Power Accumulated Over the Years
In the heart of Times Square, the landmark of Manhattan where Awakened were locked in a chaotic free-for-all, a container dropped from a transport plane touched down.
A landing without a single inch of error—no sound, no vibration. So quiet it was hard to believe a massive container had just settled onto the ground.
Every gaze snapped to that container. The Awakened who had been trading fire could not tear their eyes from the thing that had fallen from the sky.
Whirr.
Cracks spread across the entire container as a soft motor sound began to turn. It was not a real motor, but a recorded playback that carried an uncanny off-note—clearly a warning, meant to keep bystanders who might not notice the opening from getting caught up in it.
Whiiiiir!
What had been sealed inside the unfolded container revealed itself.
Endless tracks wrapped around countless wheels. A flat black chassis. A turret mounting a main gun of well over a hundred millimeters and a machine gun. The mere appearance of the tank radiated such pressure that the Awakened froze in fear.
They had no idea which side the tank that had dropped from the sky belonged to—and that uncertainty rooted them in place even more firmly.
“This is a warning to the hardline faction of Nova. Cease all resistance immediately and surrender. I repeat……”
At the broadcast issuing from the tank, every Awakened—hardliner or otherwise—raised both hands and dropped to their knees, making plain they had no intention of fighting on.
Only one tank had emerged from that container. But the containers that had come down from the sky were far from singular. From every direction, more containers touched down with perfect stability, opening to release tanks, armored vehicles, and transport trucks. Troops in black suits and helmets poured out and deployed.
Thud-thud-thud-thud!
On top of it all came the roar of helicopter rotors filling the sky. Combat helicopters that had been stowed inside the containers lifted off and seized control of the air.
At that sight, one and all lost their will to fight.
The Squad Leader ground his teeth as he fled. He had never imagined the family would commit this much force.
Even trusting Senator Richard, this was going too far. Did they truly believe they could deploy power like this and walk away unscathed?
“Citizens of New York, greetings. I am Richard Evans, United States Senator and Chairman of the Awakened Committee.”
But when Richard’s voice rolled out from the helicopters that now owned the sky, the Squad Leader finally understood the family’s play.
“I wish to confess a great sin of mine to all of you. I was deeply concerned by the rising tide of oppression against the Awakened. That is why I founded an organization to protect the rights and interests of the Awakened: Nova.”
Cover one scandal with a larger one. If Richard turned himself in under these circumstances and shouldered every crime, the family would slip free with ease—so easily that a single thin excuse would be enough.
“But the righteous purpose of Nova that I once dreamed of was corrupted, and Nova became a terrorist organization. As its founder I felt a sense of responsibility, and so I commissioned a mercenary company of my homeland to suppress Nova.”
The excuse of calling the family’s forces a mere mercenary company. An absurd excuse—yet the Squad Leader could feel it. That excuse would work.
“Is this the Gaju’s idea as well?”
“Yes. It is the Gaju’s idea.”
The muttering Squad Leader frowned at the opponent who had followed him. Fernandez. He had expected Butler Ju to come after him; he had never thought it would be this man.
“I thought that if anyone was to be my opponent it would be Joo Yeong-Cheol, a martial artist steeped in the arts—yet it is you. Unexpected.”
“……You dare spout the insolence of severing the Gaju’s finger and then presume to choose your opponent?”
“Oh-ho. A loyal retainer, are you? Fitting for me.”
The Squad Leader spoke with casual composure as he settled into his stance, but he already knew he would not escape this place. This was his end.
“I would like nothing more than to take your head this very moment, yet I shall show mercy in accordance with the Gaju’s command. Tell me everything you know of this Organization, and I will spare your life.”
“……That’s a generous offer, isn’t it?”
It would not be an offer made to him alone. The fear that someone might take the bait rose in him, and the Squad Leader drew up his mana.
“Unfortunately, those who know anything of the Organization are vanishingly few!”
And they would never open their mouths. The Awakened—those who had reclaimed the power humanity had lost—had learned of the family and burned with rage. Who were they to seize humanity’s strength and twist the truth of the world? By what right? And how dare they hide and control martial arts and magic? That fury had become the core around which the Organization gathered.
Of course it was not pure rage alone. Even the Squad Leader himself had joined because he resonated with the ideal of the world he dreamed of—the opening of the martial world—if that power ever spread to all of humanity. But he had not the slightest intention of betraying the Organization.
“……The Gaju did not hold high expectations either.”
Seeing the Squad Leader wrap himself in protective aura, draw up every last drop of mana, and charge, Fernandez drew up his own mana.
“This is my secret art! Meteor Strike!”
He expanded his protective aura into a spherical form, then fired his superpower—a beam—that reflected endlessly inside the sphere until the interior was completely filled with light. Superpower and martial art resonated together until the Squad Leader himself became a sphere of searing radiance and barreled forward. Ground, air, even space itself that touched the sphere burst into flame.
“Hmm.”
In a world of perception measured in mere hundred-thousandths of a second—something only an SSS-class Awakened could grasp, a realm of cognition equivalent to an acceleration ability—Fernandez felt his suit heat from the impossible temperature and let out a short, pained sound. The heat was so absurd that even inside that accelerated perception he could see shimmering heat haze boiling around the sphere. The road exposed to it melted into lava.
“Indeed. You staked your life on this.”
In the loyalty that attack carried toward the Organization, Fernandez felt a kinship with the devotion he himself offered the Gaju. He muttered and raised his hand.
“But it is meaningless.”
“Guhhh!!!”
The moment Fernandez put his hand to work in earnest, the Squad Leader—who had come right up to Fernandez’s face—vomited blood. Fernandez’s blood-soaked right hand had punched straight through the place where the Squad Leader’s heart had been. The life-staking blow ended in utter futility without dealing a single point of damage.
“In answer to that loyalty of yours, I shall give you the name of the technique. It is Jan-sal.”
“Cough—cough!”
Hearing the name, the Squad Leader tried to speak, but blood surging up from within clogged his throat and he left no words behind. For someone who had swaggered onto the stage declaring himself an enemy of the family, it was a hollow end.
The family’s forces clamped restraints onto the surrendered Nova members. They were the restraint version of the tool that limited an Awakened’s abilities—the one Jeon Mun-Jae had worn when Jeong-Hoon underwent Apollon’s trial. Once fitted, any Awakened of A-class or lower became no different from an ordinary person.
The moment the restraints were locked, the Vassals moved on without a backward glance. Black transport vehicles followed the army’s advance. They carried stocks of restraints and emergency supplies against the chance of sporadic fighting, yet their true purpose was something else entirely: to fold up and recover the containers that had been dropped from the sky.
Senator Richard Evans might have called them a foreign mercenary force, but the family never let its guard down. Even those containers were masses of over-technology generations ahead of the present age. They were not something to be casually left exposed.
“They really are thorough to a fault.”
Watching the scene, Min-Ha—who had been hot on the trail of the Organization’s two S-class Awakened—finally succeeded in cutting them off.
“Hey, you two. Don’t we have some unfinished business to settle?”
“Family wench. Do you value your life so little that you’d come at us alone?”
“That life you barely saved—shouldn’t you cherish it a little more?”
Two S-class. It had already been strange how perfectly they matched each other’s words; now that she looked properly, they were identical twins.
“Things are different from back then.”
“Putting your faith in that weapon, are you?”
“When skill isn’t enough, gear carries the day.”
As Min-Ha spun her weapon—a spear tipped with a blade like a military knife—the two laughed at her and charged. No other Awakened were in sight. If they simply put Min-Ha down, the two of them could withdraw safely. That was the conclusion they had reached: better to drop her than to run.
They lunged and unleashed mana at the same time. Min-Ha lightly spun her spear through a circle; the mana was sucked in and vanished. Then came a sharp thrust. At that single stroke the two hurriedly opened distance.
Kwa-kwa-kwa!!!
A mass of aura blasted from the spear and scoured the line of the thrust. Paseong, the martial art she had learned from Butler Ju. Using it through the spear, Min-Ha clearly felt how much easier the control of mana had become.
No matter that she had studied the arts, Min-Ha had picked them up in a crash course. That was why Jeong-Hoon had ordered Yeo Tae-Hyeon to issue her a family artifact. Yeo Tae-Hyeon was one of the 12 Vassals who managed the family’s artifacts; the spear he had handed her shared excellent compatibility with her. She could now freely wield the Paseong she had only just begun to grasp.
“You’ve definitely changed.”
“But in the end, it’s still the gear carrying you.”
Thinking pure mana would not be enough, the twins drew up their superpowers. One unleashed intense ultrasonic waves; the other, powerful shockwaves. The overlap of the two powers induced crushing vertigo in their target. Min-Ha sealed it off by cutting her surroundings with Seal.
“I’ve already seen your superpowers!”
She had endured those same abilities to the point of exhaustion inside the New York branch; the defense came at once. She swung the spear in a wide arc.
Koo-goo-goong!
At the power of Paseong that swept the full range of the swing, the twins abandoned their combination and opened distance from each other.
“To fire aura in successive bursts like that……”
“That’s what makes it martial arts—because it’s possible!”
Once someone reached S-class and could handle mana, they could concentrate it into something similar to aura. Martial arts were techniques that made that aura even easier to use. The Paseong Butler Ju had transmitted to Min-Ha was a further refinement of those arts; even loosing bundles of aura put no strain on her. And the spear in her hands continually assisted the technique.
Thud!
Min-Ha freely drew up mana, kicked off the ground, and used Seal to cut off the movements of one twin—the ultrasonic Awakened. Then she drove the spear through his belly and unleashed Paseong.
Kwa-kwa-kwang!!!
“……!!! How dare you do that to my brother!!!”
“Huh? This one was the older brother? You looked more worn out, so I thought you were the younger one.”
It was not that he fell for the taunt. His eyes flipped white with rage at his brother’s death as the surviving twin blasted shockwaves in every direction. Min-Ha gathered them one by one with her mana-laden spear as she closed the gap and drove the blade through the throat of the Awakened who had lost his reason.
Many of Nova had lost their will to fight at the sight of the tanks and helicopters, yet just as many had resisted with ferocious desperation to the end. And it was Jeong-Hoon who had ordered that those who fought so fiercely be killed rather than captured.
Jeong-Hoon had received reports of the overall situation and issued command after command; he had not personally stained his hands with blood, yet the blood he had caused to be spilled overflowed through Manhattan.
Lumen One to Owner. The vice-leader has been eliminated. Check.
When Butler Ju’s radio came in, Jeong-Hoon let out a long sigh. Not a single one of the two hundred Organization members—including the Squad Leader—had surrendered. When capture was attempted they chose suicide; none could be taken alive.
Owner to all. Situation over. Withdraw immediately along the designated routes. Check.
Judging that everything had been settled with Butler Ju’s report as the final piece, Jeong-Hoon transmitted to everyone.
“A great deal of blood was spilled.”
“We resolved it before it became a full-scale civil war. If anything, this is a small price.”
As Jeong-Hoon muttered with a sigh, Lee Yeong spoke as if to comfort him. It was not only the members of the Organization and the hardline Nova who had died. The blood of the moderate Nova, of Awakened who had simply risen to protect people, and of ordinary citizens had flowed as well. It was something that would have erupted someday; ending it with only this much sacrifice through the family’s power was a miracle. Yet it was Jeong-Hoon who had pulled the trigger on the chaos.
“……Gaju.”
“Yes, I know. Now I have to play the patient.”
Lee Yeong, who had opened her mouth to comfort him, felt her usual poker face crack when Jeong-Hoon suddenly changed the subject.
“I know full well there’s no helping it. I did it knowing that. You don’t have to force yourself to comfort me.”
“……I have no intention of comforting a Gaju who possesses the qualities of an outstanding warrior. I was merely about to say that you should hurry and prepare to become the patient.”
At the sight of Jeong-Hoon already drawing his own conclusions and accepting them, Lee Yeong pretended to be as composed as usual and smiled faintly. Jeong-Hoon, Gaju of the family, was kind—but he was not a weak man.