Something felt off from far away, and I couldn’t help but frown.
It was a furious outpouring of emotions triggered by an unspecified multitude, and it also felt like a chaotic torrent of causality shaking under that influence.
‘This is…’
Soon enough, I discovered the cause.
– Breaking news! There are reports of indiscriminate bombing attacks happening all over Seoul right now! The government is…!
– KWA-BOOM—!
I switched on the TV, half-expecting something.
The urgent words of the news anchor were abruptly cut off by a sudden explosion.
Had it exploded near the broadcasting station? The unfiltered sound jolted the anchor, causing his pupils to tremble as if there was an earthquake.
Woo-ooo— Woo-ooo—
At the same time, my work phone began pinging with email notifications.
– Jin So-Ran: Lord! There’s a large-scale bombing attack near Howard Industries’ store and the Blood Alliance branch…
– Hans Slave No. 1: Hahoe Mask! It seems that the Buncheon Society has done this! The Ability Management Bureau is also on high alert…
Jin So-Ran, who managed the Korean vampires as Heinz II’s representative, and Hans, who had been gathering intel, including the black magician Ahn Seong-jin.
Even amidst the sudden chaos, they were trying to relay the news somehow.
And even more surprising…
– Hey, get out of your house already!
A text from Kang Tae-san, who could be called my only friend, arrived.
The urgency in his messy sentence screamed for attention.
Now fully aware of the situation unfolding, I closed my eyes and accelerated my thoughts.
Large-scale bombing attacks suddenly erupting across Seoul.
The situation was clear.
‘Yeah, the only ones who could pull this off are the Buncheon Society.’
Korea’s underworld was already subdued under the name of the Blood Alliance.
Organizations specializing in smuggling were no exception, and naturally, smuggling such weaponry into the country without being caught by the Alliance was nearly impossible.
Of course, in this world where abilities were rampant, nothing was one hundred percent impossible…
‘Only a select few can take the lead in something of this magnitude. I thought they had completely withdrawn since it had been so quiet lately.’
Even amidst relentless extermination, they had managed to stay hidden while preparing for a major incident.
“How dare they.”
An ominous voice escaped from me without conscious thought, barely audible through my clenched teeth.
Except for other places on Earth, Korea was firmly my territory now.
They surely understood that fact as well.
Yet, blatantly pulling something like this was tantamount to a provocation against me.
“Hoo—”
I took a deep breath, trying hard to calm my racing heart.
An unknown unpleasantness swirled and boiled within me.
Fortunately, thanks to my ‘Mirror of Clarity’, it wasn’t worse, or it would have taken even longer to stabilize my emotions.
‘For now, I need to think about how to respond to this.’
Resolving the issue was the highest priority.
If I didn’t handle this upheaval properly, the peace in Korea that I had stabilized would be thrown into chaos again.
This pent-up frustration could only be released by thoroughly exterminating them.
‘Hans can’t be pulled out right now.’
Unfortunately, even now, the Ganghwan Realm was in a situation I couldn’t easily take my eyes off.
The Martial Alliance troops were steadily gathering near Beijing, making it a volatile situation where full-scale war could break out at any moment.
If something happened while Hans, the one in charge of coordination, was away, we wouldn’t be able to manage it.
‘Of course, it wouldn’t matter if the real Hans didn’t show up.’
Fortunately, I had a useful skill for this moment, didn’t I?
Without hesitation, I immediately activated that ability.
Swish—
At that moment.
The temperature around me began to plummet rapidly.
The light illuminating the room seemed to lose its power as darkness crept in to fill the space.
My taut skin and tough muscles melted away, leaving only a skeletal frame.
The heart that had been vigorously supplying blood was replaced by one that spread death, and the limits of the focus in my eyes disappeared, replaced by the senses of a dead person.
An inexplicable sense of omnipotence flooded my body.
I couldn’t help but let out a laugh.
[Hehe— Hahaha!]
With ‘Entity Projection’, I cloaked myself in the avatar of Hans, the Demon King invading the Ganghwan Realm.
Next, I discarded the chimera that had been wrapped around me, slipped on a robe over my looser outfit, and secured the Hahoe Mask firmly to my skull.
[Hehe— The little rat hiding in its hole for so long has finally crawled out.]
It seemed the sudden movements of Howard Industries had really caught my eye.
My patience, tested by the continuous waiting, had finally snapped.
Of course, I couldn’t accurately know what guts they had to act so publicly off such flimsy assumptions…
[Let’s see what you filthy rats are plotting—]
That was none of my concern.
[—I’ll just rip the secrets out of your head.]
I could just capture them and find out for myself.
*
Grasping a selfie stick connected to his smartphone, a young man with an action camera strapped to his body was running, gasping for breath.
“Ugh, huff… what the hell is going on?!”
Hong Du-sik, an internet broadcaster who filmed from the best seats right after the Golden Dragon’s appearance.
Thanks to that incident, his viewer count skyrocketed in an instant. He couldn’t forget the thrill of that day, and today he was running around outdoors again, searching for a scoop.
The reason he was feeling the pressure was that as the high of that day faded, his audience continued to dwindle.
He had temporarily gained fame, but that moment was just a blip, and the stories he told had been squeezed dry to the point that it became painfully clear he lacked talent.
However, giving up was not an option.
So he invested in an action camera and, under the pretext of searching for hidden restaurants, he kept his eyes peeled for unusual happenings and would immediately whip out his camera at the slightest opportunity.
Just like the day he filmed the dragon, he hoped to stumble upon a scoop.
‘Dammit, I’m not even a journalist! What scoop does a gamer like me have? If I had known this would happen, I would have just stayed home streaming games!’
Initially, when he heard the first explosion, he thought his chance had come and hurried over with excitement.
Currently, South Korea was recognized as a world-class stronghold of security.
He felt complacent, thinking any problem would be swiftly resolved…
Yet the situation wasn’t as forgiving as he imagined.
Rising flames and acrid smoke.
Collapsing buildings and debris, acting as weapons.
People crying in agony and crowds surging like a stampede.
If he wasn’t careful, he might lose his life, so he had to stay sharper than ever.
‘What the hell are the guardians doing in this situation? And what about the firefighters and police?’
What he didn’t know was that this terror was not just a simple bombing.
Right before the terror, there were numerous tips sent to relevant departments like fire stations and police stations… or rather, ‘terror alerts’ made in an almost overwhelming volume.
Yet amidst those, while some calls were real, many were simply false alarms.
The flood of calls paralyzed the reporting system, along with handling the incidents that had already occurred, disarming of bombs yet to explode, and wasted efforts caused by bogus information.
The related departments were frantically calling in even those off-duty, struggling with manpower amidst the chaos.
‘Huh? Who is that?’
In a daze while being swept away by the crowd, Hong Du-sik’s gaze suddenly landed on an elderly man standing in the middle of the street with a blank expression.
Given the situation, it wasn’t too strange for someone to look lost, but something about him caused an unsettling feeling that made it impossible for Du-sik to look away.
“Uh, uh? Th-that!”
Just then, the old man flicked open a lighter, and the flame quickly ignited a bundle of paper he was holding in his other hand.
The burning paper plummeted to the ground—
WHOOSH—
As the flames spread rapidly following the oil that had been poured on the ground beforehand.
“AAAH!”
“W-what are you doing?! Are you insane?!”
“Don’t push! Get back! Get back!”
As flames suddenly erupted ahead, the panicking crowd came to a stop.
Yet amidst the chaos, Hong Du-sik had no time to care about his surroundings.
His gaze followed the path of the flames.
WHOOSH—
The spreading fire raced forward.
After a wild dash, he arrived at—
“AAAAH! DUCK!”
A medium oil tanker.
Using a mix of instinct and luck, he grabbed the nearest person next to him and threw himself to the ground.
He couldn’t guarantee that simply lying down would protect him from the explosion happening this close, but it was better than just standing there in the open.
Then, in an instant.
KWA-BOOM—!
SHATTER—!
A deafening explosion obliterated the surrounding sounds, shattering every single glass window around.
‘Ah, I should have just stayed home playing games!’
Hong Du-sik buried his face into the ground as he braced himself for the impending heat.
He had heard that getting burned was incredibly painful.
They said losing even a portion of skin could lead to death, right?
Wouldn’t it be better to just die than suffer in agony?
Countless ominous thoughts swirled in his mind.
They say time slows down when facing death, right?
It felt like several seconds had already passed in reality, yet he still hadn’t experienced that oppressive heat nor heard any sound.
‘Wait, it actually feels a bit cold…?’
Could it be that he died without feeling anything at all?
Just as he felt something was off.
Hmm. This is…
A strange voice that sounded like it belonged to another world whispered in his ear, piercing deep into his mind.
The moment he heard it, he instinctively thought of the grim reaper.
‘Ah, I really died.’
The tension in his body drained away, and he felt an overwhelming sense of resignation, biting his lip in defeat.
For a moment he stayed in that position until he took a deep breath, slowly opened his eyes, and lifted his head.
If I could capture the afterlife on camera, it would make an epic scoop—such a useless thought crossed his mind.
And soon after, that thought vanished completely.
“Ah.”
What unfolded before his eyes was an unreal spectacle.
It was—
A world where everything had come to a halt.
No, it wasn’t that time had literally stopped, but there was no other way to express it.
The flames that had been erupting froze in place, and the sharp shards and debris flew through the air, suspended in midair.
The space, once so hot it felt like sweat might pour, was now cool enough to see one’s breath.
People who had been paralyzed by fear were utterly frozen, unable to speak or move as they gazed blankly at the scene.
The landscape looked as if even time had been frozen.
Drawn in by an unexplainable force, Du-sik’s gaze unconsciously turned upward.
He followed that strange pull.
At a height that required looking up at least 10 meters.
‘He’ was there.
Draped in a pitch-black robe, and beneath the shadow of a hood, a peculiar smile adorned a mask.
An eerie blue fire flowed from the eye sockets, accompanied by an emanation of cold mist.
A being that seemed like the very embodiment of ominousness in human form.
‘Hahoe Mask…?’
The most famous dark hero in Korea, Hahoe Mask.
Seeing him snapped Du-sik out of his daze, as thoughts began to flow as if nourishment was finally arriving to his brain.
No matter how you looked at it, he resembled the grim reaper, but he was surely a being grounded in reality.
Unless he had inadvertently transitioned from being a black magician to that grim reaper.
If that was the case, could it be that he wasn’t dead after all…?
[…So it’s mind control, is it?]
At that moment, Hahoe Mask, watching the elderly man who had committed the terror, whispered softly.
His unfocused eyes and drooling mouth indicated that even his spirit, visible through the ‘Eye of the Abyss’, was far from healthy.
‘They really prepared for this meticulously.’
Even the brainwashing appeared to be a trigger mechanism activated under certain conditions rather than a continuously controlling type, making it impossible to deduce a definite target through connections.
The remaining traces were thoroughly erased, even if it meant crushing the subject’s spirit.
Because of that, all he could uncover was merely inferences about the location implied through his mind control.
This was clearly an act carried out with awareness of me.
‘Is this a challenge they’re throwing at me?’
A fierce blue fire burst forth from the corners of Hahoe Mask’s eyes.
Given my already prickly mood, being confronted by situations like this twisted my insides.
Though I didn’t have any guts to twist.
‘If they come at me, I’ll naturally respond with everything I’ve got.’
And what I had was not just my own abilities.
I quickly contacted someone through my thoughts.
[Andrew Weaver, it’s time.]
– Huh?! Yes, sir?!
For tracking and information, I sought out someone with the best unique skill, ‘Trail Observation’.
Although focusing on this side would complicate handling the disaster at hand, there were always ways around that.
I wasn’t alone.
*
“Help! Help me!”
“Cough, cough, this way… please…!”
People isolated on the blazing rooftop shouted desperately.
Death approached them, baring its bright red tongue at every moment.
Then suddenly.
Whoosh— Ugh—
Flames that had been roaring ferociously quickly subsided.
The black smoke that had been billowing vanished entirely, swept away by a refreshing breeze from somewhere, and the heated air settled, now carrying a damp coolness.
“Help me… huh?”
“W-what?”
Even those who had been screaming froze for a moment, bemused by the sudden change.
As they exchanged confused glances at the transformed scene, strange occurrences were repeating in other locations as well.
‘Ugh… this is a hassle… Can’t breathe… I just want to finish up and go back…’
A lethargic figure of a motorcycle helmeted villain hovered in the air, moving without enthusiasm.
*
And in another spot.
“Sht, it’s the Man!*”
“What nonsense are you on about… it’s real, isn’t it?”
“But he’s got that… isn’t that Spider-Man?!”
A mysterious hero clad in a futuristic metallic armor sped around, rescuing those in danger with black threads extending from his right hand.
‘Neither of them is right.’
He sighed quietly, feeling a pang of disappointment.
Despite intentionally altering his design, it seemed people’s thoughts were still stuck in the same old patterns.
Of course, that wasn’t particularly important right now.
‘I didn’t expect to have abilities like this. But then again, it is a product of mechanical civilization, so I suppose it makes sense.’
Following the guidance of ‘Machina : Callicas’, Hesperon accelerated even faster.
In this unexpected debut on Earth, he made an unforgettable first impression on the public.
