Chapter 285:

Chapter 285:

Chapter 285

The existence of the returnees was something that Yu-hyun had also considered before.

On the day of the integration of consciousness, when Earth first encountered the genesis system, the world changed, and some of the people swept up in it fell into another world across the gap of dimensions.

The public called it vanishing, when people disappeared.

No one knew where they went, or when they would come back.

[Wait a minute. That person. No, that monster is a returnee?]

‘Yes. He’s a returnee. No, he’s definitely a returnee because he’s so strange. That’s a form that only returnees can have.’

[That thing with all those octopus legs?]

‘Well, it’s not usually that bad, but it’s similar. Maybe it’s some kind of chemical reaction with his own traits or the stories he has.’

It must have been incomprehensible to Baekryeon, but Yu-hyun was not too surprised because he had seen such a sight through the media.

The people who vanished were scattered across different dimensions.

It could be a martial world, a fantasy world, or an unknown space that no one knew.

The people who fell there had no choice but to struggle to survive.

Fortunately, if there was any luck, the vanishers were given benefits as soon as they went to another dimension.

‘I saw it in an interview with a returnee from the US before.’

The vanishers were actually given more power than the collectors who awakened in the usual way, so they could survive in a distant land.

That mass of tentacles in front of him must have been one of those benefits.

[Crazy. What kind of power is that? It looks like a cursed mongol.]

‘If he came from a harsh place where he had to survive by any means, it’s possible.’

Especially to survive in a harsh place, they had to literally become monsters.

They abandoned their humanity and took on the appearance of monsters for that reason.

But there was another key cause here, which was that there was a problem if they returned to Earth too quickly.

‘There’s a kind of wall between dimensions in the lower system.’

[A wall?]

‘Yeah. And it’s hard to cross that wall unless you have to, and if you try to force it, you get a huge backlash. This wall gradually thins and softens over time, but not right now.’

[So that’s why he looks like that?]

‘Yeah. Even people who looked normal when they crossed over would get hit hard by the aftermath of crossing the dimensional wall when they came back to Earth.’

Unlike Teller and the Divine Spirits, they belonged to the lower system.

And those who belonged to the lower system had huge restrictions on traveling between dimensions without the help of the Genesis system.

The early vanishers were those who tried to come back by their own power without the help of the system.

And they had no ability to borrow the power of the system, no Divine Spirits to watch over them, and no Teller to mediate between them.

Sometimes there were Tellers, but in that case, they had to pay a lot of points to return to their original dimension.

Those who had no points had no choice but to forcibly cross the dimensional wall with what they could do.

And they had to face a terrible end because of their bold decision.

The initial returnees were shunned as monsters because of this reason.

Their bodies and minds were strangely distorted, and they were completely different from when they disappeared.

But after that, some normal ones came back one by one, and finally when vanishing was called returning.

People began to recognize the existence of returnees, but that was a thing of the far future.

‘Or maybe not so far anymore?’

It wasn’t time for vanishing to appear yet, but Yu-hyun knew that this world was not going as he knew it from the past.

Rather, now that the influence of the genesis system on Earth was stronger, the mutation that would occur when the vanishers returned would be much lower.

The fact that the opponent in front of him had some reason left proved it.

The early vanishers ran wild without reason as if they were crazy.

[Then what do we do? Can we win?]

‘We can win. But I’m not very comfortable with fighting a returnee.’

[Why?]

‘What do you think is the characteristic of returnees who can cross over from another world with various abilities?’

It was that they were incredibly strong.

Just think about it.

Choi Do-yoon was also one of the returnees who lived in another world and came back.

What was he like?

He gained power when he crossed over to another dimension, and he gained more power while living there.

Then he came back to Earth and faced the apocalypse, and he rose higher than anyone else based on his power.

Of course, not all returnees would be like Choi Do-yoon.

Yu-hyun thought that Choi Do-yoon was a very special case.

But even considering that, the power of the returnees was really amazing.

[So you can’t beat him with your current strength?]

‘Of course not.’

Yu-hyun answered lightly, dispelling Baekryeon’s worries.

The whale hunting Moby Dick had transformed into the mythical beast Leviathan with the enhanced title and skill.

Moby Dick was over 230m long, but Leviathan was several times bigger. It was at least a kilometer long.

And its power was much more powerful than Moby Dick’s.

The mountain range where Leviathan passed by looked as if something had bitten it off. The winding ditch was over 200m wide, and its length stretched beyond the horizon.

A little away from that ditch.

The returnee who barely dodged by throwing his body to the side was horrified.

The immense power that Yu-hyun showed was incomparable to what he had learned to survive in another dimension for a long time.

When he was a returnee who had been an ordinary person on Earth and vanished to another dimension, the place he went to was literally a world of primitive wilderness.

There, he gained the ability to devour and evolve, and he swallowed all kinds of predators in various ecosystems as he crossed the vast forest and the even bigger ocean.

Sometimes there were monsters that were so dangerous that they risked his life, and he had seen creatures that were much bigger than his inflated size.

But, without a doubt, there was no monster as huge as that.

If he hadn’t instinctively avoided it, he would have fallen prey to the Leviathan.

He didn’t want to admit that fact.

Grrrr!

As if sensing the returnee’s anger, a new change began to take place in his flesh.

The power of [Evolution] that he had gained since he crossed the dimension.

It opened its eyes again when it sensed the crisis of his life.

Yu-hyun realized what the other was trying to do.

‘So that’s why he kept that monstrous form. It makes sense if it was an evolution-related ability.’

Evolution, which makes living beings much stronger and moves on to the next stage, does not consider aesthetic standards at all.

The disgusting and grotesque bunch of tentacles were also just taking the optimal form to survive in the environment at that time.

But the returnee had returned to Earth, and he faced a huge enemy he had never seen before.

The moment he realized that, he began to evolve anew.

Squish.

His huge body was no longer efficient here. His balloon-like body shrank and compressed into a point.

He reduced his size, volume, and weight as if pretending to be an ordinary human in a robe like before.

The change did not stop there.

The smooth and elastic tentacles twisted together like cords and became muscles, and they compressed them to the limit and returned them to his body.

A hard shell covered his skin. Sharp spikes grew all over his body

And even insect-like wings grew on his back.

[My goodness.]

The spectacle of completing a process that ordinary creatures could not see even after dozens of generations in less than a minute made even Baekryeon marvel.

Yu-hyun watched the returnee’s change with interest in his four eyes.

The returnee who had finished all the changes finally clenched his fists and bled, then pulled out sharp spikes like knives from both hands and took an attacking posture.

Did he realize with his wild sense that being bigger would make him easier to be eaten by the Leviathan?

Yu-hyun realized anew that the returnees were not just powerful beings, but he couldn’t help but feel joy.

“Jin Cheong-un had a great hand. I didn’t expect him to do this much.”

He thought he would end it with one blow from the Leviathan, but if the other side came out like that, he had no choice but to show something that matched him.

Yu-hyun changed Baekryeon back into a sword shape and pulled out the power inside him.

Kwaaaa!

The immense power swallowed the surrounding space and scattered a huge wave.

As the intense shockwave exploded, the returnee lowered his body and sent a bewildered look from inside his helmet-like face.

He didn’t expect the other side to have another trick up his sleeve.

But it was too late to realize that.

“Think of it as an honor. You’re the first one I’ve ever used this technique on.”

The black energy flowing through Yu-hyun’s body swirled and gathered on Baekryeon.

A martial art created by a transcendent who might have become an Another, surpassing science and technology.

This was not the first time, nor the last, that Yu-hyun unleashed his technique.

The Second Demon of the Seven Demons Black Sky Divine Skill.

A black vortex spun around the white lotus, creating black threads that unraveled like yarn.

Countless threads flew in all directions like the wind, surrounding the Returnee like a cage.

The Returnee sensed the danger with his wild instinct and tried to escape immediately, but the threads of strong energy did not let him go.

When the Returnee swung his sword on his wrist to cut off the threads, the sword that touched the thread was cut off and rolled on the ground.

At that moment, the Returnee realized.

These thin threads that seemed to break with a touch were sharp swords made of condensed and compressed energy.

The Returnee’s eyes turned to Yu-hyun, who was using this technique.

Black Silk Prison

Soon, the space that was wrapped around like a cage tightened.