Chapter 393

Chapter 393

Chapter 70: Mind Games (3)

“Is this some scheme to weaken our proud Japan’s power?!”

The way the person laid out his delusion as if it were reality made me chuckle involuntarily.

‘His sense of self is too inflated.’

He assumed it was natural for me to be conscious of and wary of Japan.

Why he assigned himself such importance was beyond me.

“Do you think we’ll just stand by and watch while you pull this filthy trick?”

Even conceding to the point of understanding his anxiety was pushing it, but fine, I could accept it.

“Fearing that the power to hunt a general-rank would fall into Japan’s hands, and now openly trying to eliminate us?”

In a situation where I had come to destroy the Hole, it would have been strange not to feel anxiety when it vanished.

“But now you’re blatantly trying to remove us?”

This guy was doing something I couldn’t comprehend.

“Did you think we’d just sit back and take it from a guy like you?!”

This was nothing more than him expressing his base inferiority complex that he’d been harboring alone.

If he had a proper head on his shoulders, he would assess the aftermath accurately, thinking of gathering information first.

Not stubbornly believing his delusions, implemented as reality.

These were people on whom it wasn’t worth spending time.

I coldly rebuffed the Japanese player who lunged at me.

“Move.”

Pushing him aside, I stepped forward.

“You arrogant punk! Just because people have praised you, you think you’re something special…!”

Apparently displeased by his treatment, he quickly swung a punch.

The fact that he raised his fist and not a weapon showed he didn’t actually intend to kill me.

This was merely venting his anger.

Causing such chaos just for that.

He seemed to think that, being a Platinum rank, he could land a blow in close combat.

I lightly swung my spear at the guy who rushed towards me.

That was more than enough to shatter the expectations of the unnamed guy.

Crack!

The spear moved so fast that, if you tried to follow it with your eyes, you’d only see an afterimage as it struck his shoulder.

And that was the end of it.

His shattered shoulder drooped, likely piercing his lungs and other organs.

“Gah!”

Leaving the guy who couldn’t even scream properly as he fell, I scanned the surroundings.

The space where Omby was was far from ordinary.

It wasn’t the ground nor the sky, just a dark place.

Despite being engulfed in blackness, the forms of people or objects inside were distinctly discernible.

‘It’s probably something similar to that dome created by the system.’

I guessed it was a space built on fragments of a dimension that hadn’t completely broken apart.

A very effective place to confine me.

‘But it’s not like I can’t create an escape route.’

I rummaged through my subspace pocket.

From there, I withdrew a sheet of paper and tore it.

The paper revealed a familiar sight with a white glow.

“Gate Repositioning Ticket”

It was a ‘Gate Repositioning Ticket’ left over from when I used it to evacuate the Biharin in the past.

‘I have two of these.’

I planned to set one up here.

The other would be used to create an exit gate to return.

Since the system had provided me away, in case something went wrong, to pinpoint my location, I could soon prepare my exit.

Fairy ranks who could access the VIP Shop were already placed within the other subjugation teams.

Once the Holes disappeared, they all would have used Gate Repositioning Tickets as per the plan.

‘I can’t just quietly take it.’

I prepared for every possible Scenario I could manage.

All that was left now was.

“Roar!”

“Screech!”

To exterminate all those approaching monsters again.

While I briefly attended to something else, one of the individuals from the command, apparently a Yato or Ato, was escorted away by another.

He would need treatment and reintegration into the frontline.

Meanwhile, I turned to those who were hesitantly watching nearby.

“How long will you stand there and gape? Didn’t headquarters brief you about this situation?”

Finally, the ones who lingered nearby shouted.

“They’re securing a retreat!”

“The players are preparing for battle again!”

As most departed to coordinate the subjugation team, one approached me.

Through him, I began gathering intel on the situation.

“How’s communication with the other subjugation teams?”

“We’re trying, but the radio is dead.”

“Are cameras and drones in the same state?”

“Yes, it’s difficult to expect the devices we brought to operate properly.”

“There’s no helping it. Rather than holding out hope, organizing a search team might be wiser.”

“I have already given those orders.”

A total of seven subjugation teams, each from different regions, entered this place.

Their mission was the complete annihilation of all monsters in this space.

For that mission, understanding the size of this space and the number of remaining monsters was essential.

Of course, I didn’t need to personally tackle that part.

My responsibility lay in combat, not investigation.

“For now, I’ll engage in battle. Call me if anything requires my attention.”

“Understood.”

After the association member departed, I moved in the direction from which the monsters were charging.

During the time basic investigation would proceed, this place would serve as our base camp.

A day of monster hunting would be repeated.

I briefly observed the advancing horde of monsters from a distance.

“They’re coming!”

“Tanker, set up a barrier!”

“Stop the charge first!”

In the brief period as players reorganized and braced for battle.

I gazed at the void, remembering the sheet of paper I had torn just moments before.

The system should have pinpointed my location through the Gate Repositioning Ticket by now.

By this time, they would be in the process of carving a new path for me to exit.

I simply needed to focus and do my best in the tasks at hand until then.

Leave the matters beyond my reach to capable fellows.

‘I will eradicate them until there are no more monsters to invade the Earth.’

Right on cue, players with area-of-effect capabilities began casting magics.

“Prepare to throw!”

“Aim well when implementing the field magic!”

I, too, prepared Flame Strike and Lightning Prison with them.

“Attack!”

Hell erupted, aimed at the monsters, not us.

* * *

It had been 50 hours since the sudden disappearance of the Holes.

The subjugation within the mysterious realm proceeded smoothly.

Moreover, the search operation to locate other subjugation teams was progressing well.

As of yesterday, the position of the subjugation team that entered the Hole in Nigeria had been confirmed.

This meant three of the seven subjugation teams had located each other.

The remaining four teams should soon be found.

‘It was concerning when all the devices we brought stopped working.’

The results came surprisingly quickly.

Fueled by these achievements, the Association players set out again today for the search.

Moments ago, a large-scale area-of-effect magic was detected several kilometers away.

The battle implied that the monsters and player forces had clashed.

The players, during the search, moved swiftly to investigate the scene.

And it wasn’t long before traces emerged.

Along with a powerful heat, the thick smell of burning hit first, as if it hadn’t cooled completely.

“Cough, cough!”

“Oh, what a stench….”

The smell and heat were so overpowering that it was difficult to breathe.

“Quiet!”

Reprimanding the coughing members, one player drew his sword and spoke.

“Don’t let your guard down. The one who cast that magic could be a nemesis-rank or legion commander.”

“I know, I know. How many times do you have to repeat the same…?”

Frustrated by the repeated admonition, he couldn’t finish his sentence.

Instead, he fell silent, aghast.

It was worth the shock when they crested the gentle slope of the hill they were climbing.

“What… what is all this….”

Not only were there piles of monster carcasses, charred and crackling, subtly still burning.

Some already entirely incinerated, leaving behind nothing but gray ashes.

The ground, coated black, was completely obscured.

“Wow… if we had encountered them alone, we’d have been wiped out?”

“… If the one who cast the magic was on the enemy side, it’s an extermination angle.”

“It doesn’t seem like it, though. If it was the monster side, there should be player corpses too. There are only monster remains.”

“Normal players are smaller than monsters. Which means they burn faster. If we don’t know what those ashes were originally, we can’t be sure…”

The conversation among the players abruptly ceased.

The sense of someone approaching from above the void was palpable.

Though their Mana wasn’t caught by detection magic, likely having it suppressed.

The hypersensitive senses of the Gold ranks detected the presence of something alive.

Possibly, the entity responsible for this devastation.

Just as they gripped their weapons, he revealed himself.

“Which Hole did you enter from?”

Luckily, he was a player, not a monster.

There was no need for formal introductions to identify his identity.

Known globally to the extent that if one didn’t know him, they’d be considered an alien spy, it was K.

“W-we entered through Hole 7 located in Norway.”

“If you head 2 hours in the direction of 5 o’clock from here, you’ll find the search team from the subjugation group that entered through Japan’s Hole 4. Share base camp coordinates once you join them.”

Before the player could even complete his reply, K leaped off effortlessly into the air.

Left standing, the group observed the sight with an inexplicable sense of unease.

Even as K’s figure receded in the distance, their eyes blinked in contemplation only briefly.

One among them, who grasped the nature of the unsettling feeling, spoke first.

“… He’s alone?”

“Ah, damn.”

“He did this alone?”

“Is that even possible? Is he even human?”

As murmurs swept through the group, someone at the rear of the search party muttered suddenly.

“In some ways, he’s a monster too.”

In a moment, everyone’s attention focused on him.

“Didn’t you see him hunting that turtle in Bulgaria?”

No one denied his words.

Everyone had thought similarly, even if they hadn’t voiced it.

Perhaps, this war had fostered a creature more dangerous than the very monsters that preyed on humans—such a notion crossed their minds.

* * *

I stationed twelve apostles in Korea.

So far, two have died.

Objectively, this number wasn’t particularly high.

But with each death, my tension grew.

The time in which I and my apostles existed differed from here.

‘I can’t tell if the two died within an hour or over ten hours.’

According to Gilenios’ explanation, distorting the gap meant partly detaching that space from the current dimension.

This caused a byproduct where space-time tangled.

-That space slows down as it’s perceived as a subject for destruction.

-Then it stops entirely, ending in actual oblivion.

-As long as the original dimension and God are unharmed, it’s not significant. Losing a finger or two doesn’t kill a person, does it?

Naturally, it was favorable for us.

It meant the time the apostles needed to endure shortened, and I had more time to escape.

Of course, this luck didn’t come without consequences.

-When the space reverts to its original state, there will be backlash.

Time that hadn’t flowed would rush forward all at once.

Those inside the twisted space would find several days passing suddenly.

The longer one stayed in the distorted space, the higher the possibility of death by affliction upon returning to the original dimension.

Though prepared with various high-calorie foods, including IV fluids.

‘It’s not beneficial for this to take long.’

Damned System.

New elements and characters included:

– 일본의 플레이어(Japanese player) = 일본의 플레이어(Japanese player)(na)

– 금패(Gold rank) = 금패(Gold rank)(na)

– 게이트 재배치 이용권(Gate Repositioning Ticket) = 게이트 재배치 이용권(Gate Repositioning Ticket)(it)

– 비하르인(Biharin) = 비하르(Biharin)(they)