Chapter 48
-----------------------------------------------------------------
Translator: 8uhl
Chapter: 48
Chapter Title: Legion VS Legion (2)
-----------------------------------------------------------------
"...He's afraid."
"Yeah. I feel it too."
"And I feel a deep resentment."
"Oppa has loathed and hated monsters ever since that day. Because they destroyed our family."
"How dare they..."
Rage boiled.
Not an emotion flowing in from the outside. It was a fierce anger the Legion felt on its own.
The entire Legion was agitated.
"Calm down. Oppa has crossed the Gate now, and we have our own job to do."
Kang Do-yeon stepped forward to soothe the Legion.
The Legion soon regained its composure.
Kang Do-yeon herself knew this was what the Legion wanted from her.
"That's right. To meet him... we have to get out of this place as quickly as possible."
"M-Meet him? What will you do when you meet him?"
"...I don't know."
The Legion frowned.
Cases like this were still quite common.
A phenomenon where, despite clearly knowing something, its reason and emotions couldn't catch up to or understand each other.
Having now accumulated a certain amount of knowledge, the Legion knew the cause of this phenomenon.
It was because its experience was lacking and its ego was underdeveloped compared to the knowledge it had amassed and the computational power it could mobilize.
"This isn't efficient."
From the Legion's perspective, it was experiencing inefficiency because an unnecessary ego had emerged.
To reduce this, it intended to use sub-minds like Kang Do-yeon.
However, even Kang Do-yeon, who was more 'mature' than the Legion, was still just a mentally immature 17-year-old girl.
[The scouts are continuously being intercepted. Indeed, it was certain the bastards possessed advanced intelligence and a communication network.]
"You know the situation, right? Go and deal with them."
"...Understood."
Switching its train of thought, the Legion focused its consciousness elsewhere.
He had just thrown himself into the jaws of death for its sake.
Therefore, it absolutely had to achieve results as well.
"Grrrroooan..."
In the dim passageway, a sorrowful yet somehow chilling cry spread out.
The Legion's scouts, spread out in all directions, saw with their eyes and heard with their ears, sharing everything about the bastards.
[They are different from ordinary Ruin Fungus infected. Their appearance and behavior patterns differ from the data.]
The Ruin Fungus infected, which began to be encountered one by one from the 40th floor and above.
However, their appearances were all strange.
They were clearly the ones that had infected the cave's creatures, including the Moonlight Fairies, so the changes should have been limited to excessive tumors or partial body modifications.
"What is this..."
But these things were different.
Though clearly based on Moonlight Fairies, they had something resembling a head attached to their chests, or their limbs were transformed into bizarre hooks, and so on.
The degree of mutation was enough to distort their original form.
[The captive had certainly said something like that. That the infected on the upper floors were so bizarre and dangerous that their ancestors had warned to avoid them at all costs.]
Despite their grotesque appearance, they were more aggressive than other infected.
They detected the scouts' movements and devoured them in various ways, such as extending tentacles or swinging their hands.
[It is understood. Those peculiar variant Ruin Fungi are trying to manipulate the Legion's genetic information through the scouts they just devoured. This was the first time the Legion had encountered an opponent capable of manipulating genetic information.]
'How dare they.'
The Legion was, of course, enraged.
Had it been anything else, it might have been different, but genetic manipulation and analysis were one of the Legion's points of pride.
To devour, analyze, and integrate the primitive and incomplete to evolve—that was the Legion.
These variant Ruin Fungi were, in effect, throwing down the gauntlet to the Legion.
"Kill them."
Kang Do-yeon gritted her teeth.
The mask did not appear. She had grown to a certain extent, and she knew it well.
She drew her sword.
The power core embedded in her heart began to emit energy.
Her heart, both arms, both legs.
A total of five of the Legion's power cores were embedded in her body.
With power incomparable to other Legion soldiers who had only one in their hearts, she kicked off, shattering the ground.
"Gh... Ah... Aaaahhh!"
[Noticing her approach, an infected creature shrieked horribly from organs that appeared to be mouths scattered across its body and charged, swinging its large, hook-like feet.]
Ultimately shaken by its grotesque and bizarre appearance, about half of Kang Do-yeon's face was covered by the mask.
At the same time, her sword, erupting with a dark red aura, unleashed a wave of energy in the form of a slash.
"Ugh..."
Kang Do-yeon staggered on the spot.
It was her own strike, but even she hadn't expected it to be this powerful.
This was her first battle using the power cores, so the Legion had no data on it either.
The energy slash cleaved the over-two-meter-tall infected in half, gouged a deep trench into the floor, and continued for over a dozen meters before dissipating.
"Disgusting."
But the infected didn't die instantly.
Even with its body split in two, it tried to somehow get up or crawl toward her to attack.
[Other infected heard the sound and began to swarm in. But there was still something alien about them.]
The cavern—no, the entire area—vibrated.
Gritting her teeth, Kang Do-yeon once again cut down the enemy that was crawling on the ground and swinging its hooked claws.
It ended up as minced meat, but it was still hard to say its life had been completely extinguished.
[The Legion decided it needed to learn more about these things.]
Soon, variant infected began to swarm in, shrieking monstrously as they charged.
The Legion also sent its forces to confront them.
After all, it was now used to wars with the infected.
"Ngh?!"
She twisted her head, dodging something that flew at her in an instant.
What had been fired was a large, poisonous-stinger-like bone shard.
The enraged Legion likewise began to bombard them with poison thorns.
'...This might not be easy.'
Kang Do-yeon, and indeed the entire Legion, had a premonition.
These enemies, swarming so fiercely, might be stronger than any foe they had encountered so far.
The Legion kicked off the ground and charged toward the infected.
In the first head-on collision, without reducing speed, Kang Do-yeon once again fired an energy slash forward.
[The elite Legion soldiers raised their individual outputs.]
Still, the Legion had already completed another leap in its evolution.
[Resonance and Amplification. This is the ability we took from the Moonlight Fairies' Divine Tree.]
A dark red energy coalesced in front of Kang Do-yeon, her face now completely covered by the mask, and the other Legion soldiers running at the vanguard, forming a defensive barrier.
[The Moonlight Fairies, the oldest nemesis of the Ruin Fungus. We will suppress the bastards with their final legacy.]
"Krrk..."
"Kiek!"
With a loud bang, the infected that crashed into the energy field absorbed the full impact and were sent flying back.
Poison stingers, acid fluids, and more.
The various and horrific attack methods of the variant Ruin Fungus infected could not penetrate this energy field.
However, the attacks from the Legion soldiers striking from within the field slammed into the bastards.
The black tide, composed of various shapes and sizes, began to push forward again after a slight hesitation.
[Their aggression and abilities are incomparable to the existing Ruin Fungus.]
In the heart of the nest, while the Legion's soldiers continued the battle.
The Legion used some of its small and medium-sized units crawling on the floor to continuously transport fragments of the Ruin Fungus infected from the battlefield back to the nest.
"The arrogant bastards who dared to try and transform the Legion into a part of themselves and devour it."
At the same time, they were nourishment for the Legion, and a subject to be analyzed and understood.
Furthermore, a strange anger was now mixed in.
"Disassemble, and digest."
The Legion's tentacles mercilessly descended upon the writhing chunks of flesh.
The mucus secreted from the tentacles was the Legion's digestive fluid.
Countless cells within the mucus began to weaken the target and break it down at a cellular level.
Usually, at this stage, most victims are unable to resist and are disassembled and deconstructed.
"...?!"
[However, this enemy was the only creature we had ever met capable of cellular warfare. They began to counter-devour the Legion's cells that were attacking them.]
The Legion's nest, which had been in the process of digestion, began to rapidly harden and twist at the same time.
The Legion started to be pushed back by the toxins emitted by the variant Ruin Fungus.
They first used the Legion's infected cells to take over the nutrient supply system.
The energy invested only served to fatten them, and thanks to that, the Ruin Fungus began to multiply infinitely within the Legion like cancer cells.
[If this continues, the entire collective will be taken over. The Legion, a predator that devours all, is being devoured in return.]
Gluttony was the Legion's innate essence and nature.
To have that denied was to have its very reason for existence denied.
"No."
But the Legion had already finished all its calculations.
At the same time, it admitted its mistake.
"Just growing claws and teeth is not enough."
It was true that it had only focused on strengthening its soldiers until now.
Because until now, it had never met an enemy that could dare to resist its abilities.
Using this event as an experience to prepare for the future would be a great gain in itself.
This was the conclusion the Legion reached.
The Legion attempted a new form of attack inside the nest where a fierce war was raging.
Slender tissues, like the roots of a tree, began to forcibly burrow into the infected tissue.
Simultaneously, strong energy waves erupted in a chain reaction from those roots, annihilating all surrounding cells.
"The possibilities of Form Power are endless."
The other power that gave the Legion soldiers a transcendent strength surpassing reality.
The Legion's Divine Tree was already growing rapidly in the middle of the widest stem layer.
There was no rule that said this power had to be used only in visible combat.
The eyes behind the mask sparkled.
Its craving for knowledge that would make it stronger was also intensifying.