#171
Kyushu Crisis (3)
Perhaps because Japan’s Hahoe Mask pursuit team had been assembled with intent from the very beginning, they were indeed no easy opponents.
To start with, all several dozen members seemed to be elites, and they were not greatly cowed even by Hans’s intimidation. On top of that, about five of them, including the man who had shouted the name of his technique, were skilled enough to hold their own fairly well even against the barbarian warrior Harley.
The combat strength of the man who appeared to represent the government agents, and the woman leading the Guardians, was even on par with Conwell, captain of the Imperial Royal Knights.
‘Somehow, that old man seems to end up being the standard for combat strength every time.’
Of course, that did not mean those Awakened had reached the same realm as him.
After all, they could inflate their combat power through the outstanding supernatural ability each of them possessed, known as a “Unique Skill.”
If one had to judge their level, they could be called the very top tier of the pinnacle realm, similar to Harley.
And that meant…
“Keugh!”
“What kind of monster…?”
That alone was not enough to block the path of Hahoe Mask—Hans.
[Khahaha— Indeed, that was fairly decent amusement. Though you are still far too lacking to oppose this body!]
The woman dressed like a ninja, who had been crossing through space at high speed and pouring out all manner of bizarre attacks, was entangled in threads of the abyss spread densely through the air like a spiderweb.
The muscular man, who had charged in stubbornly as if ignoring all attacks, ultimately fell to his knees before the overwhelming firepower of black magic that battered his body without pause.
As the fierce battle continued, those two leaders joined the people strewn miserably all around the battlefield.
The only one left now was…
Kaaang—!
At that moment, a sudden ambush that had not been sensed until just before the attack was blocked by Hans’s abyss and ended in failure.
“Tch! Damn it!”
The young swordsman in his twenties who had deeply impressed him at first.
Disappointingly, he seemed to have accepted his situation in the end, for after the first few attacks, he had stopped shouting the names of his techniques.
It made Hans feel a little uncomfortable, as if he were looking at a young man of this generation who had compromised with reality and given up on his dreams.
[Grasp of Death.]
Kwaaang!
“Geh!”
Of course, that did not mean he would go easy on him.
Nor was the fact that Hans seemed to be the youngest person here particularly important right now.
‘What matters is that I’ve finally brought down all these bothersome people.’
Because he had tried to subdue them without killing them, it had taken longer than expected.
They were merely faithfully carrying out their duties according to orders, so it was not as though he could kill them just because they got in his way.
Doing so would only tarnish Hahoe Mask’s justification for no reason.
‘I was planning to wrap everything up today and leave Kyushu, but I wasted time on something pointless.’
Still, he only had one target left, so it was not that late yet.
Soon, he moved to the edge of the battlefield and made contact with the barrier surrounding the area.
Perhaps out of concern for the aftermath of the battle, the barrier they had activated at the same time as their ambush had somehow held up without breaking until now.
Before breaking through it and leaving, Hans glanced behind him.
The Awakened lay sprawled in miserable states, groaning in pain.
After watching them for a moment, he…
[Hmph— It was entertaining enough in its own way. Then I shall take my leave. This time, I did what you should have done in your place, but from now on, try to manage things yourselves, won’t you? Khehehe!]
Leaving those sincere words of encouragement behind, he pierced through the barrier and soared into the sky.
He was a little worried that, because of Hans’s manner of speaking, it might have sounded somewhat mocking, but was it not said that sincerity was always conveyed?
His feelings surely reached them as well.
After turning the Awakened inside out like that, he swiftly headed toward his destination.
However, not everything went according to his will…
As he had somewhat expected, there was already no one left in their hideout.
‘Well, even if there was a barrier, a fight broke out right nearby. There’s no way they’d still be here.’
A mysterious reaper who had recently been hunting criminals and had become a top-priority target of the underworld, and the Awakened, their natural enemies, had clashed head-on in their front yard.
It was only natural that they had used that opportunity to quickly flee.
They were, in the first place, an underground organization whose basic premise was staying hidden.
‘This is troublesome. This is why I wanted to handle things as quickly as possible. Finding and crushing each of the ones who scattered like this will take too long. Should I just let these ones go?’
In any case, Japan was somewhere he had come to lightly sweep through only the larger groups.
Rather than being tied down here because of one organization, it would be far more efficient to move on to the neighboring islands of Shikoku or Honshu and continue his activities there.
‘Something like this might happen again, so from now on, even if it’s a little more troublesome, I should set a wider range and move around. Since I have the Eye of the Abyss, finding careless targets shouldn’t be that difficult.’
Due to their nature, underground organizations were not easy to wipe out at the leadership level all at once, and in that situation, the Eye of the Abyss, which could detect corrupt power and evil karma, was a great help.
Combining that skill with the information he had obtained while sweeping away other organizations made nearly perfect detection possible.
At present, when conditions were insufficient to set up a wide-area surveillance network like he had in Korea, it could be called the best ability.
‘Hmm, but just in case, let’s check one more time.’
Hans, whose eye sockets were once again filled with the abyss, slowly scanned the area around the hideout.
His abilities, such as Path of Magic and Mana Domination, also linked together and began searching for traces left in the surroundings.
However, even as he investigated, he was not expecting much inwardly.
Though they were inferior to Hans, they were still survival specialists who had survived in various worlds in their own right, and even after returning to Earth, they had shown the ability to build a fairly large force.
They should have prepared at least a few special means of erasing their traces, and since those included many different abilities from all sorts of worlds, they would not be easy to overcome through a gap in level alone.
And yet.
Even though he had thought that…
‘…This actually worked?’
Hans paused at a certain trail leading away from the hideout, now empty, and looked around again.
As if they had tried to erase their traces in their own way, only faint remnants remained, so vague that anyone but him would have had a hard time noticing them.
‘There are many who scattered in all directions, but most of them are small fry. The ones thick with evil karma gathered together and moved separately. Are these the executives?’
The Eye of the Abyss swallowed the light in every direction and filtered useful information from the fragmented traces, while every ability he possessed analyzed it in an instant.
No matter how many times he checked, the conclusion was the same.
‘Shall I go take a look?’
At the clue that appeared just as he had been about to give up, Hans immediately followed it.
If he had simply left, he would inevitably have felt uneasy, but now that an opportunity had come to neatly deal with the executives, there was no reason to hesitate.
‘So this is their safe house. How typical.’
Following the trail, he arrived at a small building in a low mountain near the city where the hideout had been.
Perhaps because it was private property, only the presences of those he had followed could be sensed inside the mountain lodge, and not a single human aura could be felt nearby.
‘No need to wait any longer. Let’s finish this quickly and move on to the next region. Next, starting with Hiroshima…’
However, the moment Hans, together with his future plans, charged into the place where they were hiding—
‘Hm?’
His keen senses caught an odd sense of incongruity.
Something different from usual began to mercilessly stimulate his instincts.
Crackle—
The faint sound of rupture that followed, and his reaction upon detecting the abnormality, occurred at the same time.
Goooooo—!
Black mana flared like flames from Hans’s entire body, and in contrast, the surrounding air instantly plunged below freezing.
The abyss streaming out in strands wrapped around him and bared its teeth in every direction, while the scenery all around instantly darkened as though a filter had been laid over it.
A change that occurred in an exceedingly brief instant.
And at last…
Crack— Shatter!
With the sound of something cracking, the sky, the earth, and every bit of the surrounding space shattered like glass.
And beyond that space…
Nearly thirty people, fully prepared for battle, were glaring at him while giving off sharp, menacing auras.
[…An alternate space, is it. Was it a trap?]
Hans, who had released a bit of mana to inspect the space after the anomaly he had failed to detect in advance, clicked his tongue inwardly.
This alien environment, still shattered in places, was not a simple barrier.
A closed world cut off from every connection to the outside.
This place was no different from a small world, like his Demon King’s Castle, the Eternal Labyrinth.
In other words, it was a trap that one could never escape unless one dealt with the caster or interfered with the dimension itself.
He heightened his senses and once again detected the people inside the mountain lodge he had followed the traces to.
As expected, even amid this commotion, they remained still in one place without moving.
‘Looks like the ones who just appeared brought those people here to use as bait. Did they pull the entire surrounding area in as soon as I reached the lodge? Spatial manipulation of this level, huh.’
In truth, when he had first discovered the traces and begun tracking them, this had been one of the possibilities he had considered. But he had ignored it out of confidence that whatever trap they prepared would be useless.
He had not expected it to be this serious, however.
“I see… I thought the claim that he was Demon King-class was nonsense, but it wasn’t entirely baseless.”
“Are you insane? Is this the time to talk so casually? He forced a phenomenon into existence just by revealing his presence!”
“Um… Is this really going to be okay? That thing really seems like he came from being a Demon King… With this much death energy, this isn’t simply transforming into an undead form…!”
“@#$%#! %$#!”
“Stop making a fuss. This was already within expectations.”
This alternate world was probably the Unique Skill of one of them.
Hans’s gaze turned once more toward the group chattering among themselves.
‘Indeed, none of them are ordinary.’
Since their Unique Skills were all different and each world had different standards for realms, it was difficult to make a clear distinction, but at Hans’s level, he could gauge an opponent’s fighting power to some extent just from the aura they emitted…
‘All of them are at least at the pinnacle realm. And the five at the front seem to have reached transcendence.’
They were not simply people whose combat power had been raised, like the two Awakened from the pursuit team he had faced a moment ago. Their realm and status themselves had exceeded the limits.
And this was not even taking into account the synergy from their Unique Skills, so once a full-fledged battle began, there was no telling how much further their fighting power would increase.
They were truly an elite combat unit unlike anything he had seen even in Auterica, one that seemed capable of defeating even a Demon King.
For an instant, he wondered if they were a special forces unit dispatched by the Japanese government, but no matter how he looked at them, that did not seem to be the case.
‘I suspected as much when I saw the Heavenly Slaughter Demon Emperor.’
Demonic cultivators exuding vicious energy and evil karma from their entire bodies were mixed in among them as if it were nothing, and their proportion was even much higher than that of the relatively normal ones.
‘They’re beyond what I expected. It really does seem Beoncheonhoe only recently began making moves in Korea. I didn’t think the gap between them and those in other regions would be this big.’
Most of them were speaking Japanese, but quite a few were using Chinese as well, so it seemed they had prepared thoroughly, even dispatching reinforcements in advance.
On top of that, perhaps through some separate method, they appeared able to converse with one another despite using different languages.
[Oho— You must be from Beoncheonhoe, yes? So, are you finished with your conversation?]
After roughly sorting things out, Hans arrogantly addressed them.
Those who had been exchanging opinions among themselves while keeping watch on him all fell silent at once, then raised their auras again and each muttered a few words.
“…He even waited while we talked like this. He really does have all the proper virtues of a Demon King, doesn’t he?”
“Don’t talk nonsense. He must have needed time to grasp the situation too.”
“Tsk, we originally planned to ambush him as soon as we dragged him here. But his response was too fast, and we missed the timing.”
Among them, a cold-looking man in a suit who seemed to be the leader clicked his tongue as he looked at the abyss wrapped around Hans.
That thing, writhing as if it had a will of its own, emitted a deadly aura that made one nauseous just by looking at it, preventing them from daring to act rashly.
“At this point, it doesn’t matter what Hahoe Mask’s true identity is.”
But now that they had set the stage like this, they could not back down.
And the strength of Beoncheonhoe gathered here was truly beyond imagination, far too much to withdraw merely because they were somewhat wary.
They were people who could be called emperors of the night in their respective regions without it sounding strange, gathered together, and on top of that, additional reinforcements had come over from China.
It would be laughable to be frightened while commanding this much power.
“…Because all we need to do is kill him and check the corpse afterward.”
“Mm, well. That was what we came here for in the first place.”
“Ugh… I’m still a bit uneasy…”
“@#%$$%#!”
That was why the man in the suit could declare it proudly.
Today would be the end of Hahoe Mask, who had interfered with their organization’s plans.
‘Hmm… It certainly does seem a bit excessive for a gift set. Since I have no idea what additional abilities they might have, I can’t say for sure. I’ll have to fight them first to know precisely.’
Of course, to Hans, it was no more than the barking of dogs.
Even if they truly were threatening and he found himself in a difficult situation, spatial severance or whatever else meant absolutely nothing to him.
[Hehehe— You have fine bravado. Shall we see how long that attitude lasts when you dare to stand against this body?]
And Hans, by nature, was a character who did not know how to sound weak.