Monster Raid
“What is this…?”
“Monster air-raid alert…! Young miss, come with me—now!”
“Huh? Wha—!”
Boom—!
KRA-KOOM—!
While I hurried Julia toward the maids, the thunder of artillery rolled over us at least several dozen times. Unmanned turrets stationed across the city had opened fire on the monsters flooding the streets, buying time until the heroes could arrive.
Kyaaaaah!
Aaaagh! Stop shoving, you bastard!
Screams carried all the way here, even though we were some distance from the main roads. From the sound of it the monsters had already reached this neighborhood, but I needed hard numbers.
“Laplace! How far has the invasion spread?”
Displaying the scale and range of the monster invasion in red on the map.
“Oh… shit… we’re screwed.”
A crimson feast blanketed the entire capital. The red zones kept swelling, proof that more monsters were still pouring out.
Attacks are concentrated on two districts: Yeongdeungpo-gu and Jungnang-gu. Confirmed entities in Yeongdeungpo-gu include the A-class monster Entwining Flame Flower and numerous B-class subordinates. Communications with Jungnang-gu are unstable, but estimates likewise indicate large numbers of B-class monsters.
An A-class monster was something the heroes could handle if they worked together. The underlings would make it rough for a single A-class hero, but a coordinated team—or an S-class—would put the thing down without too much trouble.
Korea has only two S-class heroes.
The Frost Empress, the sole Korean to receive the title of Empress. And Usa, rated weaker than her yet, because she was essentially a free spirit, the nation’s real strongest combatant.
The Frost Empress is probably off in Alaska doing something weird again.
I’d once nearly been purchased by her, so I’d dug deep into her file. Birthplace unknown. Dropout from Sirius Academy. Presumed unique ability: lowering ambient temperature. Currently buying up poor children all over the world. She ignored the government’s plea to defend Korea and instead built herself a private castle in Antarctica, racking up enough eccentricities to land on the FBI’s watch list. Her habit of slaughtering monsters and villains with excessive brutality had earned her multiple official warnings. One look at the corpses she left behind and the auction-house crowd’s reaction made perfect sense.
So the only one we could count on was Usa.
“He walks a pilgrimage across the entire country once a year, right? Where is he now?”
Current confirmed location: Busan.
“Of all places…!”
The complete opposite end of the peninsula. Usa had no personal teleportation, so even an emergency train would take three hours. There was no guarantee he would head straight here, which meant we had to hold out for at least twelve hours until the monsters were cleared.
When we reached the mansion’s living room, the people already gathered there wore grim faces. The woman coordinating them in the center rushed over the moment she saw us.
“Julia!”
“M-Mom?”
Julia’s mother swept her into a tight embrace, checked her for injuries, and finally exhaled in relief.
“What’s the situation?”
“The government has issued a yellow air-raid warning. Heroes are already mobilizing, and the military will be deploying civilians. Fortunately the epicenter of the raid just barely missed us.”
We were in Seongbuk-gu. Jungnang-gu to the east still made me uneasy, but no B-class monsters had appeared in our immediate vicinity yet.
“Let’s move to the shelter first. Whatever happens, the raid won’t end quickly.”
Thankfully people had grown somewhat used to monster invasions, and shelters dotted the neighborhood. This mansion itself had been heavily renovated underground: enough food and water for twenty people to last three months, plus a thirty-centimeter-thick steel door designed for exactly this kind of emergency.
Grrrnnnk—
Once everyone was inside we checked for stragglers and sealed the entrance. The moment the door finished grinding shut we switched to the CCTV feeds.
Outside was pure chaos. Creatures that looked like a grotesque cross between moles and reptiles prowled the streets, butchering anyone they found. Unmanned turrets answered with shells that erased monsters so thoroughly not even scraps remained, yet far too many still swarmed the roads.
While the others sank into bleak silence, Isabella walked to the keypad mounted on one wall of the shelter and entered a code. A hidden panel slid open, revealing a steel-lined armory.
“This is…”
Inside slept every kind of personal firearm imaginable—pistols, assault rifles, explosives, even a single heavy machine gun.
Why the hell is that here?
When I asked, she explained it was for holding the door if it was breached, buying time to escape. Too heavy to carry around otherwise.
“This is strictly for self-defense. Anyone who tries to escalate things will answer to me. Understood?”
“Yes, ma’am. Though… it’s been a long time since I handled a gun. Not sure how well I’ll do.”
To my surprise the maids didn’t flinch. They simply selected suitable assault rifles, checked them over, then field-stripped, inspected, and reassembled the weapons with practiced ease.
What the…?
These were the same people who usually stood in the kitchen debating today’s lunch menu. Seeing them like this felt almost unreal—until I remembered something I’d forgotten.
Right. In this world both men and women serve in the military.
Monster raids were so frequent that an all-male force could never hold the line, so Korea had adopted universal conscription. The senior maids later told me that nearly every servant employed by the Wittelsbach family was a special-forces veteran. The highest virtue of a retainer, they said, was eliminating threats to keep the master safe…
I couldn’t relate in the slightest. Could they please just pick one job—maid or bodyguard?
“Mmm…”
I lifted one of the assault rifles, tried a shouldered stance, then gave up. Three kilograms wasn’t much; even my weak arms could hold it. But running around with the thing was another story. Even maxing out the bloodstone’s power, I’d collapse in under thirty minutes—especially once you added the weight of magazines.
Just take a pistol.
Firearms were only stalling tools against mid-tier monsters anyway. Pistols even more so, but better than empty hands. I decided to carry one.
“Hm? Going with a handgun? Want me to show you how?”
“No, I’m fine. I’ve been trained.”
Ten years had passed since I last touched a firearm. My mind had forgotten, yet my body still remembered. Wait—my body had changed too. How did the muscle memory transfer? Did learning to shoot engrave it on the soul or something?
I was still turning those thoughts over when a scream cut through from outside the mansion.
—“Please help me! Open the door, please…!”
A woman clutched a child in one arm while a lizard-like monster closed the distance behind her at terrifying speed.
“Damn it…!”
They would be torn apart in seconds. Julia’s mother slammed the gate release. The woman and child tumbled inside; the moment they cleared the threshold she locked it again. The monster, denied its prey, wheeled away in search of easier meat.
—“Hah… hah… Thank you!”
Safer than the street, yes, but we couldn’t leave her standing in the garden. We guided her down into the shelter. Once inside she collapsed onto the floor, tears streaming.
“Are you all right?”
“Y-yes… I’m fine…”
She drew several deep breaths, then bowed her head in gratitude.
“Thank you so much for saving us… I was just walking home with my child when everything suddenly went wrong…”
“We understand. It came out of nowhere.”
Everyone murmured agreement. With zero warning, the death toll had to be catastrophic.
No… maybe the water-pipe failures earlier were the real warning signs.
Monsters rarely appeared in densely populated zones. For this many to erupt in the heart of Seoul, they must have traveled through deep underground tunnels from sparsely inhabited regions.
“Everyone, look at this!”
Julia’s voice snapped us out of our analysis. We turned to the smartphone in her hand—and the news scrolling across it was anything but good.