How to Live as an Immortal Chapter 108

Chapter 108

You’re weak

Baek Gi lowered his stance, bending his knees halfway. Even so, his massive fra—large enough to brush the ceiling—showed no sign of diminishing.

The two arms he spread wide as if to welco his opponent looked like horns.

Like a bull that had finished preparing for a charge.

And as if to prove that impression right, he rushed in exactly like that.

A flawless tackle.

An ordinary woman would have lost the will to fight at the re sight of such force, but Im Sol was an enhanced human who had undergone genetic modification.

Muscle and bone reinforcent, neural acceleration, and cognitive enhancent.

The three essential courses one had to complete to beco an elite soldier.

Homo sapiens, who had suddenly appeared, were originally a species whose strength lay in intelligence. Their innate physical abilities were inferior to beasts—no, even to wild animals. If cast into the wilderness, they were destined to be weeded out.

However, now that they had risen to the top of the ecosystem and explored their limits, they were capable of fighting even a bear.

Among them, the exceptional Im Sol was close to a human weapon.

The martial art she had mastered was Muay Thai.

With the drone Cot providing reliable support from the rear, she had focused solely on close-quarters combat.

Just like now.

Crack—.

The mont Baek Gi entered her range, she smashed his jaw with her elbow. Having trained her bones and joints, Im Sol’s skeletal structure was comparable to rock. If necessary, she could even smash through a concrete wall by sheer force.

Yet even after taking such a blow head-on, Baek Gi neither fell nor faltered, rely curling his lips into a grin.

Before skill, the gap in sheer size had already set them apart, but Im Sol didn’t care. She sprang up from where she stood and drove her knee into the bridge of Baek Gi’s nose.

Pure, reckless ferocity.

Unfortunately, from Baek Gi’s perspective, it was closer to a tantrum. Forgetting even the blood flowing from his nostrils, he unhesitatingly wrapped his arms around her.

“Khk.”

“On a diet? You’re pretty light.”

With sheer arm strength alone, he crushed and constricted her upper body.

It was a technique commonly used in wrestling—the bear hug—but in the hands of an undefeated champion, even that beca a killing technique.

The brute force from arms as thick as logs.

It was reminiscent of a compressor used in a scrapyard.

“Keugh.”

Crack—sothing in her chest broke, and her skin darkened.

While obsidian-hardened skin had a higher threshold than Ublec elastic skin, it had been designed to withstand firearms, making it inevitably vulnerable to grappling or joint-lock techniques.

Cot, which had fired in to target Baek Gi’s back, burrowed into him, but got lodged between his massive and dense muscle fibers, losing its power.

Even as the situation worsened by the second, Im Sol continued to hamr Baek Gi’s face with her elbows.

But as if such resistance didn’t even qualify as a massage, Baek Gi bent his waist slightly and shouted,

“Yeah, showing affection out in the open where everyone can see isn’t great, right? Then let’s go inside.”

Thud, thud, thud!

A massive beast charged forward, leaving deep footprints in the ground—even though a dead end lay right ahead.

In truth, there was nothing to avoid. If it didn’t exist, you made it. That was how the undefeated champion had lived.

Boom—!

Of course, Im Sol—who had to act as the shield and take the full brunt of the impact—felt differently. Even ramming his head forward without regard for appearances, the runaway locomotive didn’t stop. If anything, it only accelerated further.

And so, they reached the final wall.

At the very end of the west wing, the mont they arrived at the lounge, Baek Gi hurled Im Sol with all his strength. At the sa ti, with a thunderous roar that seed to shake the earth, the ground cracked like a spiderweb and caved in.

Im Sol lay sprawled within it, forgetting even to get up as she gasped for breath.

“How boring. No… maybe I’m just that amazing.”

Baek Gi pulled out Cot, which had been lodged in his waist, and flung it away. The long drone was driven into the wall by overwhelming force—so deep that its body was no longer visible.

In that fleeting mont, Im Sol leapt, aiming for his back—but Baek Gi rendered even that futile. He grabbed her shoulder midair.

“You’re flopping around like a live fish. Hard to find wild ones these days.”

“You’re disgusting.”

As he looked at her contemptuous expression, an amusing thought crossed Baek Gi’s mind. He wanted to see Baek Seol’s face twisted in shock as well—after being betrayed by the one she trusted most.

His appearance, physique, and even his genes had changed, but at his core, he was still a twisted, malicious personality.

And so, he couldn’t hold back.

As saliva gathered at the corners of his mouth, his fangs subtly protruded.

When his hot breath brushed against the nape of her neck, Im Sol shook her head back and forth in resistance.

“What are you doing? Let go. Let go, you pervert bastard!”

“So fussy. Just let borrow a little.”

In an instant—before she could react—the distance between them beca zero. The sensation of sothing foreign piercing her skin sent a shiver through Im Sol. It felt as though sothing was being drained along with her strength.

No, it wasn’t just a vague suspicion. Her blood was actually being drained.

“What…!”

She wanted to scream, but her body wouldn’t obey. Her neck stiffened, her limbs went limp.

Thud.

Even when he released her, she couldn’t stand properly and collapsed to the ground for that very reason.

“Sss. Tastes good.”

Wiping the bright red liquid from his lips, Baek Gi smiled in satisfaction. As long as he secured enough blood, he could beco anyone. From the texture of their hair to their DNA sequence—he could perfectly replicate everything about his target.

That was his ability: transformation.

This ti, the person Baek Gi intended to imitate was unusual. As a man of Mars, he was not soone who changed easily.

Psssh—like air leaking from a balloon, his physique rapidly shrank.

Yes, until he matched Im Sol standing right in front of him.

Feeling sothing lacking, Baek Gi glanced down at himself and snapped his fingers casually.

“Ah, clothes.”

Then, without hesitation, he approached Im Sol and began stripping her of her clothes.

“You piece of trash.”

“Hey, stop spitting on your own face.”

Just as Baek Gi, now neatly dressed in a suit, was about to deal with Im Sol—

“Who’s inside?”

A familiar voice ca from outside.

***

To return to Baek Seol—or more precisely, to reach the panic room where she was hiding—Ga-on quickened his pace. Setting aside the ti he had lost fighting Kenji, the atmosphere surrounding the mansion itself was deeply unsettling.

He encountered a few people along the way.

They were well-ard and well-trained, but that was all. Compared to a forr Sword Master, they were nothing more than inexperienced child soldiers. Moreover, perhaps soone had already made a move—their formation had fallen apart.

That was why he had been able to reach the west wing without even breaking a sweat.

Before long, Ga-on found a place where he sensed a presence and knocked softly on the door.

“Who’s inside?”

If they tried anything funny, he had intended to put a tal round through them—but the person who ca out was soone even he hadn’t expected. A beautiful woman with long brown hair—

“Miss One-Day?”

“It’s you, Ga-on.”

“What are you doing here? Miss Snow shouldn’t be here.”

“I was looking for a place to catch my breath after a brief skirmish.”

Ah, so it really had been Im Sol who wiped out the forces in the garden. Nodding in understanding, Ga-on tilted his head slightly to the right.

There was only one reason.

“Where’s your hairpin?”

“It seems I dropped it sowhere. More importantly, where the young lady is—”

Up to that point, Im Sol—or rather, Baek Gi—realized just how terrifying a human face could beco just by stiffening.

“Heh, this is quite amusing. I thought Miss One-Day wasn’t the type to joke around.”

Was there sothing in that conversation that gave him away?

Baek Gi questioned himself, but nothing ca to mind. They had only exchanged a few words. Unfortunately, that was precisely his fatal mistake.

“The hairpin you always wear—that’s a drone, isn’t it? I don’t know its official na, but it must be pretty high-performance.”

Identifying an opponent’s equipnt was a fixer’s basic skill.

From the mont they first t, he had already suspected that Im Sol’s treasured possession was that hairpin. Even when her outfit changed, she never parted with it.

After all, what kind of woman would craft accessories out of tungsten instead of gold or jewels?

And once he started to doubt, more inconsistencies beca obvious.

“On top of that, you’re not wearing any undergarnts, and your belt is fastened one notch looser than usual. Your nails aren’t trimd either. And when did you wipe off your makeup?”

Was he insane?

At Ga-on’s rapid-fire tone, Baek Gi instinctively flinched, his face contorting in shock. They said the devil was in the details—but now it seed sothing even worse than a devil dwelled within Ga-on: a lecher.

Didn’t this an he had been checking such trivial details one by one even in everyday life?

Moreover, as if words alone weren’t enough, he even moved to verify it himself.

By throwing a punch.

Thud—.

A straight shot fired in an instant.

For Baek Gi, who was struck in the face without warning, it was like a bolt from the blue.

“What the hell, your skin doesn’t even turn black—it’s just bluish.”

Ga-on had pointed out that it wasn’t obsidian-hardened skin, but to Baek Gi, it sounded like complete nonsense.

“You racist bastard!”

Clearly, he had already figured it out and was toying with him. In that case, there was only one answer—kill him. As Baek Gi revealed his true form, his body began to swell uncontrollably, and Ga-on’s eyes widened in response.

It wasn’t because he was facing an undefeated champion who could even trample enhanced humans—Ilya.

“So that’s how it was…”

The question that had remained unsolved until the very end.

How Baek Gi had managed to pass the genetic test.

Baek Seok-do’s order had co down abruptly. So abruptly that even Baek Geum-do, who had dealt with Yeosanghwa and the real Baek Ga-on, hadn’t been able to detect any signs beforehand.

There hadn’t been enough ti to cultivate a clone or to bribe the relevant institutions.

It seed he had filled that gap by colluding with outside forces.

A race that modern technology couldn’t analyze.

A branch of human evolution.

‘ta-human.’

Boom!

A tal projectile shot out along the preheated barrel. The radiant streak pierced through the massive body in an instant.

A pungent sll rose through the hole, but Baek Gi didn’t retreat. He knew that a micro railgun wasn’t suited for sustained fire.

At close range, fists were faster than triggers.

“I’ll crush you.”

Baek Gi swung his massive palm—like a pot lid—at Ga-on, but frowned at the unreliable sensation. It felt as if he had struck empty air. Even when he attacked again from a different angle, it was the sa.

“What the…?”

The question didn’t finish. A twisting force erupted at the tips of his fingers.

Crunch, crack, snap.

His entire forearm rotated beyond the range of its joints, as if it had been shoved into a grinder.

Startled like a child encountering fire for the first ti, Baek Gi recoiled and scread—but Ga-on wasn’t one to let that pass. Closing the distance in an instant, he threw his fist.

A triple strike to the philtrum, solar plexus, and abdon.

With rotational force mixed in, it went without saying that spiral-patterned wounds were carved into him.

“Aaaargh!”

“You’re weak. You made quite the flashy entrance, so I thought you’d be strong. Ah… since you can turn into anyone at any ti, you can’t really carry around Slots or Units, can you?”

So that was why he had mimicked soone with superior physical abilities. Having coolly analyzed Baek Gi’s ability, Ga-on added,

“So it’s not completely convenient after all.”

Yes, that was the flaw of transformation.

As body parts stretched and shrank like rubber, it was fundantally incompatible with implanted chanical devices. And yet, he had figured that out on their very first encounter.

Feeling as though he had been stripped bare, Baek Gi instinctively took a step back.

“Mr. Genji—no, Kenji—is he your kind too?”

“What are you… talking about?”

“So you don’t know him.”

Well, both of them were hired guns, but one had killed Baek Geum-do while the other followed Baek Ryang—it was hard to say they were on the sa side. It was nothing more than a cruel coincidence.

That was when Im Sol appeared, now dressed in a maid outfit.

“…What is this? We’re in the middle of a war, so why are you the only one having a party?”

“Be quiet. It’s the first ti I’ve felt this much rage.”

At the chilling reply, Ga-on raised both hands in surrender.

“May I take care of him myself?”

“Do whatever you want. Just don’t kill him—he needs to serve as a witness.”

“Understood.”

Having a rough idea of what had happened between Baek Gi and Im Sol, Ga-on didn’t add anything further.

A little later, several chunks of round flesh rolled to his feet—but he pretended not to see them.

‘Can’t be helped.’

It was a chance to collect a sample. And from a ta-human capable of transformation, no less. In so ways, there was nothing of higher quality than this.

Taking out a flask, Ga-on placed the unidentified pieces of flesh inside and carefully tucked it away into his coat.