The spatial-transfer ruins connected to Paradise were not in Djibouti, but in Ethiopia beyond the Djiboutian border.
However, since the only place connected to the ruins by an underground passage was the U.S. military base in Djibouti, there was no issue with calling these the Djibouti Ruins.
Naturally, this place had also been occupied by the rebels.
“Everyone, get back! It’s a spatial-transfer reaction!”
“No, they’re not supposed to come now! What the hell is going on?”
Amid the commotion, the view that had been filled with light returned to normal.
Fwaaaah!
Unlike the Baekdu Mountain Ruins, this underground ruin was in disarray.
Security had been strict before as well, but now it was even worse.
There were more than twice as many soldiers stationed in the ruins as before.
Soldiers with yellow bands around their arms.
The technicians clinging to the machines beside the altar were being watched by armed soldiers, and among the people lined up for spatial transfer, there seemed to be more soldiers than civilians.
And in the midst of that situation, we appeared.
People looked at us with bewildered expressions.
“What is this? This isn’t the time for people to come from Paradise to Earth, is it?”
An officer carrying a gun approached us with several soldiers.
It was an officer I had never seen before.
An officer who had not been here the last time I came.
The soldiers approaching with him, and the soldiers watching the area, were the same.
All unfamiliar faces.
Only the technicians were people I had seen before.
The technicians seemed to recognize us too, their mouths hanging open.
But the others appeared to think we were people who had come from Paradise.
The soldiers approached without any wariness.
‘Will this go more smoothly than I expected?’
Just as I thought that, a shout came from behind.
“Catherine! Margreta’s here too, isn’t she?”
A civilian man I had never seen before shouted while pointing at Catherine and Margreta.
The officer who had been approaching turned his head and looked at the man who had shouted.
“Are they people you know, Todd?”
At the officer’s question, the man shook his head.
“I wouldn’t say I know them, but they’re famous. Both of them come from good families.”
At his words, the officer frowned.
“Are you saying they’re people we need to treat respectfully?”
When the officer frowned, the man hurriedly shook his head.
“No, that’s not it! There’s a Korean man who travels with the two of them, and when he came to Paradise…”
In the middle of speaking, the man saw me standing between Margreta and Catherine.
His eyes widened to their limit.
“My God… The Slaughterer is here. We have to stop them! They’re enemies!”
At his scream-like shout, the officer hurriedly turned his head, and every muzzle that had been pointed downward turned toward us.
The officer aimed his gun and said to me,
“Hands up! Over your head, now!”
I looked at Margreta and Catherine with a regretful expression.
When I looked at her, Margreta shrugged.
“He must be someone from Paradise.”
Catherine continued calmly as well.
“If he’s from Paradise, there’s no way he wouldn’t know us. More importantly, Captain Hyeon is more famous than I expected.”
The Slaughterer, huh.
I had ended up with a strange nickname.
Contrary to that nickname, I hadn’t killed anyone in Paradise.
The only things I had taken down were the monsters created by the head of the Stone faction. The Stone faction had all been killed by the monsters they themselves had created.
Apparently, it had been decided that I was the one who killed them.
It was absurd, but Catherine nodded as if it were only natural.
“To create a new power structure, it would have been convenient to turn Captain Hyeon into a slaughterer.”
Hearing Catherine’s words, I shook my head, and the officer’s shout rang out again.
“Don’t move! Didn’t you hear me tell you to raise your hands!”
Listening to the ever-strange, contradictory order, I raised my hands.
When I raised my hands, the muzzles lowered slightly again.
Then the man who had shouted earlier cried out loudly once more.
“No! You have to kill him right now! That man is a magician!”
At his words, the officer asked back with a puzzled expression.
“You can’t use magic on Earth, can you?”
As if he had not thought of that, the man looked troubled.
“B-but…”
Looking at the man, the officer shrugged.
“Well, we’ll know if we shoot him.”
The officer looked at me again and aimed his gun.
The muzzle pointed at my shoulder.
Bang!
The gun fired.
Pat.
The bullet stopped in front of my shoulder.
Tuk.
The bullet fell to the floor.
The ruins went silent.
I changed the form of the magic circle spread out before my raised hand.
The transparent shield revealed itself.
The shield I had deployed was enveloping the three of us and the altar.
[It wasn’t a reflective shield. Did you only disperse the impact energy?]
“If it bounced off, someone else might get hurt. It looked like I could change it by altering just a few formulas.”
[That is not something that should be so easy…]
While I was talking with Sophe, the officer and soldiers came to their senses.
The officer frantically gave an order.
“Everyone, fire! Open fire!”
Tatatatang!
Along with his shout, bullets poured out.
“Aaah!”
Smoke filled the ruins, and with screams, the civilians dropped flat to the floor.
The soldiers did not stop firing.
They set their selectors to automatic and sprayed their guns.
They were rebels, but they were clearly properly trained soldiers.
However, unfortunately for them, the person in front of them was a magician who could use magic even on Earth.
Hundreds of bullets all stopped in front of me and rained down onto the floor.
Even under the countless shots, the shield did not change.
I checked the spear in my hand.
It was full of cracks, but the black stones embedded in the spear were still sending energy to me.
Black stones I had modified in the terraforming ruins before coming to Earth.
There were more modified black stones in the box.
Click. Click.
The sound of magazines running empty could be heard, and I saw soldiers hurriedly trying to swap in new ones.
There was even a soldier who, seeing the shield was intact, tried to take out a grenade.
“Contact headquarters!”
“Fall back outside the ruins!”
On top of that, the officer was shouting.
Grenades could not pierce the shield, and it would not matter if they withdrew outside the ruins, but there was no need to keep watching any longer.
The people I was dealing with were ordinary humans.
There was no need to use any grand magic.
I raised my staff within the shield and chanted.
“Everyone, into dreams. Sleep.”
With the incantation, the magic was cast.
The magic spread rapidly.
Thud. Thud-thud.
People collapsed one after another.
“Huh? Why am I sleepy…”
“We have to… attack…”
A few people tried to hold out by force, but this was not magic ordinary people could resist.
A moment later, everyone had fallen asleep.
Seeing that the people had fallen asleep, Margreta and Catherine blinked.
“Is it over already?”
“Now it begins.”
At Margreta’s question, I shrugged.
It was exactly as I said. We had cleared the ruins, but there were still plenty of rebels left to deal with.
At my words, Margreta pouted, and Catherine shook her head.
“You’re invincible on Earth.”
At Catherine’s words, I waved my hand.
“If I fought a proper army head-on, I’d be in danger too.”
At that, Margreta narrowed her eyes and looked at me.
“There’s no way Hyeon would fight head-on.”
“That’s true, though.”
Naturally, there was no reason to fight that way.
Catherine looked around and asked,
“More importantly, is it all right to leave them like this and go? It doesn’t seem like sleep magic makes it absolutely impossible to wake up.”
Indeed, sleep magic only put them to sleep.
They would not wake easily, but it did not have the effect of an anesthetic.
“But if we try to kill them all, it seems like it’ll take a long time.”
So the reason not to kill them was time.
I shook my head at Catherine’s words, then took a whip out of the box and handed it to Margreta.
“I think it would be best for Margreta to tie them up with the whip.”
Margreta’s whip was an artifact that was extremely sturdy and had no limit to its length.
With her whip, she could bind every sleeping person here.
“What? I can’t use my ability on Earth, though?”
She took the whip and looked at me with a bewildered expression.
At her words, I manipulated the magic circle of the shield again.
The magic circle changed rapidly.
Seeing the magic circle transform, Sophe said,
[That magic looks similar to the spell that transfers the black stone’s energy to you…]
As expected of a great magician.
Sophe grasped the magic I was creating through theory and experience alone.
Soon, the magic circle stabilized, and I said to Margreta,
“Try using your ability.”
“Okay…”
Though still bewildered, she moved the whip.
Whirrrk.
The whip flew forward.
If she had no ability, the whip should have fallen straight to the floor, but it continued to lengthen.
“Huh? Huh? Why does it work?”
Even in her surprise, Margreta did not forget what she had to do.
The whip lengthened and bound people one after another.
Not only the soldiers, but the civilians and technicians as well.
Even after binding so many people, the whip still had room to spare.
Since it was a whip stronger than steel, there was no worry that it would snap.
After receiving the whip back from Margreta, I cast a fixation spell on it.
Now, even without energy, the whip would not shrink.
“Will you explain what just happened now?”
As soon as I set the whip down, Catherine asked me as if she had been waiting.
It was not hard to explain.
“It’s similar to how I use magic on Earth. Just as I use the black stone energy in the spear, I’m transmitting the black stone’s energy to the people around me.”
After killing the Demon King and learning that I could modify and create magic, I examined the magic I had been curious about all this time.
Sophe’s magic, which allowed only me to use magic on Earth.
I had started investigating the magic that allowed me to use the energy contained in black stones.
In truth, copying the magic contained in the spear had been possible even before.
However, this magic was useless if merely copied.
This spear could only be used by me, since it was imprinted to me, and for someone else to use magic on Earth, they would need another artifact like Sophe’s staff.
But there was no way such a thing would exist again.
So, the magic needed to be modified.
“Fortunately, after seeing the Antarctic Ruins operate with the Demon King’s black stone, I was able to complete the modification. I became able to transmit the black stone’s energy to other people as well.”
If I had not seen the Antarctic Ruins, it would have taken longer.
On top of that, while I was modifying it, I added one more small adjustment.
“Other people can’t hold the spear like I do, so I made it possible to transmit energy using the air as a medium.”
[You call transmitting dark energy across space a small adjustment?]
“I still can’t transmit it over long distances. Only nearby companions should be able to use it.”
To put it simply, it meant I had changed wired charging into short-range wireless charging.
[Unbelievable. I cannot even begin to tell how you changed it…]
“If even a great magician could tell that at a glance, that would be a problem.”
At my words, Sophe sighed.
[I raised my disciple wrong.]
While I shook my head at Sophe’s joke, Catherine stretched her hand forward.
Shaaaak!
A line of wind extended from her hand.
The wind whipped through the air, and a long line appeared on the wall of the ruins.
Her magic, Wind Blade, had been cast.
“It really works…”
Catherine looked down at her own hand with astonished eyes.
Margreta also pulled a grenade launcher and rifle from the hands of the unconscious soldiers and held them in both hands.
Before, the weight would have been impossible for her to lift, but now she could hold them easily.
I smiled as I watched the delighted Margreta and Catherine.
It had been worth working hard to modify the magic.
Even on Earth, I could deploy a shield and protect my companions, but I wanted them to be able to protect themselves.
Just like now.
I said to the two of them, who were rejoicing,
“Let’s go. We have a lot to do.”
At my words, the two nodded, and after casting invisibility magic on everyone, I moved forward.
We left the ruins and walked into the passage.
As we entered the passage, our presence faded away.
Srrrrr.
The shield and our figures gradually blurred as well, until no trace of us remained in the passage.
The Rebel Army (1)