Infinite Evolution Hunter - Chapter 90
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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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90
Yang Sang-heon fell into step beside me. Whether he’d activated some acceleration ability or not, he kept pace effortlessly despite the considerable speed I was maintaining.
“You’ve gotten faster?”
“This much is nothing.”
“We could go even quicker then.”
“Huh?”
I accelerated further, watching Yang Sang-heon’s bewildered expression. Ah, so this was how Eres felt when she used to tease me.
In combat, you always strike the commander first—a principle Bae Na-young already knew well without me saying a word. She unleashed a curse directly at the Ogre Lord.
“Kraaagh!”
The Corruption curse ravaged the creature’s right face and neck, the skin crumbling away in grotesque patches.
Witnessing the Ogre Lord’s agony, the Ogre Shaman raised a staff adorned with dangling skulls.
A verdant beam erupted from the staff’s apex, striking the Ogre Lord and purging Bae Na-young’s curse in an instant.
“KRAAAAAAAGH!!!”
The enraged Ogre Lord unleashed a thunderous roar, and every ogre’s gaze snapped toward me.
Clad in full armor with an aura blazing around me, I hurled myself into their ranks. Those who collided with me—a runaway locomotive incarnate—shattered like glass, their bodies scattering in all directions.
The ranged attackers hurling axes and casting spells fell to Bae Na-young’s mana spheres.
Such attacks meant nothing to me. This defense was for her sake alone.
“The volume you’re unleashing per volley has increased?”
Dozens of violet mana spheres per second erupted like machine-gun fire, each one striking with surgical precision—ogre skulls, thrown weapons, incoming spells—detonating on impact.
“I trained extensively during my time in Tellus.”
Her confident expression was endearing, and yet her accuracy never wavered, her output relentless and devastating.
She’d torn through a prisoner-of-war camp with her life on the line to rescue me from Tellus—and clearly, her power had grown to match that desperation.
The distance to the Ogre Lord dwindled. Watching me barrel toward him, pulverizing his own kind in the process, the creature’s resolve evaporated entirely.
A B-rank monster like the Ogre Lord, commanding thousands of ogres, could inflict near-catastrophic devastation—assuming no S-rank Hunters were present.
The creature, towering at least two meters above the standard three-meter ogres, trembled in fear and retreated. Before it could turn and flee, I closed the distance and hurled it skyward with a vicious uppercut.
As the five-meter colossus soared through the air, every ogre’s eyes tracked its ascent.
On its descent, the creature became a living catapult’s projectile, crushing several ogres beneath its weight.
And the stone that had been the Ogre Lord came to rest with its abdomen completely pulped, life extinguished.
My relentless charge, Chang-hee’s precise gunfire, and the Mexican Hunters’ intervention had decimated the ogre mages significantly. Finally, the Military’s missiles and artillery began inflicting real casualties, and the tide of battle tilted decisively in our favor.
“With the Ogre Lord eliminated, now….”
All that remained was to intercept whatever emerged from the Gate—but the interior shimmered with an odd translucence.
Normally, Gates are completely sealed, their interiors invisible. Yet this one, though opaque like tinted glass, now revealed something within.
“What is that….”
“What’s wrong, oppa?”
“Can’t you see that? I can make something out inside.”
“Beyond the Gate? I don’t see anything.”
Something flickered at the edge of perception—tantalizingly visible yet maddeningly obscured. My instincts screamed that the answer to this anomaly lay beyond that threshold.
My heightened senses pulsed with urgency, far more intense than their usual prickling warnings. My head throbbed with a singular message: that thing beyond the Gate—it must be stopped, or disaster awaits. Yet no matter how intently I stared, the Gate’s interior remained frustratingly opaque.
[Your Heightened Senses skill has advanced from A-rank to S-rank.]
Acknowledging the breakthrough, I closed my eyes, then opened them. This time, clarity flooded my vision. Beyond the Gate stood two towers, each radiating brilliant light that channeled directly into the Gate itself—a device identical to the Gate generators the Empire had constructed.
Beyond that point, ogres stretched endlessly, frozen in place. Among them were common ogres, but also plenty of Mages, Twin Heads, and Ogre Lords.
Atop a hill in the middle of the Plains where frozen ogres lined up, the Blue Dragon absorbed the chill radiating from them. The moment the ogres, which had been frozen blue, recovered their original dull skin tone, they bolted through the Gate.
It would be possible to block this breach from outside—if there were only one location. But now at least two have opened, and I can see inactive towers inside as well, so there’s no telling when more will open. On top of that, that monster horde seems endless. No matter how skilled a Hunter is, they can’t fight without rest for days on end.
“Oppa, what’s wrong?”
As I stared at the situation inside and broke into a cold sweat, Bae Na-young asked.
“There are towers about five meters tall inside the Gate. It looks like that’s how they’re opening the Gate. Beyond that are countless ogres and the Blue Dragon.”
“Oppa, do you remember the bet we made before?”
Seeing me lost in thought, Bae Na-young paused for a moment before speaking.
“A bet?”
Wondering what she meant, I tore my eyes from the Gate and looked at her.
“When we went on that North Korea subjugation mission, we bet on who would catch more monsters.”
“Oh, right. Why bring that up suddenly?”
“If you’re going in, I’m coming with you.”
Bae Na-young looked at me with eyes that were both resolute and gentle.
Entering a Gate during a breach isn’t impossible.
A few years ago, an S-rank Hunter from Japan decided to strike the main force and entered a breached Gate, but he never returned before the breach ended. After the Gate returned to normal and a search was conducted, they couldn’t even find his body.
There were several other records of people entering, but the conclusion was always the same. No one ever came back.
Knowing all this, Bae Na-young still said she’d come with me.
“Why? Do you think I’m going in?”
“Yes.”
Bae Na-young met my eyes directly.
“Na-young, you need to stay and look after our mother.”
“We can both come back alive.”
“Yeah, that’s true.”
Already, the surroundings were being secured. My colleagues were here, and the Mexican Military Unit would help hold this position.
But if the Gate keeps opening like this, we’ll reach our limit.
“Let’s go.”
Bae Na-young, perched on my shoulder, nodded.
I charged toward the Gate like a tank, plowing through the endless stream of ogres pouring out in front of it.
“Huh?! Hyung! Where are you going!”
Seeing me rush forward, Yang Sang-heon shouted.
“Keep holding the line! I’ll be back soon!”
Leaving those words with Yang Sang-heon, I threw myself through the Gate.
The sensation of passing through the Gate felt no different than usual. The only difference was that hundreds of ogres were lined up, waiting to pass through the Gate the moment I crossed.
“Grrroooaarrr!”
The ogres saw us and breathed heavily, displaying hostility, but for some reason, they didn’t attack.
The Blue Dragon on the hill, which had been absorbing the chill, stopped. The absorbed cold gathered in its chest, flowing past its throat.
It seemed to be absorbing the very chill it had spread to freeze the ogres. If that was the case, entering before it finished absorbing everything had been the right choice.
[Fearless human. Walking in here like this.]
The Blue Dragon’s words were in a different language, but I could understand them just as I had when listening to Demon Gaff or Eres.
The Blue Dragon possessed an elongated, slender frame like a wyvern, yet its size exceeded that of a wyvern by more than double. Its skin was encased in massive scales that left no gap uncovered, and they were renowned for their exceptional resistance to both physical and magical attacks.
“I got curious why you lot kept barging into someone else’s home, so I decided to pay a visit myself.”
[So what exactly do you two think you can accomplish?]
“Well… struggle?”
[That’s your right, certainly. But your struggle ends here.]
The Blue Dragon drew in a breath.
I released my gigantification, cradled Bae Na-young like a princess, and hurled myself toward the Gate and the ogre horde ahead of us. The ice breath descended upon the spot where we’d been standing.
An unrelenting torrent of frigid breath—capable of freezing everything in an instant—pursued me without pause.
I dodged the breath by treading across the shoulders and heads of the ogre horde, then charged at the Blue Dragon. With each burst of breath, the blue aura in its chest visibly diminished. My initial hypothesis had been correct.
Though Bae Na-young hadn’t taken a direct hit from the extreme cold, her face had turned pale and frost clung to her skin.
I generated heat from my body to shield her.
When I reached beneath the dragon’s jaw, I enlarged myself and hurled Bae Na-young skyward—she quickly activated the levitation magic of her cloak. As she descended slowly through the air, she cast Corruption on the dragon’s eyes.
“Kugh!”
Though not enough to blind it completely, the creature felt pain akin to a needle piercing human eyes, and its breath halted. In that opening, I sprang upward from beneath its jaw and struck its lower mandible with an aura-wrapped fist.
[Khack!]
The creature that had been so composed let out an undignified cry.
I seized its lower jaw with one hand and drove its head into the ground.
With my left hand gripping the lower jaw, I drained its life force, while my right fist—wreathed in aura—rained down mercilessly upon its skull. True to its reputation as the king of monsters, the dragon’s scales were harder than anything I’d struck before.
[You insolent creature! A mere monkey dares insult me?!]
The dragon, caught off-guard by the ambush and reeling from my blows, regained its senses. It spread its massive wings and thrust me away, launching itself skyward. With a single sweep of its wind-manipulating wings, the colossal dragon’s body shot upward into the air.
The eyes struck by Bae Na-young’s Corruption showed no damage whatsoever.
[Kneel!]
Words erupted from the dragon’s maw like a sonic wave, interfering with both my mind and body. It was the dragon’s Fear and Draconic Language magic.
But.
Fear cannot touch me—I possess an S-rank formidable mental fortitude skill. I can even partially resist the mental interference of Eres, the avatar of Tellus herself. A dragon is trivial by comparison.
The invisible force of Draconic Language pressed down upon my body. It was a crushing weight as if tens of tons bore down upon me, but with my stats elevated through life force enhancement, it was not beyond my capacity to overcome. I shattered the pressure through sheer strength and leaped from where I stood.
[You… what… what exactly are you?!]
I seized the dragon’s tail as it descended from the sky, hanging like a rope. Sharp spines dug into my palm, but they also prevented slipping, allowing me to grip even tighter.
[Let go!]
“You think I’ll release you just because you tell me to?!”
As if my weight meant nothing, the dragon thrashed violently through the air, yet I stubbornly climbed along its tail toward its back.
The dragon flew inverted, slamming me against the frozen ogres. They shattered, and though the impact reverberated through my bones, I refused to release my grip on its body.
When it ascended once more, I unleashed a barrage of aura-laden punches into its flank. With my agility stat absurdly elevated, I delivered dozens of strikes to the same point in the blink of an eye.
[Kraaagh!]
Though the scales didn’t crack, the internal impact caused the creature to writhe in agony, lose its balance, and plummet toward the ground.
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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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