Chapter 163 – I Am Human

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Translated by Pratt

Read it only at Novelbyu.com & Utoon.net
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The press and internet communities were in an uproar over nothing but soul linkage and other worlds.

Discussions about the identities of other worlds were also actively taking place.

The multiverse theory had the strongest support.

└ Think of it as a multiverse. The initial starting point of each world was the same, but then their directions gradually diverged.

└ So on Earth, science developed, while in the other worlds, magic and martial arts developed?

└ Well, even on Earth, witches and knights were real during medieval Europe.

└ The murim world was like that too. There were Taoist sects and Shaolin Temple, and murim people like the assassin Jing Ke and the Mohist chivalrous men.

└ What about shamans and sorcerers? If you look at it properly, that’s magic too.

Then why had magic and martial arts died out on Earth while it developed into a scientific civilization?

└ Isn’t it the difference between having mana and not having it?

└ So worlds that had mana, or formless qi, developed into magic and martial arts, while worlds without it chose science?

└ Right. Earth’s transformation also happened after mana’s invasion three hundred years ago.

└ Sounds plausible. After mana appeared, kung fu and taekwondo also changed into killing martial arts, and people who said they gathered qi through dantian breathing started appearing.

└ Even system awakening is like that, isn’t it? A combination of science and magic? Isn’t it exactly that?

Meanwhile,

Vincent Moretti was on the Sahara steppe in Africa.

The one behind this exposure, the main culprit of the great Moscow explosion, and one whose soul was also linked to that of a grand magic engineer.

The Sahara.

What had once been a vast desert in the past had now changed, due to climate change, into a steppe zone where green grasses sprouted everywhere.

But this place was a notorious demonic-beast concentration zone.

In fact, it would be fair to say all of Africa was like that.

From a very long time ago, he had been building underground bunkers in regions where the number of demonic beasts was comparatively low.

Slowly and secretly, so that Emperor Caesar could not notice.

Inside the bunker there was not a single human.

They were all golems.

Humanoid cyborg golems, as well as those for construction work, battle, reconnaissance…

They were golems created by receiving the experience and knowledge of Jacques Deluan, the grand magic engineer of another world who was the same soul as him.

Even now he was linked in soul with Jacques.

The most recent linkage had been six months ago.

Another linkage would probably take place before long.

‘I’m looking forward to it.’

The day was not far off when he would share and discuss the experiment results with Jacques Deluan.

One experiment carried out on Alex Caesar alone was not enough.

He needed several more experiments.

The key point was how to control the dimensional gate.

What was important was distance.

Place soul linkers far apart from each other.

To do that, the gate had to be opened at the desired location.

But what if it failed?

For example, what if in the middle of a city, identical souls ended up merging?

‘Well, it can’t be helped.’

Even if people died from the explosion, he would not blink at that sort of thing.

The only thing important to Vincent was investigating the principles and laws of the multiverse.

Jacques Deluan was the same.

Through all kinds of reckless experiments, he had driven the world he lived in to destruction with his own hands.

So what if the world was destroyed?

What could possibly be more important than the pursuit of truth?

‘A suitable test subject…’

At present, the media all over the world was talking only about soul linkers.

Those under suspicion were appearing one after another.

How grateful was he that they found them for him all on their own even if he stayed still?

There was even one being he considered nearly certain.

Kim Tae-ju of TJ Bio in the Samhan Empire.

‘The risk is high…, approaching him as well.’

An owner of extraordinary abilities.

And a threatening existence too.

MRC, the treatment for mana-rejection syndrome, and even ships that could cross the sea using metals made through alchemy, and on top of that, it was known that his martial power was not insignificant either.

In truth, if you really looked into it, all soul linkers were like that.

Not one of them was ordinary.

Was there any need to be afraid?

Kim Tae-ju too was only a test subject.

And the highest-priority test subject at that.

‘Let’s start with Kim Tae-ju.’

He planned to approach things in a classical way.

He would disguise the improved dimensional-gate generator as a magic artifact and hand it over to him.

“Daniel.”

“Yes.”

“You’ll have to go to the Samhan Empire. Go there and meet Kim Tae-ju.”

“A concrete behavior pattern is required.”

“I’ll formulate and input an algorithm for handling the situation according to circumstances.”

“Yes.”

Kim Tae-ju had no choice but to take the bait.

Whether he activated the dimensional gate himself or Daniel activated it on his behalf,

‘the experiment will proceed no matter what.’

If it went boom, that could not be helped.

Rather, that would be even better.

It would mean a threatening existence was removed.

Was he the only test subject around?

Success was only a matter of time.

A problem he had been clinging to for well over one hundred and fifty years.

A time he had waited for far too long.

He had survived tenaciously.

After all, if he died, he could not conduct experiments.

He was not an awakened.

Though he had linked souls, he was no different from an ordinary person.

Awakened people trained their souls and bodies through mana and the power of the system, magicians through circles and classes, and knights through the power of aura.

For that reason, their lifespans were longer than those of others.

Living two hundred or three hundred years was a trivial thing.

But a grand magic engineer was neither one nor the other.

A profession with nothing at all to do with bodily training.

Simply an ordinary person.

Then how had he lived through one hundred and fifty years of time?

Simple.

Replace the aging body.

An artificial heart, kidneys, liver, lungs, eyeballs, eardrums…, and even electro-cerebral neural implants made through enchanted magic engineering and golem technology.

He had replaced almost everything.

And was still doing so now.

So sometimes he even had thoughts like this.

Was he human, or was he a humanoid golem, the crystallization of ultra-magical engineering?

‘…Of course I’m human.’

A long time ago,

the saying of the philosopher Descartes.

I think, therefore I am.

Was not the ability to think itself proof that one was human?

“I’m human.”

Vincent Moretti did not doubt it in the least.

* * *

Tae-ju left the Imperial Palace and returned to Gurye.

The reporters and YouTube streamers had withdrawn, so he could finally breathe again.

Let’s return to basics and stay faithful to the main business.

No matter this soul-linkage business and all that, wasn’t he a medicine seller?

He met Baek Seo-yeon.

“I’m thinking of doing one more doping-potion experiment.”

“Should I call in the TJ Guild members?”

“No, those kids are unsuitable as test subjects…”

Because they had eaten immortal peaches and Immortal Liquor, there was no way to find out what kind of side effects occurred even if they were doped.

And at the time of the experiment, because he had intervened in the European war, he had not been present there and so had not been able to make observations or diagnoses either.

“We’ll do it as a public experiment. Targeting awakened and compatible hosts.”

“What about the ranks of the awakened?”

“Twenty people from each rank including compatible hosts, and it would be good if there were masters too…, but it doesn’t matter if there aren’t.”

“Yes.”

He would determine how severe the exhaustion side effects from potential explosion were for each awakened rank.

Tae-ju too had improved the doping potions drastically compared with before.

He had increased the ratio of celestial-realm flowers and reduced the chemical components.

If the first medicine he had developed had a duration of five minutes and required sixty minutes of side-effect recovery time, then the medicine he had made this time had a duration of ten minutes and required forty minutes of side-effect recovery time.

Perhaps a medicine even more urgent than hair-growth medicine was the doping potion.

Demonic-beast raids were dangerous.

Even if you planned them carefully, that remained true.

If one spoke of the most dangerous moment during a raid hunt, it was when you encountered an elite demonic beast.

Of course, unless a special team had been formed from the start to hunt elite demonic beasts…

Even if you said, ‘We’ll only hunt ordinary demonic beasts,’ or, ‘We won’t even approach the territory of elite demonic beasts,’ unexpected situations always existed.

That was because the territories of elite demonic beasts were not fixed.

An elite that had been driven out by a territorial conflict could settle in a new area, or a strengthened elite could expand its territory.

The very thing raid teams carried around to break through such dangerous moments was the doping potion.

Its main use was for escaping.

Trying to get out of danger from an elite demonic beast through temporarily strengthened bodily abilities.

But what if you failed to escape?

Then you just died helplessly.

Because the most representative side effect was exhaustion.

Thus, a notice was posted at the main branch of TJ Pharmacy in Gurye.

– Recruiting test subjects for the clinical trial of raid doping potions.

– Organizer: TJ Bio Pharmaceuticals.

– Targets: Twenty people from each rank, including compatible hosts.

– Date: 2323-00-00.

– Place: Jirisan demonic-beast concentration zone.

– Allowance: 5,000,000 won.

The recruitment was completed not even five minutes after the notice was posted.

Inquiry calls flooded in asking to recruit more people.

Military units in the vicinity somehow found out and even expressed their intention to participate without pay.

Whose medicine was it, after all.

Wasn’t it made by the famous Chairman Kim Tae-ju?

The raid doping-potion experiment proceeded extremely smoothly right from the first step.

* * *

At Scorching-Heat Hell in the Yellow Springs Realm.

Drek Karax was in the middle of refining black darksteel inside a pit of hot lava.

No matter that he did not die, enduring the searing pain that felt as if his whole body would melt away was no easy thing.

He had not given up yet.

He already knew that this place was the Yellow Springs Realm of another world.

But even here, soul linkage with the Demon King had taken place.

Then the probability was high that it would happen again.

Perhaps at the next linkage, Demon King Baphomet would tell him a way to escape from this place.

Until then, he had to grit his teeth and endure no matter what.

Just in time, his power had almost fully recovered too.

The authority he possessed as a Deus Lich.

Those bastards had made a mistake.

They had thrown him in here without even sealing his abilities?

There were wardens watching with hawk eyes, but even so they were still prisoners. Among humans at least, there was no one who could defeat him.

…Except Kim Tae-ju.

‘Heuheuheu, foolish bastards, to leave me neglected like this, just you wait and see.’

At that moment!

Peok!

“Eoheok!”

Someone struck the back of his head.

A blow so strong it felt as if his eyes would pop out.

“What are you grinning about so broadly, you half-gnawed skeleton bastard?”

Drek Karax was dumbfounded.

The one who struck him was not even an immortal.

Nor was it a terrifying Yellow Springs warden.

It was merely one of the wardens watching the prisoners.

In other words, a prisoner in the same position as himself.

“You dare strike the back of my head?”

“Hahahaha, how absurd. You dare? You say, dare?”

“I can’t endure this any longer. Die!”

Uuuuuuuung!

Deus Lich Drek Karax stretched a finger toward the warden.

Black demonic qi thickly gathered on the finger.

But,

peoeok!

“Keek!”

Drek Karax took a blow to the chin so fast he could not even see it.

He got hit?

By that fist just swung at random?

When he was hit in the back of the head, he could at least call it a surprise attack, but in a situation where they were clearly facing each other…

The damage was considerable too.

Enough that his consciousness briefly cut out.

“D-dark Barrier!”

A dark translucent protective barrier spread over Drek Karax’s entire body.

This was not a simple barrier.

It was the absolute protective barrier of a Deus Lich, capable of even stopping missiles and rockets.

And yet?

Paaak!

Cha-cha-cha-chaeng!

Kwajik!

The warden’s fist shattered the barrier far too easily.

Peok! Peok! Peok!

“You really can’t tell heaven from earth, can you? Don’t get it twisted! You’re nothing. You’re worth less than an ore nugget rolling on the ground.”

Peoeok! Peok-peok!

Here, he was merely one among countless criminals.

Even soul linkers were human in the end.

They could never break past their limits.

Unless it was Kim Tae-ju of Earth, who received the help of the Immortal Realm, the Celestial Realm, and the Yellow Springs Realm all together.

Drek Karax was beaten like a dog as the Heavenly Demon vented his frustrations.

Now he could not even scream.

He had been beaten so much that his bone fragments had been crushed.

At the sight, the Blood Demon clicked his tongue and sneered.

“The one getting hit and the one doing the hitting, it’s certain both are out of their minds.”

The Heavenly Demon let out a snort.

“If we’re talking about craziness alone, Blood Demon, how many people could even follow after you?”

“Kikikik, I agree with that myself.”

Drek Karax had become senseless.

As if he had lost interest, the Heavenly Demon threw the bastard back into the lava.

“By the way, Heavenly Demon, is it really true that you too were a soul linker?”

“…I didn’t want it. Some damned power forced it on me.”

“Could the condition for soul linkage perhaps be the degree of madness? You’re insane too, and that bastard is too.”

“…”

Thinking about it quietly, even the Blood Demon’s words had a basis.

Take Tang Gun-ak right now, for instance…

Kim Tae-ju was unknown, but Tang Gun-ak definitely was a madman.

He had slaughtered countless Demonic Cultists with his terrifying Myriad Heavens Flower Rain and even melted himself with poison.

It made one wonder how such a bastard had ascended to immortality.

“Then Blood Demon, one day you’ll also soul-link. You’re every bit as crazy as I am.”

“…What?”

“The possibility is more than enough, don’t you think?”

“Uh…”

The Blood Demon trembled.

That there might be another bastard just like himself?

It was chilling just to think about.