The colonel turned his head.
A furious Asian woman, gasping for breath, burst through the door.
“What are you doing?!” she shrieked.
“Nothing,” the colonel said.
He was telling the truth. Right now, he was nothing but a helpless commander pretending that he had everything under control.
“The real question is,”—he stared into her eyes—”why are you here?”
The officers and soldiers in the control room all had their guns aimed at Chae Shin-young. Despite clearly outnumbering her, the anxiety was obvious in their eyes. The woman they were aiming at wasn’t just an angry woman. She was a sheriff, a human weapon with a massive amount of CE, though ordinarily, her Aura couldn’t be felt by civilians. However, her fiery emotions were causing some of her Aura to erupt as a Corona, creating a light gust of warm air in the room.
It was a ridiculous situation.
Even though she had been the one worried about Yoo-seong fighting against the colonel before, she’d found herself bursting into the command room without permission.
She couldn’t help it.
The United States had crossed the line.
Even from where they were now, she could hear the faint explosions in the background. The United States Military was currently bombarding Nashville, where their own hunters and Yoo-seong were located.
“It’s not just your hunters who are out there right now!” she yelled.
“Do you think we don’t know who’s in there?”
“…!”
It wasn’t only Yoo-seong or the American hunters who were in Nashville. There was also a precious treasure that the United States couldn’t bear to lose.
Miracle Boy Version 2.
“There is enough justification. The rift has been open for too long. An unidentified gray fog has settled in a place where people live.”
“But they are going to die…”
“Well… we don’t even know if they are still alive.”
Chae Shin-young couldn’t believe what she was hearing. Of course, she didn’t think that America was good. However… the greater a country’s power was, the more effort they tended to use to protect their image.
Moreover, they were dealing with South Korea, which wasn’t an enemy state, but an ally.
“Instruct them to stop the bombing right away. I will report this to my home country. Even if you’re America, you can’t just do something like this!”
“Those who gave the command thought about that too. Nevertheless, the situation is urgent enough for this to be done.”
Chae Shin-young felt Aura among those soldiers in the room. Some of them were sheriffs like her.
She bit her lip.
There were four of them. Nevertheless, her Aura was clearly superior to all of them combined. The problem wasn’t the superiority or inferiority of her force. It was the consequences that would come because of her position.
Officially, she represented the Korean government. If she got involved in violence against the US military, it could turn into an international problem. However…
Chae Shin-young clenched her fist.
‘What’s the use of that in this situation?’
It had not been announced to the public that the US government was employing Yoo-seong. Chae Shin-young was probably the only non-American official who knew what was happening right now. If the United States could decide to bury its own hunters, would they be prepared to get rid of her as well? Even if she hadn’t rushed in to confront them, the sheriffs might have come to take care of her.
“Stop the bombardment right now,” she said firmly as she raised her Aura.
She wasn’t stupid. She knew why all this was happening.
‘Alvin Hawkins and the new Miracle Boy.’
“You are attempting to murder our country’s hunter. This is my last warning. If you continue to refuse, I will use force immediately…”
Suddenly…
One of the sheriffs rushed at her.
Chae Shin-young had been expecting the attack. She immediately turned her body and prepared to counter, but…
Someone suddenly intervened.
“…!”
“…Colonel!”
Surprisingly, the colonel had placed himself between the sheriff and Chae Shin-young.
Chae Shin-young was agile enough to dodge it, but the sheriff who’d attacked wasn’t as quick to react. The combat knife he’d used to attack Chae Shin-young lodged deep in the colonel’s shoulder.
The injured colonel raised his hand to convey to everyone in the room that he was okay. Then he turned to Chae Shin-young.
“Whatever you do with me, we can’t stop the bombardment.”
“Why…?”
“Again, I didn’t do anything.” The colonel was expressionless as he began to explain. “The bombardment order came a few minutes before you came here. I didn’t follow it. Thus, as of a few minutes ago, I am no longer the commander of this base.”
Despite his expressionless face, his eyes seemed to flutter a bit.
He was the head of the Nevada Special Defense. Even someone higher-ranked than him shouldn’t be able to bypass his authority and move their planes without his approval.
However, this military principle had been easily ignored.
“It wasn’t just a bombardment order. There was also an order to capture the foreigner inside this base and use force if necessary.”
Chae Shin-young’s mouth dropped open.
Her guess had been correct; they were actually going to subdue her.
The colonel raised a finger and pointed to the door.
“Get out of the base immediately. I can guarantee your safety for the next twenty minutes, but more than that… I don’t even know what’s going to happen to me after twenty minutes,” the colonel admitted sadly.
Chae Shin-young immediately understood. “So… someone else will come here and take over the operation,” she said.
“Yes. He has great abilities and reputation, but he is not a soldier.”
‘Alvin Hawkins.’
“It would be best to leave before he arrives,” the colonel warned.
Then he pulled the blade out of his shoulder. Amazingly, his face didn’t even show the pain he felt as he did so.
He dropped the bloody blade on the floor and pulled a piece of paper from his pocket, which he passed on to Chae Shin-young.
It was the colonel’s phone number.
“Contact me if there’s a problem… At least I’ll be able to tell you what’s happening here after you leave the US.”
“I don’t know why you’re doing this,” Chae Shin-young muttered.
“I am a soldier of this country,” he replied. “Even if Yoo-seong weren’t in there, I wouldn’t have agreed to the bombardment knowing that our hunters are. Not even if they took away my position. Or my life.”
“I’m sorry…” Chae Shin-young said sincerely before turning away.
As she walked away, she heard the colonel mutter to himself.
“God bless America.”
***
Unfortunately for Colonel Mike Foley, the situation that happened immediately after turned out to be quite far from a blessing.
That same day, within minutes of Chae Shin-young leaving the main National Guard base, the news dropped.
=Paris, France. A crack that cannot be closed.=
It was the first of many reports from all over the world about the existence of unclosed cracks. This was a shock for all the cities around the world that had experienced the unexpected event.
Still, some places were particularly troublesome.
For example, all three cracks that appeared in New York, USA that day were unclosed.
Even so, it was just the beginning.
***
Kwaaang-!
Amidst the deafening explosions around him, Yoo-seong calmly observed the falling bombs.
MM-320.
Anti-Monster Missile.
It was a weapon developed because ordinary missiles could not effectively deal with beasts ranked ten stars or higher.
It had also been invented with one sole purpose: to destroy the beast’s defense and damage its insides, killing it or weakening it for capture.
However, now, unlike its original purpose, it had become a rain of hell from the sky, destroying what used to be an ordinary village.
Auto-Hunt was not using Explosive Acceleration. Instead, it was guiding Yoo-seong through the pouring bombs and their massive explosions.
Just then…
Swish-!
After checking the situation outside, Yoo-seong was brought back to the building’s basement. Down below, the fourteen hunters and the unconscious Gray lay side by side.
‘I cannot take them out safely in this situation,’ he thought.
So, there was only one answer.
Pop-!
Yoo-seong pulled the Sky Scissors from his slot. He tore open a rift, and with Auto-Hunt, threw everyone into it.
Yoo-seong went in last.
He felt the familiar buzz of the magnetic field, and soon, the scenery of the world beyond the crack unfolded before him. However…
“What?”
Yoo-seong immediately lifted the Auto-Hunt button.
It wasn’t the scene he’d expected to be in. The landscape on the other side of the Nevada desert was a wasteland, a massive garbage yard.
The pile of clutter in front of him was the size of a small building, and it looked like it was the smallest of several towers of garbage covering all directions.
The landscape itself wasn’t that strange, but what confused him was that the garbage making up the towers was all objects found in the human world.
From massive objects like cogwheels and heavy machinery to daily necessities such as beverage cans, the towers of garbage before him didn’t look like they had piled up at random.
They looked like someone had deliberately built them in an elaborate tower shape.
Perhaps these towers of trash looked like garbage to Yoo-seong, but it looked like they had a different sort of value for the creatures that had piled them up this way.
‘Just like a beast’s corpse is treated as a valuable resource in our world,’ he thought.
Suddenly…
“…”
Yoo-seong’s ears caught the same incomprehensible noise he’d heard from the Gray earlier.
This time, it sounded as if it were coming from a number of them.
He pressed the button to turn Auto-Hunt back on.
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