Chapter 610

While dealing with armed terrorist groups and rebel forces in the Middle East, I came to realize two things.

First, there was no end to human malice.

Second, this horrific wheel would keep turning.

There were just too many bad people in the world.

They were weeds, plain and simple—viruses found everywhere on Earth. No matter how many you pulled out, more would grow somewhere else and make the world sick.

There was no way to stop this damn wheel forever.

Still, one thing is certain.

Even if I couldn’t stop it forever, I could break it and bring it to a halt for a while.

And the old man sitting in front of me was one of the biggest parts keeping that enormous wheel turning.

“Hey there, young man in the strange mask.”

The old man spoke calmly, stroking a teacup that gave off a strange scent with his wrinkled hand.

“Finding me was impressive, but… the world doesn’t change that easily.”

Al Diab Jawahiri—a man with a name as long as any other Arab’s—remained calm despite the thunderous noises outside and the uninvited guest who had barged in.

He’s clearly nothing more than a powerless old man.

I didn’t know whether that remarkable composure came from more than a century of experience, or from the fact that he was the leader of Al-Qaeda, a colossal terrorist organization that divided control of the Middle East with ISIS.

What mattered was that he was wrong.

“It does change. People change, and someday the world will, too.”

“Do you know how many Muslims bow before mighty Allah?”

“No. Other than the one sitting in front of me.”

“Twenty-five percent, they say. Twenty-five percent of the entire world. That’s over a billion people.”

Al Diab smiled faintly and continued.

“You’re fighting more than a billion Muslims. You’ve made mighty Allah and His servants your enemies.”

The ramblings of a crazy old man weren’t going to shake me. I smiled back.

“Not Muslims. Terrorists like you.”

“I won’t deny that some of them still do not sympathize with us. It is a truly regrettable thing. But in the end, we are brothers. Bound together in the name of Allah, we will eventually gather beneath a single flag.”

“Is that why your ‘brothers’ split into Shiites and Sunnis¹ and have spent centuries beating the hell out of each other?”

Al Diab answered without batting an eye.

“There is nothing strange about it. Husbands and wives. Brothers and sisters. Even within one household, people quarrel endlessly.”

“That’s because your family’s a complete mess. Mine isn’t.”

“What can one do? The conflict has been passed down from our ancestors. It is only a small dispute born of trivial misunderstandings and differences of opinion—a step on the way to becoming one.”

Al Diab didn’t understand. No, he didn’t want to understand in the slightest.

He didn’t understand how much suffering innocent people had endured because of those trivial misunderstandings and conflicts, and that hollow word unity.

Or how many countless people would suffer in the future.

Monster.

The old man before me was a monster, too. One consumed by twisted beliefs and stubborn conviction.

Then I saw a broad smile spread across his face, and a chill ran through me.

“What do you say, misguided young man? Why not put an end to this foolishness and join me?”

“…!”

“Your eyes are wavering. Your heart is shaken. Do not suffer while trapped by countless afflictions. Enter the warm embrace of Allah.”

His voice was perfectly serene as his deeply wrinkled hand reached slowly toward me.

I watched him with a faint tremor in my eyes, then let out a small sigh.

“Has living this long driven you out of your mind, old man…? What kind of shit are you trying to pull?”

“…!”

Shock flashed in his eyes.

“If you get caught trying something, you pay in blood. Pick one: neck or wrist.”

The instant our eyes met—

Shk! Bang!

Everything happened in an instant.

The slender old man’s wrist shot into the air, severed by the short sword I swung at the speed of a ray of light. At the same time, a bullet fired from a special firearm hidden deep inside his dark, voluminous sleeve pierced somewhere beyond my shoulder.

In short, I dodged. He didn’t.

“Aaaaaaargh!”

Quite a set of lungs on the old man.

The scream was impossibly loud for someone well over a hundred years old. Clutching the stump of his cleanly severed wrist, Al Diab collapsed onto the carpet.

And then… another group moved even faster.

Shishshishshishk!

They emerged like ghosts from the ceiling, the walls, and beneath the carpet-covered floor. Beams of light and gusts of wind swirled from their hands.

Front, back, left, right—they surrounded me from all thirty-six directions² and unleashed a terrifying assault.

But instead of dodging, I chose to attack.

Inventory open. Equip Fire Dragon Armor.

At the same instant—

Kakak! Ting-ting!

Aura tore through the air and struck the reddish armor, only to vanish. Blackened arrowheads bounced off it harmlessly.

Of course they did. Nothing short of the concentrated energy called Force or an Aura Blade could pierce the Fire Dragon Armor.

The men had the air of Murim assassins about them. I had no idea who had trained them, or how, but they realized the same thing immediately.

Whoosh!

No orders. Not even an exchanged glance.

The men in black turbans moved like machines following a programmed command. They abandoned my armored upper body and aimed for the exposed areas, including my lower body.

But the Fire Dragon Armor was a divine weapon capable of changing the course of a fight.

Against someone stronger than me, it could let me hold my own for a while. Against someone my equal, it could give me an overwhelming advantage.

And against people far weaker than me?

Thirty men? Even if ten times as many rushed me, they would be the ones to fall.

“Come on in, you crow bastards.”

With that short taunt, I brought down the short sword in my hand.

Whoosh!

One horizontal strike was enough.

Kabooooom!

Superheated air erupted along the blade, melting Magic and weapons alike. The space around me warped.

As the mighty power that had lain dormant stretched and woke, the underground hideout shook from top to bottom.

Rumble-rumble-rumble!

The ground and ceiling weren’t the only things shaking.

Several pairs of eyes visible between the black turbans quivered faintly.

Maybe it was because the men caught in my sword’s path had died without so much as a final cry. Maybe they had felt the unbelievable gap in our strength.

Maybe it was both.

Either way, it was too late to retreat.

“Not coming? Then I’ll come to you.”

The word outnumbered had long since lost its meaning for me.

I had occasionally fought dozens of people, sometimes hundreds, and rarely even thousands—and I had survived every time.

The battle about to unfold here was nothing more than an extension of all the battles that had come before.

Shing!

A blade shot up from the ground and grazed my chin.

The patient one had never revealed himself, even while his comrades appeared one after another. But his attack had failed, and the price was death.

Crack!

I unleashed a grappling technique at lightning speed.

Before the man who had performed the bizarre feat of rotating his neck several times could collapse, I thrust out one hand.

Shishshik! Puk!

Five streams of Finger Qi cut through the air. Some of the crows launching themselves off the ceiling and walls fell.

The others who rushed in while leaving behind their comrade, whose neck had been pierced clean through, met much the same fate.

Fwoooooosh! Slash!

Their One Strike carried desperate resolve.

But the gap between will and ability was vast and deep.

My short sword split one man in two along with his sword. His body fell like a kite with its string cut.

Fwoosh! Boom!

I drove a palm strike at the blood spraying through the air. It evaporated in the terrible heat, and another attacker coming at me from beyond it flew backward even faster than he’d approached, slamming into the wall.

Boom!

The impact shook the room.

But even if the whole world had been turned upside down, their attacks wouldn’t have stopped.

Whoosh!

Neck. Calf. Hand.

Three attacks whistled through the air at once, each aimed at a different target.

Instead of dodging, I stepped forward and swung the short sword in my hand.

No. I threw it.

Fwoooooosh! Crunch!

No one could survive with a Force-infused sword embedded in their heart.

The hilt slipped from its owner’s hand as he died.

I reached for the two blades already closing in on me.

Grab!

Aura was an incredibly sharp and destructive concentration of energy. Cutting through bare hands imbued with Force was another matter.

I tightened my grip on the blades.

Grnk. Crack!

“…!”

“…!”

Two swords broke in half. Two pairs of eyes went wide with shock.

I said goodbye without a trace of emotion.

“Go.”

“W-Wait…!”

“Oh, take these with you.”

Had they ever given the people they killed time to say even one last word?

Maybe they had. I wasn’t going to.

Puk!

“Guh!”

They let out gurgling cries as I drove their own broken blades into their chests. The light faded from their eyes.

Thud.

The two bodies fell like rotten logs. I looked around.

No one else came at me. There was no more sound of attacks cutting through the air, no more death.

Only one man remained, staring at me in terror.

“Satan. You… you’re Satan.”

“Maybe. At least to people like you.”

Satan. I’d first heard the word from a deacon at church when I was little. By now, it felt almost as familiar as my own name.

I pulled the short sword from a corpse and approached Al Diab, muttering,

“Funny, isn’t it? The people who act more like demons than anyone else keep calling me Satan.”

“Y-You devil! Stay away from me! Evil Satan! Demon! In God’s name, begone!”

“…I’ve heard that a lot on Line 1.³ I’m suddenly getting homesick for a place I’ve never even missed.”

I was briefly wondering whether Al Diab had studied in Korea when the iron door leading outside opened. The noise beyond it had died away, and the Skeleton King appeared, covered in dust.

“Vile human. Are you finished?”

“Yeah. You?”

“I finished a little while ago. I’m getting ready to work. There’s no shortage of usable material, and I certainly have no objection, but… are you sure about this?”

“About what?”

“They’re human, like you. Your own kind. Using them for my Skeleton army might bother you…”

“They’re not my kind. Besides, this way I can go back to Korea with peace of mind.”

I answered without hesitation, then introduced the Skeleton King to Al Diab, who had frozen with his eyes wide open.

“Oh. This one’s an actual demon.”

“…!”

Fight barbarians with barbarians.

Barbarians should be dealt with by barbarians. Terrorists should be dealt with by what used to be terrorists.

I jabbed the Skeleton King in the side.

“Hey. Do it.”

“…I don’t want to.”

“Come on, don’t be like that. Do it already.”

Looking less than pleased, he gave Al Diab a thumbs-up.

“Don’t worry! The undead army will take care of those piece-of-shit terrorists!”

Oh, I couldn’t resist that.