“Active volcano” was no exaggeration.
If anything, it fell woefully short.
From the moment the last breath of the evil Dragon that had terrorized the whole world for thousands of years dispersed, an unstoppable catastrophe had been racing along its predetermined course.
An eruption—or an explosion.
It didn’t matter what you called it.
As if this were all it had left to do, the Dragon Heart slipped beyond its master’s control for the first time and vomited everything it had accumulated over untold ages into the world.
Using the body of the Dragon that had finally met its end as kindling, it raged more fiercely than a newly awakened active volcano.
Roooar!
Before the deafening roar that shook heaven and earth even reached their ears, everyone on the battlefield felt its terrifying shock wave.
The S-rank Hunters gathering the bodies of the seven Guardians who had found peace with Morgoth’s death—no, their former comrades.
The thousands of Hunters pursuing monsters that had lost the will to fight and scattered in every direction.
At that enormous, instinct-stirring rumble, they all turned their heads in the same direction as if on cue. Then they froze like statues.
Fwoooosh.
A chilling cold carried on the wind. A dark, ashen mist.
And beyond it, a towering pillar of pitch-black darkness, vast beyond comprehension.
“What is that…?”
The groan that slipped from someone’s lips spoke for everyone staring at the scene in stunned disbelief.
The evil Dragon—Morgoth—was dead. Of that there was no doubt.
They had won here today. The immediate danger was gone.
So why?
Why did that deep, pitch-black darkness feel more frightening than the unprecedented monster that had split the sky and poured its deathly breath down upon the earth?
They already knew the answer.
Their senses and minds, frozen by the icy magical power, simply hadn’t responded quickly enough to the memory of that day—the day that had arrived without a word of warning just a few decades ago.
But two beings recognized what was happening before anyone else, and more clearly.
“…We have to stop it.”
The Lord of the Dead spoke to the Grand Mage, who was muttering as though possessed by something unseen, his voice vacant.
“We can’t stop it.”
Unlike Magic Johnson’s, the Undead King’s tone was calm.
As if he’d already given up on everything.
But he hadn’t.
There was still hope in his words, however faint—a tiny ember that had yet to lose its light.
“At least, not right now.”
Holding his unconscious friend in his arms, the Undead King felt warmth against his fingertips as he spoke softly.
That was right.
Their hope hadn’t gone out yet.
And protecting that ember was the best they could do now.
“We’re leaving. Right now.”
Before something happened that couldn’t be undone.
Unable to force out the words that had risen to his throat, the Undead King turned away with Magic Johnson.
The sky above them was no longer filled with mere storm clouds. It was turning to pure darkness, casting a cold shadow over them.
The Great Cataclysm.
The ominous name humanity had forgotten over the past few decades was branded into everyone’s minds once more.
And even after the Grand Mage’s large-scale Warp Magic Formation appeared and vanished in a dazzling flash, a hard mechanical beep—one that hadn’t reached its owner—continued to ring out somewhere in the world.
Beep.
System
The distribution and concentration of magical power are skyrocketing. Take action immediately.
Current Rift Progress: 73%
When the Rift reaches a certain level, the ferocity and strength of monsters increase significantly.
Current Rift Progress: 85%
When the Rift reaches a certain level, the danger posed by Gates and the probability of a Monster Wave increase significantly.
Current Rift Progress: 90%
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System
You have failed to meet the Quest success requirements.
Mission: Defeat “Black Dragon Duke” Morgoth (Complete)
Halt the Rift’s progress (Incomplete)
Main Quest Rift and Collapse has failed.
A new Main Quest, Predestined Collapse, has been created.
Good luck.
.
.
System
You have failed to meet the Quest success requirements.
Mission: Defeat “Black Dragon Duke” Morgoth (Complete)
Halt the Rift’s progress (Incomplete)
Main Quest Rift and Collapse has failed.
A new Main Quest, The Foreordained Collapse, has been created.
Good luck.
The System never lied.
And even people who didn’t know it existed had no need for its warning messages. The changes were dramatic enough on their own.
Or like a marauder who barged in without warning.
“The magical power levels…! They’re skyrocketing!”
“It’s not just the Moscow area! St. Petersburg and Novosibirsk—and even the Kazan region…!”
Like waves crashing into one another, panicked shouts from all directions swallowed each other up.
Eyes webbed with red veins. Veins bulging along people’s necks.
The pit of this dreadful chaos wasn’t confined to any one place.
It was unfolding in underground bunkers around the world, where the people who ran entire nations had gathered; in cabinet meeting rooms; and, on a smaller scale, anywhere with an internet connection.
The Hunters still on the battlefield weren’t the only ones who witnessed the unbelievable phenomenon.
When a spearhead wreathed in flames cut through Morgoth and the thick storm clouds covering Moscow’s sky, billions of people had been given a brief chance to watch a battle that would decide their fate.
They shuddered at the sight of the evil Dragon falling, then cheered the young hero who had saved them once again.
But humanity didn’t know that the single ray of light shining on them in their deepest despair would fade before the tears they shed had even dried.
Rumble.
Those watching the unstable, grainy feed transmitted from a satellite suddenly realized something was wrong.
A gigantic pillar spewed darkness so vivid it looked unnatural, like a black hole sucking everything in.
That was all they saw.
A blinding, oppressive beam of light—though light seemed impossible to associate with that darkness—closed the sky. This time, it never opened again.
And the darkness that had swallowed Moscow began to multiply.
Roooar.
Like a horse galloping across the wilderness, the darkness raced silently through a world gone quiet.
East, west, south, north.
Wherever its hooves passed, the light vanished.
Just as it had blotted out the sunset over Moscow, the darkness devoured every light.
Even the blazing sun couldn’t pierce the darkness. No—the pure, profound magical power. The stars in the sky vanished, too.
By the time the Dragon Heart had poured out all its strength and crumbled to dust, the catastrophe now in full bloom had already scattered its spores across the world.
Just like now.
“Code Red! Code Red! Mutated Gate detected!”
“Mutated Gate? Shit, you’re calling that Code Red? Report only Monster Waves!”
The superior’s bark was understandable.
A few years ago, a Mutated Gate would have covered the front page of morning papers and dominated every breaking-news broadcast. Now the situation was so urgent that even that had become something to dismiss.
But the shout that came next was so clear and shocking that it wiped his jumbled thoughts clean in an instant.
“A-all Gates across Eurasia are mutating at once.”
“What?”
“At least twenty percent of them have reached levels high enough to progress into Monster Waves…”
He didn’t hear the rest.
Seized by a sudden ringing in his ears, the superior fell silent. He squeezed out every last bit of strength and managed to say one thing.
“Tell the higher-ups immediately.”
“Which higher-ups, exactly…?”
There was no time to answer.
There were more than a thousand Gates scattered across Europe and Asia.
Shoving aside his hesitant subordinate, the superior picked up a special communications device he hadn’t touched once in the more than ten years since he’d been appointed head of this place.
A direct line to one place and one place only.
After a signal that seemed to ring on forever, someone answered. A tremor crept into the recipient’s voice as they summed up the situation.
“Activate Code Black.”
That was the end of the call.
But both of them knew that this brief conversation, lasting less than a minute, would go down in history.
As would anyone who understood what Code Black meant.
And those facing the recipient on-screen—the person who had just set down the receiver, the President of the United States—belonged to the tiny fraction of humanity privy to that top-secret information.
“It’s begun.”
“…Yes. In the end.”
Though they differed in race and gender, these two hundred or so people shared one thing: they all led a nation. For a while, they looked at one another in silence.
There was only one exception among them: a distinctly young East Asian man.
He wasn’t a national leader, nor did he have the seasoned political instincts they did. But he had every right to attend this gathering.
He was also the person who best understood the wishes of someone unable to attend today.
“It’s begun, but it isn’t over.”
His face was still healing, his hair matted with blood.
But no one criticized him for appearing before them like that without showing proper respect.
No—they wouldn’t dare.
The young man before them was a hero who had bled and fought for the world in their place.
Just as his grandfather, recorded in humanity’s history, had—and just as those who had fallen in Moscow today had.
Standing alone, as if his place here belonged to someone else, Choi Minwoo continued, his eyes and voice burning like torches.
“We will end this war.”
The ominous code name that hadn’t been spoken anywhere for decades: Code Black.
No—the Great Cataclysm.
The irreversible war had already begun, and the hero was not dead yet.
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