflected the final dagger, it exploded, engulfing everything in thick black smoke.
I pushed through the haze, but he was already gone. The bastard had used an escape skill. Before I could track him by scent, I checked behind me—the Axe Wielder had vanished too.
“Damn it!!!”
The curse escaped my lips. Their scents diverged in opposite directions.
If I had to choose one to pursue… it would be the Axe Wielder. He was most likely to know Bae Na-young’s location.
Looking back at the Gate, reinforcements had arrived in force and were sealing it off. Without further interference, they should be able to hold the line now.
Months of aggressive efforts to reclaim North Korean Territory, not to mention a decade of achievements—all of it had been erased by the monsters that escaped today. But at the very least, the leader of New North Korea would die by my hand.
I tracked him by scent, footprints, and the blood trail from his severed arm.
The blood trail ended. From here, he’d traveled by vehicle. Several Korean soldiers lay dead on the ground—he’d stolen a military vehicle.
I followed the tire tracks. The scent grew stronger, meaning the distance was closing. Then I caught a familiar fragrance and froze in place. Bae Na-young.
Following her scent, I found a depression in the earth, and there in the center lay Bae Na-young, bound and sprawled on her side.
She was unconscious, but her breathing was stable. I lifted her into my arms.
“You son of a bitch!”
The Axe Wielder’s voice crackled through a speaker. The sound came from a Bunker roughly a kilometer away. His face was visible through a small window in the mostly-buried structure.
As I moved to pursue him, he laughed unpleasantly and brought something down with his remaining arm.
A warning signal—sharper and more intense than anything I’d ever felt before.
From beneath the earth came the faint sound of mechanical gears grinding to life.
I immediately enlarged my body and cradled Bae Na-young against my chest. There was no time to run far. I hardened my back to its maximum and turned to face the earth.
Boom!
The explosion erupted like a colossal beast vomiting me skyward, hurling me violently into the air.
The blast and heat seared my surface while radiation burned through my insides. With nothing but the resolve to protect Bae Na-young, I regenerated and hardened my entire body.
And then I fell from the sky.
Pain and impact threatened to steal my consciousness, but I clenched my teeth and held on by a thread. Looking at Bae Na-young cradled in my arms, she wasn’t badly injured, and her heart was still beating.
Only then did I examine my own body and realize that not just my arms, but my entire form was encased in armor. My intense desire to protect both my body and Bae Na-young had wrapped my entire being in protective plating. The black armor enveloping me resembled Bae Na-young’s design.
A mushroom cloud rose beside me, still ascending.
That madman had detonated the nuclear bomb left behind by North Korea. Even sheltered within the nuclear bunker, he didn’t want to die himself, so his decision to detonate a tactical nuke with relatively limited yield was my stroke of fortune.
Had the explosion been any more intense, Bae Na-young wouldn’t have survived, regardless of what happened to me.
I reached my apex and began descending. Having climbed so high, a direct landing would certainly subject Bae Na-young to dangerous impact. I expelled aura violently from my feet to decelerate, touching down on the earth.
Bae Na-young’s breathing is labored. No matter how much I shielded her with my body and this newly formed armor, if that was truly nuclear, we couldn’t escape radiation exposure.
I sprinted toward the bunker where he was hiding.
Burning through my vitality was agonizing, but there was no time to rest.
[Stamina increased by 1.]
[Stamina increased by 1.]
[Stamina increased by 1.]
As if compensating for the repeated bodily damage and my stamina now nearly depleted, it began to recover.
Like pouring a single bucket of water onto parched earth, but far better than nothing.
Crash!
I kicked open the bunker door.
The Axe Wielder waiting for me swung his remaining axe at me, but I had accelerated by burning vitality while he had been severely slowed by the Berserker’s recoil.
I twisted my body to evade the axe and drove my heel into his abdomen.
Crash!
“Cough….”
The Axe Wielder, slammed against the wall like a sack of grain, spat out a mouthful of blood.
“You have an Elixir, don’t you? Hand it over.”
“Elixir? What elixir?”
I stomped on his ankle, crushing it.
“Aaaahhhhh!!”

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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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