Chapter 415: A Step Toward Desolation (3)

Rumble!

The vast underground.

K-Merrow Nell looked at the hundred-meter wide underground room with a disgusted expression.

“This place always gets on my nerves… What are you doing?”

There were various tools around, and he could not figure out what they were for, along with various forms of energy and experimental subjects.

The man, who was in the center of the lab, said in response, “Experimenting.”

“Experimenting?”

The man nodded at K-Merrow Nell’s question.

“Yeah, tests regarding the aliens who call themselves ‘humans.’”

“You…You aren’t attempting the Flame’s Blessing again, right?”

K-Merrow Nell had deduced what the man was searching for as he looked at the marks on the corpses on the ground. The man nodded.

“Didn’t you say you had already finished the experiment? About five years ago.”

“… I did.”

The man thought of the past and nodded. He had gone into research right away, from the moment the aliens first appeared on this land. It had been an experiment to allow the Flame’s power to enter the bodies of those humans, but it had ended in massive failure.

Unlike the Angkara, who had been exposed to the power of the Flame their entire lives, those ‘humans’ had not been able to withstand the power of the Flame and started melting away one by one.

It hadn’t been a question of strength.

In terms of body strength, those humans had been way stronger than citizen who didn’t wear Dragon God Armor.

Even before the strange elevator had descended on humans, their race was just too weak to begin with. They were weak, and it was for that reason that they had raised their strength by using things called runes, artifacts and skills.

However, that strength had become a poison since their bodies could barely withstand it.

As the strength of the Red Jade was added onto this, their bodies were unable to withstand the amount of energy and basically started melting down on themselves.

“You even failed on those things called Transcendents. You told me that before.”

The man nodded.

‘Yeah…’

As the elevator descended and the general power level of the humans rose extremely fast, some came out of the Flameless Lands and tried to fight. Of course, that was futile.

Maybe if they had gone through at least four transformations, but with only one or two levels of change, they were too weak. Thanks to that, they had been caught, and he had been able to experiment on them again.

He had thought that extremely powerful bodies and souls might bring him success in his experiments, but the result was utter failure again.

Though their bodies and souls had gotten stronger, they had been changed forcibly through the Crystals, and their bodies had been barely holding on.

As the power from the Crystals and the Blessing collided with one another, another failure occurred. The subjects had all become living bombs.

“I thought you had given up, but it seems fun to make the same mistake over and over again, huh?” K-Merrow Nell asked.

One mistake could be forgiven. Actually, multiple mistakes could be forgiven. However, by repeating the same mistake twice, there was no way out of being punished since people like that didn’t seek to advance and would make the same mistake again in the future.

However, the man in front of him was doing the exact thing he hated most.

The man responded, expressionlessly after K-Merrow Nell’s words, “So what? Are you going to do something about it?”

“…You really are a bastard. Do whatever you want. But, you’ll need to activate the Relic within the timeframe no matter what. I really wish to get rid of that thing as soon as possible.”

K-Merrow Nell looked toward the giant mountain in the distance, the thing that was shaking in a disturbing manner.

If he didn’t get rid of it as soon as possible, he felt like he wouldn’t have an easy time sleeping.

The man nodded.

“Don’t worry. There’s no need for me to do anything else to it anymore anyway.”

The Relic was already pumping its power into the core of the planet, toward the Red Jade. There was nothing he needed to do anymore.

The Relic would succeed in agitating the Red Jade in time, and the Red Jade would destroy everything on the planet as punishment for disturbing it.

K-Merrow Nell walked out with a frown as the man continued to look at the body he was experimenting on. It was the body of a very ordinary human, not even one they called Transcendent.

The body he was looking at was similar to the ones who had already ascended. There was one key thing that was different about them, however.

‘Yeah…These guys are different.’

Before and after the elevator landed.

The ones who had been there before and the ones who came after were different. The ones who had been there before were just inferior. No matter what skills they had or how many crystals they had devoured, nothing changed. However, the ones that came up after the elevator had descended were different.

‘Their bodies have already gone through multiple rounds of modifications.’

It wasn’t just some regular modification either. They were extremely advanced, to the point of the man’s own race barely being able to accomplish something like it.

Their bodies had been rebuilt, implanted with a pool of mana and then further strengthened by use of some strange material.

‘This…This might be enough.’

Joy appeared on the man’s face.

It might really be enough for his experiment to succeed.

Zzzzzt!

Chiiiiizzzztt!

The man dissected another subject and then started to ponder.

Not enough. It wasn’t enough.

‘I… I need more subjects.’

He didn’t only need a Transcendent, but he needed a Transcendent who had gone through those body modifications.

He had gathered quite a lot of bodies due to the chaos this time around, but they weren’t enough. He needed living specimens, and a lot of them. Only then, might he be able to succeed.

‘Good. But, who did all of these modifications?’

They were more than simple modifications. They were closer to art. As the man looked at the various traces upon the body, he got lost in thought.

….

Kiriel breathed in deeply as she looked at the giant mountain in the distance, as well as the Capital that was behind it.

‘Haa…’

She was getting nervous, but she calmed herself down and turned around.

“What’s the situation like currently?”

Metionel replied as he checked the status of the Capital, “I haven’t checked everything, but I’m sure the Relic is inside the Capital.”

Since the Capital’s main systems had been destroyed, it was even harder to monitor it. All useful Technorats who had survived in various cities had been called to the Capital for recovery work.

The cracks were rapidly being mended, and that made it harder and harder to surveil them. It was hard to figure out the exact details of the situation, but one thing was clear, the Relic was inside the Capital.

‘Four days just to find out a small detail like this…’

Since there was too much at stake, they could not move before they were sure.

‘I had hoped Hansoo would wake up before then, but… Oh well.’

Kiriel looked at Samuel and Mihee standing next to her and asked, “It would be too hard to get to the Relic, right?”

The two nodded.

‘Too hard.’

Maybe if the clan heads hadn’t been watching over them so meticulously, but not like this. It was as if they believed the humans were going to try something. They, who knew both of their powers very well, will protect the Relic with all their powers.

Kiriel thought for a moment and then said, “Then, as we planned, we’ll need to aim for the metal towers.”

Mihee and Samuel nodded.

They only knew that the Relic was inside the Capital. They didn’t know where it was, how it was working, nor how to stop it.

But the metal towers were different.

Samuel and Mihee knew the locations of every single one of them, and they knew how to stop them. They just needed to smash them apart.

“I saw them as I was moving the group… They’re not that strong. We can definitely destroy them.”

“We know all the locations as well since we’re the ones who put them down.”

Kiriel smiled.

This was good. They just needed to go and destroy them. There was no way they would continue to destroy the planet if the barrier disappeared.

Their plans would fail and they would have to battle with Pompeion again. They just needed to get what they required from the two powers.

“Finish preparing. We’ll move once we’re clear about the clan head’s locations.”

Kiriel nodded at Mihee’s words.

Though they just needed to destroy the metal towers before the plan went in motion, it was better to hurry since they didn’t know what kind of variables could come into play at once they started.

‘And, that might happen while we’re out doing this.’

She knew that Hansoo wouldn’t take that long to reach the Fourth Star. He had gone in after calculating that, after all.

‘Hurry and come out, Hansoo…’

Kiriel looked at the giant mountain in the distance again.

……..

<How are you feeling?>

At those words…

Ssss.

… Hansoo woke up from his sleep and looked at his body.

“A-amazing!’

Three days, it only took three days for the Nine Dragons Strike to break through. Power that was dimensions stronger than before rushed through his body, but Barmamunt’s question and Hansoo’s answer weren’t just limited to his body.

His mind as well.

<Feel’s fresh right?>

“No need to say more.”

<Kekekeke> Barmamunt chuckled disturbingly and then looked at Hansoo. <It might be good to go out now. How about it? Are you going to go out now or are you going to rest a bit more? There’s no place better than here to strengthen yourself after all.>

“Hmm… What to do, indeed.”

Vast amounts of strength flowed through his body, and Hansoo played around with a strand of that strength as he looked at the giant creature entrapping him.

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