Lumia took Heo Jin-ho's car and drove Geon-mu somewhere.
When Geon-mu had heard about the Heavenly Dragon Society from Lumia, he had formed a rough idea of the group.
A dank group with strong influence.
And as dank as they were, he had expected them to head into a forest or out toward farming country.
"This is the Heavenly Dragon Society's base."
The place she headed for was the very center of Gangnam.
A street full of life where cars moved ceaselessly even at that late hour.
She pointed at one building among them.
"To hide a tree, hide it in a forest, is it? Not bad."
It was excellent tactics.
Who would ever guess that a secret society's base stood in the middle of Gangnam, where tall, large buildings stood packed together?
Geon-mu looked at the logo mounted at the very top of the building.
It shone brightly, reading 'Yuseong Foods.'
"Hold on, Yuseong Foods is behind this business?"
"It is a group established to sustain the Heavenly Dragon Society quietly. It grew into a mid-sized enterprise using Awakened goods."
"That's the company that makes the energy bars I liked eating."
Was this how Master Wonhyo felt drinking water from a skull?
Geon-mu's stomach felt oddly unsettled.
Even the fact that he had eaten Yuseong Foods energy bars when he first began training in the mountains now left a bad taste.
"Which floor is your boss on?"
"The fifty-fifth. It is a fifty-eight-floor building, so look for the fourth from the top."
Geon-mu looked up at the Yuseong Foods building.
As late as it was, no light could be seen anywhere near the topmost floors.
"What, looks like nobody's there."
"The lights on the fifty-fifth floor are always off."
"So there's a hidden space."
Thinking of it that way made it feel a bit more like a secret society, which put him in a good mood.
"Now, the item to deliver......"
"Here."
Geon-mu handed Lumia the remains of the sword he had broken.
Even as she took it, Lumia felt uneasy.
She knew it was already nothing but a C-Grade sword.
"Do you think...... the High Priest will be deceived by this?"
"He will."
"......Understood."
Lumia was not convinced, but she moved as Geon-mu had said.
She wrapped the shard of the blade carefully in a cloth, and carrying it, went into the Yuseong Foods head office.
"Well then, I should catch my breath too."
Sitting in the passenger seat, Geon-mu watched her go, then reclined the seat and settled into a leisurely posture.
No sooner had it gone quiet than a message window rose before Geon-mu.
[<One Who Leads Death with Claws> points out that this is a rash judgment.]
"You're not wrong. It's certainly a rash thing to do."
Seen from a third party's view, it was fair enough.
If someone else had done such a thing, Geon-mu might well have smacked them across the back of the head.
"That is, if I were to leave her to walk into the enemy camp just like that."
The reason he had taken a leisurely posture was to gather his strength.
"All right, shall we go?"
Exactly ten minutes had passed since Lumia went in.
It was the most fitting time for an unwelcome guest to burst in.
***
Meanwhile, inside the Yuseong Foods head office, Lumia was visibly tense.
'It really has been a long time since I came here.'
Apart from the times they discussed the Heavenly Dragon Society's purpose, every other order had always come through her phone.
Had there not been something to deliver in person, as there was today, she would probably never have had reason to meet him again.
Lumia passed the front desk and moved around to the back.
Rather than an elevator with the clean floor and ceiling of the front, it was a freight elevator, large and fitted with only the basics.
As though to foretell that this was no ordinary place, men in suits that did not suit their bulk were waiting there.
"Lumia?"
"Yes."
"The High Priest is calling for you."
The big men opened the elevator door and rode up with her.
The elevator had exactly two buttons.
She pressed the top one, and the elevator began to move upward.
The floor it arrived at was the fifty-fifth.
The fifty-fifth floor, which had certainly looked pitch dark, was as bright as midday, unlike its exterior.
A secret space isolated from the outside, not only from radio signals but even from the flow of mana.
It was only natural that not even light could leak out.
She moved her feet along the red carpet laid over the marble floor.
Lumia glanced around and checked the number of guards.
'Twenty.'
They were Awakened assessed at B-Grade at minimum, and among those, guards handpicked for outstanding ability.
They would be seasoned warriors, not one of whom Lumia could beat in close combat with her own ability.
She only had to stay composed.
Knowing the object in her hands was a fake, she worried about the lie she would soon have to tell, and cleared her throat needlessly.
"High Priest, I have brought the sword...... no, the sacred body."
When the man in the suit spoke from outside the door, an old man's voice came faintly from within.
-Come in.
At his command the door opened.
The guards who had escorted her all waited in front of the door, and only Lumia went inside.
That was a good sign.
It meant that at least so far, they did not know this 'sacred body' was a fake.
Lumia raised her eyes and looked ahead.
The space, with its floor and walls made of white marble, shone white even in scant light.
The most conspicuous thing in it was the altar directly ahead, and what stood behind it.
Behind the altar was enshrined a dragon statue about three meters tall.
Though it was only a sculpture, Lumia could not meet its eyes.
"It has been a long time, Lumia."
An old man in a white robe came out from behind a pillar.
He was the High Priest of this Heavenly Dragon Society.
Lumia offered him a courteous greeting.
"It is an honor to see you again, High Priest."
"When I heard the report, it said Heo Jin-ho was dead?"
"That is correct."
"Yes, you have worked hard all this time. Heo Jin-ho was a headache; had his ability been unremarkable, he was the sort I would have disposed of long ago."
The High Priest patted Lumia's shoulder and consoled her.
Far from being comforted by the High Priest's gesture, Lumia felt only revulsion rising back up her throat.
The High Priest was not a human who acted kindly toward others.
Right now he was simply elated.
At the fact that Lumia had recovered the blade.
"Have you brought that one's sacred body?"
"Yes, it is here."
Lumia handed the High Priest the layered bundle of cloth.
Taking the cloth, the High Priest carefully unwrapped it.
"Ohh...... this is......."
A rarely seen delight settled on the High Priest's face.
"There is no mistake! This is without doubt the remains of the Heaven-Breaking Dragon-Slaying Sword!"
"Is that so?"
Doubts about the High Priest's discernment began to arise in her.
Lumia knew it was a fragment of the sword Geon-mu had broken.
Either way, things were proceeding exactly as Geon-mu had intended.
"What am I to do next?"
"Hm? Ah, yes. You have handled the work so capably; how could I not reward you?"
At those words, Lumia unconsciously laid a hand on her own chest.
Her racing heart felt ready to burst.
'May I make that request?'
That hope lasted only a moment before the High Priest added something.
"Though that, of course, will be a matter for when this business is finished. For now there must not be a single moment of slackness. Do you understand what I mean?"
"......I understand."
"Do not worry. I shall have your partners rescued before long."
"Thank you."
The sense of betrayal that comes from pointless hope.
Lumia forced down her disappointment.
But the High Priest read those feelings of hers quickly.
"Your expression is not at all pleasant."
"It is nothing."
"I know. What it is that you want. As a fellow refugee from another dimension, I know well how dearly you cherish them."
"......."
"But do not worry. So long as you have that name of yours, 'Storm Piercer,' their safety will be guaranteed. But should that name lose its worth......."
"I will not disappoint you."
Lumia cut him off.
She did not want to hear his threat any further.
Even at the rude act, the High Priest only laughed.
Her reaction meant his own standing was alive and well.
"Is there anything else of note?"
"......."
"So there is something after all. Speak."
Should she say it? After hesitating a moment, Lumia at last revealed part of the true feelings she had kept buried deep.
"The Heaven-Breaking Dragon-Slaying Sword...... I understand it to be the emperor's sword, which I too know well."
"Yes, you know it and I know it."
"High Priest, are you not afraid of what will happen...... if that sword is completed?"
"......."
The High Priest's body stopped unnaturally.
He turned his head back to Lumia and asked.
"What is the intent behind that question?"
"That sword is the essence of the power wielded by the Dragon-Slaying Emperor, hero and emperor both. Even the descendants who carried the Dragon-Slaying Emperor's blood could not lay a hand on that sword."
"And so you think we too will be unable to touch this sword?"
"This sword is a sword that drove back a calamity. If it cannot be controlled...... have you never considered that it will itself become a calamity?"
The reaction the High Priest showed on hearing her concern was a burst of laughter.
"Kuhaha! A calamity, you say?"
A smile touched with madness settled on the High Priest's face.
"What do you suppose a calamity is? It is the workings of great nature, which human strength cannot stop. That is what we call a calamity. If we can control a calamity, is it right to call it a calamity at all?"
"In Yuresian there was no one who controlled the dragons for centuries. Had it not been for the Dragon-Slaying Emperor, we would have lived under their rule."
"The reason we could not kill the dragons is that it was impossible because it was Yuresian. Because it was Yuresian!"
The High Priest spread both arms and shouted in a voice full of conviction.
"But this place is not Yuresian! This is a land where all power converges! A new paradise. A place where the laws we knew collapse and common sense expands! Behold!"
The High Priest raised both hands.
Mana condensed in his hands and magic took form.
In one hand a sphere of light was generated, and in the other a sphere of darkness.
The High Priest's eyes filled with rapture, while the revulsion in Lumia's eyes deepened.
"I am a body that is both blasphemy and wonder. That I, who was an archpriest of the Church of Light, can draw in even the power of darkness. Was that a power one could so much as imagine in Yuresian?"
Darkness and light were opposing powers.
By the natural order they were powers that must never exist together.
Such order and common sense had begun to twist from the moment they crossed over into this world.
"This is precisely that land of possibility. In such a place, even that sword, which none but the Dragon-Slaying Emperor could handle, is more than possible."
Lumia understood that the High Priest was looking toward a still higher ambition.
Had she not heard from Geon-mu that the Emperor Dragon was sealed inside the sword, she would simply have assumed he meant to use the sword.
'He intends to absorb the Emperor Dragon's power.'
If that happened, the weakness they held over her would never be released either.
If she could have had her way, Lumia would have driven an arrow between the High Priest's brows right then.
But with her acupoints sealed, even drawing the string was difficult.
'If I could at least kill this man and die with him.......'
There might be no occasion to meet the High Priest again after this.
So this might well be the right choice.
Lumia moved a hand behind her and laid it on her folded bow.
It was then.
CRASH!!
The room, isolated from the outside, shook hard.
The High Priest was thrown by something that could not happen.
"Why should a tremor sound here?"
The fifty-fifth floor was a space topologically independent from Yuseong Foods.
It did not move for an earthquake, nor for an explosion on a floor below.
Which meant that an intruder had appeared on this floor.
"What in the world is this?"
The High Priest shouted outside in a flustered voice.
There was no answer.
And a moment later, the outside, which should have been silent, grew steadily louder.
No, closer.
The sound of things colliding and breaking, the sound of bones snapping, and screams.
KRRASH!
The wooden door was smashed apart.
The suited man used to smash it rolled across the floor as a pulp of blood.
And it was not only that man.
In the gap thrown wide by the half-destroyed door, humans in worse condition lay sprawled on the floor.
The groans of the Awakened lay low along the floor like a mist over water.
The Awakened one had to get past to reach this place numbered twenty in total.
Every one of them was an Awakened assessed at B-Grade.
A B-Grade Awakened was a more precious asset than taking on a hundred ordinary C-Grades.
With assets like that now rolling about in a state of combat incapacity, the High Priest could not manage a word.
Twenty B-Grades.
And the one who had done it stood there, clean, without so much as a scratch.
Cha Geon-mu.
He spoke.
"Was it you?"