Against the backdrop of the burning helicopter were charred-black corpses and one man, his mouth gaping wide as he sat rigidly frozen.
All the American soldiers had become burned corpses, but Jeong Il-su was still alive.
His entire body had stiffened from electrocution, but when he pressed the tip of his spear against his stomach and recited an incantation, he began to breathe again.
“Keogh! Cough!”
After a painful fit of coughing, he gasped for breath, hurriedly looked around, and then his expression hardened.
“To think even the helicopter was taken down……”
It seemed he had thought the helicopter would be safe.
“The helicopter pilot was just an ordinary person who knew nothing……”
Jeong Il-su’s words made me laugh.
Calling a soldier an ordinary person.
A soldier was someone who killed enemies.
That didn’t change just because he was a pilot.
If he brought someone here to kill me, then that person was my enemy too.
He grimaced at my sneer, then asked me.
Unlike a moment ago, both he and I were speaking casually now.
“Why didn’t you kill me?”
“You know why, don’t you?”
If I had killed everyone else and left only him alive, there could be only one reason. He knew that reason well too.
“Is there something you want to know?”
“Yeah.”
“If I tell you, will you spare me?”
As he said that, Jeong Il-su tried to sneer at me.
“Keuk!”
But he couldn’t.
His body hadn’t been fully healed.
My skill wasn’t good enough to immediately restore someone who had been electrocuted to the brink of death back to normal.
And even if it were possible, I had no intention of doing so.
The reason I had kept him alive was because there was something I wanted to hear from him.
As long as he could speak, that was enough.
I told him the truth.
“There’s a higher chance you’ll die.”
“Keugh. Th-then, do you think I’ll talk?”
He spoke while enduring the pain, and I answered in an even voice.
“If you don’t talk, you’ll die right away. If you do, there’ll at least be a thread of hope that you might live.”
At my words, Jeong Il-su bit his lip.
From the way his face twisted, it wasn’t only because of the pain.
“……What do you want to know?”
In the end, he made his decision. To talk.
I asked him.
“Where were you trying to take me?”
“Pyongyang.”
If they were going to take me to America, then taking me to Pyongyang, where the American forces were, made sense, but his words were a lie.
It seemed he intended to lie.
He must have thought that, if the lie worked, all the better, and if it didn’t, he could still buy time while I tried to verify it.
Unfortunately for him, I could tell when someone was lying.
On top of that, Jeong Il-su thought his identity had been exposed because of Hanna.
Even now, he was glancing sideways at Hanna.
But Hanna only watched us in silence.
If they weren’t taking me to Pyongyang, then where were they trying to take me?
I could confirm that through torture, but torture inevitably took time.
For now, I asked something else.
“Was it Aaron who gave the order?”
“Of course not. Aaron is helping us, but this was an order from the U.S. government, from the intelligence agency.”
Fortunately, it was a lie. A lie with a little truth mixed in.
That meant it wasn’t something the entire U.S. government and intelligence agency had agreed to, but something planned by a portion of them.
And at the very top of that would be Aaron.
“If Aaron is helping, where is he now? Is he in America?”
“He’s at the airport where we were going to take you.”
Oh? That answer was true.
Aaron wasn’t in America. Nor was he in Pyongyang.
“Aaron came to Korea?”
“That’s right. He brought the private plane that would take you.”
This time, it was a lie.
It was true that a private plane had been brought, but Aaron was not in Korea.
If not Korea, then where?
It wouldn’t be China, with the risk of civil war, so the only likely place was Japan.
I stopped questioning him and turned on my phone to search the internet.
The search still worked fine. Martial law had been declared, but it seemed they hadn’t blocked satellite phones yet.
Aaron’s private plane was a large passenger aircraft, so I only had to look for an airport in Japan that was close to Udo and could accommodate large passenger planes.
When I searched, it came up right away.
“He’s at Fukuoka Airport?”
“What? How did you……”
This time, it was true. Seeing Jeong Il-su’s startled expression, there was no need to confirm it.
The next moment, he immediately realized how I had guessed it.
“Don’t tell me…… You can even use magic to know the truth? But I heard it was difficult to use magic in many different ways……”
I didn’t know who he had heard it from, but what Jeong Il-su said was true.
Earthlings who had not learned from ancient mages could only use abilities that were hard to call magic, or magic of a single system.
But I was different.
There was something else that set me apart from them too.
“You say I can’t use magic in many different ways? But surely you also heard that magic can’t be used on Earth?”
When I said that, pointing to myself as the exception, Jeong Il-su laughed hollowly.
“That’s true. You were an exception from the beginning. That was why we tried to take you……”
Watching his hollow expression, I adjusted my grip on the spear.
It seemed I had heard everything important.
When I tightened my hand around the spear, he rapidly poured out words.
“Think it over one more time. We’ve already gathered far more black stones than planned. There’s no need to keep struggling to go to the Baekdusan ruins. Now is the time to transport people and supplies to Paradise. With you, we can take many things from Earth. We could maintain civilization there too!”
It was the kind of thing someone who had already secured a ticket, and who knew nothing of the situation in Paradise and Trappist, would say.
I gazed indifferently at the CIA agent who had spewed out those words.
Seeing my expression, he shouted.
“I’m saying it can still be undone! This is not only for America, but for humanity!”
Because they had gathered more black stones than originally planned, it was fine?
Jeong Il-su’s words meant that as long as the tens of thousands, or hundreds of thousands, who had already obtained tickets survived, that was enough.
Even aside from that, Paradise had no future.
He might not have known that, but that did not mean he could be forgiven.
Because his words about doing it for humanity and for America were lies.
“You know I can tell the truth, don’t you? What reward were you promised for taking me?”
At my words, his eyes widened.
“No, no. I did it for America……”
He stammered as he denied my words.
This time, it was a lie mixed with truth.
He kept rambling.
“You’re saying I didn’t do it for America? But I clearly did it for America……”
I could tell even without checking with magic.
He was deceiving himself.
He tried to deny my words to the very end, but his wavering eyes and trembling voice meant that he, too, had realized the truth.
He no longer tried to persuade or plead with me.
Flash! Rumble!
As he blankly continued to repeat what he had done to himself, another bolt of lightning fell, and he closed his eyes.
I moved the earth and buried the people and the helicopter underground.
The traces vanished, and the land that had been overgrown with weeds turned into a wasteland.
An unexpected incident had finally been settled.
Since the helicopter that was supposed to take us had been buried in the ground, I would have to call another one.
But before that, there was something I had to do.
“That bastard is in Fukuoka?”
The person who had tried to forcibly take me away, and kill me if that failed, was right under my nose.
I couldn’t just leave that alone and go back.
Before departing, I asked Hanna.
“I’m thinking of going to Fukuoka. Do you want to wait here?”
“I’ll go with you.”
After hearing my words, Hanna pressed herself right up beside me.
Certainly, it was better for me to take her with me than to leave her here alone.
“That would be better.”
I held Hanna in my arms and cast gravity magic.
Whoosh!
Hanna and I shot up into the sky.
Perhaps because she had experienced flying through the sky before, Hanna only looked around with curious eyes.
“I never thought I’d see Jeju Island and Udo while flying through the sky.”
I held the admiring Hanna tightly with one arm and cast wind magic with the other.
Boom!
The wind I released was much weaker than when I had been in Trappist, but Hanna frowned.
It seemed that, with a body that had no energy, even this much impact was hard to withstand.
When Hanna frowned, Soph immediately cast magic.
[O wind, flow to the side! Shield!]
He used wind magic to divert the oncoming winds to the side and spread a shield around us.
[That’s blatant discrimination.]
Soph, who hadn’t cared at all when I was flying.
And yet he was this different now.
Soph didn’t even respond to my grumbling.
I slowly increased our speed, and an hour later, we arrived over Japanese land.
It looked peaceful, but Japan also had Self-Defense Forces deployed here and there.
It seemed martial law had been declared in Japan as well.
Although martial law had been declared, the Self-Defense Forces did not notice us.
Thanks to the GPS on my phone, finding Fukuoka Airport wasn’t difficult.
The airport was in the middle of the city, so we had to cross Fukuoka to reach it, but that wasn’t hard either.
There were no people walking the streets, and no one looking out the windows.
We easily crossed the city and arrived at the airport.
Now it was time to find Aaron’s private plane, but there was no need to search separately.
“That’s the plane, right?”
There was only one plane at the airport with the rocket, the symbol of Aaron’s company, painted on its side.
The plane was at one side of the airport, in what looked like a private aircraft apron.
Around the plane were armored vehicles and American soldiers.
They were U.S. Forces Japan.
“There are still U.S. forces stationed in Japan?”
Korea had special circumstances, so they had remained there, but to think there were still U.S. forces in Japan.
It seemed America had more lingering attachment to Earth than I had expected.
When I clicked my tongue while looking at the soldiers, Hanna interpreted it differently.
“There are a lot of soldiers. Will it be all right?”
It seemed she was worried about fighting soldiers in such a large airport.
Just as she said, there were many troops at the airport besides the American soldiers.
They were forces stationed to guard the airport under martial law.
I smiled broadly at Hanna.
“Come to think of it, Hanna, you haven’t seen it before, have you?”
No, aside from me, no one had seen me fight on Earth.
They had all died, of course, but even before that, it was hard to see me.
“Don’t you think it’s strange that no one saw us while we were coming all the way to the airport?”
“Ah, you’re right.”
We had also avoided them well with super-senses, but that alone wasn’t enough.
This was all thanks to magic.
Now, it didn’t matter even if it wasn’t night.
If Soph’s and my concealment magic combined, ordinary people with no energy could not find us even during the day.
Holding Hanna, I approached the private plane.
We moved slowly with gravity magic and Soph’s flight magic, without bursting air magic.
Even after we reached directly above the private plane, no one noticed us.
The American soldiers standing guard beside the private plane and the soldier holding the machine gun atop the armored vehicle only stared blankly around them.
The private plane’s door was closed, and no stairs were connected to it, but it didn’t matter.
Holding Hanna, I descended and stood on top of the private plane.
Then I spread out my super-senses and checked the people inside the private plane.
The pilot and flight attendants, a few bodyguards, and Aaron Jetson.
The man I had met before was beneath my feet.
I looked down below and said,
“Soph.”
[Block the sound. Silent.]
There was no need to explain the magic separately anymore.
When Soph spread soundproofing magic, I thrust the spear downward.
Thuk!
There was no sound, but the energy-filled spear easily pierced through the plane’s ceiling.
I moved the spear and made a round hole in the ceiling of the plane.
A moment later, I removed the lid I had made and entered the plane with Hanna.
Below, Aaron was sitting alone, staring at a tablet with a serious expression.
When he lifted his head at the sudden flood of light and saw me, his eyes widened.
I waved at him.
“You called for me, didn’t you? So I came in person.”
Of course, I hadn’t come with good intentions.
I smiled and sat down on the sofa opposite him.
Aaron (2)