Chapter 18

Chapter. 18

The moment I let go of the reins that had been holding back the spell’s manifestation,

an immense sense of release washed over me.

Flash—!

The world turned deathly white.

***

FLASH!

“Aaaagh!”

“M-My eyes…!”

Every monitor in the operations room flared at once.

Overwhelmed by the sheer intensity of the light pouring through the screens, the personnel in the command room clutched at their eyes and screamed.

It was absurd, but… it felt as though that light had physical force.

Even though it came through the electronic medium of the monitors, the overwhelming wave of Mana beyond them crashed into the operations room.

“Urgh…!”

Min Ji-hee gritted her teeth and barely endured it.

Min Ji-hee was not a mage, so she could not interpret the spell.

But with predictive ability superior even to that, she reached a conclusion.

‘Even if I were a mage, it would be the same. There is… no human who could interpret that.’

Her legs trembled.

Tap-tap-tap!

Min Ji-hee’s hands flew frantically.

“The site… We have to check the site!”

From Incheon to Pyongyang.

Every CCTV camera placed along that two-hundred-kilometer route was called up at once.

And Min Ji-hee swallowed her breath.

‘Hah….’

It looked as though someone had laid a ruler across a map and drawn a line.

A single pure white line stretched in a straight path from Incheon to Pyongyang.

Everything that had existed along that line was gone.

Buildings, forests, mountain ranges, rivers. Every form of matter caught along that trajectory had been erased as though deleted from existence.

All that remained were ice crystals drifting through the air like diamond dust.

It was a landscape so clean and so cruel, as though the finger of a god had rubbed the filth off the face of the earth and wiped it away.

“Pyongyang! What happened to Pyongyang?!”

Min Ji-hee cried out like a scream.

The most important matters were whether the target, Scathach, had been annihilated,

and—whether Han Seol-ah was alive.

Crackle.

[No Signal]

[Connection Failed]

Dozens of monitors went black all at once.

“They’re gone…? All of them?”

Min Ji-hee’s pupils shook violently.

The deepest bunkers, underground facilities, and even drones several kilometers above the city, all deployed in preparation for the aftermath of the battle.

They had planted hundreds of ‘eyes’ there, concentrating them as densely as possible—and yet with that single spell, the visual data of the city of Pyongyang had been deleted wholesale.

With trembling hands, Min Ji-hee picked up the phone.

Speed dial number one. Jin Cheon-jin.

If it was him—

then he would have succeeded.

‘Please….’

***

[00:02]

Two seconds before the two minutes arranged by the Apostle came to an end.

Jin Cheon-jin, who had been concealed behind the pillar of an abandoned building, moved.

He pressed down hard on the ring on his finger—the one set with a pitch-black gem.

[00:01]

Flash!

Jin Cheon-jin’s body vanished,

and appeared beside Han Seol-ah just as she began to collapse.

At that very moment, Scathach’s expression changed as he sensed the anomaly.

In that fleeting instant, the predator’s killing intent tore through space.

Goosebumps broke out all over Jin Cheon-jin’s body, and cold sweat burst from him.

At the same time—a pure white radiance began to gather around Scathach’s mouth.

[00:00]

The exact instant the two minutes promised by the Apostle were up.

From an immeasurable distance away, all the way to Scathach’s enormous body—a single, impossibly thin white line was drawn.

And then, that line expanded, and his vision was swallowed by pure white.

Jin Cheon-jin realized it instinctively.

‘Ah, I’m going to die.’

His life flashed before his eyes.

Reflexively, Jin Cheon-jin pressed the gem with all his strength.

***

Immediately after Han Seol-ah departed for the operation site,

Jin Cheon-jin had been summoned by the Apostle.

And then—he heard shocking news.

“If events proceed according to plan, Han Seol-ah will die.”
“…What?”

Jin Cheon-jin’s question was short, but denial and bewilderment were mixed within it.

The Apostle’s eyes were cold.

As though he were someone looking back upon a future that had already ended.

“Han Seol-ah will endure for two minutes.”
“…She will absolutely do it.”
“But.”

The Apostle spoke over him.

“The moment two minutes are up, I will cast the spell immediately. When that happens, everything in the Pyongyang area—including Scathach—will be annihilated.”
“Then…!”
“Yes.”

The Apostle nodded.

“Han Seol-ah will not be able to escape the spell’s effective range. She will die as she is.”

Jin Cheon-jin’s mind went blank.

“If she wants to live, she must leave the battlefield the instant she endures those two minutes.”

Was that even possible?

In a situation where simply holding out for two minutes was already a miracle?

“There is a way.”

At that single sentence from the Apostle, Jin Cheon-jin reflexively looked up.

“…Please grant me your wisdom.”

“Let me confirm something first. Does the Republic of Korea Hunter Association possess any Artifacts of the Blink type—short-range spatial movement Artifacts?”

“…No, we do not.”

“Is there any way to obtain one immediately?”

“Spatial-type Artifacts are treated as strategic assets. Personal trade is impossible to begin with, and the supply itself is extremely limited… As far as I know, at present only two countries on Earth possess them: the United States and Japan.”

“I expected as much.”

The Apostle muttered without much reaction.

“…”

A brief silence followed.

And then—the Apostle tossed something.

Tap.

Jin Cheon-jin caught it reflexively.

It was a ring set with a black gem.

“This is an Artifact with one short-range spatial movement and one mid-range spatial movement built into it.”

The Apostle spoke indifferently.

“As for the name… yes. Just think of it as the ‘Black Ring.’”

“!”

Ancient letters inlaid in gold gleamed faintly over the jet-black gem.

At that moment—Jin Cheon-jin’s eyes shook violently.

‘No way….’

He recognized it instantly.

‘The one used by Vayu, the last S-rank Hunter of fallen India— ‘Vishnu’s Six Steps’…!’

Three short-range movements, two mid-range movements, and one long-range movement.

India’s National Treasure, containing a total of six spatial movement spells.

But most of its charges had been consumed during India’s struggle, and with Vayu’s death, it had vanished without a trace. A legendary Artifact.

‘How did he…?’

Questions arose one after another, but the Apostle’s explanation cut them off.

“The exact moment it reaches two minutes.”

The Apostle’s voice sank low.

“My spell will activate, and until it reaches Pyongyang, there will be a brief gap.”

Jin Cheon-jin pushed aside his thoughts and gritted his teeth.

“Use that gap.”

The Apostle’s gaze pierced straight through him.

“You will save Han Seol-ah and escape.”
“….”
“If you fail.”

The Apostle’s voice remained calm to the very end.

“Both you and Han Seol-ah will die.”

Without a moment’s hesitation, Jin Cheon-jin bowed his head.

“I will succeed without fail.”

***

Flash!

“Cough, cough!”

Jin Cheon-jin opened his eyes, coughing up blood.

It felt as though the entirety of his back had been ripped away.

A bizarre pain that was hotter than heat, colder than cold, as though his flesh were being burned away.

It was the trace of destruction left by the cloak and shield that had brushed the firing line of Absolute Zero and evaporated without a sound.

“Hahk….”

Was he alive?

He hurriedly checked his arms.

The unconscious Han Seol-ah was in them.

Her face was dusted with white frost, her lips pale blue.

But her heart was still beating, however faintly.

“Ha… haha….”

He had saved her.

No, to be precise—he had merely moved according to the Apostle’s design.

The moment he almost relaxed in relief, Jin Cheon-jin felt that the sensation behind his back was unnaturally light.

He reached over his shoulder with trembling hands.

“…Huh?”

It was gone.

In that brief instant when he turned with Han Seol-ah in his arms, the trailing edge of the cloak he had failed to evade, along with the A-rank Artifact shield strapped to his back—had been cleanly annihilated.

The cut surface was smooth as glass.

A severance at such an ultra-low temperature that he could barely even feel pain.

If not for the Artifact the Apostle had given him—if he had been 0.1 seconds slower, his entire back would have vanished like that.

With shaking eyes, Jin Cheon-jin lifted his head and looked ahead.

There was nothing there.

Not Scathach, nor the ruins.

Not even the forest of buildings where he had been standing moments ago.

As though a god had poured white paint across it,

the world had turned completely white.

Even sound had frozen.

There was no thunder of collapsing buildings, no scream of the earth.

Only the wind brushed across the empty glacier.

“……”

With trembling eyes, Jin Cheon-jin traced the aftermath of destruction.

From Incheon to Pyongyang.

A perfectly straight line continued across the earth, as though drawn with a ruler.

The mountain ranges brushed by that line had been hollowed out like tunnels, and the river remained frozen in place, preserving the very shape in which it had once flowed.

And—

At the end of that straight line, the center of Pyongyang, where Scathach had existed, was even more bizarre.

“Ah….”

From the point where that straight line struck, a great circle had bloomed upon the earth.

It resembled the aftermath of a nuclear explosion, but instead of a mushroom cloud, an eternal glacier had swelled outward like a dome.

Inside that circle, within a white zone stretching for several kilometers in radius, even the concept of ‘ruins’ no longer remained.

There were no collapsed buildings, no shattered steel frames.

Everything had been caught in the cold of Absolute Zero and broken down to the atomic level, scattering through the air as glittering diamond dust.

The map had changed.

The basin that had once held the remains of the city called Pyongyang

had now become the smoothest and whitest ice desert in the world.

Jin Cheon-jin trembled silently.

Bzzz—

The mobile phone in his left breast pocket vibrated.

‘…Amazing that it still works.’

The caller was Min Ji-hee.

“The operation succeeded.”

From beyond the phone came a chorus of cheers.

Jin Cheon-jin gave a faint laugh.

They had escaped the brink of destruction.

[Hooo… What is the situation like?]

“Were you not watching through the monitors?”

[The cameras were all wiped out.]

“Ah… I suppose they would be.”

Jin Cheon-jin summed up the landscape of Pyongyang in a single sentence.

“From now on, the name Pyongyang ought to be erased from the map.”

[…I expected as much. It looks like everything is completely gone, right?]

“Yes. Scathach, and Pyongyang as well.”

[…Association President, but…]

“Hmm?”

[Are we sure it’s really over?]

“…Why would you say something so unsettling?”

[Because it’s strange.]

The other end of the line fell quiet.

[There’s no System message.]

“…”

Now that she mentioned it…

When a boss was defeated and a Break ended, the System would send a message before the eyes of every Hunter affiliated with the Republic of Korea.

But now?

Nothing appeared.

Like the ominous stillness before a storm.

At that moment—

“…Hm?”

Whoooooosh—!

As though a storm were rushing into a zone made vacuum by an explosion,

a tempest of frost was being sucked into the heart of Pyongyang. It was as if an invisible ‘hole’ had been opened there.

Within that wind of cold, Jin Cheon-jin felt a vivid malice.

It carried the same killing intent that monster had emitted in that fleeting moment when he had stood before Scathach.

‘Frost Type Mana? No, it’s different!’

The unique energy emitted by a Demonic Beast.

Demonic Energy.

It was unmistakable!

‘But how? Scathach was clearly annihilated!’

[Association President?]

The fragments of the destroyed Scathach gathered the ice dust of the white desert and rebuilt a form.

What appeared there was an enormous heart made of ice.

Thump!

In the middle of the white desert,

a blue heart pulsed in midair like a newborn fetus.

And then.

Crack. Craaack!

Ice pillars burst upward around the heart.

CRRRRACK!

The scattered ice dust defied gravity and gathered together.

It raised a skeleton, packed on flesh, covered it in scales.

Transparent, unyielding ice clumped together, carving out a massive form.

“…!”

A sculpture like an exquisitely crafted jeweled work of art was completed.

A monster statue made entirely of ice, its transparent body empty within, with only its heart glowing blue.

“No way….”

[Hello?]

Rumble!

Demonic Energy of the Frost Type surged outward, and the ice statue snapped its eyes open.

ROOOOOOOAR!!!

The completed statue spread its wings and roared. Ice fragments clinging to it blasted away like grapeshot in the shockwave.

“Hahk…!”

At that moment of Jin Cheon-jin’s horror, Scathach’s head turned south.

Toward the place where the sniper who had killed him was.

Toward Incheon.

Flash!

Space ripped open, and a pitch-black transfer gate appeared. The massive Ice Dragon was sucked into it.

‘…!’

“He’s alive again! He transferred to Incheon!”

[…This can’t be! The Apostle is the only one there…!]

“What is the Apostle’s condition?”

[It’s bad…! He coughed up blood over and over just to supply the Mana required to cast that spell!]

Jin Cheon-jin hurriedly called for a helicopter.

From Pyongyang to Incheon, a helicopter using a Mana Stone engine would take less than five minutes!

The feeling of saving Han Seol-ah still remained with him.

The feeling of running straight toward certain death.

But Jin Cheon-jin had survived.

‘This time as well….’

If something happened on the battlefield… the first to die would be me.

Jin Cheon-jin steeled his resolve.

***

“Ptoo.”

I spat the blood pooled in my mouth onto the ground. When I blew my nose hard, a clot of blood came out with it.

The inside of my body was a complete mess.

“I’ll have to lower my lifeline.”

In my current condition, I could not even endure 50,000 MP.

To stay safe, it would be better to keep it below 40,000.

I picked up Eternal Winter and charged it with a precious 10,000 Mana.

“With this, I should be able to use the Genesis Trait a few times.”

I rose from the sniper chair. Forcing strength into my unsteady legs, I leapt lightly down.

The ‘third request’ I had given Min Ji-hee:

Secure an open lot near the sniper chair, and make absolutely certain it was properly cleared.

The place where I landed was a broad empty lot.

‘She gets things done properly.’

It had originally been an elementary schoolyard.

But now there was no schoolyard, no school building, no assembly platform.

Only a flat stretch of packed earth remained, turned into a perfect arena.

“It should be about time.”

I loosened up as I waited.

Not long after, the space above my head split open as if being torn apart.

A pitch-black transfer gate.

And from within it, an ice dragon dripping killing intent crawled out.

Looking at how furiously enraged it was, a faint smile crept across my face.

“Welcome.”

I tightened my grip on the staff.

“To my home ground.”

This place was within Synchronization’s effective range.

And what did that mean?

“You’re dead.”

I was invincible.