Chapter 322: Episode 322

“T-The Führer?” Phil stared at the screen, his face completely pale. “Why would the leader of the demonkins be out there…?”

“Who knows. I originally assumed the demonkins would focus on terrorizing humanity across the inland territories, but it seems they’ve shifted gears. They’re playing defense for Nemesis.”

If the Führer was running interference, making landfall on the continent was going to be infinitely harder. I held a finger up to Phil, silently asking for a moment, and tapped my earpiece.

“Samia. Do you have an update on that project I asked you to look into?”

—”Yusin,” Samia’s voice came through crisp and professional. “According to our magical investigations, casting a warp to the new continent is strictly impossible. The atmosphere surrounding the landmass is causing severe spatial coordinate errors, completely independent of the communication jamming. From a structural standpoint, it would be more accurate to classify the entire landmass as a colossal Dungeon rather than a terrestrial continent.”

“Hmm, I see. Then it can’t be helped.”

Truthfully, I hadn’t placed much faith in the warp plan anyway. Even in Erendel’s past records regarding Nemesis, attempting to bypass the perimeter via spatial magic had always ended in failure.

—”I will continue to search for an alternative method,” Samia promised.

“Alright, please do.”

I tapped the comms off and turned back to Phil.

“The Führer is going to endlessly harass our navies. He’s aiming to divide and conquer us on the open water. Even if it temporarily overextends our supply lines, we need to consolidate the isolated fleets into massive armada groups of at least three fleets each. With this brutal ambush on the Seventh Fleet, our political justification has been sufficiently strengthened to force the member nations to…”

“Secretary-General! We have a catastrophic situation!” an operations officer bellowed as he sprinted into the room, utterly panicked.

“What is it?!”

“The Third Fleet anchored in Japan is currently under a massive, coordinated attack from Nemesis-aligned demonkins!”

“What did you just say?” Phil gasped.

I let out a heavy sigh, already weaving mana into a spatial gate. “I’ll go handle it.”

Phil whipped his head around and grabbed my hand with a desperate grip. “I’m counting on you, Commander!”

*

By the time I arrived on the Japanese coast with my elite mages in tow, the battle was already a bloody, chaotic mess.

Burning warships were spewing thick pillars of black smoke into the sky. Several cruisers had already been entirely capsized and were currently groaning as they sank into the dark waters. Panicked sailors who had been thrown overboard were thrashing in the waves, swimming desperately for their lives.

“You’re a step too late, Magic Tower Master!”

A colossal black dragon, revealing only its draconic head and massive arms from a tear in the fabric of space, locked eyes with me and let out a booming laugh.

“I’ll be seeing you again soon.”

Without giving me a single second to cast a spell, the Führer rapidly retracted his scaly arms and head, vanishing seamlessly back into the spatial rift.

Runs right as soon as he sees me. Slippery bastard.

I roughly swept my bangs out of my eyes and tapped my earpiece.

“All units, assist the Japanese military in exterminating the remnant demonkins, then transition your focus entirely to maritime rescue operations.”

“Yes, sir!”

The Magic Tower’s combat mage unit, spearheaded by Kim Sarang and Jo Yonghui, aggressively engaged the remaining demonkins. The Japanese defense forces weren’t exactly pushovers either, and with our immediate reinforcement, they smoothly transitioned into a fierce counterattack. The chaotic tide of battle steadily began to stabilize.

“Thank you for the support, Commander!” a man in a scorched naval uniform shouted as he sprinted over to me, snapping a crisp salute. “I am Matsumoto Shunsuke, Deputy Commander of the Japanese Defense Forces.”

I returned the nod. “Alliance Commander Kim Yusin. What’s the current damage report?”

“Over twenty of our warships have been sunk, and that’s just the preliminary tally we’ve gathered so far.” Matsumoto wiped a smear of soot and sweat from his forehead with his sleeve. “I have no face to show you, sir. To think my fleet would be crippled this badly in such a short window of time…”

“I’m honestly quite baffled myself,” I admitted. “What exactly happened here?”

Excluding the absolute apex fighters like Certified Rank 1 hunters, the overall Japanese hunter scene was globally evaluated to possess a baseline combat power similar to South Korea’s, if not a slightly deeper talent pool. For their heavily fortified naval base to be ripped apart this thoroughly in less than an hour was highly suspicious.

“We were sabotaged from the inside,” Matsumoto growled, his fists clenched tight. “Hunters we thought were our brothers-in-arms were actually sleeper demonkins. When the attack began, the traitors simultaneously detonated the munitions armories inside the warships…”

“I see.”

It was an achingly familiar tactic.

“Furthermore, our defensive line was heavily depleted because the vast majority of our Certified Rank 3 and above hunters flocked inland to raid the newly fallen towers. I… I have no excuses, Commander.”

After wrapping up my briefing with Matsumoto, I stared out at the burning wreckage and fell into deep thought.

This entire operation has gone completely off the rails from step one.

I wasn’t blaming Japan for this mess; I was analyzing the macro flow of the global situation.

Everything kept getting snarled by the petty geopolitical power struggles between the Alliance and the superpower nations. Even the simple act of assembling our vanguard in a single staging ground had utterly failed, all thanks to the toxic winds of selfish nationalism sweeping across the globe.

At this point, the only properly structured force we had was the First Fleet, where the die-hard Alliance loyalists and the EU militaries had consolidated. The rest of the fragmented global fleets were essentially sitting ducks—ripe for the picking and absolutely perfect targets for the Führer to divide and conquer, exactly as he was doing right now.

In a political climate where the Alliance had lost all its coercive bargaining chips, relying solely on moral obligations and emotional appeals to unify humanity’s scattered military strength was realistically impossible.

Especially since the two greatest global superpowers, the United States and China, had blatantly pulled out of the vanguard effort. Without them taking the brunt of the risk, why would any other nation willingly pour large amounts of their own troops into a meat grinder?

We couldn’t afford any more pointless casualties. Plan A was officially scrapped.

I pulled up my comms and dialed Phil.

—”Secretary-General, it’s Kim Yusin. As of this exact moment, I am officially disbanding all international assault fleets.”

—”…Excuse me?” Phil stammered, clearly stunned.

—”Send every last ship back to their respective home countries. Order them to focus entirely on defending the perimeters around the Towers of Judgment. And of course, remind them that direct offensive assaults on the towers remain strictly forbidden. I will notify you when it’s time to form the second assault team.”

I had completely changed my mind.

These selfish bureaucratic bastards clearly wouldn’t listen to logic or reason anyway. I needed to let them know exactly what the hell they had just done by breaking rank.

*

It took an excruciating amount of time to persuade Phil to actually authorize the vanguard’s withdrawal.

—”Even so, I cannot accept this drastic decision!” Phil had argued over the line. “If we dissolve the assault teams right now, who is going to hunt down Nemesis and end this disaster?!”

Because Phil was so vehemently opposed to the retreat, I had no choice but to reveal a small, classified fraction of my true plan to him.

Once he finally understood the inside story, he reluctantly agreed after a long, heavy deliberation, and immediately convened an emergency summit of the global association presidents.

Unsurprisingly, the opinions of the association presidents from each country were split right down the middle.

“Is the Commander out of his mind?! You want us to turn back now?”

“And just when exactly is he planning to form this hypothetical ’second’ assault team?!”

“If we scatter our navies now, the forces we manage to scrounge up later will be even more pathetic than what we have today! It’s do or die—we have to settle this right now!”

The voices screaming in favor of continuing the desperate push all belonged to the principled faction, much like Phil. But the opposing side was just as vocal.

“The Commander is being pragmatic,” an allied president fired back. “Let’s recall our ships, catch our collective breath, and reassess.”

“Exactly! With America and China completely gone, we’re down half our global fighting force. What exactly are the rest of us supposed to accomplish by sailing into that new continent by ourselves?”

“If we blindly press forward at this rate, we’re just going to get picked off one by one by the Führer on the open ocean!”

The opposing faction argued that the onslaught from the monsters and Fiends was far more ferocious than anticipated, making any breakthrough impossible without the cooperation of the United States and China. Their stance was to stabilize their own territories first before attempting another push.

Of course, setting aside the pros and cons of the retreat, the world’s attention had already shifted to the aftermath of Nemesis.

Even if the Alliance threw all its forces into the meat grinder and somehow managed to kill Nemesis, it would only mark the beginning of an oppressive global regime led by America and China, who had hoarded their military strength. For the Alliance, it meant facing an enemy even more troublesome than the monsters.

The vote proceeded, and the motion to retreat passed by a razor-thin margin of just two votes.

The announcement of the assault teams’ dissolution turned the world completely upside down. Citizens waiting desperately in underground shelters for news of humanity’s victory were left utterly dumbfounded.

What good were strong national defenses? Without the assault teams, there was no winning this war. They would just be trapped underground, holding out for a year, maybe a decade, only to eventually starve to death.

Global Coalition Plays Hardball: Assault Teams Withdrawn!

What is the True Reason Behind the Withdrawal of Humanity’s Only Hope?

Why Are the Arrows of Blame Pointing Squarely at the US and China?

Is There No Hope Left for Humanity? Defending the Towers is Meaningless Unless Nemesis is Defeated.

US DoD Expresses Strong Concern and Disappointment: “The Assault Teams Must Be Maintained.”

The leading non-participating nations, the United States and China, were thrown into absolute chaos by the news.

If the assault teams took down Nemesis for them, it was a win. Even if they failed, the Alliance would eventually be forced to crawl to them and beg for reinforcements. Then, America and China could extort massive amounts of resources, milk the situation for all the credit it was worth, and still dispatch exactly as few troops as they wanted.

But now the assault teams had completely dissolved, and the brunt of the global backlash was squarely aimed at the non-participating nations—especially the United States, who had started the trend.

To make matters worse, the current US administration was catching flak from its own citizens, who had previously given them unwavering support.

America’s Poster Boy hunter Hines Thwarted by the Eighth Floor’s Wall.

Hunter Hines Refuses Interviews, Requests Sixth Troop Reinforcement from Association.

Estimated Damages from the Portland Tower Assault Exceed 22 Billion USD.

Tower of Judgment Also Drops in Brooklyn, New York. Necessity of the Portland Tower Assault Plummets.

Hines was completely shitting the bed. Honestly, with the amount of support he had received, he should have cleared it by now. Whatever his excuses were, he just kept failing.

Yet, he somehow always managed to save his own skin. American netizens were even starting to spread rumors that Hines was secretly a Fiend.

“S-Sir.”

Jin Bora approached me upon my return to the Magic Tower. Sweating bullets, she pointed a trembling finger at her phone.

“Who is it?” I asked.

Since I had completely turned off my phone, it seemed they had reached out to her instead. She trembled, speaking in a tiny voice.

“I-It’s the US Secretary of Defense.”

“Huh? Give it here.”

After abolishing the hunter Association system, the United States had made the Secretary of Defense the supreme commander over both the traditional military and the hunters. I pressed the phone against my ear.

—”This is Kim Yusin.”

—”This is Dick Green, Secretary of Defense for the United States.” His voice was deep and resonant, but his speaking tempo was incredibly fast. “I apologize for being so abrupt on our first introduction, but I have to ask you one thing. Are you out of your mind?!”

I couldn’t help but laugh at that.

—”About what?”

—”Disbanding the assault teams! Are you trying to get us all killed or what?!”

—”I don’t see why I have to listen to this from America. I’m hanging up.”

—”No, wait!” A distinct sense of urgency bled into Dick Green’s voice. “I don’t know what the Alliance was thinking, giving full authority to a greenhorn like you! Listen here, Tower Master! Between the Bahrain terrorist incident and now this, aren’t you taking the international community too lightly? If you were going to dissolve the assault teams, you should have at least informed the non-participating nations and coordinated your opinions! Where in the world does someone just unilaterally disband everything like this?!”

America hadn’t reacted immediately when they first heard the news of the assault teams’ dissolution. They probably thought our announcement was a bluff, a strategic move to drag them to the negotiating table.

But they had underestimated me far too much. The Alliance’s fleets were conspicuously turning their ships around and heading back to their respective countries, and America had grown desperate.

—”I believe you are mistaken about something, Mr. Secretary,” I finally said. “The reason we disbanded the assault teams was because we judged that breaking through the Pacific Ocean and entering the new continent with our current forces alone would be too difficult.”

—”Tower Master! No, hunter Kim Yusin! Why do you think I contacted you on a personal line? I didn’t call to listen to your PR talking points.” I heard him take a sharp breath. “How many troops do we need to send for you to cancel the disbandment?”

The corners of my mouth curled up.

He took the bait. And with this, it was completely clear who held the upper hand.

—”I don’t like repeating myself.”

—”Look here! You are the Supreme Commander in the face of this disaster! Do you really have no sense of responsibility for the safety of humanity?! We’re the ones extending an olive branch, and you’re going to just kick it away? This is practically a dereliction of duty!”

—”It’s pretty funny hearing you talk about responsibility.”

—”…Ahem!” Dick Green let out a fake cough and hurriedly continued. “That was simply a difference in the values pursued by us and the Alliance. Our primary goal is protecting our own citizens. Fighting the disaster comes second. We never said we wouldn’t send troops to the assault teams! Furthermore, the Alliance only spends our money, but the ones who actually give us that money are our citizens! What is wrong with a government protecting the very people who fund it?!”

—”For someone in the position of Secretary, you sure spout a lot of sophistry,” I retorted coldly. “I told you, I don’t like repeating myself. But out of courtesy, I’ll say this one last time. The assault teams are disbanded. There will be no reversal. And this decision was made entirely independent of any negotiations with the nations that refused to participate.”

He fell silent over the line.

—”If you want to show some sincerity, you can prepare a massive number of troops for the second assault team that will be formed in the future. And as a bonus piece of advice, you should stop wasting your forces on pointless things like the Tower of Judgment. I’m hanging up now.”

—”W-Wait! Then when is this second assault team going to be launched?!”

—”We’ll notify you when the time is right.”

I immediately ended the call and handed the phone back to Jin Bora.

“Block him.”

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