Earth
"Gaaah—stop that thing!"
The gates had begun opening at C-rank and then tumbled forward like dominos—B, A, and at last S. Blood sprayed and screams tore back and forth across the field, but the hunters were holding the line better than anyone had a right to expect. That was only natural. The people who had come here were veterans assembled to stop an N/A Grade. They could endure this much.
Lee Chaerin smashed monsters apart with her bare fists and still found time to flick a glance at the N/A Grade gate. The structure itself was already there. It could tear open at any second and spill an N/A Grade monster into the world, and no one would have been surprised.
Please be an internal-type.
Gates generally came in two kinds. There were external-types, like the ones vomiting monsters onto the field right now, and internal-types, which connected to a fragment of another world. Even an internal-type had to be entered and cleared—leave the monsters inside untouched and a catastrophe would follow—but that was still the better outcome. At least then you could go in prepared.
"Where the hell are the other S-ranks?!"
Blood had spattered her face and started running toward her eye. Chaerin swiped it away, then shook her head like a dog fresh out of a bath, flinging the rest of it off, and bellowed at her secretary, Jeong-hyeon.
Jeong-hyeon was supporting her with his specialty, telekinesis, and he was proving exactly why the secretary of an S-Rank Hunter had to be B-Rank at minimum. His work was outstanding.
"I'll try contacting them again—"
"We're here, we're here. Still as impatient as ever, Witch of Severance. That's why you don't have any friends."
"It's been a while."
Jeong-hyeon had been about to answer when two men arrived on the field. One had long black hair, a trademark smug look, and a spear as tall as he was: Chengtian. The other carried a seething mass of flame in his hand: Ryoku.
"S-ranks are here!"
"Waaaaah!"
Someone recognized the pair—famous S-ranks across Asia—and shouted with open relief, and the hunters roared with them even as they fought. Not one of them took their eyes off the monsters in front of them. These were people who had spent years trading blows with beasts and fiends. They did not make sloppy mistakes.
"These bastards. I've been here the whole time."
She had been fighting her heart out, and now the two of them strolled in like heroes and soaked up the cheers. It stung. She was the one who had been saving people and holding the line, and these two had only just bothered to show up. What was there to like?
"Haha. That's what you get for walking around with a face like that."
"You… when this is over, you and me. One round."
Chaerin bared her teeth at Chengtian. They had fought more than once and every match had ended in a draw. They were both precious S-rank resources, and they had always held back a little—but the way she felt right now, she could have put everything she had into killing him first.
"Oh… you're biting? Heh."
A sharp clap cut through the noise.
"Alright, that's enough. We've got work to do."
Ryoku, who wore a deceptively gentle face, drew his palms apart and spun a massive bloom of fire into being above them. Then he hurled it straight at the mouth of the gate still pouring monsters onto the field.
The blast hit like a thunderclap. True to its size, the fireball's power was staggering. The monsters in the act of climbing out vanished as if they had been erased, and the hunters holding the forward line finally got a sliver of room to breathe.
"Nice. So that thing still hasn't come out? Internal-type, maybe? I can't even picture how big it would be if it did."
Chengtian skewered three monsters on his spear like meat on a spit and shook his head. Whatever crawled out of that gate would casually chew through the highest-grade monster any gate had ever produced.
"If it hasn't come out by now, it's probably internal."
At Chaerin's words, they all tipped their heads in a small nod. It was what every person standing there wanted to believe. Three S-ranks was not nothing, but the fear of an N/A Grade sat in them all the same. If it was internal, more S-ranks could arrive and they could go in together. They might actually be able to handle it.
"Right. And if it does come out, we'll want these cleaned up first."
No one argued. The three of them fanned out to their assigned stretches of the line and started cutting the field down to size. But even S-Rank Hunters, with senses honed to a razor's edge, did not know that the thing they were dreading had already stepped out of the gate. People believed the N/A Grade had never opened. It had been open for some time.
What is this mess.
In truth, the silver-haired man had come out of the N/A Grade quite a while ago. He had simply been standing among the monsters. Anyone looking closely would have found it strange that the beasts refused to touch him, but everyone on the field was too busy staying alive, and not a single hunter noticed. Even the monsters lumbering past him could not make sense of what he was.
"Grrlk… grrlk."
The moment they drifted too near the silver-haired man, a primal unease crawled through their bodies and they veered away. But as the three hunters joined the fight and the monsters were slowly pushed back, someone finally spotted him and shouted.
"Hey! You—it's dangerous there!"
The voice cut through the din of the battlefield like a bell. It was Chaerin. She had been throwing herself at every dangerous stretch of the line, and in a blink she had cleared the monsters around the man.
Oh? That's not a method I know. Is this really Earth?
The monsters her fists touched split with a wet crack, carved apart as if a razor had gone through them, and fell away in pieces. It was an ability that more than earned the name Witch of Severance.
"You. I don't know your face. What are you standing there like an idiot for?"
"Ahahaha! So I landed in Korea? Perfect. At least I won't have to bother learning a new language."
He laughed in a way that had no business belonging on a battlefield, and Chaerin decided she was looking at a lunatic. She did not remember every hunter alive, but her memory was decent, and the unusual ones stuck. A silver-haired hunter like this? She had no recollection of the man in front of her. Hair that loud was not something you forgot.
"Don't tell me… you're a civilian? I can't feel any power from you at all…"
Even as she said it, something about the situation felt wrong, and her face crumpled like a sheet of paper. A civilian, surrounded by monsters, still alive in a place she herself had only just reached? And yet she could not feel a scrap of power from him. Even an F-rank gave off a faint trace.
"KRAAANG!"
"Look out!"
The tangle in Chaerin's head snapped clean in two as a monster lunged. In truth it had gone for her, not the man—she was the easier mark—but she had no way of knowing that. She was certain he was a heartbeat from dying.
"I don't know how you got here, but get behind me!"
She hooked a hand in his clothes, yanked him back, planted him at her back, and turned to meet the monster.
"Now this is new. Being the one who gets protected."
In a little over a hundred and sixty years of life, it was a sensation so fresh he had forgotten it even existed. Who was he? Even the most renowned emperors had been children in front of him. Not only in strength. He had watched some of them grow up; they were grandsons in the most literal sense. Their fathers had drilled it into them with absolute care: never, under any circumstances, cross that man.
"Hey! I don't know how you ended up here, but hang on just a little longer! What's your name?"
He had not moved a muscle. Chaerin threw the question at him to pull his mind somewhere else. So far he had gone a relatively friendly kind of crazy, which was fine—but if he suddenly understood where he was and bolted, things would get ugly fast.
"My name is Karen."
"Yeah? Well, at least you didn't pass out on me. Good! Just stay crazy like that! Don't worry—when this is over I'll take you to a psych hospital. The doctors and the facilities there are first-rate! You'll be back to normal in no time. I'm Lee Chaerin."
"…"
A psychiatric hospital. If the meaning had not changed while he was in another world, that was not a compliment. Still, he found he did not mind. There was no malice in anything the red-haired woman said. Only a clean, uncomplicated kindness.
She's a decent person. Not many people that strong carry themselves like that. Hm?
It felt as if Earth, welcoming him home after all this time, had decided to hand him a gift, and the thought lifted his mood—which was when something slid into the edge of his vision.
That one's actually dangerous. What's it doing here? Don't tell me the monsters and fiends from my world came through with me.
A black, rippling thing. Every hunter on the field, even an S-rank like Chaerin, had their attention pointed somewhere else. Something that had crawled out of an S-rank gate, moving unseen.
"Shadow."
A monster built to erase its presence and its shape. The Shadow was seeping toward Chaerin's back in a slow, oily crawl. Its body was frail, but the stealth and the way it wiped out its own presence would have shamed a first-rate assassin. It was an infuriating thing to fight. The venom on its teeth would melt a body down in seconds.
"Chaerin! Behind you!"
"Me? Behind—whoa, what the hell is that?!"
At Karen's shout she finally caught the black something closing on her, startled hard, and threw a fist.
The Shadow died like a popped balloon the instant her knuckles met it. Chaerin stared at the man called Karen with a look of genuine confusion. A second later and it would have been on her. The lurid green poison on its teeth would have been enough—her constitution was strong, but not that strong.
So he wasn't a civilian? Coincidence? Yeah. Coincidence.
That unpleasant monster had not been the only thing at her back. Another one had been charging in with an axe at the same moment. He must have been telling her to watch that one.
"Anyway—thanks, Karen!"
"Sure. Polite, too. Watch your side."
"Polite? We don't even look that far apart in—side? Whoa—!"
Sure enough, the same kind of axe-wielding brute was barreling in from her flank. She put it down in a single motion and turned back to him, still looking thoroughly lost.
"Was that a coincidence?"
"Hm? Was what a coincidence?"
Right. He just happened to notice.
Chaerin shook the thought off and locked back onto the monsters—and that same unhurried voice found her again.
"There's one above you."
The third time, she was almost used to it. That creeping sense at the back of her mind had started warning her on its own, and she could feel the monster now. His words were still faster than her senses.
She swung without looking and burst it. Then she spun on her heel and faced Karen.
"You. What the hell are you?"
"…Well."
The truth was that Karen had no idea what to say. What was he, here? The things he had built in the last world? Teacher to emperors? The greatest, the strongest, and the worst alchemist who had ever lived? What did any of that matter. He had only just arrived. The only thing he had left to explain himself with was a name.
"I wouldn't know."
He said it as if he were discussing the weather. And the more Chaerin looked at the man called Karen, the more she realized one or two odd things did not begin to cover it. Could a civilian keep a face that calm, a voice that even, in the middle of a monster horde that had her own nerves drawn tight? She had written him off as insane at first. Something about him was wrong.
"Hey! Look at that! The gate closed!"
"What?"
What happened next yanked Chaerin's already tangled thoughts into a worse knot. The N/A Grade gate—the size of a massive building—vanished in an instant, gone so completely it might never have been there at all.
"What… the hell is going on?"