The tips of the thorns shot up in every direction, binding his entire body, and hateful holy power had even gathered upon them.
With his concentration broken, the spell burst in midair and struck the Gargoyle Queen.
“You bastards!”
When the lich erupted in rage and looked down at the ground, Namgung Jincheon was springing upward, stepping off the thorns.
“Shut your mouth.”
With a cold gaze, he swung his sword like a bolt of lightning.
The lich’s body was cut in half.
At that moment, the Gargoyle Queen that had been sent flying charged toward Namgung Jincheon.
The lich, split in two, drew back.
“Y-you!”
His mind overturned by fury, the lich ground his teeth.
Grrrind.
“I’ll kill you. I’ll kill you no matter what!”
Namgung Jincheon was flustered by the approach of the enormous Gargoyle Queen.
“You should at least be a reasonable size!”
He first retreated backward and landed on the ground.
“Young hero!”
Standing on the stairs, Sinhyeok melted the iron underground and the stone of the floor.
He liquefied it all and formed a ballista, something that would have been familiarly used in the Middle Ages.
“I’ll send you off classic-style.”
The ballista’s bolt rested in the hands of the old mage and Sinhyeok.
The enchantment was released, and it fired with tremendous force.
Crack!
The bolt pierced straight through the Queen’s chest and shot up into the sky.
With its chest pierced, the Gargoyle Queen crashed helplessly to the ground.
Boom.
The lich, cut in half, had complicated feelings as he watched the scene.
“……”
Sinhyeok came out from inside and looked at the lich, split into two pieces in midair.
“Want to keep going?”
“Ha, haha, hahahaha!”
At Sinhyeok’s provocation, the lich laughed madly and shouted.
“How dare you! To lay hands on the demon race! You insects have gone insane!”
Sinhyeok was laughing with a look that said he found it ridiculous.
“Urk, how dare we lay hands on the demon race! I’m sorry!”
He mimicked the words exactly and tried apologizing.
At that, the lich felt even greater humiliation.
A terrible rage boiled within him.
“I will not let this pass.”
“Hahahaha~ He says he won’t let this pass.”
Ichan, who had been peeking out from the stairway, burst into laughter at those words.
“Kraaaaaaah!”
With a thunderous scream, the lich’s body exploded.
“What?”
“What the hell!”
Everyone was bewildered.
The lich’s exploded body turned into dense black demonic power and covered the surroundings.
“Master, permit your servant.”
Sinhyeok sensed a vile cheat and hurriedly shouted.
“Arin, stop that!”
Baek Arin dashed out and released powerful holy power.
“Too late.”
The black demonic power tore open space and connected it to the Demon Realm.
At its center was a black heart inside a glass bottle that looked like the lich’s life vessel.
Sinhyeok immediately realized that was the medium for this absurd phenomenon.
“That! We have to break that!”
“Hahaha. It seems you’ve read some fairy tales somewhere.”
Baek Arin firmly stepped on Ichan, jumped high into the air, and tried to strike the glass bottle, but it was useless.
Clang!
Only a clean metallic sound rang out; it did not break.
Beyond the opened space, growling demonic beasts were striding closer.
Seeing that, Sinhyeok took out the simple golems he had prepared earlier.
The golems he had placed beneath the ground broke through the soil and emerged.
“Block them!”
“Pathetic. With just a few golems like that, you think you can stop the great master’s servants—!”
The lich was flustered by the golems that kept appearing.
“Wh-what is this! Why do they keep coming out!”
“It’s a war of numbers, you bastard! You didn’t see this coming, did you!?”
Sinhyeok shouted proudly.
But inside, he was anxious.
‘I have to close it quickly.’
The lich hurried even more.
Black demonic power poured madly from the life vessel.
“I have no choice……”
A crystal in the air, radiating intense energy, cracked with a snap.
“Hmm?”
For some reason, that looked familiar to Sinhyeok.
‘A core?’
He had read the energy emanating from it, and the faint divinity carried within.
“I’ll drag you all into death with me.”
Sinhyeok hurriedly checked his surroundings.
The boundary of the world containing this place was splitting open.
“Let us go together. He is waiting for you.”
Every space beneath their feet shook.
When he looked up at the sky, their location was slowly being pulled inward.
“Ajusshi!”
The gap the lich had opened was widening further, and this world was being dragged toward the place where the Demon Realm lay.
“Kekekeke! This is the limit of insignificant vermin!”
Sinhyeok watched the life vessel in the sky, containing the core.
‘Will it work?’
He could feel the dense core beating.
A powerful wave of energy made it impossible to touch recklessly.
‘I have to stop it.’
He thought of only one thing.
‘Stop it!’
Sinhyeok stepped forward and stretched out his hand. Mana extended from him and headed toward the life vessel.
The blue-crystallized mana wrapped around the life vessel.
“Hahaha! Whatever you do, it’s too late!”
The moment he touched the life vessel, he felt it clearly.
Inside it, the screams of the core that had just been offered up could be heard.
‘If you’re that desperate too, then help me. Please……’
Sinhyeok pleaded as though praying.
‘I’ll compress the whole thing.’
He carried out transmutation in order.
‘Melting.’
First, melt it all.
The crystallized mana was the first to sag.
As it liquefied in midair and dripped down, the lich sneered.
“Kahahahaha! You’re melting like candle wax!”
But then he saw the glass bottle containing the life vessel and was horrified.
Something that could not be broken or melted by ordinary means was melting.
The desperate lich hurriedly looked beyond the gap.
The golems Sinhyeok had made beforehand were barely stopping the demonic beasts’ approach.
To be precise, they were being smashed one-sidedly.
However, merely obstructing their path was enough to buy time.
“Stop them! No, hurry up and come! No! Hurry up and go!”
He grew frantic.
The lich measured the distance to the Demon Realm he belonged to.
“It’s not far! Just a little more!”
At that moment, the glass bottle melted away, and the black heart was exposed.
“Arin!”
Baek Arin, who had been blocking the approaching demonic beasts with Namgung Jincheon at the gap, hurriedly looked up at the sky.
She spotted the blackened heart, now fully exposed.
She immediately kicked a stone into the air.
Filling her blade with abundant holy power, she struck it with the flat of her sword.
Bang!
The stone shot forward and bombarded the heart.
“Kraaaaaah!”
The gap shook and slowly began to close.
The black heart dropped to the floor with a thud.
“No, no!”
The lich, having restored his form, crawled toward the heart.
“Stop! You bastards……!”
Seeing the lich crawling over, Sinhyeok immediately smashed the heart.
Crack.
The lich wore an empty expression.
The gap vanished at once, and the lich, his source destroyed, scattered in the wind.
The lich’s scattering source gathered once more into a single mass beneath Sinhyeok’s hand.
‘This is a core in its own way too. I’ll keep it.’
When he turned his head, the world that had been moving had stopped.
Namgung Jincheon looked around and was rendered speechless.
“Have we been abandoned?”
Sinhyeok wore a puzzled expression.
They were floating alone atop a world encircled by a ring.
Like a satellite.
“Wouldn’t it be better to call it an escape?”
Sinhyeok gave an awkward smile.
Namgung Jincheon let out a hollow laugh.
“Should I be happy about this…… or afraid?”
Baek Arin, who had been admiring the world floating alone in mysterious outer space, abruptly turned her gaze toward Earth.
“Hmm?”
She could faintly hear something, a ticklish sort of voice speaking.
“Yes?”
When she asked back, Sinhyeok hurriedly asked.
“Why?”
Arin raised her hand, signaling for everyone to be quiet.
At her gesture, everyone fell silent.
“Ah! Priest!”
The moment she called him “Priest,” Ichan and Sinhyeok’s eyes widened.
‘Can you hear me?!’
At that moment, his voice also reached Sinhyeok.
“Priest Eijar!”
‘I found you. I found you!’
At the voice in his head saying he had found them, Sinhyeok spoke of the most urgent news first.
“Please tell the battalion commander! Tell him not to come!”
At those words, Arin and Ichan were bewildered.
“Tell him to wait!”
Having seen the lich’s rampage, Sinhyeok had realized something.
They could strike back at the swarming Demon Realm.
Because it would be unfair if they only suffered.
‘This is an opportunity. A chance to counterattack.’
* * *
The Hanha Group office on Earth.
Eijar sprang to his feet and stared far off into the night sky.
Hong Juyeon, who had remained by his side, looked at Eijar at his sudden reaction.
“What’s wrong?”
She yawned and took a sip of coffee.
“Ugh. I’m dying of sleepiness.”
When he stared at the night sky for a long while, she got up and stood beside Eijar, looking with him.
After staring for some time, he smiled silently.
“I can see you clearly. Have you been well?”
When he spoke to someone, Hong Juyeon turned her head to the side and checked his face head-on.
“Director?”
He looked at Hong Juyeon and said with a relieved smile,
“I found them. I can see where they are now.”
At those words, Hong Juyeon’s brain stopped for a moment.
Then she was suddenly shocked.
“W-wait a moment!”
She immediately took out her phone and called her superior.
“Deputy Chief! He found them! Director Eijar says he’s located where the three of them are!”
“What!? Got it! Take the director to Lee Gangyeol right now! Hurry! That guy’s on the verge of crossing the gate!”
Hong Juyeon immediately set off with Eijar.
“Let’s hurry! They say the bomber is on the verge of crossing into the Demon Realm!”
The place she drove toward was north.
“Director, I’m going to step on it a bit!”
“Don’t worry and step on it.”
Eijar carefully gripped his seat belt tight.
Hong Juyeon raced like mad over the ruined roads.
“Can’t you give us one damn helicopter, you shitty government bastards!”
In the aftermath of the all-out battle fought over the National Assembly, Hongik was currently left hanging.
They had saved the country, but the government had effectively been half-destroyed.
Thanks to that, Hongik was building a front line and pushing back the monsters on its own, without any outside assistance.
This situation was the same nationwide.
Everyone was going through the Calamity of the End, and Awakened who had not reached a sufficient level were being cut down wholesale.
The reason they could endure even a little was thanks to the Auzar service.
By establishing a powerful healing and recovery network, they were pushing back monsters and maintaining their forces.
“We’re almost there!”
They arrived at Dorasan in Paju, Gyeonggi-do.
She hurriedly stopped the car.
Eijar immediately got out, lifted his body into the air, and headed to the observatory.
Lee Gangyeol was looking at North Korea beyond the burning river.
In silence, he was raining fire and lightning down from the sky.
Disasters raged all around him.
“What brings you here?”
Lee Gangyeol looked at Eijar with an exceedingly cold gaze.
Eijar, who radiated a faint golden sunlight, delivered the good news to Lee Gangyeol.
“I found them.”
At those words, the fire and lightning he had been pouring down ceased.
“Where? Where are they!?”
Eijar pointed with his finger at a star in the night sky.
“Just outside Yggdrasil’s domain.”
Lee Gangyeol’s expression turned gloomy at those words.
“Can you contact them?”
“I can barely exchange a few words. We were not able to say much.”
At those words, Lee Gangyeol was relieved.
Warmth entered his eyes.
“Thank you.”
As Lee Gangyeol moved at once, Eijar hurriedly stopped him.
“You cannot. Brother Bu Sinhyeok asked me to tell you something.”
Lee Gangyeol was glaring at Eijar with eyes that had already gone cold.
“He asked you not to come. He said he would reduce the gates to the Demon Realm from there.”
It was a statement that naturally drew a hollow laugh, and Lee Gangyeol burst into laughter.
“Hahahahaha! That crazy bastard!”
The laughter soon turned into anger.
However, Lee Gangyeol quickly regained his composure and thought of Korea’s situation.
‘If it really works……’
They were short on fighting strength right now.
If it was possible, it would be very good news.
They were maintaining the front line by dragging in even Elisaa’s synthetic monsters and Bloom’s golems.
Having made up his mind, Lee Gangyeol looked at Eijar.
“Tell him I approve.”