Old Blood (2)
The terrorists wearing mana-suits were certainly not ordinary.
The mana suits developed in Japan had an exoskeletal structure made entirely of carbon nanotubes from head to toe, so even forced suppression through sniping was close to impossible.
In the end, the only method was to go in and capture them directly, but if that happened, there was almost a 100% chance that the hostages would also all be put in danger.
Of course, if it were judged that the safety of the hostages had already become meaningless, they could ignore everything and carry out a forced suppression anyway, but since not a single hostage had died yet, they were still searching for other methods.
However, during this situation, the terrorists notified them that since their demands were not being accepted at all, they would begin executing the hostages in 30 minutes.
The L Tower hostage crisis was now truly rushing toward its end.
As the situation became this urgent, the Administration was trying by any means necessary to recruit Jumong, the number one user of the Republic of Korea and the First Sky, who stood at the pinnacle of the Twelve Heavens.
Jumong’s arrows would be more than capable of piercing through the mana suits of the terrorists and suppressing them from long range.
Moreover, Jumong possessed the awakened ability ‘Bow Master,’ with archery skills close to divine technique that allowed him to continuously fire several such powerful arrows in succession, so if they could recruit him, they could certainly respond to this terrorist incident.
Hostages might be injured during Jumong’s forced suppression, but that would still be far better than watching everyone die like this.
However, the problem was that Jumong ultimately refused the Administration’s request for help.
Jumong’s official public statement was that ‘he was currently in the United Kingdom and therefore unable to help.’
But of course, this statement was a lie.
Jumong was not in the United Kingdom, but in Japan, and if he had used the private plane that the Administration had offered to send when the terrorist incident first occurred, there would have been more than enough time for him to arrive in Seoul already.
Furthermore, they also knew that he had ignored the request from the very beginning because he did not want to be criticized even slightly if casualties occurred while he intervened unnecessarily.
The Administration knew all of this, yet they could not refute Jumong’s official statement.
For now, the Korean Gate Administration could not afford to abandon Jumong.
Even though the reliable insurance called Absolute Safety First was steadily growing, the relationship with Jumong was another matter entirely.
Ultimately, for these reasons, the Administration had no choice but to remain silent, and thus the situation rapidly rushed toward the worst possible outcome.
However, inside L Tower itself, a completely new situation was unfolding that no one knew about.
***
Shrrr—crack.
Seon Yul lightly snapped the neck of the last of the three terrorists on the upper floor he had targeted.
With this, he had secretly dealt with five terrorists, leaving only the five remaining on the top observatory floor.
‘How should I eliminate these guys so that the hostages remain safe…?’
If possible, Seon Yul wanted to save all of the hostages as well.
Of course, he knew very well that things would not necessarily go according to his wishes, but he still wanted to try to see if he could.
That was why Seon Yul had no choice but to think more carefully about a method to eliminate the remaining five.
But right at that moment…
While checking the community mailbox again to review the terrorist information Cha Seong Hyeon had sent him, he found an unexpected email from someone.
‘Li Yu-nim?’
Surprisingly, the sender was Cheon Li Yu.
And the email title was even:
“Seon Yul-nim! It’s urgent! Please read this!!”
Since it was a title that he could not possibly ignore, Seon Yul immediately opened the mail.
[Seon Yul-nim, you’re at L Tower right now, aren’t you?]
[Since this is urgent, I’ll get straight to the point.]
[After seeing the news about the terrorist attack, I got worried, so I used my awakened ability to keep observing L Tower.]
[I was planning to report anonymously to the Administration if I found any helpful information… but somehow I also ended up seeing you in action, Seon Yul-nim. While I was doing that, I happened to discover something really important… among the hostages on the top floor, a fake hostage is communicating with the terrorists.]
[He’s a very tall foreigner, and under his clothes, he’s wearing something similar to the strange armor the terrorists are wearing. He’s communicating with the terrorists using something like a small radio.]
[He has blond hair and blue eyes. He’s wearing a black jacket and brown pants.]
[Unusually, he’s wearing two thick rings on each hand, so it shouldn’t be difficult to find him.]
[I’ll keep watching the mailbox, so if you need any more help from me, please contact me right away.]
Just as she wrote in the title, the email Cheon Li Yu sent truly was something that absolutely needed to be read urgently.
‘There was even a terrorist hiding among the hostages? If I hadn’t known this, it could have been a huge disaster.’
Seon Yul breathed a quiet sigh of relief and immediately sent a reply to Cheon Li Yu.
Of course, he thanked her first, and then asked her to use her Divine Eye ability to explain the position of the terrorists on the top floor and how they were moving.
Cheon Li Yu’s Divine Eye ability allowed for a far more perfect search than Spike Crow.
So Seon Yul decided he might as well receive some help now that things had come to this.
Naturally, as soon as Cheon Li Yu received his reply, she used her ability to its fullest to analyze the situation on the top floor in great detail and then sent the information back in an email.
She did not just send a single message and end it there; she continued sending emails with detailed, real-time information.
Thanks to her help, Seon Yul was able to learn the situation on the top floor almost in real time, and he immediately moved to prepare for the final battle.
Suppressing six terrorists simultaneously… the five visible ones and the one hidden among the hostages, was not an easy task.
Especially with over a thousand hostages between them.
There were far too many things to consider in this situation.
Therefore, Seon Yul decided to resolve this situation with the simplest method.
Simultaneous strike.
This was the solution Seon Yul came up with.
In truth, while this sounded very easy when said in words, it was extremely difficult to actually execute.
Six people.
And not merely six ordinary humans, but six powerful humans who had undergone special training and were equipped with special equipment called mana suits.
On top of that, the hostages between them greatly increased the possibility that even the slightest mistake could lead to enormous casualties.
Nevertheless, Seon Yul insisted on the simultaneous strike.
No… he prepared it.
Scratch scratch scratch.
Using the information he received from Cheon Li Yu, Seon Yul completely grasped the movement routes of the terrorists and began drawing a large number of Real Painting[Black Hands] beneath their feet.
Since Seon Yul was currently on the floor directly below the top floor, the floor the terrorists were stepping on became the ceiling from his perspective.
Therefore, using Arachne’s threads, Seon Yul lightly attached himself to the ceiling and began drawing dozens of Black Hand paintings on it as quickly as possible.
This task had to be done quickly.
If the terrorists discovered that their comrades on the lower floor had been taken down, things could go wrong.
Fortunately, they were like dolls that only listened to Zhang’s commands, so they did not communicate with each other or move around like ordinary terrorists.
Therefore, until Zhang gave them a separate command, there was a very high chance they would continue not knowing that the five terrorists below had already been taken down.
Of course, Seon Yul did not know this fact at all, so he simply tried to finish the Black Hand drawings as quickly as possible.
After drawing exactly thirty-seven Black Hand paintings, Seon Yul finished the task and immediately prepared to inject mana into all of them.
Then he contacted Cheon Li Yu and asked her to tell him the timing of the attack.
Since this operation would only be perfected with the Divine Eye ability, Seon Yul quietly waited for Cheon Li Yu’s signal.
And finally, an email arrived from Cheon Li Yu.
The email title was:
“Now!!!!”
The moment he saw that email, Seon Yul immediately injected mana into all the Black Hand paintings and activated all thirty-seven Real Painting [Black Hand] drawings at once.
BOOOOM!
At that moment, the Black Hands that burst out from the ceiling paintings instantly pierced through the ceiling and shot upward onto the floor of the upper level.
The Black Hands that burst upward immediately wrapped around the terrorists standing directly above them.
Since the Black Hands had originally been drawn beneath their movement routes, and they had been activated precisely when Cheon Li Yu confirmed that all of them were simultaneously positioned above the drawings, the terrorists were caught by the Black Hands in an instant.
Seon Yul also burst upward through the ceiling along with the Black Hands.
The five visible terrorists were already completely restrained by the Black Hands and rendered temporarily unable to act.
But there was still one decisive target left.
The hidden terrorist.
As soon as Seon Yul emerged above, he turned his gaze toward the direction Cheon Li Yu had mentioned.
The foreigner Cheon Li Yu had described in great detail immediately entered his sight.
The foreigner clearly looked flustered.
And he was hurriedly trying to shove his right hand inside his jacket.
‘Not happening!!’
Shrrrrrrrr!
Seon Yul immediately fired Arachne’s threads.
Shraaaak—crack!
“Keugh!”
Thanks to Seon Yul’s quick response, Zhang failed to press the self-destruct button and was instead wrapped entirely in Arachne’s threads and subdued on the spot.
During the process, the threads compressed Zhang’s body so tightly that many of his bones broke, but that alone was not enough to kill him.
After subduing the hidden terrorist, Seon Yul turned toward the remaining five terrorists who were trying to forcibly tear off the Black Hands using the strength of their mana suits.
If it were up to him, he would have liked to open Absolute Space and grind them all to pieces with the GAU-8, but since many witnesses were watching, Seon Yul instead immediately rushed toward them and touched each of their bodies once.
Then, as if struck by magic, the terrorists collapsed one by one.
Not just collapsing… they all died.
It looked as if Seon Yul’s right hand carried a death spell, but in reality, this was not a death spell.
The cause was the ‘Cursed Death Spear’ protruding about 7 centimeters from the entrance of the Absolute Space [Tatto] opened in the palm of his right hand.
Without their mana suits, the five terrorists were merely well-trained ordinary humans, so they could not endure even one second after the legendary spear pierced through the mana suits and into their bodies.
Thus, Seon Yul lightly(?) touched all five terrorists, and as a result, they all died.
From the moment Seon Yul burst through the floor together with the Black Hands, subdued the hidden Zhang, and eliminated the remaining five terrorists, only about 30 seconds had passed.
In other words, the situation ended in an instant.
Even the hostages could not properly understand what had just happened and simply stood there in stunned silence.
Since Seon Yul did not want to continue showing his appearance to others here, even though he had covered himself with equipment as much as possible… he tied up the subdued Zhang and the five terrorists he had killed with Arachne’s threads and immediately jumped down through the hole in the floor.
Seon Yul had appeared suddenly, resolved the entire situation in an instant, and then disappeared just as suddenly.
Only then did the hostages realize that they had survived, and cheers erupted all at once.
At that moment, Seon Yul, who had descended to the lower floor, quickly opened the entrance to Absolute Space and entered inside with the five corpses and the subdued Zhang.
With that, Old Blood’s L Tower terrorist attack ended in complete failure.
Of course, the Administration personnel surrounding L Tower outside did not yet know this fact, but since everything inside had already been resolved, they would soon discover the situation.
Seon Yul had no intention of demanding any reward from the Administration for this incident.
This was something he had done purely because he wanted to be a ‘good person,’ so from the beginning, he had no intention of contacting the Administration regarding this matter.
Instead, something else had caught Seon Yul’s interest.
That was Old Blood, the organization that had openly demanded him.
The reason he had captured the hidden terrorist Zhang was also to learn more about Old Blood.
He had discovered a potential threat that could endanger his safety, and he could not simply overlook it.
Recently, Seon Yul had decided to secure proactive safety by eliminating risks in advance, so he had no intention of letting this terrorist attack pass quietly.
Creak… creak…
As always, Seon Yul spread plastic on the floor and hung the captured enemy upside down in the air.
And as always, to facilitate a smooth conversation, he placed the Cursed Death Spear beside him.
Among those who had been hanged here until now, not a single person had lied or hidden anything.
Everyone had told everything they knew truthfully.
In a way, the Cursed Death Spear could almost be called the Spear of Truth.
“I’ll say this in advance… you’re going to have to tell me everything you know anyway. So if you drag things out, it will only increase the amount of time you spend suffering. Think carefully about that.”
Seon Yul even kindly used a translator to relay his words to Zhang.
Once Zhang seemed to understand what he had said, Seon Yul lightly scratched Zhang’s forearm with the Death Spear.
“Uwaaaagh!”
Zhang turned pale with terror.
A fear he had never experienced before wrapped around his entire body, and only now did he clearly understand the meaning of what Seon Yul had just told him.
At the same time, the mental defenses he had thought were quite strong collapsed completely.
“Let’s start with where Old Blood’s headquarters is.”
Thus began the interrogation after lightly breaking Zhang’s mental defenses.
The result of this interrogation seemed obvious even without seeing the rest.
Comments (0)