—Should I kill them?
Across the road, dozens of chimeras stood gathered in a pack in the park.
They were a size larger than the chimera I had just annihilated.
Looking closely, the main material used for these chimeras was orcs.
Of course, they weren’t made up of orcs alone. I could see lizardman faces, crocodile heads and tails, and things like rhinoceros horns.
In a word, they were like a collection of everything hideous and violent.
“My God! There were that many?”
Cheon Danbi, who had come up beside me at some point, muttered in a daze.
Gil stood a few steps ahead, angled awkwardly, unable to fully turn his gaze toward us.
“Graaaagh!”
“Graaak!”
“Graaaagh!”
The chimeras that had spotted us began letting out grotesque cries. The sounds mostly burst from the orc mouths.
As expected, they seemed to have lost all reason.
“Gil! Come this way slowly!”
I stepped forward and made Gil retreat behind me.
At the same time, I first raised a barrier in front of us.
The chimeras began crossing the road toward us. But perhaps because they were so massive, they didn’t seem able to run quickly.
They were advancing with sluggish steps, making the ground thud beneath them.
Thanks to that, I used the brief time afforded to me to examine the chimeras’ internal structures with my golden vision.
Like the one from earlier, they had multiple hearts, and a black magic core connecting those hearts into one.
There was no doubt that was the place I had to target.
On the outside, they looked even larger and more violent, but since zombies were absent from the chimera composition, they probably had no regenerative ability.
It occurred to me that they might even be easier to deal with.
However, the ashen energy surrounding the chimeras was tremendous.
I could even feel a triumphant momentum from them, as if they had harmed no small number of people on their way here.
“Cheon Danbi, can you create a wave of purification around this whole area?”
First, we needed to break that momentum.
Since the park was behind the chimeras, I thought Cheon Danbi would be able to draw in nature’s energy.
“Yeah. I’ll try. The chaotic energy those things are carrying is no joke. I’ll douse it with purification energy!”
Cheon Danbi wasn’t losing in spirit either.
There were many enemies, so rather than me fighting alone, our side had to launch an all-out attack as well.
“Gil! You remember the core I mentioned earlier, right? You have to attack the heart of the hearts. Try using lightning magic.”
“Yes. I will.”
For Gil, lightning magic seemed like it would be easier than freezing magic for targeting the hearts.
I decided to attack both inside and out simultaneously, as I had earlier, with blue flames and freezing magic.
“Graaaagh!”
“Graaak!”
The chimeras that had drawn close roared and raised their momentum.
We immediately began our assault.
Perhaps Cheon Danbi had already finished concentrating, because clear and pure natural energy rose from the park behind the chimeras.
The energy of purification gradually approached, covering the chimeras and diluting the ashen energy.
At the same time, Gil and I activated our magic as well.
Gil was firing lightning at the chimeras one by one, as if driving down a spear. Blue light flashed, and a prickling current ran through the area.
On top of that, I first wrapped the chimera pack in blue flames.
“Graaaaaaaaaah!”
“Graaaagh!”
“Graaaaaaaah!”
As lightning struck them and high-temperature flames engulfed them, the chimeras screamed, and the smell of burning drifted out.
But they did not collapse then and there.
Looking closely, I realized, to my surprise, that they were not catching fire easily either.
It didn’t seem to be only because of the orcs’ tough hide and the crocodile skin. These chimeras appeared to have been prepared in advance against fire magic.
At most, only their hair and a few sensitive patches of skin seemed to be burning.
At that moment, something came pouring out of the lizardmen’s mouths with a hissing sound.
Even though I had put up a barrier, we unconsciously took a step back.
But what I had thought was a black liquid carrying disease, like before, was different this time. It was a white, mucus-like substance, and rather than spraying it at us, the chimeras were covering their own bodies with it.
Then the blue flames covering the chimeras began to slide off without taking hold.
The white mucus seemed to be a black magic material that repelled fire magic and helped regulate body temperature.
As expected, these chimeras must have been created from living creatures with strong resistance to fire.
‘Not bad. Looks like he experimented with all sorts of things.’
I had known from the start that the chimeras were Nasan Haegyeong’s work.
The ashen energy was packed with magic circuits containing full-color infinite pentagons.
None other than Nasan Haegyeong’s signature.
In other words, the ones carrying out terrorism in Incheon right now were not Vanaheim, but the Magic Tower.
They must have caused terror in an area outside Seoul to divert attention from the Eternal Life Building.
As it turned out, Nasan Haegyeong was quite an outstanding black magician. In particular, he seemed talented at creating monstrous life-forms.
There was no way combining all kinds of living creatures to create chimeras was easy. Yet on top of that, he had even granted them various traits.
His skill was not to be underestimated.
‘But in Jecheon, he got helplessly beaten by me, so he must be furious.’
Back then, he had probably looked down on me.
That was why he had not prepared any monstrous life-forms in advance and had only brought the materials to the scene.
Or perhaps he had simply been eager to face me in a hurry.
Nasan Haegyeong was not appearing here now.
It seemed the Magic Tower’s black magicians preferred to send only their monstrous life-forms to the scene.
Besides, this was simultaneous terrorism, so it was being controlled remotely anyway.
‘There’ll be a day we meet again.’
I erased Nasan Haegyeong from my mind and focused once more on the chimeras before me.
The chimeras had come right up to the barrier.
Not only had they pushed away the blue flames with white mucus, but they were also ignoring the lightning.
Not all of them, however.
The lightning that struck the hearts precisely did have an effect, and the owners of those hearts were hanging their heads limply.
But because they were chimeras with multiple hearts, even if part of the body died, it did not hinder the whole from moving.
Gil did not seem able to pinpoint the locations of the hearts and core properly.
He couldn’t see inside the chimeras.
He seemed to be simply aiming for the middle of the chimera bodies, but since the combination of living creatures was irregular, the arrows of lightning missed the hearts.
On top of that, the white mucus kept making the target locations slip away.
He had watched me attack earlier, but actual combat was another matter entirely.
‘I’ll smash the cores with ice spears.’
It was time to use freezing magic.
I was just about to gather mana waves at my fingertips and unfold my intent.
“Graaak!”
“Graaaagh!”
The chimeras that had come right up to our noses swung their thick orc arms all at once.
Not only that, they also whipped their lizardman tails and crocodile tails, and charged while thrusting out rhinoceros horns.
All of those attacks were blocked by the barrier, sending sparks flying.
At that moment, the crocodile head of the chimera at the very front opened its jaws wide, then snapped them shut and bit down on the barrier itself, refusing to let go.
“Gasp!”
“Uwaa!”
Even with the barrier blocking it, I saw Gil and Cheon Danbi beside me flinch in fright and step backward.
It was fortunate they did. The barrier, struck by the chimeras’ simultaneous attack, bent and shoved inward toward us.
It was nearly pressing against my body.
Crack!
Then, in the end, the part damaged by the crocodile teeth began to tear.
These were not ordinary crocodile teeth.
It seemed black magic had been bestowed upon each body part as well. If they could tear through a barrier, a tremendous amount of mana reinforcement must have been applied.
I hurriedly activated freezing magic.
‘Ice spears, pierce through the hearts and into the core!’
Clang! Clang! Clang! Clang!
Ice spears rained down and embedded themselves in the body of the chimera with the crocodile head thrust forward.
The spear tips, accurately aimed at each heart, drove even deeper into the core.
The creature stopped moving in an instant.
Starting with the crocodile head, its entire body froze in place as if turned to ice.
Then the ashen energy surrounding it faded to white.
‘That’s one down.’
I was about to activate freezing magic toward the next one when I saw dozens of chimeras surrounding the barrier.
Already, other crocodile heads were clamping down on the barrier here and there with sharp teeth.
Thud! Thud! Thud! Thud!
The orcs’ thick forearms slammed mercilessly down on the barrier.
Wham! Wham!
The areas struck by the rhinoceros horns were already about to be punctured.
At this rate, the barrier would be torn to shreds in no time.
This was not a situation where I could take them down one by one.
‘Freeze!’
I stretched my hand downward and activated a simple freezing spell.
I had turned the ground beneath the chimeras’ feet into a sheet of ice.
My prediction was correct.
The huge, lumbering chimeras quickly lost their balance on the thin ice and began to topple over.
When one slipped and fell first, another slammed into the fallen one and went down, and yet another tripped over the one that had collapsed and slid.
The chimeras, crudely stitched together from various life-forms, had no sense of balance at all.
They were so large that they could neither run quickly nor move nimbly.
They might have paid attention to granting and strengthening traits in each body part, but as creations, they had failed to make the whole harmonious.
‘Freeze solid, all of you!’
I spread both arms wide and sent mana waves surging out like a waterfall.
The freezing energy flowing from my fingertips swirled around the chimeras.
The chimeras, which had been rolling on the ground while tangled together, became covered in white frost, and at last froze solid.
“That should do it.”
“Hah! Disgusting things. No matter how much I purify them, it’s useless.”
Only then did Gil and Cheon Danbi come up beside me, each saying a word.
“But for now, you’re just keeping them frozen? You’re not killing them?”
As Cheon Danbi said, I had only frozen them whole for the time being. Like this, it was a flash-freeze, so the chimeras would not die.
To kill the chimeras, I had to destroy each of their cores one by one. Only then would they be completely annihilated, but it would consume quite a lot of mana to do so.
But did I really have to kill them?
Earlier, there had only been one chimera, so I had aimed to annihilate it completely, but now there were dozens.
Did I have to stand here using up my mana like that by myself? Or should I leave the cleanup to the Hall or the government, like before?
“Should I kill them?”
When I asked, Cheon Danbi and Gil looked back at me.
“Why? Is it better to leave them alive?”
“Aren’t they already completely transformed into monsters? Even if you leave them alive, it’s not like they can go back to being individual beings.”
The two of them were missing the point.
What I was hesitating over was whether it was all right to hand the chimeras over to the Hall or the government. Whether they could be trusted.
Just then, Yu Jaeseon contacted me.