It's Show Time
After the Cataclysm, countless threats descended upon the world.
Yet the gates and monsters, oddly enough, never became humanity's true peril — because they could be controlled.
If anything, they were a blessing in disguise: the gates yielded mana stones, minerals of miracle.
People deliberately left gates uncleared, 'mining' the stones within like veins of ore in a mountain.
The things that genuinely threatened humanity were of a different order entirely.
First among them: their own kind — the villains.
Truthfully, even they weren't an existential crisis. So long as society held together, villains would always remain a minority. A persistent headache, certainly, but never enough to drive mankind to the brink of extinction.
But the moment villains began to ally themselves with a different threat, the equation changed.
The Outer Gods.
At this point in history, humanity had no idea what the Outer Gods actually were.
Sometime after the Cataclysm, cults devoted to them began sprouting up across the world, and everyone dismissed them as crackpot sects. They were wrong.
One by one, the third-world nations were the first to collapse into the hands of the Outer God faithful.
Though everyone kept quiet about it, studies suggested that already more than a fifth of the human population had fallen under the Outer Gods' shadow.
The most extreme estimates put the figure at over a third.
Fortunately, the mid-tier powers and above had been spared that fate. Every time an Outer God cult took root, it was exterminated without mercy. The infestations kept resurging like cockroaches, but their strength had *not yet* grown beyond containment.
Instead, another threat had burrowed deep into the mid-tier nations — the developed world above all.
Demons.
Most people nowadays couldn't tell a demon from an Outer God, but the two were fundamentally different beings.
More precisely, they were rival factions — and the methods they used to infiltrate humanity differed as well.
Where the Outer Gods built cults and gathered worshippers, demons targeted individuals.
Through 'contracts' with a nation's most important figures, they forged thralls and pulled the strings from behind the curtain.
'When I first heard that a good number of the Silicon Valley Big Tech companies had signed contracts with demons, I couldn't believe how absurd it was.'
It wasn't only power-hungry villains who made pacts with demons.
Quite the opposite — demons most often set their sights on entrepreneurs and politicians, people whose personal strength meant nothing but whose greed burned hot.
And it wasn't just Big Tech. How many of the other S&P 500 mega-corporations had already fallen into the demons' grasp? Even Dohyun didn't know.
'There's more than one devil contractor in Washington's political scene as it is. In a situation like this, of course lunacies like Californian secession or the Philadelphia Massacre end up happening.'
There were moments when he wondered whether choosing to come to America had truly been the right call.
No one but Dohyun could yet imagine it, but America's situation was an utter, catastrophic mess.
'On the other hand — if I set America right, I can preempt a huge portion of the games these demons and Outer Gods intend to play.'
Dohyun looked at the demon that had descended into Cheng.
The demon had dyed Cheng's eyes pitch-black with demonic energy, and now it stared at Dohyun.
"How bold, for a lowly human. I shall grant you a chance. Offer me your soul, and—"
"What could a bottom-feeder demon of the Seventh Circle possibly have to offer? Save the sales pitch."
"—?!"
"You're nothing but one of the Black Sheep's underlings anyway, aren't you?"
The demon before him was called Daegwi — the Great Oni.
Dohyun didn't know its true name; the Chinese who had contracted with it simply called it Daegwi.
There had been more than a few demons of its ilk among the Silicon Valley Big Tech crowd — all of them low-born fiends crawling beneath the high-rank demon, the Black Sheep.
"...You know of That One's existence. Who do you serve? I'll drag you before That One myself and pick your soul apart, thread by thread."
Cheng — no, Daegwi — reached for the laptop and began to hack.
A demon, hacking.
It looked absurd, but there was nothing incomprehensible about it.
Demons possessed intellect far surpassing humanity's. Manipulating the creations of human civilization was as easy for them as turning over a palm.
'At this point in time, demons face restrictions on using demonic energy directly on Earth, so they rely heavily on cheap tricks like this.'
It was Daegwi that had granted Cheng the Psychic Hacking skill. As the original, its hacking prowess was in a league of its own.
And now that very Daegwi was beginning to hack Dohyun's body — specifically, his nervous system.
'Hacking a living organism's body requires at least Lv. 8.'
In other words, Daegwi's power at the moment rivaled not a mere S-rank, but the Lv. 8 Nova class.
But —
'Sloppy.'
Lv. 7 this, Lv. 8 that. In Dohyun's eyes, it was all a joke.
He was only Lv. 7 at present, yet clumsy work like this was trivial to counter.
He didn't even need the aid of any remarkable skill.
The specialty of the Shadow Knights was their acute 'senses' — and the senses were, in the end, nothing more than the fine manipulation of the nervous system.
The Lv. 8 neural hack amounted to little more than blocking a handful of synapses. Dohyun simply routed around the blocked junctions, activating bypass pathways, and neutralized the demon's hacking with ease.
"Wh-what?! You haven't even undergone Soul Evolution — how can you wield an ability like that?!"
The demon cried out in shock.
"Anything else? I'll give you time. Go ahead."
Daegwi clenched its teeth and made a furious second attempt, straining with all its might.
It accomplished nothing.
No matter what it tried, it could not hack Dohyun's nervous system.
'Ah, I'd really like to just devour this thing already.'
The reason he kept stalling was that the timing hadn't come yet.
He was waiting for something.
At last, the demon abandoned the hacking and roared, demonic energy surging up like a bonfire caught in a gale.
It meant to cast aside all restrictions and subdue Dohyun with raw power.
That was when it happened.
Dohyun heard the sound he had been waiting for.
"DEMON!"
"Are you all right, Sir?!"
It was the awakener counter-terrorism squad — the operators storming in on Dohyun's signal!
'If you're going to catch a demon, you need an audience to applaud.'
Dohyun glanced at the body cams mounted on the operators' gear.
Everything he did from this moment would be broadcast live to the operations room at JB PHH.
No — further than that.
All the way to the Pentagon in Washington.
Everyone in the US government would have their eyes glued to today's events.
Dohyun strolled forward with a light step.
The demon, gripped by a primal fear, stumbled backward.
Too late.
"It's show time."
The blade in Dohyun's hand flashed — and its light, carried through the cameras, burned itself into the retinas of the countless people watching the scene unfold.
Dohyun had guessed right.
The Pentagon, sublevel three, E-ring B3 —
The National Military Command Center of the US Department of Defense.
The supreme commanders of the American military were gathered, watching the terror attack unfolding at the Pearl Harbor base in Hawaii.
"We need to level that silo with bunker busters right now!"
"A bunker buster strike on US soil — on Pearl Harbor of all places? Are you out of your mind?!"
"Better that than letting the Astral silo go into meltdown!"
"Can you guarantee a bunker buster will destroy the silo completely? Short of dropping a tactical nuke, I wouldn't bet on it!"
"Did you just say nuke? A nuclear weapon on an American military base?"
Today's crisis had already exceeded anything Brigadier General Frankie and the Hawaii base command could handle on their own.
The Secretary of Defense, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the Chief of Naval Operations, the Director of Operations — they had all assembled, and their voices rose over one another.
But there was no clean answer to be found. Every option on the table was the worst option.
"...What is POTUS saying?"
President of the United States — the military shorthand for the commander-in-chief.
"...We can't reach him."
"How long has it been since this started, and *still*?"
"...Isn't he busy being dragged off over that scandal? Even if we got through, he'd only be in the way. He wouldn't help."
The men gathered in the NMCC exchanged bitter glances.
The most viable option at present was to bomb the silo — blast it sky-high before the meltdown could begin.
But who could possibly make that call?
Impossible, unless it was the President himself.
"What's the Secretary of Defense's position?"
"I... I oppose it. We cannot absorb the fallout of such a decision."
"There's no other option right now—!"
But the Secretary of Defense shook his head with maddening obstinacy.
The Secretary was a presidential appointee. He had no intention of shouldering the blame alone.
"You truly mean to just sit here and watch? In the worst case, the entire island of Honolulu could be contaminated with Astral energy."
"That's... that's precisely because JB PHH's security failed in the first place—"
"This isn't about assigning blame right now... *Haah.* Fine."
Then something unbelievable happened.
THWACK—!
The Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff had decked the Secretary of Defense square in the face!
"Mr. Chairman...?"
"Whoops. My fist slipped. Since our esteemed Chicken has gone off to dreamland, I suppose the decision now falls to me, doesn't it?"
"It does, sir!!"
"The stand-down order's already been given, hasn't it? Get the bombing ready. Now."
"MOP, sir? Or a tactical nuke?"
The Chairman fell silent.
The MOP.
The massive penetration bomb's power was monstrous, but the silo was shielded by Astral energy — there was no guarantee it could be leveled completely.
To be certain, they would need a tactical nuke — but even the hot-headed Chairman found it no easy thing to give the order to drop one.
That was when it happened.
"Might I suggest we wait just a moment...?"
"Smith?"
The youngest man in the room — he looked to be only in his mid-to-late thirties, yet three stars gleamed on his shoulders.
Smith Edwards, commander of the American military's awakened branch, the Super Force.
An Lv. 8 Nova-class awakener, and one of the most powerful individuals in the entire US military.
"An agent has been deployed to suppress the terrorists as we speak."
"Weren't there three S-rank villains down there? Hawaii's Super Force can't possibly subdue them."
"It's a request from the field commander."
Brigadier General Frankie had sent word to the Pentagon.
He trusted Dohyun. Just give him a little more time.
"Fine... keep the bombing on standby. We can't wait forever."
And then, after minutes that stretched like an eternity —
Terrible news arrived from the Hawaii base.
"The villains have summoned a demon!!"
The Chairman of the Joint Chiefs squeezed his eyes shut.
Three S-rank villains alone had been a nightmare. With a demon appearing as well, suppression was flatly impossible.
"Commence the bombing—"
But barely seconds after that report came through —
"The demon has been eliminated, sir!"
"...What?"
The situation room monitors displayed the live feed from the field cameras.
Two villains lay dead nearby, and the demon's avatar stood locked in confrontation with a handsome, smooth-faced Asian man.
Against the demon's terrifying aura, the slender Asian man looked as though he would be crushed to paste at any second —
And then the footage played out something no one could believe.
Shff—!
CRUNCH!!
"...??"
Every general in the American military blinked.
Demons were one of humanity's great enemies. No one alive needed an explanation of how formidable they were.
So what in God's name was *this*?
"Who... who is that superhuman...?"
Smith, commander of the Super Force, said nothing.
Smith himself had only received reports — he knew hardly anything concrete about Dohyun. And even those reports had been utterly preposterous.
Suspected to be the Korean Devil-class villain, Genocide?
He answered with the only information he could vouch for.
"He is America's new hero."
The Chairman and everyone else in the room blinked in unison.
Either way, the situation was still not over.
"...The meltdown has already begun, then."
"It's not too late yet. We can still destroy the silo now."
"Evacuate that hero from the base immediately! We bomb in five minutes!"
But once again, something flabbergasting occurred.
"Er... Kim — that is, the hero says he'll remove the Astral Body inside the fusion reactor and stop the meltdown himself!"
"...What? That's impossible. There's no such thing."
"Oh!! Jesus!!"
Everyone watching the screens let out a gasp of horror.
Dohyun was doing the impossible.
Meanwhile —
It wasn't only the American brass in the Pentagon who were watching Dohyun.
The terror attack had already spread across the entire globe as breaking news.
The world's media outlets, online platforms, and streaming services were all abuzz with what was happening at Pearl Harbor base.