Chapter 115
Chapter 115
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Translator: Ryuma
Chapter: 115
Chapter Title: Underground Power Plant
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‘Magic beasts connected to another universe...’
Heading toward the emergency power facility, Shin Yu-hyun recalled the moment he took down the Genomorph Recon.
The Genomorph Recon couldn't withstand the skeletons' relentless barrage and finally collapsed.
As the Genomorph Recon fell, Dark Soul Eater activated, granting him Soul Points.
Soul Points could only be obtained from magic beasts.
That meant the Genomorph Recon had crossed over through some method other than a dungeon gate.
‘This isn’t good.’
Magic beasts slipping through via routes other than dungeon gates.
He had never heard of such a thing happening in his previous life.
The thought that events unprecedented in his past life might unfold from now on made his head throb.
‘The real issue is how many of those Genomorphs have crossed over...’
Worrying about the future wouldn’t solve anything right now.
He needed to tackle the immediate problem first.
Shin Yu-hyun desperately hoped not too many Genomorphs had come through.
For Nam Yeon-ah’s safety.
‘I hope she’s safe.’
Nam Yeon-ah was a key figure in Shin Yu-hyun’s plans.
Just the Distortion Field Coat she’d developed—abbreviated as the DF Coat—was already proving incredibly useful.
Beyond that, her artifact technology would be invaluable in the upcoming war against Getia.
To eliminate the traitors and exact revenge on Getia, he needed her help.
‘I’ll save her no matter what.’
Those disrupting his plans, the ones who betrayed humanity in his previous life, the scum who sided with Getia.
He’d make them pay for every single thing they’d done.
And at the end of it all, only their deaths would await.
Steeling his resolve once more, Shin Yu-hyun pressed onward.
“Is this it?”
Lost in thought for a moment, he arrived before a massive steel door that appeared to lead to the research institute’s underground power facility on B1.
Three corridors branched off in front of the steel door.
A long hallway to the left, one to the right, and the straight path he’d just taken.
The entrance to the underground power facility was sealed by the steel door.
“Master, it’s blocked here.”
Dia, who had been sticking close to Shuv, looked at the steel door with a sullen expression.
“It’s fine. We’ll just open it.”
Shin Yu-hyun chuckled and patted Dia’s head.
“Shall I open it?”
“No.”
Shin Yu-hyun shook his head at Shuv’s offer. Shuv had already expended mana opening the main gate to the underground lab.
Now that they knew magic beasts suspected to be from another universe were inside the underground research institute, he couldn’t afford to deploy Shuv.
“Save your strength as much as possible. We don’t know what’s coming next.”
Shuv was currently the strongest summon and ace of Shin Yu-hyun’s undead legion.
With the lab’s interior unknown, they needed to conserve power for any emergencies.
Whoosh.
Black flames erupted from Shin Yu-hyun’s hand.
The dark fire swirled around his fingers.
With each loop around his hand, it grew larger.
Once it reached the size of his upper body, Shin Yu-hyun closed his eyes and focused.
Hiss!
The massively blazing black flames compressed, shrinking to the size of a finger joint and igniting fiercely like a gas torch at his fingertip.
In that state, he pressed his finger against the steel door blocking the underground power facility entrance.
Sizzle!
The ultra-high-temperature black flames from the thin jet began melting through the steel door.
The door’s surface gradually turned red before it.
As the surface started to soften and pierce, Shin Yu-hyun moved his finger in a near-rectangular circle.
He planned to cut out a hole in the door.
While he was hard at work...
Hweeeeeh.
Suddenly, a guttural roar like air being sucked out echoed from the long corridor to the right.
“What’s that?”
Shin Yu-hyun, Shuv, Dia, and even Fluffy turned toward the sound.
Scraaape, thud. Scraaape, thud.
Footsteps dragging across the floor.
Moments later, figures in white lab coats emerged beneath the white orb Shuv had conjured.
“Husks?”
Slave Husks.
They looked exactly like humans.
Except they were so grotesquely twisted that no one could call them living beings.
“Are they... human?”
Shin Yu-hyun’s expression hardened as he stared at the husks.
They wore white lab coats, marking them as researchers from the underground lab.
Yet here they were, transformed into husks.
“They’re already dead.”
Pale complexions, eyes devoid of pupils.
Their entire bodies were unnaturally contorted. They didn’t look like living creatures at all.
But they didn’t feel like undead either.
“More precisely, they seem to have mutated from some infection.”
Shuv added from the side.
“Mutated?”
“Yes. It’s not airborne, at least. I would’ve noticed that. I suspect it’s through saliva.”
“Infection? What the...”
Kraaaah!
At that moment, two husks let out roars and charged at the Sabers.
Crack!
Not only that, their jaws split open into massive maws.
Inside were circular teeth like chainsaw blades, grotesque beyond words.
“Definitely too bizarre to call undead.”
Shin Yu-hyun grimaced at the sight.
Even humanoid undead like zombies or ghouls no longer resembled humans, but husks merely retained a human shape while being twisted into something utterly hideous.
“So that’s the source of the infection.”
Shin Yu-hyun recalled the Genomorph Recon.
How it obsessively tried to jab its tongue tip into the skeletons.
It seemed getting pierced by a Genomorph Recon’s tongue turned one into a husk.
“If even one got out, it’d be a catastrophe.”
Shin Yu-hyun frowned.
Magic beasts that could mutate superhumans into more of their kind.
He’d thought them unthreatening if you avoided their ambush tongue strikes from the dark. The Genomorph Recon had gone down easily to the skeletons’ group assault, after all.
But who knew a tongue stab would trigger a husk transformation.
Pfshk!
Kieeeek!
The aggressively charging husks were blocked by the Sabers’ kite shields, then impaled by the Lancers’ long spears, losing momentum.
Followed by the Sabers’ gray longswords swinging down.
Kiaaaak!
One husk, enraged, flung its jaw wide open to the chest and bit a Saber’s shin.
Crunch! Splat.
Kieeeek!
But the Saber wore gray shin guards, and its bones were incredibly tough. The husk’s teeth shattered instead.
‘Rank difference can’t be ignored.’
Husks were 3-star.
The skeletons were 4-star, equipped and reinforced to boot.
The husks couldn’t even scratch their bones.
A total of five husks had appeared.
The Sabers and Lancers smoothly formed an attack formation to handle them.
The moment the Sabers’ shield charge knocked the husks down, it was over. Gray longswords and spears rained down on the fallen foes.
Once the skeletons dispatched the five husks, Shin Yu-hyun gained a total of 15 Soul Points.
And even as the skeletons fought, Shin Yu-hyun hadn’t stopped working. He’d already cut more than halfway through the steel door with his black flames.
A bit more, and he could duck through the hole.
‘I’ll tuck Fluffy into the shadows for a sec and pull him out after.’
It was a bit small for Fluffy, who was 3 meters long with a shoulder height of about 2 meters. Even Shin Yu-hyun had to turn sideways and duck his head to fit.
Moments later, having finished cutting with the black flames, Shin Yu-hyun kicked the door.
Bam!
A section of the steel door flew inward, creating a large hole.
‘Nice hole.’
With the sizable gap in the steel door, Shin Yu-hyun turned to the husks.
Using Undead Creation on them, he summoned Skeleton Soldiers as proxies.
Crunch.
Bones and flesh were stripped from the husk corpses, revealing five Skeleton Soldiers.
Skeleton Core Mastery’s legionization took effect, assigning the five Skeleton Soldiers the Saber class and boosting their rank from 3-star to 4-star.
With five new Skeleton Sabers reinforcing his ranks, Shin Yu-hyun looked back at Shuv, Dia, and Fluffy.
“Shall we head in?”
“Yes!”
Dia replied energetically to Shin Yu-hyun’s words, while Shuv nodded with a silent smile.
Grrr.
Fluffy let out a low growl before vanishing into the shadows.
Shin Yu-hyun ducked through into the research institute’s power facility.
Shuv and Dia followed, and the skeletons squeezed in awkwardly due to their armor but managed.
Fluffy emerged from the shadows again.
‘Spacious.’
As expected of a power facility, the interior space was vast.
The walls were lined with machinery resembling generators and transformers.
‘Is that the mana stone generator?’
Shin Yu-hyun eyed a massive device slightly toward the back of the facility’s central area.
A colossal cylindrical mana stone generator towering at least 10 meters high.
Dozens of mana stones—from minimum 4-star to maximum 6-star—were embedded in its core, sorted by rank. Easily over a hundred.
It must boast tremendous output.
Bzzzzt!
But the generator wasn’t idle. Astonishingly, it was running.
Yet the power it generated wasn’t supplying the research facility.
Because...
“Is that thing the reason?”
Shin Yu-hyun frowned, glaring at the creature clinging to the generator’s center.
A loathsome abomination.
It resembled a massive brain sprouting countless tentacles.
The brain alone was a whopping 3 meters across, with tentacles extending over 5 meters.
The thing had wrapped its long tentacles around the generator, sucking in mana. It seemed to absorb mana through them.
The identity of the magic beast latched onto the mana stone generator, draining its mana, was...
A 4-star swarm magic beast boss.