Chapter 747

Beneath a sky shrouded in dark clouds, Sugihara Gyoiku stared blankly ahead.

What the hell just happened?

He was an ordinary civilian. His mind could not make sense of what had happened to him.

His arms and legs shook beyond his control. His stomach, full of salty seawater, could not bear the rescue helicopter’s rough movements.

No—perhaps what Gyoiku truly could not endure was the horrifying reality that had suddenly come crashing down on him.

“Ugh—bwaaaargh!”

Vomit sprayed everywhere.

Some of it hit the other people in the rescue net with him, but no one complained. No one even seemed to notice.

They only stared at the scene below with vacant eyes.

Craaaack!

Things broke, collapsed, and were swept away.

A wave dozens of meters¹ high. Perhaps even hundreds of meters.²

Even as they watched it happen, they could scarcely believe the disaster swallowing everything in its path.

The port of Tokyo Bay, where hundreds of ships came and went every day, had vanished without a trace. Cargo ships weighing tens of thousands of metric tons³ apiece broke apart like Styrofoam and rode the waves into a nearby industrial complex.

Rumble—BOOM!

Flames surged upward with a deafening roar, swallowing people’s screams.

Alarms wailed without pause. Far below, cars and crowds that looked as small as swarms of ants scattered in every direction.

Fleeing the disaster.

Unable to accept the fate that had befallen them.

And behind those struggling desperately to survive, an enormous shadow fell across the ground.

Whoooooosh!

“Ah… Ahhh…”

The survivors watching from above let out hollow moans.

The land they had painstakingly rebuilt through decades of sweat and blood after the Great Cataclysm was collapsing. A magnificent civilization was falling apart.

The white foam that had always scattered against the breakwaters and the blue seawater had both turned red.

Nothing could stop that enormous wave as it smashed through and swept away everything in its path.

No. Even if the wave subsided, it would make no difference.

This was not merely a natural disaster.

Something worse lurked beneath the deep waters that had swallowed the port and industrial complex.

The survivors who had miraculously lived through it knew the truth. That was why, upon spotting dozens of fighter jets flying toward them from the opposite direction, they could only scream as though coughing up blood.

“N-No!”

“Don’t come!”

But their desperate cries reached no one.

Not the squadron of fighter jets streaking across the sky with sonic booms. Not the elite Japanese Hunters aboard them, sent to deal with the disaster.

And not the deep-sea monster awakened from its long sleep.

Goooooong.

A low, immense call raised the waves just as they had begun to subside.

The strengthening wind whipped into a storm. Thunder rumbled among the countless dark clouds that now covered the sky.

Rumble, rumble…

Every living thing nearby froze like a statue and stared blankly upward.

It was fear engraved deep in their bones, an instinct they felt simply because they were alive.

Power.

The power of nature—and yet something beyond nature.

“What the hell is that…?”

The pilot was about to order the waiting Hunters to descend when the words escaped him in a groan.

At that moment—

Fwoosh!

Hundreds—thousands—of bolts of lightning plunged from the sky, turning the whole world white.

The Japanese Ministry of Defense’s operations control room, hastily called into session, was silent.

Suffocating silence. Throats working soundlessly. Unfocused eyes.

Dozens of high-ranking officials and generals were present, but no one spoke. They could only stare at the holographic screen with vacant eyes.

What… What just happened?

The same thought occupied every mind.

The flash had filled the screen with light so fierce that they had closed their eyes without realizing it. When they opened them again, all they saw were dozens of aircraft falling toward the ground—and the waves swallowing them.

“Th-They’ve all been wiped out.”

Someone’s thoughtless report broke the silence. It confirmed the truth none of them wanted to face.

Everything was gone. No—everyone was dead.

The hundreds, thousands of lightning bolts had turned everything within their range to ash.

The rescue helicopters carrying the miraculous survivors. The Air Self-Defense Force’s prized fighter squadron. The hundreds of Hunters mobilized for the emergency.

All gone.

But it was not only the tsunami—already engulfing ten cities and threatening the capital—that had plunged the control room into deathly silence.

The monster.

They had seen a monster that had vanished decades ago, one they had believed would never return.

“…Susanoo.”

The nickname came from its supposed command of the sea and storms.

The general who muttered it hurriedly shut his mouth when he felt the Defense Minister’s glare.

“Th-That was…”

“Shut your trap, Yoshimura.”

The Japanese Defense Minister cut off the general’s attempted excuse and looked around.

Half the people who should have been devising a response were still floundering in shock. The rest waited for him to speak again.

Like baby birds waiting to be fed.

Or people looking for the one scapegoat willing to take responsibility in their place.

Grind.

The elderly Defense Minister clenched his teeth.

For all the generals and officials in this room, he could not find a single suitable person.

The foolish, cowardly Prime Minister had retreated to a bunker long ago. The few capable, responsible commanders lacked the powerful backers needed to get into the Ministry of Defense’s control room.

That left only one person to shoulder the burden.

Incompetent bastards!

He cursed them inwardly, forgetting that he owed his own rise to an ancestor who had been a daimyo.⁴ But he was not so foolish that he could deny the reality before him.

“Stop that thing with everything we have! Self-Defense Forces, Hunters—I don’t care. Use every means at our disposal!”

“Y-Yes, sir!”

“And…”

Bang!

The Defense Minister slammed his wrinkled hand on the table, then squeezed his eyes shut. He could not bring himself to finish.

Do we really… do we really have to go this far?

The hesitation lasted only a moment.

The situation had already spiraled out of control. If anyone could keep it from becoming an even greater disaster, it was that man.

“Ask the world for help. And that man in particular—we must bring him here, no matter what diplomatic price we have to pay.”

“What?”

“If it’s him…”

His lips trembled like a child faced with a plate of broccoli.

Then, facing the people staring back at him with no idea what he meant, the Defense Minister shouted until it seemed as though he were coughing up blood.

“That man! I said call that Chōsenjin!⁵ Jin Taekyuuung!”

His pride as a subject of the Great Japanese Empire rebelled at the thought, but he had no choice.

That monster—Leviathan—was a demon sent down from heaven.

We can’t let that nightmare happen again!

Before long, news reports playing on holographic televisions throughout the control room confirmed that he had been right to choose Jin Taekyung.

—The world has once again been engulfed in flames. In a video, the figure known as “The Prophet,” who carried out an unprecedented series of terrorist attacks ten days ago, has announced a second series of attacks…

—Breaking news. A Monster Wave has occurred in Manhattan, United States. The United States and countries around the world are entering a state of emergency…

—Entry and exit bans are now in effect for countries experiencing Monster Waves. As a result, part of the emergency mobilization of Hunters to assist Tokyo has fallen through. Among nearby Asian countries, Korea is believed to be the only one able to provide support…

“Japan’s Ministry of Defense has officially requested emergency assistance through the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.”

The news President Baek Hanseong passed on to us was the starting gun. Everything had begun.

“Ares Guild and Peace Guild are heading out as the advance team. Five teams are already standing by, all volunteers of B-rank or higher.”

Team Leader Choi had acted faster than anyone.

The moment he first heard what had happened in Tokyo, he had already issued the mobilization order. President Baek Hanseong had prepared the Air Force so that we could reach our destination as quickly and safely as possible.

“What about a Teleport Magic Formation?” I asked as I gathered the equipment we needed.

Team Leader Choi shook his head.

“We could try it, but the probability of failure is far too high right now. The magical-power distribution around Tokyo rose sharply because of the Monster Wave ten days ago, and it’s already measuring more than three times the previous level.”

“Damn it. Reminds me of China.”

“Yes. It’s the same situation.”

Mana and magical power were opposed to each other.

Attempt spatial travel while magical-power levels were climbing this fast and fluctuating this wildly, and even a body made of solid iron could come apart like a thousand-piece puzzle.

“Then how long will it take?”

“Allowing for the worsening weather nearby, about thirty minutes.”

“Thirty minutes…”

Of course, we would not be landing safely on a wide airport runway.

There was at least a ninety-percent chance that Tokyo International Airport, once the pride of Japan, had already been blown to absolute shit.

And the other ten percent is the chance it’ll be blown to shit before we get there.

I took a deep breath.

The footage Japan’s Ministry of Defense had sent us replayed in my mind.

The Maritime Self-Defense Force swept away by a gigantic triangular wave. Land disappearing beneath the water.

It had broken through the extensive defensive Magic along Japan’s coastline as though it were nothing, swallowed tens of thousands of people, and reduced what little hope remained to ash beneath countless bolts of lightning.

As though proving the power attributed to it in myths passed down from time immemorial.

Leviathan.

The devil of the sea that had ruled the waters during the Great Cataclysm.

One of the most powerful S-rank monsters under the Demon King Asmodeus. A calamity that had vanished when Asmodeus died.

Some said Leviathan had died with the Demon King. Others insisted it had survived and was merely biding its time. With no evidence either way, the years had passed.

And today, more than thirty years later, the nightmare called Leviathan had returned.

Was its appearance a coincidence, or…

Had someone intended it?

Muttering the unresolved question inwardly, I finished my preparations and began walking toward the Hunters and aircraft waiting for me.

The wind blowing from far away seemed to carry a faint smell of blood.