Retribution (2)
The day of Lü Xiao, Director General of the Dimension Management Bureau, began with his arrival at the bureau’s main headquarters in Beijing.
Naturally, he was a mana user.
In most countries, except South Korea, the head of the management bureau was always chosen from among magic users.
Although Lü Xiao’s awakened ability was not particularly related to combat, he had still beaten out all other competitors and remained in the position of Director General for six years already.
His awakened ability was called ‘Heart Sound’, and as the name implied, it allowed him to hear the thoughts that people were thinking inside their minds.
With this ability, he had crushed numerous competitors and maintained his current position until now. Whenever someone harbored dissatisfaction toward him, he would read their thoughts with this ability and purge them in advance. Not only that, through this ability, he had maintained good relationships with the top members of the Chinese Communist Party.
Naturally, he had never told anyone about his awakened ability.
Instead, he was publicly known to possess an awakened ability related to danger detection.
“Hm… So a raid event finally opened in Sichuan Province?”
Early in the morning, Lü Xiao frowned slightly as he checked an urgent report sent from the Sichuan Provincial Management Bureau.
‘There have been way too many gates appearing lately… If new events start opening at the same time on top of this, things are going to become quite troublesome.’
Every day, he personally reviewed the numerous reports that came in from the provincial-level management bureaus across China.
The practical response would be handled by the working-level staff below him, but important matters were immediately reported to him.
‘We need to mass-produce Magic Assault Soldiers as soon as possible and wipe out all the gates.’
Lü Xiao firmly believed that the struggle between humanity and the gates would ultimately be won by humans.
In particular, he believed that if the performance of the Magic Prohibition improved further and the power of the Magic Assault Soldiers became stronger as a result, it would even be possible to surpass the gates and become the strongest nation in the world.
‘First, a cup of tea…’
While thinking about various things, he took out the premium tea leaves he usually enjoyed and prepared to start his day with a cup of tea.
But at that very moment…
An entrance to Absolute Space opened in the middle of Bohai Bay, roughly 190 km from Beijing.
To avoid exposure, Seon Yul had opened a third entrance to Absolute Space above the sea with Cheon Li Yu’s help. Standing inside Absolute Space with her, he looked at her and spoke.
“How is it? Can you confirm it?”
Seon Yul had already gone through considerable trouble to obtain a photo of Lü Xiao, the Director General of China’s Dimension Management Bureau, and had shown it to Cheon Li Yu beforehand.
“Yes, I just confirmed it!”
Cheon Li Yu nodded as she replied while looking toward Beijing, about 200 km away, through her Divine Eye.
She swept her gaze over the Dimension Management Bureau building located exactly where Seon Yul had told her, and quickly found Lü Xiao.
“I’m going to snipe that bastard first and blow him away.”
Using the word ‘snipe’ from a distance of 200 km sounded a little funny, but it wasn’t incorrect.
The weapon they would naturally use for this 200 km snipe was an enchanted railgun.
A 200 km snipe is possible only when this railgun and Cheon Li Yu are used together.
There were several conditions required to make it work, but the power and the result were something they could confidently rely on.
“But didn’t Lü Xiao supposedly have an awakened ability related to danger detection? He’s not going to dodge this attack, right?”
Cheon Li Yu said this while continuing to observe Lü Xiao.
“That’s why we deliberately kept the distance close to the maximum range. Even if Lü Xiao has an awakened ability that can detect danger, I don’t think he’d be able to detect an attack coming from 200 km away at 2 km per second.”
“That does make sense.”
“And even if he somehow detects the danger and dodges it… We still have plenty of things prepared after that.”
Seon Yul wasn’t particularly worried about this plan.
As long as the enemy knew nothing about him properly, they would have no choice but to be hit one-sidedly.
That was the terrifying aspect of Seon Yul’s abilities.
“Alright, the charge is complete. Fire whenever you’re ready.”
The moment Seon Yul finished speaking, Cheon Li Yu completed the sniping preparation using Divine Eye[Target Designation], then activated the railgun without hesitation.
Wiiiiiiing… THOOM!
A tungsten round shaped like a dart shot out from the entrance of Absolute Space and pierced through the air at 2 km per second.
Since the target had already been designated, the firing angle itself wasn’t particularly important.
What mattered was that the tungsten projectile would inevitably hit Lü Xiao, the designated target, about 10 seconds later.
Fwoooosh!
Beijing might have systems capable of intercepting various kinds of missiles, but there was no system capable of intercepting a tungsten projectile flying at that speed from that distance, so it didn’t matter.
Thus, exactly 10 seconds later, the tungsten round struck Lü Xiao precisely while he was pouring hot water over premium tea leaves.
BOOOOOOM!
The tungsten projectile blew away the upper corner of the Dimension Management Bureau building. Naturally, Lü Xiao couldn’t even scream before turning into smoke and disappearing.
And immediately, an emergency alert rang throughout the Dimension Management Bureau.
However, at that moment, Seon Yul had already returned to Beijing, where the bureau was located, by using the first entrance to Absolute Space he had opened earlier.
“Li Yu-nim. Let’s begin.”
Just as originally planned, he began opening a large entrance to Absolute Space above the Dimension Management Bureau through Overrun.
Of course, he had never intended to kill Lü Xiao and end things neatly.
As mentioned repeatedly, the size of the grudge Seon Yul held had been inflated to 10,000 times.
Therefore, the main headquarters of the Dimension Management Bureau had to be destroyed first, and the ability most suited for that was naturally ‘Hammer of God.’
In some sense, this could be considered an enormous waste of magic stones.
But Seon Yul did not think of it as waste at all.
On the contrary, he believed that even using several times more magic stones than this would not be wasteful.
There was a Chinese proverb:
“A gentleman’s revenge may take ten years and still not be late.”
But Seon Yul thought that saying was complete nonsense.
‘My revenge doesn’t take more than ten days.’
Because he had this mindset, Seon Yul did not spare magic stones for revenge.
Sssssssss…
Using Overrun, Seon Yul slowly opened an entrance to Absolute Space about 10 km above Beijing.
Now that Cheon Li Yu’s Divine Eye sharing range had expanded to 10 km, the power of the Hammer of God had also increased accordingly.
At this level, its power had increased to more than three times that of the first Hammer of God that had been dropped on Hallasan Mountain in Jeju Island.
Since he had used Overrun many times now, Seon Yul opened the Absolute Space entrance faster than before.
A massive hole appeared in the sky above Beijing.
And through that hole, Seon Yul slowly dropped a 5,000-ton steel sphere.
Grrrrrrrrr…
“Li Yu-nim! Please designate the target!”
At the same time, Seon Yul asked Cheon Li Yu for target designation.
Cheon Li Yu immediately designated both the projectile and the target in succession.
Thus, the Hammer of God was completed.
This new Hammer of God… one that should probably be called ‘Hammer of God Ver. 2’ was now swung down powerfully above Beijing.
RUMBLE
The 5,000-ton steel sphere, which had begun falling from 10 km above Beijing, headed directly toward the Dimension Management Bureau headquarters, and this sight could be seen with the naked eye from many places.
But seeing it did not change anything.
It would take roughly one minute for the 5,000-ton steel sphere to fall, but responding to this attack within just one minute was impossible.
In fact, not everyone constantly looked at the sky, so it took roughly a minute just for people to even realize an attack was happening.
By the time the attack was recognized, the steel sphere had already almost finished falling.
Nothing could be changed anymore.
The Hammer of God fell into the center of Beijing.
And in the end, the result was…
KWA-GWA-GWA-GWA-GWA-GWAAAAANG!
The secretly operated Dimension Management Bureau headquarters in downtown Beijing was erased.
The headquarters building was only about 20 stories tall, but it was extremely wide horizontally. Officially, it was known as a building occupied by private companies, but that massive secret headquarters disappeared in an instant.
Strangely enough, most of the other nearby buildings remained intact. Because the Hammer of God was an attack specialized for single-point strikes, it cleanly obliterated only the headquarters.
Of course, the explosion was so powerful that buildings right next to it suffered partial collapses due to the shockwave, but the structures themselves did not completely collapse.
Instead, the ground where the headquarters had existed was left with a massive crater, where not only everything on the surface had vanished, but the earth had been drilled deeply underground.
First, the Director General had been erased with a railgun snipe.
Then the headquarters had been wiped out with the Hammer of God.
Everything had happened so quickly and consecutively that no one was able to properly comprehend the situation.
Naturally, China, unable to even grasp the situation properly, could not respond immediately.
So Seon Yul intended to push forward as much as possible during this moment.
“Li Yu-nim, we’re moving immediately.”
After confirming that the headquarters building had been erased, Seon Yul returned to downtown Beijing and immediately used Real Painting [The Door] to move to the next city.
The destination city was Shanghai.
The next target was the Shanghai Headquarters building of the Dimension Management Bureau.
***
Ten minutes after the headquarters in Beijing had been erased…
The Shanghai headquarters was suddenly struck by a barrage of shells, and the entire headquarters building was almost destroyed.
100 KGGB-2 bombs that had fallen from the sky and dozens of shells fired from somewhere unknown.
That alone was more than enough to smash the Shanghai headquarters building.
After Beijing, Shanghai’s Dimension Management Bureau was also struck, without being able to do anything.
But this was only the beginning.
Following Shanghai came bombardments in Wuhan, Guangzhou, Kunming, Chongqing, Xi’an, and finally Lanzhou.
Each of these bombardments occurred with less than 10 minutes between them, so it took only about one hour for all the attacks to finish.
In the end, within a single hour, all major headquarters of the Dimension Management Bureau in China were destroyed.
By the time the headquarters in Lanzhou Province was blown away last, the Chinese government had finally grasped the situation and tried to respond somehow.
However, they could not respond properly because they did not know the enemy’s identity, nor even the method of attack.
Thus, they could only panic and stumble around without any real response.
Meanwhile, Seon Yul had already finished all the retaliation and quietly left China, returning to South Korea.
In truth, the amount of mid-grade magic stones used for this retaliation was close to 100 kg.
That meant he had spent over 10 billion won purely for revenge.
But Seon Yul did not think it was a waste at all.
If anything, he believed he had shown restraint.
If he had truly hardened his heart, he could have wiped out not only the provincial-level headquarters but even the provincial branches beneath them.
The reason he did not go that far was that doing so would severely reduce China’s ability to respond to gates, potentially causing massive chaos across the enormous Chinese continent.
If that happened, China… driven into desperation, might do something reckless in a final frenzy.
So he had struck hard enough and then withdrawn.
In any case, this alone would be more than enough of a warning to both China and the entire world.
“Do you think China will stay quiet?”
After returning to Korea, Cheon Li Yu asked Seon Yul with a slightly worried expression.
“They might not stay quiet.”
“Then what do we do?”
“Then we hit them even harder.”
“Ah…”
“If we hit them with overwhelming force… stronger than persuasion, appeasement, or negotiation… then eventually they’ll stay quiet.”
“…Is that really possible?”
“People always say they won’t bow to power. But very few continue saying that after they’ve actually been hit properly.”
In this world, there was nothing that could not be solved with power.
If something could not be solved with power, it simply meant there wasn’t enough power.
Seon Yul believed in this logic of strength.
So if China, or any other nation, touched him again, he intended to strike them with an even stronger blow.
“But China will probably stay quiet.”
“Why?”
“They have more urgent problems to solve than fighting me. To deal with those problems, they’ll probably pretend this incident never even happened.”
As soon as Seon Yul returned to Korea, he had already received a call from Cha Seong Hyeon.
Cha Seong Hyeon immediately relayed the current situation in China to Seon Yul.
After hearing it, Seon Yul realized that China would not be able to focus on him for the time being.
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