That's the Basics
Heavenly Punishment.
A villain organization rooted in China, and by any ranking of danger, madmen who stood among the five worst in the world. Madder even than Ilshikgyo, they committed incomprehensible outrages as casually as sitting down to a meal.
One of them, because a major Chinese corporation was running a fraud with food, wiped its entire building from the earth. Then he killed every person connected to the company.
One of them, irritated at a shoulder-check in the street, massacred people in the middle of a city and swam naked through a sea of blood.
One of them waited until he had a household and his children were grown, then kidnapped his wife, his children, and even his relatives, gathered them all in one place, and raped and murdered them one by one.
The Heavenly Punishment, authors of every conceivable atrocity, lived with a single phrase forever on their tongues.
For Heaven alone.
It was the one creed they pursued—an excuse that made no sense, a pure sophistry. But they meant it. If anyone spoke against them, they hunted that person down at the risk of their own lives and killed them with cruelty, and everyone connected to them as well.
And the reason they could not be caught, though all the world knew they were in China, was simple. They were too strong.
Each of the Twelve Apostles was world-class in his own right. A high-ranking hero would struggle to face even one. No—it was impossible. It would take every hero a nation prided itself on, gathered in a single place, and even then it was a coin toss whether they could be taken. The dead and the ruined property along the way were merely thrown in.
They fled as well as they slaughtered, and not one had ever actually been caught. Their stronghold remained forever out of reach. Their disguises were so flawless that unless they themselves announced they were Heavenly Punishment, no one could even tell.
Wanted notices had been scattered across the world. The gesture meant nothing.
In Forever they appeared in Part Two and became enemies to be faced in earnest in Part Three. Spawned by a third act whose balance had gone to hell, they were hopelessly strong—strong enough that any one of them could have stood in for the final boss of Part Two.
So I could swear to this. If even one of them set a foot in Korea, then Korea, whose Hero Association had not even been properly founded, was finished.
And if it were only one, wouldn't Hwang Seokgu manage somehow? Meaningless. The Heavenly Punishment traveled in pairs.
Which was to say that two powers capable of breaking a nation now stood on Korean soil. To put it plainly, it was as if there were two Swords.
Just to stop a single Sword, a corner of the map of Seoul had come down. It had ended there only because Dan Miryu raised a barrier. Had he failed, the map of Seoul would have had to be drawn all over again.
Dan Miryu knew it perfectly well—how strong the Heavenly Punishment were, and how dangerous. His whole body drew tight, swollen with tension.
"……We have to go. Now."
Crunch. The smartphone crumbled in Dan Miryu's hand. A fallen shard struck the sole of his foot, and the fragments seemed to hint at Korea's future.
"……The Heavenly Punishment. Why, of all places, Korea……."
Mi Soryeong swayed under the shock of it. In her eyes rose a Korea burned to cinders.
"………Korea's finished? Fuck?"
Dan Chuyeon stared into his own phone and chewed the curse between his teeth. A special bulletin sat at the center of the country's main portal.
That single line was enough to grasp the shape of things.
"Be calm. We are in Hawaii. Miryu, find us a flight, and be quick about it."
"Understood."
Fire lit in Dan Miryu's eyes. He flung the broken phone aside and borrowed Mi Soryeong's.
"……And Pele's revival?"
I looked back along the path we had walked. Down below, a god still remained, watching the world by the light of the ceiling.
"……Forgive me, but it cannot be helped. We shall make the time, and return."
Hong Yumin lifted her face to the sky as if the unfairness of it rankled. San-gun followed her gaze upward.
This was bad. Very bad.
For Pele to break the seal alone would take time. If we could not help her, the unsealing might take years—no, decades. Leave now to stop the Heavenly Punishment, and there was no telling when we would come back to Hawaii. What could be done had to be done now, while we still could.
But linger here, and Korea would fall.
There was a chance the Heavenly Punishment, their intent impossible to read, might simply brush past Korea and ignore it.
Then they wouldn't have revealed themselves!
Whenever the Heavenly Punishment showed their true faces, a great calamity always came with it. Korea had been entered onto that list of targets.
"Damn it!"
While I was still agonizing over what to do, Dan Miryu shouted.
"What's the matter?"
"……We're cut off."
He showed us the flights to Korea. Every one of them was canceled.
"Why……?"
"We're too late."
Dan Miryu held up the news. I saw it, and squeezed my eyes shut.
These insane bastards.
They were at Incheon International Airport.
An old man entered the terminal of Incheon International Airport with a single attendant at his side. Dressed in the robes of an immortal, the sort one might see only in a historical drama, he twitched his white brows and swept his gaze about the place.
In an airport the world itself acknowledged, there was not one living person. The terminal that had always been packed shoulder to shoulder was fouled with corpses, luggage, and food left half-eaten.
The old man looked down at the warm blood soaking his feet. Following that blood to its source, he found a child with an ice cream stick clutched in one hand. One side of the child's head was crushed, brains leaking in a steady stream, and the lower body was shattered, scraps of organs vomiting out their fluids.
Drawing near what had once been a child, the old man looked at the other hand. A hand wearing a ring was gripping the child's hand tight. Above the wrist, there was nothing.
"Poor thing. Even so, you shall not be lonely."
As if he had lost interest, the old man turned his gaze away. A man approached, the smell of blood rising from his body.
The line of his jaw was sharp, his eyes round. His cheeks were hollow enough to look sickly, but the smile drawn at his mouth overflowed with confidence. His clothes had fared worse than he had. Both sleeves were torn and flapping, and his shirt was ripped to shreds. His trousers were riddled with holes and no longer served their purpose, threads unraveling and trailing across the floor.
The man in rags saw the old man and pressed a fist into his palm in formal salute.
"You have come."
"Ah, you have labored greatly. Eleventh Apostle. I thank you for the welcome."
The old man smiled with his eyes and returned the salute.
The Eleventh Apostle spread his arms wide.
"This hardly counts as labor. A guest is coming—how could I receive them empty-handed? This is nothing more than a modest little party."
From the Eleventh Apostle's hand, thick, clinging blood fell.
Drip. One drop. In it, a family that had been looking forward to their trip.
Drip. One drop. In it, an office worker leaving on business.
Drip. One drop. In it, a volunteer on the way to aid Europe.
Drip. One drop. In it, a child who loved ice cream.
The old man looked upon that blood and smiled, deep and dark.
"Not at all, Eleventh Apostle. After such hardship, how could this be a modest party? My stubbornness bent the rule out of true, and rather than rebuke me or punish me, you receive me with such warmth. I scarcely know where to put myself."
"You honor me."
The Eleventh Apostle looked pleased by the praise.
"Do not concern yourself with the rule. Was it not a matter upon which every apostle agreed?"
The rule of two to a team. Several factors had overlapped on this journey to Korea, so the Eleventh Apostle had been obliged to go ahead, and the old man, his own work finished, had hurried to join him.
"The more you fret over it, the more villainous we appear. Let us put it from our minds."
"……My thanks."
"……And that?"
"Ah."
The Eleventh Apostle flushed like a man ashamed.
"My apologies. I ought to have finished them. I was late."
Outside the terminal, police in full heavy gear were leveling their barrels. The old man was unmoved. A sight of that degree he had watched all his life, and it stirred nothing in him. Set beside China rolling out its tanks, guns were almost endearing.
"It is quite all right. I am glad, rather, that I may be of some use."
"I am grateful for the consideration."
"To wait through a count of three……. This place is merciful."
The old man went forward, crushing the child's head under his foot. Trousers stuck with brains swayed as he walked. The Eleventh Apostle and the attendant followed.
The doors banged wide, and the old man stepped outside.
Click. Click. Countless barrels swung toward him.
"Hands up!"
The Chinese was somehow awkward.
"There is no need to force yourselves into Chinese. I understand Korean as well."
Fluent Korean spilled from the old man's mouth.
"In spreading the will of Heaven, there must be no barrier of language, must there? Well? Is it worth the hearing?"
"Shut your mouth, hands up, get on the ground!"
A low hum. An opaque membrane rose around the old man's body. An ability user among the encircling forces had made a move.
Bang!
Before the old man could reach for the membrane, a bullet flew and tore his hand.
"Last warning. Get down. Now. I'll count to three. Refuse, and we shoot to kill on the spot."
"……Why wait so kindly? How unnatural. I shall grow weary, waiting for you to hurry up and fire."
"Fire!"
"That is more like it."
Tat-tat-tat-tat-tat!!!
Amid the storm of bullets and abilities, the old man whispered, very small.
And then—
Thud! Th-th-th-thud!!!
Something burst, again and again, and in a single instant the storm of bullets and powers snuffed out.
"As peerless as ever."
"That's the basics."
Before the old man, corpses with burst heads lay in a row. Blown away so cleanly that not even the brains remained, they would not know why they had died.
"We have done all there is to do. Shall we be going?"
"I left a car in the lot. Please follow me."
The First Apostle.
The old man, the First Apostle, walked a sea of blood. At the corner of his mouth gathered a delight he could not contain.