Chapter 226

Right after Do-Jin wiped out the five magitech armored units, he shouted, “Boost me up with your shield!”

When Theresa saw him charging straight over, her heart started pounding.

Holy shit, we’re actually doing this.

She instantly realized what he wanted. They were about to pull off a move she had only ever seen in videos and comics. The thought made her grin as she planted her feet and angled her shield just right.

Do-Jin slammed into it at full speed. At the same time, Theresa bent her knees slightly, then snapped her whole body upward and drove the shield skyward with everything she had. Although they had never practiced this, their inhuman physical strength and Do-Jin’s precise control over Psychokinesis covered for everything that was lacking.

“It actually worked!” Theresa shouted as she watched Do-Jin launch into the air.

He really did get airborne in a dramatic arc, but there was one problem. Even though he got the height right, the direction was off. Do-Jin’s trajectory carried him a little short of the wall.

“This crazy fucking bastard! Shoot him down!”

The enemies nearby panicked when they saw him flying through the air. Soldiers on the wall and in the watchtowers all swung their guns toward him at once.

Shit, it’s kind of hard to pull it off...

With death seconds away, Do-Jin reacted on pure instinct. He activated Gale instantly, right as a storm of gunfire erupted.

“Shit!”

The soldiers watched their perfectly lined-up target suddenly get yanked sideways by a violent gust of wind. Their faces looked like they were about to start swearing that they’d had him dead to rights.

Do-Jin didn’t stop there. He summoned Anemone midair, and she flexed her body, springing him forward toward a clean path ahead. Do-Jin even unleashed Psychokinesis through Psychokinetic Artistry, slicing horizontally through the air and landing on top of the high wall in a single motion.

“Huh?!”

The soldiers froze for a split second when they saw Do-Jin dropping down among them and Anemone vanishing like mist. Before they could react, blue lightning-like energy burst out from Do-Jin, and the wolf reappeared at his side.

It was a chain of spirit summoning, reverse summoning, spellcasting, and summoning again. That kind of magic manipulation was like forcing sharp direction changes at full sprint, putting enormous strain on both the mage and their Magic Circuits. But for Do-Jin now, this level of feedback was something he could handle.

Just then, rapid gunfire came from outside the lightning field, but the attacks couldn’t punch through the spirit barrier wrapped around Anemone. As the explosions thundered back to back, Do-Jin ran with Anemone toward the main gate and blew it open.

“Haha... Oh my.”

Theresa let out a dry laugh as she waited in front of the gate. Do-Jin had opened the way, and the entire party stormed into the base.

The magitech armored units that rushed out late yelled, “It’s already breached?!”

He wondered what the hell the five magitech armored units that went out first had even been doing. What had the regular soldiers been doing to let the main gate get breached already? Unfortunately, it didn’t take long for them to understand why.

“Forget everything else! Take out the intruders first!”

With a high-pitched whine as their mana burned, the magitech armored units locked onto Theresa first and charged. They didn’t have a clear read on the outside situation, so they chose the most obvious threat and tried to deal with what was right in front of them.

Theresa, however, didn’t budge. She swung her shield and hammer in constant motion, using their massive bodies against them. She controlled positioning, forced them into each other’s paths, and limited how many could engage her at once. It was proper crowd control.

After rolling through purgatory with Do-Jin and learning the hard way, Theresa had built real combat sense. Compared to her, soldiers with little real battlefield experience came up painfully short. Lack of skill and poor judgment carried only one price, which was death.

For Do-Jin, even a little time was enough to get a lot done. His team had bought him more than enough time, and what followed was a full-blown storm of magic.

“Huh? What’s going on?”

One magitech armored unit that had focused on Theresa was suddenly swallowed by rising flames. A few of them activated their magic defense systems fast enough to hold on for a moment, but it didn’t matter.

Do-Jin’s spell output operated on a completely different tier. In an instant, the air itself was burned away, and blistering heat surged inward. The magitech armored units staggered as the overwhelming thermal wave crushed through their defenses, dropping where they stood under the sheer force of the magic.

“Phew...”

Even for Do-Jin, holding a high-output area spell long enough to fully roast the targets put real strain on his system. Still, wiping out more than ten magitech armored units in one sweep made the brief overload worth it.

“This is honestly a bit easier than I expected.”

In reality, the entire facility functioned like a classic monster-wave dungeon. The moment Do-Jin’s party crossed into the enemy’s detection network, attacks would start pouring in without pause. They had to advance while tanking constant pressure, and at fixed intervals, elite troopers with magic armor were deployed into the fight.

If those elites were not taken down fast enough, their numbers would keep piling up. At that point, the situation would snowball completely out of control. Very few parties in existence could actually withstand that kind of sustained escalation.

That was why Theresa calling it “easy” was such a ridiculous thing to say. Only a tank backed by completely broken damage dealers—the kind that could brute force their way through every dungeon pattern with raw firepower alone—could casually dismiss a place like this.

“What the hell is that?” Soso said with disgust, looking at a swarm of Chimeras that had just burst out.

They had cockroach legs, with torsos stitched together from multiple different beasts, creating mismatched bodies grotesque enough to make anyone’s skin crawl.

“Seeing Chimeras means they’re about to start pouring out for real,” Do-Jin commented after finishing stabilizing his Magic Circuits.

Just as he said, large numbers of magitech armored units poured out from both the spot where the Chimeras had emerged and the opposite side. Units that should have appeared before they passed through the main gate, along with the ones meant to greet users after they crossed it, all rushed out at once.

Seeing that, Do-Jin said without hesitation, “Let’s bail.”

At his order, Theresa and Soso turned and bolted without even looking back.

Since the culprits who had turned the base into a complete mess were fleeing, the Chimera riders and the magitech armored units naturally gave chase. Not all of them, but a large portion of the force locked onto Do-Jin and pursued him.

They had no idea they were being led straight into a minefield. Do-Jin guided them toward an area where he had planted a large number of magic stone bombs in advance.

The ground erupted beneath their feet. One detonation triggered another, then another, until the entire area shook like it was being torn apart from below. The charging enemies stumbled as shockwaves smashed into their legs, ripped up their formations, and turned their momentum into chaos.

“Aaaaah, now’s our turn!”

The resistance fighters burst out from cover and opened fire. The sudden counterattack tore apart what little order the pursuing force still had.

“Don’t panic! They’re untrained trash!”

The shout wasn’t wrong. Whether they were Chimeras or magitech armored units, they were not easy enough to bring down with sloppy shooting.

However, that only applied in a normal battlefield. Here, every step risked another explosion. Pre-dug pits swallowed up legs without warning while a rampaging mage tore through their lines and made a mockery of any attempt at regrouping. On top of that, no matter how tough the Chimeras were, the riders controlling them were still human, which meant they bled fast and died even faster.

By the time the dust settled, one brutal round of cleanup was already over. Going back into the enemy base was no longer a problem. Tanto had slipped inside during all the chaos and never left, managing to take out all but three of those who had fled. The damage he caused was quieter than a mage’s rampage, but the amount of blood he left behind was worse.

“What the hell is this...”

By the time General Dignos, the boss in charge of the base, finally appeared in his magitech armor, there was nothing left waiting for him.

Normally, the boss was supposed to descend like a disaster, showing up when players were already surrounded by piled-up enemies and barely hanging on. Instead, General Dignos walked out to find an empty battlefield. Even the regular soldiers had either fled or gone into hiding.

In the end, the general stood there alone, facing Do-Jin’s party with no backup and no wave to hide behind. With eyes filled half with rage and hollow disbelief, Dignos slowly scanned the wrecked base. Then, he raised the axe connected directly to his arm.

“One of you will be enough for questioning.”

The magitech armor covering his body began to swell. Since his own flesh had been modified, the armor expanded with him, adjusting to match his growing size.

Do-Jin watched the transformation and spoke to his party. “Looks like this is the last one. Let’s finish it fast.”

Tanto, who had been juggling daggers, snatched one out of the air. In the very next moment, he vanished and reappeared behind the general.

As Dignos tried to detect the stealth and react, Theresa charged straight in from the front, blocking his line of sight.

General Dignos was a powerful boss, but there was a clear limit to what a commander without subordinates could do. When he failed to instantly deal with both Theresa and Tanto, the general learned firsthand just how terrifying it was to give a mage free time.

In a short span of time, the boss lost all of his remaining HP. He collapsed onto the same ground where his subordinates had fallen, dying in a place already soaked with their blood.

“Let’s finish the cleanup quickly,” Do-Jin said, moving into the building.

They advanced while dealing with the remaining small fry, and soon reached an area that was obviously a production facility. Clearly non-soldiers were moving around there, hurriedly gathering things. Among them, the ones that caught Do-Jin’s eye were those dressed in pure white. Unlike the others, who were grimy and stained, their clothes were clean, almost spotless.

So it really is those Cult of Ruin bastards.

Of course, a production facility like this was exactly where those cult freaks would be involved. The moment they saw Do-Jin’s group, they panicked and tried to run, but it was a completely pointless effort.

Do-Jin pierced straight through their chests without hesitation. Even if he captured them, the taboo seals would keep their mouths shut anyway. Reducing their numbers was the better option.

“We need to take a few technicians alive.”

Most of them were already trying to flee, but that didn’t make a difference. Do-Jin picked out the ones who looked like they held higher positions and severed their ankles with Wind Blade.

“Aaaaagh!”

“I’m sorry, really. Honestly, I would prefer to just cut your tendons, but you kept running around. It’s making it really hard to aim.”

Do-Jin proceeded to thoroughly destroy the production facility.

They even made equipment that normal people can operate instead of mages. They really put serious effort into this, he thought.

The facility, which had been designed so that even non-mages could handle Chimera fusion and magitech equipment, was reduced to scrap under Do-Jin’s hands.

The amount of money poured into it had to be astronomical. Breaking it, however, took almost no time at all. Once he destroyed the core Magic Circle and the heart of the mana supply system, the rest started blowing apart on their own in a chain reaction. It couldn’t have been easier.

Theresa, who had been wandering around like she was sightseeing, found a door leading underground and called out, “Do-Jin, there’s another space over here.”

When they went down, they found a storage area packed with completed equipment. Among the stacks were even newer models, more advanced than the magitech armor the soldiers had been using earlier.

“Did I do a good job?” she asked, giving him a thumbs up.

“Yup. Good work.”

This was worth taking. Do-Jin quickly stored the equipment and destroyed everything else thoroughly, leaving nothing useful behind.