Chapter 798

I knew. No matter how extraordinary your abilities were, you couldn’t prevent every tragedy in the world.

But every second felt like an hour because the people falling and spilling their blood at this very moment were suffering because of me.

I was the one who’d called them to this distant desert in a foreign land. I was the one who’d led them to their deaths.

Once I took on the title of Alliance Leader, I had to bear that anguish until this war was over. I had to lead from the front and fight harder than anyone else.

Whoosh!

I shot forward, cutting through the fierce wind.

My qinggong¹ had long since surpassed the realm of Treading Snow Without a Trace. It left no footprints even on fine sand, and each step carried me dozens of meters.²

Faster. Faster. Just a little faster.

I hadn’t looked back once, but I knew I’d come so far that headquarters, which had stood like a fortress in the desert, was no longer visible.

I knew, too, that I was getting closer to the faint lights I’d spotted when I’d leapt into the sky.

But why…?

Why was it so quiet?

My heart sank at the thought I couldn’t bring myself to finish. I gritted my teeth and stamped down with all my strength.

Rumble.

The internal energy flowing through my toes shook the ground. For an instant, my muscles compressed like a spring, then recoiled with explosive force.

Boom!

I shot forward like a cannonball, the air booming around me. At the same time, faint sounds reached me on the wind.

—…What the hell… that bastard…

—Hans! Hans!

—Fled… survivor… contact headquarters…

Snatches of voices came through the sound of vehicle engines.

As I drew closer, I sensed plenty of people and heard plenty of noise. The casualties couldn’t have been too severe.

“Ah.”

Only then did I let out a sigh of relief and pick up the pace.

A moment later, I saw what lay ahead and understood.

Every person I’d sensed, every voice I’d heard, belonged to those who had arrived before me.

“……!”

I froze, staring at hundreds of bodies dried out like mummies.

The people’s eyes turned toward me. Their murmuring felt as distant as an echo.

Only one word filled my mind.

The Prophet.

No doubt about it.

He’d been here.

And maybe…

He’s still nearby. He has to be.

Mourning the dead would have to wait. If we didn’t catch him here today, the death toll could climb tens or hundreds of times higher.

Where are you?

My heart burned, but my mind was cold as ice. With my senses sharper than ever, I spread my Qi Sense.

Fwoosh.

Invisible qi swept across the sand as I launched myself forward.

Whooosh!

Beyond the sand surging up like a wave, a familiar face flashed into view.

The Skeleton King was shouting something urgently among the reinforcements, but I was already streaking across the desert like a beam of light. Every one of my senses was fixed on a single presence.

The Prophet.

Today, right here, I had to tear out the diseased tree’s last root.

If everything had gone the way I wanted, I probably wouldn’t be here now. My father wouldn’t have died, and my mother wouldn’t have gotten sick.

If things had turned out that way, I… I don’t know.

My school grades were a disaster, and the only thing I had going for me was a healthy body.

Yeah, fuck.

It was a pointless wish. Bullshit that could never come true anyway.

Things had never gone the way I wanted. This time was no different.

“Hell of a morning, isn’t it, Jin?”

I dropped down beside Magic Johnson, who greeted me with an exhausted face.

Neither of us asked the other how it had gone. We already knew six hours of searching had come to nothing.

Still, I spoke up, hoping against hope.

“Johnson.”

“I’m sorry.”

“……”

“We searched every inch of a 700-kilometer³ radius. We practically threatened Syria and Iraq into cooperating, too. But, damn it…”

The Prophet was gone.

No—he’d vanished.

As if he’d never existed in this world at all.

No wonder the elite Hunters who’d joined the search right after me all looked as if they’d seen a ghost.

“We were so close. Where the hell did he run off to?”

The reinforcements had moved quickly. They’d reached the scene less than fifteen minutes after J1, a team of roughly two hundred Japanese Hunters, reported an engagement.

The problem was that The Prophet had left the battlefield just before they arrived, and no one could find him anywhere.

“Jin. As far as I know, there’s only one way to explain this.”

Our eyes met. I murmured, “Magic.”

“Right. The Prophet is a mage. One so skilled that even Grand Mage might not do him justice.”

Magic Johnson’s magic hadn’t found a trace of him. Neither had the Skeleton King’s undead army. Neither had I.

That left one possibility.

Magic.

People called things they couldn’t explain miracles, or said they were like magic. In The Prophet’s case, it had to be the latter.

He couldn’t actually be chosen by God, whatever the fanatics brainwashed into following him believed.

A mage, huh.

Huginn’s words came back to me. He’d said The Prophet seemed to be a ranged Hunter.

I’d had my doubts, but now the evidence was tipping that way.

The Prophet was probably a mage—and one skilled enough to vanish without Magic Johnson detecting him.

Or…

One of his subordinates could be a mage at that level.

If that was true, it’d be the worst of the worst. Fortunately, Magic Johnson immediately shook his head when he heard my thought.

“That’s not it.”

“I hope you’re right, but there’s still a chance…”

“The Prophet was definitely alone.”

“What?”

That wasn’t a guess. I could hear the certainty in his voice, and his next words told me why.

“There’s a survivor, Jin.”

“……!”

“The only survivor from J1. He woke up not long before you arrived.”

The only survivor.

I couldn’t just sit there and listen after hearing those words. I sprang to my feet and asked Magic Johnson,

“Where is he now?”

The survivor lay in bed, hooked up to all kinds of medical equipment.

Team Leader Choi and the Skeleton King had been talking beside the bed with serious expressions. They opened their mouths as if to say something when they saw me, but then closed them again.

My face must have told them the search that had lasted until dawn had failed.

“That him?”

The Skeleton King understood immediately and nodded.

“Yeah. The only human who survived there.”

“Then when I first got to the scene…”

“By then, every last one of them was dead. Not a single wounded person left. That human was in critical condition, too, but he got lucky. You came in, didn’t even listen properly, and left again right away.”

Only then did I remember the frantic moments when I’d reached the scene: the word survivor amid the voices I’d heard on my way there, and the Skeleton King trying to tell me something as I left.

“You left before I could say a word. I was about to go after you, but I stopped myself. Something else could’ve happened with me away from here, too.”

The Skeleton King had made the right call. Maybe he’d read the situation more calmly than I had.

Seeing me bite my lip in silence, Team Leader Choi spoke.

“You both made the right decisions. What matters now is that we have a survivor.”

More than a hundred people had died. That was tragic, but the fact that someone had survived was a stroke of luck—for the man who’d lived through that horrific scene, and for all of us.

“He woke up a little while ago, six hours after we found him. The healer in charge says he’s had enough potions and is in the final stage of recovery. He should be fine.”

I studied the survivor. He was staring into space with his mouth hanging open.

He didn’t look fine, for one thing. For another, his face seemed familiar. And even without checking his pulse, I could sense the abundant energy inside him.

Wait. Could this guy be…?

I turned toward Team Leader Choi. He nodded as if he’d read my mind, and a quiet Sound Transmission reached my ears alone.

—He’s the person you’re thinking of, Mr. Jin Taekyung. Japan’s S-rank Hunter, Yamamoto Genji, is J1’s only survivor.

—……!

—It was a close call. From what we can piece together, reinforcements were about to arrive. The Prophet must have worried they’d hold him up, so he left before he could finish Yamamoto off.

The five hundred Hunters who’d responded as reinforcements had been lucky.

If The Prophet had been a little stupider, or more confident in his own strength, they wouldn’t have escaped death either.

But he was clever and cautious. He knew that the longer he stayed in one place, the greater the threat he would face.

That was bad news for humanity, but good luck for those who’d survived.

By that measure, the man before me—Yamamoto Genji, still staring into space with unfocused eyes—had been extraordinarily lucky.

Of course, having gone through something similar myself, I didn’t think of it that way.

Damn it.

I hated Yamamoto Genji. More than hated him. What I felt was closer to loathing.

When so many people had risked their lives to stop Leviathan, he’d shown up late with a ridiculous excuse.

The only reason I’d gone out of my way to bring someone like him into the World Hunter Federation was that he was an S-rank Hunter. I’d figured that even a useless bastard might pull his weight at least once.

But whatever I thought of him, I had no right to curse Yamamoto Genji now.

I wasn’t going to ask why he alone had come back alive when everyone else was dead.

I was the one who’d sent him—and all of them—into that deathtrap.

Tap.

I took Yamamoto Genji’s wrist and sent my internal energy into him.

My Scorching Yang Qi, warm to the touch, flowed through his pulse and into his body. His erratic heartbeat steadied, and a flush of warmth spread across his pale face.

“Yamamoto.”

I said his name quietly. His parched lips moved.

“……A-ah.”

I kept sending internal energy into him as I watched his mouth open and close, as if he’d forgotten how to speak.

I don’t know how long we stayed like that. At last, his eyes came into focus. Yamamoto Genji looked at me and spoke.

“Cho…”

“Cho?”

“Chōsenjin?”⁴

Wait, this fucking bastard.