18 hours before the operation began.
Kim Yi-hyeon had come up to the surface. It was early evening. If this were a busy district, people would be crowding the streets by now, but this place still had no life to it.
The red-light district. When he had first come to Cilicia, he had found lodging near here to save money.
He did not feel anything like fondness.
‘It’s been a while since I came here... and the smell is awful.’
Even though few shops had turned on their lights yet, all sorts of smells drifted out. Perfume. Cigarettes. Alcohol, food waste tossed away carelessly.......
He sensed them more strongly than before. His vision had also grown noticeably brighter, letting him see even alleys where the light did not reach to some extent.
‘Have my stats gone up a bit in the meantime?’
After becoming 2-star, he had accumulated quite a bit of experience. Aside from his activities underground, there had also been battles against the Pavoni Family and monsters. It made sense that he would grow.
Though the road to 6-star was still far, far away. Would the day he became 6-star ever come? For now, it was a distant future.
“Ah, is this the place?”
His footsteps stopped inside an alley.
He saw stairs leading downward, like an underground karaoke room. Club flyers, wanted posters, and the like were plastered all over the wall.
“Why live in a place like this when she has ability?”
When he saw it in the side story, he had thought the dangerous feeling unique to the back alleys was nice. Now that he was here in person, it was simply filthy.
Kim Yi-hyeon went down the stairs and knocked on the door that appeared. There was no reaction, but when he made the knocking louder, thump, thump! he felt a presence inside.
Bang!
“Ah, so noisy. Who is iiiit? Where did you sell your eyes that you didn’t press the doorbell?”
A woman rubbed her eyes and poked her face out. She was wearing a stretched-out boxy T-shirt. Perhaps she had shorts on, because her bare legs were clearly visible.
Both her hair and eyes were pink. Despite her bright appearance, her hair was a mess, and sleep was crusted at the corners of her eyes.
Her world-weary look suited her extremely well. 5-star operative Chelsea. It was a welcome face.
Kim Yi-hyeon looked at Chelsea, then turned his head to the side. As she had said, there was a doorbell on the wall. It was not that he had failed to notice it.
“There was gum stuck to it.”
“Some kid nearby must have done that. So?”
“It’s dirty, isn’t it?”
“...I really hate fussy clean freaks. Move aside. I’ll peel it—fuck.”
Only half the gum came off, sticking messily to Chelsea’s finger. It seemed some neighborhood brat had visited only a few minutes earlier.
“Fuuuuck. Just wait until I catch which bastard did this.”
“You handle that yourself. Can I come in?”
“Into a house where a woman lives alone? Let’s just talk here.”
“I have a request.”
“I know. There are only two kinds of people who would come looking for me. You don’t look like a debt collector, so what else could it be but a request?”
Chelsea rubbed her finger against the wall.
“Sorry, but I’ve already washed my hands of that work.”
“One large bill. It’ll be over in a day.”
“I said I washed my hands of it, didn’t I?”
“I’ll consider a performance bonus too.”
“......”
Pink-tinted eyes stared fixedly at Kim Yi-hyeon. Kim Yi-hyeon calmly received her gaze.
The standoff continued for a while. Then a servile smile appeared on Chelsea’s face.
“Hehe. Which bastard should I beat up?”
It was the smile of capitalism.
***
At the scheduled time, White Fang entered the underground.
They did not receive direct guidance from the outlaw who had provided the information. After a somewhat intense interrogation, they had been able to learn the precise location.
They had to travel quite a long distance. That was only natural. If their main base had been near Metrocity, White Fang would have noticed long ago.
About 30 minutes after the operation began, one member glanced behind them and spoke.
“Captain. Should we ignore her?”
Someone had been quietly following behind them for a while now. Even though there was quite a distance, several of the more sensitive members had already noticed.
“Yes. She is an ally.”
“I wasn’t told there would be additional personnel.”
“......Treat her as separate.”
The platoon leader glanced sideways at Kim Yi-hyeon. He was walking at the head of the formation, armed with a shield and a handgun.
Yesterday, Kim Yi-hyeon had asked whether he could bring one mercenary. When she asked about the person’s identity, she heard a name familiar even to her.
Chelsea. A bounty hunter also known in the industry as Owl.
Her career was brilliant. Two years after beginning work as a bounty hunter, she rose to Class 1. Even now, when news of her had grown scarce, she was still a talent countless companies coveted.
‘She’s a fucking bitch... but her skill is first-rate.’
And to put it the other way around, she was skilled, but a fucking bitch.
They could not trust her blindly. Even if she would not shoot them in the back of the head, they should not think of her as a comrade.
When they hired her, the platoon leader had also warned Kim Yi-hyeon not to reveal the outline of the operation. ‘Cover White Fang when combat breaks out.’ That was Owl’s only role.
“Consider her insurance only. And I will say this again. The objective is not extermination, but reconnaissance. If we can identify the main base’s location, that is best. At the very least, we must grasp their fighting strength to some degree.”
Also, if an external force had intervened, as Kim Yi-hyeon had said, they needed evidence that those forces were real and not merely figments of imagination.
“We are only mercenaries. Do not mistake our role. We can leave the rest to the security force.”
It would be enough to deliver the information to the security force through Lotus Company. After the case left White Fang’s hands, they could simply watch over the fate of the city.
Meanwhile.
“Hyeon, are you all right? Your complexion looks bad.”
Bryce, who was taking the front line with Kim Yi-hyeon, asked. Kim Yi-hyeon’s face was pale blue. Perhaps he was sweating, because he kept rubbing his hands against his sleeves.
“...Something feels really off. Did I get an upset stomach?”
“Ha, an upset stomach? You’re usually so calm, but it seems even you get nervous at times like this.”
Nervous?
Kim Yi-hyeon chewed over the word he had just heard. Perhaps that was it. No, he was surely more nervous than ever before.
‘This is an important crossroads.’
Of course, there was no way this would be the end.
Cilicia’s invasion was only one of Legion’s many movements. Compared to the wars that would break out afterward, its scale was on the smaller side.
However, its influence was enormous. Enough to count among the most important events that occurred in the story.
Legion was not the only enemy he would have to face from now on. He had to preserve the continent’s fighting strength as much as possible in order to make it through the “later half.”
For the sake of the future, he had to suppress Legion’s growth here.
‘If I fail, a lot of people will die.’
Hundreds of thousands, perhaps even millions.
A number of lives too distant to grasp would be swept up in the great war caused by Legion and fade away. That was not what Kim Yi-hyeon wanted.
It was a situation where he could not help being nervous.
However......
‘It feels different from that.’
Kim Yi-hyeon felt an unidentified sense of crisis. Each step felt heavy. The dark tunnel looked like the maw of a monster.
‘Was there something I made a mistake on?’
There should not be any abnormalities.
He was smoothly following the rails of the game’s story. The stage was LW-03. They would soon encounter Mithril.
He had Chelsea and Mary. Preparations were complete. Just in case, he had asked the platoon leader to bring various pieces of equipment too. There was absolutely no factor that should make him anxious.
He would soon realize that it had been arrogance.
Perhaps this damn world of Polaris had found his acting as if he knew everything displeasing. It did not overlook even one small mistake.
A wide tunnel. A path they absolutely had to pass through to reach the target location.
Someone was standing there alone.
Halt.
Bryce, who discovered the strange figure, raised a hand. One person. When the platoon leader glanced behind her, Pep raised a crossbow modified for sniping.
It was a very long distance.
Not a single proper light was intact. Only bluish water that gave off its own light, like in Tulavia’s underground, illuminated the tunnel.
All of White Fang wore night-vision goggles. In terms of visibility, their side was clearly advantaged.
During the few seconds they exchanged signals,
Kim Yi-hyeon was falling into shock.
‘Why the hell is that bastard here?’
Full-body armor that looked like it belonged in a museum. The figure was looking at the wall with the tip of a longsword lowered.
An anachronistic appearance. There was no way he could fail to recognize it.
That was not Mithril.
“......”
The strange figure’s head slowly turned. The face could not be seen because it was hidden by a visor. Even so, Kim Yi-hyeon thought, for an instant, that their eyes had met.
Clank.
It felt as if he had heard the sound of metal touching metal.
“Fuck...!”
Kim Yi-hyeon immediately ran straight forward. He threw away his gun and grabbed the shield with both hands. At his sudden action, Pep hurriedly lowered the crossbow.
“Damn it! What are you—”
—THOOOOM!
The sound of impact was as loud as an explosion. Kim Yi-hyeon’s body was not merely lifted into the air; he rolled over ten meters backward.
A person flew before their eyes like an object. The platoon leader was flustered, but she did not look away. Her hand reflexively raised a submachine gun.
The enemy had already reached right in front of them.
Ratatatat!
The sounds of various firearms firing mixed together.
White Fang did not standardize the weapons they handled. It could be considered one of the organization’s traits, and each member used equipment that suited their own hands.
Acrid smoke rose. Like veterans, many bullets hit.
However, not even a scratch appeared on the armor.
It was not armor made from some special material. Famous League competitors entered matches wearing defensive gear with far superior durability.
Its special point lay elsewhere.
At some point, the armor had become covered in frost. The platoon leader felt a terrible chill seeping all the way into her lungs.
‘A Spell!’
The instant she realized it, the platoon leader once again lost sight of the target.
Tap.
A hand settled on the platoon leader’s shoulder.
CRACKLE!
The platoon leader’s entire body froze. It was not only her. The movements of six people in total stopped. Their frozen limbs were soon severed by the blade and flew chaotically through the air.
Bryce managed to avoid disaster by instinctively throwing himself aside. But before he could even recover his posture, a shadow fell over his body.
“What are you doing? Shoot!”
The shout burst from behind. Kim Yi-hyeon, who had staggered to his feet, shouted while spraying spit.
Immediately after.
Thoom!
A bullet fired from the end of the passage White Fang had come through struck the strange figure directly. This time too, it failed to damage the figure, but it had meaning.
Frost scattered from the armor.
It was a joint effort by Mary and Chelsea. Mary’s Spell gave special properties to objects.
If an ordinary person touched it, they would feel only a brief tingle, but in the case of a Spell user, the story was different.
In game terms, it was Silence.
It was an ability that worked even if it did not pierce bare skin. Just like Kim Yi-hyeon’s Special Armaments, ‘things created by a Spell’ were deeply connected to the ability user.
And before going underground, Kim Yi-hyeon had entrusted Chelsea with bullets imbued with Mary’s Spell.
Two bullets remained.
As the opponent faltered, another storm of bullets poured in. The strange figure slid backward.
Even while quickly widening the distance, several bullets landed, battering one arm and thigh.
‘This isn’t enough.’
A judgment was made inside Kim Yi-hyeon’s mind.
‘I don’t know why that bastard has already appeared... but in our current state, we absolutely can’t kill this thing.’
There was no chance of victory. He felt it painfully the instant he received the first blow. The shield, which he did not even know how had been hit, was already reduced to a rag.
A boss that should originally appear in Episode 11. Snowfield was different from Shadower or Mithril, who became nothing special as long as their Spells were sealed somehow.
Snowfield’s helmet had a rather unusual structure. It was not worn from top to bottom, but fitted from front and back. That was because the horns on Snowfield’s head got in the way.
Snowfield was Pecatum, like Ast. Among the Pecatum, Snowfield was a warrior who boasted exceptional physical ability and a powerful Spell, truly blessed.
Snowfield.
Users called Snowfield “Snowie.” Among the human species, Snowfield was a monster who ranked within the top ten.