Chapter 611

“Allah¹! O great Allah!”

“Deal with him, Satan.”

“Goodbye, vile human.”

I left Al Diab, who was screaming loud enough to split the heavens, in the Skeleton King’s hands and turned away. Whatever happened after that was no longer my concern.

If he had been the leader of some run-of-the-mill terrorist organization, there would have been nothing left to discuss—I would have executed him on the spot. But the leader of Al-Qaeda was another matter entirely. Magic Johnson or the Skeleton King would probably find a way to put him to good use. Whether through Magic or some kind of divine power.

Maybe I should have learned the Soul-Seizing Technique.

I felt a twinge of regret.

The Soul-Seizing Technique bewitched and controlled people. It was classified among the demonic, heterodox arts, but there were people in the orthodox faction who had learned it. The same went for the disguise technique.

I hadn’t learned either one. Not because I didn’t need them—I’d just been too busy putting on a tearful shitshow trying to stay alive.

Come to think of it, there’s a practitioner of demonic, heterodox arts nearby…

I wasn’t sure whether that guy had learned the Soul-Seizing Technique. If I got the chance, maybe I could learn a few techniques from him that might prove useful in the future.

While I was thinking about matters in the Murim, the enormous underground hideout, which resembled a giant anthill, finally came to an end. An endless sandy desert filled my field of vision.

Beneath the glittering stars, a man puffing thick clouds of cigar smoke opened his mouth in a rough voice.

“Back already? That was quicker than I expected. Did you catch Al Diab?”

I looked over the bodies of the terrorists scattered around him and answered.

“Yes. I left him with the Skeleton King.”

“Allah’s faithful servant, in the hands of a monster. Good. Damn old bastard. I’d have liked to see his face.”

“He didn’t seem to like it very much. He’s probably still screaming and calling him Satan.”

Chuck Hagel laughed with satisfaction.

He’d learned the Skeleton King’s true identity three days ago. In the short conversation that followed, he’d proved that he thought nothing like an ordinary person.

“Undead?”

“Yes.”

“Is Undead his last name? Because I could’ve sworn you called him Stone King earlier.”

“No. Undead is his gender. Wait, not gender—species.”

“You said he was from Georgia.”

“Surprise. He’s actually the Skeleton King from the Demon Realm.”

“So he’s a monster.”

“Yes.”

“Hey, motherfucker. Are you kidding me? Why is there a monster here—”

“Technically, an undead monster. A named undead monster, to be even more precise.”

“…Are you people out of your minds? What the hell are you doing?”

“He’s a monster, but he saved my life from an Arch Lich during the Small Cataclysm.”

“What?”

“Oh, and he helped suppress more than ten Mutated Gates and three Gate Waves in Korea.”

“Holy shit. So he’s a war veteran. Welcome, undead warrior.”

Black cat or white cat.

People said it didn’t matter whether a cat was black or white as long as it caught mice. Even so, Chuck Hagel’s way of thinking was truly extraordinary.

My grandfather was a goddamn Indian-killer who even received medals. But I don’t give a fuck about that. If someone can deal with fucking terrorists and Gates and has the heart to devote themselves to helping people, what does skin color matter?

“Chuck. He doesn’t have skin.”

“Don’t care what color his bones are, either.”

Chuck Hagel’s willingness to look past not just race but species was enough to make my heart swell. He even showed an ambition I could hardly believe coming from the Secretary of Defense of the United States.

“I won’t tell the President.”

“I was hoping you’d say that, Chuck, but… can you really do that?”

“He didn’t ask.”

“Oh.”

“That’s how the military works. If you don’t get caught, it’s fine. Write ‘military,’ read it as ‘sham.’”

Of course, that was complete nonsense. How could a country’s Secretary of Defense know something like this and keep quiet just because the President hadn’t asked?

But it was also the sort of crazy thing Chuck Hagel could get away with. Uncle Chuck was, along with Magic Johnson, a symbol of the United States. The legendary war heroes born from the Great Cataclysm had been granted tremendous love and affection—along with an unspoken free pass.

Even with that free pass, it’s still crazy. Hm.

Fortunately, Chuck Hagel had done crazy things often enough.

I looked at him warmly.

“What’s with that look?”

“I just really like you, Chuck.”

“Was that why you were so close to Johnson?”

“…That’s how you took it? Come to think of it, where are the other two?”

I hadn’t seen Team Leader Choi or Magic Johnson anywhere nearby. Chuck Hagel chewed on his cigar as he answered.

“They’re investigating the Gate. These bastards even had a secret Magic Gem laboratory.”

A secret laboratory. I’d half expected it.

A middling terrorist group might not have had the resources, but Al-Qaeda carried out attacks around the world. It had people and supplies to spare. A Magic Gem laboratory cost an astronomical amount to run, but finding one here wasn’t much of a surprise.

“How big?”

“Bigger than we expected. Choi and Johnson think it was built at least ten years ago.”

“Ten years?”

“Yes. I don’t know whether they conducted other experiments here before this, or whether they were planning terrorist attacks using Magic Gems, as we feared… But it’s clear that they’ve been plotting something for quite a long time.”

“Hmm.”

Apparently Go Jun hadn’t been the first to think of using Magic Gems to kill people. Given that Al-Qaeda was a terrorist organization, that wasn’t exactly surprising.

“Did they get anywhere? Have they found something?”

“Who knows? We’ll have to squeeze the terrorist researchers for answers. But if they’d achieved anything, I imagine an even bigger incident would already have happened.”

“That’s true.”

“At the very least, the terrorist attacks that took place in Texas and elsewhere this time have little to do with Al-Qaeda. If it had been them, they would have already obtained data through human experimentation. They would have had no reason to put on such a stupid show of suicide.”

He had a point. If the attacks had succeeded, that might have been different. But Al-Qaeda had no reason to throw away valuable Hunters and Magic Gems on a suicide show that only advertised their stupidity. It wasn’t a banzai charge² or a kamikaze attack³.

They would just attract a whole lot of attention and get beaten to a pulp.

As I thought that, Chuck Hagel spoke again.

“Lately, I’ve found myself thinking about something. Maybe it’s impossible to completely eradicate these bastards. Maybe that’s something we’ll never be able to do.”

He looked unusually drained today. The cigar he had been holding in his mouth was extended toward me.

“I don’t smoke.”

“I know. The point is, this goddamn American military cigar was in their possession.”

I muttered quietly.

“They have someone on the inside?”

“If it had only been the cigar, I wouldn’t have said anything. But… there was enough to fill a mountain. Food, experimental equipment, medical equipment, advanced missiles, even artifacts. Most of it was the kind of material that couldn’t be taken overseas without approval from the Ministry of National Defense.”

I firmly patted his shoulder as he muttered bitterly.

“Cheer up, Chuck. It’s not the first time, is it? And it’s not as if you didn’t know.”

“Hah. That’s comforting.”

As we had destroyed more than a few dozen terrorist organizations, the only things we had seen weren’t corpses and pools of blood. What we had seen most nakedly was the shameful face of the world.

How did they get all that stuff? Who gave it to them?

Military officials? Senior politicians? Black-market dealers who’d do anything for money? Maybe all of them.

I didn’t know. But one thing was certain: someone was watering the weeds we needed to pull out by the roots.

“Bastards.”

Chuck Hagel hurled his cigar into the distance. Its faint ember vanished in the cold darkness of the desert. He watched it disappear, then spoke on a sigh.

“Crazy Korean. What are you going to do now?”

The sudden question pulled me from my thoughts, but I answered calmly. I had already made up my mind several days ago.

“I’m going back.”

“To South Korea? Well, it couldn’t be North Korea, so I suppose that’s right.”

“Hard to say.”

Half right, half wrong. I neither confirmed nor denied it, only shrugged.

Chuck Hagel smiled ruefully.

“Right. You can’t keep playing masked vigilante in that ridiculous getup forever.”

“Hmm. I wouldn’t call it particularly ridiculous.”

“You serious? Is it a South Korean fashion thing?”

I let out a quiet laugh.

“I didn’t mean to us.”

“Hm?”

“The rebels and terrorists. How do you think it looks to them?”

“……!”

Chuck Hagel’s mouth closed tightly.

I looked up at the night sky, crowded with constellations I couldn’t name.

“The Mujahideen. Al-Qaeda. ISIS’s Syrian branch…”

I recited the names of the major terrorist groups whose leaders and headquarters we’d destroyed over the past week, then the names of the smaller groups we’d uprooted entirely.

“We haven’t dealt with all of them, but we’ve sent a clear warning.”

They didn’t know our names or ages, let alone our nationalities or what we looked like.

We wore masks, avoided surveillance with Magic Johnson’s Magic, and fought while changing our weapons and combat methods.

And…

“Nothing’s scarier than an enemy you can’t identify.”

In just one week, we’d become something terrorist organizations feared. They couldn’t catch us, even with enormous bounties on our heads. Without knowing who we were, they couldn’t use their favorite tactic against us: retaliatory attacks.

On top of that, several leaders of some of the world’s most notorious international terrorist organizations had already died at our hands or been controlled into starting internal conflicts.

“If they don’t want the same thing to happen to them, they’ll keep their heads down.”

A weak deterrent invited defiance. Overwhelming force inspired fear.

The prisoners we’d freed had already stood before microphones and cameras to tell the world what they’d seen and suffered. Once again, the international community was burning like a furnace—over the horrors unfolding around the world, and over us.

“Given time, things will get a little better.”

The weed called malice sprouts first in a person’s heart. People who harbor it go on to do evil.

But what could you do? You couldn’t pull every weed out of every heart. You could pull out the weeds you could see.

“It’s not about how many weeds you pull. It’s about how many people pull them together. You and me, Chuck. Like we did.”

One person could pull one. Someone else, two. Or three.

If everyone paid attention and did their part, wouldn’t the weeds eventually disappear? I’d only recently come to that small but profound realization.

“Well, that’s what I think, anyway.”

Had I been talking too much? I let the silence settle. Chuck Hagel studied me with an odd expression, then spoke.

“Hey. Can I ask you something?”

“Anything.”

“I didn’t get an answer earlier… Where exactly are you going back to? Judging by what you just said, it sounds like you should at least be going to the Vatican.”

I laughed quietly.

“It’s hard to explain. Somewhere like this.”

“Where, Afghanistan?”

“Farther than that. Much farther.”

“…Much farther?”

Chuck Hagel looked bewildered, and my smile deepened despite myself.

Yes. It was time to go back.

After I took care of the one thing I’d put off until the very end.