Pillars of fire rose into the sky, and countless shards began to rain down.
Shattered glass, splinters of wood, ❖ Nоvеl𝚒ght ❖ (Exclusive on Nоvеl𝚒ght) debris from concrete and furniture...
Car horns blared like screams, and pedestrians hit by the fragnts scread for real.
Yeomyeong, who had been staring blankly at the devastation, snapped back to reality when he saw a chunk of concrete the size of a fist flying toward the Saint’s head.
“Ah!”
He instinctively extended his telekinesis to catch the concrete, then asked the Saint, who was still blinking in a daze:
“...You didn’t, by any chance, blow up the wrong place, did you?”
“Uh, huh? No, no! The bombs we brought couldn’t cause an explosion that big!”
So this was all just coincidence? If that were true...
“...Fucking convenient coincidence.”
Yeomyeong scowled. There went the plan to quietly blow up the room where the necromancer was hiding.
It’d be nice if the necromancers took the bait and rushed out—but would cowards who didn’t even show their faces during the Death Knight battle really do that?
No. They were definitely going to run.
Having reached that conclusion, Yeomyeong asked Dilla to watch the gun emplacent and charged back into the club.
He could hear footsteps from the Saint and Seti behind him, but Yeomyeong was already climbing the stairs in great strides using Shadow Step.
“H-Hey? Wait! Stop!”
A necromancer guarding the stairs belatedly noticed Yeomyeong and raised his gun, but Yeomyeong was already vaulting clean over him.
Then ca the gunshot.
Bang!
The Saint’s revolver pierced clean through the necromancer’s hand.
As the man dropped his gun and scread, the Saint shouted up the stairwell:
“I’ll cover you! Go!”
And Yeomyeong gladly did just that.
—Fuck, shoot him!
Another quick-thinking necromancer leaned over the stair railing and aid his weapon, but was quickly forced back or dropped the gun from fear as the Saint fired again.
Confirming there were no more obstructions, Yeomyeong rushed up the stairs even faster.
And after just a few blinks of the eye, he stopped in front of a thick steel door, twisted mana emanating from its surface.
The spell woven by the mana was familiar. The sa warped dinsional gate magic they’d encountered in the academy sewers.
So they were trying to flee after all.
Yeomyeong imdiately wrapped his sword in sword energy and slashed down on the door, intending to blow it off its hinges entirely.
But—crack!—a defensive spell reacted. The sword energy, even the blade itself, was repelled.
Mana backlash tingled up his arm.
He tried reinforcing the sword with more power, but all he learned was that not just the door but the surrounding walls were thoroughly inscribed with protective enchantnts.
Should he just detonate the bombs Seti had placed? Yeomyeong hesitated, then shook his head.
If they blew things up here too, who knew how the LA authorities would respond? It was even possible they’d get arrested in place of whoever blew up the other building.
In the end, Yeomyeong opted for a more reliable thod than bombs. He summoned his mana, layered sword energy, again and again, until it shimred in dazzling multicolor.
Then, he drove the sword straight into the door’s hinge. The heavy blade pierced through the resisting enchantnt and dug into the crack.
He didn’t stop there—channeling more force into the blade, the lock shattered and the steel door was pushed aside in its entirety.
THUNK—! Beyond the sliding tal door was a black dinsional gate, just wide enough for one person to pass through, and the necromancers, most of whom had already crossed over.
“You’ve gotta be fucking kidding , you broke that thing in two hits?!”
One necromancer, arms full of bundled luggage, gasped at the sight of Yeomyeong—but Yeomyeong didn’t care.
He leapt through the doorway imdiately.
Even if he could catch just one.
Shadow Step exploded beneath him. Sword energy flared.
“O King of the Undying!”
The necromancer didn’t go down easily.
As if to prove he was a cut above those stairwell grunts, he flung his luggage aside and instantly cast three spells.
Light of Pain, Curse of Sensation, Wall of Bone.
One after another, the spells disrupted Yeomyeong’s vision, delayed his movent, and blocked his path.
Individually, they weren’t enough to stop him—but combined, they bought him just enough ti.
Just enough for the necromancer to hurl himself toward the dinsional gate.
Yeomyeong’s blade shattered the Wall of Bone and narrowly sliced across the necromancer’s back—but the man had already shoved half his body through the gate.
Blood splattered. The gate began to close.
Yeomyeong reached toward it, but it was closing too fast.
In the end, all he could see were the necromancers staring directly at him, and the scene behind them.
Absurdly, the place they’d escaped to was a rooftop overlooking a massive cathedral.
A single gray-white cathedral, with one steeple, surrounded by towering city buildings.
He didn’t know exactly where—but a place like that would be easy to find.
“Hoo...”
Making his judgnt in an instant, Yeomyeong pointed his sword at the necromancers on the other side of the slowly closing gate and lowered his voice.
“Don’t think this is over, you corpse-robbing bastards.”
It was almost aningless bluster—more of a psychological feint—but the necromancers didn’t seem to take it that way.
Especially the one whose back he’d slashed. His eyes, as he looked back, weren’t filled with anger or fear—but a deeper terror.
“I’ll be coming for you real soon.”
And with that, the dinsional gate vanished into thin air. Yeomyeong dropped the bravado and turned around.
Thankfully, the vault was still stuffed with the docunts he’d been looking for—including a few tucked into the baggage the last guy had dropped.
“Yeomyeong! The papers?”
Seti burst into the room, breathless, just as Yeomyeong was pulling out stacks of docunts.
He answered by lifting the whole pile of files from the vault.
“There’s way more than I thought... Can we even sort them before the cops show up?”
And we still have to clean up the bombs. Seti added, worried, just as Yeomyeong lightly clenched his hand and replied:
“No need to sort them here.”
Imdiately after, the stack of docunts in his hand vanished without a trace.
The power of Inventory.
Recalling the pocket dinsion that had once swallowed a nuclear missile without a trace, Seti blinked with a right, that’s a thing too expression—then suddenly clapped her hands as sothing occurred to her.
“Hey, could we put the cut-up Death Knights in there too?”
“...Living things can’t go in.”
“They’re dead, though?”
“....”
With that philosophical grenade dropped, Yeomyeong and Seti began to thoroughly loot the necromancers’ vault.
****
Two hours had passed since the unknown bombing in Koreatown.
At a hidden house the Knights had secretly prepared in LA—
Avoiding the streetlamps and police cars, Yeomyeong and his team knocked on the door of the house.
Soon, a familiar voice ca from the other side.
“Where does the cheese go on a burger?”
“...Right on top of the patty, Neti.”
As Yeomyeong gave the prearranged passphrase (?), the house door opened with a quiet creak.
“...Why the hell does it matter where you put the cheese?”
The Saint grumbled as she followed Yeomyeong inside—and an unexpected voice answered her.
“To lt the cheese with just the right amount of heat, and to stop it from dripping onto the bottom. One of the few proud traditions of a proper burger.”
A deep, heavy voice, belonging to a middle-aged man.
Startled, the Saint instinctively pulled out her revolver—only to find a bald man with one eye grilling sothing in the kitchen, radiating nace.
“W-Who are you?”
“Harry yer. Just call Harry.”
“....”
Who the hell is that? the Saint seed to think, staring dumbfounded, until Neti chid in from the living room.
“He’s an amazing cook!”
“...He looks like he cooks people.”
The Saint muttered sothing borderline discriminatory, and Yeomyeong—who had entered the house ahead—chuckled softly and filled her in.
“He’s the Knight Sancho ntioned. Also the guy who owns the burger joint I got that cheeseburger from earlier.”
“Oh...?”
The Saint finally nodded, as if she understood now—then ca up with another question.
“But why is soone like him here...?”
Yeomyeong didn’t seem to know either; he looked toward Harry at the sa ti as Seti. Harry didn’t answer right away.
With a blank expression, he set down a plate stacked with pancakes on the coffee table in the living room, drizzled syrup over them, and then slowly began to speak.
“Things got a little tangled.”
“...Oh, really? Sa here.”
The Saint’s flippant comnt earned her a sideways glance from Harry. He handed her a fork and continued.
“Truth is, half of what I do in this city is basically information brokerage. I had connections with most of the local guilds... and that beca a problem.”
“A problem?”
Yeomyeong glanced at the Saint, whose father ran an information guild. But she didn’t seem too bothered—she was just cutting into a pancake and eating it without concern...
“The Blue Rat suddenly ca looking for and threatened my life. I gave them false intel to get through it, but it seems they’ve already figured out it was fake.”
Keh, keh.
The Saint choked in surprise on her pancake. Harry poured her a glass of milk and kept talking.
“So I’m sorry, but I’m going to lie low here just for tonight. I’ll leave for another city as soon as the sun’s up—you won’t be in any danger because of .”
“....”
It ca out of nowhere, and it wasn’t particularly important to Yeomyeong, so he simply gave a nod. The Saint, however, who was still gulping down the milk, couldn’t let it go.
“The Blue Rat attacked you? Why the hell would they do that?”
“How should I know? If I had to guess... I’d say so of the KGB remnants inside the Blue Rat turned against the current boss.”
“....”
“It’s just a guess. Nothing’s certain, aside from the fact that so old red bastard seems to be the one pulling the strings.”
While the Saint fell silent, Harry stood up and headed toward the basent, telling them to call if they needed anything.
That left just the group in the living room. A brief silence followed—then Neti, still chewing on her pancake, broke it.
“So... how did the mission go?”
“We’ll find out now.”
Seti said, glancing at Yeomyeong. Yeomyeong raised one hand and made a fist.
In the next mont, it wasn’t that docunts appeared in his hand—they started pouring out.
An avalanche of paperwork, enough to cover not only the couch but spill all over the floor.
Neti blinked at the towering stack of files, visibly overwheld, and asked cautiously:
“Corvus is setting up a magic circle upstairs... I should probably go help, right?”
Her older sister shook her head without hesitation.
“No. The Saint can go if she wants, but you need to stay here.”
“Ugh, why? I’ve done a great job guarding the house so far.”
“That would’ve been Corvus guarding it.”
“....”
“Stop whining and grab so files. We’re looking for anything related to Korea.”
She cast a pleading look toward her brother-in-law—but he was already silently lifting files without a word.
There was no real excuse left to run.
In the end, Neti pouted and reached into the pile, grabbing a random docunt...
Was it beginner’s luck? Or just plain good luck?
She happened to find exactly the docunt Yeomyeong had been looking for.
『Son of the Sun and Moon — A Research Report on the Identities of Korea’s Leaders and Patriots.』
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