Are These Bastards for Real?! (1)

The moment I stepped out of the Phase World with a tailed fox girl in tow, of all things, the Ability User Association Building erupted into an uproar.

Word must have reached him. The branch chief came scrambling down from the roof in a panic, took one look at Miho, screwed his eyes shut, and asked in a shaking voice.

"Th-that aberrant. What grade is it?"

"A superior subspecies."

"Right, a supe— a subspecies?!"

"This is Miho. The Energy Eater."

"What?!"

At the news that the Energy Eater had become a superior subspecies—and a girl of the nine-tailed fox line, no less—the branch chief's face spasmed, the flesh of his cheeks twitching without stop.

"If I asked how this happened... you wouldn't tell me, would you."

He was straining so hard his eyebrows twitched. I nodded. Asking wouldn't get him anything I could tell him.

I checked the officetel beside the Ability User Association Building. As expected, the Wall of Space I'd raised was gone. Hiarid stood in the room where Ha Cheolsu had vanished, not so much as twitching, both hands locked around her sky staff, eyes closed.

I went with the branch chief to the officetel she was guarding, raised the Wall of Space again, and asked her.

"Ha Cheolsu never came out?"

=He has not come out.=

"Anyone bother you while you were waiting here?"

=There was no one.=

She said only what was necessary. I let out a small sigh and turned to the branch chief, who spoke as if offering an excuse.

"Once I announced her as the Blue Genius's pet high-tier aberrant, no one approached."

"That's not why I was looking."

It was because Ha Cheolsu hadn't come out. Relief and unease had hit me at the same time.

When I got home, Mom was astonished that the tiny baby fox had become a little girl of about ten. Far from being frightened, she had a wonderful time dressing Miho in the children's clothes my sister and I used to wear.

I was more surprised that my parents had never thrown out the clothes I'd worn at ten than I was by how easily they treated Miho, without the slightest reservation.

I left Miho with them and headed for my office, only to be caught by Aunt Hyeryeong on the thirty-fifth floor.

Her face was set so hard I thought something terrible had happened. When I looked at her in alarm, she seized my arm and hauled me straight to the emergency conference room on the nineteenth floor of the office wing.

The moment we arrived, everyone who could be called an executive of the Grand Blue raid team was gathered there, every face grim.

If trouble had broken out, it had broken out hard. I hardened my expression, took the head seat, and Aunt Hyeryeong submitted a report that hit like a blow.

Sophia—with them since Time River's founding, no, since Hwayeon had still been in Hwarang—was a spy. A traitor.

"Sophia... a traitor?"

"I know it's hard to believe, but it's the truth. The President herself led agents straight into Grand Blue, and before that, Vice-Captain Sophia..."

"Drop the title."

"Ah. Yes. Many people saw Sophia Adelberg leave the Grand Blue Building as if she were fleeing. According to the President, who arrived ten minutes after Sophia Adelberg drove off in her own car, she was an intelligence assassin, cultivated for decades under Japan's direction."

An intelligence... assassin?

I couldn't believe it. That demure young woman with the long honey-colored hair, who smiled like a sunflower, who had devoted herself as Hwayeon's left hand until Time River became the number-two raid team in the country—that Sophia...

A traitor?

I glanced at Hwayeon, who looked as if half her soul had been torn away, then turned to Aunt Hyeryeong.

"Wasn't Sophia the second daughter of a famous family attached to Britain's Grokis Institute? How could she be a Japanese spy? I don't understand it."

Aunt Hyeryeong looked at Hwayeon, then answered with a bleak expression.

"The wife of the current head of House Adelberg was a physical reinforcement ability user, sold off to Britain during the Japan Incident eighty years ago. She came out of a Japanese intelligence organization, and after she married the head of the house, she was the one who raised every child they had as a spy for Japan..."

Ah. A spike of pain pulled at the back of my skull.

"What does House Adelberg say?"

"They refuse to admit any of it. From the start, their position is that she's some bitch who declared a family severance and ran out on the house, and that she has nothing to do with them. The lady of the house also says she never raised her children as spies."

Hwayeon had gone pale. She bit her lower lip and stared down at the table.

"And you need to see this as well."

Discomfort plain on her face, Aunt Hyeryeong signaled the proceedings officer. A scene from the news began to play on the conference room's large panel TV.

On the screen, a man introduced as a spokesperson for the Japanese government was screeching like a monkey. The sheer gall of it—the longer I listened, the hotter the rage climbed out of my gut.

I stared at the panel TV with my face locked in disgust, and the elegantly appointed conference room held a silence so complete it was hard to believe fifteen people were in it.

Me, Franc, Hwayeon, my sister, Aunt Hyeryeong, Boss Park Jiwoong, Department Head Kim Pyochung and Department Head Ha Yucheol, Vice-Captain Cha Soyoung, four B-Class physical reinforcement vice-captains out of Hwarang, the security director, and the in-house security team leader. Fifteen.

Every one of them stared at the screen with a face set hard enough to frighten.

I wanted to rage. It would only have been handing them my cheek to slap.

"Turn it off."

At the chill in my voice, the proceedings assistant swallowed and shut off the recorded news. At the same time, a staff member in a Grand Blue uniform announced that a call had been connected from the Blue House.

I nodded. A massive hologram rose at the center of the enormous U-shaped table where the fifteen of us sat, showing Yeongeun in full dress uniform, and a host of assembly members with her.

"Seoha. Did you see the news?"

"Yes. They're saying this was announced yesterday afternoon."

"That's right. The Japanese prime minister announced it himself, four hours after you entered the Phase World."

Yeongeun's face was set as well. She looked like a woman who hadn't expected Japan to strike first. I closed my eyes, recalled the screeching of that so-called spokesperson, and smiled a thin, cold smile.

"Heh. So the prime minister was among the ones who tried to kill me. What came of the favor I asked before?"

"The background on the National Museum of Korea incident and the attack in Shinchon-dong is all finished. We only need to announce it through the IWO."

I listened to Yeongeun, then turned to Aunt Hyeryeong and my sister.

"Director of General Affairs. Director of Integrated Management. How much preparation is left before the Grand Blue raid team's founding ceremony?"

"Grand Blue's preparations are complete, so the ceremony can be held in two days, on Tuesday the twenty-eighth. However, invitations have already gone out, and receiving the invited guests will take three days at the earliest."

"Then tomorrow, as a kind of eve-of-ceremony, I'll announce what you've prepared, Madam. Madam, I'd like to proceed exactly as I asked last time."

"Mmm... Seoha. Isn't this a little hasty? If we prepare a bit more..."

"Please prepare it as it stands. Whether this sinks or swims, I can't wait any longer. And right after the announcement, I'll give notice that ten high-grade phase stones from high-tier aberrants will be auctioned, split across two days. Bidding eligibility goes to any qualified nation except Japan."

At the mention of ten high-grade phase stones, an uproar broke out not only in our conference room but in the Blue House cabinet room where Yeongeun sat. Somewhere in the middle of it, I heard someone say that if they were high-grade phase stones, our government ought to purchase the entire lot.

I frowned. Yeongeun glared to one side with sharp eyes until that mouth shut, then turned a soft gaze back to me.

She looked at me as if asking when I had made something like that. I hadn't spent those two days in the Phase World just playing around. Whenever I had TP to spare, I charged them.

Every one of them was a high-grade phase stone charged past two million. I'd charged about seventeen, but releasing them all at once would draw suspicion, so I meant to release only ten.

I didn't need to guess what would follow. Once this was out, my name would spread among the upper crust of the whole world, and as the plan moved forward after that, ordinary citizens would have me stamped firmly into their minds.

They'd grow tense along with it. Tense of an ability user who could supply high-grade phase stones alone. And behind me there was a high-tier aberrant pet, which would whip that tension even higher.

A B-Class ability user who could hunt down not one or two high-tier aberrants carrying high-grade phase stones, but at least ten.

For Grand Blue's unveiling, and for putting Japan under my heel, there wasn't a better card than this.

"...Yes. That ought to raise a bigger stir. Leave the rest to this auntie."

The connection to the Blue House cut. I looked around the conference room as it grew noisy with murmurs, and said it low, in Mana Voice.

"..."

Silence dropped in an instant. I pressed down the emotion boiling up and opened my mouth quietly.

"I don't know the exact reason Japan is trying to kill me, or why they're picking this fight. I don't know why they infiltrated Vice-Captain Sophia Adelberg as a spy, either."

Thinking of Sophia, who used to cling to me with that innocent face, the fire in my gut kept growing until it felt ready to burn a hole through my stomach.

The story that she'd fled two days ago meant she had been waiting for me to enter the Phase World.

It was fair to see everything she had done until now as calculated.

"But one thing is certain. Japan's two attacks caused harm to civilians, and five agents of the security detail died protecting me. On top of that, they had Sophia Adelberg extract my information, and this time they're openly condemning and denouncing me on a public broadcast."

Hearing that Sophia Adelberg—who should have been under Mana Vision's affinity boost—had stabbed me in the back and run, my first thought was that I had been too soft.

I'd meant not to ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠use Mana Vision in ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠reality. But even if I don't go as far as brainwashing them with a mental shock through Mana Vision and Mana Voice, I need to plant enough affinity that people can't betray me. Can't betray Grand Blue.

Spies already inside, like Sophia Adelberg, couldn't be helped. But if I considered Mana Vision's affinity effect, I could stop betrayals that might arise later.

I ground my teeth.

That fucking bitch had approached Hwayeon before Time River even existed and worked as an inside spy. And I, not knowing, had felt fond of her and run my mouth with this and that. I wanted to wring my own neck.

That I was going on a field trip to the museum. That I trained alone at the training ground. The very reason they mobilized physical reinforcement, elemental, and special-type ability users to ambush me!

All of it, because that bitch spilled every last bit to Japan!

Which was why Hwayeon was staring at the table with that pale face.

Thinking of the wound dealt to Hwayeon, who did not give her heart easily, killing intent spilled out of me on its own.

What must she have felt, learning that someone she had thought of as an older sister was a spy—that the woman had watched her every move and mine, gathered it, and handed it to Japan?

When we disclosed the storage device Yoo Chae-rin had passed along, to Hwayeon and to Yeongeun. When Hwayeon asked Yeongeun if there was anything she could do to help, Yeongeun had said there was nothing now, but that later there would be.

Yeongeun must have answered that way because she already knew there was a spy around us.

Had she known it was Sophia?

I ground my teeth, and vivid blue Mana Sieve began to stream from my eyes in veins of light. Everyone in the conference room drew a sharp, empty breath at once, startled.

A boiling in my chest. Driven by emotion grown that violent, I hadn't even been conscious of it, and still Mana Sieve—those vivid blue streaks—spread from my whole body as if scattering, dyeing the dark conference room a deep blue. I could feel them forget even to breathe, staring holes through me.

I met their eyes, one by one, and opened my mouth.

"Japan, carrying on as if no one else exists, is going to learn to the bone that they picked the wrong fight this time. And of course we'll find the traitor and drag her in. Even if we have to chase her to the ends of the earth."

The people who met my eyes, vivid Phase Power streaming from them, flinched and went rigid.

Franc's face and my sister's clouded a little, but aside from Hwayeon with her head bowed, they would have caught my mood.

Seeing them sigh and give a small nod, I clenched my fist and silently asked someone I couldn't name.

It's a request. Please don't break the last brake left in my head. Push me any further, and I don't know what I'll do.

I don't want the title of slaughterer.

At the end of the short meeting, we decided that tomorrow evening, on the roof of Business Support Building 2 at the Grand Blue Building, I would announce my response to Japan.

If I wanted to show a demonstration at the end, it had to be done outside. And it needed to be a little dark, so the light of a Mana Shell's explosion would stand out and the effect would hit as hard as it could.

The announcement was sudden, but the head of external PR said domestic and foreign reporters had their feelers up toward Grand Blue, calling Japan's statement a jackpot. I could hardly leave feelers like that to sit idle.

When we contacted the reporters to say Grand Blue would hold an emergency press conference, they jumped on it like a windfall. Foreign correspondents in the country, and the newsrooms of famous domestic broadcasters, sent word that they would carry my announcement live.

That was when I felt Yeongeun's power for real. How had she sweet-talked them into a live broadcast—not even a taped network slot—of a press conference ripe for a broadcast disaster?

Well. I wasn't about to complain.

And the next evening. Dozens of domestic and foreign reporters, contacted by the PR team, had hauled in all their broadcast gear and camped on the roof of Business Support Building 2. The rooftop, nearly five hundred square meters, looked cramped.

Watching that expo of every nationality through the rooftop surveillance cameras from my office, I could see my sister behind me, unable to hide the tension on her face, shifting from foot to foot.

"Are you really going to announce it like this? Public opinion and the reaction won't be a joke."

"Why should I care about public opinion? Sis, you want me to just take this beating like a damn fool?"

"Th-that's not what I meant..."

The ultra-fine suit, much like the one I'd worn for the PR shoot, clung to my body in a way that still felt a little strange.

"Franc. Miho. How do I look? Presentable?"

"You look wonderful!"

"So this is what cool is? Yeah, Master, you're cool!"

Franc had her hair bound up and wore a fluttering golden dress, as if to mark her as a spirit, and her eyes sparkled as she looked at me. Miho, too, was in an adorable everyday hanbok, her white hair tied in a ribboned braid, fox ears and six fox tails flicking as her eyes sparkled.

Hiarid wore a garment that had reimagined a Greek ceremonial toga in a modern cut, and she tilted her head slightly as she looked at me.

And my sister raised a hand and covered her face.

Watching her put complicated feelings she couldn't help into her whole body, I checked the time. Three minutes until the announcement.

"Things have been a blur since I got back, so I never got the chance to tell you, Sis."

"Hm?"

"No matter what happens, don't enter your Phase World alone. When you go, you have to go with me."

I explained what had happened in the Phase World to my sister, who looked curious, as if wondering why it had to be that way. She nodded as if it were nothing serious.

"Those clouds were made by the cloud whales, and there's ordinary ground underneath, right? Even if I fall, I can fire a Water Ball and use Shadow Jump to reach the ground, so you don't need to worry that much. More than that—to think it might be the same Phase World as yours. I really hope it is."

"Still, just in case, go with me. All right?"

"Hehe. All right."

"...Shall we start, then."

Three minutes had passed while we talked. I lifted the corner of my mouth into a rotten smile and took the elevator up to the roof.

When I opened the door to the heliport, I saw a sky burning in the sunset.

I laid Walls of Space in the air and started walking the sky toward Business Support Building 2. I made the walls large on purpose, so they would be seen, and behind me Franc, Miho, and Hiarid floated in the air and followed.

My sister Shadow Jumped across to Business Support Building 2, found Department Head Kim Pyochung and Department Head Ha Yucheol, and began issuing instructions.

When I had crossed about halfway to the building, the domestic and foreign reporters must have spotted me walking through the air. Shock and uproar burst from that side.

Camera flashes went off without end. With a calm expression I moved to the podium set at the center of the helipad, took the microphone in my right hand, and lifted my left slightly. The murmuring thinned, and the baptism of flashes eased.

I raised a Wall of Space to enclose the whole roof, and the wind that had been blowing a little hard died down until it was pleasant enough to talk. The reporters looking at the Wall of Space, though, were anything but pleasant. Panic, shock, and fear were mixed across their faces in roughly equal parts.

Through Grand Blue's PR video—a secret, and yet not a secret—they had learned what the amber Wall of Space did.

Expressionless, I saw that every broadcast camera was on, and opened my mouth.

"Thank you for coming all this way on nothing more than word of a press conference. First, please look over the materials we've prepared. We'll talk after that."

The moment I spoke, a few impatient reporters shot their hands up, then quietly lowered them at the mention of prepared materials.

A proceedings assistant standing before the huge panel TV set in one corner of the roof worked the panel at once, and the materials Yeongeun had gathered—the evidence that Japan had attacked me—began to play.

It began with a single box.

A Japanese raid team, during exploration and excavation near Marauso, had obtained a box that looked expensive. A Japanese man appeared on screen with his face blurred and his voice altered, explaining how they had come by it.

With the subtitles, the screen split. There was the unearthed box, and there was the Soul Reaper's casket as it had come to the National Museum of Korea. Documents laying out how the Soul Reaper's casket had entered the museum appeared one sheet at a time.

Marauso was a land of death, a place where ghost-type aberrants appeared in droves, and most of what came out of it was a cursed or haunted box. The raid team had sealed the expensive-looking box on the spot and kept it sealed until the exploration ended.

Back in reality, the raid team hadn't taken it to the Ability User Association. They had carried the box to an old shrine and had it appraised.

The Association's appraisal fees were too expensive, and private commissions like this happened often. Of course, the Association's policy was that responsibility for any incident arising from that choice fell entirely on the parties involved.

In any case, the shrine had been appraising particular objects for a long time. The raid team received the result—that the expensive-looking box was an evil-spirit casket with a Soul Reaper sealed inside—and tried to have it destroyed through the Japan branch of the Ability User Association.

But the shrine's master had sidled up to the raid team with a hint. If they handed the box over to him, he would perform a proper curse-breaking, so perhaps they might let his people have a portion of the contents.

The shrine specialized in breaking the curses on cursed and haunted objects, and it even kept, according to procedure, a process for disposing of cursed boxes. The raid team, without particular suspicion, handed the box over readily, and the matter ended when they later received a certain payment. The owner of the shrine—the shrine master—turned out to have been a sponsor of an organization called the Patriotic Subjects Association.

Having obtained the Soul Reaper's casket, the shrine master took it to the Patriotic Subjects Association. When he came back, his hands were empty.

And the tightly sealed Soul Reaper's casket somehow entered Korea by ship, and at some point it had been passed off as an ordinary exhibition relic and treated as a valuable. The one who inspected the cargo knew nothing. He saw the valuables mark and the tightly sealed box, felt no particular suspicion, and stamped the inspection confirmed.

After that, the box containing the Soul Reaper was put up at a private auction house. It caught the eye of the museum director, who had been searching for a new theme for the Phase Hall, and became the centerpiece of the special exhibition's theme. On April 20, it went on display in the Phase Exhibition Hall in the basement of the National Museum of Korea. That was the storyline.

After that, the students of Euihan High School—including me—had gone to the National Museum of Korea on a field trip.

I couldn't shake the sense that something in the middle had been skipped in a flash. Looking at the documents, it wasn't a skip. It was a planned crime, carried out on the basis of information supplied in advance.

The information that I would go to the Central Museum for a field trip on April 24. The fact that around that time each year, Euihan High School split its entire student body in half and alternated between the mountain and the museum. If even one student, or one person connected to the school, existed, that was information anyone could get with ease.

The document on screen was the minutes of an Euihan High School faculty meeting. The entry recording that I was included ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠in Group A had been enlarged.

By then the reporters were murmuring, trading remarks among themselves.

"Is that real? Japan fabricated all that just to kill Grand Blue's master?"

"What was the Ability User Association doing, that they couldn't foresee something like this?"

I set Mana Sieve into my voice and opened my mouth low, and the noise vanished on the spot.

"Please watch what comes next."

Next was May 15. The route taken by the ones who had ambushed me: from Japan to the Philippines, a stop in Vietnam, through Hong Kong, from Taipei in Taiwan into Shanghai, and on to the Dong River in the city of Yantai. The evidence of it.

The items they had used in transit. Passports. Eyewitness statements and identification photos from near Kangdao in China. Satellite footage of the movement. It rose on the screen in turn.

Above all, every body photograph of the attackers who had ambushed me and been killed came up—faces and palms crushed and melted by hydrochloric acid, and the traces of tattoos on parts of the male and female attackers' bodies, followed until the evidence proved they were members of the Heavenly Imperial Guard, a Japanese ability-user organization.

The date and place for ambushing me had come through Sophia Adelberg, the intelligence assassin who had been a vice-captain of Time River. Every move I made, all of my information, had been passed to Japanese intelligence. Along with that bitch's photograph, it was submitted as evidence that she had been doing a spy's work for Japan, and that she had now fled and gone to ground.

The footage ended, but the reporters couldn't say a word, mute as if they had swallowed honey.

Of course they couldn't. I was concentrating Mana Sieve through my whole body, pressing them with atmosphere alone, telling them without words not to speak. Anyone who spoke under that would have to be an ability user, at minimum.

"I haven't done anything in particular to wrong Japan. Even the word 'wrong' is laughable. I've never so much as set foot on Tsushima, let alone Japan, and yet Japan has pulled dirty tricks twice to ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠kill me. Both times, people died. What exactly did I do, that Japan is so desperate to see me dead?"

I said it with a faint smile, microphone in hand, looking down at the reporters. They only swallowed, again and again, and watched me.

"So I intend to make a declaration of my own."

I let that be the last word and waited a moment. The reporter in the very front row cautiously raised a hand and opened his mouth.

"Wh-what sort of declaration is it...?"

"I'm told the group that tried to kill me belongs to Japan's Patriotic Subjects Association."

At the words Patriotic Subjects Association, every domestic and foreign reporter began to murmur.

When I first heard the name, I looked into the Patriotic Subjects Association. It was an organization that more than half the current members of the Japanese Diet belonged to.

Literally a gathering of bastards whose activities put ultra-right groups to shame. Whenever an issue about their own political failures came up, they dragged in our country's history and buried one scandal under another.

For instance: that the comfort women were an organization formed by the voluntary participation of Joseon women. That Dokdo was Japanese land. That Korea could only have developed this far because of Japanese rule.

Those sons of bitches. As if. That's bullshit.

They plundered and exploited the people for their own needs, laid the pipelines of the economy, and took every profit and every gain back to Japan—and then what?

"So I'm thinking of making a demand of Japan. Hand over to Korea everyone who took even a single step in the attacks on me. Well, if you'd rather not, you don't have to. Instead, you'll get to experience firsthand what kind of harm a teenager whose judgment is not yet sound—wielding immense power he cannot even control—might inflict on Japan. Mainly... on the members of that Patriotic Subjects Association."

Flashes burst without mercy, shutters hammering.

A glance confirmed the broadcast cameras were still on the air. I smiled brightly, so it would be captured clearly, and snapped my fingers, striking up an amber Wall of Space.

I shaped the Wall of Space into stairs and walked up them. Franc and Hiarid followed slowly, wrapped in bright yellow current and pure white light.

Miho, looking as if this were fun, swayed her six tails and spun through the air around me.

Just then a wind swept once around the roof and lifted the mood, and on the huge panel TV installed there, a PR video of my abilities—no exaggeration added—began to play.

As the video neared its end, a massive explosion rolled across the panel. Just as the reporters' eyes and cameras began to capture it, I slowly extended my right hand into the air.

At that, the domestic and foreign reporters all began photographing me at once.

I gave my attention to the commendable reporters filming me, then quickly formed a ten-thousand-TP Mana Shell and fired it into the sky.

The blue sphere, no bigger than a fist, shot into the sky like an arrow. A moment later it swept all the darkness away and, for an instant, set off an explosion of light that called the sun to mind.

KRRRRRUMMMMM……

"Gah?!" "Aaaah!" "Ugh!" "Oh my God!!" "¡Dios mío!" "Chyort!"

Thunder spread as it shook the air, and with a light as if to blind the eyes, a roar that shook the chest poured down onto the ground. The reporters began to scream in the languages of their own countries.

Feeling my body tremble from the thunder and the vibrating air, I looked up at the explosion of light illuminating the night sky of the Republic of Korea.

If I set that off on Japanese soil, what would the world call me? Destroyer? Slaughterer?

The vibration burst from the Mana Shell's explosion faded, and as the light died and darkness came rushing back, faces dyed in terror and shock turned toward me. The searchlights across the whole roof switched on, illuminating the roof, illuminating me where I floated in the air.

"This is entirely my own will. Grand Blue has nothing to do with it. Neither does Korea. Neither does the Ability User Association. The IWO's intentions are not involved in the slightest."

I raised my right hand and formed another Mana Shell, a vivid blue sphere, on my palm, and another baptism of flashes poured down.

"Until every person involved is handed over, once a day, a Mana Shell will fall somewhere in Japan. I'll do everything I can to keep people from dying, but..."

I grinned, sharp, and deliberately let the end of the sentence blur away.

"So before that happens, just have every last one of the bastards who tried to kill me extradited to Korea. Easy, isn't it?"

Men and women alike, cold sweat poured. Maybe because the tropical nights had started, everyone looked a little warm.

Watching them, I lifted from inside my jacket an energy source like a jewel more beautiful than any blue diamond. A high-grade phase stone.

"Lastly, six days from now, on August 1st, at the Grand Blue raid team's founding ceremony, ten high-grade phase stones will go to auction. I obtained them myself, of course, so there's no need to doubt the quality. I'll issue certificates if they're needed. For the details, ask the Director of General Affairs and the Business Support department head walking up behind me. That's all."

I flicked the high-grade phase stone toward Aunt Hyeryeong, who was walking this way. She startled, caught it in both hands, and wore the look of someone whose soul had nearly left her body.

A few did burst out in cries of shock at my sudden move. But until I slowly left the spot, not one reporter voiced a single question.