Sovereign of the Infinite Clones [Novel] Chapter 441

My Alter Ego’S Path To Greatness Chapter 441

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The Black Dragon Society (3)

Heinz gazed at his opponent with a cold, subdued stare. Yet even that alone was enough to make an oppressive weight descend upon that single point, as though the entire world had turned against him.

And yet, even beneath that pressure—enough to make most ordinary people lose their breath—the old man merely stroked his beard with a smile on his face, as though he were thoroughly enjoying himself.

‘He was the former East Asian branch leader of the Buncheon Society?’

Heinz’s eyebrow twitched. It was certainly surprising.

So surprising that even he, who had considered all sorts of possibilities beforehand, had never anticipated it.

But that revelation itself was not the greatest question on his mind.

‘Why is he telling me this?’

It was something Black Shadow had failed to uncover, even after squeezing every last bit of information out of the man.

Judging by the old man’s own words, it was probably a secret that no one else knew, something only he himself was aware of.

For him to willingly reveal such a thing to Heinz, a stranger he had only just met…

No, to an enemy who had invaded the organization he himself had built, was not something that could easily be understood.

“What exactly are you thinking?”

Heinz made no attempt to hide his suspicion. The situation had already shifted overwhelmingly in his favor.

There was no need to carefully probe the other man’s intentions. If necessary, he could simply force the truth out of him through sheer strength.

“It doesn’t have any particular meaning. I simply thought it would be better for comrades who share the same goal to speak openly with one another.”

“The same goal…”

“To bring down the Buncheon Society. Isn’t that what you wanted?”

The Black Dragon Lord gazed at Heinz with deep, unfathomable eyes. A pitch-black energy swirled within his dark pupils.

“—The Maskerade, that is.”

“Hm.”

Heinz tilted his head. The fact that the man knew that name wasn’t particularly surprising.

Maskerade had only recently begun operating in earnest, but with more than a few witnesses having seen them, rumors were bound to spread one way or another.

Besides, they had never intended to hide the name in the first place.

“I don’t believe you.”

That was where the real problem lay.

“You struck first, and now you’re calling us comrades who share the same goal…? No matter how I look at it, it simply seems like you’re making up excuses on the spot to get yourself out of this situation.”

It was a matter of trust.

Even though they were peacefully conversing now, this place had never been meant for building a friendship.

This was a place where punishment was to be delivered to the invader who had stormed into his own home and ransacked it as he pleased.

“Hmm, I apologize for that. But we had our reasons as well.”

“Reasons?”

“How much do you know about the prophet of the Buncheon Society?”

“The Prophet? You mean the Oracle?”

“…Hmm. I had a feeling, but I suppose it really is true. To think you could utter her name and still avoid her gaze.”

Heinz frowned.

What kind of excuse was the old man trying to make?

Why had he suddenly changed the subject?

“Her prophecies aren’t simply a matter of glimpsing fragments of the future. They’re closer to reading the flow that runs through the past, present, and future, as well as the thoughts unconsciously emitted by human beings, and using them to foresee one’s fate.”

Perhaps sensing the chill in the atmosphere, the Black Dragon Lord immediately began explaining.

“Her influence extends across the entire Earth. Furthermore, the moment someone speaks a word that clearly identifies her, they are immediately caught within her gaze and become a target. Of course, there are many different abilities in this world, so it’s not impossible to circumvent her perception, but…”

After saying that it was best not to leave even the slightest trace for the sake of safety, he looked at Heinz with a strange expression, then at the mysterious presence surrounding him.

“But I’ve never seen someone show this little reaction before. It doesn’t feel as though you’ve blocked her ability to track you through some method. It feels more like she simply can’t perceive you at all from the very beginning.”

He lightly shook his head before continuing his earlier explanation.

Why he, and the Black Dragon Society, had been forced to go through such complicated measures.

“Unfortunately, our Black Dragon Society doesn’t possess an ability like yours. And with her vigilance already at its peak because of what you people did in Southeast Asia, if we had approached you with the intention of cooperating with the Blood Alliance…”

Doing so would have carried an extremely high risk of being discovered.

That was why he had never mentioned anything related to it to Black Shadow, the operative who had carried out the plan, from the very beginning.

In the end, that whole commotion had merely been a means of bypassing the surveillance network and making contact with him.

‘The Oracle was that powerful?’

Seeing how excessively cautious the old man was being, Heinz raised one eyebrow.

In truth, he didn’t know all that much about the Oracle.

All he knew was that she possessed the ability to see the future and was one of the figures in the command structure directing the Buncheon Society’s movements.

“Wouldn’t that be only natural for someone who has reached the Mythic Realm, even if she isn’t a combatant? Though she had to abandon most of her rank after committing the sin of revealing heavenly secrets, in exchange, most of the restrictions imposed upon her on Earth disappeared. She is by no means someone who can be ignored. …Though, judging by what I’m seeing, you seem to be her absolute antithesis.”

The Black Dragon Lord, however, reacted as though it were only natural.

And the way he repeatedly glanced around Heinz made it seem as though he found it extraordinarily fascinating that Heinz was completely beyond the Oracle’s reach.

“Yes, I understand that. We’ll discuss the details slowly later… But now, we’ve reached the most important matter.”

Heinz narrowed his eyes and silently stared at the man.

At the same time, the air around them, which had remained still throughout their conversation, began to stir once again.

The instant the slightest suspicious movement appeared, it seemed as though it would immediately tear apart the person standing before him.

“Speak. Former East Asian Branch Leader of the Buncheon Society, Heaven Defier.”

A thick mist of blood spread throughout the surroundings.

“Tell me your true purpose. Tell me why you betrayed the Buncheon Society and now seek to oppose them.”

His stern gaze, one that would tolerate not even a single lie, stared directly into the old man’s mind.

“And tell me why I should trust you.”

With every word he spoke, the oppressive aura continued to intensify, until even the Black Dragon Lord could no longer maintain his composure.

As though forcibly suppressing a body that was on the verge of entering combat readiness, he flinched several times before letting out a deep sigh.

“Phew… Isn’t that obvious?”

Then, with his face stiffened, he continued.

“Because if the Lord of the Buncheon Society’s plan succeeds, at least half of humanity on Earth will never survive.”

It was a reason more humanitarian than Heinz had expected.

And at the same time, the scale of the problem was far more global than he had anticipated.

‘Maskerade… A gathering of adversaries.’

The Lord of the Buncheon Society slowly raised his head.

Reflected in his gaze was the enormous law that enveloped the entire world.

‘Is this your will, Akasha?’

A fragment of the transcendent system that only he in the entire world could fully perceive.

It was the source of power that had bestowed the blessing of Awakening upon the only sentient beings on Earth—humans—allowing them to experience the miracles known as Mysteries.

‘And at the same time, it is also the key to bringing about the world’s destruction.’

Ziiing—

‘—I will never give up… I will definitely become…’

Wooong—

‘—No matter what it takes… No matter what sacrifices must be made…!’

Along with the now-familiar headache, a ringing sound echoed in his ears.

The voice sounded as though it were his own, yet somehow unfamiliar—a strange, alien voice that buzzed incessantly and shook his mind.

But he merely stared at the world’s laws without even blinking.

There was nothing particularly surprising about it anymore.

Before his eyes, fragments of a future that had now become the past flashed by.

Just as a nation that had pursued an isolationist policy eventually collapsed under the pressure of foreign powers—So too did the world ultimately fail to overcome its circumstances and fall into ruin.

‘I expected there to be interference.’

It had always been that way.

No matter what countermeasures he prepared in advance using his accumulated knowledge, they were useless.

Like an unavoidable fate, it would always appear at an unexpected moment and in an unforeseen form, ruining his plans.

‘But I am definitely moving forward.’

He could say that with certainty.

His responses, built upon accumulated experience, had been effective to that extent.

The fact that he had managed to raise his share to this level despite all the restrictions could be called his greatest achievement yet.

There was only one problem.

The system’s resistance had also reached a level that could no longer be ignored, proportionate to how far he had advanced.

As his accomplishments grew greater, so too had the adversaries become more threatening than ever before.

‘Hahoe Mask and Phantom, the Saint of the Otherworld, Lion Mask, and…’

There wasn’t just one enemy capable of freely crossing dimensions like he could. There were several. And the fact that he still hadn’t completely grasped their identities was an enormous problem.

He first needed to understand his enemies before he could devise any countermeasures, but…

“Aha! Lord! So this is where you were!”

Just as he had fallen into deep thought, the voice of someone rather boisterous interrupted his reverie.

“I actually had something I wanted to tell you, so this worked out perfectly!”

A middle-aged man with ash-brown hair strode toward him.

Doctor.

Whatever he had done to his own body, a pair of fluorescent yellow eyes glowed eerily, flickering like lights.

“Ah! I see you noticed them too, Lord? Aren’t these eyes magnificent? I used an extracted gene from that Watcher fellow from the Rodeka Dimension as the foundation, then added all sorts of things to it…”

As always, he immediately went off on a tangent and began rambling about this and that.

A body fused from materials taken from various races, spiritual power circuits artificially tuned and engraved into his flesh, and even an artificial body containing a mixture of countless products of scientific civilizations.

He proudly displayed each of them one by one.

“Bodies cultivated as homunculi really are much more flexible in this regard, you know? If I’d known this would happen, I would’ve switched bodies much sooner. Bodies with too high a pure-human content are terribly inflexible!”

The mad scientist, who had gone so far as to use his own body as experimental material regardless of whether it caused him to lose the rank he had accumulated over the years, grumbled in dissatisfaction.

Of course, the reason he had been able to resurrect like this was because he had previously torn his own body apart into several pieces and cultivated them in advance.

“It would’ve been even better if the Perfect Evolutionary Organism Project had succeeded… Ah! Speaking of which, that Lion Mask fellow in Maskerade seems to be someone I’ve met before. The more I hear about him, the more something vaguely comes back to me…”

“Doctor, let’s get to the point.”

The Lord of the Buncheon Society, who had quietly listened to his endless rambling until then, finally spoke in a low voice.

He had already shown sufficient courtesy toward the man’s position simply by waiting this long.

He had just returned from devouring an entire dimension, so for the time being, he had enough leeway that he wouldn’t need to confine himself as long as he refrained from expending excessive amounts of power.

But that didn’t mean he intended to keep listening to the Doctor’s endless nonsense.

“Ehehehee! I got so excited that I completely forgot for a moment!”

The Doctor slapped his own forehead and looked at the Lord with a broad grin.

Then he continued, sounding almost delighted.

“I went through the logs from the time I was asleep, and I discovered something extremely interesting! Someone tried to hack into the system I’d locked down!”

“Hack?”

“It wasn’t some amateur, either! The mere fact that they managed to get that far means their capabilities were beyond even the quantum computers of most super-scientific civilizations!”

It wasn’t merely a matter of the device’s performance.

It meant that the person operating it was also highly skilled.

Had he not possessed his [Deus Ex Machina], the system might genuinely have been breached.

“So I tried tracing them back, but they must have been extremely concerned about security as well, because pinpointing their location wasn’t easy! Heeheehee~! How embarrassing!”

Of course, he hadn’t come away empty-handed.

He hadn’t managed to determine the exact source, but he had succeeded in finding traces left behind by the hacker.

“…A large-scale hack targeting all of Southeast Asia.”

The decisive reason that had forced them to hold an emergency meeting.

It was evidence that the unknown hacker had been deeply involved in the collapse of the Southeast Asian branch.

“Maskerade.”

“Exactly! The fact that they possess a hacker of that caliber means they aren’t simply a bunch of people who are strong in combat! Uyeeyy~! I’d love to face them directly at least once, but unfortunately, they seem to have stopped operating recently! What a shame.”

Ignoring the Doctor, who was genuinely disappointed, the Lord of the Buncheon Society slowly closed his eyes.

Maskerade.

A group of adversaries who had gathered to interfere with his plans.

And the fact that someone with information-technology capabilities impressive enough to earn the Doctor’s admiration belonged to them was by no means good news.

‘But I will overcome them. No matter what obstacles stand in my way. Even if it means making even greater sacrifices.’

Everything was for this world. To protect Earth from destruction.

That was his mission as a regressor, a mission he could never tell anyone about.