Chapter 81 Savior (3)
‘I’m worried about how my parents are doing in this situation….’
He arrived at his destination after flying for about five minutes.
Tak.
Yoon-seok folded his wings and settled on the roof of the building. He didn’t expect to arrive so early, or perhaps it took Ashton longer than he expected to report to his superiors. There was no one on the roof.
Click.
He turned the doorknob, but it was locked. This door was nothing if he’d wanted to break it, but there was no reason to be in such a hurry. Yoon-seok lifted Avatar and waited for a while. About three minutes later, the roof door opened.
“A-are you challenger Choi Yoon-seok?”
When he said yes, the startled man quickly guided him in.
“C-can you wait a moment here? They’ll be here soon.”
He was led to a conference room that could easily accommodate 100 people. When Yoon-seok asked for a smartphone charger, he gave him a portable battery in his pocket and then left the conference room as if he were running away. He wondered if it was normal to leave him alone like this.
Yoon-seok didn’t say anything. The guy who played the guide seemed to be afraid to be in the same space as him. If anyone had heard what he did, it would be normal to react like that.
‘Let’s call mom and dad first.’
Yoon-seok, who turned on his smartphone after plugging in a charger, called his father through the messenger app. After a long moment of repeated beeping, his father answered.
—…Is it Yoon-seok?
“Yes, Father. It’s me.”
—Are you all right? Where are you now? You’re not in England, are you? Do you know how worried we are! Why haven’t you contacted me so far?
Was he angry or worried? Probably both. The world was in this condition, but his only son wasn’t reachable. Yoon-seok told him that he’d found out about the outside news later because he was in a remote area in another country, and now he couldn’t go back because he couldn’t buy a plane ticket. After talking about how both of them were doing, Yoon-seok checked on how his mother was doing and ended the call with an excuse about data.
‘They want me to check if I received the money?’
Yoon-seok opened his bank account according to what his father said at the end. His jaw dropped.
‘How many zeros are there…?’
Millions of dollars were stamped on the bankbook. Perhaps it was part of the money that the chairman has compensated, but now that money was worth nothing to him, Yoon-seok felt strange. Should he say that it felt like he was returning to normal?
Originally, Yoon-seok’s house was very abundant. When the factory caught fire, it became difficult for his family to pay off their debts. To reduce the burden, Yoon-seok paid for his living expenses as well as school fees. Then…
He was brought to the Tower. Ironically, the most unrealistic event of all time ended up bringing Yoon-seok back to normal.
‘So the both of you are doing well….’
He’d made sure that his parents were safe, but…
No one had visited the conference room yet. Yoon-seok opened the messenger app to check his text messages.
‘This jerk is still the same.’
As expected, the first thing that caught his eye were the messages from Kang Hyung-woo. The contents were so jagged that he wondered if he had a split personality. He swore then begged that he was sorry and sincerely regretted it. The last contact he had made without skipping a day was ten days ago.
‘Did he think that I blocked him and gave up?’
Well, it was good. Yoon-seok also confirmed the messages from Kang Hye-in. Most of them asked how he’s doing, and after the incident, she was worried that he was in England. When he checked the messages one by one, it became noticeable when Kang Hyung-woo’s disappearance was mentioned. It was consistent with the day he’d lost contact with Yoon-seok.
Unlike Kang Hye-in, who said she was glad that their relationship had completely broken off, Yoon-seok felt strangely uncomfortable.
‘Huh?’
As he wondered why he felt like something was wrong, the door to the conference room opened, and about twenty people came in. All but one of them were challengers. The only normal person spoke as the representative. He wasn’t a challenger, but fortunately, he was fluent in Korean.
“Good afternoon. I am Michael, the head of the Korean branch. We have heard from Ashton.”
“Yes, I’m Choi Yoon-seok.”
“It must have been hard but thank you so much for coming here. How much do you know about the situation?”
“I’ve roughly heard about all of it.”
“I see, but I think it’s easier to understand if you see it with your own eyes than hearing about it. Would you like to see the materials together?”
“Yes.”
Michael lowered the screen and briefed them, playing the attached video as if he was doing a presentation. Among the images flashing on the screen was the massacre in England.
“This video was uploaded live on ATube. The recordings have been updated in a short period, and several news outlets have borrowed this video. It’s the most vivid and close-up footage.”
The video began in front of Buckingham Palace, where a man was filming himself. When the playtime reached ten seconds, the challenger appeared. He was easily over two meters tall, with horns sprouting from his forehead.
“So it was a demon.”
“Yes.”
The people around him paid close attention to the demon who appeared out of the blue in the space. He could hear people muttering while looking at the demon, but he couldn’t understand them because they spoke in foreign tongues. However, based on the atmosphere, people grew curious, thinking that it was some kind of movie filming or cosplay.
—I have arrived.
The devil looked around and raised his palm to face Buckingham Palace. He chanted a command dryly.
—Sphere of Chaos
Maybe the skill wasn’t instant activation, as it took about five seconds for anything to occur.
Whoooooooosh!
About fifty meters from the palm of his hand, a huge sphere of black and purple formed in a flash. There was no explosion. Everything was broken into particles and absorbed back into the man’s hands as if the sphere were taking a large bite.
Boooom! Boooooooom! Drrrrrrrrr!
The building collapsed to the ground. Someone screamed, and many began to flee away from the scene. Some were panicking and froze. Representatively, the man who was filming did so. Soon the demon opened his palm, looking at the man.
That was the end of the video.
“…”
Compared to the first video, the image quality was a little low, and the timing was chaotic, but Michael showed several others. A ferris wheel, clock tower, museum…
Everywhere the demon went, the terrain was destroyed, and the air was filled with blood and screams.
Michael finally showed a drone shot of London from above. It had holes in the buildings shaped like the sphere and craters here and there, making it look so unrealistic that he wondered if it was photoshopped.
“He was next seen on an island in the Pacific Ocean.”
Michael put a photograph of a satellite photo on the screen. It said it was near the island, but the island was not visible. Instead, something huge filled the image.
“A media outlet first released this photo using the nickname ‘Hatchery,’ which has been almost officially used since then.”
Hatchery… was the perfect name. Michael showed pictures one by one in chronological order. The Hatchery was growing in size day by day, eating away at the island.
“We’ve already encroached on a fifty-kilometer radius of the original site.”
Michael even added an expert’s opinion that the invaders would cover the entire planet in three months at this rate.
‘Three months…?’
Yoon-seok felt dizzy. He didn’t even know that Earth had become like this because he focused on the Tower. If the mission trial didn’t take 45 days but required more time than that…
By the time he returned, it could’ve been too late.
“So far, the demon’s skill has been identified as Sphere of Chaos. But, as you saw earlier, this demon absorbs something every time it ensues destruction.”
Michael ended his briefing with a hypothesis that there might have been something to do with the demon’s slaughter of 300,000 people in Britain and his ability to open a huge crack in the Pacific Ocean.
“What do you think?”
“Are you asking if I can win?”
“To be frank with you…yes.”
There was no doubt about him being a duelist from the tenth floor. However, they didn’t know the exact level of Yoon-seok’s powers. They were extremely familiar after reading the reports about what he’d done to Hanguk Hospital and Challenger Management Department, but…
“I’m sure you’ll be our best shot. But…that’s why we’re worried.”
“What do you mean?”
Maybe it was a little too much to say in front of Yoon-seok, but Michael turned around a little.
“If it’s hard to face head-on, we can find another way.”
In other words, it meant that they’d come up with a strategy, and he would have to proceed with the plan. Yoon-seok wasn’t upset by the remark. However, he expressed his intention clearly by shaking his head.
“No, I’m fine. I don’t think I’m going to lose.”
Sphere of Chaos. He had never seen such skill in the store, so it was likely to be a Unique Skill. The power itself was so great that Yoon-seok acknowledged it, but he wasn’t that worried. It required five seconds to activate.
For Yoon-seok, who had transcended human territory, five seconds was enough for him to get out of that range.
‘Maybe there’s an easy way to solve the problem….’
Well, he would just have to deal with the details in person. Whether it was the hatchery on the island or the demon, it wasn’t like they could fully grasp the real situation and give him accurate information. Regardless, he thought he could manage it on his own from what he had seen so far.
Michael opened his mouth as he looked at Yoon-seok, who was full of confidence.
“…Then can you give us confidence?”
What did he mean by that? When Yoon-seok tilted his head, Michael quickly explained.
“There is a challenger who has the skill to measure the strength of a challenger in numbers. And in ten minutes, she’ll be here by helicopter. For your information, she estimated the demon at sixty million.”
Digitizing power? Didn’t it mean that she was a living combat power meter? He didn’t know how but it was pretty interesting.
‘But how high is sixty million?’
It meant little since he had no reference point. One of the group of challengers who appeared with Michael spoke for the first time.
“I’m at eleven million.”
A voice with considerable pride.
“Who is that?”
Yoon-seok looked at Michael and asked, but the answer came back from the person who spoke.
“Jovan Trosian, a 13th-floor mission challenger.”
Mission on the thirteenth floor? He wasn’t that surprised. He just thought it was amazing that he managed to get there after the coins had disappeared. To be honest, it was more surprising to him that it seemed to be common to talk about floor numbers and trials during one’s self-introduction.
“Then why don’t you get six of them together?”
Funnily enough, he asked Jovan the question this time, but the answer came from Michael.
“The problem is that there are no more than six Trosians even if we turned the world upside down. It doesn’t mean that a few more people can fill in just because it was measured with numbers.”
“I see.”
With a nod, Yoon-seok looked at Jovan. He faced Yoon-seok without avoiding his gaze. He didn’t know why, but there was some sense of hostility.
‘Does he think his position is threatened?’
That was a little absurd. Yoon-seok didn’t even think of him as a rival.
“Okay, I don’t know what it is, but let’s try. I think it’s going to be fun.”
“Yes, thank you for your consideration.”
With Yoon-seok’s consent, Michael’s face turned bright. As time passed, they could hear the whir of a helicopter’s blades from above. Then, a woman appeared after waiting a little later.
“Maria!”
It seemed like she had connections with the challenges here. Yet, she simply greeted Yoon-seok with her eyes as her attention turned to him.
“Is this him…?”
“Yes. Is it possible?”
“Whether it’s possible or not, that’s my job. Let’s give it a try.”
Soon, the woman stood in front of Yoon-seok. Did she hear about him? The woman trembled slightly as she approached.
Yoon-seok didn’t want to find out how far his notoriety had spread to other countries.
“Check.”
When the woman winked, Yoon-seok nodded quietly to say that he was okay. The woman’s eyes turned bluish as she chanted the command, the color turning darker over time.
“Was it supposed to take this long?”
“It only took me a few seconds when it was my turn…”
Murmurs from nearby challengers filled the air. It was about a minute after she started using her skill that it came to a close.
“…W-what are you?”
The woman opened her eyes wide and stepped back. Jovan approached anxiously.
“Maria, what’s going on? How high is his number?”
“Seventy million…”
Ten million higher than the demon. Everyone, including Michael, was rattled by the result. But her words came with even more dismay.
“It’s not over yet. It’s still going up. Incredibly fast.”
“What?”
“One hundred million. One-fifty…”
Was there a limit to her ability? Suddenly the woman started shaking…
“Two hundred…”
Flop.
She collapsed at that point.
“…”
Yoon-seok was speechless.
What? Don’t tell him that they’re pulling a prank?
Yoon-seok never expected this situation to unfold in real life.
‘This isn’t a comic from 30 years ago. What is this…?’
It was just ridiculous.
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