Hell’s Handbook

The fight sounded really intense. One side had access to plenty of weapons, while the other side had almost indestructible bodies. It was only natural for the battle to be a fierce one.

The sounds slowly died down after about half an hour. There were only two possibilities – either one side had been defeated, or the crew had started mutating. That way, the fight would come to an end.

“Listen up, both of you. This is my battle, so you just have to take care of yourselves. If the situation looks bad, just leave,” Su Jin said to his two teammates.

Situ Jin and Kano Mai both knew themselves well. They would have been somewhat helpful in a less difficult Challenge, but not helpful at all in a Challenge with so many limitations like this one. So, they both nodded obediently.

Immediately after they nodded, Su Jin suddenly struck them with the back of his palm and knocked them out. He sighed, then found a safe place to hide them. He knew that if they managed to get through this Challenge, they were going to give him a piece of their mind, but… getting scolded was definitely better than losing them. The two of them weren’t even as formidable as Wu Chen was. Wu Chen had been completely unable to defend himself against the attack of those worms at all and died from a sneak attack. There was practically no way these two were going to survive.

“I’m really sorry, but… I don’t have much of a choice.” Su Jin smiled sadly, jammed the entrance shut and left.

By the time he arrived at the fighting area, the entire place had become a mess of blood and flesh. It was clear that a major battle of life and death had just occurred. It was hard to believe that this place had been as clean and neat as the cafeteria not too long ago.

Su Jin slowly made his way through the carnage and found Arkas quite easily. The old man was now like the research professor he was supposed to be. A group of worms were gathered around him as he dissected one of the humans.

“What’s wrong now? You don’t fully understand your own body, so you need to cut up one of your own to take a better look?” said Su Jin in a sarcastic voice. He had tied the long knife around his right arm again and had another one in his left hand.

Arkas wasn’t surprised by Su Jin’s arrival. As he dissected the body, he said, “You are right to say that I don’t fully understand. I don’t understand how there could be anyone here who remained uninfected by the worms. It’s so strange.”

Su Jin was now near enough to see that the person that Arkas was dissecting was none other than the team leader of Team Volcano Mountain. Except that now, the man was dead.

The middle aged lady and Lv Ming were hanging on a pole by the side. It was hard to tell if they were alive or dead, but Su Jin felt that they were probably dead.

“I just don’t understand! We’re the same in terms of physical make up, so… are there hidden antibodies inside their genes? I’m going to need more experiments to test my hypothesis, so I’ll need more specimens. Why don’t you stay here and become a specimen?” Arkas suddenly spun around and smiled sinisterly at Su Jin. He hadn’t been using a scalpel to dissect the body at all. Instead, he was using a worm with a knife-like feeler growing out of his own hand.

He noticed that Su Jin was staring at his hand and smirked. “How about that? That’s what I mean by evolution. The body transforms according to what the situation needs. That’s the perfect way to live!”

Su Jin snorted. “No, thank you. I don’t have the habit of becoming a specimen for others, and… I also don’t like watching anybody do such a thing to my fellow humans. I’d much prefer it if you were dead.”

“Hoho! They don’t like becoming specimens either, but they didn’t have a choice. Did you think you had a choice in this matter?” Arkas cackled, then waved his hand slightly. “Children, kill him!” After giving those orders, he went back to his own research. The worms hiding inside the dead flesh came hurtling out in huge numbers.

Su Jin took a deep breath and began charging toward Arkas. He started slow, but gained speed rapidly, eventually moving at the speed of lightning.

But just before he got to Arkas, a number of large worms blocked his way. These worms had merged their bodies with the armor of several crew members, making their defense very strong.

“Die!” bellowed Su Jin. He was able to tear the full armor apart with his bare hands, so he wasn’t threatened by these combined armor and worm bodies. He slammed a palm toward one of them and unleashed his Qi Thrust technique, which smashed it instantly. But the time taken to kill one allowed for more to come toward him.

“I’m going to kill all of you! Did you think you could stop me?” Su Jin was like a killing machine now. Regardless of what sort of alien came his way, they would be smashed to bits once they came close enough.

More and more aliens turned into corpses before him, and they started piling up into a tiny hill. Su Jin was killing them so rapidly that the previously innumerable numbers seemed like they were really going to be wiped out.

This time, even Arkas was rather surprised. He was already quite surprised by how formidable Su Jin was before this, but he was able to explain it away by assuming that Su Jin was probably some martial artist who had learned all this from an older civilization and had been allowed to join the expedition with a special hidden identity. But now, he realized that this young man had surpassed the limits of a human. It seemed more like Su Jin had limitless strength, which was truly mind boggling.

Arkas hesitated for a moment, then made a shrill whistling noise with his mouth. A woman approached him slowly with a few crystals floating around her.

“I’ll leave him to you,” said Arkas very solemnly.

The woman nodded with a faint smile. While Su Jin was busy fighting all the worms, her body fell apart like she was merely made from sand, then regrouped again right behind Su Jin. She threw a punch at Su Jin and sent him flying.

“What the hell was that?!” Su Jin had been so focused on fighting, he hadn’t even noticed the appearance of a new person. He looked up and was stunned for a moment. This woman turned out to be that female biologist.

“It seems you’ve mutated to a pretty high level.” Su Jin stretched his back. That had been a pretty hard punch.

“Hoho! There are different levels of evolution. There are king level worms like Professor Arkas, which means that everyone else can only evolve into worm subordinates. But I’m not like them. I’ve evolved in a different way, so I’m not affected by Professor Arkas,” said the biologist with a light chuckle. The worms that had attacked Su Jin earlier on retreated immediately when they saw her, as though they were terribly afraid of her.

Su Jin glanced at her and figured she might be higher up the food chain or something. But this situation wasn’t too bad either. It was easier to fight one on one than face an army.

He didn’t say anything and swung his knife at her. Immediately as it struck her, she split her body in half. This was the same move that Reginald had.

“Slicing me is not going to be of any use!” said the biologist coquettishly.

“Oh, really?” Su Jin gave a low shout, then swept up some of the blasted parts of the worms he killed earlier from the floor. He flicked them out rapidly like they were bullets.

The biologist quickly split herself again and again to dodge the attacks, but she had the same problem as Reginald – she couldn’t keep splitting and merging fast enough for too long. The way Su Jin rained attacks on her like this was already too hard for her to handle.

Just then, the four crystals floating around her merged into one crystal shield that helped to deflect the oncoming pieces temporarily.

Once the pieces stopped flying her way, she moved the crystals aside in hope of launching a counterattack, but Su Jin appeared in front of her immediately after the crystals moved aside.

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“Crap!” she yelped and tried to move the crystals back in place. But she was too late. Su Jin’s fist went right in between the merging crystals and his punch landed squarely in her face.

Boom! She was sent flying from the impact, but he knew that this wasn’t enough to kill her. Just as he had expected, she got up immediately, but part of her skin had been torn from the punch, revealing a grayish black layer under her skin that looked like it was made from straw.

“Muscle?” Su Jin looked at his fist. That feeling had been really weird, as though those black, straw-like things were not really human flesh. They seemed to be a group of muscles and were extremely resilient.

“Why, you…!” roared the biologist angrily. She waved her hand and the four crystals flew toward Su Jin like flying swords.

Su Jin did not move and waited for the crystals to come closer. Just before the crystals hit him, he suddenly hopped over them and ran toward the biologist with all his might.

The biologist paled and summoned the crystals back, but the crystals couldn’t move as quickly as Su Jin. In other words, there was no way she could use something else to defend herself against Su Jin. She had to face his attack head on.

“She’s pretty strong and the innate skills her evolved body comes with are not bad, but she’s terrible at actual fighting. Then again, I guess I shouldn’t ask too much of a research scientist who’s recently evolved,” thought Su Jin to himself. This biologist had a lot of good techniques at her disposal after evolving, but she didn’t know how to strategize or preempt her enemy well and certainly didn’t have much fighting experience. Just hoping that her new superhuman abilities could kill him was never going to work right from the start.

To a certain extent, this biologist was more formidable than Reginald. Just like him, she could split herself, but she could also control these four additional crystals that worked like flying swords. Unfortunately, she was much worse at fighting than Reginald, because Reginald was a fighter to begin with. His evolution had only given him better control of the strength and abilities he had.

Boom! The biologist crashed into the wall behind, showing that the wall made from special materials were no stronger than a wafer crisp in the face of Su Jin’s incredible strength.

“How can it be? You’re just a lowly lifeform! How is this possible?!” shrieked the biologist as she charged out from the wall. But now, her face was no longer covered by human skin. Her face made from blackened muscle looked terrifying.

“A lowly lifeform? You’re just too confident, aren’t you?” Su Jin threw her another punch immediately as she started shrieking. This time, he punched upwards, sending her flying toward the ceiling instead.

BOOM! She smashed through several panels along the way, but came back down in no time. If there was one thing you could say for sure about these evolved bodies, it was that they were real hardy.