Chapter 74
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Translator: penny
Chapter: 74
Chapter Title: Upgrade (2)
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"Huh?"
"Manager?"
Kim Jin-hyuk ran into him right after leaving the shop of a regular supplier he always visited. It was pure coincidence.
Walking along without a care, Jin-hyuk and Manager Park Dong-soo spotted each other and their eyes widened in surprise.
"Never thought I'd run into you here like this."
Manager Park burst into a hearty laugh as he greeted him.
From the moment Jin-hyuk joined the company to the day he quit, they never had any bad blood between them. There was no reason to avoid a friendly chat on the street.
"Looks like you're living the good life after quitting. A hobby of yours?"
Manager Park glanced at the cage in Jin-hyuk's hand.
It was a plastic cage containing a single tiny chameleon no bigger than a finger.
"...Yeah, I'm doing fine."
"Did you really hit it big with those US stocks?"
As Jin-hyuk's lips curved into a grin, the manager chuckled and joked.
He hadn't gone into details when quitting, but he knew Jin-hyuk had made enough money to walk away comfortably.
Of course, after that one big score, Jin-hyuk hadn't felt any real need to dive back in—he'd been busy with other things and lost interest.
Besides, money meant little to him anymore.
"How've you been?"
"Same old grind. Cleaning up after hunters."
"I heard gates are opening up again lately."
Jin-hyuk tossed out a polite question and subtly gauged the man's reaction.
Until he moved, he'd lived near the office and unwittingly cleared every new gate in the company's zone.
The company had nearly dried up on work as a result.
Now that he'd relocated farther away, gates were popping up in the area again.
"Yeah, finally catching a break. Things were so rough before, top brass even floated pivoting to entertainment entirely."
Manager Park sighed and launched into complaints at the first opening.
Some hunters with standout looks or talent jumped straight into celebrity gigs.
Being superhumans with powers made fame come easy.
There were even companies that scouted flashy hunters for showbiz over gate raids.
"Gates are multiplying, hunters are popping up everywhere. But not everyone's gonna make it big... so more are veering off into other paths, I bet."
He muttered with a strange look on his face.
Gates were indeed opening more frequently and fiercely as time went on.
And as if refusing to be outdone, the system awakening hunters was expanding, growing more sophisticated.
'Neither the outer gods nor the deities will ever give up on Earth. If the war heats up, it'll shatter the order and civilization we have now.'
Jin-hyuk's face hardened slightly as he recalled the Great Cataclysm twenty years ago.
The invasion sparked by outer gods was, in truth, still ongoing.
In the Divine Community he could pull up in a blink, countless deities still coveted Earth, scheming to drive out the outer gods and carve it up among themselves.
"What if the monsters get completely driven off this land? What if they vanish and the hunter system shuts down too?"
"Wouldn't that be great? No more monster scum, end of this decades-long war. Wait, does that mean I'd be out of a job?"
Manager Park took the half-joking remark as a joke and let out a dry laugh.
"If that really happened, the world would change massively again. Me? As long as I can eat, I'm good."
'Another cataclysm is inevitable, huh.'
The world was far too accustomed to the new system now.
If it vanished, chaos would reign once more.
To avert that undeniable turmoil, something would need to replace it—a new system.
As Manager Park walked off after saying they'd catch up sometime, Jin-hyuk's gaze shifted to the cage in his right hand.
A single chameleon wriggling inside. Soon to be ant food, a pitiful fate.
Yet Jin-hyuk believed this chameleon would serve as the seed for that new system.
From Manager Park he'd just passed to the throngs of people brushing by now. And the world they were building.
'I'll protect at least this much.'
For a moment, his eyes flushed a deep red, much like Asmora's.
His subordinates were already dooming one world to ruin.
He'd long abandoned normal life for that cause.
And having sacrificed so much, he was determined to safeguard what remained.
Asmora concludes through countless experiments that merely mimicking external appearances holds no meaning.
In the dimly lit primordial nest—the breeding ground that could be called the origin of the ants—Asmora stood before a wriggling mass of black cells, idly twitching her antennae.
This cell mass, moving at her will, was an omnipotent cell created by infusing massive resources into the rapid division and regeneration powers of a planarian.
It could replicate anything according to all the data she'd consumed so far, but the form Asmora was trying to shape now differed slightly from existing ants.
It had limbs and facial features—crude holes resembling eyes, nose, and mouth.
At a glance, it resembled an orc; from another angle, a human or goblin.
Asmora judges that true replication and production require genuine absorption through predation.
What Asmora aimed to do was create a human, based on her own knowledge.
Humans were undoubtedly a species beyond what she could consume and absorb.
But having 'created' a transcendent lifeform like the shell-back ant through omnipotent cells, Asmora attempted to craft one from a being she'd never preyed upon.
And failed every time.
There was a world of difference between absorbing full genetic data through predation and copying mere visuals.
Even with limbs attached, the intricate nerves, muscles, blood vessels—all tangled up, rendering it nonfunctional.
"..."
Abandoning the experiment, Asmora twitched her antennae in regret.
Asmora yearns to receive an oracle directly from the great existence.
She'd started these experiments because of Seira, who had joined the hive and become a relay.
Seira's magic was tempting enough, but what truly stirred Asmora was Jin-hyuk's oracles.
A primal desire burned in her: deeper, more direct communion with the godlike being who was great beyond measure.
Yet as his first subordinate to receive a true name from him, her inability to comprehend his words stemmed—from her differing brain structure with Seira's, or ultimately, her lack of human form. That realization drew Asmora to human mimicry.
The subordinates react to the great existence's reward.
Then the breeding tank lid opened, and something was tossed in.
Asmora snapped her head up and swiftly ordered worker ants to retrieve the great one's reward.
Her only path forward was to devour relentlessly, elevating her rank ceaselessly.
Until the day she could consume a human and claim it all.
'New... prey.'
Through a worker ant's eyes, Asmora spotted the chameleon and clacked her mandibles.
Instinct told her this was prey of a different kind from what she'd eaten before.
'Joy.'
Asmora felt actual joy watching the chameleon snap up and devour a small worker ant in one gulp.
New food meant progress toward what she craved.
"Gasp...!"
The moment Asmora hunted and began devouring the chameleon.
In the shattered holy kingdom's capital—far from the primordial nest—Seira, deep in prayer, broke out in cold sweat and opened her eyes.
Moonlight filtered through broken windows, illuminating her.
This vast building, once remodeled for the goddess, was now Seira's solitary space for meditation and prayer, stripped of all that.
The massive city that had housed hundreds of thousands was now a complete ghost town.
A rocky wasteland the ants ignored, left in ruins with only Seira amid the collapse.
'...The queen could kill and discard me anytime. The moment she hears his words directly, I'm obsolete.'
In the silent stillness, clutching her chest where a heart beat, Seira gritted her teeth, grasping Asmora's thoughts through the hive mind.
She'd led the holy kingdom's fall and earned great merit, but to the ants—including Asmora—that meant nothing.
To them, devotion and sacrifice for the hive was natural; no such thing as rewarding achievements.
Seira remained just a useful relay in their eyes.
'No.'
One command from Asmora, and the thorn ants inside her could destroy her brain before she resisted.
Refusing to be culled, Seira had to desperately prove her worth.
If Asmora received Jin-hyuk's oracles directly as she wished, Seira would be expendable.
She knew Jin-hyuk had spared her precisely for this relay role.
Fail even at that, and her fate was sealed.
She needed a new purpose.
"Is that why you've come to me?"
"I intend to implant mana manipulation into Belzahad. I've already promised the great one that I would."
To that end, Seira sought someone out.
Count Merlen, gaunt-faced and living under ant surveillance with survivors, peered in confusion from beneath his black cloak at the monstrous body begging him earnestly.
"Help with the research. It's the only way to save even one more life in this world. I never lied."
"I know. That's why I'm still alive."
Gazing at her horrific ant-altered form juxtaposed with a face still holding human emotions and convictions, myriad feelings crossed Count Merlen's mind. He let out a deep sigh.
He'd survived the ants' brutal purge of the goddess's followers by fully abandoning faith, as Seira advised.
Allied with the Golden Mandate Society but never truly blessed like her, he'd passed ant scrutiny and lived.
"What's the exact plan?"
"No one knows their biology and structure better than I do now."
Seira, with one eye glowing red like the ants, pointed to her own body.
"Variants are born with vast internal resources, but they can't utilize them properly. A mage's heart—with its layered mana rings—is an amplifier and output device that gathers and unleashes mana."
Seira spoke fluidly, as if she'd thought it through.
"I plan to give them new hearts."
She raised what she held in her other hand.
A fist-sized ore glowed iridescently, reacting to her mana.