The Guide of Light
Thud!
"Ghk…"
The body crumpled.
"That makes sixty."
Baek Do-ha flicked the blood from his dagger and frowned.
He had expected to finish this quickly. It was taking far longer than planned. The cultists weren't clustered together — they were scattered in every direction, and the travel alone was eating up time. Teleportation had cut the waste as much as it could; without it, he would still be at this hours from now.
Worse still was dealing with the ones inside the Gates. They had buried themselves among ordinary Hunters, so he couldn't simply cut them down on sight. Identifying and eliminating each one had stretched every encounter.
"That's exactly why I made my arrival official…"
In truth, leaving a public record of his coming had been the largest part of the plan. If word spread that a Cheonwaecheon was on the ground, the hidden cultists would start to shift — the ones hunting for traces would grow frantic, the ones watching the perimeter would tighten their guard, and the ones running surveillance would try to avoid any contact with him at all.
And they had moved exactly as he predicted. Because of that, killing them had been almost easy. Once they started showing themselves, he barely needed to dig. They practically announced themselves.
Still, the numbers were lower than expected. The sixty who had slipped up were gone, cleanly dealt with — but the rest remained buried deep.
A low hum. A hiss of dissolving flesh.
"Time to bring Yong-yong into this. I can't keep going like this."
Do-ha melted the corpse with Yeokcheon-mudok-ma-gong and sank into thought. Roughly fifty cultists left — more, if he counted the ones still cloaking their demonic energy. Hunting them one by one would take forever. And as their numbers thinned, someone was bound to notice something was wrong.
They'll catch on and run.
He had no intention of letting them.
A rustle of cloth. Decision made, Do-ha gathered the things he had left on the ground — everything he had taken off the cultists so far. Documents. Phones. A few were locked, but locks like these never took him long.
I'll go through the papers once I'm home.
If he pieced all of it together, he might finally get something on the Pope — or at least on the people closest to him. That was the real reason he had come this far.
A soft rush of air. The documents and phones vanished into his subspace storage.
"Ugh. Nothing ever goes according to plan."
Do-ha shook his head and sent a telepathic call to Yong-yong, wherever the dragon was hiding.
—Yong-yong. Come to the coordinates I'm sending. Stay out of sight.
Lightning crackled. Wind tore past.
With the message sent, Do-ha unfolded Noeryeongsinbo and vanished.
A rush of air.
"Good work out there!"
As Do-ha approached, Viktor — a Finnish Hunter — yanked a bottle of water from his pack and thrust it forward. Ever since Do-ha had left them with that killing-intent remark earlier, Viktor had been a nervous wreck.
"I already drank."
"Ah — then maybe a snack, or—"
"Just stand there and be quiet."
"Yes, sir."
Watching him, Do-ha let out a sigh. How had a blockhead like this even made SS-Rank? A quick check had put him in the Divine 200. Was Earth really this short on talent?
"Anyway — how many are left?"
Leo turned toward Dvalin. The three of them were running the Hunters across Iceland, each handling a sector of Gates, and none of them had a clear count of what remained.
"Five in the east, four in the west, six in the south, three in the north."
"Ugh… still that many."
Leo and Viktor scratched their heads at Dvalin's report. A Cheonwaecheon was here — why were so many Gates still standing? Iceland didn't even have any high-risk Gates right now.
"It's only this low because Do-ha has been clearing them so fast."
Word from the scattered Hunters was consistent: the Cheonwaecheon would appear, kill the boss at speed, collapse the Gate, and move on. That report had come in nine times already.
I wasn't trying to build an alibi, but I accidentally made a pretty solid one.
He had only been moving to kill the cultists near — or inside — the Gates.
Then—
"AAAAAGH!"
"AAAH!"
Screams tore through the air. The three of them spun toward a support Hunter sprinting their way. What now?
"A— a dragon! There's a dragon!"
"It's a dragon!!!"
"What?!"
At the word dragon, all three men's eyes went wide enough to fall out. Iceland had no high-risk Gates. A dragon out of nowhere?
"The sky!"
Wings beat the air. One of the Hunters pointed upward — and there, high above, a massive dragon was gliding on the wind.
Of course it was Yong-yong.
I bulked him up with illusion magic. Looks pretty damn cool.
Watching the enormous black shape cut across the sky, Do-ha allowed himself a small smile. The form was an illusion for now — but given a little more time, Yong-yong would grow into that size for real.
—Hyung, I'm here!
—Good. When I give the signal, just open your mouth and hold it.
—Okay!
Yong-yong nodded at the telepathic order. Do-ha had briefed him on the plan well ahead of time; he already knew exactly what to do.
—Now.
Yong-yong's jaws yawned open wide.
A wet, hollow sound rolled down from the sky.
"U—uwaaah! Breath attack!!!"
"Take cover! It's a Breath!"
The Hunters on the ground panicked. A dragon large enough to blot out the sky unleashing its Breath was a terror beyond anything else.
Do-ha's hand moved almost lazily.
Hellfire
A roaring column of flame tore across the sky.
While Yong-yong held his mouth open, Do-ha quietly cast the spell. From the ground, it looked exactly like a dragon's Breath.
Yong-yong still can't actually breathe fire. I have to sell the illusion myself.
"Do— Do-ha!"
"Everyone, stay calm."
Do-ha shot into the air. With a hissing rush of dispersing heat, the "Breath" vanished. The Hunters below broke into applause and awed murmurs.
He had snuffed out a Black Dragon's Breath like it was nothing. This was a Cheonwaecheon. The stories about him facing a dragon alone hadn't been empty rumors after all.
A soft landing.
"Hmm…"
"Wh— are you all right?!"
Dvalin started when he saw Do-ha touch down. In extinguishing the Breath, he had taken a burn across his right hand.
Baek Do-ha — rumored to be the strongest even among the Cheonwaecheon. And he was burned?
Just how powerful is that dragon…?
Because it's a Black Dragon?
If even Baek Do-ha got hurt… this is bad.
The faces around them darkened. They had assumed he would handle a dragon as easily as he had erased its Breath. It looked harder than expected.
"Everyone."
"Yes!"
"Go ahead."
All three turned to him at once.
"To deal with that dragon, we're going to need a lot more people. Pull every Hunter currently inside a Gate. Right now."
"All of them…? That'll slow Gate clearance even more—"
"Hurry!"
"Yes! Understood!"
Faced with Do-ha's urgency, the three of them scrambled to send the orders. Gate work could wait. The dragon came first.
A thin smile.
Good. Now they'll all come crawling out.
The burn on his right hand was pure illusion magic. He needed them rattled enough to move fast.
He had considered using this the moment he arrived in Iceland — and discarded it. A Cheonwaecheon appears, and a dragon shows up immediately after? At least one cultist would have found that too convenient. So he had waited, quiet, for several hours.
—Yong-yong. Up on that mountain — open your mouth a few more times.
—Got it!
And so Do-ha hurled a few more Hellfires into the mountainside.
A restless murmur of voices.
"Is that everyone?"
"Yes. We ran a head count. All present."
The three of them nodded as they surveyed the crowd. Hunters from the Gates. Search teams. Supply runners. Every Hunter across Iceland had been pulled into one place.
It was pure luck the dragon had fired its Breath somewhere empty of people. They had come close to a massacre.
"So… where did the dragon go?"
"Haven't seen it since earlier…"
"Not seeing it just makes it worse."
"It's probably hiding somewhere nearby."
Do-ha lied without so much as a flicker of expression. Yong-yong was already across the water in Greenland, tucked out of sight. They could turn Iceland upside down and never find a trace of a dragon.
"What do we do now?"
"Should we all take defensive positions?!"
"No. There's something I need to check first."
"Check?"
Do-ha walked forward and drew a palm-sized glass vial from his subspace. Inside it floated a single grain of pure white light.
The Guide of Light. A gift from Metatron.
He uncorked the vial and carefully set the light-grain on his palm. A single-use item — once spent, it would be gone.
All right. Let's see who's been hiding.
Do-ha clapped his hands. The grain of light burst outward in every direction.
A soft, spreading shimmer. Tiny motes drifted through the air.
"Do-ha, what is—"
"It's not dangerous. Don't worry."
"Ah — not dangerous. That's a relief… But… why am I so sleepy all of a sudd—"
Viktor toppled.
"Hey, Viktor. Why'd you just— fall…"
Leo crumpled after him.
Starting with Viktor, the Hunters around them began dropping one by one into sleep. The light-grain was spreading, putting people under as it went.
"Heaven made this Guide of Light to find the corrupted," Do-ha said. "Ordinary people without demonic energy drift off into a warm, peaceful sleep. But…"
He turned his head and looked straight at Dvalin.
Leo and Viktor were out cold. Dvalin stood perfectly, unnervingly awake.
"…it does nothing at all to anyone carrying demonic energy."
Silence.
Dvalin looked from the sea of sleeping Hunters to the ones still standing, wide-eyed and upright, and let out a hollow laugh. He had hidden as carefully as he could — and still been exposed this easily.
"Heh… so that's why you came to Iceland. To find us."
"Half right."
"Half?"
"I didn't come here to find you. I came here to kill every last one of you."
"Threaten us all you like. We won't give up a single piece of information."
"What the hell are you talking about? Information? I don't need any."
A vast, crushing force erupted from Do-ha's body.
"I already told you. I came here to kill you all."
Baek-bo Myeol-hwang Gong
First Step — Cheon-roe
Heavenly Thunder
Lightning screamed through the air.
"W—wait!"
A flash.
Thunder crashed down in a continuous, world-splitting roar. Sensing something wrong a heartbeat too late, Dvalin lunged with an outstretched hand — and hundreds of bolts of lightning fell at once, splitting every cultist clean in half.