These Bastards, For Real?! (2)

After the announcement I'd dressed up as a press conference, I came back to the office and found Hwayeon standing there, dark circles bruised deep beneath her eyes.

She had returned yesterday. Once she'd heard the whole story from Aunt Hyeryeong and Yeongeun, she hadn't been able to say a word, and through the night she never slept — only turned over, and over, and over. The shock must have cut deep.

"You okay?"

"I'm sorry..."

"Haa..."

She couldn't even meet my eyes. I pulled her into a hard embrace. The one who had betrayed us was Sophia, not Hwayeon — so why was she swallowing the guilt like this?

"This isn't your fault. Nobody but Yeongeun even noticed there was a spy. She said herself she never guessed it was Sophia, and I didn't suspect a thing."

"And the way she bolted the instant before we could grab her — that was planned from the start... No. Forget it. Don't dwell on it, Hwayeon. Yeongeun and I will handle all of it."

No matter how I reassured her, she couldn't get a word out. She only stood there with her face buried in my shoulder, so I locked my arms around her waist hard enough to snap it.

"Hkk—?! S-Seoha?"

The pain must have felt like her spine giving way. A strangled cry tore out of her, and only then did she look at me.

"There, your mouth works. I'll say it again — this is not your fault. Though if what you're repenting is the version of you that got fooled by a traitor and went around calling her unnie, unnie, I'll allow that much."

"...Haa. Seoha. I have a request."

Shadows sat under her eyes, and the whites were faintly bloodshot. She looked at me with a grave face and opened her mouth.

"Leave... her punishment to me."

"All right. In exchange, give me a turn to stomp on her too."

"...Understood."

Miho had a finger caught between her teeth, wearing an expression that begged for a hug of her own. If Franc hadn't been holding her by the shoulder, she looked ready to charge in that very second, utterly deaf to the mood.

Still holding Hwayeon, I flicked Spatial Perception toward the roof of Business Support Building 2. The reporters up there were losing their minds. My sister and Aunt Hyeryeong were pouring cold sweat, working desperately to calm them, while Department Head Kim Pyochung and Department Head Ha Yucheol had mobilized every burly staffer from the Business Support buildings to soothe the press.

Once today's announcement and what I meant to do tomorrow spread across the world, even that prickly woman from the Ability Affairs Ministry — the one who'd given me an earful during the PR shoot — wouldn't have a word left to say.

When we got home I drew Hwayeon into my arms and let my hands wander over a body so tempting I wanted to devour her on the spot. She squirmed, then let out a long sigh.

"...Do you want to do it?"

"Huh? I'm always ready, but you seemed to be in a bad mood today, so I was trying to cheer you up."

As I said it, I slipped a hand under her suit blouse and started fondling breasts as soft and yielding as rice-cake ice cream. She turned to me with a look of pure disbelief.

"What does cheering up my mood have to do with doing it?"

"Franc said so. When you're in a bad mood, doing it once helps you feel better..."

"Wh-when did I ever say that!"

Franc shrieked as if I'd stabbed her, jolting in shock.

"Huh?! When Hwayeon was away on the Second Unit subjugation, you said it. And after that, when I was in a foul mood over that bastard, you told me to just—mmph!"

"Kyaa~! Eek! Kyaah!"

She darted in and clamped a hand over my mouth, face blazing red, shaking her head frantically. What? Why was she acting like this?

Miho's voice chimed, bright and curious.

"So if someone touches big breasts, you feel better?"

"That is not it! That cannot possibly be it! Miho, please cover your ears!"

"Why?"

"A child must not hear things like this..."

That was when Hiarid lifted the skirt of her own dress, prodded breasts the size of watermelons, and spoke with a perfectly blank face.

= Having one's chest touched does not improve one's mood. =

"Really? I want to try too."

= Please do so. =

"Waaah~ Squishy squishy~ Warm warm~"

For a moment, none of us could speak.

I caught the hand Franc still had over my mouth, hoisted her blushing self up under ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠my right arm, then grabbed Miho — still kneading breasts bigger than Hiarid's own head — and tucked her under my left. Then I sighed.

"Calm down. First, let's see how people are reacting to my declaration."

I forced the unraveling mood back into some kind of order and switched on the television. The screen was playing the moment I'd detonated the Mana Cannon earlier. A sky bright as a white night gave way to a famous Korean newsroom, where a young woman anchor and a potbellied middle-aged man in a suit filled the frame.

The middle-aged professor had abruptly launched into calculating the size of my Mana Cannon's blast, and he seemed deaf to the anchor's flustered voice as he worked through the scale of the explosion.

No matter how many channels I flipped, they kept replaying fragments of my PR video. The full expanse of the Floating Sky Islands and the Mana Cannon detonation. Album Cetus and the Mana Cannon detonation. The battle against Peak-Rank Variants and the winged Flavius, and — again — the Mana Cannon detonation.

Turning the channels eventually brought me to two scholars whose faces carried real years on them, debating in a studio. The exchange was fairly interesting.

Ugh. What even was this. The horse-faced scholar, fed up with the rat-faced debater's endless needling, had suddenly roared. For a moment I'd thought they were on an interesting subject. Then it turned into a dogfight.

Anyway, things were already noisy at home. Franc was scrolling foreign articles on her phone, and Hwayeon had switched on her Certifier to wander the community boards.

"Hwayeon. Please look at this."

On the social feed of a British news desk that Franc was showing her, live articles about me were being retweeted hundreds of times the moment they went up.

"..."

Seeing Hwayeon's face tighten, I wondered what was wrong and leaned in to look at the holographic screen the two of them were watching.

I'd gotten that far when Hwayeon, face tight with anger, started typing something into the comment box below.

...And I know, former keyboard warrior that I am, that posting like that only makes it—

Dozens of replies piled on, and the thread exploded.

Watching the replies, Hwayeon went scarlet and started to shake. I was still wondering how to calm her down when a call came in on the Certifier. I answered, and Yeongeun's tearful face rose in the holographic window.

"What's wrong?"

"Heh. Hang in there."

I grinned as I said it, encouraging Yeongeun, who was glancing at me with a deliberately grumpy face. She faltered for a second, then grimaced and apologized.

"Hm? It's fine. You haven't given up on catching her, right?"

"Then we're good."

One more reason to go to Britain in the near future. I'd have to pay that filthy bitch's house a visit.

Yeongeun glanced at Hwayeon beside me, still wrestling her anger down, and spoke with a sigh.

"You must really be busy. It's because I have you that I can charge in like I did today. I'll trust only you."

"I'll kiss you deep enough to knock you out."

"The first move won't be an attack. It'll be a threat. So can you find me a place with no people?"

Then she opened her mouth again, wearing a wicked smile.

"I can. If I set it off over the sea, the tsunami would slam into countries that have nothing to do with this, so I'll detonate it in Japanese airspace."

"Hmm... If it's only a matter of erasing Mount Fuji, about a thousand TP would be enough to wipe it off the map."

"Yeah. I'll fire it loaded with the grudge of a Yeongeun who can't come home."

Franc and Hwayeon, having watched the two of us talk, wore expressions of faint exasperation.

"Terrifying."

"It's frightening..."

It wasn't real fear, and it wasn't that they were genuinely fed up — mischief was mixed into their faces — so I let out a short laugh, leaned back into the sofa, and spoke.

"Soon I'll be able to lay a flower on the graves of the bodyguard brothers and sisters."

"..."

"I'll smash every last one of the bastards who came after me, drag them there, make them kneel in front of those graves, and have them beg forgiveness a hundred times over."

And Sophia — the moment you're caught, you're going to chant that you're already dead.

I was up early the next morning. I went into the equipment room where Hwayeon and Yeongeun's weapons and defensive gear were displayed, and started putting on the Force Leather set — and a Blue Stone slipped out of the jacket pocket. I'd been so pissed about Japan that I'd forgotten the thing. For now I tossed it into the box where I kept the high-grade Phase Stones whose TP had bottomed out, and left. Once I built a research lab, I could throw it at them and tell them to study it.

When I came out to the living room fully dressed in the Force Leather, Hwayeon was standing there with a thin blanket wrapped around her like a dress, hiding the fierce marks of lovemaking all over her body. Franc was waiting too, already dressed to go out. Miho had on a T-shirt and suspender skirt my sister used to wear as a child, tail swishing.

"What's this. You're coming too?"

"Wherever Master goes, I'm going too!"

"So you are going."

"Yeah. I'm going to show them what happens if they don't hand the criminals over."

Hwayeon gave a small nod, turned on her Certifier, opened a world map, and zoomed until only our country and Japan remained. Then she extended a finger and drew a long diagonal across the zone roughly halfway between the two.

"The map of Japan... Tokyo's farther than I thought."

"In terms of distance, it is about 1,100 kilometers from Seoul to Tokyo. And from here on is Japanese airspace."

As she raised her hand, the thin blanket covering her gaped, and the dazzling nakedness of her body showed through. My eyes went to the valley between her thighs, and I forced them away. Somehow the way it revealed itself in glimpses felt even more obscene.

"Then I'll be back."

Hiarid moved to follow, but she still hadn't been cleared by the Ability User Association, so I sat her down and took only Franc and Miho, leaping from the terrace into the sky. I unfolded Mana Mode - Acceleration and started running flat-out toward Dokdo. While I ran, I sent Yeongeun a text that I'd departed.

Then I looked at Franc and Miho flying alongside me, and envied the wind attribute. Even at my full speed they had no trouble trading the lead, throwing in aerial acrobatics the whole way. It looked ridiculously comfortable.

I focused on the run for a long while, and it still took nearly thirty-five minutes just to reach Dokdo. We were about fifteen kilometers off the ground. Through the gaps in clouds spread like a wool carpet, I could see Japanese land.

"Farther than I thought... Getting from here to the sky over Tokyo will take more than an hour."

"If you intend to fire into the sky above Tokyo, there is no need to go all the way there, is there? It seems to me you could fire from here."

"Oho. You're right."

I giggled at Franc, who was staring at me blankly, and eyeballed roughly how high I'd need to fire for the Japanese public and those Patriotic Subjects Association bastards to feel absolute terror. If I just shot and a village or a city got swept up in the Mana Cannon by mistake, that would be a bad outcome.

Of course I hated the ones who'd tried to kill me enough to want them dead, and the Japanese public had elected those people, so all of it pissed me off. But if you have power and kill people indiscriminately just because you're in a bad mood, that makes you human garbage. Besides, if a Mana Cannon landed on Tokyo, tens of millions would die. At that point, even calling it a fight between an individual and a state, the Ability User Association and the IWO wouldn't sit still.

I wasn't particularly scared of them coming at me if they refused to sit still. What scared me was not knowing what methods they'd use. I was confident I could win no matter the situation. I just didn't want those people targeting my family, or my lovers. And if I started brawling with countries like America, Russia, Britain, and China, I'd be announcing to the whole world that I was more dangerous than that bastard Ha Cheolsu. I was trying to wreck Japan and might end up fighting the entire world. I had to be careful that didn't happen.

...If it did come to a fight, should I gather my family inside a bunker made of Space Walls and drop one Mana Cannon on the capital of every country that came at me? They'd probably get scared and leave me alone. Or maybe they'd get consumed by spite and latch on even harder.

I caught Miho, who was orbiting me like a satellite, pulled her into a hug, and stroked her tail. She burst into shrieking laughter and twisted in my arms. I was still brooding, feeling the warmth of her small body, when Franc — who'd read the worry on me — looked toward Japan and spoke.

"Why not climb a little higher? You are at about fifteen kilometers now. From fifty kilometers up, a suitable position may present itself."

"Ugh. It gets cold up there, and breathing's hard. Tch. Patriotic Subjects Association or Association of Idiot Slaves, I'm not letting them walk."

I ground my teeth, concentrated Mana Sieve through my whole body to the limit, and started circulating it over my skin. My entire body turned a deep blue, as if I'd climbed into a bucket of blue paint and climbed back out. I sighed and leapt up to fifty kilometers. The cold was less than when I concentrated Mana Sieve the ordinary way, but Miho — even with dozens of fireballs stuck to her body — was shivering hard. Her tail fur had frozen stiff. It was pathetic enough to be funny.

"M-M-Ma-Master, i-it's coooold, sh-sh-shivering."

"You go back down to where we were."

"O-o-okaayyy."

In that brief moment her face had gone a ghastly blue, and the instant I finished speaking she shot downward. I watched her go, then checked my Phase Power. Sure enough, TP was dropping at about fifty per second. It was decreasing to protect my body in conditions harmful to flesh. At this altitude, it wasn't a place a person could exist with a bare body.

"Let's go a little higher."

I told Franc, and just in case, pulled from my pocket the high-grade Phase Stone I'd charged to five million TP and gripped it in my left hand. If my TP dropped into the danger zone, I'd draw from the stone and absorb it. I took the deepest breath I could, poured everything into concentrating Mana Sieve through my body, and climbed. The higher I went, the more terrifying the rate of TP loss became.

When I reached a hundred kilometers up and checked the consumption, at this rate even burning the Phase Stone's Phase Power plus all of my own TP, I'd last twenty minutes at most. Eight and a half million TP for only twenty minutes. The efficiency was absolute garbage.

I looked around. It was dark in every direction, which was a little frightening — but thanks to that, all of Tokyo lay clear below me, and a firing line came into view. Franc was mouthing something in front of me, but no sound reached me. No atmosphere? I read her lips instead.

"Is your body all right?"

"I'm fine. TP is dropping a little, but once I'm done I should be able to head down."

I glanced at Franc, who looked perfectly fine, nodded to say I was all right, and extended my right hand to prepare a Mana Cannon. A 10,000 TP Mana Cannon covered roughly 150 kilometers, so if I detonated it 300 kilometers above Tokyo, the blast would blanket the sky over the city. I gauged a suitable position, condensed TP in my palm, set it spinning, sheathed the surface in Mana Sieve, and let it fly.

The Mana Cannon left my hand without a sound and shot away. Its speed was one kilometer per second, and the target was about seven hundred kilometers off, so it would detonate in roughly twelve minutes. One shot felt thin, so I decided to give them a few more. When a minute had passed I fired another. A minute after the second, I fired again. One minute after that, I launched the fourth.

I'd aimed them to detonate at the vertices of a square, with Tokyo at the center, so the message would reach the Patriotic Subjects Association bastards in the city, and the citizens of Tokyo with them, without fail.

My threat.

Each blast ran about 150 kilometers across, so four of them going off a minute apart would be seen whether anyone wanted to look or not. Those explosions would be visible even from the great cities beside Tokyo, Nagoya and Osaka... No. Yesterday's shot had been seen from the surrounding countries. Korea would see this one clear as day.

With my TP plunging, I stimulated the Phase Stone in my left hand and began drawing TP into my body. Then I turned on the Certifier and sent Yeongeun a text — the Mana Cannons were launched, and four of them would detonate in sequence nine minutes later. A call came in at the same moment.

I couldn't talk right now. I answered anyway, and Yeongeun's face appeared in the holographic window.

Our country was visible?

I turned at her words, and it was true. The whole of Korea lay in view. More puzzling than that — there was no oxygen here. How was I hearing her at all? Ah. The Certifier was stuck to my skin, so the sound was traveling as vibration through my body. I'd thought the voice had a faint echo. So the device could do that.

I angled the screen downward for a moment and held up a single finger. Her reply came at once.

I nodded, and a murmur rose from beyond the holographic window. Yeongeun stared at me blankly, as if she hadn't expected this, until a middle-aged woman who looked like a secretary lightly touched her shoulder.

She'd suddenly switched to honorifics, speaking with an awkward tone and an awkward face. This was that formal — what was it called. The right word wouldn't come. Anyway, it seemed to be that thing where they leave a record that the Korean government had gone through the motions of trying to stop me.

...Oh! R-right — I hadn't even thought about airplanes!

Panic hit me for an instant. Then I remembered what Yeongeun had just said, and let out a sigh that came from the gut.

Ha. I'd come a hair away from actually becoming a butcher of tens of thousands.

I nodded and turned my body toward Tokyo. Gasps and cries of shock kept spilling from the holographic window — they must have been able to see all of Japan. After that, Yeongeun went on in the flat cadence of someone reading aloud from a language textbook: a reckless attack in a situation like this would only deepen the emotional rift, and she asked that I consult our government before taking action, if at all possible. I nodded along and looked toward Tokyo.

A moment later a sun was born in the sky over the city, and I watched the explosion of light. Then, at one-minute intervals, three more suns appeared in succession. I grinned.

Good job.

Shockwaves from the Mana Cannon blasts poured down toward the ground, and I could see waves stirring faintly in the waters off Tokyo. If a shockwave that size had reached the surface, there was probably some damage... Eh, whatever. At this point it ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠had to count as a definite threat.

I looked at the four suns, flicked my index finger up, checked the Phase Power draining toward empty — and the instant I did, I dropped toward the ground like a shot.

Mission complete. Returning!