Phase 3 (3)

The Hidden Piece had come as an achievement reward.

Hanseong drew the Evolution Stone from his Inventory. The moment his hand closed around it, its details unfolded.

Hanseong's eyes flew wide.

He had guessed as much from the name, but he had never truly believed the thing would be bound to real Skill Evolution.

He clenched the stone and tapped the skill at the very top of his list—the first he had learned after becoming a mage. Call Lightning.

The skill sat on the very brink of evolving. He checked the others and found Wind Cutter and Tinder poised just as close.

If I used the Evolution Stone here, it might catch Call Lightning, or Wind Cutter, or Tinder. The skill was chosen at random. That would be a staggering waste. Better not to use it. Not yet.

And besides, so long as he kept the stone, he could see exactly what each evolution still required. Simply holding on to it was profit enough. Hanseong returned the Evolution Stone to his Inventory.

Finished with the rewards, he meant to recall Phantom as well. Then, without warning, a notice appeared.

A sudden demand, unlike anything he had seen. Hanseong was not rattled. The moment it asked for an alias, a name was already waiting in his head.

He had barely finished the entry when a new message rose before his eyes.

So that was why it had asked for an alias. From the look of it, the notice had not gone to him alone. It had appeared for everyone else as well. The comments were the proof.

The comments detonated, multiplying by the second. He left them behind and looked at the subjugation notice again. Something had snagged at him the first time he read it.

Three spawn sites. South Korea, India, and the Philippines. An entrance into the rift must have opened in each of them. And the 3 fixed to the end of the rift's name—was that a coincidence?

No. Hanseong, at least, did not think so.

It meant the number of entrances.

A new fact, settled. Then the notice in front of him vanished, and a red alert took its place. A warning.

Ten minutes, and the rift would be gone. A pure-white vortex opened before Phantom. The way out, most likely.

He moved Phantom's body forward and stepped through. A moment later he stood behind the National Museum of Korea—the very place where he had first found the swirl.

He stored Phantom in his Inventory and wrote a comment on the Information Strategy Board.

Everyone has to know. Everything he had learned about the rifts. He boiled it down to the essentials and posted, and he had just drawn a breath when his phone buzzed. A call from Haeun.

Her voice was startled. He gave her a short account of what had happened inside the rift, and she gasped in wonder again and again. Then, a little later:

The question dragged up something he had let slip. Right. An entrance to a rift had opened in Busan as well.

"No. I'll go."

He answered without room for argument. A crowd pouring in would be less efficient than going alone, and the rewards for clearing a rift were too good to hand away.

That worried send-off was the last of it. Hanseong fixed the coordinates for Busan Seomyeon and drew Phantom back out of his Inventory.

A short while later, Phantom stood in Seomyeon. Past the bleak stretch of street, the entrance to the rift was visible. He had just started toward it when a voice called after him.

"Hey! You there!"

Only then did Hanseong realize it. Dozens of people were gathered around the entrance to the rift.

"Where did he come from all of a sudden?"

"We had this whole area sealed..."

"More to the point—that is a person, right?"

They closed in, one and then another. The crowd split down the middle.

The man who came through stood nearly two meters tall. Burly, early thirties, he tossed the words out as if they cost him nothing.

"Oh Jeongho. Busan Alliance."

By his tone, and by the way the others reacted, he was the leader of the pack. Now that Hanseong thought of it, Busan did have one large group of survivors. He was turning the memory over when Oh Jeongho spoke again.

"Who are you? How did you get here..."

"The Fire-Lightning Mage."

Jeongho's brow twitched. The murmuring around them swelled with it.

"The Fire-Lightning Mage? For real?"

"I heard he was in Seoul..."

"He already made it all the way here from Seoul?"

Doubt and disbelief rode the noise. Jeongho himself glared at Phantom, his face hard, as if he had no intention of believing so easily.

"...And how am I supposed to trust a word of that?"

The reaction he had expected. There were plenty of ways to make them believe. A single comment on the Information Strategy Board would have been enough. Hanseong chose another.

"Look over there."

Phantom pointed at an old building. Hanseong had already confirmed there was not a single survivor inside it, or anywhere around it. Every eye turned that way.

A great pit opened in the ground. Five meters deep, it stripped the building's foundation of any use in a single breath, and the collapse followed at once. With a boom and a long, grinding crash, the structure dropped in on itself. The subsidence took the neighboring buildings with it, one after another, like dominoes. At the sight of intact buildings falling in sequence, the ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠street went dead quiet.

Tense eyes. Ragged breath. The doubt and distrust on their faces turned to shock, and then to awe. Oh Jeongho was no exception. He swallowed dryly and stared at Phantom, his face gone stiff.

"Why would the ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠Fire-Lightning Mage come here..."

Phantom did not answer. He only pointed, silent, at the entrance to the rift. Fortunately the leader of the Busan Alliance was not a fool with no sense for the obvious.

"You're going in there?"

"Yeah."

At the short reply, Jeongho stepped aside without another word. The others did the same, opening a path in silence.

And why are they all gathered here if they aren't even going in? The question flickered up and was gone. It wasn't what mattered.

He reached for the vortex, and the rift's information opened beyond it. Only two entrances, perhaps—fewer people had gone in than he had expected.

Right. Before that.

There was something he still had to ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠do. His fingers found the watch on his left wrist, the one he had received from the Enchanter, Lee Minjae.

He chose Ether Strike. A moment later the cooldown cleared, and he set Phantom's feet in motion.

He was on the point of stepping into the rift when someone shoved through the press of bodies and ran straight for Phantom, seizing his hand without warning.

"E-excuse me!"

A girl who couldn't have been older than middle school, drowning in an oversized hoodie. Her face was bloodless, and whatever had happened to her, the words came tumbling out in a rush.

"Please save my brother! He went in ahead of us, and—it's just, I mean..."

She spilled the whole story. Stripped down, it amounted to this: fifty of the Busan Alliance's vanguard had already entered the rift, and with no way to contact them, the people outside could only stamp their feet. Hanseong turned to Oh Jeongho.

"Then go in and contact them yourself."

"...That's impossible, as things stand."

"Why? There's still room under the entry limit."

Asked with the doubt plain in it, Jeongho let out a sigh. His expression grew complicated as he stared at the vortex that led into the rift.

"The main force was supposed to follow five minutes after the vanguard went in, but..."

Once word spread that no one who entered could come back out, the volunteers had vanished. They had learned the rift was a death trap, and no one wanted to walk into it. Hanseong's brow furrowed.

"Then what were you planning to do about the vanguard?"

"That..."

"You were just going to let them die?"

"Th-that's not what I was thinking!"

Jeongho barked it. His mouth said otherwise, but his face was the face of a man struck dead center. Flustered into the open, he launched into another passionate defense.

"We're doing everything we can, in our own way! If we can just find a way to contact the vanguard and confirm what's happening inside, we'll go in right away...!"

He laid the rescue plan out in detail. Hanseong did not believe a word of it. Through the Magic Eye, every syllable was a lie—though, from the start, Jeongho had been in no position to tell the truth.

If he doesn't even try to save the vanguard—if he doesn't so much as make the effort...

And the vanguard was wiped out because of it? Oh Jeongho would lose every scrap of trust he held as a leader. After that, no one would step forward lightly. In the worst case, the survivor group itself might collapse.

Just then Jeongho spoke up again, as if some bright idea had struck him.

"Or I could concede the whole of it to you."

"Concede? What does that—"

"Every coin and every piece of loot taken in there, I'll yield the rights to all of it. In exchange, getting the vanguard out will be how I take my payment."

Hanseong let out a hollow laugh. It wasn't even worth calling a proposal.

"Well? Not a bad offer—"

"That's enough of the stupid talk."

Cornered or not, the man was sitting there declaring nonsense as if it were obvious. At that pathetic display, Hanseong shot Phantom's hand out and seized him by the collar.

"Whatever rewards come out of that rift are a right I earn by what I do. You want to claim them, fight for them yourself."

"Th-that's..."

Jeongho's eyes slid this way and that. A moment later they went round again, as if some new clever move had just occurred to him.

"Then I'll commission you! Save the vanguard, and I'll pay you a price that fits the work."

Now, at last, he was saying something shaped like sense. Hanseong withdrew the hand that had held him and named his terms.

"I'll take the payment in coins."

"Coins? How many would that be...?"

"Ten thousand a head. Five hundred thousand coins."

"...What?"

Jeongho's eyes bulged. He stared blankly at Phantom, then waved his hands in a panic and shouted.

"W-we don't have money like that!"

"Then make it."

"Where am I supposed to get—"

"That's your problem. If the coins aren't ready when I come back out, I'll kill every last one of you standing here and take them anyway."

"...!"

Color drained from his face. Only then, as if he had finally understood that this had gone badly wrong, did Oh Jeongho lunge.

"W-wait—!"

Hanseong was not caught. He moved Phantom on and stepped through the green vortex.

The familiar message came with it, and a darkness he already knew closed around Phantom.

The survivor group of Busan. Seo Jihun of the Busan Alliance, a level-30 Assault Warrior, was in hell.

"Ghk—!"

The zombies had him ringed on every side. Ordinary ones he would have erased in under a minute. These were a special breed. Every one of them wore armor, and worse than the armor was this: they did not simply charge. They attacked with tactics.

"Damn it all!"

"Why isn't the main force coming!?"

Not far off, the comrades fighting beside him spat the words in fury. At the shout, Jihun thought back to what had happened only a little while ago.

A green vortex had appeared near Seomyeon. The Busan Alliance had formed a vanguard before anyone went in.

...Oh Jeongho.

Leader of the Busan Alliance. When he recruited the vanguard, he had offered the volunteers special benefits—a larger cut of the rewards, things of that sort. If that had been all, Jihun would have had no reason to step forward. He was not particularly hungry for the rewards.

But...

The ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠man had dangled a condition Jihun could not refuse. His only family, his younger sister Seo Subin, would be kept out of the fighting to come.

In the end he accepted, and stepped into the vortex. A jungle thick with undergrowth greeted the vanguard.

And then the fighting started.

Armored zombies had appeared from somewhere and fallen on them. The battle had not stopped since. At first they fought with everything they had, waiting for a main force that was supposed to arrive any moment. The force that had promised to come in five minutes still showed no sign of coming after more than ten.

And then—

"Ghk—!"

"J-Jihyeong!"

The comrade at the front took an arrow and went down where he stood. Leave him, and he would end up looking like a porcupine. Jihun bit his lip hard and shouted back over his shoulder.

"I'll go get him—cover me!"

"O-okay!"

Jihun kicked off the ground at once. Shield held out in front of him, he ran. He reached the fallen man, hauled him onto one shoulder, and turned.

If I can just get back to the others...!

He could still save him. He was setting his feet down, calm, when brush crashed against brush and zombies that had not been in his sight a moment ago stepped into it.

"...!?"

Had they been hiding, waiting for exactly this? The guess flashed through him, and by then the axe-wielding zombies were already in his face.

A crisis with no room left in it. Jihun's choice was to set both his comrade and his shield down and strike back. The problem was that the zombies did not look inclined to wait that long.

Please...!

Anyone. Just buy him a few seconds. Then he could get his guard up and cut them down. His desperate wish went unanswered.

The axe hissed in, closing on the nape of his neck. So this was as far as he went. His face twisted with frustration, and he squeezed his eyes shut. And in that instant—

A splintering crack, then a wet impact. With the racket of it, the axe-swinging zombies collapsed. Jihun's eyes flew open, and he realized something had dropped out of the sky and slammed into them.

"That's..."

Black shapes, tearing into the zombies. It did not take him long to understand what they were.

"...Crows?"

A flock of dozens. They had hunted the zombies down in an instant, then scattered into the air around him, already searching for the next prey.