The Terrorist
In the red-marked spot of Sagum-ri stood a single one-story house.
The people of Sagum-ri talked about it like this:
"It used to be empty, but someone bought it a few months ago and fixed it up. Using it as a villa or something? What kind of villa out in this rural backwater."
"Never saw anyone come out of there. Never saw anyone go in either."
We thought it might be empty, until a tip came in from the only chicken place in town.
"Ah, that place? Lately they've been ordering delivery every hour."
"Always tell us to leave it at the door, so I don't know who's inside."
Given the circumstances, it was clear the culprit was hiding in that house.
Judging by the amount of chicken they ordered, we estimated two people.
Same number the sniper had given us.
Boss and subordinate, he'd said.
"The entry team is me, Kim Nayeon, Lee Jungmin, and two of Jungmin's acquaintances. Everyone else, hold your assigned positions and make sure not even an ant gets through."
Keira and Elena were wearing recognition-disrupting robes.
So right now they registered as sturdy men.
Someday the day would come when we revealed to the crew that the two of them were otherworlders, but today was not that day.
Excluding the entry team, the remaining crew members numbered twenty-one in total.
The whole crew had come, including leader Kim Nari.
Of course Nari herself was sitting this one out, waiting in the rear.
Because she might end up in danger.
If a C-class Keeper was at risk, why was a D-class Keeper like me joining the operation at all?
Because of Keira and Elena, of course.
If anything went wrong, I needed to be right beside them so I could at least serve as a battery.
"(Are you nervous?)"
"A little."
This was the bastard who had driven Keira and me to the brink of death.
A madman who had tried sniping in the middle of Seoul and set off an explosion for good measure.
There was no telling what crazy stunt he would pull this time.
"(Hehe. Don't worry. I'll protect you no matter what.)"
Elena's voice brimmed with confidence.
By Earth standards she was a full S-class Keeper.
One of the absolute elites of which Korea had only about ten.
With her here, no one fretted about a D-class like me joining the operation.
The fact that we could march straight in through the front was entirely thanks to Elena's presence.
With an S-class holy knight on our side, what was there to worry about?
"(Then I'll take the lead.)"
With Elena at the front, the five of us headed for that one-story house.
It had a yard enclosed by a low wall.
There was no separate front gate.
Instead, CCTV cameras greeted us.
"(I can feel eyes on us from there and there.)"
Elena pointed to the wall and the roof of the house.
CCTV cameras sat exactly where she indicated.
"The enemy has spotted us. Stay sharp—we don't know when the attack will start."
I tensed hard at Garam's words and scanned every direction.
On the surface, nothing was happening.
Even when we reached the front door, there was still no reaction.
Could the oracle have been wrong...?
"I'll go in first. Elena, protecting the party is your top priority."
Elena nodded and lifted her shield a fraction.
The others exchanged looks and nodded as well.
"Going in."
Bang!
Garam kicked the front door open and rolled inside.
The entrance opened straight into the living room, and the living room held nothing but furniture—no people.
Instead, the door on the far side of the room swung open and a massive gun barrel thrust out.
"Machine gun! Everyone dodge!"
Ratatatatat.
They had clearly been waiting for us to open the door.
Bullets came flying with zero delay.
Garam, already rolling, could keep tumbling out of the way, but the rest of us stood in a straight line at the entrance with nowhere to dodge and no time to move.
The only thing we could trust was Elena.
"(The love of Lu shall cover all!)"
Elena gripped the shield with both hands and thrust it forward.
The shield matched the design of her armor—white base with elegant gold accents.
Blue light flared from its edges and formed a far larger shield.
Originally it had only covered Elena's upper body; now it stood a full two meters tall.
KRA-KA-KA-KANG!
A roar like successive explosions filled the air.
Furniture shredded by the machine gun flew in every direction.
The wooden floor was gouged open, exposing concrete, and even the concrete could not withstand the gun's power.
Chunks of concrete bounced from floor to ceiling.
Yet Elena did not budge an inch from her spot.
She stood planted on both feet, absorbing the full momentum of every bullet.
"Whoa..."
The admiration slipped out on its own.
I had heard "S-class, S-class" plenty of times, but the real presence of an S-class was on another level entirely.
I had shared a bed with that person.
I was the only one who had ever seen that face lost in climax.
Was this even real?
Would I even be able to get hard next time out of sheer intimidation?
No—if anything, the fear might make me harder.
KRA-KA-KA-KANG!
The hail of bullets kept coming.
But behind Elena it was almost peaceful.
Only Garam, who had jumped out ahead for no good reason, had to scramble and dodge until he finally made it back behind her.
Thud. Thud. Thuk.
Sssssss.
About two minutes.
That was how long the machine gun spat fire.
Spent casings lay in a thick pile in front of the far door; lead bullets formed an equally thick pile in front of Elena's shield.
"(Is it over?)"
"Yeah. The gun overheated—it can't fire again."
At Garam's words Elena lowered the shield.
It immediately shrank back to its original size.
"(I'll take point.)"
Elena walked forward, shoving the pile of bullets aside with her shield.
Her back looked utterly reliable.
She was shorter than me, her back smaller, but what did that matter right now?
I wanted to kiss that back this instant and tell her she'd done well.
Later.
As we advanced slowly, the far door opened all the way and two men stepped out.
One was the sharp-eyed man I remembered; the other had a faintly resentful look about him.
"There's no Keeper in Korea with that kind of ability... no, not even in the whole world. Who the hell are you?"
"Why do you need to know? Why don't you give us your name first?"
"Garam... you're no ordinary Keeper either. I can't find any past records on you. Like they were wiped clean."
"If you'd just asked me, I would have told you. You went and did something pointless."
The man threw his head back and laughed.
"Hahahaha. Yeah, I should have. But stranger than that is Lee Jungmin. What ability did you awaken, exactly? A mage?"
The man looked straight at me with perfect accuracy.
His pinpoint observation made my face go stiff.
"So you really are a mage."
Tsk... still a long way to go.
I needed to learn how to hide my expressions the way Garam did.
"Why would the heavens awaken a mage at a time like this... no, the heavens are always like that. They never help me, do they?"
"They're helping you now, so relax. A few years in prison and you'll be living a nice, upright life."
Garam shot forward.
He had warned us not to chat with the terrorist during the operation.
Just focus on capturing him, he'd said; interrogation comes after.
The subordinate beside the man stepped out to intercept Garam.
Both of them were physical-enhancement types; they drew swords and clashed.
Kang. Kang.
Right after, Nayeon charged the man.
"Tsk. No sense of romance..."
The man pulled papers from his coat and scattered them in front of himself.
Every one was a scroll covered in magic formulas.
The scrolls immediately sucked in the surrounding mana and detonated on the spot.
Puh-buh-buh-bung.
Nayeon had to fall back to avoid the blasts.
And when more scrolls came flying, she was forced to dodge sideways instead of charging straight in.
Pung!
I still didn't know the full extent of the man's ability, but he was clearly no pushover.
"Keira, did you find the detection-interference magic?"
A powerful detection-interference spell blanketed the house.
Search magic and the like couldn't tell us what was inside.
Even the oracle had been useless.
It wasn't that detection itself was impossible—specification was.
With Divinity 2, an oracle answer like "there's a sofa in the house" left you with nothing to complain about.
From the moment the front door opened, Keira had been hunting for the core of that interference magic.
Since the man used magic through scrolls, this would be a scroll too.
"There and there. I'll take them out."
Keira pointed at the coat racks standing in both corners of the living room.
She instantly formed blue arrows and hurled them at the two spots.
Pang! Pang!
The coat racks shattered, and the papers hidden beneath them tore apart.
At the same instant the man's subordinate went flying into the wall.
The man himself fared no better.
Nayeon's fist sent him crashing into the wall as well.
"Keuk!"
He spat blood.
The subordinate already looked unconscious—no movement at all.
"An A-class Keeper... kuh, really is different... but... how about this?"
The man raised his right hand.
That was when Keira shouted.
"Gather around Elena! Now! This whole house is covered in scrolls!"
"Too late! We all die together!"
Snap.
The moment the man flicked his fingers, the surrounding mana convulsed.
It surged and tried to pour into the floor.
If the scrolls absorbed all the mana they needed and activated, something would happen.
Probably an explosion.
Thud.
Elena slammed her blue-enlarged shield into the ground.
The blue light stretched farther and formed a hemisphere that enclosed the entire party.
The shape was different from the one she had shown before the operation.
Back then it had been a full sphere; now it was a hemisphere.
In exchange, it was twice as large.
Keira's thought rang inside my head.
That.
The one thing only I could do in this place.
Even S-class Elena, A-class Keeper Nayeon, B-class Keeper Garam, or B-class ability user Keira couldn't manage it—only a D-class Keeper like me.
Paaaat.
A Gate opened in front of me.
The moment I called on Lu's power, warm energy flowed through the Gate and filled me with strength.
The god of compassion and love, Lu, bestows a blessing upon you.
Divinity rises by 1.
As my Divinity rose, the mana that was trying to move became visible to my naked eyes.
I could also see the still mana layered over the mana that wanted to move.
I ordered those manas not to move.
Even the mana that had been trying to surge froze in place.
A method of bringing the surrounding mana under my control by using the high authority of Divinity.
Mana already touched by someone else's magic power was impossible to control with only Divinity 2, but the mana used by scrolls was fair game.
It was the contingency we had prepared against possible scroll traps.
Of course, with Elena and Keira here I had never expected my turn would actually come.
Puh-buh-buh-buh-bung.
Dozens—no, hundreds—of scrolls seemed to detonate at once.
Just how much preparation had he put into this?
"(The second the explosions stop, I'm going out!)"
Because each individual blast was weak, Elena's barrier held firm.
My own condition, however—holding back the internal explosions—was not good.
Honestly, I was already at my limit.
The mental strength needed to maintain both my magic power and the Gate was scraping the bottom.
Pung...
The moment the explosions ended, Elena dropped the shield and sprinted forward.
The man who had been embedded in the wall was gone.
He wasn't dead.
The subordinate's corpse, shredded by the blasts, lay sprawled nearby.
He had shouted "let's all die together" and then run off alone.
"Below there!"
Keira pointed at the floor.
Elena slammed her shield into the spot Keira indicated.
KRA-GAGANG.
The floor caved in and Elena dropped through.
Sgeong.
Accompanied by the sound of a blade, the man's right hand rose into the living room and then vanished back below the floor.
His right hand was making a "snap" motion.
"(Now! Drop the Divinity and get out of that spot!)"
I did exactly as Elena's voice told me.
About one second later the mana surged again and the place we had been standing exploded dozens of times over.
Puh-buh-buh-bung.
A moment later and we would have been caught in those blasts.
I had already hit my limit, and my Gate had vanished before I could even dismiss it myself.
"Uwaaaagh!"
Elena climbed back into the living room with the man in tow and hurled him onto the floor.
He clutched his severed wrist and rolled around screaming.
"Uagh, kuh, damn it! Who the hell is this woman?!"
Elena's hood had come off, revealing her beautiful face.
Standing there in white armor with her sword at the man's throat, she looked like a painting.
"Why isn't space transfer working again?! Goddamn it, kuh. You bastards! What did you do?!"
The fact that space transfer wouldn't work was also part of our preparation.
Keira had drawn an interference magic circle that prevented proper space-transfer coordinates from being set within a three-hundred-meter radius.
She had spent five full hours drawing it.
While the man sat inside eating chicken, we had been wandering around outside for five hours.
"Nothing you need to know. The people you killed died without knowing what was done to them either, right?"
Garam said as he bound the man.
Those words felt damn good.
At first we hadn't even known how Park Jaehyeok had gone missing.
"Uuk... that wasn't me. The monster did it."
"That'll all come out in the investigation, so don't worry. Of course, don't expect that investigation to be public."
Garam casually dropping terrifying lines one after another.
The underground prison at the GGC Crew House flashed through my mind and I shuddered on pure reflex.
"Shut up... investigation my ass! You think I'll cooperate with Keepers?"
The man snarled and opened his mouth wide.
Madness burned in his eyes.
"That's enough."
Garam raised a knife-hand, ready to knock him out.
In that instant the light in the man's eyes shifted slightly.
Was there something else?
This was the same guy who opened fire with a machine gun the second the door opened, then shouted "let's all die together" only to try escaping alone.
High odds he had prepared something right to the end.
I lunged forward and shoved my hand into the man's mouth.
"Ugueok?"
I saw his eyes waver.
I gave him a wide grin.
Sorry—you're not dying today.
Garam's knife-hand struck the man's neck and he went limp.
When Garam searched inside the mouth, the reason for that flicker of the eyes became clear.
"Cyanide pouch. Looks like he planned to kill himself. Nice work, Jungmin."
"It's nothing."
Thank god.
That bastard didn't deserve a comfortable death.