Episode 106. Robbing an Empty House (1)
-You can’t just demand help like this! I need some kind of justification to order people around……!
“Just do it. You’ll be better off if you’re criticized right now.”
-It’s not that simple. This isn’t just any guild. The Tower is a massive group, one of the top three guilds.
“The Association will also take action. That’s why I’m telling you in advance, so get moving. You won’t regret it.”
-What? T-t-he Association? The Association is participating? Are you sure…….
Beep.
I hung up as soon as I heard her pouncing at the word ‘Association’. It was the Archmage of the Tower, Ma Top-joo. I had established a top-down relationship with her, but I neglected her for a while because I had no use for her.
She probably thought I forgot about her because I didn’t keep in touch for a long while. But unfortunately, I wasn’t about to just let someone as useful as the Archmage of the Tower rest.
‘That makes it two large organizations.’
The Archmage always jumped at any chance of profit. Could she really stay still after hearing that the Association was getting involved? She would probably poke around a few times and then jump in as soon as she finds out I was telling the truth, which meant almost entirely supplementing the shortage of force and firepower.
As long as the two organizations come through, I guess there will be enough Awakened people to protect civilians from the outpour of Returnees.
‘If need be, I can always bring up the Five Heroes.’
I still had letters that could provoke the other Heroes, just like I did with the Flame Empress. But that was the last resort. It was a one-time method, so it would be better to save it until the end.
“Then… I guess I’ll go help Mr. Zhang Wei or Han Yeon-soo.”
It would be quite difficult for them to observe and sort the Returnees on their own. Now that I dealt with the issue of manpower, I had better join them and get moving…….
“What are you talking about?!”
“……?”
I thought so until I heard someone shouting down in the main street. I turned my head to see a man in tattered clothes holding onto a passerby, making a ruckus.
“What’s going on?”
What is this situation? I approached with a frown. People nearby were trying to stop the man, but he pushed them away with the flick of his hand, no matter how many men clung to him.
Was he an Awakened person or a villain? It seemed like a difficult situation for civilians to deal with. I pulled out Mirage from my hand. I should subdue him first…….
‘Wait a minute.’
Something was weird. The man standing upright in the crowd of people looked familiar. He wasn’t a stranger to me. I had definitely seen him somewhere in my past.
The limp in his leg. His left hand holding onto a cane-like object. The two puzzle pieces occurred to me. And the small pieces drew a faint, large image.
Someone’s voice rang in my memory.
-This guy is the reason for the name ‘Returnee’.
-Everyone thought it was crazy Awakened people creating chaos, but because of him, we learned that it was the Fourth Disaster.
-Status didn’t matter. He was a monster who really told us what it meant to be a Returnee from a different world.
I remembered. My eyes widened. I can’t leave him like that.
That’s a bomb.
“Get out of the way! Get away from him!”
I yelled hurriedly. But no one listened to me. Some were confused and didn’t know what to do, and some simply found the situation interesting as they laughed foolishly or filmed with their smartphones.
It was a mess. There were no Association staff members to control people, nor were there any fellow Hunters.
“Everyone run away…!”
So it was inevitable that the incident eventually happened similar to the way it did in the past. Before I could even finish speaking, the person closest to the man floated up into the sky. And like a piece of paper in a shredder, the person began to disintegrate in the air, starting from the tip of his toes. Crushed flesh and blood scattered everywhere.
“Aaaarrghh!”
A person in the crowd screamed. And people in the main street started to panic. Those who were filming slammed their phones into their pockets or dropped their phones and fled.
They pushed each other, trample on the people who fell, and screamed. They bumped and got tangled, making it take longer to flee the scene.
“What! Happened! To! Sokcho!… Explain!”
At the center of it was the crazed guy who was unleashing his power. The first registered ‘Danger-Class Returnee’. An individual who can only be dealt with by at least three 1st class Awakened persons and classified as a highly-dangerous person face to face. Solely in terms of killing ability, he was a top-ranking murder weapon.
There was a strong smell of blood. The man covered in red blood, the Returnee, raised his hand one more time. It looked like he was about to wipe out the entire noisy crowd of people.
The surrounding mana quivered slightly. My Information Access and Outstanding Insight create information based on past analysis records and his current appearance that I was seeing with my own eyes. If I leave him like that, everyone here dies.
Snap!
I snapped my finger once. Absorbing the mana I drew up, the reinforced Mirage flew through the atmosphere, shining brightly.
He has no Characteristics or skills. His body structure changed while he lived in a different world, and he earned the instinctive, monster-like ability to control mana and robust strength. I wasn’t dealing with a human being. I was dealing with a monster that looked like a human.
[‘Excellent Magic’ has been activated.]
The Mirage emits a tiny bit of mana and disturbs the flow of the surrounding atmosphere. Weak vibrations shake the whole place, and small holes appear. The murder weapon-like mana that he deployed started to collapse.
“Ugh…huh?”
The man’s face stiffened. He looked like he couldn’t believe why his power was disabled or why the people around him were still alive.
Watching him, I squeezed through the crowd and approached him.
I clenched my fist, and the Mirages that had flown here and there gathered toward me again. Colorful light swirls, and mana condenses.
Snatch!
I push my hand through a gap in the crowd and grab the Returnee by the back of his neck. Then, I reach my fist filled to the brim with mana towards the Returnee’s fixed head.
“If you’re going to ask for an explanation, just say it.”
Craaack.
The fist moves forward, accompanied by the sound of a skull being crushed.
* * *
“This is where a Returnee appeared most recently, right?”
“Yes, he appeared out of nowhere and asked me how to get to Daejeon. So I told him it was a long way from here, at least two hours by car, and he asked what direction Daejeon was.”
“Direction?”
“Yeah. So I told him to go straight up, and he kicked the ground and shot up dozens of meters into the sky and disappeared!”
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