The Strongest Vassal
As if to prove his threats were no joke, Yong-Ha raised both the Organization and Nova in simultaneous revolt.
The worst of it was Lee Chang-Won, teleported straight into Seoul in a single stroke—yet that did not mean the uprisings of the Organization and Nova could be taken lightly either.
That was why Jeong-Hoon, having left only Lee Yeong, Fernandez, and the elders as his personal guard while dispatching the vassals in every direction, suddenly lifted his head at a jolt of unexplained unease.
"Professor Jeong?"
"Gaju? Is something the matter? Jeong Si-Min has already gone to intercept Lee Chang-Won."
Fernandez answered in open confusion at Jeong-Hoon's abrupt call for Si-Min. Having evacuated Jeong-Hoon to Lumen's underground panic room precisely because he might become a target of the Organization, the former chief butler could only assume his lord was having a sudden panic attack.
"Ah—no. I just got this sudden bad feeling. Professor Jeong's opponent is that worst of the Awakened, after all."
"I see. If Lee Chang-Won has truly mastered the traitor's techniques and become a genuine SSS-class, then even Si-Min will have a hard time of it."
Hwa-Rim had originally meant to face Lee Chang-Won herself, but for the very reason Fernandez had just stated, they had sent Jeong Si-Min—who already had a history with the man. However strong Hwa-Rim was, she was only SS-class; facing an SSS-class would have been an uphill battle.
Si-Min, however, was the strongest among the 12 Vassals—the strongest the family currently possessed. If he fell, there would be no way to win short of every one of the 12 Vassals attacking together.
"Si-Min may not look it, but he is a comrade who has devoted himself to the family just as I have. He promised you victory before he sortied, Gaju. He will win and return."
Jeong-Hoon could not tell whether Fernandez was referring to Si-Min's mannerisms or to the fact that, for all their similar ages, the man looked nothing like a peer—yet he smiled all the same. What came through clearly was the assurance that he could set his mind at ease.
Blinding light faded, leaving behind a heat like a fallen sun still seething across the ruins that had once been Gwanghwamun Square.
Standing alone in that wreckage, Lee Chang-Won burst out laughing.
"Pu-huh, hahaha! Pwahaha! I won. I won! I burned that bastard to ash without a trace left!!!"
Most of the sphere's power that Lee Chang-Won had fired had been nullified by Jeong Si-Min—yet in the end, the victor was still Chang-Won. With three years of humiliation washing away as if scrubbed clean, he kicked the molten, soft ground in high spirits.
Sizzle!
The tremendous heat even scorched the mana sheathed around him, but Lee Chang-Won was far too pleased to care.
"That last one was genuinely dangerous, I'll give you that."
"……?!"
SYSTEM ALL GREEN
Clack-clack-clack!
Lee Chang-Won, savoring his triumph to the fullest, flinched hard when Jeong Si-Min's voice suddenly rang out and a mechanical tone sounded from somewhere. Then came the noise of something deploying.
OPERATING START
Whiiirrr!
Another mechanical hum spun up, the sound of something powering on.
"Wh-where are you?!"
Sensing that something was badly wrong, Lee Chang-Won shouted in alarm—only for a rippling gray barrier to form behind him. From it stepped Si-Min in a black combat suit and helmet, blue light flowing along the lines that traced his entire body.
"Haha. So your own power isn't enough and you're borrowing tools now!!!"
Realizing the earlier noises had been the compressed suit deploying, Lee Chang-Won sneered and spat fire. Not a sphere this time—a straight jet like a flamethrower.
Whoooosh!
But the moment Si-Min raised a hand, countless spaces layered around that hand and canceled the flames out.
"I'd rather you not misunderstand. My clothes just burned away while I was blocking that fireball of yours."
Wearing the combat suit the family had developed for S-class and higher Awakened, Si-Min corrected the misconception with a shake of his head. It was for S-class and above, yet unlike Jeong-Hoon's suit it did not enhance physical ability, nor did it help one control mana more finely. All it did was absorb the ambient mana an S-class or higher Awakened naturally drew in and convert it into defensive power. Even that defense, however, was nowhere near enough to stop a proper SSS-class like Lee Chang-Won. Fernandez's suit had been wrecked in New York by the Organization leader's Meteor Strike.
In truth Si-Min had simply put the suit on because his formal wear had burned. He flicked a hand; a gray veil wrapped around him.
Whoooosh!
The veil reappeared behind Lee Chang-Won. Si-Min burst through it and drove a kick into the man.
Thud!
"Khuk!"
Caught completely off-guard by the perfect ambush, Lee Chang-Won kindled flames in both hands and spun in place. The surroundings ignited, sealing off Si-Min's approach—yet when Si-Min flicked his hand again, the gray veil met the fire as if to collide with it, then simply absorbed the blaze.
"Was that earlier blast your full power? Out of mana already?"
"Damn it!!!"
Si-Min hurled the absorbed flames straight back. Lee Chang-Won could not stop his own fire and was forced to retreat. It had unmistakably been the Samadhi True Fire shaped from his own mana—yet it no longer obeyed him.
"Wh-what kind of magic is this?!"
"It isn't magic. It's a psychic ability."
Psychic powers were a transitional force granted to humanity when the seals had broken imperfectly. They were not merely a passing phase, however; they formed a genuine third axis of mana mastery alongside magic and martial arts. And given that any Awakened could use them, their versatility far outstripped both magic and martial techniques. Si-Min, who had honed that gift, had gone beyond simple blinks to command space itself—and, when he poured everything in, could even interfere with dimensions for a fleeting instant. That brief interference was more than enough to handle Lee Chang-Won.
Si-Min drove a fist forward. Lee Chang-Won tried to block with fire, but space layered, shattered, and the flames vanished.
Thud!
"Uwaaagh!!!"
The ringing impact in his skull hurt less than the fury of being beaten so helplessly—exactly as three years ago. Lee Chang-Won wrenched up more power. A gray barrier slammed over him and the fire winked out. Si-Min blinked to his side and lashed out with a kick.
Crack!
Space shattered again, punching through Lee Chang-Won's mana defense; the kick slammed into his gut.
"Guh-aaargh!!! Y-you bastard—you're stacking space to multiply the force!"
"…Oh? Only at the end do you show halfway decent observation."
Lee Chang-Won had finally grasped why his Samadhi True Fire kept dying so limply—but it was already too late. Si-Min stamped the ground and soared high.
Whoom, whoom, whoom, whoom!
Countless walls of space—no, of dimension—lined up along the diagonal between the airborne Si-Min and Lee Chang-Won. Behind Si-Min a vast mass of mana bloomed and spun with savage speed.
"Kraaagh!!!"
Realizing what was coming, Lee Chang-Won raised Samadhi True Fire in desperate resistance. Far too late. From the arrayed dimensions, translucent afterimages of Si-Min—no, Si-Min himself, multiplied by dimensional multi-deployment—drove diagonal kicks down upon Lee Chang-Won.
Shuuuung! KRAAAANG!!!
The spinning mana launched Si-Min. Countless dimensional copies overlapped, force stacking atop force, until Si-Min flew faster than sound. The dimension-layered kick sent a colossal shockwave rolling outward—not once, but many times over. The first impact was canceled by the next, quieted, then the next struck. Generation and cancellation of those shocks repeated dozens of times.
Lee Chang-Won's body, forced to take that unimaginable cascade, left not even a shape behind. Only the white-hot blaze of the mana he had desperately gathered remained to prove he had ever stood there.
"Samadhi True Fire, was it? A paltry blaze like that could never burn my dimensions."
Si-Min pulled off his helmet, flicked the sweat from his brow, and snorted at the vanishing remnants of Lee Chang-Won.
Having teleported Lee Chang-Won into Seoul as if declaring open war and raised both the Organization and Nova, Yong-Ha was even now slipping away unnoticed by boat, putting the waters near the Dadohae behind him.
With his identity exposed to the family, operating in Korea was impossible. The Organization's foundations had been built in Korea as well; its collapse was only natural. So Yong-Ha had boldly abandoned it, throwing every scrap of power he had stockpiled over the years into the role of bait so that he alone might survive. Moving with cunning care so that even those cast as bait never realized, he escaped—and allowed himself a bitter smile.
"Haa… how the hell did they find out? I had Grandfather completely fooled."
Knowing too little about the seals to even guess how he had been exposed, Yong-Ha set his next destination as China. Ever since the Awakened appeared, China had become a Warring States free-for-all—warlords rising on every side, the whole country reeking of end-of-the-world chaos. Perfect ground for hiding from the family's eyes and rebuilding the Organization.
"Still, it's a shame to throw away everything I built—oh, damn it!!!"
Mid-grumble, Yong-Ha suddenly sensed a fierce storm of aura—Paseong—hurtling toward him. He shouted, kicked off the boat, and landed on a nearby nameless uninhabited island.
"Whoa—Paseong? Grandfather? It is you, right!"
"……."
"Aw, come on! You came all this way to see your grandson's face and you won't even say hello?"
"I have nothing to say to a traitor of the family."
Declaring Yong-Ha not a grandson but an enemy of the house, Butler Ju revealed himself—black combat suit with glowing blue lines, helmet, the S-class Awakened combat suit. He charged.
"Haha! No blood, no tears! Not even kinship left, huh? That's a fanatic for you!"
Yong-Ha met the charge with Paseong of his own. Butler Ju answered with Paseong and canceled it out.
"How do you know this?"
"Great-uncle taught me, of course. You trusted your friends too much, Grandfather!"
This time Yong-Ha rushed in, hand outstretched. Reading the trajectory, Butler Ju twisted his body and only just avoided the strike.
"Sir Fernandez's Jan-sal?!"
"Getting shocked over mere Jan-sal is a bit disappointing! I can do this, too!"
Yong-Ha swept a hand; magic circles bloomed around him and blue flames erupted.
"Even the Head Maid's Hellfire!"
"So I told you it's still early to be surprised!"
Yong-Ha deployed another spell, drew a massive sword from a magic circle, and swung.
KRAAASH!
Mana coiled along the blade's path and pulverized everything around it. It was only mana poured into a sword and swung—no true aura blade—yet the artifact turned the strike into something special.
"So you even possess an artifact… the family's traitors prepared thoroughly."
"More like I collected them one by one myself!"
Yong-Ha smirked. Every time he waved a hand and drew up mana, Butler Ju's expression hardened further. The boy had mastered not only the secret arts of the traitors but the current secret arts of the 12 Vassals as well. Even with knowledge, absorbing all of that into a single person should have been impossible. Butler Ju felt a quiet pang of regret: had Yong-Ha not been a traitor, that talent could have served the family—and the world.
That regret opened a tiny gap.
"Haha! I thought you were a man without blood or tears, but even Grandfather is human after all!"
Yong-Ha's greatsword slipped into that gap. Seeing the Paseong erupting from the blade, Butler Ju braced for injury and wrapped his body in mana, intending at least to avoid a fatal wound.
BOOM!
"My, Uncle. Showing an opening to a traitor—surely your heart hasn't gone soft?"
Another black combat suit filled the gap instead. Hwa-Rim's intervention reduced Yong-Ha's attack to nothing.
"Ah, what. Auntie too? You're really set on killing me, huh?"
At Hwa-Rim's appearance Yong-Ha briefly lowered the greatsword and scratched his head. Butler Ju alone had been trouble enough; with Hwa-Rim here as well he calculated escape routes—and found none. He would have to throw everything into bringing both of them down.
"You should leave. That boy is my grandson. I will deal with him myself."
"No. Uncle, you killed my father even though he was a traitor. Do you have any idea how much that still festers in me? So this idiot nephew of mine is my prey."
Butler Ju steeled himself—traitor or not, at least by my own hand—only for Hwa-Rim to cut him off coldly and step forward.
"Ha! First he's a grandson, then a nephew, and you're arguing over who gets to kill him? Not a single real human among you."
"We're more human than you, who would destroy the world out of greed for power. Aren't we, idiot nephew?"
"You think I'm doing this out of greed for power?"
The family's traitors had been drunk on the omnipotent force called mana and had sought to break the seals for more of it. They had risen in rebellion and failed—precisely because they were intoxicated by mana even while knowing what would happen if the seals fell. So when Hwa-Rim mocked Yong-Ha for trying to destroy the world out of that same addiction, he flared.
"There's only one reason I'm trying to break the seals—to return the world to its original form. We don't need shadow rulers hiding in the dark!"
He charged, greatsword swinging. Hwa-Rim slipped aside with easy grace and clicked her tongue.
"And that 'original form' is the extinction of humanity?"
"Ha! I've already figured out how to release the seals step by step! The experiments at Diana are finished! Humanity is ready for the next stage!"
"…Don't tell me you were the one who caused the Ogre Lord Incursion?"
Butler Ju's face twisted at the confession Yong-Ha had spat out in anger.
"So what if I was? It was just a handful of ogres running wild."
"If Gaju had not been there, that entire region could have become land poisoned by radiation. Do you understand that?"
If Jeong-Hoon had not read the signs of an Incursion and gathered forces in advance—if that place had not been the family's stronghold—they would have failed to stop the Ogre Lords, and nuclear weapons would have been the only option left. Watching Yong-Ha proudly call such a threat a "safe, stepwise method of releasing the seals," Butler Ju could no longer see a blood relative. He saw only a terrorist so lost in his own ideology that he would shove the world into the abyss of ruin.