Chapter 140 : Chapter 140

Chapter 140

A powerful gale surged in through the shattered cockpit window where Lee Eunho had escaped.

At least the relatively low altitude kept it from doing catastrophic damage, but the aircraft had already begun to face the panorama of Seoul’s District 8.

—Damn it! You failed to persuade him…! There is no choice! There is no other way, so you at least get out!

Park Chaeshin’s cold judgment.

The control panel was dead, rendered useless by Lee Eunho.

It was impossible to control the power unit, and the passengers would already be panicking as they stared out the windows.

—Announce it over the cabin broadcast, even if it is one second sooner! Tell every awakened person to jump out!

“And after they jump?”

—Obviously, we shoot it down in midair!

…

Was this truly the only option?

A way to save the passengers without letting the plane crash…

I clenched my fist in frustration.

“Damn it.”

A situation where I could not even throw a punch for fear of breaking something.

In that chaos, a voice I never expected came through my in-ear device.

—Ji Seokhyeon!

That voice was unmistakable… Monica. Monica Bayliss.

The Summoner of Radiance who had solved the Geumgorae Village incident with me.

She rushed out her words.

—Listen to me very carefully. No matter what it takes, neutralize the aircraft’s power. I am not asking you to stop it completely. Suppress it as much as you can. If you slow it down even a little, I will catch the aircraft with a golem!

Monica’s enormous light-aspected Knight Golem catching the plane…

It was a plan worth attempting.

—If you can handle the power source, the wind-aspected mages below will raise massive winds. So deal with the power first, right now! There is no time to hesitate! Do not even think about answering—move!

…!

There was no choice.

Even if I ran the calculations a hundred times, this was still the best option.

The problem was how to neutralize the aircraft’s power source.

Go outside and forcibly detach the fuel, dropping it?

If there were only one fuel source, it might have been possible, but unfortunately, the fuel tanks were mounted on both wings.

“Then move the passengers to the bow or the rear and split the airframe…”

No. There was no time to give orders and coordinate anything.

Both methods would be no different from dropping explosives the moment the fuel tanks hit Seoul’s ground.

“Damn it.”

In the end, there was only one method.

Using my crude ability to bind the aircraft’s power and restrict its mana.

Without delay, I planted my hand on the floor.

Then I scattered my shadows across the entire aircraft, and soon my awareness met the mana stones amassed inside the wing fuel tanks.

Binding and restricting mana itself was simple.

If there had been only one mana stone.

But the mana stones my shadow sensed numbered in the hundreds.

Giant mana stones like those from a gumiho or a basilisk were hard to obtain, so they were using countless smaller stones gathered together.

…Could I bind that many shadows at once and restrict their mana?

The aircraft’s altitude was already low enough that people could be distinguished below.

“Damn it! What happens if I cannot do it?”

Whether I could or not, I had to.

I even dismissed my Demonic Eye, swallowed a mana potion, and focused every ounce of my mind on binding.

The moment I restricted the mana of the mana stones I had bound in one sweep, a mouthful of blood burst from my lips as if it had been waiting.

“Hngh…!”

My mana began to drain in an instant.

My skin swelled as if it might burst at any moment.

My eyes felt as though they would bulge out past my eyelids under the pressure inside my body.

When it became so sensitive that I could not move even a finger, all sensation left my body.

The only thing I could feel was a dreamlike touch, as if I were floating while permeated by environmental mana.

…Mana depletion.

At some point, a brilliant light bloomed into my sight, which had been empty.

That light was Monica’s Knight Golem.

Only then did my will, writhing through mana depletion, finally loosen.

As I collapsed into unconsciousness, my vision cleared a fraction too late, and I saw Monica with the golem’s radiance at her back.

“I… did it.”

***

Cha Yeri thought Ji Seokhyeon was an impossible man to grasp.

A man? Perhaps he was not even human.

His words and actions were far from the basic common sense of this society, he was far too unhurried for a social care beneficiary from the outskirts, and he always carried himself with an arrogance as though he knew everything.

When Cha Yeri first met him, her assessment had been, “a reckless bastard.”

He watched from a step removed, as though nothing interested him, yet when something truly mattered, he meddled in everything she did.

At first, like the other cadets, she thought only that he was insolent.

But at some point, every incident at Hero Prep had begun to revolve around him.

And even she herself had begun to revolve around him.

He really was impossible to grasp.

How long had Ji Seokhyeon been invading her mind?

Perhaps it had been since they met at Giant Needle, or perhaps since he had told her to speak casually at the Production Guild.

What mattered was that his presence never left her thoughts for a single day.

There were many times she forgot even her gaming appointments and stayed up through the night, thinking of him alone, and she had developed the habit of absentmindedly stroking MA6, which had once belonged to him.

Though she had awakened, for the first time, to feelings for the opposite sex, the thoughts that filled her whenever she thought of him were, ironically, mostly worry.

Because he was so impossible to predict.

His skills developing abnormally fast compared to his peers, discovering he belonged to the very highest circle of awakened society, even suddenly boarding a plane on an ordinary peaceful day to stop a terror attack…

No, what in the world is this situation?

Cha Yeri, who had been eating with Ji Seokhyeon not long ago, kept letting out hollow laughs as she watched an aircraft plummet through the sky over District 8.

It was proof that her worries about him had always been justified.

Whenever something like this happened, anger bordering on self-reproach rose inside her.

Because in most of these incidents, she could do nothing to help him.

How many lives does that man even have?

From what she had overheard of the radio of Go Manseok, the Branch Chief of Dispel’s District 8 Branch No. 33 nearby, the end of this terror depended entirely on him.

Truly, the Bureau and Dispel were incompetent.

How could anyone possibly stop a rapidly falling aircraft?

She could not even begin to imagine it, yet she felt certain that Ji Seokhyeon would not fail.

She could not prove it logically, but anyone who had watched him would think the same.

If something goes wrong, I will curse you from your side for the rest of my life…!

Just as she expected, the aircraft’s power suddenly died.

Then, in a relatively close position, a gigantic light flared, and a golem as tall as a building took shape.

That is… the summoner from the Special Affairs Division.

The golem kicked off the ground with its massive body, leapt, and embraced the powerless aircraft as if snatching it from the air, landing with it.

Could there be another golem that carried out commands so perfectly?

Because it was a light-aspected golem, it should not have been able to display its full strength in Seoul, where there was no sunlight.

This is not the time to stand here.

She could not remain watching.

She had seen the Special Affairs Division investigator’s skill enough times. The first priority now was confirming whether Ji Seokhyeon was safe.

She ran toward the golem, which vanished after setting down the aircraft.

A place where many people had already gathered.

She pushed through the crowd and approached the cockpit, where Ji Seokhyeon should have been, but…

He was not there.

Clutching her panic, she ignored Dispel’s attempts to stop her and entered the aircraft.

But she still could not find him.

They said he was in the plane…

In an instant, anxiety surged inside her.

The more she had believed he would not fail, the more the loss conjured by that anxiety seeped into her bones.

“Are you looking for that boy?”

A familiar voice reached her at that moment.

When she turned, Jang Incheol was standing there.

The master of the blacksmithing guild Ironflame.

“Well, you are fellow cadets, so it is only natural to worry… In any case, if you are looking for that friend named Ji Seokhyeon, you do not need to worry. The summoner who called that dazzling golem just took him away. Special Affairs Division investigators do not even reveal their identities to families, so they must be treating him while avoiding public attention.”

“Ah…!”

Relief.

True relief.

Cha Yeri let out a deep breath.

The moment her heart grew lighter of its own accord.

Then, as he watched her, Jang Incheol suddenly asked an unexpected question.

“More importantly, could you spare me a moment?”

“Pardon?”

“I have taken an interest in that boy.”

***

The first thing I heard was the sound of news on a television.

The anchor’s voice, gentle yet precise, brought a strange calm.

I woke with a clear mind, like opening my eyes on a Saturday morning.

…

A white ceiling filled my vision.

When I looked around, I found myself in an utterly ordinary private hospital room.

It seemed I had lost consciousness from mana depletion and been brought here.

But why was this not Hero Prep’s infirmary, but an ordinary hospital?

In terms of security and safety, the safest place in Seoul should have been Hero Prep.

And this place was…

After taking in my surroundings, I turned my gaze to Baek Dojun, who sat watching television in the chair by the bed.

There were no signs of anyone else, so it seemed he had come alone.

“What happened here?”

With so many things I wanted to ask, the words came out wrong.

A delicate mixture of Where am I? and What happened to the incident?

Baek Dojun answered as though he understood perfectly.

“You are awake. Do you feel all right? The incident was resolved well. There were no casualties other than the two pilots, and there was no damage to any facilities besides the aircraft.”

“That is… a relief.”

When I learned the operation had succeeded safely, a breath I had not realized I was holding escaped me.

“But why am I here? I mean…”

I lifted the sleeve of the patient gown I was wearing.

More precisely, to show the printed mark: Suwon General Hospital.

Baek Dojun did not answer immediately. He stood and stretched his arms wide.

Then he suddenly opened the hospital window.

“Is it not rather refreshing, the air of a city where mana is scarce?”

“With sunlight, it is visually far superior. …Wait, sunlight?”

If there was sunlight, that meant I had been lying down for at least a day.

“Ah, that is right. You have been unconscious for two days. You must have overexerted yourself terribly. As your superior, I have no excuse.”

Two days…

It felt as though I had opened my eyes in an instant.

When I checked my status, my Magic had increased by 0.2, becoming 5.4.

“Then, during that time, did you keep caring for me, Chief?”

“Well, as a matter of convenience. I was growing tired of being buried in paperwork anyway.”

In other words, he had slipped away from his attendant, Kim Seyeon, even if only briefly.

“But you asked why we came to Suwon, did you not?”

I nodded.

In truth, I could roughly guess.

To Baek Dojun, the Suwon administration was a place where he had laid various cornerstones to oppose Director-General Baek Dojin.

Bringing me here meant he intended to place me under his command in earnest.

In other words, I had become a useful tool for him to use against Baek Dojin.

“In fact, there is a proposal I would like to make to you.”

“A proposal?”

“But first, there is something I must confirm. …Do you not wish to take revenge for Gangneung?”