Where Am I?

‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠

A black void.

I stretched a hand forward and found a pretty, slender one reaching back. When I looked down, there was the hem of a skirt, and feet wrapped in tights.

Just a moment ago, I had definitely been up in the sky...

Black. The most beautiful color of purity in the world.

Yeah.

That's mortifying. Let's not revisit it.

Apparently I had siphoned out every last drop of mana in my body and triggered Mana Exhaustion. It works a lot like hypoglycemia — fainting, a total loss of strength, irregular breathing — except it also dumps your mind into a space that feels like a dream.

All right. Let's see what we've drawn this time.

The last time this happened was a few weeks before I came back to Earth. I had slammed every destruction spell I owned, range amplified to the absolute limit, into the Demon King's castle and the entire region around it, and then I had passed out.

It hadn't been a black void like this. It had been something closer to a ballroom, chandeliers blazing.

People I could never meet again had been there, each of them dressed in their finest, smiling at me as if nothing in the world were wrong.

I had genuinely thought I was dead. If that was the end, heaven or hell, I hadn't cared — I just wanted to stay there and be happy with the people I had wanted to see.

But somehow I opened my eyes and I was in a prison cell, and after that...

"Off with his head!"

Ugh.

I squeezed my eyes shut. When I opened them again, a television had appeared in front of me that had not been there before.

Not some old cathode-ray relic — a massive, crystal-clear screen, the kind you would see along the wall of an electronics store.

— Pssht.

The solid blue field crackled with static, and two figures resolved out of the noise.

That's me. And the Goddess.

I had no idea what scene this was supposed to be, but the way a morning drama you accidentally flip on while getting ready for work can steal your eyes, I found myself leaning in.

A Holy Sword, stained black, pressed against the Goddess's throat.

Ah. That time.

She had tried to paint me as the villain, so I had hit her with annihilation magic, and the Holy Sword had been upgraded to the Black Edition.

She had been so startled she manifested right in front of me, going ufufu~.

But looking at myself as a man... how do I put this. I had packed on muscle to a genuinely grotesque degree.

I watched that past self — so completely different from who I was now — with a complicated feeling sitting in my chest.

If I had put just a little more force into it, I could have cut through.

It did not even take strength to split flesh and sever ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠bone.

The Holy Sword was a blade forged to kill beings of divine rank, a weapon imbued with the power of a god. Naturally, that included the Goddess who had poured her own power into it.

But she did not dodge. She actually craned her neck forward. The edge pressed hard against her throat, and a hairline crack opened in the skin.

Instead of blood, a faint golden radiance bloomed from the wound.

As if that were of no concern whatsoever, the Goddess — her tone now politely formal — smiled with benevolent grace and opened her mouth.

"If the Hero were to take my head with that Holy Sword, I would surely be erased from existence."

A benevolent smile I wanted to tear apart.

"But what would your old comrades — the ones who sacrificed themselves to save this world — think of that?"

"You fucking bitch."

My grip tightened on the sword.

The Goddess did not seem to care that a blade was resting on her throat.

"The guerrilla fighters who launched suicide charges to support the offensive. The scout teams who revealed their own positions to draw the enemy search parties away. The villagers who died on the paths you chose not to take."

She folded her fingers one by one, ticking off the past as if she were counting. Then her expression went cold, and she glanced at me.

"And now you stand upon the foundation of all those deaths, with a blade at my throat."

What the hell was she playing at. I could not listen to another word. I was about to swing the Holy Sword when—

A child's voice spilled from the Goddess's mouth. Then the voices of conscripted soldiers. Then the voices of comrades I had thought I would never hear again.

I said nothing.

The Goddess returned to her own voice.

"Have you forgotten your old comrades' last words? Does the Hero truly intend to lead this world down the path of ruin?"

She laid a finger on the blade and gave it a little push. Then she ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠looked down at the thinly sliced tip of her finger and smiled, faintly.

"How long do you think this world would last without me?"

And the reason that smile felt less like mockery and more like pity...

The miracles of the clergy would cease. Patients kept alive by borrowed holy power would die. The center that held people together as one would vanish.

A future that would, without question, come to pass.

Even if I fought as the Hero, sword in one hand and staff in the other, I would not be able to use the holy power and blessings that held the Demon King's army in check. I would not be able to heal the sick. I would not be able to unite anyone.

The Goddess knew that.

"Go on. Cut. When you had the justification that these people died because of my commands, choosing between two options was not so frightening, was it..."

She smiled.

"Aaaaaaaaaaah. Aaaaaah."

"Cover them! Get a blanket over them!!"

"Rope! Get me rope!"

"AAAAH! Guys!! AAAAH! SAVE MEEEE!!"

"3rd Platoon! 4th Platoon! The company commander's being pulled up!"

"Don't look at the sky! Axe! The axe!"

"I'm sorry, sir!!"

— CRUNCH. CRUNCH.

"GYAAAAAAAAH!!!"

To the east, Hanam. To the west, Cheongna. To the south, Hwaseong. To the north, Goyang.

Across a fifty-kilometer radius, a grotesque phenomenon had erupted on a massive scale, and screaming and running was the only response anyone had.

There had been no warning signs. Hair-like threads had suddenly rained down from the sky, and those threads had transformed into black ropes. The ropes had coiled around people, and what followed was the scene unfolding now.

"Get a tourniquet! A tourniquet! There's teaching supplies in the multipurpose room — just grab those!"

At one of the military units caught inside the affected area, they were responding by simply cutting off the limbs of people being pulled into the sky. If it was the neck or the torso that had been snared, they had thought they would have no choice but to stand there and watch.

"Uurp! BLEGH!! Hrk! Aaaa...ah. Aaaaaaaaah."

"This one just looked up at the sky! Tie him down!"

The mottled gray sky would not even permit you to look at it.

"What the hell is happening..."

A soldier muttered as he fastened a tourniquet around the stump of his company commander's upper arm. Even a slight turn of the head revealed countless ropes beyond the compound fence, and the people being hauled up along them, scattered like dots. He tried to pretend he could not hear, but the screams carried from far away.

"Damn it. Damn it...!"

Praying that his own parents or family were not among them, the soldier wiped away falling tears and loaded his commander onto a stretcher.

— BEEEEEP. BEEEEEP.

It was twenty minutes after the incident began that a major disaster alert was finally issued.

By then, an estimated fifty thousand people or more were already hanging from the black ropes.

"AAAAH! No!"

One of the military officers who had stepped out of his vehicle because of the emergency was no exception. The problem was that this particular officer happened to be the lead escort for an ammunition convoy. And when you escort ammunition, you go armed with live rounds. That was standard.

With a black rope coiled around his waist, the officer grabbed the rifle hanging from his sling and aimed it at the rope above him.

— BANG! BANG!

"You son of a bitch! Fuck...! Hah! Hah! DIE!!"

— BANG! BANG! BANG! BANG!

— SKREEEEE! SKREEEEEEEEE!!!!

The thunderous noise left a great many people within range temporarily delirious or unconscious...

"What the hell was that all of a sudden...!"

...but it was more than enough to summon a certain mage who had been loafing around in a PC bang somewhere in Incheon.

The Major Disaster Response Headquarters, conspicuously missing the unconscious President and a great many other key figures.

"...The gray fog and blotches in the sky are disappearing."

"...Haaaaah!"

After scattered witness reports that Yuria had soared high into the sky, the crisis was resolved in roughly five minutes. Everyone in the room let out a breath they had been holding.

The acting head of the response headquarters. The President, the Prime Minister, the Minister of the Interior, the Director of Disaster and Safety... after a cascade of senior officials had collapsed one after another, the next person in the chain of command was a Grade 4 civil servant: the Situation Control Officer.

"..."

A Grade 4 civil servant. Not a low rank, exactly, but inside this headquarters he was the acting acting acting acting acting stand-in for the government, the acting Fire Commissioner, the acting Police Commissioner, the acting-acting Director of Emergency Preparedness, the acting-acting-acting-acting Director of Social Disaster Management...

He had managed to ease the weight on his shoulders a little when a Grade 7 officer, rolling his eyes around the room, had met his gaze and hastily looked away.

"Casualties and missing persons first. That's the top priority. Has the mobilization order been issued for all disaster zones?"

Seoul, Gyeonggi, and Incheon had all been declared disaster zones. On top of that, a partial mobilization order had already gone out to replenish military and police ranks, given the expected scale of the casualties.

Ordinarily the President and the assemblymen would have hemmed and hawed over a mobilization order for ages, worried about their approval ratings. The Situation Control Officer sitting in the acting director's chair was in no position to care about any of that.

Every available police officer, firefighter, and administrative official had gone dark, and military units across the region were reporting deaths, disappearances, and desertions through the high-speed situation relay system.

The mobilization order itself was a reasonable measure, but...

"You get the text?"

"Come on. Korea's already fucked. You actually gonna go?"

The fact that not many people were quietly answering the reservist call-up was not that big a problem.

"The mobilization response rate has exceeded ten percent in just thirty minutes, but we have a problem."

Perhaps because the Republic of Korea had never actually executed a partial mobilization order like this before.

"The MMA texts directed people to the training grounds, but the actual assembly points are currently being announced independently by each local government..."

"What?"

All across the capital region, call-up targets were piling into reservist training grounds, local mobilization units, and assembly points in a chaotic mess.

"Excuse me, I got a reservist text and came here."

"Sorry? But why would you come to the mobilization unit? You should have a separate assembly point."

"Huh? But the text said to come here."

Official notices that the assembly locations had been changed late were sitting in the officers' inboxes — but some of those officers had already gone out to support the field. The civil servants who were supposed to be providing that field support had themselves been hauled up by the ropes and were now drifting slowly back down from the sky.

You could not exactly wake those people up and put them to work, so even the people who were supposed to be directing and coordinating from the inside had rushed out into the field. Command confusion was inevitable.

"Line up this way, please!"

"Ah, for fuck's sake. I didn't even want to come."

"Look at you, first one in uniform. Playing tsundere?"

At every community center, people in military fatigues stood in line. People whose uniforms no longer fit, who had just brought them along. People who had dropped everything at work and come running in civilian clothes. People with no combat boots, wearing sneakers. People who had received the call-up text but had no idea which unit they were assigned to, waiting with number tickets in hand.

It was the kind of scene that taught you exactly what people meant by a complete circus.

"Uh, sorry, I don't actually belong to this unit. I was in the area for work and just came."

"That's fine. Take this assembly confirmation and get on vehicle 7884 over there."

A man in civilian clothes climbed into a Twinlex van. Behind it, two buses were already starting their engines and pulling out.

"Ugh, it's freezing. Can we get the heat on?"

The transport support officer from a nearby unit, driving the bus, was half out of his mind as he steered. Barely ten minutes ago, he had personally cut off both arms and both legs of two of his drivers.

Nnngh, th-thank you...!

"Haaah, son of a bitch."

The cigarette clenched in his mouth, and the bloodstains he had only half wiped off on his combat uniform, were enough to make the reservists in the front row start to say something about the smoking — and then think better of it.

It had been just over an hour since the mobilization order was declared.

The problems kept coming.

A reservist transport bound for Incheon was stuck on the outskirts of Seoul, boxed in by rescue vehicles and civilian traffic. There were simply no police to deploy for search operations. Aside from those who had been in vehicles or indoors, most of the force had gone completely dark.

"We can't get through on the phones. We requested a mobile base station from the carriers, but with the traffic..."

"Then control the roads or do something!"

The acting-acting Police Commissioner — the Director of the National Office of Investigation — shook his head with an uncomfortable expression.

"It's a weekday morning. A lot of traffic police were already out on external assignments. We're critically short-staffed right now..."

"..."

The Situation Control Officer picked up a water bottle, then set it back down when his hand would not close around it.

Even now, after the crisis had ended, the red dots on the big screen kept multiplying. The unidentified black ropes were gone, but missing-person reports were flooding in from every district without pause, and it was not uncommon for multiple family members to report the same person. There was still no way to distinguish between people who had been taken by the ropes and people who had simply lost contact during the evacuation.

"Missing-person reports have already exceeded forty thousand. A lot of those are duplicates or erroneous reports..."

"Filter out every duplicate report."

The Deputy Fire Commissioner opened his mouth, on the verge of saying something he would not be able to take back, then barely ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠swallowed his anger.

"...Do you have any idea how hard that is?"

Even looking at the figures that had come through the Central Medical Headquarters so far, the death toll was already over two thousand, and the number of critically injured was more than twice that. Those were conservative numbers, counting only people whose identities had been confirmed at hospitals.

Nobody even wanted to think about tallying the lightly injured.

The missing were estimated at a minimum of forty thousand, but even that number was not a proper count. It could go up or down. Some people had been pulled up and never come back. Some had fallen. Some had been found with their limbs severed. It was not uncommon for search and rescue personnel to report severed limbs and torsos as belonging to different people.

"......Haaah."

The Situation Control Officer ordered the casualty figures to keep being updated, and instructed that the search radius be expanded to the outer edges of the restricted zones. He also ordered that mobilized reservists be attached as support personnel if they were short-staffed — but they had not even finished organizing the assembled people and distributing equipment yet.

There was no manual anywhere for getting through a disaster the likes of which no one had ever seen.

"...Director of the Magic Bureau. Have we determined Yuria's current location?"

It was only natural, perhaps, that someone would suddenly reach for the name of the one person who might know anything about what had just happened.

The stark white glow of fluorescent lights. And the distinctive stippled pattern of a Tex ceiling, crawling like earthworms. I forced my heavy head to turn and found an IV drip.

Ah. I can't resist.

I pulled the blanket up to my chest, laid both hands neatly on top of it, then slowly opened my eyes and spoke.

"...Where. Am I?"

There was no doctor in round glasses.

Eheheh.