Chapter 84
Chapter 84
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Translator: Ryuma
Chapter: 84
Chapter Title: An Airport to the Multiverse
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Standing before the clock tower, Haon looked up at the peak with a curious expression.
Blue's scan had revealed the entrance to the underground passage was at the very top, but there were no doors or stairs leading up to it.
The door right in front of them was a trap; it seemed the only way up was through Mana Engineering.
Even if they somehow managed to get to the top, opening the entrance, which was sealed by several layers of shielding, would be difficult.
From there, they would have to unlock a series of doors one by one to descend into the basement before they could enter the passage.
*How did Nova get through this? If he succeeded in forced Awakening, can he see the flow of mana? Or...*
As Haon's eyes sparkled with the same excitement she felt when first learning differential geometry, Nova waved at her.
"Babe. What are you doing over there? The path is this way."
"Huh?"
Puzzled, Haon approached where he was calling from and couldn't believe her eyes.
When Nova moved a flattened cardboard box, a large hole in the ground was revealed.
He casually slipped into the hole and beckoned for her to follow.
Haon, in disbelief, ran her hand over the incredibly thick concrete.
"...You didn't break through the shielding, you just punched through the ground?"
"Should I make it a bit wider?"
"Ah, no. This is plenty."
When Nova raised his fist as if ready to swing at any moment, she quickly descended into the hole.
In the long underground passage, the sound of dripping water echoed.
"Why would they build a tunnel leading from District 2 all the way to the port?"
"They probably blew up the Hero Headquarters and stole all the Awakening Spheres that were there."
They must have stored them under the sea. So they couldn't be detected by anything.
As she walked, Haon kept her guard up, staring into the darkness of the passage, but an unresolved question remained.
She couldn't fathom what Bae Anjae intended to do with the Awakening Spheres he had stolen from other dimensions.
Was he also trying to build a Dimension Gate to return home? Or, having failed to conquer his own world, was he now trying to take over this one...?
Lost in thought, she soon found herself in front of a small door.
*I can feel the mana fluctuating.*
Haon exchanged a look with Nova and opened the door.
Vroooom—.
A vibration, completely absent in the underground passage, now thrummed beneath her feet. It was the vibration from an enormous self-contained generator.
"What on earth are they doing with a generator this big..."
Horrified, Haon examined the generator's structure. It was using Mana Engineering to burn microorganisms from the seawater for energy.
Bae Anjae hadn't chosen the port as his base just to hide the Awakening Spheres.
"This is environmental destruction...!"
Nova, who had been trying to take another step toward the generator, spoke up.
"It's like there's an invisible barricade. I can only go this far."
"That's because there's a mana shield. I'll try to break through it. We need to shut that generator down, fast."
"I can't let you do that."
Just then, a door behind the generator opened, and Bae Anjae appeared.
"Bae... Anjae?"
And behind Bae Anjae, another Bae Anjae appeared.
"Ah, welcome."
"By now, I expected you'd have taken over District 2."
There were two Bae Anjaes.
Haon, confused, looked back and forth between them before focusing on the Bae Anjae on the left.
He clearly had Bae Anjae's face and was wielding mana, but something was different. He didn't have the same menacing, eerie aura as the terrorist Bae Anjae.
"...We haven't met before, have we?"
He was definitely someone she'd never seen before.
"Yes, that's right. I'm the Bae Anjae who used to repair mana engines in another universe."
He admitted it readily, speaking with a casual air. Haon's gaze shifted to the Bae Anjae standing on the right.
"And you're the Bae Anjae who came from the same place I did."
"I knew you were hard to kill, but you're more persistent than I thought. After I planted a bomb that big at Headquarters, you should have had the decency to die."
Bae Anjae gave a vile smile and adjusted his glasses.
The moment Haon saw two Bae Anjaes, the moment she realized there were three or more of them in this dimension, a fact dawned on her.
"The group called Phantom that was handing out potions to people... that was all of you."
The identity of Phantom, which everyone had been wondering about, was them. They must have used the same stealth technology she saw at Headquarters.
"But how..."
What could make something like this possible? How could a Bae Anjae from another dimension also end up here, of all places?
Watching the leisurely smiling Bae Anjae, Haon ran through numerous Mana Engineering theories in her head before asking with a look of dawning horror.
"...You reached the Void Realm?"
"Ah, you couldn't possibly know how grand and beautiful that place is. Even calling it grand feels like an insult to its magnificence."
Haon's face filled with shock at Bae Anjae's fanatical response.
The multiverse and dimensional travel were theories derived from the study of the Void Realm through Mana Engineering.
Just as the Void Realm itself was not fully understood, the concepts of the multiverse and dimensional travel had many ambiguities.
A space no one was known to have ever reached. An unknown territory with countless hypotheses about what existed there.
And a human had reached it. By getting caught in a Dimension Gate explosion, no less.
Haon's mind reeled.
"The fact that you reached the Void Realm through the Dimension Gate and brought other versions of yourself here means..."
"That's right. The Void Realm is the entrance and exit to all multiverses. An airport, so to speak."
Bae Anjae continued, his expression ecstatic.
"In that place, time and space have no meaning, yet at the same time, they hold infinite meanings."
"..."
"You know as well as I do. Time is just an illusion created by humans for convenience. I experienced that with my entire being. In that place, I was an omnipotent god."
"You were able to tamper with time...?"
Mumbling blankly, Haon felt goosebumps rise all over her skin.
The reason why the 'Eun Haon' who knew nothing of mana could research the Awakening Sphere with such astonishing accuracy.
The reason she had such incredible luck in creating the short-term Awakening agent.
"...You were the one who leaked the Awakening Sphere theory to 'Eun Haon' from there."
Haon simply couldn't understand him. What reason could he possibly have for going that far?
"But why...?"
"Just imagine."
Bae Anjae spread his arms wide and spoke dramatically.
"Turning every single person in this dimension into an Awakened. Don't you think that sounds fun?"
"And they'd have to keep buying the Awakening agent to maintain their state. You plan to turn everyone into addicts. Since you lost the war you started with terrorism, you're going to conquer this place another way."
Haon shook her head. Why was everyone so obsessed with conquest?
How many Villains had flocked to the old town, trying to conquer a single district?
And what about the bosses from other districts who couldn't let go of District 1, which she now controlled, and kept sending assassins after her for a while?
"If we join forces, we can manipulate this world as we please, just like in the Void Realm."
"I'd rather die."
"Don't you want to know the secrets of the Void?"
"You don't know them either."
"..."
"If you were truly omnipotent there, able to tamper with anything without the constraints of time and space, why couldn't you stop me from falling into the same place as you?"
For the first time, a crack appeared in Bae Anjae's smiling facade.
"You must have known that if we met again, I'd become your main enemy!"
Haon shattered Bae Anjae's mana shield in an instant and fired a mana bullet at the generator.
"Were you analyzing the shield's structure this whole time we were talking? You're as disgusting as ever."
The terrorist Bae Anjae deployed a barrier, blocking the generator.
At the same time, Nova dropped from the ceiling and pounced on the mana engine repairman, Bae Anjae.
At some point, Nova, who had been lingering near the door, had vanished. It seemed he had smashed his way in from somewhere else.
"Aargh!"
As he screamed and was slammed to the floor, the terrorist Bae Anjae threw a small mana bomb.
"Nova!"
Haon sent a blast of mana under Nova's feet.
The moment Nova launched himself off the foothold Haon had created, the mana bomb went off with a crackle, creating an electric shockwave.
The repairman Bae Anjae, who had barely managed to stay conscious, crawled behind the generator.
As Nova targeted him again, the terrorist Bae Anjae fired a saw-toothed mana bullet.
"Targeting a non-combatant. How very villainous of you."
"That's rich coming from someone who terrorized civilians!"
Haon fired her own mana bullet, preventing Bae Anjae from continuing his attack.
In that opening, Nova used his monstrous strength to jab his hand into the wall, lightly launching his body to evade the mana bullet.
"A non-combatant, you say. I guess you have combatants, too?"
"...!"
Realizing something from Nova's teasing remark, Haon immediately changed the direction of her mana bullet. It was aimed at the small door beyond the generator.
Thwump!
Crack—.
The door was torn clean off its hinges, and at the same time, a thin bullet stopped right in front of Haon's forehead before dropping to the ground with a clink.
Standing inside the doorway was a Sniper wearing a balaclava and night-vision goggles.
"Isn't that Halo's sidekick? Does that mean Halo is here too?"
Nova's face lit up as he stood beside Haon.
"Then I guess that makes you Eun Haon's sidekick."
The Sniper muttered dryly and stepped aside, revealing Cue's subordinates swarming in behind her.
Haon sighed in disbelief.
"So that's what a lack of integrity looks like..."