Chapter 302: Episode 302

Alexandro glanced over his shoulder.

“Karak. Wipe them all out.”

The hulking Fiend who had attacked us first stepped eagerly forward, as if he had been practically vibrating with anticipation for that exact command. His massive body bulged grotesquely, and lethal metallic tentacles violently erupted from eleven different points across his flesh.

The tentacles lashed out like whips, striking every single golem on the field. The massive constructs were sent flying, smashing violently into the concrete walls. Their armored chassis had been completely impaled.

He’s fast.

Retracting the bloody metal appendages, the Fiend ripped off the remaining shreds of his suit and tossed them aside.

Smoke began to leak from the mouth of the black-skinned demonic monster. It spread its arms wide and thrust its chest forward, flexing its sickening musculature.

An overwhelming bundle of metallic tentacles—at least a hundred and twenty in total—violently poured out from its torso.

Knowing a standard shield wouldn’t hold up against that barrage, I relied entirely on Deva’s Eye to map their chaotic trajectories and launched myself high into the air. The razor-sharp tentacles whipped past me in a dizzying blur, grazing my shoulder and thigh just enough to draw blood.

-Tower Master! Are you alright?

Ugh, it stings.

I rolled my eyes, glancing over at my partner.

Hong Yeon was simply standing in place, looking utterly relaxed as she gripped her blade with one hand. In a fluid motion, she twirled the weapon and smoothly sheathed it.

The moment the hilt locked into place, the flurry of black tentacles surging toward her instantly disintegrated, scattering into the air like tattered ribbons of dark fabric. Maintaining her momentum, she dropped into a low stance and drew her sword in a blinding flash.

A crimson arc cleaved the very air in two. Caught directly in that deadly trajectory, the demonic monster’s body was bisected with a crisp shwing!

Her arm didn’t stop moving.

It was like dicing a slab of meat on a butcher’s block. In the span of a single breath, the Fiend’s body was carved into perfectly rectangular chunks that rained heavily down onto the concrete floor. She let out a light sigh and lowered her weapon.

“Look out!” I yelled.

It wasn’t over. Fresh metallic tentacles suddenly erupted outward from the diced, bloody chunks of the Fiend’s remains.

Contorting her limbs to dodge the lethal spikes by a paper-thin margin, Hong Yeon stabilized her footing and glared at the regenerating monstrosity. Her golden eyes glowed with terrifying intensity.

“Fine. Then this time, I’ll just have to disintegrate you on an atomic level.”

As an incredibly fierce battle erupted between her and the remaining Fiends, the rank 1 Danger Level Alexandro used the distraction to hurdle into the driver’s seat of his sedan.

“Where the hell do you think you’re going?”

I forcefully stomped my boot onto the magic circle I had discreetly drawn on the floor.

<Gaia>

The building’s concrete foundation jutted violently upward, forming a massive, impassable earthen wall directly in front of his hood.

However, Alexandro showed no sign of trying to swerve. The engine flared to life, letting out a deafening, concussive roar that sounded more like a bomb detonating.

The tires spun madly in place, burning rubber against the concrete. The rear bumper of the sedan mechanically split open, revealing a frankly absurd cluster of jet propulsion boosters.

It was a heavily modified getaway vehicle.

The boosters spewed blinding blue flames. The car rocketed straight ahead, violently punching a hole right through my barricade of concrete and dirt to escape into the night.

Damn it…!

I hadn’t even considered the possibility that he would literally ram his car straight through a solid wall to flee. On top of that, the modified sedan was ridiculously fast.

In an instant, he was already on the verge of escaping the absolute maximum visual range of my Deva’s Eye.

“Yusin!”

Hong Yeon sprinted over to my side. The demonic Fiend she had been fighting just seconds ago had completely vanished without a trace, as if she truly had followed through on her promise and vaporized it on an atomic level.

The severed heads of the remaining Fiends were simply rolling to a halt across the floor.

“Sorry, I lost him,” I gritted out.

“I think… that couldn’t be helped,” she muttered, staring blankly at the massive, smoking hole blown through the tunnel wall. She tapped her earpiece, switching frequencies.

“This is the Commander. The main target is fleeing rapidly via Route A.”

Frantic voices bled through the comms.

“CI guard line has completely collapsed!”

“He’s breached Point CO!”

“Mana bullets are completely ineffective against the vehicle’s armor!”

Her expression hardened into a terrifying scowl.

“Why the hell do you think we brought you all here in the first place?! Use whatever means necessary to apprehend him! Do not let him slip away!”

As she savagely barked out orders to lock down the sector bulkheads and secure the civilian population, she looked absolutely ferocious. Was this the uncompromising, bloodthirsty Hong Yeon that the rest of the world usually saw?

Letting out a heavy, frustrated sigh, she turned her attention back to me.

“What do we do now?”

“We chase him, obviously. Leave it to me.”

I was already releasing my mana into the air, pushing my cognitive processing to its absolute limit. The intricate mental preparations were finally complete.

“Time to work, Cheir.”

A seventh-order magic circle, thick and dense enough to resemble a solid metal plate, materialized and began steadily rotating in midair.

The seventh-order was the ultimate magic of creation. As long as the caster inherently understood an object’s precise molecular and mechanical structure, there was quite literally nothing they couldn’t manifest. The dimensional entrance to Cheir spiraled open, and what aggressively popped out from the ether was…

“…Ah?”

A stunning, cherry-red sports car. Seeing the vehicle drop perfectly onto the concrete, Hong Yeon let out a thoroughly dumbfounded noise. I chivalrously popped open the passenger door for her and offered a sweeping bow.

“Hop in, milady.”

Flustered, she awkwardly climbed into the low-slung bucket seat. I slid behind the steering wheel and slammed the door shut.

I was the one who had just forged it from thin air, but externally, it was a flawless replica of a high-end sports car. I had even put extra mana into perfectly replicating the supple leather texture of the steering wheel and the upholstery. But underneath the hood, it was anything but an ordinary car.

“D-does this thing not have seatbelts?” she stammered, feeling around the sides of the seat.

“Ah, right.”

I vaguely gestured a finger through the air, and heavy-duty racing harnesses materialized over our shoulders instantly. Blinking with wide eyes, she securely clicked the belt across her chest.

“You really are like a wizard.”

“I literally am a wizard.”

I gripped the steering wheel with a wide, reckless grin.

-Welcome aboard.

The dashboard GPS screen flickered to life, bathing the cabin in a soft blue glow. Naturally, the sophisticated voice purring through the speakers belonged to Ea.

“Let’s go, Ea.”

“…Who is Ea?” Hong Yeon asked, raising an eyebrow.

“My partner in crime,” I answered smoothly, giving the dashboard an affectionate pat. Then, I slammed my foot squarely down on the accelerator.

From the very first second, the speedometer needle violently whipped across the dial, instantly redlining at 124 miles per hour. With a deafening, throaty roar, the sports car launched forward, blasting straight through the gaping hole in the concrete wall.

“Ugh!” Hong Yeon gasped, pinned aggressively to the leather seat by the sheer G-force of our acceleration.

155. 186. 217.

The numbers kept climbing.

“Ea. Pull up his location.”

-Understood.

A sleek tactical map immediately overrode the navigation screen, displaying Alexandro’s red dot amidst a sea of tiny green dots representing the civilian crowd.

Alexandro was barreling down the main festival roads at a breakneck speed, clearly uncaring if thousands of innocent people died in his wake. I could see the tiny green dots scattering frantically away from his trajectory on the map.

“This absolute son of a…!”

Hong Yeon bit her lip hard enough to draw blood.

“Fortunately, the parade route itself is relatively clear. Just hold on tight.”

I mashed the gas pedal all the way to the floorboards.

The sports car exploded out of the exit tunnel at supersonic speeds, the deafening roar of the engine echoing into the night.

We burst into the open air of Carnival Land. Gorgeous, colorful fireworks were actively detonating high above us against the pitch-black, starry sky, but unfortunately, we didn’t have the luxury of enjoying the show.

The shocked shouts and terrified gasps of startled bystanders poured through the windows as we became a blur of red chrome.

I aggressively tailed Alexandro straight down the road he had just devastated.

-Tower Master, there is a sharp curve 1,640 feet ahead.

“Got it.”

I slammed the stick shift into gear with my right hand, jammed my foot onto the clutch, and cranked the steering wheel hard to the side. The precise moment I dumped the clutch and stomped back onto the accelerator, the rear tires broke traction, sending the chassis sliding effortlessly through the turn in a flawless, screaming drift.

“Whoa!”

She yelled, white-knuckling the handle above her door.

We cleared the apex of the curve. Smashing the gas pedal once more, the car rocketed out of the drift and shot straight down the avenue.

“Good, I think we can actually catch up to him at this rate!”

-Tower Master! A monster has suddenly appeared on the route ahead.

A massive reptilian monster, reminiscent of a movie kaiju, was violently tearing into the side of a themed building. That thing absolutely hadn’t been on the radar just a few moments ago.

“It seems Alexandro dumped his cargo to hinder our pursuit.”

“What do you want to do?” she asked urgently.

“Every single second counts right now. Let’s leave that to the standby hunters and—”

Just then, the monster lunged, reaching its massive, clawed hands out toward a group of fleeing civilians. Hong Yeon’s face drained of color. Her lips trembled for half a second before she fiercely cried out.

“Drop me off! I’ll hold the bastard off and catch up to you!”

“Now that’s more like it.”

I wrenched the steering wheel, intentionally charging the vehicle straight toward the rampaging monster. Simultaneously, I tweaked Cheir’s active magic circle to retract the hardtop roof of the car.

“No need to get out! We’ll do a drive-by, but you only get one shot at this!”

“Understood!”

She punched the release on her harness, stepped onto the plush leather seat, and braced her upper body firmly outside the open roof. The monster’s jagged claws were mere inches from snatching a fallen civilian.

“Haaaaah!”

The exact millisecond our bumper zipped past the beast’s ankles, she thrust her sword out like a javelin. A blinding red flash glinted under the fireworks, and the monster’s head abruptly launched into the sky, violently spraying a geyser of thick blood over the pavement.

“Nicely done!” I cheered.

-Now is not the time to relax, Tower Master. Alexandro has unleashed a wave of additional monsters.

Sure enough, six more hulking aberrations materialized out of thin air further down the festival road. We had to exterminate them immediately before they could redirect their bloodlust toward the scattering crowds. I aggressively veered the chassis in their direction and shouted against the wind.

“Get ready for the next wave!”

“R-right! But with a thrusting stance, I can only take out one at a time…!”

“You can wipe them all with a wide slash, right?”

I drove the sports car directly into the center of the monster pack while rapidly tweaking the parameters of Cheir’s magic circle. The entire chassis of the car audibly cracked straight down the middle, then mechanically lifted upward.

The entire upper cabin folded backward on mechanized hinges, slamming down onto the trunk deck with a heavy, metallic thump.

We were now driving a completely exposed, roofless go-kart. Dumbfounded for a brief second by the absurd transformation, Hong Yeon quickly burst out laughing and adjusted her grip on her hilt.

“What kind of car even is this?!”

“Hey, it still has four wheels. It’s definitely a car!”

Surrounding us, the monsters simultaneously swung their massive, tree-trunk arms down at our exposed heads.

I violently jerked the steering wheel at the absolute last second, weaving the chassis through the lethal blows. Standing tall in the passenger seat, Hong Yeon stumbled slightly against the G-force but instantly regained her ironclad balance.

I threaded the sleek vehicle right between the massive legs of the lead monster. Anticipating the maneuver, Hong Yeon gracefully dropped to her knees.

Shwing!

A terrifyingly sharp ripple of crimson energy expanded outward in a flawless, 360-degree circle. A mere second later, all six hulking monsters simultaneously collapsed to the asphalt, their upper and lower halves perfectly bisected as torrents of dark blood poured from their severed torsos.

“Hell yes!”

I held out my free hand, palm open. Slipping quickly back into her seat, she met it with a stinging high-five. The displaced chassis mechanism immediately swung back over our heads, sealing shut to safely enclose us in the luxurious cabin once more.

She immediately snapped her heavy-duty harness back into place, but her triumphant smile quickly vanished as she checked the GPS tracker.

“Damn it. The gap widened significantly while we were dealing with the small fry!”

“Ea. Do we have any viable way to catch up?”

Ea paused.

-Only the highly unorthodox method that you currently have in mind, Tower Master.

“Yeah. I figured as much.”

Hong Yeon looked over at me, her golden eyes wide with sudden anxiety.

“What exactly are you planning to do this time?”

“You’ll see.”

The very first thing I did was lift both of my hands entirely off the steering wheel. Entrusting the physical driving completely to Ea’s autopilot, I closed my eyes and focused the entirety of my mental bandwidth on my magic.

“Haah.”

I took a slow, grounding breath and gathered a massive surge of mana into my core. Seamlessly reading my intentions through our link, Ea aggressively ramped up the RPMs.

Back up to 124. 186. 248.

“Y-Yusin! What are you doing?!”

Hong Yeon shrieked in absolute panic. The sports car was suddenly accelerating completely on its own, rocketing at terminal velocity directly toward a massive, dead-end perimeter wall.

I coldly calculated the distance and the timing.

Three.

Two.

One.

Now!

A single, glowing magical shield materialized a few feet in front of the advancing bumper, rapidly unfurling forward and upward in a perfect, continuous incline with a swift, staccato clatter.

The interlocking shields forged a solid, translucent ramp of hard-light energy. The speeding car hit the base and seamlessly drove straight up into the air.

“Aaaaaah!”

Vrooooooom!

We were literally driving along a glowing, neon road suspended high in the night sky. Ea effortlessly handled the steering wheel, and I laid down the asphalt in real-time.

I am a seventh-order Mage. Conjuring a rudimentary first-order formula like a simple shield was something my brain could process faster than the speed of light.

Every single time Ea pushed the engine to go faster, I effortlessly outstripped her velocity by projecting an even faster magical track into the sky.

Having finally recovered its absolute, unrestricted prime, my brain practically exploded with euphoric joy at this long-awaited rampage, chewing through complex magical formulas at a terrifying, breakneck pace.

“Ah…”

Hong Yeon peered down through the window with wide, disbelieving eyes. Far below, I could clearly see the crowds of panicked people pausing their frantic retreat, completely dumbfounded as they pointed their fingers up at our glowing trajectory.

“More! More! MORE!”

Completely intoxicated by the torrential flow of raw mana, I screamed at the top of my lungs.

Five more heavy-duty jet boosters violently sprouted from the rear bumper of our flying sports car, spewing massive cones of blue fire. I instantly doubled my track projection speed to match the frankly suicidal velocity.

Rumble, rumble, rumble!

We were flying so high that a park rollercoaster was passing right next to us. Feeling inspired by the looping amusement ride, I casually laid my magical rails out in a massive, vertical 360-degree loop.

The car roared up the incline, pinning us to our seats as our bodies executed a flawless, gravity-defying 360-degree loop high above the park before rocketing back out the other side. Practically in tears as she screamed her lungs out, Hong Yeon squeezed her eyes shut and death-gripped the handle.

“Ahahahahaha!”

I laughed like a complete maniac, utterly drunk on the sheer thrill of the speed.

-Tower Master! The target is in sight!

Ea’s urgent voice snapped me back to reality. Squinting through the windshield, I finally spotted Alexandro’s speeding sedan directly ahead of us on the ground below. He was barreling straight toward the theme park’s reinforced rear gates, clearly intending to smash through the exit and disappear into the sprawling city grid.

I couldn’t let that bastard get away.

Utilizing rapid remote chanting, I aggressively angled the glowing sky-track upward like a ski ramp—and then abruptly stopped projecting it altogether. The red sports car launched off the lip, soaring high into the open air like a missile. We were now completely airborne, devoid of any physical foothold.

“Yeon! Open your eyes!”

She was completely paralyzed by the sheer terror of the freefall and simply couldn’t force her eyelids apart. Left with zero alternatives, I reached across the center console, wrapped one arm securely around her shoulders, and hooked my other arm under her knees, scooping her tight against my chest.

“Now, Ea!”

The gull-wing doors forcefully popped open, and I immediately bailed out of the plummeting vehicle with her secured in my arms.

As we fell through the night sky, I watched the dashboard of the blazing-hot sports car completely max out. Dozens of fresh jet boosters simultaneously jutted out from every possible angle of the chassis, unleashing a catastrophic, synchronized blast of pure propulsion fire.

And then—

The empty car transformed into a literal crimson meteor, rocketing in an unstoppable, straight downward line toward the fleeing sedan.

A colossal, blooming sphere of hellfire completely swallowed Alexandro’s getaway car, triggering an earth-shattering secondary explosion that rattled my teeth.

Still holding Hong Yeon protectively in my arms, I swiftly cast Aiolos to manipulate the wind, arresting our terrifying freefall. We slowly and gently floated down toward the blazing crater of the impact site.

She had finally managed to open her eyes and was staring down at the inferno below.

“…Yusin,” she whispered, her voice still trembling with residual adrenaline.

“What is it?”

“I think I finally understand why you’re always putting your life on the line every single day.”

I chuckled warmly. “It’s fine. I won’t die.”

“…Isn’t that ranked somewhere at the very top of the list for famous last words?”

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