Chapter 46: New York Collapse

Kim Si-won.  

The pillar of the Republic of Korea.  

Messiah, savior.  

Some called him a butcher, a calamity, spouting nonsense as they pleased, but Minister Kim Chaun, who supported him, believed he was an indispensable existence for Korea.  

The only hope is to bring a brilliant future to a hopeless Korea.  

Of course, he wasn’t a typical savior.  

Normally, one imagines a merciful figure, someone who can embrace everyone, but his personality—  

“Complete bastard.”  

To be more honest, he was garbage.  

Sometimes, he was so cold that one might wonder if he was an android.  

Yet the reason he was revered as a savior wasn’t because of his personality or leadership—it was solely because of his overwhelming power.  

He was the first to awaken this truth.  

Overwhelming force encompasses everything.  

Kim Si-won was precisely that kind of overwhelming power.  

A man who ended the war alone.  

A man who went to Japan, one of the four great powers, and planted the flag of conquest.  

Naturally, he was strong.  

But the power on display now was on an entirely different level—one beyond imagination.  

“Swish!”  

The trace of the sword.  

It was something like as if his hand was stretching out endlessly.  

The sword’s trajectory, invisible to the naked eye—  

“Shing!”

It sliced through an enemy’s flesh.  

One at a time?  

No.    

Dozens of enemies collapsed like bundles of straw.  

From crown to groin, their bodies split perfectly in half.  

If they had been human, it might have been disgusting or cruel.  

Though Kim Chaun belonged to the government’s Awakening Bureau and was mainly tasked with reconnaissance and tailing, such slaughter was an unfamiliar sight.  

But—   

The sword turned into black smoke and sticky liquid.  

What that revealed—  

They looked human, but they were not.  

They were something else, monsters in human guise.  

Those monsters were swarming from all directions.   

“clack clack clack.”  

Though dozens had been killed, even more monsters disguised as humans formed a surrounding siege.  

It was like a zombie horde relentlessly charging in a zombie movie.  

“Why?”  

Was this some kind of zombie outbreak in New York?  

No, if they were zombies, it would be the lesser evil.  

The approaching enemies weren’t zombies with rotting flesh who only knew how to bite.  

“Kwak kwak kwak kwak!”  

Unknown energies—colorful lights, intense energy—rushed fiercely.  

At first, startled, Kim Si-won muttered curses alone.  

But then—  

“Swoosh.”  

The incoming energy disappeared in an instant.  

All from one strike of Kim Si-won’s sword.  

How to describe it?  

“An eraser!”  

Yes, “eraser” was the right expression.  

Erasing all incoming attacks.  

Cutting all enemies in half.  

Like an eraser that erases anything it touches, all attacks and beings vanished from this world.  

Strong.  

Overwhelmingly so.  

It felt as if this strength did not belong to this world.  

But above all, the most astonishing thing was—  

“Does this man never get tired?”  

He had been fighting for hours, though no one knew exactly how long.  

He had moved from Manhattan to near Brooklyn.  

Countless sword swings, countless enemies faced.  

The siege encircling the entirety of New York had to be broken through with tremendous physical and mental effort.  

Yet why—  

“Shing!”  

His sword strikes only grew more vigorous, devastating his enemies.  

Like an immortal being who never tires.  

In a scene worthy of mythology, Kim Chaun gazed at his back in awe.  

‘Could a human back appear so immense?’  

It was a mountain.  

A steadfast mountain, unshakable by any tremor around it, towering with unfathomable presence.  

And then—  

“W-we’re here!”  Kim Chaun, who rarely took the lead, stepped forward and said.  

On the outskirts of Brooklyn, what lay before them was—  

“Woom woom woom!”  

An artificially created gate.  

A bidirectional dimensional gate that could transport them directly to the Republic of Korea.  

Because it could only transfer a fixed number of people to precise coordinates, it had to be installed in a secluded place.  

But finally, they had arrived.  

Breaking through the monster siege surrounding the whole of New York, they reached their destination.  

Emotion surged—exhilaration, joy!  

“All we have to do now is pass through here…”  

“Go first.”  

Kim Chaun, who was about to enter with him, had to stop.  

‘Go first.’  

It was a line that somehow felt forbidden to question.  

“…Huh?”  

So he asked again, “No, why not just walk together?”

Why send him ahead?  

“There’s something I have to do.”  

But Kim Si-won—  

“Chase after them!”  

“Kill them!”  

He stared at the monsters, no—New Yorkers desperately chasing after something behind him.  

No, more precisely—  

He was watching the people going about their daily lives as if none of this was happening.  

“Come to think of it…”  

A question arose amidst the urgency.  

Monsters swarming everywhere.  

Though disguised as humans, this kind of commotion should have caused chaos.  

Shouts and screams of fleeing people, an apocalyptic scene.  

But it was quiet.  

People walking the streets. 

Salarymen working inside high-rise buildings.  

As if the situation here was invisible, everyone was just doing their own business.  

And their eyes—  

“Gray?”  

Something was wrong.  

Their irises, a mix of white and black, glowed a deep gray.  

“I’ll see you later.”  

With a firm grip, he restrained the unwilling Kim Chaun.  

“Uh, uh-uh?!”  

And tossed him through the bidirectional gate.  

“Swoosh!”  

Kim Chaun disappeared, swallowed by darkness.  

Then—  

He shifted his gaze back to the distance.  

“Thud thud thud thud—”

Doppelgangers and Slime Corps approaching all around.  

It was impossible to even guess how many demons had occupied New York.  

Or perhaps—  

“Maybe it was conquered by the Demon King or a legion commander.”  

The pieces finally fell into place.  

How America could ascend the tower faster than any other country.  

How it acquired potions, refining techniques, and other skills at such a rapid pace.  

If all that knowledge came from the Gritia Continent, from the Demon King’s Legion—  

The Demon King’s Legion explained everything.  

And so, there was a reason for him to remain.  

To eliminate the remnants of the Demon King’s Legion who bore a grudge against him?  

***

No.  

“The seed of the demon magic is about to sprout.”  

Those people with gray eyes who treated me, and all of us here, like invisible beings.  

Within them lay the roots of magic, the Seed of Demon Magic—one of the Plague Legion Commander Salmora’s masterpieces.  

His grand plan wasn’t to exterminate humans but to transform them into demons, allies, and create the true world of the Demon King.  

One of those methods was the Demon Transformation Potion I mentioned earlier.  

The moment the potion was swallowed, the demonic energy permeates with the liquid and slowly consumes the human, eventually transforming them completely into demons.  

Before that, there was an earlier experiment.  

That was the Seed of Demon Magic.  

By continuously ingesting special substances in food or water, a demon’s consciousness, like an Awakening potion, would manifest.  

Unlike the Demon Transformation Potion, it was not about consuming and replacing the host.  

Rather, the Seed took root inside, sprouted, and transformed the human host into a demon.  

The former had a short transformation period but required various special materials.  

The latter took a long time but could be mass-produced using demon blood and a few ingredients, no special materials needed.  

And now, the New Yorkers with gray eyes I’m looking at—  

They were experiencing the pre-sprouting stage of the Seed.  

“All of New York.”  

This encompassed the entire city.  

If I were to return to Korea now, the seed would sprout, turning every citizen of New York into a demon.  

“That can’t be allowed.”  

Any way to reverse it?  

Unfortunately, it’s too late.  

Once the seed has sprouted this far, restoring them to their former human selves is impossible.  

The only thing I can do here is one thing.  

“Tsut tsut tsut tsut!”  

The Martugi armor wrapped his body.  

The blue-tinged armor of Return of Spirit Fire, Algor—the armor of frost.   

The cold emitted as he donned the armor instantly froze the air.  

This was different from before.  

Because he had grown.  

Hours of battle.  

Countless demons slain, raising his Magical Power to 25%.  

The stronger the Magical Power, the less absorption needed.  

Recovering 5% of Magical Power was nothing short of a miracle.  

“Thud!”  

He stomped his foot.  

That was the technique he had used before—  

‘Fimbulvet.’  

Extreme, immense, dangerous winter.  

The cold spreading from his toes turned the ground and surroundings into a domain of absolute zero in an instant.  

The once noisy scene was now engulfed in silence.  

Buildings, people, demons targeting him—all frozen.  

Only 5%?  

No.  

That 5% difference unleashed power enough to freeze an entire city center.  

But it was not the end.  

“Wuuuuuung!”  

Far above, a massive, pitch-black orb was forming, absorbing the air.  

I will purify this place, tainted with Magical Power.  

By killing all life here.  

Some will say—  

“That’s a massacre.”  

“How can you harm so many under the guise of a human?”  

To that, I can answer.  

“They are no longer human.”  

Demons.  

Worshippers of power, they are like devils to humans.  

You only have to look at the cruel tortures inflicted in the Korea Elixir Branch to know this.  

They tortured humans for the essence of pain, using every cruel method imaginable.  

And that was only natural.  

Like how humans force-feed geese to fatten their livers for delicacies, or hunt animals indiscriminately for fur.  

From the demons’ perspective, living in a survival-of-the-fittest world, humans were no different from livestock.  

Livestock they could take whatever they wanted from at any time.  

And those demons harbored a deep grudge against me.  

If the Seed of Demon Magic sprouted and turned all of New York into demons, they would become a force threatening me.  

I can’t just leave the seed of disaster about to sprout.  

“I don’t know how you transferred to this world…”  

There were no questions.  

After all, I too was a dimensional traveler who moved from reality to the Gritia Continent.  

Only the target became demons.  

Therefore—  

“Disappear here.”  

That was my wish and my will.  

A shadow spread on the ground with that will.  

It was not the Great Demon Orb I used before, not the pitch-black sphere.  

But a giant sword like Agamemnon Saglayer’s Grandis.  

No, incomparable to that.  

Larger, fiercer, packed with even greater power.  

‘The Great Demon Sword.’  

I evolved continuously to survive.  

So I developed the Great Demon Orb Ingram passed on into a single sword soul.  

That was the Great Demon Sword now unfolding before me.  

A perfect fusion of Magical Power and Knight’s energy, my full might unleashed.  

And that massive sword struck into the heart of Brooklyn, sending a tremendous shockwave rippling out.  

“Hoooo!”  

The ice shards swept up by the circular shockwave—  

“Kwachachachang!”  

Shattered pitifully.   

I briefly stared at the scene.  

“Step.”  

I moved toward the bidirectional dimensional gate.  

Two people.  

As soon as the limited number entered, the bidirectional gate vanished. 

“Sleek!”

The shockwave of the Great Demon Sword that swept through New York utterly devastated the area where the dimensional gate had just been.

“Kwakwakwakwakwakwak-kwang!”