Chapter 741

“Damn it. He’s dead.”

I’d hoped I was wrong.

But the unease I’d felt at those few words over the phone had been right on the mark.

“Sorry, but you need to come right away. We have to find as many clues as we can before this case slips out of our hands…”

“Where are you?”

There was no time to hesitate.

We headed for the coordinates Magic Johnson had given us as fast as we could. After several long-distance Teleports in succession, we arrived on a mountain blanketed in white.

Crunch.

The snow that had lain there for ages crumbled beneath my feet.

The breathtaking scenery of the Alps, something I had only ever seen on the internet, unfolded before my eyes. But I had no time to admire the view.

And neither did—

“Intruders spotted!”

—the group guarding the area nearby.

“Stop! Stop!”

“Shooters, ready!”

Chk-chk-chk!

At the urgent shouts, gun barrels and blades were pointed at us.

The soldiers and Hunters were heavily armed. I stopped, and a familiar voice came from among them.

“If you insist on attacking, I won’t stop you. But it would be in your best interest to check the intruders’ faces first.”

“One more step and we shoot… Mr. Johnson?”

“Don’t act rashly, Colonel. They’re my guests.”

A huge Black man walked past the middle-aged commander in a beret and stopped before us.

Fatigue and sorrow weighed on his face.

Magic Johnson, whom I had not seen for several weeks—no, several months—gave us a faint smile and greeted us.

“Long time no see, friends. How have you been?”

I smacked my lips bitterly and firmly grasped the hand he held out.

“Not well at all.”

“Who are the people outside? It looked like an even split between soldiers and Hunters.”

“Swiss Federal Police. This area’s under their jurisdiction, and I didn’t want to become a murder suspect just because I found the body first. Come on.”

Team Leader Choi, the Skeleton King, and I followed Magic Johnson.

We passed between the soldiers and Hunters watching us with equal parts wariness and curiosity, then entered a forest deep in snow. A faint sense of déjà vu stirred.

This is…

I closed my eyes and focused. As I slowly reached out, I felt an invisible ripple through the fierce snowstorm.

“Mana?”

Magic Johnson nodded.

“A barrier. Concealed well enough that even most S-rank Hunters wouldn’t notice it, and just as flawless as it is discreet.”

He wasn’t exaggerating.

Even the Skeleton King had barely noticed the barrier until Johnson pointed it out.

“Impressive work for a human. But not enough to fool this body’s keen gaze. After all, I am no ordinary S-rank Hunter. I am an exceptionally gifted—”

“Monster.”

“……”

The Skeleton King fell silent, crestfallen.

Having shut him up with one word, I studied the barrier and recalled something from not long ago.

It’s similar.

Just as a particular martial art left behind a specific trace, magic worked the same way.

The flow of mana was as distinctive as a fingerprint. I was sure of it.

No doubt about it. It feels like Area A.

Magic Johnson met my eyes, as if he’d read my mind.

“I’d been looking for people connected to Area A at your request, even before all this happened. But of everyone I know, only one person came to mind.”

I now knew who the Grand Mage who designed Area A was. I also knew he’d announced his retirement more than a decade ago and disappeared from public view.

“I didn’t expect him to be staying in a place like this. But had you been in contact with that person separately?”

“Not at all. He was quite eccentric and reclusive.”

“But we were friends. We were close enough that he could at least give me a hint about the hideout where he planned to stay someday.”

Whoosh.

Mana mingled with mana, and the snowstorm came to a stop amid a flash of pure white light.

No—the scenery had changed.

The vast snowfield was gone. We stood inside an enormous cave, its long passages winding like a maze.

“Follow me. Magic, including spatial movement, can’t be cast inside.”

We talked as we followed him through the cave.

Unsurprisingly, things hadn’t been going smoothly for Magic Johnson either.

“You’ve seen the news, so you know our L.A. branch was hit. It’s on the outskirts of the city, but there’s so much foot traffic around it that we couldn’t prevent casualties.”

Magic Johnson was a Grand Mage and the owner of the vast Wizard Guild.

Although it had been pushed out of the rankings several years ago, the Wizard Guild had once been one of the world’s top ten Guilds, even if only in last place.

Yet neither the Wizard Guild, with its many mages, nor Magic Johnson had been able to stop the planned terrorist attacks that unfolded with lightning speed.

“By the time I got there, it was too late. Afterward, I was swamped dealing with everything else.”

I didn’t ask what had kept him so busy. Everyone here knew.

The so-called “vigilante incident”—our campaign against the Middle Eastern terrorists and African rebel groups.

That campaign had become both the justification for these attacks and the means of carrying them out. Much of the public now blamed us for it. Magic Johnson had been one of the vigilantes, and he couldn’t escape the criticism.

None of us could. I’d simply taken the hardest hit from the media.

“I’m sorry.”

“What?”

“I felt I owed you an apology. If I hadn’t proposed it, the whole world wouldn’t be cursing us out right now…”

“Damn it. Is that what you’re talking about?”

Johnson stopped and shook his head.

“Listen, Jin. This isn’t your fault. You don’t need to apologize to me, either. Understand?”

“Of course, but—”

“Let me ask you something. If you could go back, what would you do? Leave those bastards alone?”

I didn’t need long to think. I’d turned that question over and over in a room where no light could reach me.

“No.”

“What about you two?”

Team Leader Choi and the Skeleton King looked at each other, then answered almost at the same time.

“Nothing would change. If anything, I’d make even more certain they were dealt with.”

“This body will kill that bastard called the Prophet without fail.”

“Good. Clear answers.”

Johnson shrugged at their different answers, which amounted to the same thing.

“And I’m saying this just in case, but no matter what people say about that incident, I don’t regret it in the slightest. Chuck Hagel feels the same way, even though he isn’t here right now.”

Chuck Hagel.

I could still picture him beating down terrorists while suffering through cigar withdrawal.

Team Leader Choi had mentioned on the way here that Chuck was facing plenty of trouble himself.

“How’s Chuck doing?”

“Not well.”

“That was quick.”

“Because it’s true. The external and internal pressure coming down on him is tremendous. At this rate, it wouldn’t be strange if he were dismissed from his position as Secretary of Defense before long.”

Team Leader Choi joined in, his voice calm.

“The pressure must be too much for even the President to shield him.”

“Chuck’s situation is different from yours. He’s a high-ranking official—the United States Secretary of Defense. The President may have tacitly approved what we did, but that only protected him while it stayed secret.”

“But the entire world found out. And it was revealed directly by a terrorist of historic proportions called the Prophet.”

“…Yeah. Thanks to some damn traitor.”

The operation had gone ahead with the President’s tacit approval. Our mission as “vigilantes” was never supposed to become public.

That was why I’d dared to act so boldly in the modern world, with all its restrictions. I’d trusted that the satellite surveillance system would be disrupted and every related record destroyed.

But information about us had leaked out in plain sight, and I vividly remembered what Michael Silbert had said amid the ruins of Paris.

I’ll give you one piece of advice. There are no perfect secrets in this world. Not even in the Pentagon.

The United States was still the world’s most powerful nation, and the Pentagon was its Department of Defense headquarters, reputed to have the tightest security in the country.

Yet information that should have been kept secret even within the Pentagon had made its way out.

So easily.

But…

With him involved, it’s no surprise.

I was taking it with a calm that surprised even me.

Because the opponent was Michael Silbert. He was stronger than any Hunter I had ever encountered—and even more insane than he was strong.

And then there was the unidentified madman called the Prophet.

No ordinary person could do this. No person could even try.

Even evil had its degrees.

In that sense, the path those bastards had taken had already crossed the line by an absurd distance.

Thousands were already dead, and more than ten times that number injured.

Not every crime committed throughout the world over the course of the week—including the day the Paris branch collapsed—could have been their doing, but it was obvious that they had exerted a considerable influence.

Fear paralyzed reason and gave rise to another kind of madness.

Along with the ten terrorist attacks accompanied by Monster Waves, the distribution of magical power continued to rise at an even steeper rate, and Mutated Gate phenomena were now occurring dozens of times a day.

Some terrified people were already speaking of the end of the world. With crosses hanging at their waists and microphones in their hands, they shouted about God’s mercy at the top of their lungs in the streets.

Just as their parents had done long ago.

But I wasn’t looking for God.

Those bastards were only human, not devils, and I was ready to bring them down.

There was only one problem…

The thread leading to one of them had been severed just like that.

As I muttered inwardly, I stopped walking. At some point, the long, winding passage of the cave had come to an end.

And waiting for us at the end was a corpse.

Every bone and scrap of skin on its body had dried up and shriveled tight, like a mummy.

“…What is this?”

Team Leader Choi’s voice came out like a groan.

At that moment—

Chime.

System

A new Quest has been generated!

The clear chime rang out more ominously than ever.