#171
Kyushu Crisis (3)
The Japanese Hahoe Mask Tracking Team was a team that had been planned and formed from the beginning, so they were indeed not an easy opponent.
It seemed that all of the dozens of people were elite and were not greatly intimidated by Hans’s pressure. Including the man who had shouted the name of the technique, the five or so people were skilled enough to hold their own against the savage warrior Harley.
Even the fighting power of the man who appeared to be a representative of the government and the woman leading the Guardians was on a level comparable to that of the Imperial Guard’s Knight Commander, Cornwell.
‘It seems like that old man is always the standard for fighting prowess.’
Of course, that doesn’t mean that the realms of those awakened beings were the same.
Because they each had a special ability called a ‘unique skill’ that allowed them to inflate their fighting power.
If we really have to rank them, we can say that they are at the top of the extreme, similar to Harley.
And that means…
“Cough!”
“What kind of monster is this···.”
It meant that they alone could not block Hahoe-tal and Hans’ path.
[Kuhehe— Indeed, it was a pretty good entertainment. Although it is far from being a match for this body!]
The ninja-clad woman, who was moving through space at high speeds and unleashing all sorts of extraordinary attacks, was entangled in the abyssal threads that spread out in the air like a spider’s web.
The muscular man, who had been charging forward as if ignoring all attacks, eventually gave in to the overwhelming firepower of the black magic that was constantly striking his body.
As the fierce battle continued, the two leaders joined the crowd scattered everywhere.
Now the only people left are…
Kaang—!
At that moment, the sudden surprise attack that was not felt until just before the attack was blocked by Hans’ abyss and ended up as a dud.
“Ugh! Shit!”
A young prosecutor in his twenties who first impressed him.
Disappointingly, he eventually accepted his situation and stopped shouting out the skill names after the first few attacks.
It made me feel a little uncomfortable because it seemed like I was seeing today’s youth giving up on their dreams by compromising with reality.
[The grip of death.]
Boom!
“Ouch!”
Of course, that didn’t mean I was going to take it easy.
The fact that he looked the youngest among all of them wasn’t really a big deal right now.
‘The important thing is that we finally took down all these annoying gentlemen.’
It took longer than expected to subdue him without killing him.
They are just faithfully carrying out their duties according to orders, so can’t we just kill them because they are annoying?
It would only serve to tarnish the reputation of Hahoe Mask.
‘I was planning to finish everything and leave Kyushu today, but I wasted time on useless things.’
Still, it wasn’t too late, as there was only one goal left.
He eventually moved to the outskirts of the battlefield and made contact with the barrier surrounding him on all sides.
Perhaps concerned about the aftermath of the fight, the barrier they activated at the same time as the attack has managed to hold on without breaking until now.
Before breaking it and leaving, Hans glanced behind him.
The awakened ones were lying miserably, groaning and suffering.
He watched the scene for a moment…
[Huh— It was kind of fun. Well, I guess I’ll be going now. This time, I did what you guys had to do, but from now on, you guys should do it among yourselves? Hehe!]
After leaving them with some sincere words of encouragement, he broke through the barrier and flew into the sky.
I was a little worried that Hans’ tone might have sounded a bit mocking, but isn’t it true that sincerity always gets through?
His feelings must have been conveyed sufficiently as well.
He quickly moved to the target after turning the Awakened ones’ clothes inside out.
But not everything went his way…
As expected, there was no one left in their hideout.
‘Well, even if there was a barrier, there’s no way it’d still be there when the fight broke out so close.’
The unidentified reaper, who has recently been hunting down criminals and has become a special target of surveillance in the underworld, and the Awakened ones, their natural enemies, are clashing head-on in the front yard.
It was only natural that he would quickly take advantage of the opportunity to escape.
In the first place, they were an underground organization whose main job was to hide.
‘This is difficult. That’s why I wanted to get this done as quickly as possible. It takes too much time to find and kill each of these scattered guys. Should I just let these guys go?’
Anyway, Japan is a place where people came with the intention of lightly skimming over only the big guys.
Rather than being tied down here for no reason because of one organization, it would have been much more efficient to go over to the neighboring islands of Shikoku or Honshu and continue activities.
‘Since something like this could happen again, I’ll have to move around in a wider area from now on, even if it’s a bit more inconvenient. Since I have the “Eye of the Abyss”, it won’t be too hard to find an unsuspecting target.’
Due to the nature of underground organizations, it was not easy to wipe out their leaders in one fell swoop, and in that situation, the “Eye of the Abyss,” which could detect evil forces and evil deeds, was of great help.
Combining this skill with the information gained from sweeping away other organizations made it possible to detect them almost perfectly.
It could be said to be the best capability in the current situation where conditions are insufficient to install a wide surveillance network like in Korea.
‘Hmm, but just in case, let’s check again.’
Hans, whose eye sockets were once again filled with an abyss, slowly scanned the area around the hideout.
There, abilities such as “The Path of Magic” and “Magic Control” were also linked, and he began to search for traces left in the surrounding area.
But even as he was doing that research, he wasn’t really expecting much.
Although they may be inferior to Hans, they are survival specialists who have survived in each world, and they even had the aptitude to build up a fairly large force upon returning to Earth.
There must have been several special means prepared to erase traces, and since there were so many abilities from so many different worlds, it wasn’t easy to overcome them even with the difference in level.
however.
I thought so···.
‘···Is this possible?’
He stopped in his tracks at the sight of some sort of trace leading from the now empty hideout of the men, and looked around again.
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It seemed as if he had tried to erase his traces, but the traces were so faint that it would have been difficult to notice if it weren’t for him.
‘There are many scattered in all directions, but most of them are thugs. Those with serious evil deeds have gathered together and moved separately. Are these guys the executives?’
The “Eye of the Abyss” sucked in light from all directions, extracting useful information from the fragmented traces, and all of his abilities analyzed it in an instant.
No matter how much I checked, I came to the same conclusion.
‘Should we go first?’
Hans followed the clue that appeared at the moment he was about to give up.
If I had just left, I would have inevitably felt uneasy, but now that I had the chance to deal with the executives cleanly, there was no reason to hesitate.
‘Is this their safe house? Typical.’
As we followed the trail, the place we found was a small building on a mountain near the city where the hideout was located.
Only the presence of those who had followed him could be felt inside the lodge, and no other human presence could be felt in the vicinity.
‘There’s no need to wait any longer. Let’s finish this quickly and move on to the next area. Next, let’s start from Hiroshima…’
But the moment Hans rushed into where the men were hiding with a plan for the future.
‘hmm?’
Something felt off to his keen senses.
Something out of the ordinary began to stimulate my instincts without mercy.
Falling—
Then, a faint cracking sound was heard, and he reacted at the same time, sensing something unusual.
Gooooooo—!
Black magic burst out like flames from Hans’ entire body, while the surrounding air instantly dropped below zero.
The abyss that flowed out in streams enveloped him, thrusting its teeth in all directions, and the scenery of the area darkened in an instant as if a filter had been applied.
A change that occurred in a split second.
And finally···.
Crackle— Crackle!
With a cracking sound, the sky, the ground, and all surrounding space shattered like glass.
Also, beyond that space.
A group of nearly thirty men in perfect battle stance were glaring at him with sharp aura.
[···So this is the space. Was it a trap?]
Hans, who had not detected the change in advance and checked the space by secretly casting his magic, stuck out his tongue inwardly.
This heterogeneous environment, still broken in many places, was not a simple barrier.
A closed world where all connections to the outside world are blocked.
This place was no different from his Demon King’s castle, the ‘Labyrinth of Eternity’, which was a small world.
In other words, it was a trap that could never be escaped unless one dealt with the caster or interfered with the dimensions.
He raised his senses and detected the men inside the mountain lodge again, following the trail.
Even in this chaos, they remained still and did not move from one place.
‘I think the guys who showed up just now brought those here to use as bait. Did they use my arrival at the lodge as a signal to lure the entire surrounding area in? This level of spatial manipulation ability.’
In fact, when I first discovered the traces and started tracking them, I had assumed that it might be the case, but I ignored it because I was confident that it would be useless no matter what trap I set.
I never expected it to be this serious.
“Indeed… I thought you wouldn’t talk nonsense since you said you were Demon King-level. It turns out that your words weren’t completely baseless.”
“What the hell, when are you talking so peacefully? You forced the phenomenon just by showing your presence!”
“···Hey, is this really okay? That thing really looks like it came from the Demon King···? With this much death aura, it’s not just a simple transformation into an undead form···!”
“@#$%#! %$#!”
“Don’t be so excited. It was expected.”
Perhaps this back world is the unique skill of one of them.
Hans’ gaze turned back to the group chattering amongst themselves.
‘Indeed, they are all extraordinary people.’
It was difficult to make a clear distinction because each unique skill was different and the standard for each world was different, but for someone like Hans, you could estimate the opponent’s power to some extent just by looking at the momentum they were giving off…
‘The power poles are ideal. And the five at the front seem to have reached transcendence.’
Unlike the two Awakened members of the pursuit force we had encountered earlier, these were not simply people with heightened fighting prowess, but rather people whose level and class had surpassed their limits.
Even this did not take into account the synergy from unique skills, so it was impossible to predict how much their power would increase once a full-scale battle began.
It was truly the most elite combat unit that even Outerica had ever seen… that seemed capable of defeating the Demon King.
For a moment, I thought they might be special forces dispatched by the Japanese government, but no matter how I looked at it, it didn’t seem to be that.
‘I had a feeling it might be the case ever since I saw the Thousand-Year-Old Demon.’
Because the evil spirits and evil deeds that emanated from their entire bodies were mixed together without a care in the world, and the ratio of them was even much higher than that of the normal ones.
‘It’s more than I thought. It certainly hasn’t been that long since the Bancheonhoe began to interfere in Korea. I didn’t know the level of difference between them and those from other regions would be this much.’
Most of them were speaking Japanese, but there were quite a few who spoke Chinese, so it seemed that they had prepared thoroughly in advance, even sending reinforcements.
Moreover, even though they spoke different languages, they seemed to be able to communicate with each other, as if they had used some other trick.
[Oh ho— You guys are from the Bancheonhoe, right? So, are you done talking?]
Hans, who had finished organizing things to some extent, spoke arrogantly to them.
Those who had been exchanging opinions among themselves while being on guard against this side all shut their mouths, but soon gathered their momentum again and began to speak softly one by one.
“···You waited for us to have this conversation. You even have the virtues of a true Demon King, don’t you?”
“Don’t talk nonsense. They probably needed time to figure out the situation too.”
“Tch, I was planning on taking you by surprise the moment I dragged you here. But you reacted too quickly, so I missed my timing.”
Among them, a man in a suit with a cold impression who seemed to be the leader clicked his tongue as he looked at the abyss surrounding Hans.
That thing, which moved as if it had an ego, gave off a deadly aura that made people feel nauseous just by looking at it, making them unable to dare act rashly.
“Now it doesn’t matter what Hahoe mask’s true identity is.”
But now that the game has been set like this, I can’t back out.
And the power of the Buncheonhoe present here now was truly beyond imagination, making it difficult to exclude them simply because they were reluctant.
It wouldn’t be strange if these people, who could be called the Emperors of the Night in their respective regions, gathered together, and didn’t they even receive additional reinforcements from China?
It was ridiculous to be afraid with this much power.
“···We can just kill the guy and then check the body.”
“Hmm, well. That’s what I came here for in the first place.”
“Uhhh… I’m still a little anxious….”
“@#%$$%#!”
That’s why the man in the suit could confidently declare.
Today, this place will be the last time that Hahoe-tal will interfere with their organization’s plans.
‘Hmm… It certainly seems like a bit too much for a comprehensive gift set. I don’t know what additional abilities it will have, so I’m not sure. I guess we’ll have to fight it to find out for sure.’
Of course, to Hans it was just the sound of a dog barking.
Even if they were really threatening and in a difficult situation, wouldn’t the spatial isolation and all that mean nothing to him?
[Hehehe— Your power is good. Let’s see how long you can keep that attitude against this body.]
And originally, Hans was a character who couldn’t even make a weak sound.
