Part 1 Chapter 8 (1)

The world is collapsing.

Blue flames covered the entire Earth, incinerating everything. As if to cremate buildings, humans, nature, and the entire planet, the flames did not extinguish, devouring everything.

“It’s a truly beautiful day. Birds are chirping, and flowers are blooming.”

In the sky, small phoenixes, scattering blue flames, floated like clouds.

The screams of humans burning in the flames they dropped to the ground echoed all the way to the building’s rooftop. The blue girl hummed a tune as if savoring those screams, raising both hands.

♪♬♩♪

As if she were an orchestra conductor, her fair, delicate hands played the flow of mana spread everywhere. The sound of collapsing buildings kept the beat, and the painful screams of people burning to death were gathered and amplified like a crescendo.

“Now. It’s your turn to choose, isn’t it?”

The girl smiled brightly and turned her head towards me. Standing on the rooftop railing with both feet, turning only her head to look at me, that sight was clearly an event scene from the game etched in my memory.

Thank you for freeing me from brainwashing, ■■■.

The girl in my memory, an executive of the evil organization Dark Legion, was grateful for being freed from brainwashing. The girl before my eyes wore the same smile as the girl in my memory.

“Thank you for telling me the truth, Phoenix.”

The girl addressed me as “Phoenix.” I, Phoenix, was forced to make a binary choice with the girl before me.

“No matter what you do, the world will be destroyed. All your struggles so far have become useless.”

The girl scattered a handful of glass beads she held onto the floor. Cores of familiar colors rolled across the floor, reaching my feet.

The Azure Syndicate. And the countless ability users I had turned into monstrous humans.

The girl killed all of them, turned them into Cores, and then used them as hostages to threaten me.

“Alright. I won’t beat around the bush anymore. One hour from now. In one hour, the end of the world will arrive on this land.”

The girl stepped down from the rooftop railing and spread her arms towards me. The black gauntlet’s claws were sharp enough to cut if merely touched, and the girl fully opened her chest.

“You won’t have time to think, will you? No matter how much you rack your brain, there’s only one thing you can decide.”

The girl approached me. I instinctively stepped back, retreating from her, but the girl, with even faster steps, placed my hand on her chest.

Thump. Thump.

The sensation of that soft chest, which I had always wanted to touch, sent shivers down my spine. Beyond the mana-formed chest, the girl’s origin and foundation, her “Core,” was throbbing rapidly.

It wasn’t the kind of throbbing that came from touching her chest or being alone with her on the rooftop. It was a throbbing of pleasure, as the girl anticipated what choice I would make.

“Time is passing even as we speak, you know? If you’re too late, you won’t be able to save either of us~ Fufufu.”

The girl’s words were not wrong. One hour of my hesitation. If I didn’t reach a conclusion within that hour, the Earth would be destroyed.

“Why are you stalling so much? Should I tell you again?”

Stop. I don’t want to hear it. I wanted to cover the girl’s mouth, but she stood on tiptoes, wrapped her arms around my neck, and whispered.

“Will you kill me to save the world, or save me and let the world be destroyed? No, it would be more impactful to ask you this way.”

The girl’s eyes were burning with blue flames.

“Me, or the world?”

* * *

“……That was a horrifying dream.”

I woke up from my sleep, shivering. It was more chilling than any moment when the heroines would launch a pregnancy attack in the omake.

“Ugh.”

The face of the blue girl was reflected on the screen of the seat in front of me. A beautiful woman whose looks would not fall short anywhere in the world, and the one moving that body was me.

“Grrr.”

I changed my expression. Was it a more glaring look? That ambiguous expression that forced a terrifying binary choice on me in my dream was proving difficult to imitate.

After twitching my facial muscles for about a minute to create the most similar expression, I recited the chilling line the girl had thrown at me.

“Me, or the world?”

“Looks like you’re not fully awake if you’re spouting nonsense again. Hey, snap out of it. Is this really the time to be leisurely sleeping?”

“…Ah, seriously.”

Jo Deokbae, the bald old bachelor sitting in the passenger seat, was shaking all over. He swayed as if sitting in an electric massage chair, but not a single strand of hair flew around. I shrugged and yawned.

“Haaah. If you were going to nag this much, I shouldn’t have brought you along.”

“I’m fucking regretting following you right now. Sba.”

“Did you just curse?”

“No, I didn’t! I just said a shortened Russian word! Spasiba! Nichipalerma!”

I had ordered him not to curse because his mouth was so foul, and this is what I got. I twisted my body, preparing my mouth muscles to nag this insolent subordinate number two, who was displaying his vulgar behavior, for the first time in a while.

“Hawawawa.”

“You son of a-” (T/N: The character cuts himself off before finishing the curse.)

“Ugh, did my mouth dry up while I was sleeping? Deokbae-ssi, do you have any wine from earlier? Give me a glass.”

“Can’t you see the mess I’m in right now?”

Deokbae pointed to his lower body. I scanned his soaking wet gray pants and twisted my lips, scoffing at him.

“You have severe acrophobia. To pee yourself just from being on a plane. You’re disqualified as a monstrous human, subordinate number two.”

“…….Let’s say, for the sake of argument, that I peed myself a hundred times, no, a thousand times.”

“You peed yourself without needing to argue, though?”

“No, just listen!”

Deokbae pounded his chest, expressing his frustration. I wondered if even a monstrous human could die from anger, so I tilted my head slightly and blinked.

“Are you going to hit me?”

“Ugh, seriously…. I should have just drugged you and beaten you to death in Incheon that day.”

“Since that didn’t happen, you’re here doing this.”

To bring up old matters so suddenly. I didn’t realize he would still hold a grudge over something that happened just over two months ago, let alone half a year.

“Should I have just saved that lawyer ajumma?”

“What’s the point when you burned her all up yourself? Is that ajumma any different?”

“Yes. She was a pretty well-known Villain. If I had to compare…”

I shrugged my shoulders, pointing at the masked men who were screaming and aiming guns at me and Deokbae.

“She was trash, incomparable to these robbers?”

“……Hey. Is it even right to call them robbers?”

“They stole a plane, so they’re no different from robbers.”

“They’re going to cry now.”

Many people inside the plane were already spilling something. Some were shedding tears, some were bleeding, some were spilling mana in confusion, and some were peeing from their third leg.

“You’re thinking weird things about me again, aren’t you?”

“Tsk.”

He’s like a ghost when it comes to this. I waved my hand, unbuckled the seatbelt around my waist, stood up from the seat, and dusted off my hands.

“Don’t move! Move and I’ll shoot!”

“I’m already moving, so you should shoot right away. Oh, are you worried I might die if you shoot? Did your bosses tell you to capture me alive or something? Fufufu.”

I radiated mana, sweeping through the plane. There were no signs of external intrusion, so they must have infiltrated as regular travelers when the plane took off from Gimhae Airport.

Crackle. Sizzle.

My smartwatch wasn’t getting a proper signal either. They even mobilized a device that generated powerful jamming signals, so it was highly likely that there was an accomplice among the crew members, not just the passengers.

“When I get back, there’ll be a bloodbath. I’ll tell Eun Yuha agassi everything. That the directors below took bribes and I was terrorized.”

“This is my first time flying Yuseong Airlines, and this is happening on the very first flight. Oh dear.”

Deokbae also unbuckled his seatbelt and stood up. I briefly considered conjuring flames to dry the wine he spilled on his pants, but decided not to bother.

“Hey. But isn’t this whole mess because you just openly got on the plane in the first place?”

Deokbae poked at an uncomfortable truth. I whistled and shrugged.

“……No, I honestly never imagined something like this would happen as soon as I got on the plane.”

“What now? Are we going to get dragged off to some weird place and forced to drink mala tang through our noses?”

Rat-a-tat-tat.

Gunshots began to ring out. It was so loud that the mana shield I had loosely put up in front was starting to waver.

“Surrender immediately! Otherwise, the hostages’ lives are forfeit!”

A man who seemed to be quite high-ranking among the terrorists shouted, pointing a gun at a flight attendant’s temple. The man was a non-ability user who hadn’t awakened mana, but the gun in his hand was imbued with mana.

“Even a Core Weapon? Seriously.”

“What are you going to do? Are you going to just let them die like that?”

“There’s no big problem, is there…?”

I smiled sweetly at the flight attendant. The flight attendant, with a gun pressed to his temple, saw that I, his only lifeline, showed no intention of helping him, and screamed with a face full of despair.

“Please save me! Beast Tamer-nim!!”

“There’s no reason to save you. After all…”

I scanned his face, the lingering mana beneath his skin mask.

“When a high-ranking official from Dongchang tries to kidnap me, even taking their own people hostage, there’s no need for us to do that, is there?”

“……Attack!!”

As soon as the flight attendant yelled, the terrorists raised their guns. Though far inferior to the Azure Syndicate’s, the Core Weapon bullets, which produced decent firepower, slowly began to shatter the shield.

“Subordinate number two. Do you like skydiving?”

“……You’re not going to do what I think you’re going to do, are you?”

Deokbae vehemently shook his head.

“Hey! Do you know how high up we are?! You can fly, but I can’t!”

“Oh, don’t worry.”

I conjured flames in my hand and extended it towards the side of the plane.

“Surely the Core won’t break, will it?”

“That means I’m going to die first, doesn’t it?!”

“If you were B-class, you’d live, but you’re C-class, so you’ll die. Who knows?”

I gave Deokbae a thumbs-up, cheering him on.

“Maybe through this crisis, you’ll truly grow into a B-class?!”

“I don’t need that kind of-” (T/N: The character cuts himself off.)

Boom. I extinguished the shield myself and simultaneously detonated a fireball. Having suppressed the firepower as much as possible to create a hole barely big enough for two people to escape, I grabbed Deokbae’s hood and jumped towards the hole.

“Then, see you sometime later!”

“Aaaah?!”

The terrorists clung to the cabin seats. The entire plane shook violently from side to side, but soon, a Dongchang ability user began to shoot mana, sealing the hole in the plane.

“They’re using it like that.”

I descended vertically from the sky, waving at the plane. For Deokbae’s thrill, I deliberately didn’t spread my wings.

“Ah. No.”

I spread my wings behind my back. Deokbae seemed relieved as he saw the blue, burning flame wings behind me.

“We’re flying like this!”

“…What? Hey! Wai-” (T/N: The character cuts himself off.)

Whoosh!!

I flew.

Towards the ground.

“Aaaah?!”

“It’s okay! Don’t worry!”

I changed a part of my body into its monstrous human form and gave a wide smile.

“I won’t die!”

“I’ll die?!”

“If you die, I’ll resurrect you!”

“Yaaaaaaah!!!”

Where else would you find a superior who makes you experience skydiving without a parachute? Laughter burst out of me at Deokbae’s expression, which was on the verge of fainting. As soon as Deokbae saw my face, he contorted his expression like a demon and snapped at me.

“Why are you doing this to meeeeee!”

“Just because!!”

There was a reason. It just felt off to come to China for a 1:1 date, not with Cheon Gaeul, Eun Yura, or Seok Harang, but with some big bald guy. Perhaps because I had a gloomy bald guy next to me, my dream turned into a complete shitshow.

“You made me have a nightmare!!”

“You were sleeping soundly on your own, so why are you picking a fight with me?! Did I make you dream that?!”

“Probably!”

“Aaaah! Seriously, aaaah!!”

Deokbae let out a cry mixed with resentment, but I paid him no mind and flapped my wings even faster towards the ground.

Faster, even faster.

As I increased my speed, I got so close to the ground that I could even see the grain of the leaves on the dense trees at my landing point.

“Aaaah?!”

I felt Deokbae activating his rock skin. It seemed like a measure to mitigate impact if he were to hit the ground, but I’m not such a cruel superior as to drag my precious guinea pig to China just to smash him into the ground.

“……Haa!”

Just before hitting the ground, I gathered enough mana and flapped my wings widely. Thanks to the power of my ability manifested by mana, I ignored even the law of inertia, stopping precisely 5cm from the ground.

“Ah, what a shame.”

‘I wanted to get within mm range.’

Perhaps flapping my wings a little early, just in case Deokbae kissed the continental soil, was the cause. I gently folded my wings and landed on the ground.

“Ugh, I couldn’t break my record because I worried about subordinate number two…. Huh? Subordinate number two? Jo Deokbae-ssi…?”

“…….”

Deokbae said nothing.

Jo Deokbae.

Deceased.

* * *

The Leader of the Azure Syndicate, Azure Flame Phoenix.

And his subordinate, the Rock Monstrous Human Jo Deokbae.

June 13, 2020.

They jumped from a Yuseong Airlines plane departing from Gimhae Airport for Xi’an, China, and went missing in the middle of China.