The Lust Emperor Unleashed
The mercenaries Jincheon had rescued were racing toward the power source along three separate routes.
The strange part was that the Mother was not attacking them at all—simply leaving them alone.
Convinced it was preparing another encirclement for a surprise assault, the mercenaries scattered radar devices as they advanced, securing the area around them step by step.
Only Team 3 discovered just how pointless all of that effort truly was.
"Th-this is…"
"What the hell… happened here…?"
The corridor was packed with Crypter corpses. Almost every body had been burst open or torn apart as if something had simply ripped them in half.
Kyaaaaa…
Bang! Crunch! Crack!
From far ahead came the sounds of ongoing combat. Team 3 realized they no longer needed to watch their flanks and simply followed the noise.
What they found waiting for them was this:
"Kikeeeek!"
Rip! Rrrriiiip!
Jincheon, gripping a Crypter’s head in both hands and tearing it cleanly left and right.
"Oh my god…"
"What the hell… is that guy…?"
The mercenaries of Team 3 could only stare, faces blank with disbelief at the slaughter unfolding right in front of them.
The Team 3 leader, desperate to confirm he was not hallucinating, linked his Bio Device to the other team leaders and streamed the carnage live.
"Fuck… is that even human…?"
"Th-this… this is… what the hell…"
The other leaders reacted the exact same way, proving that what Team 3 was seeing was no illusion.
"Kwereeeek!"
"Keugigit!"
Other Crypters lunged from every direction the moment Jincheon finished ripping the head free. He simply spun his entire body, both arms sweeping in wide, powerful arcs.
Whirrrrr!
Every Crypter that touched those arms was flung into the air with the exaggerated, almost theatrical spin of an old Chinese action movie. Jincheon followed up with open-palm strikes into empty space; the airborne bodies slammed into the walls and exploded into bloody pulp.
"Keeeeeek!"
One after another, forces that defied every law of common sense kept erupting from him—yet the Crypters still charged. If anything, a desperate urgency now radiated from them: they could not afford to lose this ground.
"Hahahaha! Yes! This is it! This is how a real fight should feel!"
Jincheon wore a smile of pure delight as he watched the Crypters keep coming even after witnessing his power. Perhaps what he had truly wanted all along was an enemy that refused to lose its will to fight no matter how overwhelming he became.
That was one reason he still bothered fighting in mecha. Childhood dreams played a part, of course, but more than that, enemies who saw his bare strength would never burn with fighting spirit again. Hiding power capable of reducing an entire world to ash was impossible without a genuine desire for peace—and Jincheon was far too violent, far too emotional, and far too lust-driven to ever become that kind of power-suppressing protagonist.
The only reason he had once chosen seclusion in Murim was that every opponent who felt his true strength simply gave up. For a man who lived for the thrill of battle, that was a fatal problem. So he had always held back. Now, facing Crypters that kept attacking even after tasting his power, he felt a near-maddening joy.
"Dynamite!!"
He drove a fist straight through the abdomen of a muscle-bound Crypter, seized its spine, and punched clean through.
"Hahahaha! I’ve always wanted to try that once—turns out it’s every bit as fun as I imagined!"
Laughing with pure satisfaction, he acted exactly like the protagonist of a certain manga who tore demons and monsters apart while proudly calling himself a twelve-out-of-ten man (no, that is not a typo). Even so, his mind kept analyzing the creatures.
They were a completely new life form; a spark of scientific curiosity had lit inside him.
Bones, flesh, blood… the basic building blocks of life are all here. So even these things can’t fully escape the standard template of living organisms.
Most Crypters possessed at least the minimum requirements for a living body. Of course—
Shrrrrk!
—there were also tentacles strong enough to factor a human body into neat pieces.
When those tentacles burst from ceiling vents, walls, and floor to coil around him, Jincheon simply lifted one foot and stamped down with crushing weight.
BOOM!
A shockwave erupted from the impact point and instantly burst every tentacle that had been strong enough to shred a man.
"In this world there are exactly two kinds of existence that can be killed in pure self-defense. One is—"
Pop! Pop! Pop! Pop!
He casually exploded every Crypter that charged him, one punch at a time, while continuing his lecture.
"—the male bastard who goes ‘hawawa’ while pretending to be cute. And the other is—"
BOOOOM!
Thud-thud-thud-thud—
He released a wave of Inner Qi; the invisible force detonated every Crypter in front of him. Chunks of meat and a rain of blood filled the air.
"—the bastard who tries tentacle play on a man."
The tentacles aimed at him had clearly pissed him off; his tone had gone razor-sharp.
"Kieeeek!"
"Kek-kek-kek!"
Suddenly the Crypters began grabbing corpses and fleeing. It was not a panicked rout—they deliberately left sacrificial units behind. A strategic retreat.
"Hoh. So they still have a card left to play?"
Buying time meant a final trump card existed. Dragging the bodies was proof enough.
Jincheon ignored the Crypters still fighting to the death, piled the corpses he had already made into a crude chair, and sat down.
"If you need time, take as much as you want. I’ll wait."
Watching through the eyes of her minions, the Mother seemed rattled; the movements of the remaining sacrificial Crypters grew chaotic.
"Wh-what the hell are you doing!?"
The Team 3 leader, who had been staring blankly at Jincheon’s rampage, finally found his voice.
"We have to take the Mother down before she pulls something! This one’s experienced! You can’t give her time!"
"That’s exactly why I’m giving her time. She put on a good show for me—least I can do is watch her final thrashing."
"D-don’t screw around! This isn’t a game…!"
"It is a game."
"What?"
The leader had been about to insist that purification work was no game, but Jincheon cut him off cold.
"If I felt like it, I could have finished every Crypter I’ve faced so far in under ten seconds. Instead I tore them apart one by one, beat them to death piece by piece. To me this is nothing more than a long-overdue chance to stretch my muscles—a game."
Then he added a half-threat aimed straight at the Team 3 leader and everyone watching through Bio Devices.
"You—and every other bastard watching me right now—listen carefully. The Crypters are making their last stand. Stay put and don’t interfere."
"Stop spouting bullshit!"
"No matter how many you kill, as long as the corpses remain the Crypters can rebuild their numbers! Taking the bodies just now proves it!"
"Is that so?"
Jincheon’s smile turned intrigued at the Team 2 leader’s warning. He stretched out a hand; using Heogongsbeomul he pulled every remaining corpse—including the ones he had been sitting on—into the air.
"Then take these too. It’ll make whatever comes next even more entertaining."
He compressed the bodies into a single massive lump of flesh, seared the meat together with intense heat, and hurled the whole thing after the fleeing Crypters.
THUD!
The giant meatball hit the floor with a deafening crash even though he had added almost no force—proof that it was packed solid with flesh, no empty space left inside.
"Wh-what are you doing!?"
While the Team 3 leader panicked, one Crypter under the Mother’s command began rolling the meatball away.
"Take him down! C-7! Kill that bastard!"
A lean man called C-7 raised a sniper rifle and fired at the fleeing Crypter. Jincheon casually pinched the bullet between index and middle finger as if using chopsticks.
"Did you not hear what I just said?"
"You crazy son of a bitch! If they take those corpses they can spawn the same numbers all over again!"
"That’s why I’m sending them. You’re making me repeat myself."
Jincheon’s brow furrowed; irritation was starting to show.
"You two as well—final warning. I’ll handle the Crypters myself. Interfere and… I won’t kill you, but I will break something and toss you into open space."
He delivered the same warning to the other team leaders whose faces appeared on Bio Devices.
Just as a heated argument was about to explode, the Crypters that had been fighting to the death suddenly turned and fled.
"So the preparations are finished, huh? Heh heh heh."
Recalling the sacrificial units meant there was no longer any need to buy time. Jincheon strolled toward the power source with his hands clasped behind his back, genuinely curious about what the Mother had prepared.
A trap? Sheer numbers? A handful of elites? This feeling of looking forward to a real opponent… it’s been far too long.
The competitive fire he had not felt since becoming the absolute ruler of Murim known as the Lust Emperor. Coming to this world had been the right choice after all. Smiling in quiet satisfaction, he continued on with the awkward Team 3 mercenaries trailing behind him.
They arrived to find the guard room, checkpoint, and corridor immediately in front of the power chamber transformed into one enormous open plaza.
"What is this place?"
"The Crypters must have rewritten the internal structure."
Moments later Teams 1 and 2 also emerged into the plaza; every surviving mercenary was now gathered in one place.
"Jincheon."
"Where are the Crypters?"
Heliane and Calsira, who had been fighting alongside Team 2, hurried over the moment they entered the open space. Filthy fluids covered them from head to toe—proof of how hard they had fought while Jincheon was rescuing the others.
"Looks like they’re about to make their entrance."
Jincheon lifted his gaze to the ceiling. Every eye followed.
CRACK! Rumble-rumble-rumble!
The ceiling shattered and roughly a dozen Crypters dropped down, landing in a defensive line that blocked the power source. All of them were bipedal, thick with muscle, and stood nearly three meters tall.
"Th-this is bad!"
"Open fire!"
The mercenaries opened fire on pure reflex. Jincheon did not stop them. If these new Crypters could be taken down by ordinary weapons, giving the Mother time would have been meaningless.
Clang-clang-clang-clang!
"No way!"
"Every single one of them is using Larium!"
Even without taking defensive stances, the Crypters shrugged off both bullets and lasers. Their outer shells were completely plated in Larium. Unlike the earlier models that had been little more than bone wrapped in skin, these ones possessed dense muscle capable of tearing through anything.
Boom! Crash!
Larium bulkheads slammed down over the corridors the mercenaries had used, sealing every escape route. An ordinary Mother could never manipulate human-made materials with this level of skill. This one was far more experienced than anyone had expected.
"Damn it! I told you to stop playing around and just kill them!"
"We’re all going to die now!"
Faced with monsters their weapons could not scratch, the mercenaries turned on Jincheon in despair. The moment death felt close, their true natures surfaced and they began tearing into him for the “mistake.”
"What kind of nonsense are you spouting?"
"If it weren’t for Jincheon you would already be corpses!"
Heliane and Calsira snapped back, but the mercenaries—now trapped in a room with invulnerable monsters—kept pouring out blame.
The Crypters simply watched the humans bicker among themselves, almost as if returning the favor of the time Jincheon had given them earlier.
"Pfft. Hahahahahahaha!"
Under the rain of accusations Jincheon had lowered his head—then he could no longer hold the laughter in. It burst out of him in a full-throated roar.
"People really are the same everywhere! Different species, different cultures—doesn’t matter! In the end, people are people! Hahahahahaha!"
From the twenty-first century he had once lived in, through the fifteenth-to-seventeenth-century Murim world, all the way to this far-future galaxy—Jincheon had just confirmed once again that human nature never changed. He kept laughing until, abruptly, the laughter cut off and his face went cold. The entire plaza fell silent.
"Sorry about this, Crypters."
Apologizing to the monsters only made every stare even stranger.
"I was planning to play with you a little longer, but now that everyone’s blaming me I suddenly feel like flipping the whole situation in one move and shutting every mouth in this room."
Rumble-rumble-rumble—
A massive vibration began to radiate from Jincheon’s body. A portion of the power he had kept sleeping finally stirred awake.
"Khaaaak!"
"Kikeet!"
The Mother instinctively understood that leaving him free any longer would be fatal and ordered the Crypters to charge.
"Behind me. Cover your ears."
Jincheon gently pushed Heliane and Calsira back out of harm’s way, then slid his right foot rearward and slowly rotated his right arm until the fist was cocked against his ribs—loaded like a cannon.
Thud-thud-thud-thud!
The Larium-armored Crypters closed to within twenty paces.
"Ha!"
Jincheon swept his left hand once in a wide arc.
WHOOOOOOSH!!
A visible, space-warping spiral of air blasted outward. Every Crypter caught in it clawed at the floor, at walls, at anything solid—yet even the things they grabbed were ripped free and they were sucked into a single tumbling mass.
"Hup!"
At the same instant his rear foot stepped forward and the right fist that had been “chambered” against his side drove out in a perfectly straight, immovable punch.
BOOOOOOM!!
A detonation like the birth of a new star tore through the plaza.
"Uwaaaaah!"
"Ghaaaak!"
Mercenaries clapped hands over their ears, faces twisted in agony. Some bled from ruptured eardrums. Yet the moment the pain faded they forgot it completely—because of what they saw.
Where the tangled mass of Crypters had been, a hole of almost identical size now punched deep into the darkness beyond. The Larium-plated monsters had simply… vanished.
"Hmm. Lives up to its reputation. I didn’t expect any of it to keep its shape."
Jincheon peered into the black tunnel he had created, mildly surprised that fragments of Larium still retained form even after being shattered.
"…"
"…"
"…"
Every mercenary stood with mouths hanging open, staring blankly at the result of Jincheon’s fist-wind. Not one of them could ask what had just happened. The slightest slip of sanity and the storm of emotions raging inside their skulls would have driven them mad on the spot.