Chapter 92

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Translator: penny

Chapter: 92

Chapter Title: Land Grab (2)

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"You'll be getting a call soon."

"This one's a promising talent who was pretty famous in her own right...!"

Baek Jin-seong, who had been hoping to bolster his hunter roster to keep his business afloat and growing, found himself at a complete loss for words when I sent over Ji Ye-eun's contact info.

The goddess, unable to pour all her points into just Ji Ye-eun, had ultimately lost the bidding war to me. That let me pull her out from under another deity's wing and slot her into my own—more precisely, onto the roster at the Hangyeol Hunter Company.

"She still doesn't know 'anything' about this, so treat her well."

"O-of course."

Baek Jin-seong caught the emphasis on "anything," held his breath for a split second, then blurted out his reply.

Ji Ye-eun had no idea deities even existed yet.

So naturally, she wouldn't understand why she'd been yanked from her old company.

From her perspective, she'd been thriving just fine, only to wake up one day demoted—or worse, outright fired.

I wondered when I could break the truth to her, now shocked and disappointed... My eyes suddenly gleamed as I stared at the blank phone screen.

Right before that, I'd gotten the alert about my deity rank rising thanks to the ants' exploits.

It was acknowledging their rampage across imperial territory, which had turned the entire southern empire into a chaotic hellscape of total societal collapse.

'Normally, a deity who fully controls a single ordinary-sized world gets bumped up to upper-tier.'

The ants were on fire, sure—but they'd only claimed a chunk of this massive continent so far.

Still, my rank kept climbing, which meant they were pulling off something way beyond just expanding territory.

And that something was likely their growing infamy.

"This is..."

Reaching mid-tier grade 3 came with a shiny new systemic function.

Unlike deities who'd ascended by mastering some niche to transcendence, I had zero standout talents of my own. Systemic handouts like this were pure gold to me.

My eyes went wide reading the popup explanation.

'Extract traits from one subordinate and graft them onto another?'

Deities in the Divine Community are always hunting for promising subordinates.

Every race, every individual comes with unique innate gifts.

They recruit the exceptional ones, yank their traits, and pump up their own forces even stronger.

I gave it a shot on a whim, but nope—"Insufficient Interference Power."

Even I, who'd been slacking on interference-heavy chats with subordinates unlike the others, couldn't swing this. It guzzled a ridiculous amount way beyond mid-tier capacity.

'Just a smidge short. Not far now.'

At least the gap wasn't huge.

He confirmed as much while dumping the scheduled batch of magic stones into the breeding pen. Days at most, and he'd get to test this power.

Perfect timing—new enemies were inbound.

"We can't keep doing the same damn thing. Without reinforcements from Central Command, we'll just get whittled away bit by bit by those monsters."

While Kim Jin-hyuk collected his rewards for the ants' rampage...

...others were grinding their teeth at the ants' relentless prosperity—scorching lands, swelling nests everywhere.

Marquis Hermann, central army commander, was one of them.

He'd spent the last few days nonstop: torching nests, squashing no small number of ants.

But it only took those days for him and everyone to realize the truth.

Scrubbing the ants that had spread this far wasn't a job for one measly unit.

And the ants sure as hell weren't rolling over.

Show even a hint of underestimation, and hunting parties swarmed from every direction, forming full battalions for counterstrikes. Each time, heaps of casualties ended up as ant chow.

"Report every last detail to the prime minister—no sugarcoating. Tell him if he doesn't want to kiss half the empire goodbye, we need a new plan!"

Having seen the horrors up close, the marquis fired off a raw, desperate report. Drop everything, he urged—prioritize purging the ants from imperial soil first.

The central ministers reading it weren't blind to the crisis.

Massive refugee waves were already slamming into the empire's heartland.

"...Hold on a moment."

In the end, Shuver stepped out.

Not to run—but to beg one more time for aid from deity Astregon. The one who'd fed him answers nonstop, teased fragments of lost magitech glory, and promised to crown him ruler of a superpower devouring all Edellion.

"West... south?!"

Astregon finally deigned to guide his minions after ages.

Eyes bulging at the order, Shuver snatched a map and scanned locations.

'No way...!'

West of the empire: orc kingdom, founded by steppe escapees who'd enslaved locals; dwarf federation from the great mountains, who'd similarly roped in neighbors.

Beneath the ant-wrecked imperial south: sprawling primeval forests, clusters of southern kingdoms.

'So even you see it as impossible with our power alone.'

Shuver clenched his fist and sighed, grasping the meaning.

They'd have to cut deals with outsiders to claw out of this mess.

Indeed, the Divine Community was buzzing with deities hashing out a deal.

Astregon—pride massively dinged—pitched this as prime time for a joint ant-smashing. The others loathed him, but agreed: the ants had to be stopped, no question.

It was the endpoint of brutal wheeling, dealing, and profit math.

Had Lukadia held even a bit firmer, or the ants struggled more, the other deities would've just spectated longer—no intervention needed.

Astregon seethed at the jab about clearing Bellona's nomad hordes first, twitching at someone's reply.

While the empire slugged it out with ants, other powers kept grinding ahead.

With deity backing, they'd built up internally, steamrolled neighbors, skyrocketed in strength.

"Guardian, we haven't properly linked up with the human empire yet."

"Doesn't matter. The great spirits have already spoken."

And right then, they mobilized.

The empire's absolute southern fringe. Local guards long crumbled, no refugees heading this way—this border was already falling piecemeal to ants.

A force crossed a shimmering bluish mana bridge spanning the vast river that marked nature's divide... and collided with an ant hunting party.

As mora clocked them through the ants' eyes at the same instant.

Human-like at first glance. But no humans, these.

"...Elves!"

Seira gasped without thinking.

Armored helms or laurel-crowned robes—every last one sported long, pointed ears poking through their hair.

To locals, ultra-rare enigmas known only from legends and dusty myths.

"Just as the tales say—vile-looking freaks."

The frontrunner smirked, ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠hoisting a massive bow.

Seira, As mora, even Jin-hyuk—who'd caught wind of the deities' scheming via Divine Community—all zeroed in.

Intricate gears studded the mechanical bow's core: a finely wrought magic stone.

The elf channeled mana and loosed. The arrow rocketed out with insane force, mana coiling around it—then it split, unleashing dozens of colossal mana arrows in a blink.

"I-I'm not sure."

Not even Seira—who knew traditional spells plus scraps of hyper-advanced magitech swiped from Arkaina Zero—could ID the power.

One elf's volley shredded ant bodies on contact. As mora reeled at the overkill and yanked the ants back fast.

"Forward. Time to break the smug streak those human-pounding pests have been riding."

The elves surged toward ant nests in force.

While ants ballooned from a puny northeast burrow into this nightmare, these guys had quietly bulked up in the woods, claiming regional overlord status.

"Nasty poison haze. No ordinary toxin—this is laced with some horrific mana-or-Demonic Power cocktail, who knows."

"Only the World Tree's power can cleanse this much."

The elf-polluted hellscape? No sweat for them.

Robed casters whipped out handfuls of powder and dusted the air. Blighted earth purified in seconds, pulsing back to life.

Fresh troops flooded the cleansed ground nonstop.

Ants could only keep peeling away from these total unknowns.

'Every freak in the book.'

Jin-hyuk's brow furrowed deeper watching the scout's feed. He'd known, but damn—this was next-level.

Ant growth was breakneck, true. But these other factions still packed serious untapped punch.

'No more fodder critters.'

As mora could chow bigger and more as she scaled, but to Jin-hyuk's eye, she'd wrung near-max gains from the grub he supplied.

Top regen, killer venom, ironclad chitin, geometric precision moves, optimized joints—you name it.

As mora knew it too. She ditched brute tougher-mutants for game-changers: colossal carriers to ford seas, erosion-nest tactics. That's how she'd backed this behemoth empire into a corner.

But it wasn't enough.

More growth. More evolution. As mora's very reason for being—no moment without that hunger.

'What now? How to shatter the ants' limits again?'

Jin-hyuk brooded hard enough to look downright gloomy.

They needed a paradigm shift for the colony—like predation or pluripotent cells had been. Something to rewrite their fundamental biology.

"...the purpose of this visit to Korea by William, the so-called magic stone-eating hunter famed for his unique energy conversion trait..."

That's when a face flickered on the TV, catching his ear.

His interference topped off right then, the alert confirming his new toy was go.

'Yeah. Stuffing faces with shrooms and meat hits a wall eventually. True limit-breakers? Gotta devour the big leagues.'

His eyes sparked like he'd cracked it.

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