Meanwhile, Commander Lee Byeol-ha of Artemis came right up in front of Han-eol.
The petite, bespectacled Vice-Commander held her place at Lee Byeol-ha's side.
Then the women knights of Artemis landed swiftly and ringed Han-eol.
The knights' expressions were as hard as could be. Some had gone past hardness into faces drained white.
They all seemed overwhelmed by the horrific hellscape spread out behind Han-eol.
Even the Vice-Commander, said never to forget her cool head, could not close her mouth at the sight of tens of thousands of Leopard Wolf corpses.
The Artemis Knights had scrambled the moment they heard that Base Camp No. 1 on the Highland's Eighth Continent was under a large-scale assault by demon beasts, and they had aided the 1st Assault Corps in defending it.
Then, once the base camp's walls stabilized, they had hurried out to reinforce the metal mine.
When the Artemis Knights first arrived here, Commander Lee Byeol-ha and every one of her knights had written the metal mine off in their hearts.
That was because, surveying from high altitude, the scale of the beasts encircling the base camp walls and the scale of those racing toward the metal mine were nearly the same.
The base camp was an iron fortress. Most of the 1st Assault Corps' ability-holders were deployed there, and it was heavily armed with solid walls, a moat, and numerous mana cannons.
The metal mine, by contrast, had nothing but a handful of personnel and one shabby watchtower.
“We are giving up the mine. The base camp has to be defended first.”
Lee Byeol-ha made the call coldly.
Then she and the Artemis Knights flew above the demon beasts assaulting the base camp and picked off only the leader-class ones.
WOOOOOONG!
When Lee Byeol-ha unleashed her supernatural ability, a summoned beast in the form of a golden whale appeared.
The whale, dozens of meters long, astonishingly slid up through the ground like a ghost, swallowed the Leopard Wolf leader whole, and returned into the earth with its prey in its jaws.
Its maw was so large that several Leopard Wolves around the leader were dragged along with it.
The Leopard Wolves plunged underground soon melted into mush and vanished without a trace.
After that, the golden whale kept bursting out here and there across the battlefield, striking only at leader-class beasts.
As a result, the Leopard Wolf formation visibly disintegrated.
A little more time passed, and a considerable number of the Leopard Wolves broke from the battlefield and began fleeing in all directions.
“Haah, haah, now I can finally catch my breath. Whew.”
The 1st Assault Corps Leader, who had been holding the beasts off atop the wall while bleeding freely, finally flung down his shield and slumped to the ground.
“Hurrah, hurrah, hurrah.”
“We won. We drove them off. Hahahaha.”
Cheers from Shinseong Group's ability-holders rang out all along the wall.
But the Artemis Knights got no rest.
“We are going straight to the mine.”
Lee Byeol-ha steered her glider first and flew toward the metal mine.
“All of you, follow the Commander.”
The bespectacled Vice-Commander gave the order coldly.
“We obey.”
The Artemis knights cried out with one voice.
Immediately after, more than a few dozen gliders cut the wind and soared.
The lead, naturally, belonged to Lee Byeol-ha.
‘By now the guard unit posted at the metal mine must have been torn to shreds and gone into the beasts' stomachs.’
Lee Byeol-ha frowned in sorrow.
Even so, it was her will to confirm the site with her own eyes.
And the result?
Astonishingly, the metal mine area was blanketed with dozens — no, hundreds — of times more demon beast corpses than the area around the base camp.
And in that hellscape stood a friendly survivor, alone, his body wholly intact.
That was Han-eol.
The squadmates who had stabbed him in the back and fled a short while ago had already gone into the beasts' stomachs. Only Han-eol remained here.
“How is this possible?”
Lee Byeol-ha blinked.
“Indeed, ma'am.”
The Artemis Vice-Commander, seemingly unable to believe it either, took off her glasses, scrubbed the lenses on her clothes, put them back on, and looked around.
Looking again changed nothing. From the mine's entrance out to the far distance, the entire land was a landscape blanketed in demon beast corpses.
The Vice-Commander was not the only one astonished. The others found the situation hard to believe as well.
“You there. Can you explain how this came about?”
Lee Byeol-ha's cold tone bored into Han-eol's eardrums.
“Uh, the thing is…….”
Han-eol wet his lips with his tongue and made up a story on the spot.
Hearing it, Lee Byeol-ha asked back as though dumbfounded.
“What? You do not know either? You were surrounded by an enormous number of demon beasts, waiting to die, and they simply toppled over on their own?”
Lee Byeol-ha's always-flat tone rose higher and higher.
‘Oops. Was my answer too half-hearted?’
Han-eol panicked.
‘Then again, even I would find it hard to believe. All these demon beasts suddenly keeling over dead. Is that talk or is that a fart?’
Han-eol wanted to slap his own mouth.
But he had already set out on this road. If he changed his story in a situation like this, he might be dragged into an Artemis interrogation room.
‘To hell with it.’
Han-eol shut his eyes tight and piled another lie on top of the lie.
“Commander, it may be hard to believe, but it is true. This scene had unfolded before I knew it. Come to think of it, I think I may have seen something like a shadow in the distance…….”
Just as Han-eol was wringing his brain to explain things as vaguely as possible, Lee Byeol-ha closed on him as though teleporting and gripped both his shoulders with her hands.
“What? What did you just say?”
Her voice had gone past rising and cracked sharply.
“What kind of shadow was it? A man? Or a woman?”
“Uhh, well, um…….”
Naturally, Han-eol could not answer properly.
It was a lie he had made up on the spot.
Lee Byeol-ha pressed him.
“It was a woman, was it not? It must have been.”
This was less a question than her answering herself to secure her own certainty.
“Kuek. Kek, kek, kek.”
With an ability-holder as powerful as Lee Byeol-ha gripping and shaking his shoulders, Han-eol's head rocked hard up and down. He coughed violently.
Even so, Lee Byeol-ha paid him little mind. She merely saw his head nodding up and down and read it as an answer in the affirmative.
“So that is it. My guess was right after all.”
There was a damp catch somewhere in her low murmur.
In truth, Lee Byeol-ha did not trust people.
And toward the tribe called men, she had less trust still.
This was not true of her alone. The Artemis Vice-Commander and most of the knights shared her disposition.
Yet the lie Han-eol had thrown together a moment ago not only convinced Lee Byeol-ha at a stroke but shook even the exacting Vice-Commander.
There was a reason behind this.
‘Could that person have helped us?’
‘Could it be Lady Lee Hyeon?’
Seized by the same thought, the two of them looked at each other.
Lee Byeol-ha's large eyes, turned to the Vice-Commander, trembled like aspen leaves.
The Vice-Commander's eyes, looking up at Lee Byeol-ha, turned into those of a girl who had recovered a forgotten dream.
It could not be otherwise.
What was the Artemis Knights' founding purpose?
To protect Lee Hyeon. Protecting Lee Hyeon, the ruler of demon spirit energy, was Artemis' supreme reason for existing.
Long ago, disillusioned by the conduct of Shinseong Group's owner family, Lee Hyeon had entered the Highland alone and vanished, and after that the Artemis Knights' role changed from ‘protecting Lee Hyeon’ to ‘subjugating demon beasts.’
Even so, Lee Byeol-ha, the Vice-Commander, and the rest had never forgotten Artemis' original purpose.
To Lee Byeol-ha, Lee Hyeon was more than a great-aunt; she was an object of reverence.
To the Vice-Commander, Lee Hyeon was an absolute goddess and a faith.
But they never let Lee Hyeon's name pass their lips.
It would be catastrophic if word of her existence ever reached other cities.
Imagine it becoming known that a natural predator who subdued demon beasts by forcing their demon spirit energy into reflux existed in Mid-Land Seoul.
Every faction seeking to check Shinseong Group would then ally to kill her and rush assassination squads to Seoul.
For that reason, Shinseong Group's leadership and the Artemis Knights kept Lee Hyeon's existence thoroughly hidden.
‘That made it all the more stifling. The reality that we could not search for my great-aunt openly, even after she vanished, was suffocating enough to drive me mad.’
Lee Byeol-ha clawed at her chest.
‘And now, at the very moment I gave everything up, I find a trace of her. Aaah. My great-aunt did not die. She is still alive. And she is somewhere close beside us, watching over us. Aaaah.’
Tears brimmed in Lee Byeol-ha's eyes.
‘Sob. Lady Lee Hyeon has finally returned. She dealt with the demon beast legion and protected this base camp. Ohhh.’
The Vice-Commander also took off her glasses and rubbed hard at her eyes.
With the two of them choked up, it was Han-eol who ended up bewildered.
‘What? Why are they suddenly like this?’
Han-eol did not know Lee Hyeon existed.
Nor did he know that Lee Hyeon's unrivaled ability, which killed demon beasts instantly by forcing their demon spirit energy into reflux, looked outwardly similar to the result of him ripping out beasts' souls with the full-color hand.
There was one thing Han-eol did grasp for certain.
‘Ohoho. Their souls aren't turning a hostile color? Which means the story I made up on the spot worked, doesn't it? There were so many holes in what I said that I'd braced for at least a little suspicion. How about that?’
Han-eol's mood suddenly improved.
The Artemis Knights sealed the metal mine area off with a barrier.
WHIRRR—.
When the knights laid several hundred long rods set with mana stones in a line on the ground, a blue curtain surged up from those rods and cut off all view.
This barrier, ten meters high, could not serve as a solid defensive line the way a wall could.
Instead, since the barrier itself blocked sight and sound waves, it suited occasions when one did not want the outside to know what was happening within the curtain.
Setting up a barrier stamped with Shinseong Group's mark also served in itself as a declaration: “No entry to this area except by authorized personnel.”
So the Artemis Knights and various Shinseong Group departments made good use of it. Considered properly, the barrier could fairly be called an upgraded ‘police line.’
“What on earth are they doing in there?”
Kim Hyu-in's voice was full of complaint.
In fact, after barely repelling the Leopard Wolf tribe's massive offensive the other day, Kim Hyu-in had nursed expectations of his own.
‘As a flame-line ability-holder, I put in a pretty big contribution defending the wall against the Leopard Wolves' great offensive, didn't I? So maybe Artemis' leadership will reassess me.’
Artemis' Commander Lee Byeol-ha was of Shinseong Group's owner family. Not a collateral branch, either, but Chairman Lee Gang-hyeon's own daughter, direct line of the direct line.
‘Just catch her eye and this Kim Hyu-in's life changes completely. Hahaha.’
In his imagination, Kim Hyu-in was already walking a path of flowers.
But what was this?
Whatever had happened at the metal mine, the Artemis Knights threw up a barrier around the area and forbade anyone from approaching.
Even the 1st Assault Corps Leader could not get inside the barrier.
Naturally, Kim Hyu-in had trouble catching sight of the Artemis knights' faces, let alone Lee Byeol-ha's. All he could do was watch the additional Artemis knights who had come over from Mid-Land Seoul file into the barrier and come back out with their backpacks stuffed full.
In fact, the Artemis knights were carrying out the task of packing Leopard Wolf corpses tightly into space-contraction vacuum packs and transporting them to Mid-Land Seoul.
During all this, under the knights' watch, Han-eol put on a long straight-haired wig, wore their armor as a woman's disguise, and slipped out beyond the barrier.
A group of Artemis knights ringed him and returned him to Mid-Land Seoul.
The one who spirited Han-eol away was none other than Lee Byeol-ha.
‘I cannot leave a boy connected to my great-aunt in the 1st Assault Corps. If word of her appearance reaches Lee Seong-u, there is no telling what that greed-filled man would do.’
Lee Byeol-ha bit down hard on her lower lip.