Misconception
Having finally dealt with the ridiculous Guardian RX-78 Minhee Custom, I quickly made my way out of the tower.
It wasn't as if I'd actually found my sister, but confirming that she was likely still alive was enough to call this trip a success.
Once outside the tower, I could see the golems still prowling around the area.
What am I going to do about those things?
I observed the surrounding golems while keeping my presence concealed. What North Korea had originally requested was the conquest of the tower — there was no particular need to hunt down every golem wandering the field.
By now I had a rough grasp of how Earth's gates worked. To put it simply, the monsters in a gate fell into three broad categories.
The first were the field mobs roaming inside the gate, and the second was the boss mob at the gate's core.
The final category was the mutant variant — an event-type monster that appeared under special conditions.
Ordinarily, "clearing a gate" meant that its boss mob had been defeated. The moment a boss was killed for the first time, most gates spawned a nerfed replica with reduced stats, but for a unique boss like the Guardian RX-78 Minhee Custom I had just slain, the norm was for the boss to never reappear at all.
A gate vanished completely only when the total mana inside it had been fully depleted, which supposedly happened as a natural result of hunting down the field mobs over and over.
In a word, it was the realm of pure grinding, and for gates that turned a profit, some parties even deliberately managed the field mob population to keep the gate from closing.
Well, the clear is done, so there's no real need to deal with those things.
Granted, Park Jaehyun had told me that hunting golems was lucrative, but I hardly needed money at the moment.
Leaving the brainless golems exactly where they were, I launched Shinhyeong toward the gorge entrance where I'd parted ways with the others.
"Aaargh! Please, just make it stop!"
And what greeted me when I arrived at the gorge was a scene too absurd for words.
Seriously, what is he doing over there all by himself?
Looking down from the cliff above, I saw Seo Jinwoo pounding golden divine power into his shield, fighting a desperate solo battle against the Chinese and Japanese hunters.
He kept screaming at the top of his lungs while holding up a barrier bigger than his own body.
Of course, Seo Jinwoo holding back the awakened of both Japan and China single-handedly was an impossible feat. According to Seoyeon, he was apparently a fairly famous hunter, but from what I could see, he still had a long way to go.
What was actually interesting were the awakened from Japan and China. The Japanese hunters were watching Seo Jinwoo with an almost excessive wariness, while the Chinese side merely feinted attacks — their real attention was focused squarely on the Japanese.
In other words, to put it bluntly, the two of them were locked in a tense standoff over a single Seo Jinwoo.
Just like the Orthodox-Unorthodox Alliance watching each other back then.
The reason the Blood Heavenly Cult had been able to overwhelm the Orthodox-Unorthodox Alliance in that war known as the Moorim Grand Assembly was, without question, because the cult's strength had exceeded all expectations.
But it was also an undeniable fact that another reason was the alliance factions squabbling amongst themselves, each trying to minimize their own losses.
Surveying the interior of the gorge, I could roughly guess why the same thing was happening here.
The corpses sprawled across the ground in wretched states were almost all Chinese awakened, and it wasn't hard to deduce that Samsik was the one who'd put them there.
Naturally, the Chinese hunters — who had suffered almost entirely one-sided losses — were bound to suspect the intentions of the Japanese.
The problem was that the Japanese hunters' situation didn't look all that great either. Every now and then I caught one of them flinging strange curses at Seo Jinwoo, but each time the spells touched the golden aura radiating from him, they fizzled out powerlessly.
I watched the scene with a thoroughly intrigued expression. Seo Jinwoo's energy really was peculiar, even to my eyes. It resembled extreme yang qi, yet it was mixed with the demon-subduing power one would only expect from the high monks of Shaolin.
So it was only natural that the attacks of these Japanese hunters — saturated, bizarrely, with resentment and yin energy — kept being turned back by his golden shield, time after time.
By the way, where did that guy run off to?
No matter how carefully I scanned the surroundings, there was no sign of Samsik anywhere. I had expressly ordered him to look after Seo Jinwoo, yet far from minding the boy, not even a trace of his presence could be detected.
"Well, setting that aside — not bad at all, is it?"
I let out a small chuckle as I watched Seo Jinwoo grinding his teeth, sealing off the gorge. Granted, Japan and China were too busy checking each other to commit their full strength, but even so, Seo Jinwoo was undeniably putting on a dazzling display.
Even as his barrier looked ready to crumble at any moment, for some reason he was desperately, frantically holding the line.
I debated whether to reveal myself, but decided to watch his struggle for a while. As long as I was nearby there was no chance of him being hurt, and moments of growth were best supported by silent observation.
"...No. But how the hell do I get out of here?"
Having stuffed the mana stone from the Kamikakushi into his pocket, Kang Samsik muttered to himself as he looked around. No matter where he searched, there was not a single exit to be found.
He spread out his ki sense as usual, but nothing unusual registered anywhere nearby.
"Eh, I'll just smash everything to pieces."
The first thing Samsik did was start mindlessly destroying everything around him. The problem was that in a space where nothing could break, no amount of overwhelming force amounted to shoveling at empty air.
This is bad, isn't it?
It was around the time that thought crossed his mind that the back of Samsik's neck began to bead with cold sweat. If he put his mind to it, he could probably find a way out — but the problem was the frail little runt he'd left behind out there, all alone. The kid used some rather remarkable powers, so he wouldn't die easily, but that didn't mean Samsik could rest easy either.
The cult leader had clearly ordered him to forge the boy into a warrior — not to leave him to die.
Reaching the conclusion that things could go very, very wrong if he dawdled, Samsik did something he hadn't done in a very long time: he started actually using his head.
Hold on. Something like writing definitely appeared just now, didn't it?
The instant the thought formed, Kang Samsik saw text appear before his eyes once more.
Title: You have acquired Rift Traverser.
Through the title's effect, you may now use spatial movement.
Spatial movement?
Frowning, Kang Samsik began analyzing the text. He was trapped in a strange space, so it stood to reason he'd have to use that ability to return to the original one.
It was at that exact moment that a Japanese-style shoji sliding door materialized in front of Kang Samsik.
"Huh? I go out through here?"
Samsik murmured to himself in the empty void, then opened the door. And beyond it, he found the cult leader standing there like the sun itself.
"Leader-niiim!"
Without a moment's hesitation, Samsik dove through the door — and promptly found himself facing the cult leader, who was looking at him with an expression of sheer disbelief.
"Why are you coming out of there?"
"F-forgive me! I saw a spirit beast and lost my head, which delayed my return. Please, kill me."
I let out a sigh at the sight of Samsik, who slammed his forehead into the ground the moment he appeared. Strictly speaking, he had, in fact, failed to follow my orders. He'd only reappeared after Seo Jinwoo had completely collapsed — had I not arrived first, the worst possible outcome might have unfolded.
The way Samsik lay prostrate on the ground, stealing glances at my face, was probably because he'd worked all of that out himself.
The real problem, though —
— was that Samsik had come bursting out of that strange door. The same one that Kuroda Sho, or whatever his name was, used to use.
"A spirit beast, you say?"
"Yes, sir. Some weird rabbit was glaring at me out of thin air, so I went to catch it — and I got trapped in there for a while. Couldn't get out."
I couldn't help wearing an intrigued expression at his words.
That thing — it was spatial movement, wasn't it?
I'd heard through Jang Yeongsu that after Kuroda Sho killed the mutant known as the Kamikakushi, he'd acquired a spatial-movement ability. And since I was the one who killed Kuroda Sho, it was only natural for the mutant to reappear. After all, the whole reason Kuroda Sho had targeted Seoyeon was because when an awakened who slew a mutant and gained a title dies, that mutant reappears.
And as it happened, Samsik was the one who'd caught it this time.
This could be genuinely useful.
I couldn't help thinking it as I looked at Samsik. The thing I'd regretted most since returning from Murim to the modern world was mobility. The very reason I hadn't been able to send Samsik straight to that gate in Beijing was that reaching it required physical travel time.
Granted, "Beijing" was only a few hours away by plane, but the procedures, the immigration process — all of it felt unbearably cumbersome.
But if I could make use of that strange door Kuroda Sho had wielded, the problem would be solved perfectly. I couldn't yet be certain whether multiple people could move through it simultaneously, but either way, it would clearly prove useful for what lay ahead.
"Good work."
"Sir?"
"I said you caught that thing well."
I said it with a faint chuckle. The situation was, for the most part, already wrapped up. The Japanese hunters had long since fled, and of the Chinese who had fought to the bitter end, I'd left only the strongest one alive.
I gave the Chinese hunter sprawled on the ground a light kick with my foot to bring him around.
"Nnngh..."
Slowly coming to from my kick, the Chinese man groaned and pushed himself up. His bloodshot eyes darted around as he tried to piece together his situation.
And that situation was the worst one possible for him. All of his comrades were dead, while on this side, our full strength stood assembled and untouched.
"Ni shi shei! Ni zhidao wo shi shei ma?!" (Who are you?! Do you have any idea who I am?!)
I scrunched up my face at the man suddenly shouting at me. Obviously, I had no idea what Chinese he was spouting.
"What's he saying?"
"He's asking if you know who he is. What a hilarious bastard."
The one translating for me was none other than Samsik. I looked at him in surprise, and then the broader picture clicked into place. Just as communication with the people of Murim had posed no problem when I'd gone there before, Samsik, too, seemed to share the same gift.
I'd never given it much thought, but in hindsight, the fact that Samsik could converse with my Korean-speaking family without any difficulty had been strange from the very start.
"Wo shi Zhongguo zhengfu de daibiao, Wei Qinghan! Ni gan dong wo, Zhongguo buhui fangguo ni de!" (I am Wei Qinghan, representative of the Chinese government! Lay a hand on me and China will not let you go!)
"What's he saying this time?"
I turned to Samsik again as the Chinese man ranted and raved.
"Ha. What a lunatic. Leader, this guy says he's Wei Qinghan, a representative of China, and that if so much as a single hair on his body is touched, China won't sit still."
"Samsik, repeat after me. 'Then killing him outright would be the best option, wouldn't it? Nobody's ever going to know what happened inside a gate anyway.'"
At my words, Samsik parroted them back word for word — and in that instant, the color drained from the Chinese man's face, leaving it ash-gray.
Either way, this calls for a proper reckoning.
This was already the third time I'd been entangled with China. The first, I could write off — I had, after all, returned to Chinese soil. But the second time, those bastards had come hunting all the way to the space where I lived. And now this was the third.
From where I stood, all I could see was men who had attacked the people around me of their own accord, and even while captured, kept puffing out their chests and invoking their country's name.
And the reason they could act that way was plain to see. They thought I was an easy mark. And they believed, with iron conviction, that the power of their nation — China — far outweighed mine.
"Samsik."
"Yes, Leader."
"Looks like I need to go run an errand."
I intended to show them, down to the very root, just how badly misplaced that belief was.