Chapter 304

Every source of light in the office had been blocked out. As the holographic video began playing in the darkness, I suddenly felt as though I were standing at the scene myself.

This place is…

Everything was gray. I couldn’t see an inch in front of me.

Only after an eagle’s massive wing swept dangerously close did I realize where the footage had begun.

The sky.

The drone recording the scene descended rapidly, escaping the fine dust that filled the air.

Whoooosh.

After plunging through the fierce wind for some time, it finally emerged above a city engulfed in flames.

Boom! Rumble-rumble-rumble!

“Eeeeeek!”

“Aaaaaah!”

Factories belching smoke exploded one after another. Towering buildings toppled like dominoes, while people who looked like tiny dots screamed and fled in every direction.

Pandemonium.

There were too many of them to count.

Thousands were visible at a glance. Including those beyond the camera’s view, there had to be tens of thousands.

“What the hell is this…?”

A groan escaped me before I could stop it. Was this because of some factory explosion?

No. It was because I had spotted creatures racing through the maze-like city, spreading destruction and slaughter wherever they went.

“Grrrrrrr!”

“Graaah!”

Massive bodies. Strength and Agility that could only belong to monsters.

Their eyes gleamed with killing intent as they swept across their surroundings. Then, letting out hideous roars, they began searching for targets.

Why are there monsters out there?

The question lasted only a moment before I realized the answer myself.

There was only one possibility.

A Monster Wave.

During the Great Cataclysm, Gates had been passageways connecting Earth to another world known as the Demon Realm.

But after the Demon King Asmodeus disappeared, the monsters’ power weakened, and Gates became doors that only humans could freely pass through.

There was one exception.

If the mana inside a Gate exceeded its capacity, everything changed.

When a dam breaks, the water comes rushing out.

That was a Monster Wave, and the holographic video was showing us the result.

“Kyaaaaaa!”

“P-please, save me…!”

Crunch!

The camera zoomed in on the massacre unfolding in the heart of the city.

Monsters slaughtered and destroyed without restraint while humans died helplessly around them.

Some were impaled on monsters’ claws. Others were trampled to death beneath the feet of the fleeing crowd.

Amid that maelstrom of chaos, a mother and daughter running for their lives caught my eye.

“Bingbing! Hold Mommy’s hand tight!”

The woman had barely shouted the words when—

Whoosh! Thunk!

A spear flew from a dark alley, pierced her chest, and buried itself in the ground.

She vomited up a mouthful of blood, then her body went limp.

The child burst into tears at the sight of her mother dying before her eyes.

“Mommy!”

But it wasn’t over yet. More than a hundred Orcs poured from the dark alley and advanced on the child.

They had taken up ideal positions to block the fleeing civilians’ escape routes.

One Orc who appeared to be their leader raised an axe and brought it down toward the crying child.

Whish! Slice!

“Krk?”

The leader stared down at its arm in confusion.

The thick arm holding the axe had been cleanly severed below the elbow. Before the Orc stood a man who hadn’t been there a moment ago.

“How dare mere monsters lay hands on the people of Zhonghua?”¹

A dazzling aura flashed.

Slice!

The leader’s head was severed. Before it could even hit the ground, a thunderous cry burst from the man’s mouth.

“Public Security Armed Forces Department!”

“Yes!”

The answer rang out.

The man was not alone. Hunters from the Public Security Armed Forces, their armor emblazoned with China’s Five-Starred Red Flag, were streaming onto the battlefield even now.

The man shouted, his eyes blazing.

“Kill every last one of those stinking bastards!”

“For the people!”

Sh-sh-sh-shk!

With a tremendous roar, more than a thousand Hunters charged forward.

Despite the enormous losses it had suffered during the Great Cataclysm, China still had a population of well over a billion.

The strength of each individual was unknown, but it would not be an exaggeration to say that China could mobilize more Hunters than any other country in the world.

“Wipe them all out!”

“Waaah! Long live the People’s Republic of China!”

A thousand Hunters charged as one.

The monsters rampaging through the city weren’t about to stand by and watch. Every kind of monster converged in one place, their numbers easily surpassing a thousand as well.

“Gwoooooo!”

“Kya-woo!”

Thud-thud-thud-thud-thud!

Monsters and humans. Humans and monsters.

Two waves that could never coexist surged toward each other.

Eyes shining with resolve, and killing intent directed at the enemy.

The force of the scene filled the office, so overwhelming that it was hard to believe we were watching a holographic video.

High above, the drone captured the two forces rapidly closing the distance between them.

Five hundred meters². Three hundred³. One hundred⁴…

Just as the deafening noise reached its peak and the two sides were about to collide—

“Perish in hellfire. Fire Rain.”

A cold voice utterly devoid of life.

At the same time, the gray sky split open.

Kiiiiing.

It was a sight unlike anything I had ever seen.

About thirty meters⁵ in the air, not far from the drone, the empty space peeled open as though something had sliced through it.

A massive ball of flame emerged from a vortex writhing with black energy.

Whoooosh!

The Chinese Hunters stopped in their tracks without realizing it and stared blankly at the sight.

“This can’t be.”

“This is… a dream.”

Unfortunately for them, it was all real.

Crack!

The sphere of flame, dozens of meters⁶ in diameter, split into four pieces. Each of those four divided into dozens more, and those dozens shattered into hundreds of fragments.

Then the rain of fire struck the earth.

Whoooom! KABOOM!

Rrrrrumble!

The deafening explosions dyed everything red.

The drone was thrown off balance by the aftershock. When it finally steadied itself, the being responsible for creating that spectacular scene was staring directly at it.

“A human device, I see.”

Its voice held neither inflection nor vitality.

The figure wore a robe covered in strange patterns, its hood pulled low. It extended one finger toward the drone.

I shall kill you all and take everything. Those who set foot upon my territory will pay with their lives.

Bzzzzzt!

The instant that finger, gnarled like the root of an ancient tree, moved, the video vanished in a burst of static.

The gray sky choked with fine dust disappeared. So did the scene below, a sight that could only be called the end of the world.

With the hologram gone, a heavy silence descended over the office.

I was the first to speak.

“What the hell is that bastard?”

“He is the man responsible for this Monster Wave. No—he isn’t a man, so I suppose that isn’t quite the right word.”

Team Leader Choi continued in a subdued voice.

“A Named Monster. A Lich. That is what he is.”

A Lich.

A fallen archmage. An apex monster reigning at the top of the pyramid of countless undead.

The Lich that had supposedly vanished after the Great Cataclysm had appeared. It had caused an enormous catastrophe, as though celebrating its return after several decades.

Team Leader Choi unplugged the USB drive and spoke.

“November fifth. This footage was recorded exactly ten days ago by a reconnaissance drone belonging to Chinese intelligence. It shows a small city near Nanchong City in Sichuan Province. The estimated number of casualties so far is approximately three hundred thousand. An accurate count is still unavailable.”

Sichuan.

I was more familiar with it as the region where Qingcheng and Emei of the Nine Sects and One Gang were located, along with the Tang Clan, one of the Five Great Families.

Of course, Murim was an entirely different world that merely resembled China, and what the hologram had shown us was a catastrophe on an unimaginable scale.

“Three hundred thousand?”

“Yes.”

“That’s fucking insane…”

“And that figure covers only the first twenty-four hours after the Wave began.”

A chill ran down my spine.

Three hundred thousand estimated casualties in a single day. Had humanity suffered this much damage from a Monster Wave even once since the Great Cataclysm?

“Are Liches normally this powerful?”

I directed the question not at Team Leader Choi but at Butler Kim, the only one among us who had lived through the Great Cataclysm.

His eyes trembled like ripples on water.

“Of course not. The Liches I saw with my own eyes during the Great Cataclysm were all immensely powerful, but… that one is on an entirely different level. Its fire magic gave me goose bumps just watching it.”

Butler Kim was an A-rank mage who specialized in fire magic.

If a man who had been through hell and back during the Great Cataclysm said that, it showed just how powerful this Lich was.

Where the hell did something like that come from?

The burning city and the people collapsing in pools of blood lingered before my eyes. The enormous rain of fire that had hammered the earth was a disaster in the truest sense of the word.

I remembered the declaration the creature had made to the camera at the very end.

I shall kill you all and take everything. Those who set foot upon my territory will pay with their lives.

No one else could have understood what it said, but I could.

Thanks to the Integrated Language Pack, part of the System, I had heard every word clearly and understood what they meant.

That merciless undead monster would never be satisfied with a single small city.

Three hundred thousand people in one day? With the power it had displayed, the number of casualties might already be ten times higher by now.

“Goddamn it…”

I didn’t particularly like China, but no sane person could look at a catastrophe like this and laugh that they had gotten what they deserved.

The thought of all those people dying helplessly—and the little girl crying over her dead mother—left a bitter taste in my mouth.

Then something occurred to me.

Wait.

Now that I had recovered somewhat from the shock, one thing struck me as strange.

A catastrophe of this magnitude had happened ten days ago, yet the world remained peaceful.

And more importantly…

Where did Team Leader Choi get this information?

If it had been the Ares Guild—or Lee Jungryong—I could have understood. They were one of the world’s leading Guilds, and their intelligence network was exceptional.

But Team Leader Choi was just a team leader in an ordinary mid-sized Guild. If even he knew about this, news of the Sichuan disaster should already have been playing on broadcasts around the world.

There’s something going on.

I wasn’t the only one who had reached that conclusion.

Everyone was staring at Team Leader Choi, silently demanding an explanation.

He wasn’t the kind of person who would fail to notice.

“One week ago, I received an unexpected message.”

That was the day Hayeon finished her college entrance exam.

Team Leader Choi had spent a long time staring at his phone that day before leaving, saying that something important had come up.

“It was from China, wasn’t it?”

Team Leader Choi nodded.

“Yes. More precisely, it was a request for one particular person to take part in this crisis.”

“Forget everything else for a second. China specifically asked for me?”

“Yes. ‘He’ wanted you.”

“Who’s he?”

A name slipped from Team Leader Choi’s lips.

“Xiao Yang.”

“Gah!”

“Xiao Yang?”

“Young Master. Is that true?”

The moment they heard the name, everyone in the room stared wide-eyed. Naturally, I did the same.

I gaped at Team Leader Choi before finally managing to speak.

“X-Xiao Yang asked for me?”

“Yes.”

“But who’s Xiao Yang?”

“……”

Why did they all look like that? It was possible that I didn’t know.

Team Leader Choi’s eyelids twitched for a long moment before he finally spoke.

“Xiao Yang is the General Secretary of China’s Central Committee.”

“Jongseok?”⁷

“The General Secretary! The Chairman—the Chairman of the country!”

Well, fuck me.