Casino Chaos (1)
Fsssshhh……
A muffled blast, and the underground entrance caved in.
A stunned buzz swept through the crowd. Everyone panicked — and Baek Jinwoo instinctively called his summons as well.
But—
Players cannot use summons for combat purposes in external areas!
No combat allowed. All they could do was raise protective barriers.
The summons said nothing — with this many civilians around, that was impossible — and Ramba, Hungyo, Pokryongi, and the rest simply closed ranks around their master, shielding and guarding Baek Jinwoo with their bodies.
"What's going on here?" Jinwoo asked, half wondering if Xenos might know — but the man's face had stiffened too.
"No idea. I'd better go see for myself."
Dust was billowing up from the entrance, marble fragments strewn all around it. The occupants of the VIP rooms, thrown into confusion, were drifting toward the central hall.
"What's happening?"
"A bomb? Did a bomb just go off? The entrance is completely blocked!"
"Manager? Get out here! How do you run this place and let an accident like this happen?"
"We can still get back up, right? Don't tell me the whole building's coming down?"
Of all the places it could have struck, the blast had hit exactly where the elevators stood. And no manager came to answer the uproar.
Hmm. Something felt off. No matter how he looked at it, this was no simple accident.
A bomb, planted in the world's largest casino — a place that was, at a single glance, packed with guests of enormous standing? Anyone could see this was terrorism, plain and simple.
It was then that Xenos, one summon already at his side, strode fearlessly toward the haze.
He was just beginning to piece together the scene through the billowing dust when—
Whoosh!
Someone burst out of it. A colossus of a man, slabs of muscle stacked on muscle, his skin blanketed head to toe in tattoos.
And in that instant—
WARNING! WARNING! WARNING!
An unknown player is using the item Shield Release (A-grade).
For the next 3 hours, the personal shields of all players within range will be forcibly deactivated!
The message flashed across everyone's vision.
"Wh-what?!"
"M-my shield's gone!"
"What is this?! Which one of you did this?!"
...Ssshhk.
The golden aura sheathing their skin began to drain away, little by little.
At the same moment—
WHAM!
The giant drove a full-swing kick straight into Xenos's stomach.
"Gahk!"
That was how much force was behind it: Xenos was knocked clean off his feet, launched into the air, and sent tumbling across the floor over and over.
Insane. Jinwoo was dumbstruck. Shields could be taken away?
He'd had no idea. The concept of a protective shield had never even existed in Battle of Summoners. So an item like that was out there.
Still — watching Xenos, a man of such overwhelming presence, rolling around like a soccer ball, it was clear this situation was sliding somewhere very serious indeed.
Dropping low, Jinwoo moved at once toward where his guild members were.
The giant who had revealed himself was a Black man with muscles that looked juiced to bursting, a ski mask pulled over his head — and a rifle in his hands.
Crazy. No shields. If someone ran a terror attack like this, could people really just die where they stood, helpless?
"Hey, you lot."
An unfamiliar, gravel-rough voice swallowed the whole hall.
"Everybody on the ground. Unless you'd rather die."
CLACK-CLACK-CLACK!
And the armed giants weren't alone, either. One after another, more of them came springing out of the still-choking dust.
That wasn't all. Whether security had been breached from the very start or not, even the guards who'd been standing watch above threw off their jackets, pulled on masks — and swung their muzzles toward the crowd.
Wow. At this point there was no doubt. A planned terror attack. Fifty or so of them, by a rough count.
"Did you not hear me?"
CLACK!
The giant who seemed to be their boss leveled his muzzle at the ceiling — and opened fire.
RAT-TAT-TAT-TAT-TAT!
He'd flipped the selector to full auto and was simply spraying.
Holy shit. This was a thing in the twenty-first century? The public safety of Britain, a nation hailed as a summoning superpower, was a joke?
"Kyaaah!"
"G-get down!"
"Aaaargh!"
Pandemonium broke out in an instant, and Hungyo flattened Jinwoo to the ground. Then he whispered:
"My Lord, there is no way out of this one. Nothing would please me more than to seize those contemptible wretches this very instant and educate them until the lesson reaches the marrow — but I cannot possibly act."
There was, admittedly, one way out: pull up his phone and request a summon from Baek Ajin. The skill Desperate Call had no range limit.
But he couldn't do that. He wasn't about to abandon Yoo Jia and the guild members and run for his life.
"Wh-what do we do?" a frightened Yoo Jia asked.
"Just a moment."
First — a barricade! Summons couldn't be used for combat, but simply parking them in the way had to be permitted. And Jinwoo had quite a few excellent tanks on hand. Jakgeo, Damphir, and the Titanium Golem.
But someone moved before he could — Xenos. Grimacing through the pain, he thrust out an arm and called a summon forth.
That's— Jinwoo's eyes went wide.
The short, squat figure beneath an enormous hat, clutching a cylinder — that was the Transmutation Alchemist (A-rank). So he'd gotten his hands on that one. If he remembered right, it was a fairly broken unit: unlike the Combat Alchemist (A-rank), it could convert, synthesize, and decompose metal — and even produce chimeras.
"Kicking me, of all people. You have some nerve."
Vwoooom!
The Transmutation Alchemist's cylinder lit up.
And in the same breath—
CLANG-CLANG-CLANG-CLANG!
Every gun the giants carried ripped free of their hands and came clamping together above the alchemist's head like iron filings to a magnet.
"Ghhk!"
"Wh-what the—!"
"My gun—!"
The pull was so tremendous that the terrorists had no choice but to let go rather than be dragged along with their weapons.
KRAK! KRKRKRK!
In under a minute, guns and ammunition alike had gathered at a single point and compressed themselves into a small, dense sphere.
Wow. Jinwoo was genuinely impressed. Xenos really had earned his seat among the Five Emperors — stripping an entire armed squad bare in the space of a few breaths. Metal transmutation served no combat purpose, so he had been fully free to use it.
"...Xenos." The giant recognized him. And so did—
"It's Xenos!"
"Xenos of America!"
"Woooah!"
The crowd recognized him too. And with recognition came relief — World Rank 3 was in this room with them, after all.
About two hundred people in the VIP rooms. Fifty terrorists. The two groups squared off on opposite sides of the hall, edges bared like drawn blades.
"Right." The giant who appeared to command the terrorists gave a nod. "Turning our guns into a lump of scrap — that was genuinely impressive, I'll admit. But so what? Without them, what exactly can you do to us?"
Thwack! He cracked his fist against his palm. Even that light smack boomed and echoed through the hall. Just how strong was this man?
"Take away the summons and you're all just nobodies." The giant snorted a laugh and swept his gaze around the room.
Thud. Xenos stepped out in front of him. Even through the pain, his back was ramrod straight.
Well, of course. The man had an Emperor's pride to maintain; he couldn't go groaning about his bruises here.
"What is it you want?" he asked, speaking for all of them.
Every act of terror has a demand behind it. Those brutes hadn't fired a single round into the crowd — they'd emptied their magazines into the ceiling. And what did that mean? They wanted something.
As much as it galled him, for the moment they weren't wrong. On the Day of Peace, summons were dead weight, and in raw violence the terrorists held every advantage. They had even stripped the shields away. One misstep, and people would die.
"Heh. Sharp one, aren't you. Fine — there's room to negotiate, then?"
"I'll hear you out."
"Simple." The giant's eyes slit like a serpent's. "You — and every one of the Five Emperors who entered this place — hand over fifteen of your representative summons each. Do that, and these people keep their lives."
"What did you say?" Xenos's brow knotted.
This was the worst possible scenario. Of all the targets in the world, these people had set their sights on the Five Emperors.
They'd come in here in secret, of all things. The other Emperors — all but Xenos — were lying low in the VVIP room even now, one floor below, close enough to descend at a moment's notice.
Damn it all. Under normal circumstances the Five Emperors never gathered carelessly during the Day of Peace; from the first match to the last, they were escorted by their nations' security details. This time had been different. The instant word spread that Baek Jinwoo — quite possibly Jinugod himself — had stopped by the casino's VIP rooms, they had converged on the spot. And whoever had let it slip, that information had plainly reached the terrorists' ears.
"Don't waste effort on clever schemes." The giant smiled. "We know full well that all five Emperors came in here. If you won't hand over your summons — well, what can you do? We kill everyone. And should we fail to finish in time, we'll simply make sure none of you ever takes part in the League."
And with that, the terrorists' objective was beyond dispute: to hobble the Five Emperors by any means necessary. Strip their summons — or bury them here until the League window closed!
Insane. Who the hell were these people? At this scale, this was practically state-sponsored terrorism. The intelligence, the precision — far too polished. Even the onlookers could only click their tongues at the sheer audacity of it.
Even the great Xenos, apparently lacking any proper countermeasure, held his silence and gave no answer.
"One minute. Exactly one." But the giant had no patience to spare. "Fail to decide within the minute, and we kill every last one of you. Your summons are the price of every life in this room."
Had it truly come to this?
GRRRRND!
A secret wall hidden in the corner of the underground chamber ground aside. And the four players who emerged from within were—
"L-look! It's the Five Emperors!"
The strongest beings on the face of the present-day Earth. A buzz ran through the crowd.
"Wow... Rachel..."
"There's Hikaru of Japan — and Beskov of Russia, too."
Alexandr Beskov. That was Moscow Man's true name.
And the last to emerge — a man of sixty strolling out with a hearty belly laugh — was none other than—
"Hahahah! My, my. What a situation with no good answer at all!"
The player known as Bai Tian! The Republic of China's Zhuo Longtai.
Wow. Even Jinwoo stared in open fascination. It was his first time seeing their faces this close up.
Thud, thud. They advanced with the composure of people who owned the ground beneath their feet. Rachel, at the very head of them, spared Baek Jinwoo a single glance and the faintest inclination of her head — then walked past him and planted herself before the giant.
Woman though she was, her presence was colossal — enough to make even the giant flinch.
"Fine. Let's say we do hand over our summons."
"..."
"How are we to trust that you'll send every one of these people up alive?"
"One moment." At the giant's flick of a glance, one of his men appeared, dragging someone along. Judging by the uniform, it was the manager of the VIP rooms.
"Total headcount in this place?"
"T-two hundred and twelve!" The terrified manager thrust out the roster and babbled out everything he knew.
"Two hundred and twelve, hm?" The giant smirked and looked Rachel dead in the eye. "Forty lives per Emperor. We'll send forty of them up alive apiece. Will that do?"
The giant gave as good as he got.
Hmm. Jinwoo had one burning question.
Unlike most players, he had always taken exercise and physical conditioning seriously — which was why his strength, stamina, and every other physical metric already stood beyond the human ceiling.
Could I beat them? With guns in the equation, obviously not — but at this moment, there wasn't a single gun left in the room.
"Hungyo."
"Yes, My Lord." Hungyo whispered back.
"Could I beat them?"
"Wh-what are you saying...!" Yoo Jia clamped onto his arm in a death grip. The message was clear: quit entertaining insane ideas and stay put.
"Jinwoo, all you've ever done is conditioning and breathing work. You've never actually trained in martial arts."
"That's true, but..."
"Then stay right there. However quick your hands might be, how is someone with no recipe and no kitchen experience supposed to cook a meal?"
"Hmm." Was that so? She had a point. Still, it stung a little, having to swallow something this absurd without putting up a fight.
"One never knows, My Lord." That was when Hungyo answered.
"Hm?"
"Even granting that you have neither recipe nor kitchen experience — would it not be a different matter entirely for one who has watched others cook until his eyes wore out?"
"Really, now?"
Even the dog outside a village schoolhouse learns to recite verses after three years, as the old saying went. Was that what he meant?
"And for a genius of an entirely different order — such as yourself, My Lord... there may well be more than mere possibility."
Oh. Really, now. And why was that? Listening to him, Jinwoo felt his heart settle a degree or two. Hungyo's insight was nothing short of monstrous. The man wouldn't be wrong.