—————————————————————–
Translated By Arcane Translations
Translator: Wjin
—————————————————————–
◇◇◇◆◇◇◇
“Gasp… gasp…”
I caught my breath. A notification indicating the end of class had appeared.
The chaos beast I had just defeated must have been the last one.
‘I can manage up to this point on my own.’
Even during the fight, I had kept track of the other team members. They were all surviving well.
Though, for some reason, they were quickly gathering around me as soon as the class ended.
“Seo Yoo Rang.”
The first to arrive was Yuseora, who had been nearby. She had a worried expression on her face. She pointed at my leg and said,
“…What happened to your leg?”
I looked down. There was a gash that looked slightly torn.
It had happened while I was trying to handle things on my own as much as possible.
“It’s fine. It’s not a fatal wound.”
It was just a small tear; it would heal quickly.
“But if I had helped, there would have been no reason for you to get hurt…”
Just then, Elsie arrived, having run from quite a distance.
“What happened to your head?”
She looked furious.
“Elsie?”
“What’s wrong with you? You were doing fine during the first semester.”
From the looks of it, Yuseora and Elsie were dissatisfied with me essentially leaving them to their own devices. I did have an excuse.
“I can handle things up to this point on my own.”
I had, in fact, used the wind authority’s swift mobility to eliminate most of the chaos beasts all over the place.
“And the person who ‘handled it’ got their leg injured?”
But that damn leg injury had become a stumbling block.
“This is just the trial space. It’ll return to normal once we’re outside.”
“Yes, it’s the trial space. So there was no reason for you to push yourself so hard.”
Then she started listing my actions one by one.
“That group of armored chaos beasts you took down earlier. Even I could see that it would have been more efficient for Yuseora to handle them.”
“But what if even one survived? Yuseora would have been defenseless.”
Yuseora shook her head.
“That probability is extremely low.”
“But the probability still exists.”
“That’s…”
No matter how low the probability, as long as it existed, it wasn’t impossible. It would be too late to regret after someone died.
It was better to eliminate the probability entirely.
However, that line of thinking wasn’t without its counterarguments.
“If you consider every worst-case scenario like that, the tactics will become a mess. Like just now.”
Elsie precisely pointed out the contradiction in my actions.
“And you, on the other hand, barely considered the probability of variables happening to you.”
“No, I did consider it. I wouldn’t die to chaos beasts of this level.”
“That’s true for chaos beasts of this level. But what if this wasn’t a mock battle? What if the opponent was a stronger chaos beast, or even a Demon Lord?”
That was similar to what I had been worrying about. The only difference was that the subject and object were reversed.
“I guarantee it. At this rate, you’ll definitely try to handle things alone again.”
I couldn’t refute her. I wasn’t confident that I wouldn’t.
Elsie drove the point home, saying,
“That’s… not what you can call a comrade.”
Comrades were precious. But my actions, taken precisely because of that, had backfired. I understood what Elsie meant.
‘But…’
Just then, my body was enveloped in the sensation unique to the trial space. It seemed time was up. Since the mock battle was over, I was being sent out of the trial space.
‘Okay, let’s think about this properly outside.’
◇◇◇◆◇◇◇
Thinking that, I closed and opened my eyes, only to find myself in a different space.
But this wasn’t outside the trial space. It wasn’t the place with the giant tree either; it was another familiar space.
‘This is… the waiting area?’
The waiting area, separate from the mock battle space. But something felt off. For some reason, there were too many candidates in this space. Moreover…
‘The atmosphere is strange.’
Everyone seemed to be filled with confusion. Just as I sensed something was amiss and tried to find Elsie and Yuseora, murmurs reached my ears.
“Was that real just now?”
“The Hailen barrier broke? What’s going on…”
I froze.
‘What?’
The conversation continued.
“That thing we saw earlier, was it a Demon Lord?”
My frozen state was brief. I finally started to understand the current situation.
Candidates from the Hero Academy continued to pour into the waiting area.
No, it wasn’t just candidates; ordinary people were starting to mix in as well.
Combining the conversation I had overheard and the current situation, there was only one possible explanation.
‘The trial space turned into a shelter.’
It was easy to understand when considering the other trial spaces outside the barrier.
Due to the nature of trial spaces being the personal property of gods, a small barrier existed around the lake.
Therefore, even if the Hailen barrier was broken, the trial space barrier would remain and function.
‘But it’s not invincible.’
Barriers weren’t invincible. The collapse of the Ice Valley had been the first proof, and if what I had just heard was true, even the Hailen barrier, known as the strongest, had collapsed.
It would be optimistic to think that the fragile trial space barrier could withstand this worst-case scenario.
‘If a Demon Lord really did invade, like they said…’
Even now, the combat personnel would be fighting the Demon Lord and chaos beasts outside.
Fortunately, the combat personnel of Hailen, the holy city, were on a completely different level in terms of both quality and quantity compared to any other city.
Hailen wasn’t called the City of Heroes for nothing. But a sense of bewilderment remained.
‘Why would they attack Hailen at this point in time?’
Leaving aside how they managed to break through Hailen’s sturdy barrier, I couldn’t understand why they chose this place in the first place.
‘Weren’t they supposed to be focused on the Lodreim Kingdom strategy?’
That’s what I had been hearing, and considering the current situation of the Demon Lords, that should have been the case.
The Demon Lords had avoided direct confrontation with the human side for the past few decades.
Of course, that was to minimize attrition with the Saint-ranked Heroes, but they had been secretly carrying out various operations behind the scenes.
One of them was the 71st Demon Lord, whom I stopped early on. After that failed, they focused on the 72nd Demon Lord and the Lodreim Kingdom operation.
The Lodreim Kingdom operation was definitely important to them.
If it succeeded, the 72nd Demon Lord would become almost unstoppable. But it was also a long-term operation.
That’s why I had some leeway to thoroughly prepare at the Hero Academy.
But for them to leave the Lodreim Kingdom and invade Hailen, there were three possible assumptions.
‘First, the 72nd Demon Lord has fully awakened.’
But that didn’t make sense. The 72nd Demon Lord’s awakening wasn’t something that could be accelerated even with their dedicated efforts.
Moreover, even if the awakening was complete, there was no reason for them to immediately attack Hailen.
They should have taken control of the Lodreim Kingdom first, and if they had, there would have been news before this happened.
‘Then second, the Lodreim Kingdom operation failed for some reason, leading them to attack Hailen out of desperation.’
If this was the case, the situation would likely end with them being subdued by Hailen’s heroes. But that was too optimistic.
More importantly, the crux was that such a situation had never occurred in the Hundred Braves game.
‘It’s not like this was their only operation.’
The endings of Hundred Braves that players had reached so far all resulted in the inevitable destruction of the world. It couldn’t be an act of desperation.
Then I needed to change my thinking.
‘The last assumption. They have a weapon that can definitively conquer Hailen.’
Originally, that would be the 72nd Demon Lord, but it was too early for that. Then they might have found another weapon.
A weapon that would allow them to definitively conquer Hailen, the heart, first, without needing to conquer the surrounding nations one by one.
‘If that was true…’
This world might be in danger. To try and stop it, I needed to at least grasp the situation outside.
‘The problem is whether to take Elsie and Yuseora…’
Just then, I heard someone shout,
“Once you enter here, no one except Heroes can leave! If you have someone to look for outside, let us know!”
It seemed they had locked down the trial space to prevent the candidates and civilians who had taken refuge there from going back outside and facing disaster.
In that case, I didn’t have a choice.
Elsie and Yuseora weren’t officially Heroes yet.
‘But I can leave.’
Even though I held the status of a Hero candidate as Seo Yoo Rang, I still retained my status as the High-ranking Hero Allen Blake.
‘I’ll just check the situation outside.’
I could decide what to do next after seeing the situation.
◇◇◇◆◇◇◇
The first thing I saw after leaving the trial space was the sky. What was so special about the sky?
The building where the trial space was located originally had a ceiling.
‘What the…’
The outer walls of the building surrounding the trial space were gone. It wasn’t just the outer walls.
Most of the Hero Academy, no, most of the buildings in Hailen, were destroyed.
The sight of dark red chaos particles, pouring in from outside the barrier and scattering in the air, was like a scene from hell.
“Fuck.”
A curse word I hadn’t uttered in a while slipped out.
Of course, I had expected something like this to some extent after hearing that Hailen’s barrier had been broken and that a Demon Lord had invaded.
But the feeling of seeing it firsthand was completely different.
‘What happened?’
The only place that was somewhat intact was this small space surrounded by the trial space’s barrier.
Everywhere else was utter chaos. People who were instantly exposed to chaos had transformed into chaos beasts, and their rampages were causing sporadic destruction.
“This is…”
Cold sweat trickled down my back, and my fists clenched.
It was the first time I had witnessed such a sight with my own eyes.
If I hadn’t stopped the 71st Demon Lord in my hometown, a similar disaster would have occurred, but the scale was different.
This was Hailen, the last and greatest city of humanity. And Hailen had already been destroyed.
In the midst of it all, my legs gave way. Questions like ‘how’ or ‘why’ weren’t important anymore. In this situation, the only question I had left was ‘what’ to do.
And that question…
“Damn it.”
…had no answer.
◇◇◇◆◇◇◇
