Chapter 247
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Translator: Ryuma
Chapter: 247
Chapter Title: Lesson 48. Teacher Ban Yu-won - 2
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Monsters from abandoned dimensions were so filthy that even folks from higher dimensions wouldn't touch them.
That's because the ceaseless waves of infection could affect anything they carried, even if the people themselves were safe from higher dimensions.
So it was less about fear and more about leaving them be because they were disgusting.
As long as they didn't grow strong enough to break through the dimensional barriers barricading them and spill into outer dimensions.
Inside a sealed dimension, monster waves would turn everything that made up the dimension into monsters. They'd fight each other, devour one another, grow, and slowly thin out their numbers over long ages.
Eventually, unrecognizable freaks blending traits from countless monsters and objects would emerge. Those were called chimeras.
They were a pain to deal with, and even if you managed to kill one, the forcibly fused monster genes would explode on the spot, leaving no corpse behind and blasting out powerful infection waves. No gains whatsoever.
"By the gods, who the hell created such a horrific mongrel...?"
Over time, those chimeras would clump together again, ballooning even larger. At that point, they stopped being mere monsters and became more like natural phenomena.
Like black holes, sucking in and devouring everything around them—massive spheres of something...
They were called Chimera Balls.
Ban Yu-won stared in shock at the Chimera Balls—each at least a hundred meters in diameter, the smallest of them—feeling an eerie sense of déjà vu.
"Don't tell me that 'giant space monster' line from earlier was foreshadowing...!"
"The Chancellor's insane. Exodus wasn't enough; shoving these abominations at Academy students? He's nothing but a madman."
Aire spread mana infused with chill in all directions to halt the spheres' advance as she spat the words.
At the root of her ice was the power of deceleration.
Her potent freeze slowed all forms of motion, making it one of the strongest tools against infection waves. Right now, the Chimera Balls lunging for their spaceship froze as if slamming into an invisible wall.
"Ah, Yu-won, you're here?! Now I can go all out and kill them!"
"No, seriously, where the hell were these massive things hiding?"
"Exodus fleet lost half its ships to these guys."
Until Ban Yu-won's group arrived, Exodus had been luring the Chimera Balls with bait rich in higher-dimensional mana—their favorite snack—drawing them to one side. Then they'd use the monsters to pressure Ban Yu-won's crew.
But Ban Yu-won had flipped Woo Hye-rin's curse, tangling the entire Exodus fleet. Snapping out of it, the Chimera Balls turned on the exposed Exodus ships and started feasting.
That combo play was a huge reason the Exodus fleet wiped out so fast.
"Just blowing them up gets you swept in their mana! You have to induce their mana reactions to scatter them..."
"If Kshana handles mana sonic waves, maybe...!"
The club members, who had belatedly exited the ship and spotted the Chimera Balls, muttered gravely.
But the other Rebellion members—Dokgo Yeon, Asya, and Aire—ignored the infection waves entirely, hunting down the cores making up the beasts and attacking wildly.
"Then they explode! That's too danger—oh."
Kshana, trying to stop them in horror, fell silent as she watched Dokgo Yeon's death aura spear through the center of a massive Chimera Ball.
She braced for the massive blast, readying her sonic waves, but Ban Yu-won shouted first.
"Yeon, don't wipe them all out—leave some!"
"Knew you'd say that."
The death energy cleanly severed only the Chimera Ball's sustaining life force and vanished.
The collapsing sphere unleashed explosive force and massive infection waves—but all of it transmuted into strings of concepts, sucked into Ban Yu-won's outstretched hand.
Acquired Life 1, Vital Energy 1, Fusion 127, Collapse 18. Fusion and Collapse are concepts living beings cannot possess.
No way... how could it taste this good?
Ban Yu-won watched his freshly minted 1,000 Life tick up to 1,001, his eyes sparkling.
As expected from its size and monstrous power, it was a chunk of experience—but on top of that, he'd scored massive hauls of higher concepts: Fusion and Collapse!
He figured the Chimera Ball's core concept was Fusion, and when it lost its life force, the forced fusion collapsed explosively, trying to revert to infection waves.
But Ban Yu-won conceptualized it in time, wiping the infection waves and splitting it into absorbable Fusion and Collapse.
"Whoa... whoaaa..."
The club members, led by Kshana, went silent in awe as an explosion that could obliterate a lower-dimensional city vanished without a trace at Ban Yu-won's casual gesture, realizing anew just how ridiculously overpowered he was.
They still reeled from the shock and sorrow of their Exodus days targeting his life, but watching this... it almost made those dead comrades seem pathetic for even thinking of fighting him.
"Yu-won, incoming!"
"Incoming? What..."
True Dragon Sword—no, Spear. Asya extended its length to dozens of meters in an instant, crammed it full of mana, and hurled it at a Chimera Ball.
It felt like watching a slender girl chuck the 63 Building like a baseball.
Handling a building-sized ball that lightly? Stunned, Ban Yu-won still reached out toward it.
Just before the Chimera Ball smashed into him, the mana injected at impact detonated inside!
Acquired Life 1, Vital Energy 2, Fusion 135, Collapse 11.
"Nice catch!"
"That was..."
Perfectly timing the concept recovery, Ban Yu-won narrowed his eyes at Asya prepping round two from afar.
She hasn't been punished enough, has she? What new nickname for dinner tonight? As he pondered, Aire stared at him intently.
"What?"
"Me too. Catch it good."
"...?"
Aire conjured a massive ice pillar and launched it into space.
What was the point? But it elongated horizontally to kilometers, skewering several Chimera Balls before turning toward Ban Yu-won.
It absorbed no mana from the balls, killed their life force without triggering blasts, and bound them temporarily—an unreal technique. But Ban Yu-won was too busy extracting concepts from the incoming exploding ice pillar and the chain-reacting Chimera Balls to admire it.
Acquired Life 3, Vital Energy 5, Fusion 359, Collapse 37.
He scooped the concepts just in time and shot Aire a glare, but she smirked in satisfaction and started crafting another ice pillar.
What baffled him most was Dokgo Yeon eyeing it all with displeasure before speeding up her own attacks.
In the end, Ban Yu-won was stuck on hardcore mode, catching hundreds-of-meters-wide Chimera Balls from three directions before they blew.
"What the hell are they competing over?"
"Hehe, how cute."
"Kinda scary, though..."
Kshana shuddered anew watching Chimera Balls—capable of dooming lower and even higher dimensions—get treated like love-filled baseballs tossed at Ban Yu-won.
In this tournament where handling their horrific infection waves and blasts was the key to dimension cleansing, they were competing over who could stylishly toss the most.
But... if that's the game.
"Me too! I wanna play!"
Kshana's twisted competitive fire ignited.
"Kshana!"
"We'll help!"
"Your authority can do it!"
The special admission crew, centered on Kshana, bravely charged the Chimera Balls.
Her sound waves controlling vibrations were perfect for chimeras; combining with the others let them time it just right, tossing to Ban Yu-won right before life-force loss triggered explosion.
"Catch, Yu-won sunbae!"
"No competing!"
Chimera Balls always sought devourable prey.
No need to hunt in the spaceship; they came running. The two-day special tournament wrapped in under half a day.
Union Expedition took the win, no contest.
Sure, Rebellion handled nearly ninety percent, but showcasing the club members' awakened powers—especially Kshana's anti-Chimera authority—across all dimensions achieved their goal.
The two core concepts from the Chimera Balls had clumped to depths rivaling his all-time bests.
Back on the ship to Union, as Ban Yu-won pondered their uses, Sellon telepathed him.
[I've got a question. What's the difference between Synthesis and Fusion?]
Synthesis was a top-tier concept from clearing the orc wave sparked by the Previous Eternity Follower's fragment.
Ban Yu-won explained simply.
"Synthesis is the completed state of merging. Fusion is the act of merging itself. Or at least, that's how I see it."
[That's a seriously dangerous concept. Don't ever pull it out by mistake.]
"Dangerous means useful. Might start actively hunting abandoned dimensions from now on."
Staring at the Code Core holding those two concepts, Ban Yu-won recalled his clash with Woo Hye-rin.
Woo Hye-rin believed dimensional walls divided mana densities across dimensions, with Union as the root of all evil for creating them.
Obviously false... but he suspected special reasons why monster waves culminated in Fusion phenomena.
Maybe the walls were made precisely because of...
"Hoo..."
Ten Great Families, Chancellor, dimensional walls, space pirates... and the Tower.
Ban Yu-won felt himself inching closer to the universe's secrets.
Too heavy for a mere first-year Academy student, but as Babel Tower's future lord, it was inevitable.
'Anyway, handled all immediate stuff. Time for solo explorations, as promised to Sellon.'
He nodded sharply, eyes keen—then.
"Y-Yu-won!"
Asya screamed and clung to his arm.
Turning to a sensation worlds apart from her old male days, her teary face was suddenly in his face.
"Midterms are in two weeks! I don't remember studying at all!"
"Don't use your dark history as a convenient excuse. You weren't gonna study anyway."
Aire sipped her tea beside them and added calmly.
"A great founding hero wouldn't sweat Union exams."
"I didn't found anything!"
Ban Yu-won soothed the sniffling Asya nestling into him and clicked his tongue inwardly.
Come to think of it, he'd forgotten midterms came before solo runs.
...Just when he'd finally settled into a normal student life, a bit relieved.