**< Chapter 151. Summary >**
"You..." Kwang-gun was about to say something when Seo-woon spoke first. "How many are left?"
"If we take care of these, there will be one left."
"We don't have time. Leave this here." After finishing what he was going to say, Seo-woon and his companions hurled themselves towards the remaining Khatz magic field. Kwang-gun threw a rock at Ki-chan, who was running after Seo-woon.
-Wheezy! Ki-chan caught the rock and gave Kwang-gun a questioning look, while Juriell, who was running beside him, said, "If you concentrate your mana, you can communicate with the person holding that rock."
Hearing his words, Ki-chan placed the rock in his subspace and sped off, looking behind Seo-woon. Seeing Seo-woon and his team disappear with a surprised expression, Kwang-gun approached Skers and said, "Seo-woon definitely has the ability to transform.
Keep that in mind." It was important to identify the main abilities of players who could turn into enemies at any moment. This was especially true for similar-ranked enemies they could encounter at any moment.
Seo-woon, who was running, asked Juriell. "If we take out the last location, we can stop Meteor, right?"
"Yes!" With one location already taken care of by Senruk, there was only one more location left to be dealt with to prevent Meteor's devastation.
After running for a while, the final destination began to appear in the distance, and the sun was slowly rising. Seeing the brightening surroundings, the group didn't stop and broke through the illusion spell in a single move. However, there wasn't a single enemy waiting for them.
"Straight up!" The three ran along the building's outer wall, and Juriell, lifted by the flying spell, landed on the building's roof. Seeing that the dozens of mages who were supposed to be waiting there had disappeared, Seo-woon asked in a surprised voice. "Could Khatz have changed his casting location in the middle?"
"No. If it's a wide-area spell with fixed coordinates, it's impossible to change the location while the spell is being cast… That!" Juriell's face contorted the moment she noticed the blue jewel in the center of the roof.
"What's that?" Ki-chan asked with a worried expression.
"The Philosopher's Stone."
Seo-woon sensed the unease in his subdued voice and quickly asked again. "Does that mean we can't stop the meteor?"
Seo-woon's question was answered with a slow nod. He approached, examined the cracked Philosopher's Stone, and sighed. "Despite all the mana gathered here, it hasn't completely broken. I don't know when it was changed, but… It's impossible to destroy the Philosopher's Stone before the meteor spell ends."
Hearing her words, Seo-woon unleashed his ki.
-Kang! -Kakang! He struck the cracked blue stone several times, but the Philosopher's Stone didn't budge.
"Where in the world did you find this item?" Ki-chan's voice trailed off. It was obvious he'd gotten it from a vending machine. After attacking the Philosopher's Stone for a while, Seo-woon withdrew his ki, and Ki-chan looked behind him and opened his mouth. "Brother…" He didn't know what to say.
"Let's move now. We're going to Beverly Hills." Unlike the players, Seo-woon's group wasn't restricted by the stationmaster. Naturally, there were no restrictions on entering Beverly Hills, which was kept off the map.
-The Smoke Vision might be wrong. There's still a day left, but at this rate, the meteor will fall today at the earliest.
"I know. That's why Roy Miller appeared and fought Kwang-gun fiercely. Even if he distracts them, he still won't be able to stop Kharz."
Hearing Juriell's words, Seo-woon took off his headphones and put them in his ears. After explaining the situation so far, they seemed to be prepared for this and quickly proposed an alternative plan.
"So how about we evacuate everyone in Beverly Hills in the remaining time? We can send personnel to assist with broadcasts and evacuations…"
"We can't guarantee when the meteor will strike. We can't guarantee there will be enough time for evacuations, and we don't know how many of the 200,000+ civilians will survive if the magnetic field suddenly leaves. The game isn't over yet."
- So what's left?
- We have to stop the meteor somehow.
- NASA is continuing monitoring, but no asteroids have actually been detected approaching Earth.
"Juriell. Does the meteor's spell draw asteroids from space?" He shook his head at Seo-woon's question. "No. Meteor is a spell that opens a portal from beyond space and summons meteorites. It's a wide-area spell that infuses summoned meteorites with powerful mana, causing them to fall." His words were transmitted through the headsets.
- If that's the case… We have no choice but to rely on interrupter missiles.
"Even if the interrupter missiles are successful, the damage from the debris will be significant."
"This… We have no choice but to minimize this somehow."
"Is it possible to obtain as many spellbooks as possible?" There was a short silence after Seo-woon's question, then the other person's voice was heard. "We can quickly obtain about 400."
Seo-woon thought for a moment and replied. "Please airlift these to Beverly Hills as soon as possible."
After he finished speaking, Seo-woon and his team started moving again.
"What are you going to do?" Seo-woon looked back at Juriell, who was asking worriedly, and smiled. "It's unclear how much damage mana-powered anti-meteor missiles could do. I plan to try to destroy the meteor first."
"That's dangerous…"
"Of course, I'll use my clones." When Seo-woon interrupted, Juriell nodded in relief. Seo-woon's tendency to rush in without thinking when the situation was dire seemed to worry her.
***
No enemies appeared in front of Seo-woon when they entered Beverly Hills. "Wow… incredible. Beverly Hills was home to some impressive houses, captivating just by looking at them.
When Ki-chan entered a large park next to a large hotel and resort and looked around, he noticed some people that caught his group's attention. Some were walking their dogs in the park, while others were lazily basking in the sun on park benches.
"What are those people doing?"
"I don't know." The scene, with citizens going about their normal lives, knowing there was no danger from the stationmaster's guard, seemed strange no matter how you looked at it.
As the group made their way toward the center, they saw a variety of other people. There were distraught refugees standing in front of restaurants holding cans, and others lying on boxes in the street.
And people walking past with disturbing expressions. It was all so different from downtown LA, where it was hard to see people, that it felt alien. The outskirts of Beverly Hills near the station were practically empty, but as you drove a little further in, the scene was the same everywhere you went.
"The situation of the refugees doesn't look good. I think they need relief supplies." When I spoke with my headset on, a response came immediately from the other end.
"We keep dropping them off via drones, but they don't seem to be delivering them properly. Since it's impossible for people to come directly, the only way to deliver the relief supplies was to fly drones and drop them all over LA. Even then, since Beverly Hills was excluded from the map, it didn't seem like there were many relief supplies allocated there.
As he watched this scene with a frown, Seo-woon and his group made their way to the very center of Beverly Hills on the map. In a quiet residential area with grassy houses and a wide road stretching out in front of him, Seo-woon suddenly sat down and started charging his drone. The rest of the group was also busy with preparations.
After spending some time there, a man in a black suit fell hard from the sky onto the asphalt road.
"Kagagagak!" The man rolled onto the neatly paved asphalt, landed on his feet, looked around, and ran towards Seo-woon's group. "White Force G-Team member, Connor Lee." An Asian man speaking broken Korean.
Seeing the man, Seo-woon opened his mouth. "Did you bring the order form?"
"Yes! Here it is." Seo-woon frowned as he saw the man open the bag he was carrying on his back and place it in front of Seo-woon. No matter how he looked at it, the bag wasn't big enough to hold hundreds of scrolls.
Reading his expression, the man quickly opened his mouth and opened the bag. "This bag was developed by our government. It's equipped with a subspace magic that allows it to expand far beyond its actual size."
"I see." Come to think of it, it was an item that looked like it had been developed using subspace, like a tent, which made the word 'developed' meaningless. Seo-woon checked the spell scrolls inside the bag and took them.
"Hmph." Seo-woon, who was carrying the bag, thought for a moment and pulled out two spirit stones from the subspace. In an instant, the divine energy disappeared, and two Jeon-daeseong appeared.
"Huh? Where is this place?"
"Why did you summon me?" Giman and O-man looked at Seo-woon with different reactions.
"I need your help with something…" As Seo-woon continued his explanation, Giman and O-man wore dissatisfied expressions. However, they didn't refuse. "If my strength were strong, I could easily handle that trivial spell. But I'm not sure I can do it with your weak energy."
In response to O-man's words, Seo-woon showed him the spell book he was carrying on his back. "Let's try to do something with this."
After briefly explaining the plan, he sent the two back to the spirit stones and recharged his sword. Now all that was left was to wait for the meteor to fall.
As the sun set, Seo-woon opened his eyes. He sensed a strong surge of mana in the sky. Juriell, Ki-chan and Liling also looked up at the sky with nervous expressions.
"It's started!" Fortunately, two meteors were summoned.
"It looks like one of them failed." Juriell nodded at Seo-woon's words, and then a voice came through the headset. "Missiles launched!"
At the same time, Seo-woon saw dozens of missiles launch into the sky with his own eyes. The missiles flew towards the Meteors and exploded.
"Failed… I failed…" Seeing the Meteors only crack slightly, Seo-woon called out to the two monkeys with his weak voice. "How many missiles are left?"
- There are many… but…
"I'll handle what happens after the Meteor is destroyed. If the spell scroll works properly, it won't be able to survive even with mana support." After finishing his words, Seo-woon pulled a strand of his hair and created a clone. He handed the bag containing the remaining spell scrolls to the two monkeys.
"Hmph." As the clone took a deep breath and looked up at the sky, Seo-woon's evil energy quickly faded, and Arrogance and Deceit rode the clouds, carrying Seo-woon's clone into the sky. The two monkeys, soaring quickly, broke through the clouds, released Seo-woon's twin, and each charged towards their own meteor.
-Kwaaang! Kwaaang! With a slight time delay, explosions echoed, and a storm began to form in the sky, blowing down towards the ground. Seo-woon and his comrades, along with Connor Lee, looked up at the sky, their hair flying wildly. At the same time, the meteor broke into eight pieces and fell to the ground.
"Fire fast!"
"We already did!" Many more missiles than before flew into the sky, destroying eight pieces of the falling meteor. There wasn't as strong an aftershock as the first, but hundreds of meteor fragments shattered into tiny pieces, glowing red as they fell, and at that moment, another violent explosion occurred in the middle.
-Kwaaah! That tiny dot, which was Seo-woon's clone floating with a parachute, exploded and the falling meteor fragments were caught in the explosion.
-Ting! Ting ting! Tootootoo. Then, small grains landed near the group.
-Woohoo! A moment later, a loud roar erupted, and Seo-woon quickly ripped off his headphones. Juriell and Ki-chan, who had summoned hundreds of flame arrows and wind arrows and launched them into the sky, also ran towards Seo-woon.
"Brother!"
"Seo-woon!" The three hugged each other, and Rilingwei joined them, throwing himself into Seo-woon's arms.
White Force G-Team member Connor Lee reported via radio as he sat on the ground, his legs weakening. "Operation… successful!"
The White Force commander, who hadn't yet received a report from headquarters, shouted joyfully into the radio. "From now on, Jin Seo-woon's name will be spread all over the world."
"Yes… He's an American hero."
When the group finished sharing their joy, Seo-woon looked at Ki-chan. "What happened, Kwang-gun?"
"I'll try to bind him." Ki-chan pulled out a small stone from subspace and concentrated his mana.
-Speak up! Seo-woon responded to the busy voice. "Are you in the war?"
"Nothing. Meo… It seems like you handled it well."
"It was good. Did you get the magnetic field item?" There was a short silence after Seo-woon's question. "…You know, right?"
"Hesitating because of your item greed will only slow you down. Do you think you can catch and kill all the hidden players in this vast magnetic field? There's no rule that says the game can't take place in the middle of Crescent's capital."
Kwang-gun responded to Seo-woon's words with a disappointed voice. "Even if that weren't the case, I scraped together every penny I had to buy it. I've already used it all, and you don't know it, but the magnetic field has already started moving. The final battle… Will you participate?"
"Unfortunately, no. Where is the final battlefield?"
"Ramer Park." Hearing his words, Seo-woon spoke into his earpiece. "Did you hear?"
-We will immediately concentrate all our forces there and evacuate the civilians!
Seo-woon returned his gaze to the stone where Ki-chan had concentrated his mana and said. "Three days?"
- Exactly. We're heading there now.
"…Let's meet again for a normal game next time. Then I'll slit your throat again."
- Don't be so relieved. Next time it won't be as easy as the last time. Next time I'll show you why you call me Kwang-gun.
However, the connection was cut off.
After that, Seo-woon and his group began searching for the evacuation center where refugees selected by the American government were gathered near Koreatown. Near the first shelter, White Force agents and American players had already gathered in large numbers to defend the area, and firefighters were also conducting rescue operations here and there.
"The players seem to have been weeded out," Ki-chan asked, and Seo-woon replied. "The magnetic field must have been detected."
Before he could finish, an aide following Seo-woon spoke up. "I also need to leave soon."
Seo-woon looked at him. "How many do you have?"
"180 blue coins." Thinking it was a pretty good amount, Seo-woon checked the vending machine to see what items could be purchased with 180 Blue Coins.
[Summoning Skill. Summons a mid-level fire spirit.]
[Karine's Great Sword. Stabs an enemy, halving their stats for one hour. *Must be stabbed into the torso to activate.]
[Gainer's Pill. X10: When consumed, your body grows 1.5 times and all stats increase by 50% for one hour.] … There were items like this.
Looking at his teammates, they were all smiling at Seo-woon. "Let's get the items you want. We're not here just to buy items anyway.".
"Seo-woon, you'll be leading us in the game from now on."
"Just choose whatever you want. Don't worry about us."
Seo-woon smiled at his teammates and selected an item. The assistant nodded, took the item, and handed it to Seo-woon.
[Divine Being Contract. A contract that obligates any being to fulfill their promises. Once you set the conditions here and sign your name, any being must fulfill their promises. *Even if the other party is unaware of the contract's contents, the promise must be fulfilled.]
Seo-woon placed the paper emitting a faint blue glow into subspace and smiled, remembering Giman and O-man.