When Sterling grumbled that there should be more time, Catherine said,
“There is no time. I was told by Captain Hyeon a moment ago that the Arachne monsters we saw can fly.”
By Arachne, she must have meant the spider-human monsters.
As she said that, Catherine looked at me.
‘Wasn’t this supposed to be kept secret?’
Since she had brought it up first, I couldn’t pretend not to know.
“Yes. They seemed to be able to fly using magic. It looked like it required a great deal of energy, but they would use it if necessary.”
“The monsters we saw earlier can fly?”
Sterling stared at me with an incredulous expression.
“That monster uses a variety of magic. Catherine should be able to use something similar.”
“For me, brief levitation is the limit.”
“That’s what she says.”
I shrugged at Catherine’s words.
After listening to our exchange, Sterling furrowed his brows.
“If they can fly, then we don’t have much time. Ah, right. You said it requires a lot of energy, didn’t you? Then, if we make them use up all their energy…”
Sterling trailed off and looked at Catherine again.
Catherine met his gaze with an expressionless face.
Sterling bit his lip.
Only now had he learned the truth.
“So sending us out to hunt them wasn’t meant to lure them out, but simply to make the monsters expend their energy…”
Once he realized the truth, he seemed shocked.
But this was not all that different from what he had known.
The nuance was different, but becoming bait to tie down the monsters and making them expend their energy amounted to the same thing in the end.
He had not said it particularly loudly, but no one failed to hear him.
Unlike Sterling, who had known the situation to some extent, the others had not even known that the main force had become bait.
Now that the truth had been revealed, they could not help but be surprised.
Everyone looked at Catherine with shocked expressions.
Catherine opened her mouth.
“As you heard, what we are doing already stands upon the sacrifices of others. We must succeed. Fight with all your strength.”
At her words, the people’s expressions changed.
They had all begun to feel responsible.
[There’s nothing left to say. I never saw anyone like her even back in the old days, but this goes beyond merely choosing to play the villain.]
She had even exposed a secret to heighten their sense of responsibility.
I had no choice but to raise both hands in surrender to her actions.
Catherine did not seem to care how the others viewed her. To ensure the operation’s success, she truly stopped at nothing.
Once the people’s expressions had changed, she added one more thing.
“As the first step, let us move swiftly according to Captain Hyeon’s orders.”
After hearing her, the people hurried into motion.
Even the Americans who had been displeased with my orders changed their attitude completely.
“Install one plastic explosive every hundred meters. Insert this electric detonator into each bomb.”
As we ran through the underground cavern, I pointed out where the explosives were to be placed.
The people installed the explosives and detonators brought from Earth alongside Sergeant Wu.
No one questioned my orders anymore.
There were plenty of things they could have asked: how we had brought the explosives and electric detonators, how we intended to set them off by merely inserting the detonators, and how we planned to escape if we collapsed the sewer we had entered through.
But even Sterling kept his mouth shut.
Thanks to that, we were able to save the time it would have taken to explain.
There was no way I could explain how we had brought the explosives and electric detonators.
Naturally, we had brought the explosives in boxes.
Because they were packed in boxes, we had been able to bring a large quantity of both electric detonators and explosives.
Although much of it had disappeared along the way, there was still enough to collapse this cavern.
It was also difficult to explain how we would detonate the explosives.
The answer was Sop’s electrical magic, which had been embedded in the electric detonators.
Unlike communications, magic passed through walls quite well.
Once Sop’s electrical magic activated in the sewer, all the detonators would explode.
At least I could explain how we would escape after collapsing the cavern.
Just as Sterling had said before, we would move the earth and escape through the place where the monsters had entered.
Naturally, the monsters on the surface would notice us, but by then it would not matter even if they did.
As we raced through the sewer, installing explosives, I felt the sewer gradually sloping downward.
The sewer itself also grew larger, and its branches began converging into one.
Perhaps because several sewers had merged together, we saw numerous rat monsters and humanoid monsters that had been left behind wandering through the tunnel.
Bang! Bang! Bang!
Sergeant Wu took down every monster that came into sight.
With the suppressor removed from his gun, he blew the monsters’ heads apart.
It was absurd that a rat monster slightly larger than a dog did not go down from a single shot, but when that happened, he simply shot it several more times.
When there were too many of them, Tom and Hannah helped out, and we continued racing through the sewer without stopping.
How long had we run?
Now we could no longer see any other sewers connected to this one.
All the sewers had merged into a single passage.
The sewer had grown so large that it now seemed as big as a subway platform.
At the limit of my senses, I finally detected something other than a passage.
It was an underground plaza with a huge hole in its center.
That had to be the city’s sewage treatment plant.
It would have looked different to the naked eye, but to my heightened senses, the sewage treatment plant felt like a gigantic funnel.
When we discovered the sewage treatment plant, Sop spoke.
[As the city’s sewage passes through that narrowing pipe, it is cleansed by magic, and the water spreads throughout the entire planet through the underground waterways. The groundwater beneath the underground ruins is connected to those waterways as well.]
Thanks to his explanation, I understood the structure to some extent, but one question remained.
[But can purification magic really be used in a structure like that?]
I did not know purification magic very well, but I had seen something similar before.
When you thought about it, what the terraforming ruins did was purify the entire planet.
The facilities were so vast and most of them were hidden underground, making them difficult to understand properly, but I knew the basics.
A purification magic facility could not take that shape.
[How would you draw the purification magic circle to produce a funnel-shaped structure like that?]
The fact that I was curious about something like this in a situation like the present meant I had practically become a mage myself.
Sop did not answer right away.
That was unlike him.
I asked again.
[Can’t you remember?]
[…No, that’s not it.]
Only then did he answer.
[They aren’t using purification magic. That sewage facility has spatial-transference magic installed, not purification magic.]
Spatial-transference magic?
At first, I wondered if I had heard him wrong.
But I had not.
[There was a portal installed at the entrance to the pipe you called a funnel. It lets the water pass through while selectively transferring only the pollutants elsewhere.]
That was an answer I had never expected.
I had nothing to say.
Sop sighed and continued.
[Because transferring it elsewhere was far easier and more convenient than purifying it.]
It was an exceedingly practical reason.
I could only give a wry smile at his words.
I asked Sop one last question.
[Where do they send the waste?]
[They used to send it to the first moon, Reshaph.]
On Earth, we had sent our waste to other continents, but here, they had sent it to a satellite in space.
The scale was certainly different when it came to mages.
Then I suddenly remembered which moon he had mentioned.
I knew the largest satellite orbiting this planet quite well.
[You don’t mean that broken satellite, do you?]
The half-destroyed satellite I had seen ever since arriving on this planet.
He was saying that they had sent the waste there.
[It was intact back then.]
[You don’t mean it broke because they sent waste there, right?]
[…]
It had clearly been a joke, but Sop did not answer.
I was beginning to worry that I had said something wrong when Sop spoke.
His words were not an answer to my joke.
[I see. Those monsters didn’t remain here merely because of the energy. They knew that this facility was connected to the place they came from.]
It was a statement I almost understood, but not quite.
I wanted to hear more, but unfortunately, our conversation ended there.
We had arrived before the sewage treatment plant, an underground plaza pierced by a hole.
The entrance to the sewage treatment plant was visible at the far end of the tunnel.
I looked back at the people.
They were all clearly tense.
I took the radios out of the box and handed them to Sergeant Wu and Margreta.
They probably would not work well underground, but they were useful as a precaution.
Fortunately, the expressions of my team members were not bad.
That was partly thanks to the trust between them, but it was also because of Hannah’s words.
“Captain, you’re shining even now.”
By now, Margreta and Tom also understood Hannah’s Korean word for “shining.”
I handed out all the ammunition and grenades from the box to my team members as well.
This was not a situation in which we could afford to leave anything behind.
While we made our final preparations, the Americans also checked their equipment with grim expressions.
Sterling and Catherine inspected the artifacts they possessed as well.
A little later, once everyone was ready, I asked them,
“Everyone all right? Your energy levels are fine too?”
Everyone nodded at my question.
“The operation is the same as before. If the situation changes, I will issue new orders. If you hear my voice, follow my orders without question.”
Unlike other times, I could not afford to be relaxed this time either.
It would be difficult to save anyone who failed to follow orders.
When I saw everyone nod again, I gestured forward.
‘Advance.’
At my signal, the people moved silently.
I led the way into the sewage treatment plant, my team in the middle, and the Americans at the very back.
As we walked, I sent another hand signal behind me.
It was the hand signal we had agreed on before, one only my team members could recognize.
When they saw my gesture, my team members chuckled and shook their heads.
They could not help but laugh.
The hand signal meant to run if things became dangerous.
I had no intention of dying for everyone else.
Neither did my team members.
Unlike Catherine, I had no intention of forcing people to sacrifice themselves.
We had the grand mission of saving humanity, but I had not the slightest intention of letting my team members die for it.
I would do my best, but that was all.
[Even if you say that, you do dangerous things every single time, even under normal circumstances.]
Sop tried to object again, but I did not hear him.
A mage’s objections were merely an annual event.
A short while later, we entered the sewage treatment plant.
We were not attacked until we set foot inside.
Whoosh.
I entered the plant with the light I had brightened to its fullest leading the way.
The city’s sewage treatment plant was no different from what I had sensed.
A vast, circular underground plaza.
A large hole gaping open in its center.
Magic circles that I had been unable to sense were engraved around the hole.
They were spatial-transference magic circles, just as Sop had said.
The monster—the Control Object—was nowhere to be seen.
“Where’s the monster…”
The people hurriedly looked around, and I pointed toward the ceiling.
“Above.”
Everyone raised their heads and looked up at the ceiling.
A huge black mass hung from the dark, domed ceiling.
At my gesture, the enormous mass, to which dozens, then hundreds of pipes were connected, began to writhe.
The Control Object had begun to move.
The connected pipes burst apart, and humanoid monsters poured out of the ruptured pipes along with white blood.
Thud. Thud. Thud.
The ones that fell looked like monsters that had only been half-formed.
They became even more mangled when they hit the ground, but they began moving toward us.
Seeing the humanoid monsters move, I shouted,
“Commence battle! As planned!”
At my cry, the people charged toward the monsters.
Whips lashed out, while bullets and grenades rained down.
Arrows split the air, and flames and blades of wind shredded the humanoid monsters to pieces.
I called out to Sop.
[Please!]
At my words, Sop began chanting.
A magic circle formed beneath my feet.
My hair rose upward.
[Surge upward. Gravity inversion!]
Along with Sop’s words, the world turned upside down.
My body shot into the sky.
Control Object (2)