Chapter 741
– Damn it. He’s dead.
I didn’t think it would happen.
The unease I’d felt at that short sentence over the receiver was spot on.
– I’m sorry, but you need to come right away. Before this case gets out of our hands, we need to find as many clues as possible…
“Where is it?”
There was no time to hesitate.
We moved as quickly as possible, following the coordinates Magic Johnson gave us, and after several [Long-Range Teleport]s in a row, we arrived at a snowy mountain blanketed in white.
Crunch.
The perpetual snow underfoot crumbled as we walked.
The breathtaking scenery of the Alps—something I’d only ever seen online—spread out before me, but there was no time to appreciate it.
And that was…
“Intruder detected!”
The people guarding the area were the same ones as before.
“Stop!”
“Prepare to fire!”
Click-clack!
Along with the urgent shouts, guns and blades were aimed at us.
We halted at the sight of soldiers and Hunters in heavy gear, and then a familiar voice rose from among them.
“I won’t stop you if you insist on attacking, but before that, it would be in your best interest to check the faces of these intruders.”
“Move one step and we’ll shoot to kill… Mr. Johnson?”
“Don’t act rashly, Colonel. They are my invited guests.”
A burly black man brushed past the middle-aged commander in a beret and came to a stop in front of us.
His face was etched with fatigue and sorrow.
Magic Johnson—whom I hadn’t seen in weeks, no, months—greeted us with a weak smile.
“Long time no see, friends. How have you been?”
I grimaced and firmly clasped his outstretched hand.
“Not great.”
“Who are the people outside? It looked like half soldiers and half Hunters.”
“Swiss Federal Police. This area is under their jurisdiction, and I contacted them because I wanted to avoid being suspected of murder since they were the first to discover the body. Follow me.”
Me, Team Leader Choi Minwoo, and Skeleton King followed Magic Johnson.
As we passed through the soldiers and Hunters watching us with a mix of unease and curiosity, we entered a forest buried in snow, and a faint sense of déjà vu crept over me.
‘This is.’
I closed my eyes and focused. As I slowly reached out, I felt an invisible ripple through the heavy snowstorm.
“Mana?”
Magic Johnson nodded at my murmur.
“It’s a Barrier. It’s so subtle that even a decent S-Class Hunter wouldn’t notice it, and it’s just as perfect.”
His explanation wasn’t an exaggeration.
Even Skeleton King only noticed the Barrier’s existence after hearing those words.
“That’s quite a feat for a human. But it’s not enough to fool this body’s keen eyes. Because I’m not just any S-Class Hunter, but a very outstanding…”
“Monster.”
The sulking Skeleton King shut his mouth.
After silencing him with a single word, I looked at the Barrier in front of me and recalled a not-so-distant memory.
‘It’s similar.’
Just as certain types of martial arts leave specific traces, so does magic.
Staring at the flow of Mana—clear as a fingerprint—I became certain.
‘No doubt. It’s the same feeling as in Area A.’
As if reading my mind, Magic Johnson met my gaze and spoke.
“Before this incident, I was looking for people related to Area A at your request. But there was only one person I could think of.”
I already knew who the great archmage—the designer of Area A—was.
And I also knew he had announced his retirement more than a decade ago before vanishing from the public eye.
“I didn’t expect him to be staying in a place like this, but were you in contact with him separately?”
“Not at all. He was such an eccentric, reclusive person.”
Magic Johnson answered Team Leader Choi Minwoo’s question, then added,
“But we were friends. The kind of friends who could give you a hint about the hideout where he would stay someday.”
Whoooosh.
Mana tangled with Mana, and in a flash of white light, the snowstorm stopped.
No—the scenery itself had changed.
The vast snowfield was gone, replaced by a long, enormous cave that stretched out like a maze.
“Follow me. You can’t use magic, including teleportation, inside here.”
We followed Magic Johnson as we talked.
And, of course, things weren’t going smoothly for him, either.
“You must have seen the news… our LA branch was attacked. Even though it’s located on the outskirts of the city, there are so many people passing by that we couldn’t prevent casualties.”
Magic Johnson wasn’t just a great archmage—he was also the owner of the giant Wizard Guild.
Though it had slipped down the rankings a few years ago and now sat near the bottom, the Wizard Guild had once been among the world’s top ten.
Even so, the Wizard Guild—with its countless wizards—and Magic Johnson couldn’t stop a planned terror attack that struck like lightning.
“It was already too late when I arrived. After that, I was so busy cleaning up the other things.”
I didn’t bother asking what those “other things” were.
Everyone here already knew.
The so-called Vigilante Incident—the suppression of Middle Eastern terrorists and African rebel groups.
Many people criticized it, and Magic Johnson, one of the vigilantes, couldn’t escape the backlash.
No—none of us could.
It was just that I’d taken the biggest and hardest hit from the media’s iron hammer.
“I’m sorry.”
“What?”
“I thought I should at least apologize. If I hadn’t stepped up and made that suggestion, we wouldn’t be getting so much hate around the world…”
“Damn it. I was wondering what you were talking about.”
Magic Johnson, who had suddenly stopped walking, shook his head.
“Look, Taekyung. It’s not your fault. You don’t have to apologize to me. Got it?”
“Of course, but.”
“Let me ask you one thing. If you could go back to that time, what choice would you make? Would you have left those guys alone?”
I didn’t hesitate long.
Because it was a question I’d asked myself over and over again in a room where no light could reach.
“Not a chance.”
“What about you two?”
Team Leader Choi Minwoo and Skeleton King exchanged a glance and answered almost at the same time.
“Nothing will change. If anything, I would have tried to deal with it more thoroughly.”
“This body will definitely kill that Prophet.”
“Good, that’s a clear answer.”
Magic Johnson shrugged at their different but identical answers.
“And just in case you’re wondering, I don’t regret it at all, no matter what people say. Chuck Hagel is the same, even though he’s not here right now.”
Chuck Hagel.
The image of him beating down terrorists while suffering from cigar-withdrawal cravings was still vivid.
According to Team Leader Choi Minwoo, whom I’d heard from briefly on the way here, he was also in serious trouble.
“How is Chuck doing these days?”
“Not good.”
“That answer seems too fast.”
“It’s the truth. The external pressure coming from inside and outside is considerable. At this rate, it wouldn’t be surprising if he were dismissed from his position as Secretary of State soon.”
Team Leader Choi Minwoo replied in a calm voice.
“The pressure must be so strong that even the President can’t stop it.”
“It’s different from you guys. Chuck Hagel is a high-ranking public official of a country—Secretary of State of the United States. Even if our actions were condoned by the President, that only holds if it wasn’t discovered.”
“But it was revealed to the whole world. Directly by the Prophet, a terrorist of the century.”
“…Yeah. Thanks to some damn traitor.”
This had all been done with the tacit approval of the President of the United States.
So originally, our mission as “vigilantes” shouldn’t have been known to the world.
That was the only reason I’d been able to act so boldly in the modern world, where there were so many restrictions.
The disruption of satellite surveillance and the disposal of all related data.
But information about us had been leaked as if someone were showing off, and I clearly remembered what Michael Silbert had said in the ruins of Paris.
Let me give you one piece of advice. There is no such thing as a complete secret in this world. Not even the Pentagon.
The United States was still the world’s leading superpower, and the Pentagon was the most secure Department of Defense building in the country.
Yet even matters treated as top secret inside the Pentagon had leaked out.
So easily.
But…
‘It’s not strange if it’s him.’
I accepted the reality with surprising calm.
Because the opponent was Michael Silbert—stronger than any Hunter I’d ever met, and more cunning than that.
On top of that, there was the unidentified madman called the Prophet.
‘If it were a normal person—no, if it were a person at all—they wouldn’t even be able to try.’
There is a limit to evil.
In that sense, the path they were taking had already crossed far beyond the line.
Thousands had already died, and more than ten times that number had been injured.
Not every crime that had taken place around the world in the week since the Paris branch collapsed could be pinned on them, but it was clear they had played a significant role.
Because fear paralyzes reason and breeds another kind of madness.
With ten terrorist attacks accompanied by Monster Waves, Mana distribution accelerated even more rapidly, and Mutation Gate phenomena were now occurring dozens of times a day.
Some terrified people were already talking about the end.
They wore crosses at their waists, held microphones, and shouted for God’s mercy in the streets.
Just like their parents had done long ago.
But I don’t seek God.
They were just humans, not demons, and I was ready to take them down.
However, there was one problem…
‘The thread connected to one of them has been cut off so futilely.’
With that thought, I stopped walking.
Before I knew it, the long, winding tunnel had come to an end.
And waiting for us at the end was a body.
A corpse with bones and skin dried and shriveled like a mummy.
“…What is this.”
The moment Team Leader Choi Minwoo’s groan reached my ears—
Ting.
[A new quest has been created!]