The Catalyst
What the hell did those bastards even want?
Listening to Moon Youngseok, that was the first thought that surfaced.
Fine, the monsters themselves, I could understand. A Cataclysm would actually work in their favor.
But the humans within the New World Order — what exactly were they thinking?
"You aren't aware of the reason yourself, are you?"
To my half-hearted grumbling, Moon Youngseok gave a quiet answer. ...Well, he wasn't wrong.
What I'd just said was nothing more than a complaint, after all. Humanity had been hit by two Cataclysms already, despite no one ever wishing for one.
The New World Order — Novus Ordo Seclorum. There was no denying that they were traitors to the human race, rotten to the core.
And yet, blaming them for the onset of the Third Great Cataclysm would be a slight stretch. Wasn't the founding philosophy of the Academy itself rooted in preparing for a third one?
Someday, the Third Great Cataclysm would come. The vast majority of hunters shared that conviction.
So the cultists intended to summon it themselves — to personally call down the Cataclysm that would inevitably arrive at some unknown time.
An unimaginable calamity whose timing and form no one could predict. In that case, why not trigger the Cataclysm on their own terms? Better than trembling in fear over when and where the third disaster might begin, surely.
That had to be their reasoning. And I hated it.
South Korea was, in its own way, a hunter superpower. It hadn't escaped the aftermath of the Second Great Cataclysm unscathed, but it belonged among the nations that had somehow weathered it well. This country even had Lee Joongoo, hailed as humanity's strongest. Sure, we were suffering from a sweeping shortage of hunter manpower, but that was a global phenomenon.
And still.
'They decided we couldn't win?'
Had they judged that even mobilizing every hunter in South Korea — Lee Joongoo included — they would be no match for an Extra-standard entity? The very thought left a sour taste in my mouth.
"...So? In short, they intend to summon an Extra-standard monster to bring about the Third Great Cataclysm."
I barely held down the seething in my chest as I threw the words out flat. Moon Youngseok somehow managed to answer even that.
"Yes. Through magic — summoning magic, to be precise."
Summoning.
Figures. I'd had a rough idea ever since Moon Youngseok got involved, but apparently their primary method was magic after all.
Magic. Hearing the word, nothing quite clicked. Even in an era where hunters, monsters, and gates had become mundane facts of life, the word "magic" still carried an air of unfamiliarity.
But there was no need to overcomplicate it. Magic was simply the method of using mana — a form of technology that operated on mana's own independent set of laws. To put it more simply: conjuring a sword out of nothing was Jung Pilyeon's ability, but the way he wielded that sword was purely Pilyeon's personal skill.
It was the same principle. Unlike abilities that flared up according to one's aptitude and inclinations, magic was a technique built from the ground up to use mana itself. That was the true nature of the thing. In that sense, you could even call Kim Minchul's various flame techniques a kind of magic.
The same was true of why mana sensitivity was widely considered the ideal trait for an aspiring mage. Just as Kim Minchul's mana specialized in pyrokinesis after his ability awakened, every hunter's mana took on a nature shaped by their awakened power — or rather, to be precise, it was the nature of one's mana that determined which ability awakened in the first place.
Either way, in that sense mana sensitivity was a somewhat bland ability. Which also meant it had very little bias. The fact that sensitivity helped with magic directly was a point in its favor, but the real reason mages rated it so highly was exactly that lack of skew.
Just as Hayeon, whose curse ability had awakened, would struggle to cast recovery magic, Yeeun, whose telekinesis had awakened, would struggle to use body reinforcement magic. Mana specialized to match an ability carried that much bias — it was no exaggeration to say that magic opposed to its nature was all but impossible to cast. Conversely, an ordinary mana-manipulation ability user could never hope to keep pace with the ice magic Choi Seungjun wielded.
And so mages inevitably competed on versatility. Otherwise, they'd be nothing more than a lesser copy of an ability user.
The summoning magic Moon Youngseok had just described was no different. It called a target across using mana and a spell formula as the medium. If Lee Joongoo used it, he'd get nothing but a lightning elemental or two — but if a mana-sensitive user specified a direction...
They could call down an Extra-standard monster. Is that it?
"That's correct."
"Does that even make sense?"
Because there were several things about it that didn't add up. Bluntly put, magic was nothing more than a craft, like swordsmanship. And even swordsmanship required rigorous training before you could execute proper forms. So how, exactly, did they intend to summon a beast capable of triggering a Cataclysm?
They'd dressed it up in fancy talk of magic and spell formulas, but at its heart, summoning was nothing more than being a cat lady. A magical cat lady, if you like, since it ran on mana. That was precisely why summoned creatures manifested by consuming their summoner's mana.
In other words, the summoner's entire role in summoning amounted to feeding magical cats out of their own pocket. The magic circle drawn for a summoning, examined closely, said exactly that: I shall pay this much mana at regular intervals under the following contract terms, so if this cat food pleases you, kindly grace us with your presence... A contract of the summoner's own drafting, so to speak.
Which meant my doubt was a perfectly legitimate one. Draw the circle, pay the mana, call an Extra-standard monster from beyond the gate. Were they stupid?
What, they had enough mana to summon and sustain an Extra-standard? If they had that kind of mana lying around, it would be far more rational to simply use it to erase the Extra-standard monsters that already existed. Mana did run on its own independent laws, but it didn't violate the order of the universe. You couldn't produce a result of 150 from a mere 100.
Knowing that, Moon Youngseok's claim sounded like nothing but armchair theory to me.
"And that is precisely why a catalyst is required."
A catalyst.
Moon Youngseok answered with a perfectly calm face. ...Granted, it wasn't an impossible argument. Even the grimoires dismissed as mere occult before the Cataclysms said as much: if you truly wished to cast a spell on a target, use a relic deeply connected to them. The reason curses demanded a strand of the target's hair was the same — so that even a weak flow of mana could yield a result beyond its means.
More precisely: to lower the threshold required to produce that result. Using a catalyst really was common practice. Put in a single phrase — even among cat ladies, cats would generally follow the one they knew rather than a stranger. That was all it came down to.
"But such a thing actually exists?"
I couldn't help the question. We were talking about something on the level of a weapon Typhon wielded in the age of myth somehow surviving to the present day. No — Typhon I could almost believe. hadn't the legends said he tore loose from the volcano at Etna of his own accord, trying to burst free? Even a single cell shed in the process would make a serviceable catalyst. Hair was the most favored catalyst in all manner of curse rituals for a reason.
But a catalyst for a monster that had never once been summoned? How in the world were they supposed to acquire that?
"Acquire? We already have it."
"Huh?"
"Fortunately, it has not fallen into that organization's hands."
"What is it, then?"
"No — wait. You're serious?"
I was caught completely off guard. Who answers "we already have it" that casually?
Had it come up at some auction, then? If so, that would almost be a relief — we had Choi Seungjun on our side. No doubt the cultists had their own entrepreneurs among them, but unlike Seungjun, who held the title of Academy Chairman, they couldn't openly funnel money toward acquiring the catalyst. That was just how corporations worked. Even if someone was willing to shoulder that risk, it would only mean baring their tail to us.
Which was why I could ask with such confidence.
"There was no need. You already recovered it yourselves."
...At those words, a fact brushed through my mind.
Once — in an alley buried deep in the small hours of dawn — I had met a girl fleeing from a monster. The faint, inexplicable wrongness that had prickled at the back of my neck that night. In all the time since, I'd never felt that strange sensation again, so I'd let it slide, wondering if maybe I'd simply imagined it.
"Yes. Ja Hayeon. She is the offering prepared for the Third Great Cataclysm."
Cruelly, Moon Youngseok gave nothing more than that.