Chapter 1149

The battle didn’t take long to end.

By the time most of the seven named monsters leading the enemy were dead or incapacitated, the tide had already turned. Then humanity’s greatest War Mage arrived and smashed the monster army’s life support.

KWA-BOOOOM!

Attack spells rained down without pause from dozens of meters¹ overhead, tearing up the ground and sending blood spraying. His aim was nearly perfect, as if he were sniping his targets.

That was the end of the battle.

What followed was a one-sided massacre.

“Charge! Wipe them all out!”

CRUNCH!

With me, the Skeleton King, and Team Leader Choi at their center, some three hundred Hunters swept forward like a wave and swallowed enemies more than ten times their number.

Slash, splatter!

I cut down or stabbed every enemy that came into view. The medium and large monsters that trusted their strength and fought to the end, and the ones who had finally lost their nerve and turned to run.

No exceptions. No mercy.

After a little over thirty minutes of pursuit and slaughter, not a single monster stood on two feet in the blood-soaked desert.

Well.

Actually, there was one.

“Thankfully, we didn’t suffer any casualties… What’s that insolent look for, human?”

The Skeleton King had started toward me, then hesitated and stopped. I glanced over at him.

“Hmm. It’s nothing.”

“Looks like something to me.”

“There are exceptions to every rule. Right?”

“Where’d that come from?”

“It’s a thing. It has nothing to do with you, so don’t ask.”

His eyes narrowed; he’d clearly noticed something suspicious. Thankfully, I was spared any further interrogation when a huge shadow fell across me like a lifeline from heaven.

“Gentlemen. I have a question for you.”

Dark skin like dark chocolate. Enormous muscles. And a staff that looked more vicious than most close-combat weapons.

The towering Grand Mage descended slowly through the air. When he spoke again, his voice trembled.

“What I’m looking at isn’t some damn mirage or illusion spell, is it?”

He stared at me in disbelief. I slowly held out a fist.

“Why don’t you check?”

“Oh, damn it. Jin?”

Magic Johnson, the Grand Mage from the United States, pulled me into a tight hug instead of bumping fists.

Squeeze.

“……”

The firm, heavy thing pressing into my stomach was probably his staff.

It had to be.

It took Magic Johnson quite a while to calm down. Fortunately, his excitement had come entirely from the joy of seeing me again.

Yeah. Even for a black guy, that size and hardness would be ridiculous.

“Dear God. I can see you standing here, and I still can’t believe it. When did you wake up?”

He was only just regaining his composure. I’d barely escaped the enormous arms of this Grand Mage of the physical school, and I couldn’t help glancing at the staff tucked into his belt as I answered.

“Not long ago. It still doesn’t feel real.”

“Ah, I see. The last time I managed to get in touch, I hadn’t heard you’d woken up.”

“What?”

Something about that phrasing made the dread I’d been trying to suppress stir inside me.

This was the modern world. Humanity had prospered so much that even global community seemed too small a phrase for it.

With Magic added to the advanced technology we already possessed, civilization had risen from the ashes of the Great Cataclysm brighter than at any other point in human history.

And yet…

The last time he managed to get in touch?

For a moment, I couldn’t make sense of it.

Magic Johnson was a Grand Mage. One of only three masters of Magic among billions of people—no, only two now.

True, as a War Mage, most of his Magic was geared toward combat. But a Grand Mage could turn imagination into reality. One teleportation spell could carry him hundreds, even thousands, of kilometers.² Given the right conditions, he could contact someone just as far away whenever he wanted.

So his choice of words wasn’t merely strange. It was ominous.

He sounded like a signalman who’d barely managed to reach his allies through a broken radio.

Everything about this was telling me the same thing.

It was finally time to face reality.

“Johnson.”

“Yeah?”

“When was that last contact?”

“Well…”

Magic Johnson trailed off. Then, as if something had just occurred to him, he turned to the Skeleton King beside him.

“Could it be…?”

The Skeleton King muttered as though making an excuse.

“Damn it. I didn’t have time to tell you.”

“…Shit.”

“I couldn’t have told you, either.”

More precisely, I hadn’t been able to bring myself to ask.

I’d been that afraid. That scared.

How long?

What had happened while I was gone? How much time had passed?

I let out a quiet, trembling breath. Magic Johnson looked at me and sighed deeply.

“Fuck.”

It hurt to tell me. It would hurt to hear it.

But putting it off would only make it worse.

“Tell me. Right now.”

And the very next moment, the answer I’d been waiting for came from over Magic Johnson’s shoulder.

“The last contact was a day ago. Twenty-one hours ago, to be exact.”

Team Leader Choi.

Monster blood and bits of flesh had dried on his armor and sword. His gaze was drier than sand, and it pierced me like an awl.

“The first contact was three hours before that.”

Twenty-four hours. One day.

The numbers leaving Team Leader Choi’s lips seemed to grow thousands of times heavier, crushing my chest. My vision went white—whiter than all the flashes Magic Johnson had unleashed on the monsters combined.

No way.

A difference in the flow of time far beyond any ratio we’d seen before.

But that wasn’t all.

Even before Team Leader Choi spoke again, I knew instinctively that a crueler truth was coming.

“And…”

In the vast silence pressing down around us, he drew a deep breath. His voice trembled as he continued.

“Today is the tenth day since you lost consciousness.”

“…!”

At that moment—

Dum, dum, dum.

A war drum sounded, low and ominous. Before my eyes appeared a new kind of System window, unlike any I’d seen in Murim.

System A trigger has activated due to the failure of the Main Quest, Cataclysm.

Mission: Prevent the Summoning (Failed)

You defeated the “Final Abyss” Doppelganger, but did not complete the mission.

As a result of the Main Quest’s failure, the boundary of the Demon Realm has partially opened. Unknown beings are invading this world.

A rift is in progress. Its progress will change when certain conditions are met and can be checked through the System.

System A trigger has activated due to the failure of the Main Quest, Cataclysm.

Mission: Prevent the Summoning (Failed)

You defeated the “The Final Abyss” Doppelganger, but did not complete the mission.

As a result of the Main Quest’s failure, the boundary of the Demon Realm has partially opened. Unknown beings are invading this world.

A rift is in progress. Its progress will change when certain conditions are met and can be checked through the System.

The words were the same ones that had been etched clearly in my last memory of the modern world.

But a new holographic window appeared over them, bearing the name of a being I’d never seen or heard of.

System An unknown being willingly answers the summoning.

The immense shadow of Black Dragon Duke Morgoth¹ has fallen over this world.

Would you like to view the new Main Quest, Rift and Collapse?

System An unknown being willingly answers the summoning.

The immense shadow of Black Dragon Duke Morgoth has fallen over this world.

Would you like to view the new Main Quest, Rift and Collapse?

Frozen like a statue, I suddenly remembered.

The enormous wings I’d seen in that meaningless nightmare on my last night in Murim.

The dragon’s roar, shaking the sky swallowed by darkness.

The man was black as pitch.

His hair reached his calves, and his eyes looked as though they’d been set with obsidian. The only part of him that wasn’t black was his irises. They shone silver, whiter than white, and were captivating enough to make anyone feel as though they might be drawn in.

Anyone, that is, except the old man calmly watching him enter his office.

Step. Step.

Footsteps echoed in the silence.

The man crossed the long carpet. Only when he came right up to the old man did the old man speak.

“You have no manners.”

The man answered with a look, and the old man went on.

“A guest should wipe his shoes before coming in. You’ve dirtied the carpet.”

“Ah.”

At the man’s soft exclamation, something stirred in the old man’s chest. If not for the blood and scraps of human flesh scattered along his path, the old man might even have taken an immense liking to him.

“My apologies. I’m still a little clumsy with things like this.”

The man smiled gently and offered his hand. Despite what he’d just said, the movement was perfectly natural.

“Ah, have I got it wrong again? I was told this is how you do things.”

The man tilted his head. After a moment’s silence, the old man replied.

“No. I was only surprised by how practiced you are. Your appearance, too—and that handshake.”

The movement was more than natural. It carried grace and elegance. And the man himself might well have been the most beautiful human being in the world.

But the old man knew better.

He had seen with his own eyes what the man before him had done barely ten minutes earlier: erased his beloved Red Square with a single gesture.

“So, Morgoth. What brings you here?”

Vladimir Furin, Russia’s dictator, gritted his teeth as he clasped the hand of the monster wearing a human face.