Quick Eagle's Return
I held my holy power in my hands and sprinkled it straight ahead.
The finely scattered pink light swirled in the air, obedient to my will, and then gathered into one point before slowly forming the shape of a perfect circle.
The holy spell, **Azure Sky Vision**.
A holy spell for observing distant locations. The same one I had used the last time Liam and Ha In-ha had dinner together.
Now I needed to designate the coordinates of the person or place I wanted to observe through the mirror. The target I was about to check was, of course, the nuclear weapon that possessed a self.
“Let’s first observe the situation through this.”
The Goddess simply told me to keep broadcasting without worry.
But that was impossible. Not someone else, but Liam had already flown to America. How could I possibly do that?
If things went wrong, I wouldn’t hold back my unique temperament against the Americans.
That would be the end. No matter how much of a former hero I was, it was impossible to win against ‘America’ in this land where mana was scarce.
Moreover, according to Seoyun, America has the highest number of returnees. The exact figure wasn’t public, but it was said to exceed one thousand without fail?
‘As expected, America.’
Even though the world had changed since I reincarnated, the fact that America was the strongest country remained unchanged.
So I needed to keep a close eye on Liam’s movements.
—Elluke.
At that moment, the Goddess suddenly called my name softly. Had something gone wrong? I answered with tension.
“Why did you call me?”
—Do you have any snacks to snack on while watching? If you have any, go ahead and eat. It’s for my substitute satisfaction.
“…”
I stared at the sky for a moment, then went to get some snacks. They were potato chips I had bought for my children.
After neatly cutting the top of the potato chip bag for eating, I asked carefully.
“I’m sorry, but are you not busy?”
When my voice couldn’t be heard, it was lonely, but once it was heard, it suddenly became troublesome. It was better for me to just stay silent and dignified.
—I’m quite busy.
“Then I’ll go ahead.”
—Why are you sending me away? Have you become interested in believing in another god?
“…”
It seemed there was no urgent matter to deal with right now. After all, I could just use the angels as snacks, so the Goddess wouldn’t have to run around busy.
I finally finished preparing to observe Liam with **Azure Sky Vision** together with the now-audience-mode Goddess.
Seoyun was also sitting right beside me and didn’t go anywhere.
However, her complexion was a bit stiff. It was because the Goddess’s gaze was directed this way.
Still, since I had nothing I could do for her, I just patted her shoulder and activated the mirror.
Soon, Liam appeared on the screen. Our nuclear weapon was flying slowly through the sky.
But he wasn’t alone. With him was a black man flapping his enormous wings, obviously a returnee.
“Eh? That person…”
Seoyun, who had been quietly there, widened her eyes.
“Do you know who it is?”
“That person is ‘Quick Eagle.’ He’s a famous returnee.”
“Quick Eagle? I hope he doesn’t call himself that.”
“He does call himself that.”
“…”
He claimed to be a ‘Quick Eagle’ himself. It was no different from me calling myself the ‘Pink Pope.’
“So what kind of person is he?”
“A hero.”
“…Don’t tell me he calls himself that too?”
“Yeah. But he’s so capable that the American government supports his hero activities. The name is what he made up, though.”
He was thicker-skinned than I expected.
He was as brazen as Liam in many ways. That’s probably why the two of them were flying happily and talking cheerfully.
—“Personally, I think Captain America and Iron General should have been women.”
—“I agree with you, friend.”
—“And if possible, they should be of Asian descent. That way it’s PC, right?”
—“You know a lot!”
Quick Eagle’s words sounded in Korean. It seemed he had cast an interpreting spell. The translation was a bit awkward, but not bad.
But even though I understood the words, I couldn’t grasp what they meant at all.
“Seoyun, what does ‘PC’ mean?”
From what I knew, PC stood for ‘Personal Computer.’ But why was there a ‘to do’ attached to it?
Just as I was guessing the reason, Seoyun suddenly placed her hand on my thigh. Then she shook her head.
“It’s something you don’t need to know. Don’t bother looking it up and just ignore it.”
“Is that so…?”
It was a line that sounded serious, but I decided to obediently follow it. Seoyun wouldn’t lie to me.
Soon, Quick Eagle in the mirror opened his mouth again.
—Friend, how about we drink together at my house? I want to drink to commemorate this meeting.
—I’d be fine with that.
The two of them slightly changed their flight path. Yet they still exchanged words naturally, like old friends who had known each other for ten years.
I watched the scene blankly and murmured softly.
“…What exactly is going on here?”
Why was the guy heading to the Tribe headquarters suddenly going to drink with a self-proclaimed hero? And when had they become so close?
I couldn’t understand the situation at all.
Seoyun, who was just as blankly staring as I was, soon offered her own guess.
“It seems Mr. Kim is controlling it well?”
“You mean him?”
It was a plausible deduction once I heard it. Liam wouldn’t have spoken so politely to someone he had just met on his own.
Normally, he never would have.
If it had been the original Liam, he would have asked why there was only hair on his head when his whole body was covered in feathers. Or why his skin was black but his feathers were white.
But he wasn’t making any rude comments and was only saying things that would please the other person. It was clear evidence that someone else’s intention had intervened.
Thanks to the Goddess’s arrangement, Kim Ji-eong must be giving advice on what to say and do while connected in spirit.
“I’m glad.”
Seoyun, who had been tense the whole time, finally relaxed.
“It seems he’s handling it calmly like during the interview.”
“…I suppose so.”
“Is that also a kind of speech correction?”
“He’s more passive than me, but it doesn’t seem like he’s saying anything completely wrong.”
He was reading Liam’s thoughts, selecting words, and telling him what to say. Then he was suppressing his actions. In other words, ‘behavioral passive correction.’
He was an external affairs handler I had hired expecting exactly this role, but I was a little confused. The problem was that he was doing much better than expected.
‘How…’
How could a normal job seeker suppress Liam’s temperament so perfectly? It was impossible for me to understand.
Was he perhaps truly a capable military dog?
Thinking about it, that seemed right. The methods for handling dogs and for suppressing Liam weren’t that different.
When teaching a pet dog to ‘sit,’ it was effective to give treats while demonstrating. The way I had temporarily corrected a former hero and present delinquent’s behavior was similar to that.
‘For one week, behave quietly. And if you don’t misbehave for a month… imagine what will happen to you.’
This so-called ‘training and reward’ operation. It was quite an effective method. Even so, after receiving the reward, he would immediately return to his old ways.
Anyway, Kim Ji-eong really was a capable military dog. He was handling a former hero who was fiercer than a typical attack dog.
—Didn’t I tell you? Thanks to trusting me, it’s mostly solved.
Soon the Goddess boasted proudly. I nodded my head but cautiously objected.
“Because the Goddess’s motto is to just charge in blindly, she’s trusting the external affairs handler?”
It was a reasonable objection, but the other party was the Goddess. It meant she was ignoring me.
—I’m going now. From now on, try to handle it alone as much as possible.
Soon the Goddess’s presence, which had been filling my mind, disappeared. She had really gone to work.
Even while the Goddess was leaving, Liam and Quick Eagle’s voices continued.
—“I think we should teach PC awareness at school.”
—“Friend, that’s… a bit radical?”
It wasn’t a conversation with much nutritional value. Since there didn’t seem to be much point in watching closely, I slumped.
Then I told Seoyun.
“Please go to bed first. You have to go to work tomorrow.”
“Then what about oppa?”
I shook my head while staring at the mirror.
“I have to keep monitoring our nuclear weapon.”
That night, I had a feeling it was going to be long.
***
At 3 a.m., the time when everyone was asleep.
I was still blankly staring at **Azure Sky Vision**. I was lying on the sofa.
‘Until when are they going to keep drinking?’
Liam and Quick Eagle were really having a drinking party. They were chugging strong Russian alcohol like water and making a lot of noise.
It was too loud, so I turned down the volume a little.
It was almost a noise complaint. But no one came to protest. Quick Eagle’s house was a boat, after all.
No, actually, it was ambiguous to call it a house. It was just a motorboat. It was big enough, but it was hard to call it a family home.
Why did he live in a place like that? It seemed a bit expensive for a motorboat, given that his self-proclaimed hero activities weren’t going smoothly.
—“But why do you live in a place like this?”
At that moment, Liam asked the question he was curious about.
Quick Eagle answered after gulping down his drink.
—Friend, strong people are supposed to be alone, right? For someone like me with overly strong power, a lonely place like this is just right.
I wondered if there was some noble reason, but there wasn’t. It sounded like something that came out of a middle schooler’s puberty fantasy.
‘Is he actually a kid?’
On paper, he looked almost fifty, but surprisingly young. Both his appearance and personality were young, unlike what I expected.
How much hardship had he gone through in another world to become this old? While smiling bitterly and realizing the importance of management, I was there.
—“Overly strong?”
Liam murmured with a puzzled face, then spat out after a while.
—Like this?
The moment I heard those words, I sat up startled. It was an unavoidable remark.
‘Why all of a sudden…’
Quick Eagle’s expression suddenly turned cold. Because of Liam’s provocation.
Why was he suddenly acting like that? Did Kim Ji-eong not endure the midnight drowsiness and fall asleep?
I didn’t know the cause, but I knew what would happen next.
*Crash!*
—“…That’s a hard thing to ignore.”
As expected, Quick Eagle, who looked younger than his appearance, couldn’t ignore Liam’s provocation and sat up. Then he grabbed feathers in his hand and aimed at Liam.
—Come on. Prove your strength to me.
I clenched both my fists in tension.
Liam would probably win if they fought. That was the problem. An American returnee getting beaten, and America wouldn’t just sit still.
—Good. Follow me to the sky.
Of course, Liam didn’t refuse the fight.
This was going to be trouble. It was time for the Goddess’s intervention option that she had kept hidden.
‘…It’ll be annoying to clean up later.’
I was worried about the aftermath, but first, I needed to calm these two down.
First, I concentrated all my holy power in my body near my chest.
Then, the chest covered in the Sacrament began to flicker with an intensely bright light that pierced through my clothes. An unmistakably clear pink radiance.
I gathered that brilliant light to one point and shot it straight forward. I poured all my faithful heart into it.
“Be purified.” Right after the short sentence was uttered. The pink light, bright enough to be blinding, flooded across the mirror.
Soon, the burning passion in Liam and Quick Eagle’s faces disappeared, and gentle smiles bloomed.
Peace had come.
—Haha. Why were we even trying to fight? On such a beautiful sunny day.
—I guess I just forgot the Goddess’s blessing for a moment.
Their conversation didn’t match their appearances. It was a temporary ‘Faith Contagion’ symptom.
Watching the two people suddenly become meek, I let out a sigh.
‘Oh, I should have seen this. Father.’
It was a fatal move that made me realize all over again how much I regretted not entering the game.
---
Azure Sky Vision Activated
Faith Contagion Skill has been activated. Liam and Quick Eagle have been calmed.