Phase 3 (1)

The sky was slowly bleeding red.

Kang Hanseong set System Eden's warning aside and stared straight up into it.

So it's finally begun.

Phase 3 — the one Aey had warned him about. Aside from the change overhead, no other anomaly had shown itself yet. Even so, he did not relax. If anything, he drew his nerves taut. Danger had a way of arriving without notice, just as it had when the first elite monster appeared.

The preparations are finished. Thoroughly.

For ten days he had driven himself without pause. The greatest change was his level. Gazing into the red-tinged void, he murmured.

"Status."

His level stood at 55. Over the past ten days he had climbed five.

It was the expected result — no, if anything, the gain had slowed compared to before. In that span he had subjugated no fewer than fifteen Champion monsters.

Seoul, Gyeonggi, Incheon, Gangwon, and Chungcheong.

Every Champion-grade in South Korea, save Gyeongsang and Jeolla, had fallen to him. Five levels for all of that was less than he had thought. He wasn't particularly bothered.

It was like this before, too.

Back when he reached level 20, simply clearing zombies no longer yielded the experience it once had, so he had climbed by hunting elites and their minions. From level 40 on, the experience from elites themselves had dropped off sharply.

This is probably the same thing.

A dry laugh escaped him. There was no reason at all to be disappointed over a mere five levels. In the course of bringing down fifteen Champions he had taken in a vast sum of coins, and a considerable haul of spoils besides.

And quite a few skill books.

Setting aside mage skills and common skills, he had either parceled the books out to the comrades around him according to their classes, or sold them through the Auction House. Along the way he had learned two more skills. He looked them over one at a time.

The first was an invisibility skill. Just as it sounded, it turned the caster and the allies around them transparent — useful in a crisis, or whenever bodies needed hiding. What pleased him most was that once the skill took hold, the invisibility held even if they moved away from the caster.

The second was a flight skill. It designated a single target and lifted them into the empty air. From the trials he had run, the flight was freer than he had expected. It could also launch someone skyward at speed, which ought to serve well for breaking away when a crisis came out of nowhere.

He was still turning the skills over when—

Vmmm!

A vibration stirred in his pocket. The smartphone Lee Jihye had given him three days ago — a device Lee Minjae, the Enchanter, had built specially, linked to as many as eight lines. The moment he touched the call button, a bright voice tapped at his ear.

Seo Haeun, the level-32 shadow assassin. The reason he was hearing from her, rather than through the usual channel, was simple. The afternoon of the day before yesterday, Jihye had entered the Alchemist's Tower, and until she returned, Haeun was standing in for her. Even as he pieced that together, Haeun went on with her report in that same bright voice.

Right after Phase 3 began, Brigadier General Lee Jongpil had ordered every combatant operating beyond the Air Corps Base to return. With no way to know what might happen, he had chosen to gather them rather than leave them scattered.

He didn't particularly have questions. No — there was one. Something he hadn't been briefed on since two days ago. The moment it came back to him, he asked.

"I'd like to know the progress on the transport I commissioned from the Enchanter."

Lee Minjae, the Magic Engineer. Ten days ago he had entered a tower and come back having successfully learned the skill to craft ether-powered transport, then gone straight into building it. After that, Hanseong had received a daily progress report through Jihye. Once she entered the tower, the news had stopped.

Hmm. Taking longer than he'd thought. He had expected it done in about ten days. Well — it was the first thing of its kind. Of course it would take time. He told Haeun he understood, and her answer came at once.

The call with Haeun ended there. That accounted for the Air Corps Base.

Next he drew potions from his inventory and set them on the desk. Thirty intermediate energy-recovery potions — what Jihye had produced by pouring everything she had into the work before she entered the tower.

And...

There had been one more gain over those ten days, beyond the levels and the skills. From his inventory he produced an enormous egg.

The Poison of Gu, into which he had poured a tremendous amount of mana, had reached the state just before hatching. It would have been better if it had hatched before Phase 3 began, but it was still a solid result. When he had room to spare, he could finish granting it mana and claim whatever came of it.

With the recollection of the past ten days done, Hanseong looked to the sky again.

"Hmm."

A sky with nothing new in it. Aside from having been dyed a blood-red, not a single anomaly could be seen. He watched it for a while, then opened the Information Strategy Board, meaning to learn whether anything had broken out somewhere other than here.

Not long after, the post with the most comments caught his eye.

A post by the Crow Shaman. There wasn't much to the body of it — only a request that people leave, in comments and replies, eyewitness accounts or opinions about the anomalies that had followed Phase 3. He went straight to the comments.

Other places are about the same.

Taken together, they told him the situation elsewhere was much like Korea's. Aside from the sky turning red, there was no sign of any change.

How long he read, he couldn't have said. He had judged there was little to gain and was about to leave the board when a comment posted only just then snagged his gaze.

Replies raced up in an instant. A short while later, the author added more.

Hanseong narrowed his eyes. If that account was true, it did not look like a natural phenomenon at all. The other survivors seemed to feel the shift as well; the replies they left had changed in tone.

And then the author of the post appeared.

Kurogane Kotori, the Crow Shaman. Agreeing with SkySquirrel, she wrote out in detail what was happening in Ikebukuro — then abruptly added another comment.

What? How did she know I was watching?

The question flickered and passed. Given the situation, she had probably assumed he would be looking, and simply asked. He wrote a reply at once.

If anomalies broke out in regions where high-level survivors were present, something similar would have to be happening near Hanseong as well. Yet nothing had been observed in Suwon. Just as Kotori guessed, level and anomaly had nothing to do with each other.

Kotori fired the comments off in a rush. The matter was already finished, and still she wouldn't let go. None of it had anything to do with Phase 3. Hanseong ignored her and went back to the thread.

In the midst of that, someone new posted.

Busan?

His brow twitched. Of course it did. This was the first anomaly observed in Korea itself.

Shall I take a look?

Busan lay about three hundred kilometers from where he stood — well within what Precise Observation could cover. After a brief hesitation, he fixed the coordinates on Seomyeon in Busan, the place ICBM had named.

He was just about to use Precise Observation when the world before his eyes flooded red.

A warning, sprung without notice. At the same time, an icon of a peculiar shape manifested at the very coordinates he had meant to observe.

"That is..."

A shape like a raging vortex. The deep-green whirl had not appeared in Busan alone. The same thing had risen north of his current base, in Yongsan District, Seoul.

Better ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠to check that one first. Once he had decided, he shifted the coordinates designated for Precise Observation.

Yongsan District, Seoul. The National Museum of Korea. Over the grounds where a soccer field and a park had been laid out, green light snarled together in wild knots. The tangled light had made an enormous vortex, and its appearance matched the eyewitness accounts in the comments exactly.

His eyes flew wide. He had seen something that looked like this before — the Warp Gate, an added function of the base-creation skill.

Which means...

It was fair to read the thing as nothing but a passage, with the real threat lying beyond it. Understanding that much, he stored Phantom in his inventory, so he could get at the vortex.

Phantom was released beside the vortex. Hanseong piloted the figure that had stepped out, closing the gap. Just as it came within arm's reach, a notification appeared.

Information on the vortex, plain to anyone. What seized his attention was the time limit of roughly forty-eight hours. The moment he confirmed it, Aey's words surfaced unbidden — the warning that if the master of ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠■■ was not eliminated within the time, a great calamity would follow. His expression hardened as he went over the information with care.

But...

One question had arisen. The figure labeled entry limit.

That probably means how many people can go inside...

The strange part was that, so far, not a single person besides Phantom had approached the vortex. If no one had gone in, why was the entry count ticking upward?

He was quietly tilting his head when—

"...Ah!"

His eyes snapped wide. Only then did it come to him: a guess that would make the contradiction hold.

There just has to be an entrance to that same space somewhere other than here.

Perhaps every vortex that had opened across the world led to a single place.

The guess was close to certainty. He did not hesitate to move Phantom's body. The entry count had already leapt past a hundred.

I'll think once I'm inside.

It wasn't as if his real body were going in. If the situation turned against him, he had only to pull Phantom back out.

He set Phantom's foot toward the far side of the vortex. In that instant, a notification from System Eden appeared before his eyes.

With that brief notice, Phantom's vision was swallowed in darkness.