As a famous vacation spot, Waikiki Beach in Hawaii was a place filled with tourists all year round thanks to the clear blue sky and the calm waves in the emerald sea. There was one time when it was designated as a danger zone because of the invasion of sea monsters, but not anymore. Hunters who work in the Hawaiian Islands are on guard 24 hours a day, and a state-of-the-art anomaly detection device ensures that evacuation orders would be issued long before gates or dungeons appeared. Because of that, there were very few dangerous incidents that happened these days.
Children laughed and ran around the beach, some people enjoyed the sun while getting a tan on their skin, and some plunged into the sea and enjoyed swimming in the cold sea water. And in one corner, tourists enjoyed their vacations while holding colorful drinks in their hands.
“Huh?”
“What is that?”
Because it was Hawaii, where there was no danger, they did not show much caution when something unfamiliar appeared. Rather, some teenagers approached it out of curiosity.
“Is that a human?”
“Isn’t he too tall for a human?”
“Darling, could that be a monster? Let’s just go.”
“That’s absurd. Have you ever seen a monster looking like that? No matter how you look at it, he’s just a normal superhuman. You know Giant Boy, right? He must have the same type of ability as him.”
Appearing out of the blue on the shore, the subject of the topic had flesh-colored skin whose features were common among the humans. It gave an impression that people will forget once they no longer look at it. Its height was close to 3 m, but in the 21st century, that was a normal thing. It was due to the fact that there were numerous unique superhumans in the current world, with them having a much taller body height than average, blue skin, etc.
“Hey, you like me right?!” Someone approached it and tapped it on the thigh, but it still didn’t move.
“By the way, why are you all naked?”
“Yeah.”
“EH… That guy doesn’t have d**k?”
Beeeep!
When anything out of normal happened, it was a protocol in Hawaii that the first security personnel to respond had to blow a whistle to alert the other security personnels. All of the security personnel were by no means ordinary, since they were all at least rank C or higher, and had sufficient ability to respond to any situation. So, when such security personnel came, the civilian who had crowded the man had no choice but to back off.
“Cih! No fun!”
“Right!”
As the tourists retreated, the security approached the monster and spoke in English.
“What are you doing, without even a single pair of clothes on?”
However, the monster just stared at the security guard without answering. The security sighed and put his hand on the monster’s shoulder, thinking of taking it to the security office.
“You seem to be a superhuman, but for now, please cooperate with me… huh?”
However, when he pushed, the security couldn’t feel his hand pushing the body of the tall man in front of him. So he tried again…
But…
Slice-!!
His right hand fell to the sand below and blood started gushing out from his shoulder.
“Uh… uh…”
Tuk!
Eventually, the security guard’s head was separated from his neck. Without even realizing his own death, he met his end with his eyes wide open.
“A… A…”
“Ahhhhhhhh!”
“So-so-someone is dead!!”
The tourists, who realized the situation a beat later, began to run away. Unfortunately for them, their lives were already over the moment the monster stepped its foot on the sandy beach.
Weeing-!! Weeing-!! Weeing-!!
A siren blared out all of a sudden. But it had a different sound from the one which signifies that a monster had appeared.
-Tsunami warning issued! Tsunami warning issued!
Flap-!! Flap-!! Flap-!!
Tens of thousands of seagulls flew in droves in the sky. And a moment later, a thick layer of dark clouds began to fill the sky.
And, the tsunami finally came.
Goooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo…!!
The Hawaiian Islands tsunami warning system was famous for sounding the alarm long before the tsunami arrived. But for some reason, the tsunami arrived just mere moments after the siren rang.
“Hey, run away!”
“It’s a tsunami!!”
No superpower, advanced equipment, nor countermeasures could resist the tsunami. Because it was literally a natural disaster. Therefore, the scene quickly came and went. It took only 30 minutes for the Hawaiian Islands to completely disappear after being swept away by a devastating tsunami.
The monster watched all the deaths caused by the disasters that he had called with uninterested eyes before leaving the place by flying to the sky.
-A tsunami of magnitude 7 occurred in the western part of the Hawaiian Islands at 14:48 pm today.
-Amidst numerous casualties…
The incident was immediately reported around the world.
-At the time of the tsunami, an unidentified monster was spotted floating over the Hawaiian sky…
It also imprinted its presence on the world.
*
Around 4pm, Another League Lab.
“Using that part reduces the effectiveness of the ether. Why don’t you try using a conductor instead?”
“But, by using a conductor, mana won’t flow smoothly…”
“Can’t be helped. We just have to use both of them in two different layers. After all, this suit is a space suit.”
Under the advice of Lacanthal, who lived in a world where magic engineering was developed to the limit, I was participating in the development of a brand new suit. In fact, I was rarely directly involved in the development, and what I was doing right now was closer to experimenting while checking what the hell was being developed while I was away.
The thing that I value the most amongst all the developed equipment was the ‘suit’.
An ether suit could be said to be the wearer’s second life. Depending on how much money you spend, you can survive even going out into outer space. In other words, the performance varies greatly depending on the direction of the modification.
“Why am I going to space?”
“Your kind will have to go there sooner or later. It won’t be long before we catch up with the level of interstellar travel.”
The space suit that Lacanthal painstakingly developed was very different from the old thick and stuffy space suit, which was uncomfortable to wear. After being improved a lot, it now only had about 5 cm thickness even though it was made out of a special alloy. It also had an energy protection field, making it possible for the wearer to move freely in a non gravitational zone.
And by applying the principle of such spacesuits, a suit, which was called ‘Hell Gate Suit’, was developed. From my experience, I know that the space inside Hell Gate rendered any protective clothing useless. But Lacanthal directly investigated the environment of Hell Gate and made a suit which could adapt to it.
“As of now, this suit was nothing different compared to other suits. But the moment you wear it and go inside Hell Gate, the suit will adapt and evolve by itself. No matter how high or low the temperature outside the suit, the inside will maintain a temperature suitable for humans to live.”
Of course, the environment inside the Hell Gate was not something as simple as hot, cold, or bad air. Something was wrong with the environment itself. And it was something which Earth’s technology couldn’t cope with as of yet.
“Okay, let’s try inputting some data first and then experiment. You are the one who has to do the clinical test.”
“Wait a minute, why should I?”
“Don’t you have superpower to adapt to any environment?”
“I have it, but…” While I reluctantly looked at how to wear the suit, my smartphone rang. However, it was not my main smartphone but my second smartphone which I only get called in urgent situations, so I rushed to answer the call.
– Master Yoo Seodam. Did you watch the news?
“What’s going on?”
-Hell Gate Lab has collapsed!
“Sorry?”
I dropped the suit I was holding in my hand out of shock.
“Come on, wait, what the hell does that mean?”
The Hell Gate Research Lab was equipped with state-of-the-art equipment to observe the energy of Hell Gate from the distance of the Hell Gate. It is also equipped with armaments to fight any monster which might jump out of it. In other words, the lab was a command center which was ready to go to war anytime.
– We’ll send you the data right away! There’s only one survivor from the lab. It was SS rank hunter ‘Cheong’. She explained what happened to us, so please read it right away.
“Yes. thank you.”
It was only after hanging up that I found out that the person calling was a high-ranking person in the International Supernatural Phenomenon Association.
Data related to the Hell Gate Lab’s collapse was immediately delivered to my phone. However, before I could even read it, the phone rang again.
-Hello? Hunter Yoo Seodam!
“I just heard about the collapse of Hell Gate lab.”
-No. Rather than that, please take a look at the video we are sending now! The Hawaiian Islands were completely swept away by the tsunami!
“Tsunami? Why…”
I had doubts, but I decided to listen to the story until the end. When I pulled the smartphone from my ear, the screen expanded and a certain video played. In it, a scene of the catastrophe in the Hawaiian Islands captured by the satellites and drones was shown.
And then, I noticed something strange.
“What’s that strange thing flying in the sky?”
-Did you get the message that the Hell Gate Lab had collapsed?
“I have.”
-Presumably, the collapse of the Hell Gate Lab was also the work of that monster.
“What, that’s crazy…” Hell Gate Lab and Hawaii Islands. The two places with the best defense against anomalies in the world were destroyed by a single monster in just one day.
“I will call you again later.” Without even checking who the caller was, I immediately checked the data related to the lab collapse in my smartphone.
[Hunter Cheong’s testimony: The subject is a being who escaped from the Hell Gate and is at least SSS rank or higher, but it is not certain.]
[It is meaningless to measure the monster’s energy level using human standards.]
[Subject is capable of inducing natural disasters, and has been confirmed to be able to create an ‘always favorable’ environment for itself through some unusual ability.]
“SSS rank…?”
Although the ‘Gray Humans’ continued to invade Earth within the Hell Gate, each individual was only at SS rank level, so with enough preparation and personnel, their attack could be blocked. But if it’s an SSS rank, the story was different.
Dozens of SS rank superhumans need to be gathered to deal with it. But there is no way to gather such a large number of hunters in one place because who knows where the monsters will appear next.
“Damn it…”
“SSS rank monster, huh? What a headache.”
“Yeah…”
In the past, when there’s still only a very few hunters that received the SS rank, there was this one terrorist. As an SS rank superhuman who handles wind, he flew around the world on the stratospheric air current and terrorized all over the world. Authorities never know when or where he will appear. Thus, the fear he caused was great. People stopped seeing each other, and everyone hid inside buildings.
And now, the same situation has happened. But the culprit wasn’t just an SS rank superhuman, but an SSS rank monster. Although it was not certain yet whether the monster was capable of rational thinking or not, by looking at the behavior the Gray Humans have shown so far, it was highly probable that the SSS rank monster could think by itself.
‘If noonim and I go together and find that guy, we can somehow win, but…’
There was one thing that struck me the most. One of the reports says ‘able to create an ‘always favorable’ environment for itself through some unusual ability.’ At first glance, ordinary people may not understand that, but I could easily guess.
Protagonist correction.
All the protagonists I have dealt with got their abilities strengthened by protagonist correction whenever [crisis] that exceeds the protagonist’s threshold occurred. And since that monster also comes from the same place as those Gray Humans, which have the protagonist hashtag, it was certain that it would have protagonist correction.
And as far as I know, there is only one person on Earth who can suppress the protagonist’s correction.
Me.
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