Saved Us, But Now Demanding a Bundle?
Kim Chomok's ability was, on the premise that it could unleash maximum output from the very beginning, strong enough to completely paralyze the security and economy of any decent-sized city. After all, try imagining a city where no plants grew at all or one without a single gas station. Since humanity's progress had evolved into an oil-based civilization, no such place had ever existed. In effect, it might as well have had no activation restrictions whatsoever.
Even after his first 'full charge'—wiping out an entire mountain peak to massively expand his tank capacity—he had drained the foreigners once more, stuffing his tank past its limits again. Now, after the emergency repair crew living inside had spent an entire month desperately patching the cracked tank walls...
"It was long. So damn long... The day has finally come when I can run on my own two legs."
The man whose stored energy essentially was his combat power had just taken another leap forward. There would probably be one person—no, one friend—who'd complain that he was getting too far ahead of the other ability users.
When he thought about the price—nearly dying twice from over-draining energy—it didn't seem that expensive after all.
"Uh... why the hell does my body explode when the energy exceeds the limit? It naturally leaks out, doesn't it?"
No matter how much energy there was, it only became reinforcement if the body could endure it. If the body was a vessel too small to hold that much energy, the result would be far worse than any poison. The black horse, unwilling to lose its candidate rider, had shouldered some of the burden and taught him through relentless beatings how to use the energy for various actions. It was a good thing his body hadn't been fully reinforced yet. If he had still poured every ounce of that energy into physical reinforcement during fights?
It would have been like a living creature exposed to extreme radiation—an utterly miserable end.
"...Ugh, of all the ways to die, why that one? At least it'd be easy to fit in an urn."
Even though his words were half-joking, Kim Chomok's face twisted with genuine distaste as a shiver ran through him.
"Hup! So you should be grateful to me. I was the one who repaired that storm-ravaged interior of yours."
The resident of the Chomok House, who had barely managed to repair the inner world turned into a wasteland by the energy vortex, suddenly popped his upper body out from the man's left shoulder. It did feel a bit ominous hearing someone say you'd die while they were literally sticking out of your body.
"...Don't just sprout your upper half from my shoulder... People will think I'm some kind of freak..."
"But the moment I separate from your body, I need energy. There's no helping it."
He was now an imaginary friend (or not) who could pop out anytime without costing anything. The complex emotions of suddenly changing from a college student to a magician—how was he supposed to process them?
"...Sigh, I should head back... Hey, put your head back in!! What will people think if they see this!"
While the two of them bickered and shoved each other, they climbed into the commander's Retona that was supposedly their "vacation return vehicle."
To protect American citizens, we can send as many ability users and troops as necessary!!
The nation that had once been the world's sole superpower, the ruler of the American continent now connected by land to the other side of the globe, began to faithfully follow the theory written in a Scottish sage's self-help book: Every Nation Gets The Government It Deserves.
MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN—!!
America First. No interest in understanding other nations' cultures or geographical peculiarities. Benefits matter more than diplomacy. In the hearts of the American people, who had not tasted the bitterness of defeat for so long since their war of independence from Britain, it was perhaps inevitable that slightly extreme emotions would mix in.
"Yeah, tell that idiot who only knows how to run a hotel to fuck off! That guy's nowhere near enough!"
"We want a stronger, greater America! Let's live somewhere safe for once!!"
Of course, even if the United States suddenly charged full force into the gate dubbed Tennessee One...
"If you're going to help, why didn't you do it sooner instead of abandoning us and then suddenly jumping in?! Are these guys out of their minds?!"
"Look how they're rushing over because the rescue just got easier! They don't even like doing things the hard way!"
From the South Korean military's perspective, watching their so-called ally salivate at the prospect of an easy meal was hardly pleasant. It had taken another month after the shocking Nampo incident before they had finally swallowed up nearly all of North Korea's key regions. With the Daeryeong River line to the east and Hamhung secured to the west, they were already run ragged—blocking waves of monsters on one side while rescuing civilians on the other.
"Hey, if you have any situation intel, could you share it with us?"
Even when the Americans came asking like this, the Korean forces were so overworked that they had to debate whether to send them away with a sour look. Yet the requests kept coming.
"The gate isn't even that far away. Since things have come to this, how about a little cooperation?"
"You know, that ability user you sent on reconnaissance? Dispatch them over. What? You don't have a problem with that, do you?"
Being ordered around like this made it impossible not to feel like shit.
"Are you insane?! We're the ones in a more urgent situation here!! Korea isn't doing citizen rescues right now!!"
Not everyone in the U.S. military was crazy, and from the perspective of those who had come as part of the U.S. Forces Korea, it was understandable. Unlike Korea, which had relatively easy rescue difficulty since it wasn't taking in North Korean citizens, they had essentially abandoned the Tennessee people to die. Now they had to beg for help to rescue them. They demanded to know which insane bastard had ordered such trash behavior...
"...I know. But the President said America seems to be looked down on by the world and told us to tighten discipline..."
The moment they heard that the insane bastard was their own President, the officers clutched the backs of their necks, feeling their blood vessels throb. After all, when the new boss who had just officially launched this year gave an order, the military's sad reality was that they had to obey.
"You crazy Pentagon desk jockey! Where in the world is there an alliance leader who tightens discipline on their own allies like a lunatic?!"
"...It's right here... Ack!! Why are you going for the joint—!!"
"You crazy bastard, if they ordered you to blow your own head off, would you pull the trigger?!"
Thanks to that lunatic, the U.S. Forces Korea commander—who had seen his own dignity shattered—essentially half-ignored the presidential order. It seemed like the situation might settle with a gesture of reconciliation and a 'We handled the disruption, so let's proceed like this!' but...
The Korean agent essentially forced our citizens into participating in armed forces!! Dispatching that agent immediately into the gate with the U.S. Army would be the best way to avoid any misunderstanding!
Originally, a disruption referred to people who, when others tried to correct them with normal speech or actions, would cover it up with an even bigger mess so that the correction seemed pointless. The U.S. Secretary of State, who had worked tirelessly to damage-control the diplomatic fallout made worse by the President's rampage, clutched his forehead.
"Ugh...!! How much effort did I put into damage control for the disaster those lunatics caused...!!"
"G-General!! Damn it, medic—!!"
Like a baseball fan cheering for the New York Mets, the U.S. Forces Korea commander suddenly developed symptoms of a nonexistent chronic illness and foamed at the mouth. After all, the best way to deal with a lunatic was to deploy a lunatic of your own, wasn't it?
The man who had been singled out by the American President—the one who always competed for first place in drawing global attention—found a swarm of foreign reporters waiting when he returned from his one-month vacation...
Click! Click click...!!
"Do you have anything you'd like to say?! Aren't you angry about the sudden dispatch order?!"
"What kind of proposal did you receive from the United States?! Was there perhaps a secret offer that no one else knows about..."
On top of an already exhausting month, he was suddenly bombarded with camera flashes. This was the same man who would throw rocks at the Blue House and stage violent protests if his own country's President acted up. Now some foreign leader he'd never even met was ordering him around.
"Ha, haha. This is the first I'm hearing of it. Well..."
Kim Chomok forced a smile, the corners of his mouth twitching with clear displeasure as he tried to hold back his rage. But the cameras ignored his portrait rights and kept snapping away, while the foreign reporters kept yapping noisily in foreign languages.
"Coming through... Yeah, could you move aside?"
"Wait a moment!! The whole world wants to hear what you have to say. Where do you think you're going?!"
His return time was set, but these damn bastards wouldn't get out of the way. A normal person might have held their temper and quickly pushed through the situation, but...
"Mister Kim! Mister Kim! The U.S. President said, 'If you kneel quickly, nothing bad will happen'..."
That abnormal person finally reached the limit of his patience at an English question he could actually understand.
"Tell that bastard: 'Do I look like your mom from last night?!'"
The classic and extremely rude "your mom" joke flew straight at the President of the United States. But he wasn't done.
"Ah, cancel that! A corpse from the grave can't rise up, right? If you're going to visit the grave, at least send my regards!"
Along with even more vicious insults, the crazy bastard flipped both middle fingers on live television, instantly engraving his face and hand gesture into news and newspapers worldwide.
"Bring that damn bastard before me right now—!!"
The outburst from the American President, who had tried to restore some of his country's ruined dignity only to become a laughingstock, was understandable. But when the intelligence agents who had entered Korea while grumbling that they had to obey orders from above asked...
"No? The Korean government's position is that we'd need nuclear missiles to catch him... and I agree."
The U.S. Forces Korea commander—who had barely talked them out of pushing an already disliked policy—shook his head, citing the incident where 'one man took the entirety of Seoul hostage' as an example.
"If he were just stupid but strong, we could at least try sending him to somewhere empty like Death Valley..."
No matter how crazy the opponent was, he was still a highly educated man who had gone to college. They had no idea what kind of extreme things this lone wolf with no family might do if provoked.
"Does anyone know what cities are in the northeast of Tennessee, where the gate is connected?"
"...Washington D.C... New York... Ugh!"
Exactly. The moment they failed to catch the lunatic the instant he stepped out of the gate, they would have to fight a virtual close-quarters battle with America's capital and economic center held hostage.
"He didn't go wild in Seoul because it was his own country. But if he holds a grudge against Americans? Haha, I wonder what'll happen."
He wouldn't care about casualties. Buildings would be destroyed, critical infrastructure would be completely wrecked. In that case, unlike Korea which would only lose one man, America's losses would be astronomically greater. It was practically certain that the monster encirclement in Tennessee would collapse the moment he moved north, causing severe additional damage.
"If the encirclement loosens, monsters will slip through the gaps, and the more ability users that get injured, the more wildly the monsters will rampage, right?"
When considering secondary and tertiary damage, in the absolute worst case they would have to prepare for the overturning of Massachusetts itself.
"...And even this data is from quite a while ago. Almost two years old."
Even a little growth in that time would naturally lead to much higher estimated damage.
"This is a real 'just in case,' but... what if nuclear weapons can't kill him and only wound him enough to make him furious...?"
The option of striking nuclear power plants would increase, and the entire United States might have to live amid radioactive contamination.
The U.S. Forces Korea commander shook his head, using the 'what if' scenario to persuade them to stop the pointless provocation. A single bead of sweat rolled down the field agent's forehead despite the late autumn chill settling over Korea.
No matter how much the higher-ups raged and demanded they bring him in immediately, the people below weren't loyal enough to risk their lives for such a useless action.