Solo Leveling- Ragnarok-Chapter 305

Beru’s deafening screech echoed throughout the facility, making the entire structure tremble as if it were on the verge of collapse.

Soon after, robotic voices rang out from every direction.

“Intruders detected.”

“Activating perimeter defenses.”

Suddenly, Suho’s head tilted to the side. A laser beam shot past him, narrowly missing its target.

The beam tore through the wall behind him. It was obviously meant to kill.

Suho laughed incredulously. “Is this a ‘the best defense is a good offense’ situ—”

Before he could even finish his sentence, countless other laser beams began firing at him from all directions, weaving a deadly net. He deftly evaded them and continued moving forward.

“Young Monarch! There are minuscule dimensional rifts everywhere!” Beru exclaimed.

Indeed, the beams were being fired from tiny rifts barely wide enough for a finger to slip through. This meant there was no way to shut them down at their source.

Suho’s ears picked up the desperate voice of Experiment Forty-Seven.

“Please... I beg of you! It will be dangerous to go any further.”

“For who?” he asked. “Me, or the Doctor?”

“For me.”

“Huh?”

Suho’s mocking tone vanished when he glanced behind him. However, he couldn’t help but let out a laugh.

Unlike Suho, who was dodging each laser beam with ease, Experiment Forty-Seven was being relentlessly shredded and repaired over and over again. She made no effort to avoid the beams. Her body was being constantly torn to pieces and then regenerating, hanging in tatters like she was a literal rag doll.

Suho’s desire to meet the Doctor grew even stronger. “That’s some impressive regeneration. So you’re telling me the guy who made you is hiding in here somewhere?”

But Experiment Forty-Seven’s warning was genuine. From the beginning, the purpose of the laser beams wasn’t to eliminate intruders.

Suddenly, the ceiling above them began to crumble.

“Huh?”

It now made sense. The laser beams Suho had avoided had been slicing through the walls and the pillars supporting the building.

“It seems the building is rigged to collapse if an intruder can’t be stopped,” Beru mused.

“Smart. He even prepared for things going wrong,” Suho noted.

The strategy was based on brute force, but it was clever. If the enemy managed to break in, the Doctor was prepared to bury the entire laboratory to protect himself.

But Suho had no intention of turning back. Instead, he batted away the falling debris with his fists while analyzing his surroundings with a calm gaze.

“So what’s the next trick up his sleeve?”

From experience, Suho knew clever enemies always had contingencies. If the lab’s collapse was the first trap, there had to be something else.

“There it is.”

His eyes gleamed with realization. The lasers were being fired at seemingly random angles, but there was something unusual about them. None of them touched the floor.

“He doesn’t seem to have any qualms about cutting through the walls and the pillars, but none of these beams have damaged the floor. Why is that?”

Unlike the collapsing walls and ceiling, the floor remained perfectly intact.

Without hesitation, Suho raised his fist.

[Skill: “Iron Body Technique” has activated.]

Suho’s fist, brimming with destructive energy, crashed into the ground, piercing straight through the floor.

“Warning! Intruders detected in the lab!”

“Warning! Intruders detected in the lab!”

The alarms now sounded more urgent than before.

“Earlier it just said there was an intrusion in the perimeter,” Suho remarked. “Now it’s warning of a laboratory breach. That means...”

Descending through the shattered floor, he scanned his surroundings and found an old-fashioned staircase leading downward.

“Just as I thought.”

The real laboratory was buried deep underground.

Suho walked slowly toward the stairs, but soon paused and tilted his head. Even with his eyes wide open, he couldn’t see beyond the darkness. It was like staring into the depths of a bottomless pit.

“A gate?”

He quickly grasped the structure of the place.

“So there’s a gate below the stairs... Or is it the other way around? Maybe the gate was there first, and the stairs were built over it.”

He looked at Experiment Forty-Seven, expecting an answer, but she shook her head. “I know very little. I have not been around for long. The lab was already complete when I was created.”

“So that must be one of the reasons he sent you as a gift.”

If she knew nothing, there was nothing to extract from her.

One thing was for sure: The laboratory hidden beneath the snowy wasteland was far more extensive than Suho had expected. If the Apostle of Paradise had expanded his territory by growing trees skyward, then the Apostle of Evolution took the opposite approach. Intending to focus solely on research, free from any external threats, he had burrowed deep underground and established his base there.

“Shall we proceed immediately, Young Monarch?” Beru asked. “It could be a trap.”

They had arrived too quickly for the enemy to prepare, but with a foe so cunning, anything could be waiting for them. Still, there was no helping it.

“I’ll let him do the thinking. We’ll do things the easy way,” Suho said.

In the end, the only way to meet the Doctor was to go to him on his own turf.

Even while dodging the ongoing laser fire, Suho’s eyes glinted with determination.

“A hunter should act like a hunter. If there’s a gate, we just have to clear it.”

Suho stepped down onto the stairs.

In that moment, as if on cue, the barrage of laser beams ceased. What lay beyond the gate revealed itself.

“Activating maze system.”

“And... of course there’s something more,” Suho muttered.

What lay before him was a labyrinth. Walls and passages twisted and turned, blocking his view forward. Countless traps lined the maze’s narrow corridors. Saw blades spun wildly, spikes shot up from the floor, and acid rain poured from the ceiling. Each one was designed to kill, and they activated one after the other in an effort to end the party’s lives.

Suho let out a tired sigh.

“Oof... This isn’t some game, is it? Just what the hell was this guy making down here?”

The laser beams up above had been more of a threat.

“Arise.”

At Suho’s command, his shadow extended through the labyrinth’s walls and corridors like tendrils. Out of that shadow emerged countless shadow soldiers, rising like black mist.

“Destroy,” Suho ordered.

That one word was all it took. The shadow soldiers began tearing through the traps, smashing everything that stood in Suho’s way.

“W-wait!” Experiment Forty-Seven cried, hurriedly stepping in front of Suho. “The Doctor’s laboratory contains not only defense systems, but also numerous experiments! If you keep going like this, every one of his great achievements will be destroyed, and—”

Beru grabbed her head.

“You’re in the way.”

He lifted her, letting her dangle from his grasp as he glared at her with bared jaws.

“If you don’t like this method, then lead the way,” he growled.

“A-all right, I will—”

“Too late.”

A loud rumble reverberated through the lab.

“We’ve already made our way through,” Beru told her.

Suho’s path was now clear. The maze’s walls and traps lay in ruins, leaving only wreckage in their wake.

Seeing the devastation, Experiment Forty-Seven let out a faint sigh.

At the end of the path, someone was waiting with a troubled expression. It was a boy who looked no older than ten, sitting calmly in a chair and looking at Suho. He also gave a resigned sigh, then spoke.

“You know... I did intend to come see you one of these days. But I didn’t think it would happen so soon.”

“You’re the Doctor?” Suho asked.

“I am. At least, that’s one of the titles I go by. You can also call me the Apostle of Evolution.”

Surprisingly, the Apostle of Evolution didn’t seem the least bit bothered that his hidden base had been thoroughly destroyed. As he stepped down from the chair, his small frame became even more apparent.

“Now, this wasn’t part of the plan, but since you’re here, why don’t I take you for a tour of the lab?”

With short steps, he moved toward an area of the laboratory that hadn’t yet been destroyed.

Suho’s shadow soldiers hovered nearby. Their eyes were locked on the Apostle, awaiting the command to strike.

“Master, shall I kill him?”

“I can inject him with poison right away...”

However, Suho gestured for them to hold off.

The Apostle of Evolution didn’t seem to care whether they attacked him or not either. 𝐟𝕣𝕖𝐞𝐰𝕖𝚋𝐧𝗼𝚟𝐞𝕝.𝗰𝐨𝐦

“I didn’t think I would be showing these to you under such circumstances. I must say, it’s a little embarrassing. These are all failures, you see,” he said.

If the path they had just traversed was a labyrinth filled with traps, the area he led them to felt more like a scientist’s workshop. Rows and rows of glass tubes and tanks lined the space, each filled with squirming, pinkish cells.

“Weapons?” Suho murmured.

Within the space, various weapons floated in the air, emanating the same energy as Haseul’s Harvest Scythe. They were all in various stages of completion.

“Ah, yes. Those are all unfinished products. I began to create humanoid weapons from Experiment Forty-One. Experiment Forty-Seven, which I sent you, is—”

“Hold on,” Suho interrupted, focusing on the most critical point. “You mean to say there are thirty-nine more weapons like the Harvest Scythe? Where are they?”

His gaze swept over the area, but there were no completed weapons to be seen.

The Apostle of Evolution seemed somewhat embarrassed by the question. “Well, technically speaking, those were all failures as well. I would be embarrassed to call them weapons at all. Still, it seemed wasteful to destroy them, so I just gave them away to whoever I happened to meet. They were gifts.”

“Gifts?”

“Yes. It would’ve hurt my pride to sell failed experiments, so I provided them free of charge.”

Free of charge.

That reminded Suho of what Jinchul had told him. Jinchul had reported that the Doctor had given him the scythe after they had met by coincidence, without asking for anything in return. It was just as the Apostle himself had said.

But it’s hard to believe there’s no ulterior motive.

To get a better read on the Apostle’s intentions, Suho pointed at Experiment Forty-Seven. “Is she a failure as well?”

“Sadly, yes, I must admit she is. Still, she was one of the better outcomes, so I didn’t want to give her away randomly.”

“So that’s why you sent her to me?”

“That’s right. She is a gift, pure and simple, expressing that I have no hostility toward you. I have no intention of opposing the son of the Shadow Monarch.”

“Then let me ask you one more thing...” Ignoring the Apostle’s unnecessary chatter, Suho moved straight to the point. “If the Harvest Scythe is just one of those weapons, who has the others?”

The Apostle hesitated to answer.

***

After parting ways with Suho, Jinchul’s group split up. One team was led by Jongin, and the other was led by Jinchul.

“Whatever you do, don’t burn the tree trunks,” Jinchul told Jongin.

“I will keep that in mind.”

With that, Jongin hurried across the North Korean landscape, dealing with the remaining trees. His flame skills were perfectly suited to combat plant-type monsters. The flames were nothing compared to Suho’s Flames of Destruction, but they were more than enough to destroy the Elvenwoods, which were already in disarray because of the death of the Apostle of Paradise.

“I suppose I shall also have to do my part...” Jinchul muttered.

He made his way to Paradise, where the most treasured of the Apostle’s trees, Álfheimr, once stood. It was also the final refuge of the villains who had fled from him.

But when he arrived, he laughed in disbelief.

“This place really is hell on earth.”

He had been told winter had come to this city, but this was a bit much. Just like the other areas Suho had passed through, this one had also been scorched by hellish flames and frozen over by an eternal winter. In other words, it was a complete disaster.

At the center of the city where Álfheimr should have stood, a vast pillar of ice shot into the sky.

“From this point on, we will protect this place,” Jinchul said.

“Yes, sir. We’ll set up camp nearby,” a subordinate said.

Jinchul had delegated the other tasks to Jongin while devoting himself to protecting what mattered most to Suho. He didn’t intend to just sit around and twiddle his thumbs, however. The Apostle of Paradise might have died, but his remnants would still be buried somewhere beneath this frozen wasteland.

Jinchul’s hawk-like eyes gleamed as he removed his black sunglasses. “Search thoroughly for any traces of the bank,” he ordered. “Find whatever you can.”