Wheeee!
Sirens that hadn't even sounded when the rebels captured the base now rang throughout the entire installation.
Bang-bang-bang! Boom!
Gunshots and explosions followed.
Along with heavy sounds rising from underground, the soldiers occupying the base moved frantically.
Soldiers barricaded the hallway with furniture and other objects, taking aim at the stairwell from which the sounds came.
A light breeze swept past the tense faces of the soldiers.
A wind, as though someone had walked by.
One soldier tilted his head and turned to look, but there was nothing there.
He remembered his officer's order to report anything strange immediately, but at the shout from beside him, that thought vanished.
"Stay sharp! One step back and we're finished! We hold here to the end!"
At the officer's words, the soldiers checked their firearms.
Drones hovering in the air, rifles, machine guns, grenade launchers, and grenades.
They were excessive weapons for indoor use, but no one thought them excessive.
The officer commanding the soldiers thought so even more so.
He checked the signal device in his hand.
The signal device still flashing with a green light.
If he pressed this device, all the bombs installed along the stairs and passages would detonate.
The installed explosives were enough not simply to blow away the passages, but to collapse part of the base itself.
In truth, using it would be no different from suicide.
Worse, it would be killing all of their allies together.
The officer gritted his teeth and shoved the signal device into his pocket.
"We stop them no matter what! Don't retreat, not even for your families!"
At the officer's cry, the soldiers' eyes changed.
At the same time, the gunfire from below the stairs ceased.
Tap. Clack. Clack.
A moment later, the sound of light footsteps climbing the stairs could be heard.
Footsteps drawing steadily closer.
A translucent sphere could be seen rising up the stairs.
A strange barrier, impossible to witness in reality.
Seeing the barrier, the officer gave an order.
"Drones, now!"
At his order, the drone operators moved the drones hovering in the air.
Wheeee!
Suicide drones loaded with bombs shot across the hallway toward the stairs.
The drones entering the stairwell collided one by one with the barrier rising upward.
Boom! Boom!
The drones exploded in succession.
Though small in size, so the bomb payload was not large, the explosions were more powerful than ordinary grenades or hand grenades.
But the barrier, the shield, was unharmed.
The same went for the drones that had circled around to strike from behind and above.
Though they had exploded, collapsing the stairwell walls, the shield ascended the stairs without taking so much as a scratch.
People could be seen inside the translucent shield.
It was dark, so only silhouettes were visible, but there were two people inside the shield, and their slender builds seemed to be those of women.
But to the soldiers, the enemy's build was irrelevant.
"All troops, commence forward fire!"
The moment the officer gave the attack command, the soldiers waiting behind the barricade opened fire.
Rat-tat-tat-tat!
Machine guns spewed fire, and grenades and hand grenades flew forward.
Boom! KABOOM!
The shield entering the hallway was engulfed in flames.
The roar of explosions and gunfire assaulted their ears, and heat surged all the way to the barricade.
"Don't stop! Pour everything you've got!"
From behind the barricade, the officer continued to shout as he fired his weapon.
The soldiers gritted their teeth and kept shooting.
They ran out of grenades, and the machine gun barrels glowed red-hot.
But the flames covering the shield were not pushed back; instead, they drew steadily closer.
"Go. Wind Blade."
A woman's voice followed.
Even amidst the explosions, her voice rang out clearly.
Shwack!
A burning line shot out from the erupting flames.
A thread of fire, as if spewed forth by the flames themselves.
But the fire wrapped around the thread vanished the moment it left the flames.
In its place, a sharp line of wind surged toward the barricade.
Shhk.
The barricade, blocked with furniture and objects, was sliced cleanly in half.
Crash.
Objects came pouring down.
Along with them, the soldiers behind the barricade screamed.
"Kuh!"
A soldier writhing, clutching his half-severed throat.
"My arm! My arm!"
Soldiers whose limbs had been severed in an instant.
"Medic! We have wounded here!"
"Don't stop firing!"
A soldier holding his comrade's severed arm and calling for a medic; a senior soldier screaming at them to keep shooting.
The place where the soldiers stood transformed into hell in an instant.
"This isn't an enemy we can stop...."
The officer, who had been lucky enough to avoid the Wind Blade, placed his hand on the pocket where he had stowed the signal device.
"Damn it!"
He forcibly removed his hand and picked up the wired communicator beside him.
Beep. Beep.
The wireless communicator was dead, but fortunately, the signal was getting through via the wired line.
He had grumbled incessantly when they made him work alongside the engineers installing bombs in the walls, but it was proving more helpful than he had expected.
He shouted into the communicator as if vomiting blood.
"This is the 1st floor entrance! We cannot stop the enemy with our firepower! We have to retreat immediately!"
As his shout ended, an order came from the other end of the line.
"—...Retreat is impossible. Blow the passage immediately."
"B-but."
"We cannot let the enemy enter the base. Follow the order."
At the order from above, he gritted his teeth.
He and his subordinates hadn't joined the rebellion to die like dogs.
"We cannot follow that order. We are pulling back."
With those words, he threw down the communicator.
And shouted to his subordinates.
"We retreat with our wounded!"
Fortunately, the enemy was not approaching quickly.
After the first magic, for some reason, no further attacks came.
At this rate, retreat seemed possible.
But at that moment, a brilliant light engulfed the passage.
BOOM-BOOM-BOOM!
Amidst the tremendous roar, walls burst one after another starting from the stairwell.
Flames swept over the stairs and passage in sequence.
An enormous explosion that rendered the previous battle insignificant.
The officer knew the moment he saw the explosion.
That these were the bombs he and the engineers had installed in the walls.
The bombs had detonated even though he hadn't pressed the signal device.
"Those vicious bastards. So that's why they had us install wired communicators..."
Along with his last, hollow words, the entire passage was engulfed in a fierce explosion.
At the same time, in the meeting room deep within the base.
"Boom... click. Beep-beep."
The continuous sound from the receiver ceased along with the explosion.
The general nodded and set down the receiver.
"It seems to be taken care of."
At his words, the expressions of the soldiers in the room brightened.
At the same time, the expressions of those on the opposite side darkened.
The people sitting under the watch of soldiers.
Among several star-bearing generals and men in suits sat an old man, his face a mess of bruises and wounds.
His face was so badly damaged he was difficult to recognize, but he was David Stewart, the President of the United States.
"It was more impressive than expected, but a single person cannot withstand the firepower of modern weapons."
At the words of the general with three stars on his shoulder—the commander of the guard unit who had become the rebel leader—the President let out a groan.
"Please stop resisting now. More people are bleeding because of your stubbornness, Mr. President. The lifeline you were counting on has been severed, so please cooperate with us."
At his words, the President raised his ruined face.
There was still a light alive in his eyes.
He seemed not to have given up yet.
The rebel leader, Lieutenant General Colwell, clicked his tongue at the President's expression.
To still have that look in his eyes.
Did the President think that man was still alive?
Then, a voice was heard from the side.
"Certainly, it is too soon to rest easy. He is the one who even seized nuclear weapons from North Korean remnants."
Though it was a statement refuting his own words, the Lieutenant General could not ignore it.
He turned his head toward where the sound had come from.
On the opposite side, where the President and high-ranking government officials were being held hostage, among the rebel generals and officers stood a civilian.
A smug-looking middle-aged man.
But contrary to appearances, he was a high-ranking bureaucrat.
He was Harold Whitman, the Director of the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency, where Margareta was assigned and Samuel served as deputy director.
Under normal circumstances, he would have been taken hostage like the other bureaucrats, but having participated in the rebellion from the beginning, he stood on the opposite side.
The government officials held hostage glared at him, but Director Whitman paid them no heed.
At the director's words, the general raised an eyebrow.
"Regarding the nuclear weapons, did you not say they were used on another planet?"
Perhaps because the director was on the rebels' side, the general was also well-informed about Hyeon's information.
From using magic on Earth to seizing nuclear weapons.
"That is what we know, but in truth, we cannot possibly know what happened on that planet, can we? It is a difficult story to believe. Moreover, unlike the deputy director, I do not cling to foreign mages."
However, the director did not believe all of Hyeon's information.
Absurdly, he seemed to believe only what was visible to the eye.
At his words, the general nodded.
"Understood. I will order that vigilance be maintained."
"I would appreciate that."
As the director nodded, the general, seemingly displeased, threw in a slight barb.
"Even if he is alive, there is no need for concern. Even if he uses strange magic, he is but one individual. Three elite US Army divisions and the Navy are gathered here. If it becomes known that he is alive, he can be eliminated immediately."
The director smiled at the general's confident assertion.
He stroked the bag resting on the side table.
"I trust you all. Of course, even if that were not the case, I have this, so I am not worried."
The bag he was touching was a thick, black, rectangular leather bag.
The director spoke to the President while stroking the bag.
"If you had cooperated from the start, things wouldn't have come to this. With an artifact that reveals the truth, there was no way to hide the code, was there?"
Even at his mockery, the President could not say anything.
He had no other choice.
What the director was stroking was the nuclear briefcase.
The code that the President had been forced to vomit out through violence and the artifact was the code to launch nuclear missiles.
Now, America's nuclear attack switch was entirely in the rebels' hands—no, in the hands of the intelligence agency director.
Looking at the President, the director spoke again.
"If you understand, please tell the US troops still facing us to surrender. I would prefer not to use this thing over their heads."
Again, the President did not answer.
Instead, he stared at the empty air.
As the director clicked his tongue at that sight.
One officer looked up.
"What is it?"
When the general looked at him questioningly, the officer immediately apologized.
"My apologies. The wind direction seemed to have changed, so I was checking the air conditioner vent."
"The wind changed?"
Then, a startled voice rang out.
It was the director shouting.
Pale as a sheet, he reached toward the table where the nuclear briefcase sat.
Tap.
But his hand grasped an empty table.
There was nothing on the table.
The surprised man shouted.
"A mage has gotten inside!"
The startled soldiers raised their guns, but the spell was faster.
"Sleep. Everyone, fall asleep."
Thud. Thud.
People collapsed on the spot.
Some endured, trying to locate the mage.
Though sleep crashed over him, the director leaned against the table and drew his gun.
"I-is that you! You mage bastard!"
The director aimed his gun at the empty air from where the voice had come—the same empty air the President had been staring at.
But he could not pull the trigger.
"Current, burn."
Because before he could, lightning struck his body.
BZZZZT!
Electricity surged over his body and the bodies of those who hadn't succumbed to sleep, and the people burned black collapsed to the floor.
Thus, in the room where all the rebels had fallen, one person revealed himself.
It was me, Hyeon Myeonghan.
"It's been a while."
I greeted the President of the United States.
Rebels (3)