The Hero Returns

Act 8

Su-hyeun nodded at Luslec’s question and beckoned with his hand—a gesture that said, “Follow me.”

Luslec scratched his head and followed after Su-hyeun. The latter whispered once they got a bit of distance from Lee Ju-ho, “Please lend us your assistance.”

“But didn’t you say I mustn’t cause a commotion?”

“I said that in case you caused a ‘problem’ somewhere, you know. What I’m requesting to you now is to help me deal with this problem.”

Even if it was Su-hyeun, he had only one body. It was impossible for him to take care of two events happening simultaneously in two different locations.

It was also uncertain if Thomas could raid an indigo-colored dungeon all by himself. Not only that but an outbreak had also occurred, and monsters were flooding out even now, so they would definitely need several times more the manpower required to raid a dungeon.

Also, unlike the inside of a dungeon where you could go as wild as you want, you’d inevitably worry about the safety of other people when fighting inside a city.

Su-hyeun continued, “Well, it shouldn’t be too hard for you. It’ll be several hundred times easier than dealing with the predator we met back then, for instance.”

“Ugh…”

“I know that you don’t have much time, but please, help us.”

Su-hyeun bowed his head at Luslec.

He knew that the length of time the latter could stay here was limited to a few days, but the lives of far too many people were hanging in the balance right now.

If the act of terror perpetrated by the awakeners turned out to be severe, then that could result in the loss of tens of thousands of people, not to mention the severity of a dungeon outbreak.

“Argh, I’m not supposed to do this, you know…” Luslec said while slightly lowering his head as he began chuckling.

“…?”

“Only this one time, okay? Well, I’m sure it’ll be fine if I’m the mysterious hero appearing out of nowhere.”

“You seem to be enjoying this somehow.”

“Of course I’m enjoying it. After all, I’m going to work together with you, Mister Su-hyeun. This will be 10 times more thrilling than some random sightseeing tour, you know?”

Su-hyeun thought Luslec would be troubled by the prospect of losing his valuable time; on the contrary, the latter seemed genuinely pleased about this development.

Su-hyeun sighed in relief and walked back to Lee Ju-ho along with Luslec.

“The incident in Germany, please leave it to this…dude over here,” he told Lee Ju-ho.

“Really? He’s an awakener?”

“Yes.”

“Even then, he alone stopping an indigo-colored dungeon’s outbreak is a bit—”

“It should be more than doable, actually,” Su-hyeun interjected without a trace of hesitation in his voice.

Lee Ju-ho fidgeted around with his smartphone while quietly mulling over his options. If it was Su-hyeun willing to go, then he wouldn’t have been this undecided.

Su-hyeun was fully capable of easily handling an outbreak of an indigo-colored dungeon, after all. Being unsure of such a man’s capabilities would be one of the most stupid wastes of time imaginable.

But what about this awakener before his eyes, whose name was Luslec?

“Even if Su-hyeun is personally vouching for him…”

Lee Ju-ho contemplated for a bit longer before eventually making up his mind. “Please go with Thomas.”

That was him giving half a consent.

After saying that, Lee Ju-ho called someone on the phone. It was to let the other party know that under the name of the Paragon Guild, they would send support to both Germany and Argentina.

“Yes, sir! Understood!” Luslec replied energetically, his voice sounding clearly excited. He then grabbed Thomas’s arm without warning.

Ka-booooom—!

Right after that, he kicked up a mighty dust cloud, and both of their figures instantly disappeared upward.

“We’re flyiiiiiing—!” Thomas’s excited voice belatedly resounded from somewhere high above the skies.

Tumble, drop—

The rising dust gradually settled down. Lee Ju-ho in the middle of his phone call completely forgot about the call itself and dazedly stared at the empty spot, still wondering what just had happened.

“See what I mean?”

Tap, tap…

Su-hyeun lightly tapped on Lee Ju-ho’s shoulder before calling Miru out. He then quickly climbed on the dragon’s back and flew toward Argentina.

All of that happened in the blink of an eye.

As wry laughter leaked out of his mouth, Lee Ju-ho’s hand holding the phone gradually dropped toward the ground.

“Who was that monstrous guy, anyway?”

* * *

Germany was seen as one of the awakener powerhouse nations in its own right. Although not comparable to South Korea or the United States of America, it still retained four S-rank awakeners, and it also boasted quite a high number of A- and B-rank awakeners that formed the vital pillar for the whole system.

Not only that, but the number of dungeons had also noticeably decreased in recent times, leaving a lot of awakeners on standby.

In the middle of this situation, an indigo-colored dungeon had suddenly appeared.

“We can definitely raid this dungeon all by ourselves.”

Germany, and the German Awakener Authority, began drooling greedily at the appearance of such a tasty indigo-colored dungeon.

Compared to other “regular” dungeons, an indigo-colored dungeon boasted a far richer deposit of Ether stones. Not only that, but the market price of Ether stones had also shot up due to the sudden drop in the rate of dungeon generation in recent times.

Without a doubt, the price of Ether stones would only climb higher with every passing day. Successfully raiding an indigo-colored dungeon could, therefore, result in earning an enormous profit internationally for the country.

Of course, that reason alone wasn’t quite good enough to take on the risk.

No matter how valuable an indigo-colored dungeon was, and even if the worth of Ether stones mined from such a dungeon reached billions and tens of billions of dollars, they still weren’t quite attractive enough to risk the potential problem of said indigo-colored dungeon causing an outbreak.

However, the story would change if it was no longer about the money, but the prestige of one’s nation on the line.

“Just by successfully raiding this indigo-colored dungeon, the international community’s evaluation of Germany will change significantly.”

The common reason among those voicing their desire to raid the indigo-colored dungeon by themselves was precisely this one.

They said that by clearing a dungeon of such a caliber, Germany’s international acclaim would rise up to the same level as that of the two powerhouse nations, America and South Korea, and that’s why they needed to turn this critical moment into an opportunity instead.

Thus, Germany brought together her four S-rank awakeners and launched the indigo-colored dungeon raid.

And the end result was…

“We’re all screwed…”

The minister in charge of Germany’s awakener management bureau, Louis Hesse, was currently holding his head.

“A way to solve this situation,” was the line of thought that very briefly popped up in his head, but it got thrown out just as quickly.

“Of course there is none.”

Hesse began tearing at his hair.

He didn’t have a lot of hair remaining in the first place, yet a fistful still got ripped off, but that only went to show how stressed he was right now.

Despite staring at a handful of torn hair, he couldn’t even get angry at that. His condition had reached such a severe state that something this minor wouldn’t get him riled up anymore.

“Sir, do not be too concerned. Thanks to issuing evacuation orders earlier and making preparations, losses to human lives are—”

“Yes, sure! But for how long?!”

It had been only 30 minutes since the outbreak began.

All thanks to deploying quite a number of awakeners beforehand and evacuating the citizens living in the near vicinity just in case, they were able to minimize the losses.

If the surrounding cityscape turning into piles of rubble was a better consolation than the deaths of tens of thousands, then yes, it certainly was a consolation indeed.

But in the end, that was nothing more than just the lesser of the two evils. It was merely the beginning as well.

“What about the support from the Paragon Guild? Still nothing yet?”

“They said they will be here very soon. Don’t be too concerned, sir.”

“Dammit! Stop telling me not to worry. Unless Kim Su-hyeun himself shows up here, we won’t be able to stop the possibility of Munich disappearing from the face of Earth, so stop spewing useless words meant for comfort and try to think up of a way!”

“B—but, sir…”

Bzzz, bzzzz…

In the middle of his head being bitten off, the adjutant noticed his phone vibrating furiously inside his pocket.

Since various reports had been streaming in endlessly for a while now, Hesse didn’t think much about it and simply frowned deeply while waving his hands dismissively. “Answer it already.”

“My apologies, sir.”

The adjutant bowed a little before answering his phone. Rather obviously, both he and Hesse didn’t expect the contents of the call to be anything good.

They were dealing with none other than an indigo-colored dungeon’s outbreak, and the situation seemed way too bleak for any positive news.

But then…

“W—what was that? The Paragon Guild did what? Thomas did what?”

Hesse found a ray of hope from the adjutant’s replies, and he began listening in more eagerly while gradually leaning forward.

Thomas—that man was one of the top-ranking awakeners in the whole world. His main skill, “Dark World,” could exert physical and magical effects over a wide area, thereby potentially lowering the damage incurred from an outbreak.

“Wait, what? It wasn’t Thomas? Then who was it? You don’t know? Then why are you even…?”

Soon after that, the adjutant’s voice calmed down substantially.

He listened without saying anything for a while, and then his face gradually stiffened. He sneaked a glance at Hesse to gauge the latter’s moods and finally replied to the other person on the phone while nodding theatrically. “Alright, I understand. I’ll give you a call as soon as possible. Find out who that person was, no matter what it takes. Got that?”

The moment the adjutant ended the call, Hesse asked in an urgent voice, “What happened? It wasn’t Thomas who came here?”

The adjutant hesitated for a moment before replying, “That was…Sir, I’ve been informed that another Necromancer-type awakener has appeared.”

“A Necromancer-type awakener, you say? Wait, isn’t that Kim Su-hyeun, then?”

“No, sir. To be more precise, I’ve been told that this individual didn’t command corpses but something closer to dead spirits. Thomas was also present with this person, but he didn’t do anything and simply spectated from the sidelines…”

“He’s not doing anything?! Son of a b*tch! A damn city is about to get destroyed, so what the hell—?”

“But, sir, I’ve also been informed that he doesn’t need to do anything in the current situation.”

The adjutant’s urgent explanation temporarily shut Hesse’s mouth because he found it somewhat difficult to understand what’s being said here.

Actually, his current reaction was quite similar to the adjutant’s when the latter was answering the phone. As such, the adjutant felt a definite need to clarify himself here.

“Sir, that lone Necromancer apparently has stopped the entirety of the outbreak. All by himself.”

* * *

An act of terror, normally this term would have denoted someone or a group resorting to methods such as murder, bombing, or abduction to achieve whatever goal they had in mind.

Before the advent of awakeners, such acts of terror utilized firearms or explosives, but the times had moved on now. From a certain point in time onward, “acts of terror” came to mean a type of “armed protests” that centered on the awakeners.

After the group of murderers, the Dump Guild, had been uprooted, such acts of terror were in a decline, but this didn’t mean that groups willing to commit acts of terror had all unilaterally disappeared.

“Seriously now, what a mess.”

And Su-hyeun was currently staring at the location of such an act: an empty city.

The current condition of the city of Cordoba was giving off a similar vibe to a destroyed world that Su-hyeun had witnessed in the past. There was no one here, and the empty city had half-way crumbled down.

Those were the traces of the acts of terror.

“The terrorists have taken over the city and took about 10,000 people as hostages. The hostages are divided into groups of 1,000 each and are currently imprisoned in different locations. The terrorists are demanding that, first of all, the city be emptied and, secondly, half of all Ether stones currently stored in the Argentinian authority’s reserves be handed to them.”

An awakener sent by the Argentinian authority was sticking close to Su-hyeun’s side. His role was to act as an assistant to Su-hyeun who had just arrived in Argentina by providing information and answering other requests.

“We’ve marked the locations of where the hostages are being held on this map, sir. However, we estimate that the rescue operation of the hostages will not be easy, as there are a lot of people to rescue and with the locations being where they are. Also—”

“Before all that, let me confirm this one thing first. The terrorists. What kind of punks are they?” Su-hyeun asked while scanning the map handed over to him by the Argentinian awakener.

“The name of their guild is ‘Hungry.’ But contrary to that name, you could say they are very well fed, sir, because they used to make a move only when enough money was involved, you see. As for their number, we roughly estimate it to be somewhere around 400. Every single one of them is an awakener, and their nationalities are also varied.”

“No, that’s not what I was asking,” Su-hyeun shook his head and continued, “But I want to know whether or not anyone will care if they all died.”

“If anyone will care…” The Argentinian awakener pondered for a bit before nodding a little. “No one will miss those bastards, sir. From kidnapping to contract murder, rape, and even committing acts of terror for money or even for fun sometimes, they have done all those things, after all.”

“In that case,” Su-hyeun began.

An act of terror with a goal toward one’s financial gains was easily one of the worst evil acts out there.

Even then, Su-hyeun made sure to ask one more time because there was a chance that the information he had could be incorrect somehow.

And now, he heard a clear-cut confirmation from someone else’s lips, which made things rather simple for him.

“I’ll deal with this right away.”