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Translator: 8uhl
Chapter: 25
Chapter Title: What He Truly Desires (1)
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"Yoon-ah's on Chapter 2. She said she won a tribal unification war and is now expanding her territory. Her population is around ten thousand?"
"Speaking of which, what exactly did she give her people?"
"From what I heard, things like food and weapons. Not guns, but armaments for Hunters. But from what she told me, it seems like there's something you get just by becoming a Unit?"
"...I suppose so."
I listened carefully to the information my sister brought back, being as cautious as possible about certain keywords.
The thing granted just by becoming a Unit was likely a species trait.
[Correct. Species traits are the most fundamental power and benefit.]
"So the luck of the draw was the real skill all along."
Back in my room, I clicked my tongue.
Countless species were interconnected as Players and Units, all interacting with one another.
So, those who could communicate from the start were bound to get a head start.
I thought of the rat-like creatures my Legion had trampled and nearly annihilated after their victory.
Any Player who drew a species like that was bound to fall behind.
[Is that so? I wonder. No one knows the potential a species holds.]
"No, what you don't know, you don't know."
I shook my head, as he was half-right and half-wrong.
The harsh reality of nature doesn't wait for indecisive growth.
[Look at the screen. This is the second stalk. The 21st tier, a place from which countless other branches can extend.]
"Are there guardian spirits here too?"
I scoffed.
"Graaaah!"
"Grrr..."
There were.
The guardian spirits of the second stalk. Several of them had gathered, baring terrifying teeth, sniffing the air, their blue eyes glinting.
"Thankfully, they don't seem to be grotesque monsters."
[It seems they sensed our presence in advance and gathered. They are quadrupedal, their bodies covered in soft fur. Their sharp teeth are...]
"Saber-toothed tigers!"
I could summarize them in a single term.
Finally, a large mammal other than bats and rats had appeared in this crazy subterranean world.
The saber-toothed tigers that lived on Earth during the Cenozoic Era.
With their pale fur, it seemed fitting to call them White Saber-toothed Tigers.
Though they looked much larger.
[They have entered a combat stance. But do not worry. Fire has no effect on the Legion, which has already experienced it from below. They felt no fear.]
"...Right."
Of course, the saber-toothed tigers that lived on Earth probably didn't spew flames like a flamethrower from their mouths.
The Legionnaires at the forefront were large lizards with dark blue carapaces on their heads.
They took the flames head-on and were burned to death.
[Legionnaires who had been clinging to the claws of large flying species dropped from the air, descending upon them.]
This combined air-and-ground assault was a time-honored tactic, attempted ever since the Legion first gained wings.
While the ground forces drew their attention, the flying species that had soared into the sky dropped the soldiers they carried.
[They are flustered. Their foreleg swipes are sturdy and powerful, but once struck, the Legion instantly grasped their characteristics.]
"Makes sense. I did add cats to the mix."
[They dodged the kicks and offered an arm to the bite. Then, another Legionnaire plunged a sword deep into the exposed flank.]
They were cats with excellent intelligence, tactics, and combat prowess.
But in the end, that was all they were.
Not enough to stop us, who spread without end.
Seeing other Legionnaires tenaciously clinging to the injured ones, I was certain of our victory.
Something glinted in the hand of a goblin-type Legionnaire at the front.
The Chinese cleaver I gave them... caked in blood, it was being put to good use.
I checked the time. It hadn't even taken thirty minutes.
[Main Stalk Guardian Spirit: 4c1557]
"So they're guardian spirits too. What exactly is this species called 'guardian spirit'?"
[Do you have other thoughts about them?]
"I have to. They're clearly a different species from the other creatures."
Having encountered them twice, I couldn't help but be suspicious.
For one, while the existing cave creatures were bizarrely shaped, these were even more so.
Though the saber-toothed tigers were handsomely built compared to the monster with code 0080 from the first stalk.
"Their behavior is strange too. I'm no expert in this field, but their behavioral patterns were, from a common-sense perspective, not like living creatures. Could they be Units too?"
[The Legion felt the same sense of unease. Unlike the instinct of a creature to prioritize survival, they dared to confront us, knowing they would die. And they were unusually strong.]
"There's definitely something about this cave."
Until now, I had only seen the tree in front of me, but as I started trying to see the forest, things began to crop up one by one.
For example, the probability that an intelligent life form comparable to humans lived in this cave.
[The Legion has considered all possibilities. The conclusion is: unknown. Insufficient data. Therefore, we will act according to priority. Devour the 21st tier and all its attached branches.]
"How convenient."
While I was racking my brain, the Legion, with its transcendent processing power incomparable to my own, seemed to have reached all its conclusions.
Setting aside the fact that the conclusion reached with all that processing power was basically goblin-level, for now, the Legion's decision seemed correct.
They would probably tell me they had cleaned everything up by the time I woke up tomorrow.
I closed my phone there.
"Kueek..."
"..."
The moment Shin-woo closed his phone and went to sleep.
A massacre was unfolding here, on a major tier, a single branch leading to the stalk.
The dominant species here was a hoofed animal similar to a pig, with a snub nose granting it an extremely sensitive sense of smell, and a sturdy neck and shoulders.
The Legionnaire that had felled the pig casually raised its blade and lopped off its head.
Green blood spurted from the severed artery, drenching the Legionnaire's body.
Pulsating flesh walls and tentacles were already beginning to cover this major tier, turning it into a nest.
The Legion, having mimicked the reproductive methods of fungi, could take root anywhere there were nutrients and make it a part of itself.
A tentacle approached and connected to the Legionnaire's body.
The nest, responsible for digestion and absorption, directly supplied nutrients to all soldiers.
[Do you still harbor doubts?]
A questioning voice rumbled through the Legion's collective consciousness.
"..."
It wasn't the first or second day this voice had been heard.
Naturally, the Legion couldn't understand the words.
However, by now, they could at least tell that the voice was speaking to them.
[From the very beginning, you have been thinking of him.]
A Legionnaire raised the blood-stained Chinese cleaver to eye level and wiped it clean.
A red glint reflected off the gleaming blade.
In this very moment.
The entire Legion was watching this scene.
[I can feel it. The emotion, the deep suspicion and wariness, and the interest.]
Emotion.
The entire Legion stirred.
Since first awakening it, the Legion had continuously accumulated experience.
They explored and contemplated what this thing that tickled them was.
Thanks to their growing brains, its variations had become much broader than before.
Elation, fighting spirit, arrogance, and so on.
[The opportunity to resolve your curiosity is not far off. There are still several chances left.]
The voice cut off there.
However, the Legion's subsequent movements became slightly more aggressive and faster.
The Legion was now fast enough and strong enough to handle such radical movements.
*
"Oh Yoon-ah wants to see us?"
"Yeah. To be precise, she said it was a call from Cha Ji-yeon."
"Then, could it be?"
"Looks like they found a new ally."
Kang Do-yeon came over to my room first thing in the morning.
Waking up, the first thing I did was look for my phone.
No notifications had gone off. That meant nothing out of the ordinary had happened.
"I'm not sure about anything else, but it seems right to go to a meeting like that."
"I'll go alone."
"Don't be ridiculous. I'd rather go alone myself."
I shut down my sister's nonsense.
In the end, the conclusion was that we would both go together.
"Mom's at work anyway. Let's go."
"...Is it okay to keep skipping class?"
"Are lectures really that important in this situation?"
We immediately got on a bus.
As we expected, when we arrived, there was someone else besides Cha Ji-yeon.
"This is Mr. Park Joon-seok."
"Hello?"
"...Are these people the ones?"
Cha Ji-yeon, whom we were seeing again, introduced a young man.
He gave us a strange look, then nodded.
"Has it been proven?"
"Of course."
Cha Ji-yeon replied instantly to Oh Yoon-ah's words.
The man, introduced as Park Joon-seok, shared his information.
The place where his Units were located was definitely a completely separate, third world.
"And to all of you, my Player would like to make a proposal."
However, today's business was not a simple meeting.
Cha Ji-yeon took out her phone from her pocket.
"We've found... a target."
The information that appeared on the phone showed an ordinary-looking middle-aged woman.
According to Cha Ji-yeon, this woman was the Player who had a Unit in Sehansha, the world where Cha Ji-yeon's Player was.
"How on earth did you find that out?"
"...I'm not entirely sure myself, but my Player has a wide variety of miscellaneous skills. I think it might be some kind of reverse tracking."
Reverse tracking.
At those words, the faces of the Players present hardened.
Even if one didn't reveal their own information, if an enemy Unit was captured and information was extracted, their past interactions could be uncovered.
The idea was that they had deduced the target from that.
"Yoon-ah... did you happen to tell those people about yourself?!"
"W-Well..."
Meanwhile, Oh Yoon-ah, who had been pulled aside by her mother, turned pale at the scolding.
She definitely told them. But it wasn't hard to understand why.
She must have been itching to tell someone.
Both Kang Do-yeon and I let out a small sigh.
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