Volume 6 / Chapter 186
TL: LightNovelCafe
Editor: Hungry Panda
It is dark.
That was Cha Jun Sung"s first thought when he was locked up in the dark tent. He cannot see anything. This is the first question. As he went through body modification and became a mutant, he gained the ability to see at night as though it is daytime.
But he cannot see in front of him as though he has gone blind. His other senses are fine. There is only an effect on his sight.
"Manual operation of battlesuit, command. Secure visibility."
Wiing!
Cha Jun Sung put on the helmet he had taken off. Functions including night vision goggles, heat detection, and infrared detection are activated manually and they scan the stuffy s.p.a.ce.
The battlesuit connects to the PDA. When he logged out of the PDA, the helpers were moved so artificial intelligence was automatically logged out as well.
He cannot receive Odin"s help. It is a bother, but he needs to figure it out for himself.
"Huh?"
What he can see with his night vision is the shape of the tent that is covering everything.
Did he say that it is a dark tent?
He borrowed the power of machines and was able to figure out the rough configuration of the structure.
But infrared detection is useless.
The dark tent is a living barrier that Black Demon"s wings created. The entire thing is marked in red. The infrared ray did not detect anything in particular either.
"Light activation."
His light turns on. Cha Jun Sung"s battlesuit shines a light. The tent"s shape becomes clear.
Beep beep!
[The amount of oxygen is decreasing. Preliminary oxygen ejection, time limit 30 minutes.]
Did he block off all ventilation as well?
This tent will breathe since it is also alive. What if it takes the enemy"s oxygen so they suffocate, and gets the rest from outside?
It is completely Black Demon"s area. Since he is locked in, he will suffocate to death regardless of everything else unless he rips through the tent or digs through the ground.
"Come out."
Cha Jun Sung was offended.
Why is Black Demon locking him in like this when he said that they should talk?
Does he want to test him?
Ping ping!
Cha Jun Sung is standing in the center of the tent, and something comes flying at him.
He does not know what it is. It is extremely fast. His instincts moved him more quickly than his senses did.
He threw his body to the side at the sign of danger. Then, a sharp thorn fell from the ceiling and dug into the ground. The tent is attacking him.
Ping ping ping ping!
This time, it happened several times, not just once. The speed is the same as before.
But as the attacks overlapped, the entire area including the ceiling had thorns sticking out of it. Cha Jun Sung was rushed trying to avoid them.
He is getting angrier and angrier.
It does not seem like Black Demon would do this without reason, but his patience is running thin. And then he reached his limit.
Kung!
Cha Jun Sung blew up the power buried intrinsically within him. He could not reduce his battlesuit, which had gone through the process to become the Overbooster, into sc.r.a.p metal.
So while he exploded, he pressed the release b.u.t.ton. As the battlesuit separated, his human skin peeled. A demon woke up within the darkness. He turned the PDA off and because he is hidden under the tent, Black Demon is the only one that can see him. He had refrained from awakening solely to fool the helpers. He does not want to hide it away in a situation like this.
A sickle shaped blade forms from Cha Jun Sung"s body. He found inspiration for this skill in a mutant, Tornado, he encountered in the past. If Black Demon does not appear immediately, he intends to chop up the tent.
"You b.a.s.t.a.r.d!"
"So… I was right."
Large pieces of flesh gathered on the ceiling and dropped Black Demon down. He maintained his form and looked over Cha Jun Sung.
"Are you the one who fought Medusa and Beholder in the city of Rome in Italy?"
"How did you know that?"
"When they got back, I was enjoying a date with White Queen."
Cha Jun Sung did not accept the word "date" literally.
White Queen fought Cruel King, and he had appeared when she was being overwhelmed by Lifers as though he had been waiting. It is right to interpret this as meaning that they held a meeting.
"That"s not what I"m saying. I"m asking how you knew it was me."
"How could I not?"
Black Demon had looked half human and half mutant, but his appearance began to twist. He had held characteristics of both species, but his body crumpled like clay and then he became one species.
That is a human. A complete human form as Cha Jun Sung himself.
"What are you playing at?"
Cha Jun Sung was not surprised. Imitating his image is nothing for a level 9 that can go through whole body mutation at will.
"Does this look like a joke?"
"Then what else could it be?"
"Cha Moo Hyun, Lim Hye Yang."
"What?"
"Father Cha Moo Hyun, only son, born August 21, 1966. Mother Lim Hye Yang, 4 siblings, born December 18, 1967, and her family is worse than her neighbors?"
Cha Jun Sung released from his awakened state. He had intended on going wild, but he was covered in gooseb.u.mps as soon as he heard what Black Demon was saying. It felt like he had been splashed with cold water.
"You - you, how…"
"I"m sure you know that this is Earth, too? There"s no difference between where you live and this place. The same people lived in the same environment."
Lived. Past tense. Now, it is dominated by mutants.
"Unless you"re stupid, I"m sure you understood what I"m saying."
He knows what Black Demon wants to hear.
It is a hint, and a very explicit one at that. A mutant knows his parents" names and their family relations. How could he have known their birthdates? The same people and environment? He would be dumb if he did not know.
"You"re me?"
"You in that world and me in this world are the same. We"re different but the same and the same but different. Proof? Your body is proof. Cha Jun Sung."
Cha Jun Sung looks down at his hand.
Awakening of level 8 whole body mutation. Come to think of it, Oriax had said that it was scared he would swallow it up.
Oriax had felt a level 9 potential buried somewhere deep inside of him.
"Are you saying that I"m a level 9 mutant?"
"No. I don"t know the cause, but you weren"t able to awaken properly. There are things along the way that we can"t know. I"m sure it"s coexisting in that body?"
He is not complete. He stopped while evolving. He is strong now but if the strength he was supposed to have was similar to that of Black Demon"s, he has failed.
"Oriax, come out."
[I don"t want to. I"m scared. He"s a monster that"s out of balance. My existence itself is crushed just by looking at him. Don"t look for me. Figure it out yourself.]
Oriax began talking less after witnessing White Queen and Cruel King.
Its is mixed with Cha Jun Sung, but they are different beings. It was frightened by a top level predator. This is the same situation.
"As long as you"re me and you don"t give up the life of a mutant, you will fully awaken one day. The idea of 2 Black Demons isn"t bad."
Cha Jun Sung is speechless. He wants to say that he is a human, but he is currently a mutant no matter which way he tries to look at it. That is why this lacks persuasiveness.
"At the similar time, two changes occurred in two worlds, whereby two results came out. Like this. Isn"t it funny? Lifers develop in your world through a game Life Mission, while mutants develop in my world with the spread of a virus."
Regardless of their will and instead by the wishes of Life Mission officials, the hunters and game had been decided. That result brought them this kind of meeting.
"You wouldn"t have noticed that they"re the same worlds… There is bound to be overlap when that large of a population is acting."
He is right.
There are various cases where Lifers enter missions and find traces of memorials or go to find the houses they used to live in.
"This world is a bit more in the future than the world you live in. Not dozens of years, but more or less 10? I"m sure they controlled it in Life Mission."
"How did you find out? A mutant to know all this stuff that Lifers don"t even know."
"I heard it."
/ /
Volume 6 / Chapter 187
TL: LightNovelCafe
Editor: Hungry Panda
"Heard it?"
"Are you looking at the notebook that was pa.s.sed to you?"
"I looked through it as a reference a long time ago, but I don"t look at it that much now. There hasn"t been a need to look at it since I became like this. I can kill a level 8 now."
He can break through with overwhelming force if he completes the level B advance mission. On top of that, the opening card will allow him to skip level A to S. If that happens, it will not matter to have the notebook. Even without it, there is no obstacle in his path. It was not that helpful in the first place, only providing keywords.
"From the tone, it seems you"re not the one who gave it to me."
"No. Why do you think we gave you the notebook? Because we want you to develop with that as a base? That wasn"t our intention. We wanted it to become a turning point."
"Turning point?"
"A turning point to change your future. The future did change when my son Red Eye went to Infected Tree, but we needed something certain."
Cha Jun Sung thought carefully. He does not know exactly what this means, but he can understand to a certain point. The biggest turning point had been Underpa.s.s.
He had put his faith in previous experience and the keywords mutant and evolution, but he had almost had his body taken away by Oriax and awakened as a mutant. If Black Demon knew his future, it had become a clear turning point since his world had been flipped upside down.
"You know my future?"
"I know your future before you changed. Right now… I don"t know because you"ve changed."
"You said you heard it, that you"re not the notebook"s owner. Who else is involved in this other than you and your son Red Eye?"
"Oh, I can"t tell you that."
"Answer this. Is he the link connecting you and me?"
"Yes."
For Cha Jun Sung, it is difficult for him to even grasp this situation.
He cannot think of this as the future Cha Jun Sung creating an arrangement for him. His range of thought is out of range and has not even gotten there yet.
"He asked repeatedly."
When the future Cha Jun Sung told him about Life Mission"s secrets, he had told him not to mention him. But Black Demon"s thoughts are different.
He pushed everything over and left to die. He had brought the situation to this and pushed off the responsibility. He is ill-natured.
It is against duty.
Black Demon won"t tell Cha Jun Sung everything either since he did make a promise. But there needs to be some kind of driving force to move him.
"I"ll tell you the way. Going and getting through are your share. Get to level S as quickly as you can and move your mission area to North America."
"Why?"
"I can"t tell you who the person is, but I can tell you where he is. He went to North America to kill Evil Queen."
"Evil Queen…"
"Even if you find Evil Queen before he does, I suggest you don"t approach her until you meet up with him. You can"t win with your ability."
Black Demon has only fought against the future Cha Jun Sung once. It was to see if someone who has reached the apex of humans would be able to take on a level 9 Disaster.
The conclusion was that he could, but not enough to kill.
If he could kill Evil Queen, he would not have lost his friends. The future Cha Jun Sung has much more experience in battle than the current Cha Jun Sung does.
If he goes up to level S and gets all of his specs in order, his pure power will be similar but lacking beyond that. He cannot fill up experience without facing them.
Black Demon had seen Evil Queen when she came to mate as White Queen had done, and got a look at her power.
The strong and weak are decided relatively to Evil Queen as a standard.
"I"ve never fought with her myself, but the force I felt coming from her was less than mine. She"s about similar to White Queen. Around there."
It is not a definite for the strong to win. The winner is the strong one. Black Demon himself is confident that he is the strongest but is not arrogant.
But honestly thinking, he is sure that he would win if they fight one-on-one without interference.
Arrogance? No, it is confidence.
"Evil Queen is similar to White Queen? Whew! So it"s a difference of style."
Cha Jun Sung is oriented for close range combat. If the battlesuit"s full energy is put in the Overmode, its offense power is outstanding but it falls behind in endurance. In that sense, Evil Queen is the best opponent because she falls behind in endurance similarly to Cha Jun Sung, but White Queen is the worst opponent because she is like a steel wall.
He is not so as much as White Queen is, but Cruel King is not fitting either.
"Don"t think that it"ll be easy just because I can beat her. You have to be wary of partial destruction. That"s the level 9 Disaster you guys speak of."
Cha Jun Sung wanted to ask Black Demon why the person he needs to meet is going looking for Evil Queen and why he is trying to kill her, but he held back.
The biggest reason is that Black Demon won"t tell him even if he asks.
"You"re spending more time acting separately from your party these days, right?"
Cha Jun Sung looked puzzled. Other than the time he spent stuck in the mission, they haven"t spent that much time apart. And this time, he was acting on his own.
"It gets trickier as you advance higher. No matter how well you lead your party, they"re bound to be eliminated if they can"t advance on their own."
"What is it you want to say?"
"Don"t drag them into missions. They"ll all die if they don"t have the ability."
The words "They"ll all die" became embedded in Cha Jun Sung"s heart.
He agrees.
He wasn"t thinking about working separately yet, but he can feel that the gap between their levels has grown. It seems that is what Black Demon wants to say.
"This is all I have to say. Go look for him if there"s more you"re curious about."
He found out a lot by meeting Black Demon, but not all of his questions had been answered.
It feels like he hasn"t heard everything.
It is a half truth that doesn"t make him feel refreshed.
"Are you done?"
"There"s one more thing. Keep in mind when you"re facing mutants other than me."
Black Demon gets rid of his human form.
He changes similarly to when Cha Jun Sung awakens. The overall form is the same, but Black Demon is more p.r.o.nounced. The dark tent wrapped around Black Demon and Cha Jun Sung body cheers and beats crazily with explosive strength.
Cha Jun Sung"s heart started beating faster in his suit.
His hands and feet start trembling as though he is having a stroke.
This is fear. He hadn"t felt this much fear even while witnessing the fight between White Queen and Cruel King because he had watched from afar.
If Cha Jun Sung had been exposed to the murder and match from right in front of them, he would have been acting the same.
"… How did you get this strength?"
Black Demon"s power came out even after he awakened.
At this rate, he could burst through the dark tent and shoot into the sky. He has no thoughts of stopping.
Black smoke pours and strength reduces amplification.
Then, another change happened. Faces came out of Black Demon"s cheeks and the back of his head, and two pairs of arms came from his armpits. He is a triple monster. It means there are 3 heads and 6 arms. But Black Demon is a quadruple monster. That is a truly the complete level 9"s awakened state.
"This… is the final form of evolution that you"ll achieve."
Cha Jun Sung pinched his thigh. It is enough to make him lose his mind just by looking at it.
Strength beyond imagination. It did not even come to mind to fight.
"This is the power of a Disaster. Even if Evil Queen is weaker than me, there isn"t that much of a difference. What do you think? It looks like you shouldn"t approach her, right?"
Cha Jun Sung nodded automatically. He cannot take her on even if he awakens. To think that there is this much of a gap with level 9s. It is hard to grasp.
"Keep this power in mind."
There are 2 reasons why Black Demon showed Cha Jun Sung the power of awakening. He is placing restrictions so Cha Jun Sung won"t make mistakes, and in the hopes that he will evolve completely since he has become a mutant already. He has never seen someone live for long after becoming intoxicated in his own strength.
Black Demon returned to his human form. He is done. All they have left to do is to release the dark tent and go their separate ways.
"Put your battlesuit on. You look unsightly."
"Ah!"
Cha Jun Sung realized that he is naked, and put his battlesuit on. His impact tights and underwear had ripped because he awakened.
"Can I ask you one thing?"
"You?"
Cha Jun Sung should be the one asking questions, but for Black Demon to have one. He felt strange because it felt like their roles had switched, but he did not refuse the question.
"… How did your parents pa.s.s away?"
"They were in a car accident when I was in my early 20s, when I was just starting the virtual version."
He had felt like the world was collapsing around him. There is no way to express in words how he had felt then.
"Was it an accident? I guess that"s better since it wasn"t your fault."
"How about yours?"
Their worlds are different, but they are the same people. Their parents, relatives, and friends would have been the same. But his words are strange. What does he mean "your fault"?
"Me. I killed my parents with my own hands."
"What?"
"Awakening comes without warning. It comes without you knowing about it. When I was awakening, my parents were in front of me."
Life Mission spread the virus in Black Demon"s world. He does not know how he became infected, but Korea was destroyed.
"It"s a cruel fate. I heard what I wanted. Now… go out."
Bang!
Black Demon"s arm lengthened and hit Cha Jun Sung. It is a powerful shock that went into his battlesuit, but he had not put in enough strength to kill him.
A part of the dark tent opens and spits Cha Jun Sung out.
Since it did not cushion him, Cha Jun Sung flew out hundreds of meters and rolled on the ground. The world is still dark. Their conversation had not lasted a full hour. There is still a while left before the sun coming up. The night is starting now.
/ /