A Treasure Precious to Someone! # 3
The warehouse where Lee Jeonghun had asked to meet me turned out to be a space housing his own private vault.
Clunk—.
The moment I slotted an old key into the wall, a steel door opened up from the warehouse floor, and inside, row upon row of cars sat parked as if on display in a showroom.
"Whoa, holy crap—isn't that a Bugatti Mana Brake? The fastest car in the world! It's the limited edition that supposedly breaks 100 kilometers per hour in one second!"
Lee Jina's eyes lit up at the black sports cars. She was the type to watch car vlogs on MeTube for fun, so her obsession with vehicles ran deep.
It was only natural that her eyes were practically spinning out of her head at the sight of the fleet parked inside Lee Jeonghun's secret base.
Even I felt my scalp prickle at the wall of weapons hanging on every surface.
"Is that a Beam Saber? An early model? Don't the early models explode once every thousand uses? Wow, I can't believe I'm actually seeing one. And is this a compact railgun! There's even a power suit!"
Was this what a hero's secret, hidden headquarters would feel like? The kind of place every man dreams of—my heart fluttered in more ways than one.
Once I make real money, I'm building one of these for myself too!
Ari chimed in as well.
"Lee Jeonghun. I've never heard a single word about you owning things like this. Weren't all your assets mortgaged to the government and seized?"
"......"
The owner of this space, Lee Jeonghun, was squirming on pins and needles.
He looked like a man whose secret stash had just been discovered—and in practice, that was almost exactly what had happened.
Ari was a civil servant, after all.
Then Illinoi spoke up.
"What eez diz red automobile, I ask…? It looks tremendously nymph-friendly, and zat eez magnifique, it eez…! It matches Illinoi's gorgeous red hair so perfectly, it eez simply similar, I say…!"
"Huh? You've got a good eye. That's a Lamborghini La Heckate. It runs entirely on mana—there are only two of them in the whole world."
"Indeed, absolutely gorgeous and purr-fect, it eez…! A mana-driven, nymph-friendly, organic method—very much to my liking, it eez…! From zis moment on, zis car shall be renamed ze Illinoi-mobile, I declare…!"
Whoosh—.
Illinoi climbed on top of the car and shouted.
Lee Jeonghun, witnessing the spectacle, was thrown into utter panic.
"...The Illinoi-mobile? What on earth are you talking about?"
Amid all the chaos, I snapped myself back to attention.
"We don't have time for this."
Granted, I'd had a momentary lapse into gawking at a magnificent secret base, but we were on a mission—to rescue our abandoned comrade.
Lee Jeonghun, too, seemed to pull himself together, his expression hardening into something serious.
"Follow me!"
At the end of the path behind Lee Jeonghun stood a machine gleaming with black light.
"This is a stealth silent helicopter. A prototype built by Ohsa Group's arms development division. It can neutralize radar and every other type of detection device."
It was an enormous helicopter.
Big enough for all of us to ride in.
Even Yu Ari—someone who normally couldn't have cared less about military hardware, weapons, or suits—gasped in admiration, running her palms over every inch of the helicopter.
"What an impressive helicopter. Completely silent, plus a jamming array that scatters interference signals? If we'd had these all along, public servants' jobs would have been a whole lot easier."
Yu Ari was a doctor.
She was probably thinking how wonderful it would have been, back in the day, to swoop into emergencies by helicopter and save people.
But for some reason, Lee Jeonghun's expression kept darkening, until cold sweat even beaded on his brow.
The helicopter—distilled perfection of the 5th Industry—was fast and invisible.
Before we knew it, the typhoon said to have erupted at the center of the Pacific was swirling right in front of us.
Piiiipipiipiii—.
Somehow ominous alarm bells rang out from the cockpit, and Lee Jeonghun shouted his warning in a voice taut with tension: "Everyone, hold on tight!"
KWA-BOOM—!
KWARRRRR—!
On the news it had looked like nothing, but up close, the typhoon was a disaster incarnate.
And yet Oinoi seemed to be in a wonderful mood.
"Open the door, is what Oinoi demands…! This Oinoi wishes to capture the typhoon inside this glass bottle, she does…! If Oinoi tames the typhoon, then surely Oinoi can sprinkle rain whenever she pleases and grow golden apples and flowers, it is certain…!"
Oinoi wanted to bottle the typhoon's winds in a special jar inscribed with ancient charms and take it home with us.
I had no idea how anyone was supposed to tame and raise a typhoon, but Oinoi's claims had always been too unbelievable to trust—and they had always, without exception, turned out to be true.
"But Oinoi! If we open the door right now, you'll get blown away!"
"Just leave it to this Oinoi, is what she says…!"
Oinoi brimmed with confidence.
Beep—.
Lee Jeonghun pressed a button, and the helicopter's door slid open along its rail with a smooth whirr—.
Immediately, as if she'd been waiting for exactly that, Oinoi thrust the hand clutching her glass bottle straight out into the open air.
"Ah…! Oinoi has missed it, she has…!"
But the terrifying winds pried the glass bottle right out of Oinoi's fingers.
Down toward the Pacific the bottle fell.
Kalinoi, flying alongside the helicopter, let out a sharp cry at the sight.
━Hoo, hoo…!
Zoom—.
Kalinoi dove toward the falling bottle at a speed faster than the helicopter itself, snatching it up in her talons with a firm snatch! My chest swelled with pride at the sight.
"That's our Kalinoi!"
"Now we go down there, is what Oinoi says…! We nymphs are closest friends with water, but we are fairies on friendly terms with the wind as well…! We can surely tell which part of the typhoon is most vulnerable, Oinoi is certain…!"
According to her, a nymph's short ears are extraordinarily sensitive—perfectly suited for feeling the wind.
The moment the helicopter door had opened, Oinoi and the other nymphs had apparently taken a quick measure of the entire massive typhoon—and seemed to have already pinpointed the best route of entry.
"Bringing the nymphs along was the right call after all!"
I congratulated myself on believing in what Oinoi and the nymphs could do.
Whoosh—.
Kalinoi plunged into the typhoon first.
Shaaaaaa—.
Spinning as she flew like a fired bullet, Kalinoi bored onward.
Shuuuuuuuuuuuuu—.
She carved out a passage of airflow through the storm as smooth and cozy as a secret tunnel.
Soon, without the slightest strain, the helicopter passed straight through the typhoon and reached the storm's eye—the one zone that could truly be called safe.
"...It's that easy? Last time I flew out here, the whole chopper got twisted up and nearly torn apart. It was chaos!"
Lee Jeonghun was floored.
He hadn't imagined the nymphs' intimate knowledge of nature ran this deep.
Kalinoi's performance had been dazzling, too.
I'll have to grill her some beef when we get home!
Thump—.
At last, the helicopter touched down on the beach of the strange island.
━Hoo, hoo…!
Kalinoi, who had arrived ahead of us, waddled over and nuzzled her water-soaked feathers and head against my body.
I pulled out a towel and dabbed the moisture from her plumage.
"Kalinoi, you did great! Tiger Owls are seriously incredible!"
━Hoo, hoo…!
Kalinoi seemed pleased with herself, spreading her wings and scampering in every direction. The nymphs got excited too, exclaiming, "This beach is nymph-friendly, it is…!"
Who could have imagined such a peaceful stretch of shoreline existed in the heart of that treacherous typhoon?
Then Lee Jina sank to one knee on the sand, scooped up a handful, and murmured under her breath.
"An island that wasn't on any map, born out of nowhere along with the typhoon, huh. And that's a tower...? A Tower of Babel? It's impossibly huge. My eyes can't even take it all in."
An island born of the typhoon.
And a truly, truly colossal tower rising from it.
Lee Jeonghun had given me fair warning beforehand, but seeing it in person, even I felt crushed beneath its presence.
The tower soared all the way up into the clouds, and its width... my eyes alone couldn't begin to measure it.
"Everyone must behold this, is what Oinoi says…! The typhoon has been safely captured inside the glass bottle…! No nymph anywhere in the world could seize and tame a typhoon this enormous—of that Oinoi is certain…!"
Lift—.
Oinoi held the bottle high overhead.
Inside, it just looked like an ordinary, transparent jar—but according to Oinoi, she had somehow managed to trap the typhoon's winds within.
Honestly, I couldn't tell you how!
"But this Oinoi wonders what that thing over there is, she does…!"
Point—.
Coris, who had been romping along the beach, indicated something with her hand.
Wedged between the rocks of the shoreline, her finger pointed at a red helicopter—and its shape bore a striking resemblance to the one we'd arrived in.
The first to identify it was Ari, who as a civil servant had access to all manner of information.
"That's a Chinese helicopter. Senior, that's a Black Snake Sect chopper! The Black Snake Sect is China's black ops unit! Which means—the Chinese have already landed on this island before us!"
The Black Snake Sect?
It was a name I'd never heard before.
Some classified special operations unit, no doubt.
Still, the mere word "China" put me sharply on guard.
In the age of the 5th Industry, China was a rugby ball of a country—you could never guess which way it would bounce next.
"Sect Master. A helicopter has just landed on the beach."
"Oh? From where?"
"...We do not know, Sect Master. It is a helicopter that could be neither detected nor sensed—"
The woman called Sect Master opened her narrow eyes from within the shadows, her form still hidden.
"A helicopter that cannot be sensed or detected, and that punched straight through the typhoon a T-Rank Rift spawned. Then it must be Korea. Right now, Korea is the only nation on Earth capable of building such a thing."
Tsk—.
She clicked her tongue.
Her thoughts drifted back to ten years ago.
Ten years ago.
When rifts had erupted across Korea in droves, the whole world believed the country was doomed.
And in truth, it very nearly was.
Then rifts began erupting all across the globe—but somehow, China alone had escaped the rift calamity and become a safe nation.
A land stretching over ten thousand li, a population of over a billion, and almost no damage from the rifts. It was a miracle—and it fired up the hearts of a billion citizens.
"We live in a chosen land! We are the center of the Earth!"
"Banzai!"
"China—the Nation Safe from the Rifts."
That became their slogan.
But everything began to change the moment people learned to conquer rifts and use what lay inside them to raise gleaming towers into the sky.
"If we're going to keep pace with the world of the 5th Industry, we must seize the high ground within this typhoon, no matter what it takes. And we must recruit more awakeners."
If a Korean team had been dispatched here, its members were surely formidable.
"Sect Master. What are your orders? According to the report we just received, there is a man accompanied by a Dog-Squirrel and a giant Tiger Owl. A Honey Ant has been spotted as well. Quite adorable, I must say. The Honey Ant in particular was a lovely sight, glittering all in gold."
"What? A man with a Dog-Squirrel, a giant owl, and a Honey Ant, you say. There's no doubt a rainbow-shimmering spider hiding somewhere unseen, too! It has to be that man!"
Icing on the cake.
Wasn't a flower laid upon silk precisely a description of this very moment?
Xiaoxiao, China's one and only S-Rank awakener, clenched her fist tight.
"Let it be known to all Black Serpents. We are adding an objective to the operation. We will capture Ha Ildo alive and bring him to China."