Since it would be hard to meet them if he kept flying even after reaching the target point, he prepared a bulletproof vehicle close to an armored car as transportation for moving overland,
and he also carefully checked the combat androids’ charge levels, inspected their armaments, and left a large number of them on standby in the subspace warehouse.
Through the warehouse’s dimensional gate, he first moved to Busan in a single leap, emerging on a cliff at the Taejongdae Observatory.
First, he put on the [Extreme Powered Armor].
It was a suit so complicated to equip that simply putting it on would normally take well over ten minutes, but since he was wearing it inside the subspace warehouse before coming out, it effectively took less than 0.001 seconds.
Then he spread his newly attached wings, the [Tempestbane Wings].
Skak— Shakak—
The wings unfolded with a sharp sound.
Though they were large wings, their invisibility property made them as hard to see as the thin wings of an insect.
As the helmet’s visor came down and displayed all kinds of information, preparations were complete.
Without hesitation, Suho leaped off the cliff.
“Oh, this is pretty good.”
He was still only flying at a low speed of a few hundred kilometers per hour, but the ride was comfortable.
The powered armor not only wrapped his entire body from head to toe, but was also enchanted with multiple layers of defense, shock absorption, and temperature regulation.
‘I’m sure of it—mine is an upgraded version even compared to the cutting-edge suit worn by the Steel Man from Marbling Comics.’
A needless sense of pride made the corners of his mouth rise.
Through a vision-expansion enchantment, the powered armor allowed him to see clearly even places the naked human eye could not, while at the same time, the advanced equipment helmet’s AI assistant system—in other words, its AI-based HUD—rapidly updated various pieces of information.
‘Khh… The harmony of magic and science. This is it.’
Admiring his own creation, Suho passed Jeju Island and gradually entered the East China Sea.
Suho and his powered armor flew low over the sea, casting a long shadow over the waves.
As he gradually increased his speed, feeling the pleasant vibration transmitted through the frame, he began accelerating without restraint.
The surrounding air compressed and began wrapping around the powered armor, and then—
Kwa-kwaang———
A tremendous roar rang out as a sonic boom shook the sea.
Once he began flying without any restrictions, his speed rose higher and higher as if there were no limit.
Acceleration beyond Mach 3 and toward Mach 4.
The extreme air resistance began applying tremendous pressure to the frame, and the surface temperature of the suit rose sharply, but the powered armor’s various pressure-dispersion, heat-release, and shock-mitigation enchantments activated and neutralized it without difficulty.
Shweeeeeeeee———
Kwaaaaaaaa——————
Behind Suho, who was maintaining an altitude of about thirty meters while performing high-speed, low-altitude sea-skimming flight,
water pillars well over twenty meters high surged up and followed in his wake, created by the pressure applied to the water’s surface through shockwaves and compressed air.
“I might arrive faster than expected. What’s the estimated arrival time?”
When Suho asked, the AI navigation displayed the remaining time on the visor.
Two hours and sixteen minutes. A decent amount of time.
* * *
Bria, located in a remote northeastern region of the Central African Republic, was a tropical savanna climate zone where grasslands and forests mixed together. It was famous for its dense concentration of diamond mines, and for the active presence of rebel forces and criminal organizations.
As a strategic key point where clashes between various armed factions occurred frequently, it was also notorious as a place where human rights violations often took place, mainly due to conflicts over control of mining resources and fighting between armed groups.
The coordinates Suho had received pointed to a forested area southeast of Bria. Right in the middle of a criminal organization’s den.
He arrived there at nine o’clock at night.
He had departed Busan at around two-thirty in the afternoon and flown for roughly two and a half hours, but because of the time difference, it was nine o’clock at night in Bria local time.
There were three hours left until the appointed time, midnight.
Night had already fallen over the forest, but fortunately the moon was bright, so it was not difficult to make things out.
He had arrived at the exact coordinates. But there was nothing there—only a dark forest.
Fortunately, there was one unpaved road that a car could barely pass through.
Still wearing the powered armor, Suho took out the special bulletproof vehicle he had brought and got in.
Wiiiiii———
The heavy vehicle, resembling a Knight XV and weighing over six tons, lit up the path through the forest.
“What the… Why is there no one here? Did they just give me random coordinates? No way. What kind of opportunity would this be for them…”
After driving blindly down the empty road for thirty minutes, the vehicle stopped.
An improvised checkpoint had appeared ahead, set up in the middle of the road.
Several men stood at the checkpoint, which was made of wood, branches, and a few rusty oil drums.
They wore a mix of military uniforms and camouflage, and carried things like AK-47 rifles in their hands. Every one of them had sharp eyes and a wary, on-edge attitude.
One of them approached.
He had a red headband wrapped around his left arm, and his clothes bore various tattoo-like symbols. He seemed to be the leader among these small fry.
“Whose permission do you have to pass through here?”
At the man’s emotionless question,
“I came to meet OAE.”
Suho told him the truth as it was.
At that one sentence, the men exchanged cold looks, and in an instant, they raised their level of readiness.
Click— Clack—
The men who had been letting their guns hang low took aim, and even those who had been lounging around all picked up their weapons.
Kang— Kang—
“Get out of the car.”
The man who seemed to be the leader jabbed the muzzle of his gun hard against the vehicle’s window and growled in a commanding tone.
There was no choice.
Suho immediately materialized a combat android in the back seat, already having issued the order to return fire.
Of the vehicle’s six doors, the four rear doors opened at the same time, and armed combat androids poured out. They rapidly disembarked and returned fire.
“What the hell!”
“Fuck! Shoot!”
Drrrrrrrk— Tatatatata— Tatatatata———
A sudden battle broke out in the forest in the dead of night.
Men screaming at the top of their lungs, flashes of fire bursting from gun barrels, screams.
But not a single scream came from Suho’s side. The androids were not humans who screamed, and since they fundamentally had reinforced bodies, most bullets bounced right off them.
In only a few dozen seconds, the situation was settled.
Suho stored the androids again and started the vehicle.
“Just as I heard, it’s a den of criminals… So it really is ‘hide a tree in the forest,’ huh… They’re hiding in exactly the kind of place that suits them.”
For now, there was only this one road.
Before long, he engaged a second group.
They, too, wore a mix of old military uniforms and civilian clothing and were armed with rifles. Judging from the parked military vehicles as well, they were a much larger group than the previous ones.
They were similar in that they had machetes at their waists and were mainly armed with AK-47s, but among them, there were also men carrying RPGs.
“I came to meet OAE. Guide me.”
At those words, they too charged at him as if determined to die, and Suho released the androids, granting them their wish.
Silence returned again after only a few minutes.
This time, among the criminals presumed to be rebels or terrorists, one of Suho’s androids was lying on the ground as well. It had been hit by an RPG and destroyed.
It would be troublesome if a Korean-made android were found lying around in a place like this, so he carefully stored even the broken one in the subspace.
He hesitated slightly. Should he keep advancing?
These cunning bastards were trying to get things done without lifting a finger.
It was obvious what they were aiming for: expend the criminal organizations filling this region in order to confirm whether Suho himself had really come, what abilities he had, and how many people he had brought.
‘They’re watching from somewhere. What should I do…’
There was a high chance they were watching through small drones or some other CCTV.
But if he hid in the subspace warehouse, he would not be able to meet the bastards who were hiding tight, and showing all of his own abilities was unpleasant in its own way.
He needed to keep several finishing moves in reserve.
‘There’s no need to reveal all my cards.’
Suho decided to continue as he had been.
With the bulletproof car and androids in front.
He destroyed the third checkpoint, and the fourth checkpoint he encountered was located in an extremely wide area. It almost felt like the headquarters of a rebel force.
As he had done until now, Suho continued materializing combat androids in the back seat, and from the rear seats that looked as if they could hold four units at most, androids began pouring out endlessly.
In an instant, more than fifty androids emerged from a single vehicle and completely seized control of the area.
After easily devastating what seemed like the criminal organization’s headquarters, he tried to find the next place to go. But alas, there was no road leading deeper into the forest.
“Was this not the right road from the beginning? Let’s go back.”
He tried to turn the car around, but the car did not budge. Even when he stepped on the accelerator, the bulletproof vehicle gave no response at all.
“Mm? Hey, guys, the car’s not listening. Try pushing it.”
But the androids were the same.
All of them stood frozen in place without the slightest movement, as if someone had pressed a stop button.
Feeling a sense of unease, Suho heightened his tension.
At that moment—
“Whoa, whoa?”
The vehicle floated up.
The reinforced bulletproof vehicle weighing over six tons rose into the air like a balloon. It felt unreal.
Sensing something ominous, he was about to flee into the subspace warehouse when—
the slow sound of applause came from somewhere.
From behind a broken building of the criminal organization he had wiped out, a man sitting on a metal chair was approaching while clapping. Surprisingly, the chair was floating in the air.
“Well now… I enjoyed the infinite android summoning magic show. I really did.”
There was not just one. Figures revealed themselves here and there, spaced out at a distance.
“Did you set up some kind of factory in the back seat? Haha, no matter how many times I saw it, it was still fascinating.”
At that moment, a woman approached the man in the chair and spoke as if reporting.
“There is no one else. The only lifeform detected nearby is this man.”
“And the missiles?”
“None detected at all.”
“Hiya… Item Collector, you’re even more impressive than I expected. I never imagined this. To think you’d come alone. Surely you didn’t come alone just trusting in one shoddy android show, did you? That would be disappointing… In any case, you’ve got remarkable guts.”
Steelshade, an S++ rank, was deliberately releasing powerful Aether, but Suho’s actual impression was different.
‘What the… He’s weaker than I expected…’
Perhaps it was because an enormous amount of Aether already existed within Suho himself, and because even the equipment he was wearing already contained a great deal of EX-rank Aether, but the Aether wrapped around Steelshade felt insignificant and below standard.
Suho recalled the information he had received in advance from the Administration Bureau and Sanarae.
Since he had basically memorized the single-number members from Number 1 to Number 9 before coming, he could confirm their characteristics.
A person with two abilities: the ability to control metal and the ability to harden his own body like metal.
The unofficial world’s number one S++ rank Admittee; in a simple comparison of ability values, he ranked above Joshua.
“Are you Steelshade?”
“Tch. How long are you going to keep chirping inside that tin can? Why don’t you come out already?”
Kwa-ddeudeuk— Kwajik—
The bulletproof vehicle floating in the air was a reinforced vehicle nearly on the level of an armored car,
but with a single gesture from him, all the doors were ripped off in every direction while it remained suspended, and even the roof was torn away.
Since it seemed clear that this was Steelshade, Suho quickly stored the powered armor.
Still, he had carefully layered protective equipment under his clothes. To Suho now, they were practically items he treated as trash-tier, but protective gear such as the [Tempered Ray Ring], [Diatannos Belt], and [Elastrin Silk Defensive Suit] were still effective defensive items.
Ujijijijik—— Kwajik, peopeong—— Peong——
The androids that had been standing around like mannequins crumpled here and there before exploding.
As expected, androids were no help at all against high-rank Admittees.
Looking around, he spotted two familiar people.
The grateful man who had gifted him the Ethereal Blade, and the woman who had created ice spikes.
‘They were in Korea only a few days ago, but they got here fast… They must have come by supersonic jet or something…’
In truth, Suho’s situation was an extremely dangerous moment, like being inside the jaws of a tiger,
but when he thought of his immortal body that would never die, the subspace he could flee to at any time, and the powered armor he could take out and wear whenever he wanted, a sense of calm settled over him.
Suho steadied his voice.
“As you can see, I came alone. I demand treatment befitting that. Why don’t you start by introducing yourselves?”
“Ha ha ha! I like this one. He’s got one hell of a spine. Okay, why not? From the look of it, you seem to have figured out who I am. You should already know these two, and this here is Specter. The one over there with the gun is Raven, and this lady is Leviathan...”
Steelshade, as it turned out, had a more impish side than expected. Just because Suho had asked for an introduction, he rattled off the Single Number members one by one.
Surprisingly, among the S-ranks from Number 1 to Number 9, everyone was present except for Number 5, the poison master.
They had probably assumed that this side would also be bringing along several high-ranking Admitti.
Judging by the fact that all the Single Number members had shown up, they seemed to have come prepared for a fierce battle. In that sense, the absurd ease and overconfident complacency the man displayed was understandable.
Suho’s original plan had been to cater to their moods and demands as much as possible, infiltrate as deep into their core as he could, and meet their boss and executive-level members.
Then he would start the real work afterward.
That way, he could seize the head and wipe them all out in one fell swoop.
But if it was going to be like this, the plan had changed.
“Hmm. Is it really that surprising that I came alone?”
“Hm? Of course it is. Surprising? Absolutely. Do you even know where you are? Keh heh heh.”
As Steelshade laughed and looked around, the formidable S-ranks surrounding them on all sides slowly raised the corners of their mouths.
“Really? I’m more surprised that all of you came out like this right from the start. What is this, some kind of deluxe gift set?”
“Is that so? My motto has always been to suppress others with overwhelmingly excessive force.”
“I do like that motto, at least. Anyway, since all of you are out here, I’m changing my operation.”
“Oh?”
Steelshade grinned as if he found it too absurd to even scoff at.
“Then let me ask you. Are you really Jeong Suho?”
“I am.”
“Well, anyone can claim that.”
The instant his chilling words fell, Suho’s armored vehicle began crumpling like an aluminum can.
Whoa. Startled, Suho evacuated into subspace.
In the blink of an eye, the vehicle was rolled up into a round ball and compressed before dropping to the ground with a thud.
“Tsk. How dull.”
At the sight, the surrounding Single Numbers gaped.
“S-Steelshade... What are you going to do if you just kill him... The original plan was to use him to...”
“Hmph. In any case, this one isn’t him.”
“Pardon? How do you know?”
“Frostbite and Edge said as much, didn’t they? They said he had the ability to manifest an unbreakable Cage. If he were the real one, he wouldn’t have just stupidly let himself get crushed when the car body caved in.”
“B-but with just that...”
At that moment, Suho, who had disappeared, appeared above the uselessly crushed metal ball of a vehicle.
“Wow... Is that how it is? You crushed the car just to check that?”
Seeing Suho reappear in midair, Steelshade’s eyes widened as if they would split.
“How did you get out? You have a stranger trick than I expected. Like a magician. Interesting.”
Though he was a little surprised, he seemed to consider Suho’s technique nothing more than a petty trick. He kept grinning with an expression that said Suho was welcome to try anything, but Suho had nothing more to say.
“I’m done here. It was disgusting meeting you. Let’s never see each other again.”
With those words, Suho vanished in an instant.
The armored vehicle, now a metal ball, and the androids had also disappeared with him, as if he had taken them at some point.
“Hm? Where did he go this time? What a rat-like bastard. Hurry up and detect him.”
“He cannot be detected at all. There is no one within a minimum radius of twenty kilometers.”
“What? What a bizarre bastard...”
Just then, something turned unnaturally dark.
It had been a night bright with moonlight, yet it grew far too dark, and those who sensed something was strange raised their heads.
“Uh... Th-that! Up there!!”
“Something’s falling!!”
“Hmph... Huh?”
Sensing that it was metal, Steelshade tried to stop it, but somehow, the thing filling the sky did not budge and continued to fall.
Before going there, Suho had investigated in advance, and the coordinates they had given him were, quite literally, a jungle region far removed from any city.
Within a fifty-kilometer radius, there were no private homes—only the hideouts of criminal organizations.
How grateful he was that he could pour down wide-area attacks to his heart’s content.
Before Suho disappeared into the subspace warehouse, what he manifested above his own head was a lump of Obelun two kilometers wide, two kilometers long, and two hundred meters thick.
He had manifested a mass weighing a staggering 1.6 billion tons roughly two hundred meters in the air.
By the time they discovered it, it was already far too late. But with a radius of two kilometers, even if they had found it earlier, it was too large to avoid.
Upward, sideways, even underground—unable to find any path of escape, all of them welcomed the mass equally.
Grooooooo...
Several seconds after the terrifying sound of the colossal mass crushing the air resounded, a roar like the earth being torn apart erupted.
As the tremendous mass reached the surface, an enormous amount of energy equivalent to 3.165 petajoules was generated.
A massive crater formed at the point of impact, and the shockwave created by the collision spread outward, overturning the crust.
Trees were ripped up by the roots, and all living things—plants, animals, everything—were wiped away as if they had been annihilated.
As the energy from the moment of impact converted into heat, the entire forest was engulfed in fire,
and as that energy shook the ground, a powerful earthquake reaching magnitude 8.0 erupted and extended for dozens of kilometers.
It was a calamity itself, one that no one could escape.
The same held true even for Number 3, the spirit arts user Specter, who could render his body immaterial.
He could turn his body immaterial to pass through walls or avoid attacks, but he could not use that ability without limit. It was a power he could only activate instantaneously, for very brief moments.
When the lump of Obelun fell upon them all, he instinctively made himself immaterial and passed through it at that instant, but during the short activation time of his skill, he could not pass through the full, immense thickness of the mass.
In the end, when the time limit ran out, his body merged directly into the lump of Obelun, and he met the most horrific death.
After the entire Bria region had been overturned and the shockwaves had all settled,
Suho, who had been sitting in the subspace warehouse in front of the gate transformed into a portal window while watching the situation outside, came out of subspace once the disturbance outside began to subside.
As soon as he emerged, he activated his life-form detector just in case, and a faint signal appeared.
When he went to where the signal had been detected, Steelshade was there, still barely breathing.
“Wow... You really are amazing.”
Suho clicked his tongue at the man’s tenacious vitality.
It seemed that even at the final moment, he had metalized his entire body and used the chair he had been sitting on as a shield.
But he was not unscathed.
His body, torn apart by the shockwave and intense heat after he squeezed out every last bit of aether to endure, was in tatters.
Even if left alone, he looked as though he would not last more than a few dozen minutes. He was barely clinging to life.
If Suho fed him a top-grade healing potion, he would recover immediately... but there was absolutely no reason to do that.
As Steelshade drew ragged breaths with a metallic rasp, his limbs were almost completely burned away, and blood kept bubbling and overflowing from his mouth.
Suho sat down beside the dying man.
Steelshade, looking at him with hollow eyes, forced his mouth open.
“If it were you... you could have fulfilled our great cause... Awakened ones are a new humanity. There is no reason for us to live... under the rule of inferior... breeds... We must remove all their heads... become the new head ourselves... and rewrite human history...”
But Suho snorted.
“Tsk... with edges that sharp, of course you got struck.”
“......”
“A new humanity? What’s so impressive about a mere new humanity? I’d say I’ve practically become a god-man... But if I thought like you, this world would have ended by my hand long ago.”
“You... Just what are you...”
The light was draining from Steelshade’s eyes, which could never have understood Suho’s words.
“You need to know how to live in harmony, and how to be content... That’s what it means to live properly.”
The faintly flickering light on the life-form indicator went out completely.
Suho rose while dusting off his backside, stored away the lump of Obelun that had created the gigantic crater, and disappeared into the subspace warehouse.