The Elder Council Deploys
When someone awakens as an S-class, they gain the ability to wield mana. And their body is reconstructed to match that mana.
In other words, the so-called metamorphosis takes place.
"GRAAAAH!!!"
The Ogre Lord, already stumbling backward in terror from Jeong-Hoon's wave of power, shrieked and shielded its eyes as Min-ha erupted in the searing light of metamorphosis.
Whoooom!
The Ogre Lord swung its fist blindly, thrashing to banish the blinding radiance. It had lost all reason — so thoroughly that it even forgot the one who had filled it with dread, Jeong-Hoon, was standing right there.
Thoom!
Min-ha stopped that blow with a single, casual punch.
Something even the A-class vassals could not hold back together, she alone turned aside.
Metamorphosis does not end at simply reconstructing the body to suit mana. The mana that remakes the body lingers for twenty-four hours and pours strength into its vessel.
For those twenty-four hours, the Awakened is lifted beyond S-class — granted power rivaling the current pinnacle of humanity, the SSS-class: bottomless mana, stamina that never flags, regenerative force that refuses to die. Something close to omnipotence.
With a fist steeped in that near-omnipotent force, Min-ha blocked the Ogre Lord's blow and, in the same breath, settled on the most efficient way to bring the monster down.
Invincible as the strength that came with metamorphosis might be, a woman who had only just stepped into S-class still had no single strike that could finish an Ogre Lord. So she simply kicked off the ground.
"KUOOH!!!"
As Min-ha rose into the air, the Ogre Lord swept its blocked hand upward.
Thok!
But she used that very motion as a foothold and sprang even higher.
"UOOOH!!!"
Seeing her climb beyond the reach of its grasp, the Ogre Lord snorted and lifted a foot — not from strategy, but from pure, flailing instinct. The creature was so steeped in fear that it was barely conscious. Min-ha's expression hardened.
If the Ogre Lord went berserk, Jeong-Hoon, the vassals, and the people still evacuating nearby would all be caught in the chaos. She was not fighting merely to fell the Ogre Lord. She was fighting to protect everyone.
Can I do this? No — I can!
With that certainty, she deployed her ability beneath the Ogre Lord's foot. Her power was Sealing — a barrier skill that designated an object or area and locked that space down. A barrier formed around the Ogre Lord's foot and bound it in place.
An ability that had never worked at A-class now took hold with almost insulting ease. Then she spun her body and triggered Sealing once more under her own feet.
Multiple, successive deployments of an ability — impossible at A-class. Possible now.
Thung! Whoom! Whoom! Whoom!
Kicking off the solidified space of her own seals, Min-ha tumbled through the air and flew straight at the Ogre Lord's head, then scythed her leg down.
KRAK!
"KUAAAARGH!!!"
"Just die already!"
The axe-kick crashed into the Ogre Lord's skull, and in that instant Min-ha knew: it would work. She could drop the Ogre Lord for certain. So she poured her ability into its head.
Full-power deployment. Not at range, but at zero distance — a strike with no loss, every scrap of strength poured in. That single blow fused with the mana of her metamorphosis and sealed the Ogre Lord's head.
Wuuuung! KRRRACK!!!
The sealed zone contracted, wringing blood from the Ogre Lord's skull.
Kuuung!
Its head shattered, and the lifeless giant toppled backward, shaking the earth.
"…!"
Spending everything to fell the Ogre Lord snapped Min-ha free of the intoxicating omnipotence mana had given her. She landed and spun toward Jeong-Hoon at once.
"Haa…! Ga—"
"It's Chairman."
"Ah — yes! Chairman, are you all right?"
"Thanks to you, I'm fine."
Watching her nearly slip into the wrong form of address while drunk on that all-powerful rush, Jeong-Hoon simply nodded.
"You know that when you awaken as S-class, you're invincible for twenty-four hours, right?"
"Yes!"
"Then go fight. The others are still pouring everything they have into this."
For the next day, Min-ha was invincible. So Jeong-Hoon gave the order without a shred of worry. She nodded eagerly.
She had emptied herself deploying her ability at full strength, but under the influence of metamorphosis the fatigue was already knitting itself away and her mana was surging back — the same state as the moment she first rose to S-class.
"Leave it to me! Ah — Chairman, are you really all right?"
"…I'm not. Looks like I'll have to evacuate too."
"Then shall I escort you?"
Min-ha asked, eyes full of concern. Jeong-Hoon shook his head.
"I can ask the people here."
He turned as he spoke, and the vassals caught in his gaze dusted themselves off and stood. They had taken serious wounds from the Ogre Lord's blows only moments before — yet now they were fine. Exposure to Jeong-Hoon's wave had erased the shock the Ogre Lord had dealt them.
"Chairman, are you unharmed?"
"…And we've also got Director Han with us."
Jeong-Hoon had come running blindly when the radios failed — but he had not come alone. Han Su-Ho had been with him. He had simply been delayed, forced to shake free of ogres that had suddenly surrounded them along the way.
Han Su-Ho had figured that while he drew the ogres off, Jeong-Hoon would link up with the vassals and be safe. Then the Ogre Lord had appeared. He had sprinted the rest of the way at full power and arrived soaked in blood.
"But are you all right, Director Han?"
"This isn't my blood."
Jeong-Hoon eyed Han Su-Ho's blood-drenched suit with worry; the man only shrugged. The moment he had spotted the Ogre Lord, he had decided speed was everything and unleashed his full strength without looking back. The gore was simply what he had gotten covered in while forcing his way through the ogres.
"I'm glad you're fine, then."
Relieved that someone he could trust with the rear was here, Jeong-Hoon swept a finger across the ruined expanse of Diana and looked at Min-ha.
"Anyway — it's time for the counterattack. Enjoy your invincibility window to the fullest."
"Yes! See you later!"
Min-ha nodded at his words and vanished in a streak of light.
"Whee~ Youth really is something to envy."
"…Director Han."
Han Su-Ho, who had tossed out the joke about Min-ha's S-class awakening, flinched at the low way Jeong-Hoon said his name. He had drawn the ogres away for Jeong-Hoon's sake — and that choice had turned into a catastrophic miscalculation. He could feel the weight of it.
"My apologies. I'll keep my mouth shut."
"That's not it. I'm about to pass out, so look after me properly."
"Pardon?"
Expecting a scolding, Han Su-Ho jolted and reached out. Jeong-Hoon, who had been clinging to consciousness by a thread, gave a faint smile at the sight and collapsed. He trusted that by the time he opened his eyes again, the raid would already be over.
Hidden among the mountains that ringed Diana's basin were the family's facilities and organizations. Deep in those peaks stood a traditional black-tiled hanok mansion, planted like a gate before a vast cave bored into a sheer cliff face.
The Elder Council — where the family's strongest fighting force was gathered — was one such hidden site.
Elder was an honorary title given to retired vassals who had stepped back from the front lines past the age of seventy. The Elder Council was the body those elders formed: an advisory organ to the Gaju, built on long experience, knowledge, and connections.
But the world had changed, and so had the Elder Council. Alongside its role as the Gaju's advisors, it had been reborn as the family's most powerful combat force.
Where the Council had once maintained a roster of dozens, it now numbered a mere eleven. Even so, they remained the family's strongest.
"KRAAAAGH!!!"
The Ogre Lord, already reeling backward in terror, could not withstand the flying sword energy and screamed. Nine elders armed with blades stood in formation, shielding the hanok and the cave behind it. The three old men facing the Ogre Lord itself cackled as they mocked it.
"My, my — what could have you trembling like that?"
There was not a scrap of tension in the elders' laughing voices. The sudden shift in the Ogre Lord and its lesser kin had not rattled them. They simply rode the newly favorable current and jeered.
Even under that mockery, the Ogre Lord did not rage. It only shook and stepped back. It could not understand the words, but it felt the contempt — and something far greater crushed that feeling flat. An overwhelming fear.
When the wave that had poured from Jeong-Hoon swept across Diana, the Ogre Lord exposed to it stared at the elders while trembling with dread. Three old men blocking its path. Six more butchering the other ogres. All of them looked like humans not worth a single punch. And yet it was struggling.
"KUAAAAH!!!"
But more than that, the sudden, maddening terror was worse. The Ogre Lord bellowed and charged the elders, intending to cut them down and flee.
"Still looking down on us, are you."
An elder who had read the Ogre Lord's intent gave a thin smile and swept his blade. Sword energy sheared through an already shredded arm and took it clean off.
Kuu-ung!
The Ogre Lord's pillar of an arm hit the ground and shook the earth, but the elders did not so much as sway. There was no cheer at the fact that A-class strength had severed the limb of an SSS-class Ogre Lord. To them, this was simply the natural order of things.
"Haa. To think it would take this long just to cut off an arm from something as lowly as an Ogre Lord."
An Ogre Lord was a thing even A-class Awakened vassals could not stop when they pooled their strength. Yet these elders — A-class Awakened themselves — were lamenting how long it was taking to deal with one.
"If we ranked up, it'd be trivial. Heh heh."
"Hey now! That's our trump card — leave it be!"
Talk as if they could become S-class at any moment and were simply choosing not to. It was not bluster. They were freely wielding mana — mana that properly only functioned at S-class — while still wearing A-class bodies. In other words, they had already awakened to mana.
But the secondary gift that came with rising to S-class, the near-omnipotent power granted by the vast residual mana of metamorphosis — that, they were holding back as the family's hidden card. Because they could control by will the change that would normally come from natural enlightenment, the elders were powerhouses who defied common sense.
S-class wearing the skins of A-class. That was the true face of the Elder Council, the family's strongest force.
"If you have time to chatter, kill one more of them."
BOOM—!
A massive hole punched through the heart of the Ogre Lord that had lost its arm, and the creature died on the spot. The snickering elders spun around in surprise — and from deeper in the cave, one more old man strode out with a hardened scowl.
An octogenarian in a gray suit, white hair swept back and tied. A gaunt face and piercing eyes that made his temperament plain at a glance. At the appearance of Fernandez, President of the Elder Council, the others clicked their tongues lightly. He ignored the display and spoke.
"Is everyone here?"
Fernandez met the eyes of the nine elders as he asked, but they only shrugged without answering — as if to say, can't you see for yourself?
"Hm? Why only nine? Who is absent… Where is Elder Jeong Si-Min?"
Including Fernandez, the Elder Council numbered eleven in total. Counting him, ten were present now. One was missing — and that one was Jeong Si-Min, both an elder of the Council and one of the 12 Vassals.
"…Elder Jeong said he was worried about his disciples and went that way."
"Is that so…? Well. That does matter."
Jeong Si-Min's role was the training of trainee vassals, and the facility for that training was also hidden somewhere in these mountains. Understanding the worry well enough, Fernandez nodded — then fixed a glare on the elder who had spoken to him so casually.
"But why are you speaking so familiarly? I'm four years your senior."
"Ha ha. You're President of the Elder Council, and older besides — but we're all growing old together. Must you nitpick every little thing?"
"Haa. With the Gaju not exerting his authority, this family is a mess. A complete mess!"
Fernandez was still lamenting the elder's attempt to stand as his equal when he looked outside. There was a more urgent matter than enforcing discipline — and the other elder knew it, which was precisely why he had talked back.
"I'll deal with you later. Crouching here is finished."
The unknown wave that had poured from Jeong-Hoon had shattered the raid itself. Fernandez did not know that Jeong-Hoon had been the source of that crushing force — but he had clearly sensed that the raid had stopped.
"I have no intention of letting monsters run free across the family's territory any longer. We deploy."
It was time to clean house.
No more ogres or Ogre Lords appeared. The evacuation was complete as well. Every facility in Diana was already beyond salvage — which meant there was no reason to hold back.
So the Chief Butler poured his full power into a punch.
KRA-BOOOOM!!!
A storm of fighting energy blasted from his fist, obliterating the shattered facilities and detonating the ogres in its path.
"Grandfather!"
"…What are you doing here?"
He had thrown several more punches when Min-ha came running. The Chief Butler lowered his fist and looked at his granddaughter. He had not heard that Min-ha had risen to S-class.
Thanks to Jeong-Hoon's power the raid had ended — but the titanic force that had forcibly crushed the raid had swept over Diana in its place. The entire area around the park was as good as caught in an EMP storm. Radios were still dead.
That made Min-ha's arrival purely baffling. Short-handed as they were, there was no reason to throw an A-class granddaughter into a battlefield of ogres during cleanup. And for reasons he did not yet understand, the ogres had already lost the will to fight and were only scrambling to flee. Given time, they could be cleared without difficulty — which only deepened the question.
But rather than answer her grandfather's confusion in detail, Min-ha stretched out a hand and bound the fleeing ogres with her ability.
"Because it's the Gaju's order, of course."
She closed her outstretched hand into a fist, and the ogres were crushed flat by her power. The mana rolling off her, the growth of her ability, the respect packed into the way she said Gaju when speaking of Jeong-Hoon — the Chief Butler took it all in, understood what must have happened, and nodded.
"You've become S-class and undergone metamorphosis. That's why the Gaju sent you."
Moved by his granddaughter's growth, he stroked her hair with proud eyes.
"From the look of it, you finally understand our work."
"It was a good lesson."
It had weighed on the Chief Butler that his granddaughter had never truly grasped the family trade passed down through generations — the same trade his own son had staked his life on. So when she met the Gaju, Jeong-Hoon, and grew so much in only a few days, he was glad.
As always, the Gaju surpasses every expectation I have of him.
Min-ha was still receiving training as a trainee, and he had worried she might one day go off track the way a grandson might. He had hoped meeting Jeong-Hoon would give her even a little insight — he had never imagined she would grow this far.
"Now that you're S-class, you'll need training in martial arts and magic as well."
"Of course. I'm going after a seat among the 12 Vassals, just like you, Grandfather."
Even as she said 12 Vassals, she stared straight through him — the Head Butler. The Chief Butler was not so dense as to miss what that meant, and a laugh rose in him.
"Female Head Butlers have been rare enough in this family to count on one hand. Think you can do it?"
"Just watch me!"
"Ha ha ha!!!"
At Min-ha's blazing declaration, the Chief Butler burst out laughing.
"Head Butler. Forgive me for interrupting your pleasant time with your granddaughter, but you lot should withdraw soon. The military is on its way."
But in that moment, Fernandez's telepathic voice rang in his head.
When a report of a raid came in, the nearest military units, police, and guilds were supposed to mobilize. People liked to say they arrived in five minutes, but five minutes was never realistic. Even so, this response was late. Jeong-Hoon had reported the magic circle the moment he found it — and only now were they coming.
"Hmph. Showing up after everything's already over… This is why the government…"
"Hm? Grandfather, what are you talking about?"
"The military has been deployed, it seems. Time for us to pull back."
"Then what about the remaining ogres?!"
Seeing her grandfather prepare to withdraw, Min-ha asked in surprise. Even demoralized, the remaining ogres still included S-class and SSS-class Ogre Lords. Emergency-mustered military forces would have their limits.
"The Elder Council says they'll handle that. We'll have to trust their cleanup skills."
Once the Elder Council had volunteered for the hardest of the mopping-up work, the Chief Butler had nothing left to worry about. They might have stepped back from the front lines, but they were the vassals who had once led the family — elders who had been among the 12 Vassals themselves.