A blinding plasma sheath left a brilliant ribbon of light across the atmosphere. In the blink of an eye, Hyuk broke through Gulan's exosphere and entered the vacuum of space, her speed instantly surging.
Mach 20.
Mach 50.
Mach 100!
Once free of Gulan's atmosphere, the plasma envelope surrounding Hyuk dissipated, yet her velocity skyrocketed to a terrifying Mach 100, and it was still climbing steadily.
In theory, Hyuk could accelerate to near-light speed in the vacuum of space. Vortex Headquarters had barely managed to detect her signal when Hyuk aggressively intercepted the Progenitor head-on.
Covering a cosmic distance of nearly 400,000 kilometers in under five minutes, Hyuk's terminal velocity reached an absurd Mach 7,500.
Radiation and cosmic particles slammed into her in space, turning her into a glowing, meteor-like projectile. This luminous streak plummeted toward the target at an absolute-speed-of-light-adjacent flash.
Celestial-tier kinetic force instantaneously tore through the Progenitor's massive frame. Its hundred-meter body erupted into a fine cloud of pulverized flesh and blood in a fraction of a second.
[Infinite Overload · Potential Unleashed]
[Strength: 4.62 billion tons ⬆]
...
"The target is about to impact the moon!"
The personnel at Vortex Headquarters nearly had heart attacks.
No one had the time or mental capacity to calculate what would happen if Hyuk actually slammed into the moon at that speed. At the very least, it would create a catastrophic lunar impact crater.
Fortunately, such a disaster didn't occur. Hyuk came to an abrupt, absolute stop. The immense g-force overload generated by the sudden deceleration was practically nonexistent to her.
Even so, Hyuk's stunt left the Vortex leadership experiencing a level of shock they had never known before. Crossing 400,000 kilometers in less than five minutes?
That was something they wouldn't even dare dream of.
...
Meanwhile,
Mangled shreds of flesh drifted and scattered across the cosmos. The Progenitor had been obliterated in a single punch by Hyuk, and the floating remains showed no signs of regeneration or reassembly.
Was it dead?
No!
The mission prompt hadn't indicated completion.
Hyuk suddenly whipped her head around to glare at the moon. Sure enough, a colossal claw extended from the lunar crust, followed by a behemoth of staggering proportions. Its body was encased in jet-black scales, and its size was mind-boggling.
While Uranus was a hundred-meter-class beast, the true Progenitor before her was easily over three hundred meters long. Its appearance was identical to the smaller one Hyuk had just atomized.
Hyuk understood immediately.
It seemed to possess reproductive or division capabilities.
Noticing that Hyuk had caught onto its true body, a fierce, hideous grin split the Progenitor's face. In the next instant, its colossal body began to shrink at a rate visible to the naked eye.
Compressing.
Compressing.
Shrinking even further!
Behemoths possessed high intelligence, and the Progenitor was no exception. It realized that its gigantic size was a fatal weakness against this human, so it immediately moved to eliminate that flaw.
Faced with an opponent of unknown power who posed a severe threat, Hyuk didn't harbor a single shred of arrogance or contempt, nor did she hold back.
She never had the habit of leaving room for unnecessary danger.
As the Progenitor's body shrank, Hyuk instantly knew what it was trying to do: compress its bodily density to drastically enhance its defense and attack power.
The drastic, plunging drop in its body's luminescence ratio was living proof of this.
Accelerating from a dead stop in a fraction of a second, Hyuk hurtled toward the lunar surface. Before the Progenitor could finish compressing its form to the limit, Hyuk was already upon it.
With a brutally simple, unadorned punch, she struck. The Progenitor swung its own fist in retaliation, but its body was still too massive; Hyuk's strike slammed straight through its arm, instantly vaporizing the limb into a fine mist of blood.
The incomparable kinetic impact blasted a colossal cloud of lunar soil into the air. The Progenitor carved a gargantuan trench across the lunar surface before being sent flying out into the void of space.
In that fleeting fraction of a second, even the lunar regolith caught between their clashing fists was subjected to extreme pressure, triggering nuclear fusion and flashing with a blinding, transient burst of light.
The rebounding Progenitor continued to shrink. It shoved raw flesh and muscle toward its shoulder, forcefully regenerating a brand-new arm.
It appeared that as its bodily density increased, its regenerative capabilities weakened, forcing it to rely on such crude methods to rebuild its limbs.
Hyuk gave the Progenitor zero breathing room. Blasting a massive crater into the moon's crust with her takeoff, she accelerated and caught up in an instant, unleashing over four billion tons of raw force.
In the blink of an eye, the Progenitor's newly compressed, human-sized body was directly blown apart by half. Through this single strike, Hyuk gauged the Progenitor's density precisely.
Its density and hardness approached that of a white dwarf.
However,
Hyuk's physical density was several thousand times that of a standard white dwarf!
Combined with 4.62 billion tons of strength and a body weight of 30 million tons generating unimaginable kinetic energy, this single strike effortlessly tore through the Progenitor's painstakingly condensed physique.
However.
After evolving into a celestial-tier lifeform, the Progenitor's life force was undeniably formidable; missing half its body wasn't fatal. It opened its mouth and unleashed a blinding beam of light.
A ferocious wave of energy erupted outward.
Hyuk showed not a shred of fear.
Swiveling around, she delivered a full-powered strike. The energy beam slammed into her fist, completely incapable of scratching her. Instead, the ray scattered in all directions, blooming into countless blinding strands of light.
Fist imbued with celestial-tier power, she punched straight through the Progenitor's beam, driving her fist right into its mouth and shattering its entire head.
The moment contact was made, extreme kinetic energy converted into thermal energy. A plasma fireball blazing at hundreds of millions of degrees instantly ignited and expanded violently. It emitted a light brighter than the sun, and a ferocious gamma-ray burst swept across the vacuum of space before washing over Gulan and the lunar surface in a brilliant, terrifying spectacle.
Numerous satellites were instantly fried and destroyed.
This was an absolute, one-sided slaughter.
[Infinite Overload · Potential Unleashed]
[Strength: 4.61 billion tons ⬆]
The Progenitor's movements ceased. Its head had been blown to pieces by Hyuk, leaving only a third of its torso behind. To be completely safe, Hyuk pulverized the remaining third as well.
...
Vortex Headquarters watched the entire battle unfold in space via satellite. Aside from trembling in sheer terror, they could do nothing else; this was not a power humanity could ever hope to oppose.
Even the drifting lunar regolith had been forced into nuclear fusion simply from the shockwaves of their clash. To beings of this caliber, human nuclear weapons were completely meaningless.
Therefore, they arrived at a unanimous conclusion.
"They are definitely not from Gulan!"
Gulan's natural ecosystem could never nurture a lifeform like this. Such physics-defying entities could only be forged in the extreme environments of massive celestial bodies.
...
The battle concluded.
Hyuk cast a glance back at the moon. Not ruling out the possibility that the Progenitor she had just killed wasn't the true original, she accelerated and hurtled toward the moon's surface.
Mach 100.
Mach 300.
Mach 500.
...
"What is she trying to do?!"
The Vortex leadership nearly jumped out of their skins.
Hyuk's hyper-velocity frame collided head-on with the moon. The moment of impact compressed vast amounts of regolith so violently that it triggered spontaneous nuclear fusion. An unparalleled shockwave rippled across the lunar crust, carving out a gigantic impact crater.
...
A moment later,
Hyuk burst out from the far side of the moon. Countless tons of lunar soil and rock were blasted into the cosmos. She had pierced straight through the entire moon, yet detected no other abnormalities within its interior.
It wasn't until the mission completion prompt appeared that Hyuk finally confirmed the task was finished.
——
[Main Mission · Phase Three · Completed]
[Reward: Evolution Rate · 20%]
[Evolution Rate: 85%⬆]
——
The Progenitor hadn't managed to inflict even a shred of damage on Hyuk, meaning this battle yielded zero evolution points. Even so, the next evolutionary leap was now within arm's reach.
Sensing Hyuk's mood, Type Zero remarked, "You seem somewhat unsatisfied with this fight. Is it because the opponent was too weak? In my eyes, the Progenitor's power already defied all logic."
"It just wasn't strong enough."
As an enemy, Hyuk wouldn't give the Progenitor a single window to struggle or retaliate. But as a martial adversary, Hyuk felt it could have been stronger.
That way, it might have given her some evolution points. Furthermore, Hyuk was craving a breathless, all-out battle; her pent-up fighting spirit had nowhere to go.
Following the battle on the moon,
Hyuk returned to Gulan's surface, bringing back a fraction of the Progenitor clone's flesh. Its true body had been compressed into degenerate matter, but the flesh from the clone shattered in the initial exchange still retained biological cell characteristics.
It would be useful for research.
Hyuk had only been on Gulan for fifteen years and still had plenty of time left. Since completing the mission didn't mean an immediate departure back to Earth, she decided to stick around a little longer.
She handed the Progenitor's flesh over to Type Zero.
"The Progenitor seems to possess reproduction and division capabilities. Have some people look into it thoroughly, and set up a few cultivation bases."
"Just like culturing primordial parasites?"
"Yes."
"I'll see what I can do."
Hyuk grew stronger with every enemy she killed; Type Zero had long since noticed this obvious trend and knew exactly what Hyuk was aiming for.
However, she couldn't guarantee success. It would depend entirely on the scientific caliber of her research teams and a healthy dose of sheer luck.
...
Hyuk returned directly to Deep Blue Biopharma. Under Type Zero's orchestration, the corporation's research institutes and laboratories rapidly launched a new, high-priority project.
The research team stared in absolute shock.
"What kind of biological cell is this? The vitality is utterly staggering!"
"A behemoth."
The researchers gasped in awe. Their boss always seemed to pull the strangest things out of thin air, constantly opening their eyes to new horizons.
Having work meant they wouldn't have to worry about unemployment. In times like these, surviving without a job was a monumental struggle, so the scientific staff were practically ecstatic.
Vortex was smart enough not to provoke Hyuk. Following the lunar battle, they had universally agreed that this monster should not be trifled with. Whatever she wanted to do, they would just let her be.
If Hyuk was willing to quietly stay behind closed doors and do research, they would thank the heavens. At the very least, she had stopped going on rampages and had conveniently taken out that apocalyptic anomaly on the moon.
While Vortex and nations around the world were locked in a desperate, life-or-death war against the raging behemoths, Hyuk quietly lived her life in peace.
For one thing, no behemoth dared to threaten the city where Deep Blue Biopharma was based, making it by far the safest haven on Gulan.
The main mission hadn't triggered any subsequent phases after Phase Three, which likely meant Phase Three was the grand finale of this journey. The rest of Hyuk's time here was entirely up to her to spend as she pleased.
Truth be told, Hyuk was quite curious whether other portals might appear on Gulan, or if there were other extraterrestrial beings hiding out on the planet. She had purposely gone out looking for them, but failed to sense any resonance from other doors.
It seemed Earth was just a unique outlier.
The Progenitor's genome was bafflingly complex, vastly different from both humans and primordial parasites. It was practically a genetic junk drawer, throwing everything inside and pulling a random lottery ticket every time it reproduced.
The mutations and traits passed down to its split offspring were pure RNG, which explained why bizarre anomalies like Uranus and Diablo existed as direct descendants of the Progenitor.
Because of this extreme genetic complexity, Deep Blue Biopharma's research team was completely stumped. None of their past experience applied here, forcing them to resort to slow, painstaking trial and error.
They needed to engineer a controllable, stable cloning protocol that could lock down the Progenitor's random mutations. Just figuring that out took a few years.
...
Three years later.
Ten massive behemoth cultivation bases were constructed one after another. With the cloning protocol and cell samples successfully researched, all ten facilities simultaneously initiated the cultivation process.
The sample genes had been artificially modified to cap the adult behemoths' size at around that of an average human. An adult specimen possessed ten tons of raw strength and could grow by absorbing nuclear radiation.
They didn't even need nutrient fluid; as long as there was nuclear radiation present, the specimens would automatically divide and multiply at an exponential rate, perfectly aligning with Hyuk's specifications.
Type Zero noted, "A single facility can hold a maximum of 10,000 behemoths. But they multiply at a terrifying rate, a facility will be packed to the brim in just twelve hours. Do you mind flying over a few times a day?"
"Not at all."
A single round-trip took less than twenty seconds of flight time anyway.
BOOM!
A deafening sonic boom ripped through the air. The mindless, mass-produced behemoths bellowed in fury, only to be effortlessly crushed en masse by the shockwave of Hyuk's passing flight. System notification chimes rang endlessly in the back of Hyuk's mind.
[Infinite Overload · Potential Unleashed]
[Strength: 4,610,000,004 tons ⬆]
——
[Infinite Overload · Potential Unleashed]
[Strength: 4,610,000,208 tons ⬆]
On average, a single behemoth granted Hyuk a 4-ton boost in strength. One facility could culture 10,000 behemoths per batch, churning out two batches a day.
With ten facilities running, the daily total output reached 200,000 specimens, meaning Hyuk could rack up 800,000 tons of raw strength every single day. And she still had plenty of time ahead of her.
Hyuk felt that the number of cultivation bases could still be increased, so two years later, Type Zero had another ten massive facilities built and operational.
Naturally, these bases were meant exclusively for Hyuk's use. The radiation levels inside were dangerously high, any normal human who walked in would drop dead instantly.
...
Time flew by in a blur.
In the blink of an eye,
Hyuk had been in Quadrant 117 Gulan for thirty years. Strictly speaking, she had actually only spent a little over twenty-nine years here.
Over the decades, humanity on Gulan was still locked in a bitter war against the behemoths. Utilizing harvested behemoth genes, Vortex and the allied nations had successfully bred a few elite, combat-capable behemoths of their own.
They intended to use these engineered beasts to counter Uranus.
All of this had nothing to do with Hyuk. Her sole focus was on growing stronger, indulging uncontrollably in the rapid surge of her own power. Her strength metrics skyrocketed day by day, reaching absurd, astronomical heights.
The system interface:
——
[Name: Hyuk]
[Race: Terran]
[Talent: Infinite Overload]
[Evolution Rate: 85%]
[Strength: 11.2 billion tons]
——
Hyuk's strength metric had broken past the ten-billion-ton mark. According to Type Zero's calculations, her body weight had ballooned to 76.86 million tons.
Despite such unimaginably concentrated mass packed into a human frame, she still didn't exhibit any noticeable gravitational pull on her surroundings, which was the most incredible part of all.
Type Zero noted, "Your body density is now roughly 10^12 kilograms per cubic meter. You're taking another solid step toward becoming a humanoid neutron star."
"Still a long way to go."
Hyuk knew she was still several orders of magnitude away from true neutron star density. Even so, the leap was staggering, upgrading her physical density by an entire order of magnitude.
This meant greater durability and vastly superior combat prowess. Under these stats, Hyuk's instantaneous burst speed now reached a blistering Mach 156.
...
[Serial No. 268813975: A two-way passage leading to Quadrant 042. This is a Quadrant of infinite possibilities, the nexus of all potential.]
[Closure Countdown: 4 days, 11 hours, 20 minutes]
Standing before the door.
Hyuk was dressed in casual clothes, carrying a hiking backpack. The pack wasn't stuffed with supplies, but rather packed with high-capacity storage drives, used to store all the scientific data and technological blueprints Type Zero had harvested from Gulan.
Truth be told, a simple backpack couldn't hold an immense amount of data, as Gulan's storage technology wasn't particularly cutting-edge. Still, anything was better than nothing.
"What do you want to do once we get back?"
"I need to find someone to craft me a durable, reliable battlesuit."
When Hyuk said this, there was a hint of helplessness in her tone. The nano-battlesuit from the Navy-blues alliance had been completely destroyed during her battle with the Progenitor, vaporized down to the very last atom.
Naturally, there was no repairing it.
The extreme plasma heat generated by that final strike had spiked well over a hundred million degrees, far exceeding the battlesuit's maximum tolerance, instantly evaporating it.
The sentimentally valuable Navy-blues military uniform had thus been reduced to cosmic dust.
As they spoke,
Hyuk pushed open the door and stepped inside, vanishing from sight. In a fraction of a second, her body traversed across two Quadrants, returning to Earth in Quadrant 042. She emerged from the isolation door hidden inside an abandoned factory.
CLICK!
The isolation door slid shut, leaving no visible trace of its existence behind.
Hyuk looked around. The inside of the factory was just as dilapidated as before, completely unchanged. The surrounding area was so dead silent that even the scurrying of mice couldn't be heard.
She pulled out her phone. Type Zero automatically reconfigured the device's network protocol to connect to Earth's internet, then synchronized the internal clock back to Earth's standard time.
May 11, 2027.
Nearly three years had passed on Earth.
Type Zero remarked, "Discounting the time you spent beyond the doors, it's been almost four years since you left Jpscan City. The changes down here are a bit more dramatic than I anticipated."
"In what way?"
"The existence of superhumans has been fully made public. Ordinary people have had no choice but to accept this reality. Social order is still relatively stable, and various governments are doing everything they can to integrate superhumans into mainstream society."
The emergence of superhumans was undoubtedly a massive leap forward for Earth's civilization. Their diverse and extraordinary abilities were by no means limited to combat and brutal turf wars.
They could also be used to boost productivity and assist in scientific research. Society and technology were poised for an explosive, exponential leap forward, and Earth's nations were actively steering things in that direction.
"What about the aliens?"
"That's still a secret."
As expected.
Type Zero casually roamed across Earth's internet. Her pace wasn't fast, but the perk was total, unrestricted access, every firewall in existence was nothing more than hollow scaffolding to her.
Superhuman academies.
Star-Link.
Major events of recent years.
...
Pop-ups continuously flashed across the phone screen. Type Zero summarized the gathered intelligence and relayed it to Hyuk one by one, such as the establishment of specialized domestic academies dedicated to educating superhumans and assisting them in developing their innate talents.
Jpscan City happened to have one such superhuman academy, spanning all age groups from early childhood, youth, and adulthood all the way to old age, with no restrictions on student backgrounds.
And then there was Star-Link.
The full name of this organization was the "Superhuman and Alien Special Operations Agency." It was a semi-classified government bureau, though ordinary citizens were generally only familiar with the code name, Star-Link.
Due to its unique mandate, Star-Link members possessed exceptional capabilities for handling anomalous incidents, and their combat prowess far outclassed ordinary individuals.
Hyuk asked with a hint of curiosity, "Is there a power ranking list or anything like that?"
"No."
This wasn't a video game; it was virtually impossible to neatly categorize and quantify everyone's combat strength. Online tier lists were purely internet nonsense, and Star-Link didn't indulge in that kind of playground rivalry internally.
Perhaps due to the sheer explosion of weird anomalies and entities, government intelligence agencies and data security protocols had tightened dramatically. Many data networks that Type Zero used to be able to effortlessly hack were now completely sealed off.
The signals were blocked down to the absolute last byte.
She praised them, "Humanity is evolving very fast."
Spotting flaws, analyzing problems, instantly devising countermeasures, and continuously accumulating experience to adapt to new environments, that was the definition of progress.
Hyuk only cared about one thing.
"Any traces of Vinespawns?"
"Yes."
Type Zero's response made Hyuk's expression tighten.
Jpscan City's archive records popped up on the phone screen.
"Plant-based lifeform, capable of turning their bodies into vine-like weapons. A few months ago, an individual suspected to be a Vinespawn surfaced right here in Jpscan City."
"No further info?"
"Aliens hiding within human society appear to have formed a decentralized, underground social network. Their operational security is exceptionally tight. I suggest you gather more intelligence by trying to make direct contact with them."
Years had passed, and the aliens who had trickled onto Earth had naturally woven an undercover social web among themselves for mutual benefit.
This wasn't surprising, and it indirectly proved that the alien population lurking within human society was steadily growing, forming an entirely separate, shadowed ecosystem.
Without needing to overthink it, Hyuk's destination for this trip was Jpscan City anyway. Now that she had picked up the scent of a Vinespawn, there was certainly no reason to hesitate.
...
The next day.
Hyuk returned to Jpscan City.
For her, this was simply a routine homecoming. Nearly four years had flown by since she last set foot here, and she was finally back. But for Jpscan City's local Star-Link cell, this was nothing short of an apocalyptic event.
The moment Hyuk crossed into Jpscan City, the alert alarms inside the Star-Link branch's headquarters began wailing frantically. The system flashed a warning: a Tier-5 threat entity had manifested within the city limits.
The staff lost their minds, crying out in sheer panic.
"Tier 5?!"
Star-Link categorized potentially threatening or destructive individuals and incidents into ten distinct tiers, with higher levels representing greater peril and catastrophic potential.
Since the establishment of the Jpscan City branch, a Tier-5 threat had never once been recorded. The only thing that had ever been classified as Tier-5 was the Jpscan City incident from four years ago, an event that directly catalyzed the founding of Star-Link itself.
Shenan remained outwardly calm despite the chaos.
"What's going on?"
"The Powerful is back."
A bespectacled young man pulled up the surveillance footage on the main screen, clearly displaying Hyuk's face. In the simplest words possible, he dropped an absolute bombshell of suffocating pressure.
The moment those words left his mouth, the atmosphere inside the base froze completely. After all these years, the lingering shadow Hyuk had cast over them was still vividly fresh in their minds.
The Instructor rushed into the command center at top speed. He stared at the screen: Hyuk wasn't displaying any hostile behavior whatsoever, calmly standing at a crosswalk like any ordinary citizen waiting for the pedestrian light to turn green.
"Do not take any action."
Special incidents required special handling. For ordinary superhumans and alien interlopers, if they ever crossed the line and committed destructive acts, the local Star-Link cell would deal with them decisively.
But it all depended on who the target was.
When facing an individual whose power completely transcended conventional limits, like Hyuk, any move made by the Star-Link cell would not only be a foolish overreach, but it could easily provoke her wrath.
Unless they possessed the power to check and bind Hyuk, the wisest course of action was simply to turn a blind eye. It was frustratingly helpless, but that was reality.