Chapter 79
Chapter 79
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Translator: Ryuma
Chapter: 79
Chapter Title: Headquarters Under Siege
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“H-How did you…!”
“Bae Anjae?”
Behind the horrified Haon, a bewildered Hunter loaded a bolt into her crossbow.
“Don’t come any closer!”
The moment Bae Anjae took a step forward, Haon cried out sharply and blocked Hunter’s crossbow with her hand.
“His shield will block it.”
“Is that man really…”
“That’s right. The terrorist.”
Haon was certain. A turbulent mana, which she hadn’t felt from the Bae Anjae of this world, was swirling around him.
This was the man she had met at Halo’s abandoned factory—the terrorist from her own dimension.
She didn’t know what device he was using to shake the building, but she had a good idea why Blue hadn’t detected it.
‘He must have perfected the mana stealth technology.’
It was a technology the terrorists had tried to use to conceal their mana airships time and again, but they had always failed.
Here, with its abundance of mana, he would have had all the opportunities he needed for trial and error to perfect it.
“Did you run into this dimension’s Bae Anjae? You killed him, didn’t you?”
Haon asked, pointing her phone forward. He grinned.
“That one had his own circumstances. Instead of talking about the dead, why don’t we, the living, have a more constructive conversation?”
“…”
His tone and demeanor were completely different from the Bae Anjae she knew as a counselor. The memories of their few encounters on the battlefield came flooding back.
“The only thing I have to discuss with you is Halo’s whereabouts.”
“Why not join me instead? The war is over, and this place doesn’t even have Mana Engineering.”
“Don’t say such horrible things. How did you cross over to this dimension?”
As Haon gathered mana at the tip of her phone and took aim, he licked his lips, his eyes tracing the flow of mana.
“There was an explosion inside the Dimension Gate, which caused a massive quake over there, too.”
A massive quake!
The color drained from Haon’s face. She had believed everyone would be safe since she’d dealt with the bomb.
“I took advantage of the unstable mana fluctuations to break my restraints and jumped into the Dimension Gate.”
“…Not knowing where you’d end up, even though you could have died?”
“Isn’t that better than rotting in prison for the rest of my life, never able to touch a Mana Core again?”
Haon gave him a frigid look and tapped the wall.
‘Aluminum soundproof wall with built-in acoustic absorbers. Judging by the flooring, the absorbers are probably wood-wool boards.’
Haon quickly infused the hallway wall with mana, erecting a barrier as solid as an iron fortress behind Bae Anjae.
“We’re settling this here. Neither of us is leaving until it’s over.”
“Still as quick as ever.”
Bae Anjae clicked his tongue in admiration and pulled something from his pocket.
“But did you really think I’d come to face the famous Eun Haon alone without any preparations?”
In his hand was a detonator.
“!”
Before she could even think, Haon fired a mana bullet, but Bae Anjae sliced through it with a serrated blade of mana.
‘No…!’
Before the mana bullet had even fully dissipated, Haon lunged toward Bae Anjae.
A crossbow bolt flew past her head, aimed at him, but it was blocked by his mana shield.
Just as a flash of mana from her phone was about to strike his arm.
For Haon, that fleeting moment stretched out, long as a great bridge.
‘Is it my fault? Because I came to this dimension…?’
Haon felt the hollow sensation at her fingertips, which had failed to reach Bae Anjae.
‘Are all these people going to die just because I happened to be at Headquarters today?’
The screams from her nightmares piled one on top of the other, greedily clawing their way into her ears.
‘Again… is everyone going to die because of me?’
Her cold fingertips trembled, and the stretched-out moment snapped back to reality.
The detonator was pressed, followed by a soft click.
“No—!”
BOOM! RUMBLE!
With a tremendous roar, every single reinforced glass window in the Hero Headquarters shattered.
* * *
*Crumble—*
Concrete debris rained down from the ceiling like snowflakes.
“*Gasp. Hah…*”
Haon gasped for breath as she looked around the dark space.
Bae Anjae was nowhere to be seen, and Hunter was collapsed beside her. It seemed she had shielded her.
‘…If only I’d been a little faster.’
Haon looked at Hunter with a heavy heart, her eyes welling up.
‘Still…’
In her nightmares of the collapsing bridge, she had thought of and tried every possible way to save people.
It was a nightmare because she had never once succeeded.
But what unfolded before Haon’s eyes now was not a collapsed hallway.
It was the hallway of the Headquarters, its structure holding, even if the ceiling was partially damaged.
‘It was possible.’
If you can’t stop it from collapsing, you just have to put it back together.
‘It wasn’t futile.’
Even if only in a dream, her countless attempts to save someone had finally manifested as a solid bridge before her.
Overwhelmed with emotion, Haon clenched her fists and took a deep breath.
‘It’s not over yet.’
She wiped away the tears welling in her eyes and checked her phone.
“Blue. Status report.”
[Mana bombs have detonated on all floors of the Hero Headquarters. No mana was detected prior to detonation.]
“What about the people?”
[They are evacuating.]
“Juyeol, too?”
[Ttiyong’s location is confirmed to be the First Archive on the 7th floor.]
Haon’s face turned deathly pale. If he was still there, he had to be trapped.
He wouldn’t be hurt with Ttiyong there, but she had to hurry.
“For now, keep feeding me the composition of the walls. Scan for explosive materials or distorted energy instead of mana. He might have hidden more with that stealth function.”
As she talked to Blue, Haon’s mind never stopped calculating.
The Hero Headquarters had been irreparably damaged.
If Haon hadn’t enveloped the entire building in mana the moment Bae Anjae pressed the detonator, reinforcing its structure, it would have already crumbled to dust.
The problem was that the mana the terrorist had implanted was constantly changing the walls’ composition.
It kept trying to crumble, its structure shifting to something like sand or thin ice, forcing her into a constant battle of calculations to maintain the building’s form.
‘I have to hold out until everyone has evacuated.’
The moment she stopped calculating, the building would completely collapse.
‘First, I need to get Hunter out. This is the third floor, so we only have to go down two levels.’
Haon grabbed Hunter’s shoulders and shook her forcefully.
“Hunter! Wake up!”
But she didn’t stir.
[Haon! I’m detecting a distorted energy flow on the 2nd floor. It’s presumed to be a trace of the stealth technology.]
Just then, Blue displayed a blueprint of the building with its blue mana.
The remaining mana bomb was in the server room.
My god. Haon desperately held on to her wits, her face aghast.
“Can’t you disarm the bomb? What about launching it outside to detonate?”
[Both are impossible. A detailed scan shows it’s set to explode on impact.]
‘He rigged it so the server room would be completely destroyed when the building collapsed.’
How chilling! To think all that data would be lost!
The building was holding for now, but it had already been compromised. The bomb was going to go off eventually.
The entire server room would be wiped out? Professionally, it was an unacceptable outcome.
“Hunter! The Headquarters’ servers are about to be destroyed. All the data will be vaporized!”
Haon said urgently, lightly slapping Hunter’s cheeks.
“As an emergency measure, I’m going to copy the server data. You consent to that, right? Answer me, quickly!”
“Ugh…”
Hunter groaned, her brow furrowed. That was enough of an answer.
“Blue! Copy the server’s data. If you run out of space, save it to the lab’s server remotely. Get as much data as you possibly can.”
[Copying data from the Hero Headquarters server!]
Blue mana extended from the phone like wires and plunged into a power outlet.
At least the task wouldn’t be interrupted by a lack of mana. Haon decided to move on to the next thing.
“And I need to move Hunter with the cargo lift app.”
[…Activating… lift app…]
Just as Blue’s response slowed.
*Rumble—*
A hair-raising sound assaulted her eardrums. More debris fell from the ceiling.
“Terminate! Terminate the lift app!”
[…Lift app terminated!]
It seemed the phone’s memory couldn’t handle running another Mana Engineering app while simultaneously keeping an entire building from collapsing and copying server data.
‘I guess I’ll have to carry her myself.’
Haon ended up removing Hunter’s heavy gear and started to move her, grunting with the effort.
Struggling not to tumble down the stairs, she honestly felt like she was going to pass out.
She had hoped to run into someone to hand Hunter off to, but unfortunately, she met no one.
Finally reaching the first floor, an exhausted Haon collapsed on the ground, panting heavily.
Even so, she kept her mind racing to ensure the calculations didn’t stop.
‘Now, just to the main entrance…’
Grabbing Hunter again, Haon lifted her head, only to slump back down in despair.
The hallway leading to the entrance was blocked by a collapsed section of the ceiling.
‘It must have fallen when my concentration wavered earlier.’
Haon wiped the sweat from under her chin with her sleeve and stared at the wall.
‘If I can just make a hole here, big enough to get Hunter out…’
She then began to modify a section of the wall, making it looser than the rest, but then she hesitated.
‘Can I do this?’
She was exhausted from carrying Hunter, and a dull ache was starting to throb in her head. One wrong move and not just this wall, but the entire building would come crashing down.
‘If only someone from the outside could just break through this spot—’
[Haon! An explosive substance is approaching at high speed!]
“What?”
KABOOM!
Her hair whipped around her face in a sudden blast of wind and dust.