The Gaju's Command
Beginning with the Ogre Lord, countless ogres materialized in every direction.
Dozens of S-class ogres, each one a catastrophe on its own — and among them, an SSS-class Ogre Lord.
"Aaaaah!!!"
At the Ogre Lord's appearance, people screamed and fell. A few scrambled to flee, but far more stood frozen, paralyzed by terror.
"Kuuuh—"
The Ogre Lord snorted and laughed at the sight. Worthless insects, not even worth charging down. That was how it looked upon humanity.
The ogres that had arrived with it, however, were different. As people fled, they began to move — slowly — in their direction. Not for the sake of savoring fear. They had only just broken free of the seal; their bodies were still stiff.
Bang!
A unit of figures appeared, guns blazing toward those ogres. The family's vassals, already prepared for the danger of an Incursion. Clad in the same design of suit Jeong-Hoon had worn during Nova's hotel terror attack, helmets sealed and assault rifles in hand, their fire snapped the ogres' heads around.
Bang! Bang! Baaang!
As the vassals kept firing and gradually opened the distance, the ogres followed them away.
"……"
Even watching it all from the Ferris wheel, Jeong-Hoon felt his mind go light and dizzy. He had believed he understood how vital the seal sustained by his life force truly was. And yet, somewhere inside, he had still wondered how remarkable a seal held by a single life could really be.
The moment he saw the horde of ogres at Diana, he understood. If the seal broke, the world itself could end.
A force of ogres this size, with an Ogre Lord among them, had appeared only once in ten years. That single occurrence had branded the Ogre Lord into humanity's collective trauma. The power required to subjugate that Lord and its brood could have casually annihilated a nation or two. Nuclear weapons had even been considered. Every hunter on the planet had gathered to put down that one monster called an Ogre Lord.
"Gaju?"
As Jeong-Hoon's breathing grew ragged and his head rang hollow, Han Su-Ho and Min-Ha caught him from either side.
"Haa……"
"Are you all right?"
"Are you okay?"
He tried to nod at their words, but a white blankness flooded his mind and he shook his head again and again instead.
"Hup!"
The sight of a moment ago and the crushing pressure of the Ogre Lord refused to leave him.
Slap!
In the end, Jeong-Hoon struck his own cheek and forced himself back to clarity. If he fell into panic now, nothing would get done — not rice, not porridge, nothing.
"Owner to Lumen One. Can you handle eliminating the Ogre Lord? Check."
He managed to compose himself enough to transmit, but a tremor still clung to his voice.
"Lumen One. If you give the order, I will see it done. Before that, however, evacuating the guests takes priority. Check."
Butler Ju's reply came over the radio, heavy with resolve.
If the enemy is SSS-class, answer with SSS-class of our own. That had been Jeong-Hoon's reasoning when he asked — but the weight of commitment in Butler Ju's voice was immense. The resolve to carry out the Gaju's command no matter what. Even for an SSS-class like him, the Ogre Lord was an opponent that demanded everything he had. And for that reason, the visitors were an obstruction dragging at his ankles.
Ogre Lords and ogres were powerful. Even the 12 Vassals would have to meet them at full strength. At full strength, though, bystanders could be caught in the crossfire. They had to be evacuated first. Only then could this side unleash everything.
"Owner to all units. From this moment, the 12 Vassals will focus on containing the ogres as much as possible. All other vassals, devote yourselves entirely to evacuating the people. Check."
Looking down from the Ferris wheel, Jeong-Hoon had barely finished transmitting before suit-clad, helmeted vassals began appearing on every side — and he let out a long breath. Faith that things would somehow come under control once the vassals moved was already rooted deep in his heart.
"Then we should go as well."
Pressing the deployment switch of the suit hidden beneath his clothes, Jeong-Hoon spoke, and Han Su-Ho and Min-Ha beside him both nodded.
Diana was a theme park built around hunters and monsters. The park had divided its basin into seven zones by refined theme, each zone designed around the concept of a dungeon. At the heart of those seven, the central zone was the Air Dungeon Zone, themed after dungeons that spawned aerial monsters — the zone with the towering free-fall rides people pictured whenever they thought of Diana.
The Ogre Lord that had appeared there watched the fleeing crowds with blank indifference, breathing heavily. It left the people whose legs had given out, and those being half-carried by vassals or by each other, free to escape.
"Grrrr……"
The aftereffects of the seal were fading at last; the Ogre Lord's body was loosening. Instinct writhed, urging it to charge the fleeing humans that very instant. Yet it did not. Not out of mercy. It had recognized that someone was watching it from afar, waiting for an opening.
The rifle-bearing vassals were no threat to an Ogre Lord. A true powerhouse was holding it in check from a distance.
"Hmm. I took you for a beast ruled by instinct alone — I shall have to revise that assessment. Or did you simply sense it by instinct?"
Butler Ju, helmeted and suited, revealed himself while watching the Ogre Lord and murmured under his breath. Following Jeong-Hoon's order that the 12 Vassals contain the ogres until the people had evacuated, he had come to pin down the Ogre Lord. If it began to rampage, the evacuating crowds would die in droves. So the family's strongest current asset had stepped forward to hold the line.
"Grrrr."
"I am Joo Yeong-Cheol, head butler of the household. By the Gaju's command, I shall face you from this moment."
Even with a monster that could not understand language as his opponent, Butler Ju announced himself with full courtesy and settled into a stance. The Ogre Lord, recognizing him as its enemy, raised a fist.
KWA-GWA-GWANG!!!
The descending fist shook the earth. A fifteen-meter giant's fist was no mere punch. A shock like a bomb blast rolled outward, and screams rose from every side. The intended target, however — Butler Ju — leapt at the perfect instant and slipped past the blow with ease.
"……Leaping about without dignity is hardly to my taste, but if it is required to fulfill the command, I shall endure it."
Muttering, he changed direction midair and kicked off empty space. It was not martial arts. Butler Ju's power was physical reinforcement — the most fundamental of abilities. But at SSS-class, the story changed. He produced martial-arts-level force without ever employing martial arts.
Fwooom!
Even without generating fist-qi, the air itself burst with a crack as crushing pressure smashed into the Ogre Lord.
"KRAAAAH!!!"
The shockwave was powerful enough to crack the ground — yet to the Ogre Lord it was little more than a knuckle-rap on the skull. For an apex predator that had never known the sensation of pain, however, even that single rap was deeply offensive.
Crrrack!
So it ripped free one of the massive support pillars anchoring a sky-high ride beside it and swung the column at Butler Ju.
Among Diana's zones, the Ruin Dungeon Zone was themed after dungeons housing ancient ruins. To emphasize the mystery of those ruins, it had been packed with VR-centered attractions and had swallowed more money than any other zone. Those most expensive rides were being destroyed, one after another, by rampaging ogres.
Watching attractions that cost tens of billions of won apiece as a baseline get smashed to pieces, the head maid Jeong I-Yeong furrowed her brows. She was already in a foul mood, dressed not in her usual maid uniform but in a suit and helmet. There had been no choice. The family's true nature had to be concealed as thoroughly as possible.
"Expenses have increased."
After the ogres were dealt with, major repairs would be required — no, a full-scale reopening. Simply imagining how much money would bleed away made her head ache. Not because funds were lacking, but because managing the household's finances was one of the core duties of the 12 Vassals. How much budget she would have to pull in for Diana's reopening — which was to say, how much money she would have to launder — was enough to make her temples throb. The stress of not wearing her maid uniform only amplified the irritation.
"Therefore, I shall take it out on them."
Gliding past the orderly streams of people being guided by vassals — parents gripping children's hands — I-Yeong gave her hand a light turn, and telekinesis rose.
"Everyone, keep your heads as low as you can and run!!!"
As an invisible wave of force stirred around her at the gesture, the vassals directing the evacuation shouted. Parents with children made the kids duck first and ran. They had instinctively recognized that something significant — something not to be ignored — was about to happen.
Even with telekinesis, she could not simply lift and hurl an S-class ogre over five meters tall. Concentrate that telekinesis, though, and she could twist a leg. I-Yeong's power coiled precisely around the lead ogre's limb.
Crunch!
"KRAAAAH!!!"
Its leg bent in a direction no joint was meant to go; the ogre toppled, and the ground shuddered. Frenzied by pain, it flailed its fists wildly in every direction.
"KWOOOOR!!!"
Other ogres struck by those thrashing fists flew into their own rage and turned their violence on the thrashing one.
Crunch! Thud! Squelch!
Exposed to the furious assault of its kin, the fallen ogre was a bloody ruin in moments and fell still.
"Kin-slaying born of rage — how perfectly fitting for such brainless monsters."
Having engineered the fratricide, I-Yeong mocked it and raised her telekinesis once more.
"Kuooh?"
Rrrumble!!!
She goaded a massive VR pavilion already on the verge of collapse; the structure came down at once and buried the ogres beneath it.
Crrrash!
"KUOORRR!!!"
"Kyahaha!!! Die, the whole lot of you!!!"
As the ogres screamed under the falling attractions, I-Yeong burst into laughter and savored the spectacle. It was a cathartic, stress-shattering laugh she would never, ever allow herself in front of the Gaju, Jeong-Hoon.
The Ocean Dungeon Zone, themed after dungeons of the sea, was dominated by a broad lake and water rides such as flume rides.
"M-move! I was first!"
"Don't block the way!!!"
A place that should have overflowed with laughter was pure pandemonium — chaotic enough that even the vassals trying to guide the evacuation were hard-pressed. That chaos stilled the moment a suited figure appeared, drawing every eye without meaning to.
"Please evacuate in an orderly fashion."
Stepping out in front of the ogres with the crowd at his back, Yeo Tae-Hyeon — the man in charge of Shine Mall, an SS-class Awakened — watched people nod and smile beneath his helmet. A single plain sentence quieted them more effectively than all the vassals' urgent shouting; they fell into controlled compliance at once.
"All right then — let's get wild!"
As an ogre charged, Yeo Tae-Hyeon opened a subspace. One of the ogre's legs plunged into it, and he slammed the subspace shut.
"Kwuh?"
That subspace had sliced through orcs without effort, but an S-class ogre's leg did not sever. Forced back only by the closing space, the ogre merely staggered and lost its balance. Yeo Tae-Hyeon did not waste the opening. His fist drove into the ogre's skull.
As the shock rattled through its head and the ogre toppled backward, he mounted it in a full mount and hammered its head with blow after blow.
"Guek! Kuor! Guk! Kek!"
The wretched screams — hard to believe from an S-class monster — sent fear rippling through the surrounding ogres. Paying it no mind, Yeo Tae-Hyeon kept swinging.
Thud! Fsssh!
At last blood erupted from the ogre's head like a fountain, staining the great lake that was the Ocean Dungeon's symbol. Only then did Yeo Tae-Hyeon stop punching and turn his head toward the other ogres.
"Who's next for a brawl!!!"
Drenched in blood, spreading terror through the ogres — and yet the shout was so lively it hardly seemed to belong to a savage human. At that cry, a nearby ogre charged. Not courage. A basic survival drive etched into living flesh, convulsed into a spasm of fear.
"Right — so you wanted a piece of me. That works!"
As the charging ogre swung an arm, he raised both hands and caught it by the wrists. A snap of his body sent him spinning up along those wrists until he stood atop the ogre's arm. From there, the eyes gleaming inside Yeo Tae-Hyeon's helmet locked with the ogre's — and the ogre's eyes began to tremble madly.
The Under Dungeon Zone, themed after the subterranean caves that had been the most common dungeons in the early days, was lined with attractions tailored for Awakened. Constructed as a vast indoor complex to match its underground concept, it was also the place most at risk of collapse if ogres ran amok. Collapse itself had been accepted as inevitable. With people still needing evacuation, though, it was a serious problem.
One mercy: because of the attractions' nature, the Under Dungeon's main clientele were Awakened, and they followed evacuation guidance well.
"Even so, having to fight alongside Butler Woo is simply dreadful."
"Butler Ko, I was about to say the same."
Woo Do-Il, director of Myeongil Hospital, and Ko Yu-Yeon, head of the family's legal team. That two SS-class Awakened had been deployed to the same location alone showed how seriously the evacuation was being treated. The problem was that their relationship was the worst among the 12 Vassals. The gazes meeting through their helmets practically threw sparks.
"I trust you will not hold me back, Butler Woo."
"I was about to say the same to you, Butler Ko."
Set the friction aside, however, and their compatibility was the best among the 12 Vassals. Ko Yu-Yeon, who wielded formidable illusion-type powers, and Woo Do-Il, whose ability nullified other abilities, formed an outstanding pair. Ko Yu-Yeon's power was strong. The issue was that the harder he pushed it, the harder friend-or-foe identification became — because it designated an area rather than a target. If Woo Do-Il recognized allies and applied nullification, those allies stayed safe from Ko Yu-Yeon's power. For containing ogres while evacuating people inside the enclosed Under Dungeon Zone, no pair was better suited.
In practice, under their coordinated assault the ogres simply shuddered, trapped in hallucinations, while other vassals guided the evacuation.
"Even if the wounded's injuries are light, make certain the standby medical teams see them."
Woo Do-Il issued careful instructions to the vassals handling evacuation as he amplified his nullification.
"Butler Ko, are you not overtaxing your ability?"
"The opponents are S-class monsters — ogres. Of course their resistance is high."
Firing back that high resistance forced him to push his power hard, Ko Yu-Yeon deliberately met Woo Do-Il's eyes and smirked. A smirk that asked whether keeping up was too much for him.
"High resistance by what standard? I would prefer you answer with those numbers you are so fond of."
"……You have been holding that against me all this time? You are a smaller man than you look, Butler Woo."
When Woo Do-Il struck back with the old quarrel over the painkillers he had given So-Hyeon during the sealing — a grudge he had clearly nursed — an incredulous smile rose on Ko Yu-Yeon's face. He had never imagined the man would keep it bottled up for more than a month.