Chapter 424

A week had already passed since the construction of Terra’s new body had begun.

As expected, reviving a Perfect One was no easy feat, but the process was going more smoothly than he had initially expected.

“Rotate your right ankle three more times, then lift and lower both legs twice.”

“Okay!”

Following Se-Hoon’s instruction, Terra, seated in a chair, tensed her legs filled with resonance needles. Simultaneously, the Warhound standing beside her also moved its legs in the same way.

Watching Terra complete the motions closely, Se-Hoon turned to Lea.

“Lower the assimilation rate of number forty-nine by two percent. Twenty-one and thirty-eight are out of sync, adjust them.”

“Got it.”

Operating the Sphere nearby, Lea tapped the golden orb housed inside the Sphere with a light touch and the five surrounding rings began spinning in unison.

Woong-

As the astral projection within the golden orb re-aligned, the resonance needles embedded in Terra’s legs—specifically the enchantments inscribed within them—recalibrated to enhance their performance. Then, at a certain moment, Se-Hoon suddenly struck Terra’s right knee with a knife-hand blow.

“Gahk!”

Whoosh!

Reacting to Terra’s knee-jerk reflex, the Warhound’s right leg jolted upward, throwing its balance off.

Crash!

“My... my knee...”

Terra clutched her right knee, trembling, while the Warhound lay sprawled awkwardly on the ground. Yet, despite the scene that looked like a failed experiment, Se-Hoon was grinning in satisfaction.

“Not bad.”

The knee reflex had triggered with precision, and even the minor movements during the fall aligned perfectly. And more importantly, Terra was clearly reacting to the pain in her knee—not somewhere wrong, like her shoulder or back. In other words, the connection to the Warhound was working properly.

“That should do for the legs. Luize.”

“You’re seriously...

ugh

, never mind.”

Walking over to Terra with an exasperated expression, Luize sighed.

“My knee... I think it’s broken...”

“It’s not. Move your hand.”

Luize brushed away Terra’s hand from her knee, transformed her choker into a mask, and then invoked an incantation.

“Assimilation.”

Woong!

The resonance needles embedded in Terra’s legs vibrated all at once, causing Terra to flinch and squirm.

“I-it tickles...”

“Better than hurting.”

With a light slap to Terra’s knee, Luize coldly stood up as her mask turned back into a choker.

Despite her coldness, however, Se-Hoon chuckled. If Luize merely synced the sensation, Terra would’ve felt pain—not ticklish. And that meant Luize had dulled the pain for her.

It seems both her Incantation Magic and finesse have improved.

Se-Hoon couldn’t help but smile in approval.

“...What are you smiling at?” Luize asked with a frown, noticing his smile.

“Something that looks nice?”

Luize immediately grimaced. “Creep...” Walking away, she flopped down onto the couch they had brought in a few days ago.

“

Hmm...

” Lea stroked her chin thoughtfully, watching Luize.

“What? Did you find something wrong?”

“Not really. I’m just wondering how deep your karma has piled up.”

Bewildered, Se-Hoon shot her a questioning look, only to be ignored as Lea mumbled something strange about getting stabbed by multiple people.

“Hey. Stop saying such weird things and show me the results already.”

“

Ahem.

Fine.”

Lea tapped the golden orb again and the independently spinning rings settled into a flat disc. Observing it, Lea then finely tuned each ring, shifting them left and right until the orb shimmered and slowly morphed into a miniature version of the Warhound.

Woong-

Observing the golden construct of the Warhound that emerged, Se-Hoon noticed the legs were glowing faintly red—the successful sign that they were fused with Terra.

Se-Hoon’s eyes lit up.

It worked.

The Warhound, the Seeker’s body, and Terra had successfully fused—at least partially—into a Perfect One. Happy with the week’s results, Se-Hoon naturally looked upward from the legs.

I guess the only remaining parts are the vessel and voice.

According to Dawn’s classification system, Se-Hoon had possession of five segments of the Seeker’s body: the left arm, the right arm, the vessel, the step, and the voice. Of them, he had chosen to use only the vessel, the step, and the voice for Terra’s new body because of two reasons.

One, it was a waste to dismantle the Beads of Omniscience and Akasha, respectively made from the Left and Right Arm. Two, he wanted to prevent the full resurrection of the Seeker.

What I need right now is a new Terra, not a revived Seeker.

He remained cautious. Even with all the safety protocols in place, he was all too aware of how the Perfect Ones were capable of causing catastrophic incidents in the blink of an eye. Every so often, he reminded himself never to let his guard down again for that very reason.

“The legs are good. Let’s move on to the torso.”

“Right away?”

“I won’t develop it fully yet. Just want to test the response.”

When syncing foreign objects, once one part successfully harmonized, the rest often followed easily. And with that hope—that if luck was on his side, he could even finish the procedure today—Se-Hoon wanted to do a quick check with the vessel.

“Alright. I’ll prepare for it now.”

Lea started adjusting the Sphere again, and in the meantime, Se-Hoon picked up new resonance needles before sitting next to Terra.

“This time, it’s going into your torso. I’ll start off light, so don’t tense up.”

“Okay!”

With an energetic response, Terra relaxed her body. And she relaxed so much that her shadow-like form drooped like jelly, making Se-Hoon chuckle.

She’s really gotten used to this.

Unlike before, when she used to roll on the floor crying while thinking she’d been abandoned after getting pricked by the needles, she was now composed. He didn’t know if it was thanks to living with them or not, but regardless, her condition had clearly stabilized; it was quite reassuring.

“Let’s begin.”

Moving on from the legs, Se-Hoon started inserting resonance needles into her torso. As their number grew, Terra’s entire body began trembling faintly.

Woong!

The Warhound was even twitching slightly in sync with Terra’s movements. However, rather than joy, Se-Hoon was completely startled by the sight.

This is way too fast...!

They hadn’t even started the fine-tuning, yet the synchronization was already so strong? Quickening his pace to ride the momentum, Se-Hoon inserted more needles—

Pop-

Terra’s body exploded the moment he felt the sensation of something snapping.

BOOM!

In an instant, an internal explosion ripped through her, scattering the now fragmented needles in all directions.

At the sight of the spray of countless fragments, Se-Hoon instantly realized that not only Lea, who was right beside them, but even Luize, who was behind them, would be caught in the blast.

So, in the following split second, Se-Hoon ran the calculations before wasting no time to activate the skill he acquired recently.

Unity of Mind and Body

Se-Hoon’s body and his accelerated consciousness immediately snapped into synch, breaking past his limits. Then, in that new state, he hurled Spirit Weaver toward the now slowly dispersing shrapnel.

Only once the fragments were all tightly bound did he release the acceleration while using one smooth motion to swing the tangled Spirit Weaver like a net.

BOOM!

In the blink of an eye, the shards, which had been about to scatter in every direction, were abruptly yanked downward by Spirit Weaver and smashed into the ground.

That speed...

Where does he even learn stuff like that...?

Having moved just a beat too late, Luize and Lea stood there dumbfounded by Se-Hoon’s increasingly superhuman abilities.

Meanwhile, Se-Hoon was shaking out his stiff wrist while looking over at what remained of Terra.

“Ugh...”

A shadowy lump, about the size of a head, sat atop the broken remains of the chair.

“You okay?” Se-Hoon asked, gently lifting the mass that was Terra’s body.

“I’m so s-sorry...”

“It’s okay. It’s not your fault. I’ll restore you, so stay with me for a bit.”

Woong-

Injected with an influx of Silver River, the shadow slowly reformed until Se-Hoon pulled his hand back when Terra’s original form was restored.

“

Ugh...

What just happened...?”

She swayed unsteadily, looking down at the shards of the chair and the resonance needles. A heavy silence hung in the air, the aftermath of a disaster that had unfolded in the blink of an eye.

“...”

Se-Hoon remained silent, needing a moment to process it himself. He looked over at Lea.

“Can you find out what state Terra was in right before the explosion?”

“Huh? Oh... hang on.”

Expertly manipulating the Sphere, Lea manipulated it and retrieved the final stored data.

Woong-

Bringing up the results, Lea’s expression twisted in confusion at the sight of the Warhound glowing faint red inside the Sphere.

“This... this means the experiment was a success, doesn’t it?”

According to the data, Terra had—albeit briefly—been successfully recognized as a Perfect One. But then, why had the explosion occurred?

As Lea struggled to make sense of it, Se-Hoon calmly offered an explanation once he finally processed it himself.

“I see. The experiment succeeded, but the result wasn’t accepted.”

“Not accepted...?”

“Apparently, the evaluator didn’t think it was the correct answer.” Se-Hoon glanced upward with a frown.

By all accounts, they had successfully had Terra recognized as a Perfect One. Yet the “evaluator,” the Golden Ring, had rejected it—just like how it had forcibly nullified Aria’s Fatestone before.

What went wrong...?

Was it because Terra was just a copy and not the original? However, if that were the problem, she wouldn’t have been recognized as a Perfect One to begin with. That clearly wasn’t the case, meaning the issue likely came after. In other words, Terra replacing the Seeker may have inherently disqualified her.

“I guess this really isn’t as easy as I thought.”

Se-Hoon scowled, frustrated by the Golden Ring’s strange standards that were seemingly arbitrary yet rigid in the most unexpected ways. If there were at least a clue, he could work from that. But there wasn’t. It was like he had been kicked out of an interview the moment they saw his face, saying his fortune looked bad.

If it

were

a person, I could at least ask why... but I can’t even do that with the Ring.

He briefly considered using the power of Grace to investigate further, but his instincts told him it wouldn’t lead to an answer.

Is my entire approach wrong?

Perhaps he should have tried a completely different method. However, he just couldn’t think of any other way to protect the planet from the Demon Force. He fell into deep thought, feeling like he’d been cruising only to suddenly run into a cliff.

“Hm?”

Startled by her phone, Luize, who’d been mulling it over with him, took a look and called out to Se-Hoon.

“Hey. Amir says to pick up your phone.”

“Huh? Right... I left it on silent.”

Pushing the problem to the side for now, Se-Hoon checked his phone, scanned the missed calls and texts, and then called Amir back.

—Brother! Glad to see that you’re fine!

“Huh? What are you talking about...”

Did the Planetary Enhancement Project seem that dangerous to him? As Se-Hoon furrowed his brow, Amir’s sheepish laugh ran out.

—I was panicking a bit because it’s never taken this long to reach you before. For a second, I thought maybe Luize had finally kidnap...

“She’s saying that if you keep talking nonsense, she’ll kill you.”

—...Haha. Yeah. No worries.

Due to Luize’s threat, Amir dropped it immediately, making Se-Hoon smirk at the familiar exchange.

“So, what’s the issue? It looked like something urgent.”

—Right. I was looking into Caden, just like you asked... and found something a bit unexpected.

“Unexpected?”

—Do you know someone named Li Wen? He’s the son of Li Kenxie.

“Yeah. I met him once last year.”

Li Wen was the man who stood in front of Se-Hoon and denounced his own father—Li Kenxie, one of China’s Seven Saints’ backers—calling him trash and saying he had to be overthrown.

He was someone Se-Hoon had interacted with even before regression, and recently, he had tried reaching out several times due to matters concerning Li Fei. Unfortunately, every time, the response was that he was currently unavailable.

—Did you know Li Wen is under probation?

“...Probation?”

—Yes. On suspicion of colluding with the Demon Force.

“If it’s collusion...”

Se-Hoon’s thoughts flashed back to the terror attack in Babel during the first semester that had been carried out by Dawn and some other Watchers. The item used to revive Vermilion Bird then was from MT Industries, brought by none other than Li Wen.

“I thought he was cleared of all charges, though?”

That was what he’d heard from both the news and Seon-Woo.

—Officially, he was. But afterward, the Chinese government and the local Heroes Association branch conducted further investigations and placed him under secret probation.

“That’s...”

—Not normal, right? It’s most likely that the Seven Saints ordered it directly.

Se-Hoon’s eyes narrowed. Although the Seven Saints did indeed have significant influence in China, even they wouldn’t randomly detain Li Wen. After all, he was the

son

of their own benefactor.

And that was when it clicked.

“It must have been Caden... or rather, Li Kenxie himself.”

—That’s my guess too.

“Damn...”

Judging by the situation, it seemed Li Kenxie was trying to prevent Li Wei from getting close to Li Fei. But placing Li Wen under probation for that? It felt excessive.

Do these families become a complete mess after they produce a Perfect One? Or... do they produce Perfect Ones because they’re already a mess to begin with?

Se-Hoon sighed at the state of the Li family, which seemed as chaotic as the Kruger family.

“So, what do you want me to do?”

It was a bit of a blunt question, but he knew Amir wouldn’t have gone through the trouble of contacting him just to relay that Li Wen was under probation.

—Actually, Caden’s been meeting with Li Wen frequently lately. I feel like he’s definitely up to something.

From Amir’s satisfied tone, it was clear Se-Hoon’s guess had been correct.

“And you want me to find out why they are meeting up?”

Going all the way to China was a bit of a hassle, but not impossible—

—No. I know that’s not your way of handling things, of course.

“Then?”

Puzzled, Se-Hoon raised an eyebrow, and on the other end of the line, Amir grinned.

—Please kidnap Li Wen for me.