Phantom Is in Korea
Every class the sinners possessed had an original.
The Sword Saint's class, for instance, was an imitation of Laily.
But the master of this high-level Guardian Wall had almost certainly inherited a class of an entirely different caliber from even that Sword Saint — of that, he was certain.
Perhaps even the holder of the very class he had been desperately searching for all this time.
So then.
"Shall I wait?"
He could force it open if he wanted. But there was no need to smash it open by force.
In another ten seconds or so, the Guardian Wall would shatter on its own anyway.
He only needed to wait and face the wall's master.
That was the moment.
Crack! Crrrack!
Union's expression hardened.
It seemed he would not be able to wait until the Guardian Wall's duration ran out.
From the moment the invasion began, the sounds of collapse had been ringing out across the world — and among them, he could hear the voice of the Balance Guardian as well.
Tch. Raise my level and the bastard notices like a damn ghost.
The moment he restored his power with the stored experience, the Balance Guardian had moved.
The aftereffects of crossing dimensions had yet to fully fade.
Wait for me.
It seemed he would have to meet the owner of that Guardian Wall next time.
Yet a thick smile settled on Union's lips.
One way or another, he now knew where the most delicious fruit was.
Which meant he could pluck and eat that fruit whenever he pleased!
"Inventory. Infinite Teleport Book."
Infinite Teleport Book
Ziiiiing!
Union leisurely stepped into the open portal.
A brief clash.
Gracia felt his heart hammering like mad.
"Insane…!"
He had never seen a bastard like that even in Pangenia.
Someone who summoned meteors with such frenzied abandon — who had even dismantled his Heavenly Sword and casually blocked his secret techniques.
With scissors and a shield he had never seen before.
It felt as if the man could summon whatever item he needed on the spot.
More than the man's own strength, the power of those summoned items defied all reason.
Was that thing really a demon?
It would make far more sense to call him a player.
"…I can feel it. Somewhere in this place, my lost youth is definitely here."
Gracia's heart grew urgent.
When I opened my eyes, I was home.
Eunpyeong-gu.
My familiar room, tidied up unlike before.
Only after secretly summoning Hydragon to cause a ruckus and logging Hudson out had I finally managed to return to Earth.
I immediately used the Golden Rule to head outside, but aside from the countless people out on the streets, there was no enemy in sight.
The Second Invasion is definitely on a different level from the First.
I had stopped the King of the Dead, Ahram, before he could invade.
But the Second Invasion was different.
They had prepared the invasion somewhere I couldn't detect, even pulling the erosion rate forward to launch it.
A far more prepared and meticulous bastard than Ahram.
And there was exactly one Hell Lord who came to mind.
If Isera has invaded, this is going to be a filthy fight.
The half-breed Isera.
It was clearly that bastard who had invaded Earth.
I expected a thoroughly dirty fight.
By the way.
I tilted my head.
I had clearly seen the message that the Guardian Wall had been attacked, yet no enemy was visible.
I slowly shifted my gaze.
Did the opponent flee through a warp?
Only a few traces of warps remained.
Had they run because they couldn't break through the Guardian Wall?
Some nobody must have been putting on airs.
I shrugged.
The level of whoever had attacked the Guardian Wall wasn't something I needed to be particularly tense about.
Next time I saw them, I would kill them for certain.
Looking slowly around, it seemed fortunately there had been no major casualties.
Then, suddenly, I spotted a man floating far off in the air.
Gracia?
…Why the hell was that bastard in Korea again?
Park Taewoo, leader of the Hero Alliance, stared blankly up at the sky.
Meteors falling without end.
If even one of those scored a direct hit, there would be nothing left of the Republic of Korea.
They were intercepting as many as they could, but it wasn't enough.
Even with Gracia stepping in, they hadn't managed to stop every falling meteor.
What's that?
And so, in the midst of despair — a curtain of impossible scale unfurled across the sky, vast enough to blot it out entirely.
The moment he saw it, Park Taewoo knew by instinct.
A Guardian Wall!
That enormous curtain was a Guardian Wall — something nearly every player possessed.
Even the fact that it vanished after thirty seconds matched perfectly.
Which meant someone had felt a threat to their life, and the Guardian Wall had activated automatically.
And that meant —
The person who owns that massive Guardian Wall is in Korea.
Here. In this country.
He was almost certainly not the only one who had noticed.
But… who?
The maximum level of a Guardian Wall is 10 — the hard cap granted to the first-ranked holder of the Hall of Fame. Anything beyond that can be purchased from the Privilege Shop, but…
It could be bought from the Privilege Shop, yet the cost in points was enormous.
Privilege points could only be earned by completing massive achievements or main quests, and the amounts were never as generous as one hoped.
At least level 13. Maybe higher.
The sheer force of the attacks that mage had poured out had approached the level of a 13-level threat.
A three-star Transcendent could, in practice, wipe a small nation off the map — that had been the consensus.
And this Guardian Wall had stopped attacks of that magnitude.
Over an area this vast, no less.
He had never even heard of a Guardian Wall large enough to cover all of Korea.
"W-what was that just now, Commander?"
"The mage? Did he run?"
Alliance members muttered blankly as they stared at the sky.
But Park Taewoo's expression had gone completely rigid.
Players who held a Guardian Wall above level 10 could be counted on one hand.
And among them, the only person capable of deploying a wall of that scale was one man alone.
The so-called usurper of the Hall of Fame.
The strongest existence, rewriting every record that existed!
"…Phantom is in Korea."
Phantom was here. In this country.
After the Jeju Island disappearance incident, I had returned to Korea.
Using a life-support device to stay logged in for long stretches had never meant much to me.
Unlike Hudson, I could remain logged in for extended periods without one.
What worried me most was the Second Invasion.
Above all, the Second Invasion had been drawing near.
I couldn't stay in Britain forever.
So I had come back to Korea and settled once more in Eunpyeong-gu.
The Mage of the Golden Rule. What that bastard used was Inventory.
And now —
I hadn't clashed with him directly, but I was piecing the information together.
About the mage who had scattered meteors across Korea.
There were people who had clearly heard the mage say the word Inventory with his own mouth.
At this point in time, no player knows how to use Meteor.
The problem was that Meteor was a skill that had been erased to begin with.
It had been far too dangerous, and the goddesses had deleted it — one of several such skills.
Which meant this was not a current player.
A player from the past.
…But if players had existed in the distant past as well, then someone from that era could well have used both the Meteor skill and Inventory.
That bastard isn't a demon. He's a player who knows exactly how to use skills and items — or someone who used to be one.
I stroked my chin in thought.
Only Isera and his legion should have been able to cross the invasion warp.
And yet a human who was not a demon had been added to the mix.
Meaning Isera allowed him through.
That meticulous bastard would never have left a security gap unattended — so Isera had deliberately permitted the Mage of the Golden Rule to cross the invasion warp and head for Earth.
Which meant their interests aligned.
And aligned interests meant only one thing…
The destruction of Earth.
He held a purpose that served the annihilation of this planet.
I nodded and drew my conclusion.
Someone who harbors a grudge against players. That's the Mage of the Golden Rule.
He had come to Earth through Isera in order to judge the sinners — the players.
He might even have close ties to the Death God Religion.
No.
There's no way the Empire and the Death God Religion don't know about the Mage of the Golden Rule.
It might not merely be a close relationship — there was every possibility they had sent him themselves.
And if my guess was right —
"I can use him."
-Kyaha?
Hell, suddenly summoned, popped out from the far side of space and tilted his head.
"Hell. Can you tell where that warp leads?"
-Kyahahaha!
The Mage of the Golden Rule, who had vanished using a Teleport Book.
Hell, whose level had risen after I boosted his talent some time ago, was now capable of tracking warps as well.
Knowing where the bastard was would be enough.
What's left is Isera.
I looked out the window.
Korea was quiet.
But this was only the calm before the storm.
The opponent was Isera — a bastard who was more unsettling the quieter he stayed.
Isera, King of the Scorching Hell.
Isera was a master of dirty, mud-slinging fights.
The second king of the Scorching Hell.
A half-human, half-dragon with crescent horns and a crimson human body!
An immortal who wouldn't die no matter how many times you killed him, and one of the three most troublesome bastards I had ever dealt with.
Of course, the most troublesome of the three had been his older sister — but still.
Killing him will take preparation.
First had been Ahram, King of the Dead.
Second was Isera, King of the Scorching Hell.
I had sealed Ahram with the Golden Hoop. But that kind of cheap trick wouldn't work on Isera.
I did, however, hold a secret card he knew nothing about.
"Ahram. How does it feel to breathe outside air after so long?"
-KRAAAAAAAH! You cursed bastard! You damn son of a—!
I pulled out a hidden strand of hair and flicked it. With a pop, the hair burst open and a miniature Ahram appeared.
The King of the Dead, shrunk down with the Golden Hoop still locked around his head.
He thrashed about, spewing every curse he knew.
"Do me a favor and I'll take the Golden Hoop off."
-Bullshittttt! Gyaaaaah!
"Don't you want to be free of that pain?"
The agony the Golden Hoop inflicted defied imagination.
The more malicious Ahram's thoughts became, the worse the pain grew — and the fact that he was still resisting made me wonder if he was actually enjoying it.
-Guhhhhk! I-I'll hear you out first.
"What weakness has Isera currently set?"
Isera could reconfigure his own weakness on a fixed cycle.
And the only ones who knew what it was were the Hell Lords and the Demon King.
Considering the enormous sacrifices it had once taken just to learn that weakness, finding out in advance was by far the wiser choice.
-You thought I'd tell you thattttt?! Gyaaah! Stop it!
"You don't trust me? I said I'd take it off."
-Y-you mean it?
"I swear on everything I have. I'll remove the Golden Hoop."
-And I'm supposed to trust youuuuuk?! It hurts! It huuurts!!
Ahram settled down again.
Just how much pain did it take for a Hell King to spit out the word hurts so freely?
Or maybe the long suffering had simply broken his mind.
Either way, Ahram was considerably more compliant than he used to be.
-S-self-destruction!
"Self-destruction?"
-I can't say any more than that!
Self-destruction.
The act of charging in and blowing yourself up.
As expected, he had set another thoroughly troublesome weakness.
Ahram shouted.
-Keep your promise and take it off already!
"Sure."
Shiiing — pop!
-You lying son of a—…!
The Golden Hoop returned to the form of a strand of hair and resealed him.
Ahram, realizing what had happened, spat curses — but that was none of my concern.
Tch. Naive bastard.
Who in their right mind keeps a promise to a Hell King?
Self-destruction, huh.
In other words, to take down Isera I would need lives I could throw at him like bombs.
And as it happened, I had just the right talent pool for the job.
I lowered my head and looked down at my shadow.
Within that shadow existed countless eyes visible only to me.
…The Demon Blood Species.
A sacrifice skill was, after all, just another word for a self-destruct skill.
Demon Blood Species Force:512
Their numbers had been cut in half, though, after I used a large-scale skill last time.
Looks like I'll need to increase their numbers.
To take on Isera, I would need to expand the Demon Blood Species force.
But the only way to tame more of them was to climb the Rift Tower.