Chapter 736

It started with barely a tremor. Nothing more, nothing less.

But that was only the first sign.

Rumble…

The ground shook.

Visitors lined up outside the Louvre ducked instinctively. In Paris’s 10th arrondissement, people who had been fighting with fistfuls of each other’s collars broke apart and scattered, swearing as they ran.

And in the 6th arrondissement…

“Ah…”

People forgot to scream. They could only stare, dazed, at the sight before them.

Gooooom.

Crimson-black darkness coiled around a skyscraper that rose to a dizzying height, then surged upward.

Everyone held their breath at the vast, ominous energy, unlike anything they had ever felt.

BOOOOOM!

The skyscraper that had housed Ares Guild’s Paris branch exploded.

The layers of defensive Magic around its exterior. The sturdy frame built to withstand a missile strike. All of it shattered and burst outward.

Fragments large and small, once part of a building some fifty stories tall, rained down in flames.

Fwoosh. Whoooooosh!

“……!”

It was impossible to believe. Impossible to deny.

As countless fragments blotted out the sky, a thought came to the people below.

Maybe today is the day of the apocalypse described in the Bible.

Then they saw the air twisting out of shape, and suspicion hardened into despairing certainty.

Fwoooooosh!

None of them had ever seen it happen. But as people living amid the brightest civilization in history, they knew what the phenomenon was called.

“Monster Wave…”

The words escaped someone like a groan.

Yet even with debris falling toward them and monsters emerging from the warped space, no one ran.

Not the Sorbonne students cycling to class. Not the young couple walking through the Luxembourg Gardens with a stroller. Not the police rushing to calm the public.

Everyone who had been going about their morning—the entire 6th arrondissement—froze where they stood, gripped by fear and a chill that sank into their bones.

And then—

BOOM! BOOM! BOOM!

A rain of fire engulfed everything within a radius of over a hundred meters,¹ and the gates of hell opened.

Thud. Thud.

Huge monsters with arms and legs as thick as temple pillars, each with two heads on a single body, beat their chests and roared.

—Gwooooooar!

Crash!

Glass shattered all around them, unable to withstand the force of their roars.

Fear, which only powerful monsters could emit, shot out like invisible ropes and bound thousands of people in place.

—Grrrr.

A growl rich with satisfaction.

The hunt was about to begin.

Or so it should have been.

Whoooooosh! Boom!

A flash struck the monster at the front, sending it staggering. Everything above its shoulders was gone.

Thud!

The ground shook. The hundred or so monsters raised their heads as one.

Among the thousands of people rooted to the spot, predators hidden in the flock of sheep were revealing themselves.

They came with dazzling flashes too fast for the eye to follow.

Whoooooosh! Crack!

Rattle, rattle.

Flesh and bone crumpled. Blue blood sprayed in every direction.

A Twin Head Ogre that had survived at the cost of one of its heads stepped backward without realizing it.

It had no idea what waited behind it.

Crunch!

A gigantic fist burst its remaining head like a watermelon.

The giant possessed strength and a physique far beyond those of the other ogres. It licked its subordinate’s brain matter from its fist, and a golden-eyed human was reflected in its enormous pupils.

—Karsh. Marto.

The words were in the Demon Realm language. They sounded almost like a curse.

Huginn paid them no attention. He turned and bowed politely to someone behind him.

“It is a Named Monster—a Giant Ogre. What would you like to do?”

A calm voice answered.

“Not bad. This should do for a demonstration.”

“Then…?”

“I’ll take it. Clear out the rest.”

That was all.

At the order, Huginn and a hundred Hunters swept forward as one, like the storm and lightning painted on their armor.

Like the ancient god whose name they bore: Odin.

Whooooooosh! Slash!

A clash. Then a slaughter.

Limbs as thick as logs flew through the air, and dazzling aura cut through the magical power surging around the monsters.

It was a scene out of myth.

And even in a myth crowded with figures, there was always one hero who shone above the rest.

—Gwooooooar!

Crack!

One Strike.

The roar that had seemed ready to swallow the city fell silent.

Ruuuuumble!

The Giant Ogre, dozens of meters² tall, dropped to its knees before a human who looked tiny beside its mountain of a body.

But to the people who had seen it all, that human was anything but small.

A hero had protected them. A true giant stood before them.

Brought back from the brink of death, the crowd cried out the hero’s name—or the heroes’ names—as one.

“Michael! Michael!”

“Odin Guild!”

As the cheers spread like wildfire, Michael declared in a ringing voice, “Rest assured. As long as Odin Guild and I are here to protect you, no danger will come to you.”

Then he looked toward the ruins beneath the heaps of concrete and added, too quietly for anyone to hear, “At least not today.”

With a faint smile, he stepped toward the remaining monsters, trampling the fallen name Ares beneath his foot. The letters had lost their shine when they tore free of the building and fell among the rubble.

Odin Guild Declares Support for Ares

Odin Guild Master Michael Silbert: “We Offer Our Heartfelt Applause for Ares Guild’s Actions in the Public Interest and Will Walk Forward Alongside Them”

Odin Guild Makes Surprise Release of New Mana Cultivation Method!

Senior Odin Guild Official Dismisses Pre-Release Controversy: “A Major Project Years in the Making. If You Think We Released It Because of Public Opinion, That Is Regrettable, but We Will Endure It…”

The breaking news I’d learned from the Skeleton King early that morning had been startling enough.

Before the shock could fade, another wave hit us.

A far bigger, more terrifying one.

Bzzzt. Bzzzt.

Team Leader Choi’s smartphone vibrated on the table.

A few seconds later, another breaking report came over the holographic TV. It was hard to believe.

—A Monster Wave has occurred in Paris, France. The site is a skyscraper in the city’s 6th arrondissement, now identified as Ares Guild’s Paris branch, in a shocking development…

—The French government has begun sealing off the 6th arrondissement under international emergency law. The casualty count and details of the operation to suppress the monsters remain unknown…

—Local witnesses say Odin Guild, based nearby, was the first to head to the scene…

Reports poured from the TVs around the restaurant.

But among the countless words spilling from the lips of people with different skin colors and speaking different languages, only three terms pierced my ears.

Monster Wave.

Ares Guild’s Paris branch.

And…

Odin.

Ding.

System

A sudden Quest, The Darkness Over Paris, has been generated!

You cannot choose whether to accept this Quest. By the authority of the System, the Quest will proceed by force!

Quest

The Darkness Over Paris

Every choice has consequences.

Your enemies have brought down Ares Guild’s Paris branch, and the city once full of life is now shrouded in darkness and the roars of monsters.

Rescue them as quickly as possible and repel the monster army to prevent innocent casualties!

Grade: Supreme Peak

Restriction: Jin Taekyung

Mission:

Rescue the survivors of the Paris branch (Incomplete)

Suppress the Monster Wave (Incomplete)

Reward: Determined by the outcome

Failure: Determined by the outcome

“……!”

Everything came at once: the System notification ringing in my ears, the holographic windows appearing before my eyes.

But by the time I saw and heard them, I was already moving on instinct.

No. We all were.

“Gather around me. Quickly!”

Team Leader Choi shouted, pulled a Magic Scroll from his coat, and tore it.

Fwoosh!

A blinding flash burst out and enveloped us.

If I can’t come help and you need to get somewhere fast, use this. As long as you know the exact coordinates, you’ll arrive safely.

Magic Johnson had said that when he gave me the Magic Scrolls several weeks ago, near the end of the Middle East cleanup operation.

Now we were burning through the several dozen Teleport scrolls he’d given me, one every few seconds.

Rip!

The tough, specially treated parchment tore. The mana dormant inside it awakened, and another brilliant flash enveloped us and carried us toward the chosen coordinates.

Flash!

Light flared again and again.

We leaped through space without pause—sometimes tens of kilometers,³ sometimes hundreds.⁴ Before long, my body began to ache, and exhaustion weighed on my mind.

Hup.

The rapid succession of spatial-transit spells was taking its toll.

But no one stopped. Not even Team Leader Choi, who was probably bearing the worst of it.

Grind.

He clenched his teeth and pulled out another scroll.

Ignoring the foreign airport Hunters thrown into confusion by our unauthorized spatial movement, he tore one scroll, then another before the aftereffects of the first had even faded.

Scroll after scroll ripped apart.

With every flash, the scenery changed. So did the skin colors and languages of the people around us.

At last, after a flash I had long since lost count of, we saw it.

The ruins of what had been Ares Guild’s Paris branch.

Huge monster corpses lay scattered everywhere. Amid the concrete and rebar, I could not sense so much as a trace of life.

Then a sound only I could hear cut through the air.

Beep.

System

You have not completed a single mission.

The sudden Quest, The Darkness Over Paris, has failed.

Every event brings both reward and cost. You will receive penalties for failing the Quest.

EXP decreases drastically.

Fame decreases drastically.

The special Title Idle Bystander will apply for the next 30 days.

Due to the penalty effect of the special Title Idle Bystander, all stats decrease by 10%.

“……Ah.”

A small sound escaped me.

Quest failure? A massive penalty?

None of that mattered.

Neither did the murmurs of the people who had belatedly noticed us, or the group making its way across the ruins.

Of all the holographic windows floating before me, my senses fixed on one line.

System

You have not completed a single mission.

That was all.

The cold, rigid sentence bored through my eyes and into my mind. I already knew what it meant.

They’re dead. All of them.

That was the reality before me.

Ares Guild’s Paris branch no longer existed. Neither did the people who had begun their day peacefully nearby.

The skyscraper that had once reached the clouds had become a ruin blanketed in death, and the people who had been laughing and talking here only a few dozen minutes ago had crossed a river from which they could never return.

Like the unidentified body buried beneath the wreckage in front of me.

What was I thinking?

I stared down at it, then reached out and grabbed an arm. Only when I pulled did I realize the arm belonged to another body.

That wasn’t the end.

When I dragged one body free, I found three more. When I pulled those out, severed limbs emerged beneath them.

“H-how…”

“Wicked human. This… this is truly…”

Team Leader Choi and the Skeleton King sounded impossibly far away. I looked around without a word.

The streets around the former branch had been devastated. Acrid smoke rose, carrying the smell of burning flesh. Bodies not yet recovered lay everywhere.

How many more lay beneath the rubble under my feet?

And why?

Why did they have to die?

My stomach burned as though I’d swallowed a ball of fire.

I clenched my teeth until they felt ready to break. Swallowing the blood from my split lips, I struggled to calm the three jiazi⁵ of Scorching Yang Qi raging in my dantian.

I could not get any more agitated. I had to remain calm and composed—more than ever.

Otherwise, I wouldn’t be able to face the owner of the immense energy approaching behind me in my right mind.

Michael Silbert.

With his name in my thoughts, I slowly turned around.