The Hero Returns

* * *

The Hungry Guild.

This guild that operated mainly in the American continents was, in reality, better known as a terrorist organization.

The reason for an awakener ending up as a criminal was fairly simple: they might possess a powerful ability, but they also didn’t want to risk the dangers.

Whether a dungeon raid was a major or a minor one, some degree of danger would always exist. No matter how good an individual was as an awakener, oftentimes, that person would lose their life in vain simply by letting down their guard or making a little mistake somewhere.

Raiding a dungeon was a dangerous business. However, criminal activities including acts of terror were a bit different. Such things were far safer than raiding dungeons, and one could earn a bigger payout much easier as well.

“This is what I’m talking about!”

An Argentinian A-rank awakener, Ginovali, lightly tossed up a small bar of gold he held in his hand.

Clang, tumble—

The gold bar landed on the large pile of accessories and pieces of jewelry and made a clean metallic noise. Ginovali stared at that with a deeply satisfied expression.

These riches were a result of emptying every single jewelry store found in the city. Just these things alone should amount to tens of millions of dollars in total.

Of course, he and his group didn’t cause this commotion just to rob this pitiful little amount. Their real goal was something else.

“One hundred thousand dollars per hostage and we secured 11,150 hostages. In total, 1.115 billion dollars.”

A truly astronomical sum, indeed.

Once they successfully pull off this job, they would be earning closer to 30 million dollars per person, and when that happened, none of them would have to worry about money for the rest of their lives.

Ginovali chuckled, “This is wonderful. Wonderful, I say.”

“Oh, so it’s wonderful now, isn’t it?” A voice suddenly came from right behind Ginovali.

He jumped up in shock and tried to turn his head, but right at that moment, a sword was thrust against his neck, and he froze up stiff on the spot.

“W—who the hell are you?”

“Rather than finding out who I am, isn’t the fact that a sword was pressing against your neck more important? Wouldn’t you agree?”

Gulp—

Ginovali hurriedly swallowed back his saliva.

He felt a chill run down his spine. Although he didn’t sense the other party’s murderous intent, this would be his first time letting an enemy get close enough to place a blade on his neck. As such, he couldn’t help but get nervous.

“Wait a minute. This voice, where have I…?” Ginovali mulled over this for a minute before gasping out in shock. “Kim Su-hyeun?!”

“You recognized me pretty quickly.”

“Anyone living on this planet who doesn’t recognize you is the strange one, mister. Goddammit! To think that it’s you who showed up today.”

Ginovali had been entertaining the idea of suddenly activating his skill to fight back, but now, he chose to raise both of his hands high to reveal his lack of desire to resist.

His opponent today was none other than Kim Su-hyeun, so Ginovali determined that there was no point in even thinking about resisting.

“What do you want? Why are you pointing your sword at my throat, anyway? If you wanted to subdue me, you could’ve just killed me or knocked me out. I’m guessing you want something from me?”

“The priority is to rescue the hostages.”

“That’s going to be very difficult. Even if it’s you, it’d be tough to rescue every single hostage in ten separate locations, now wouldn’t it?”

Despite having both of his hands up in the air and a sword pressed against his neck, Ginovali didn’t look all that scared right now.

His reasoning was pretty simple.

“To you, people’s lives are the most important thing. Isn’t that true?”

He was confident that Su-hyeun’s personality wasn’t callous enough to forsake the hostages, and that’s why he figured that he wouldn’t lose his head today despite a sword being pressed against his neck.

“If you wish to rescue the hostages, you better get this sword away from me, buddy. If you don’t, as per our guild’s regulations, we’ll have to start killing hostages one by one.”

“Sounds like you’re mistaken about something here.”

Shu-wuk—

Su-hyeun withdrew the from Ginovali’s neck.

In all honesty, there was not much difference in whether the sword was placed against this fool’s neck or not. Su-hyeun was confident of chopping off Ginovali’s head whenever he wanted to.

“The reason why I came here for you is that you’re the top dog in this place. Meaning, no one here knows more than you.”

“What do you mean, I know more?”

“I need information. You see, I was thinking of completely uprooting your Hungry Guild just like how I’ve done with the Dump Guild since an opportunity presented itself like this,” Su-hyeun replied in an unconcerned tone.

However, the content of his words would never be described as light-hearted. The Hungry Guild was reviled as one of the worst terrorism-related awakener guilds out there, after all.

“What the f*ck is this as*hole even talking about?” Ginovali thought.

Shouldn’t the safety of the hostages take precedence here no matter what?

Ginovali began wondering if he had figured Su-hyeun out wrongly, and thick sweat drops streamed down his face. If the latter didn’t really care much about the safety of the hostages, then without a doubt, all of the Hungry Guild members would be as good as dead before long.

“And another thing. You’re mistaken about something else here. I didn’t come here because of the safety of the hostages, you know,” said Su-hyeun.

“What was that?”

Grab—

Su-hyeun abruptly grabbed the scruff of Ginovali’s neck and began dragging him away.

“Come outside for a sec, okay?”

Clunk—

Ginovali gasped and struggled for breath at Su-hyeun’s sheer hand strength gripping onto his neck. He got forcibly dragged outside the building he was in.

Tumble, crash—

Keo-heok, keok…

Su-hyeun tossed Ginovali to the side. The latter tumbled and rolled on the ground before coming to a stop, and then while grasping at his neck, he struggled for some air.

“You—you, what are you trying to…?”

Ginovali finally managed to control his rough panting and raised his head to stare at Su-hyeun, but it was also at that very moment that the Argentinian’s eyes caught onto a bizarre phenomenon taking place in the skies overhead.

“A magic circle?”

“Right. I had to work hard to create that. I mean, it was my first time drawing magic lines in the sky, after all. But I learned a lot today.”

Vuoo-woong—

While saying that, Su-hyeun pressed his palm on the ground. At the same time, magical energy boasting high concentration spread out to the surroundings and encased both Su-hyeun and Ginovali like some kind of barrier.

Ginovali naturally flinched for a moment after feeling threatened there, but he didn’t need a long time to realize that this event hadn’t harmed him at all. “W—what are you trying to do?”

“Don’t be too scared since I’m trying to shield you. Besides, those on the other side will be the ones in deep trouble from now on.”

“On the other side…?”

“Did you know that there are so many different types of magic in the world? One of them is a magic spell that causes hallucinations after reacting to a special type of energy,” Su-hyeun said while looking up at the sky—at the gigantic magic circle that seemingly filled up the skies above the city itself.

He needed quite a lot of time constructing that. Not to forget, activating a magic circle of such a size would also require a huge amount of magical energy.

“That magic circle has a pretty simple structure. It’s an illusion magic circle that rouses fear in people’s hearts by directly interfering with their brains after reacting to their magical energy. Other than its wide area of effect, it’s nothing special. Of course, the AOE this time is ridiculously wide, but let’s not mind that for now.”

“An illusion to stimulate one’s fear…?”

“I’ve already requested the Argentinian government for their assistance. Once I give my signal, regular police officers, not awakeners, will be deployed.”

“But that’s impossible!”

“Of course it’s possible. Impossible for you, maybe, but not for me.”

Ginovali made a face that reflected his confusion at Su-hyeun’s resolute reply. What the latter said, could they be all true?

“Is it really possible?” he thought.

Ginovali was an A-rank awakener. Although he hadn’t climbed the tower ever since getting that evaluation and didn’t increase his strength, he was still acknowledged as a strong awakener. Thanks to that, he was able to occupy a fairly high spot in the Hungry Guild’s pecking order. In other words, he was rather confident of his own abilities, and that fact only made his mind even more chaotic than before.

No matter how much he thought about this, it was simply impossible to cast illusion-type magic on a location this large. That’s what his common sense kept telling him.

Swhooooosh—

Pow, po-po-po-pow—!

Su-hyeun pointed to the sky with a finger, and a streak of flame left from his fingertip to begin exploding like a bright firework.

That must’ve been the “signal” he said earlier.

At this point, Ginovali had no choice but to accept what Su-hyeun had said as true. After all, the latter wouldn’t go to the trouble of setting up such a huge magic circle over a city and starting a light show just to trick someone like Ginovali.

Most importantly, not one of Hungry Guild’s awakeners had made a move even as such a commotion was taking place.

“No need for you to try and understand. Nothing will change whether or not you do, anyway. What’s important for you right now is…”

Step, step…

Su-hyeun leisurely walked up to Ginovali. “To answer my questions without making a fuss since you no longer have the luxury of the protection called hostages. That’s all.”

Crunch—

Kkeu-aaaaaah—!

Su-hyeun used his foot to crush Ginovali’s thigh. Just as a painful scream resounded out, Ginovali tried to jump up.

Crunch—

Aaaaaahk?!

Su-hyeun proceeded to crush Ginovali’s other leg as well.

While staring at the Argentinian that had collapsed on the ground, Su-hyeun spoke up with an icy-cold voice, “Alright, then, why don’t we start with the process of selling your friends out?”

* * *

Hundreds of police officers were deployed inside Cordoba that had halfway collapsed from the acts of terror.

Their goal was this one thing—to safely rescue the hostages.

Originally, such a job wasn’t meant for regular police officers, as all acts of terror perpetrated by awakeners fell outside the jurisdiction of the police. These problems were for the special guilds, mercenaries, or the awakener authorities tasked with handling awakener criminals to solve. Awakeners being the only people capable of dealing with awakener crimes was a widely accepted opinion at this point.

Despite that, the regular police force had been deployed, and the only reason for this event was Su-hyeun’s request for assistance.

“So, it was all true.”

“Sir, from sector A-1. Several hallucinating awakeners have been discovered. Hostages have been found all tied up, sir.”

“Report coming in from sector B-2. It’s the same situation, sir.”

“Also, over on sector…”

The situation within the city limits had already been wrapped up more or less.

The awakeners from the Hungry Guild were all under some sort of hallucination, and they were collapsed on the ground, while the hostages were found tied up and confined.

The jobs of the police officers were to place the special handcuffs on the hallucinating awakeners and extract the hostages to a safer place.

“Sector F-1 reporting in. A corpse has been found.”

In the middle of this operation, one of the officers ran into a corpse still dripping with a copious amount of blood.

No, wait. More correctly, it was…

“N—no, wait. He’s still alive. His identity is…he is the ringleader of this terrorist act, Ginovali from the Hungry Guild.”

It was actually a person who almost resembled a corpse. His being caught signified that the terror act had been successfully and completely suppressed.

“Yes, sir. We’re more or less finished with the operation on this side. Hostages have been safely rescued, while the terrorists haven’t regained their consciousness as if the skill’s effect isn’t over yet. But sir, we couldn’t locate Kim Su-hyeun anywhere,” a lieutenant of the Argentinian police force named Picardo concluded his report on the walkie-talkie.

Quite literally, everything happened in an instant.

The police moved out after they received the signal. As for rescuing the hostages, it was so easy that rather than calling it a rescue, it would be closer to leading people on a tour instead, so much so that the cops felt foolish for being so tense earlier.

“Are you telling me that just one person pulled this off?”

Picardo waited for the medics to arrive while standing next to Ginovali.

Su-hyeun took only a few hours to fly over here from the distant land of South Korea and, quite literally, subdued a group of terrorists in the blink of an eye. He dealt with it so swiftly and cleanly that no one had died in the end.

However, for some strange reason, Su-hyeun had vanished from this place. He must’ve been responsible for leaving Ginovali in this wretched state, yet he decided to abandon this terrorist like this and went somewhere else.

“Just where did he go off to, I wonder…?”

And while he continued to wait for an ambulance…

Hiss—

Picardo’s walkie-talkie buzzed at him, so he answered it. As for the news he received…

“The guild master of Hungry Guild is what?”

It was the announcement on the awakener terrorist organization—the Hungry Guild’s dissolution.