Solo Leveling- Ragnarok-Chapter 268

Yuri Orloff was not only the prime minister of Russia but also an S-rank hunter. He was the most powerful figure in the country.

Not even the most reckless individual in Russia would dare set foot in his chamber uninvited. Even if he hadn’t been so strong, one would still have to contend with his security detail, a force consisting of both armed soldiers and elite hunters which guarded him with more care than even the Russian president.

Yet despite all that, an uninvited guest now stood before Yuri. Not only had this individual entered without alerting his guards, but he also seemed wholly unafraid of the prime minister’s presence. If anything, the visitor seemed mocking.

“Is something in your ears? One of your goddamn barriers has been breached.”

“What?!” Yuri exclaimed, scowling.

The wine glass in his hand shattered, and sharp shards of glass flew everywhere. Before the crimson liquid could spill onto the floor, it floated into the air. The red droplets swirled into a rippling sphere. It looked almost like blood encased in some invisible container.

Barriers were Yuri’s signature ability, the very power that had lifted him from the depths of obscurity and placed him at the pinnacle of Russia’s hierarchy. The idea that one had been broken was a direct insult to his pride.

“Impossible,” he growled. “The Terrarium barriers are perfect. No one should be able to break through them.”

The visitor scoffed. “You are overconfident. It has been broken. Some lawless individuals have trampled and burned down one of my favorite gardens. You seemed so sure of yourself. How shoddy are these barriers of yours?”

Yuri clenched his teeth as he glared at the intruder. A massive surge of hostility exploded from his body, pressing down on the individual with the full weight of his fury.

No one in Russia could withstand Yuri Orloff’s wrath and remain sane. He was the pinnacle of power in the country, and even the Russian president was beneath him. If Yuri so wished, even the most righteous person on earth could be put to death immediately.

However, his uninvited guest remained unmoved. Instead, the visitor glared back and ground his teeth, matching Yuri’s intensity.

“Put that angry stare away before I pluck your eyes out. Your pride is irrelevant to me. What matters are my gardens.”

The individual cocked his hip, leaning on the window Yuri had been staring through moments before. He folded his arms in utter disdain.

“So tell me, are you absolutely certain your barriers have no weaknesses?”

“None,” Yuri answered firmly.

His large hand gripped the globe of wine floating in front of them. His immense strength bore down on the liquid, compressing it. But unlike the surface of the wine glass, the transparent barrier encasing the wine held firm.

“See? This is the same as the barriers I placed over the Terrariums. They have been enhanced with a great many mana crystals. They are so powerful that not even an S-rank hunter could break through them, no matter how much strength they use.”

“Don’t be so confident. I never expected a mere human to have perfect power. I am simply asking for a solution now that your barriers have been proven faulty.”

“Hmm...”

Yuri’s boiling anger gradually subsided as he watched the intruder respond with calm composure. Now cooled off, he leaned back against his chair and folded his arms as he spoke again.

“Which Terrarium was breached?”

“One in North Korea.”

“Hmm... North Korea... We took extra care in that area,” Yuri muttered. “Especially since that bothersome chairman of their association is around.”

“I am aware. So figure it out. I have a number of gardens in paradise. If one was taken down, the same can happen to the others. And you know how bad that would be for you.”

“As I told you multiple times, no one gets through my barriers. Even if Woo Jinchul and Choi Jongin of South Korea were to attack at the same time—”

Yuri, who had been rubbing his chin to collect his thoughts, suddenly stopped short. He had realized that even his perfect barriers were not completely without weaknesses. There was one way in—though it was tiny and nearly impossible.

“What if they didn’t get through by force?” he muttered.

“Your pride knows no bounds. Are you suggesting that the Elvenwood itself opened the barrier to an outsider?”

“Yes. That would make sense, wouldn’t it?”

“An Elvenwood would have no reason to do so,” said the visitor firmly.

Yuri scoffed. “Let me throw those words back at you. Don’t be so confident. If you don’t know how that might have happened, you should be looking into it. Or are you going to stand here all day whining? It’s your gardens that are at risk. You call yourself an Apostle of Paradise, so try to live up to the name.”

As Yuri glared at the guest with eyes as cold as a snake’s, he revealed his teeth.

“Besides, you are the one who surrounded the Terrariums with your own magic to prevent them from being detected, are you not? You even distorted the space so that nobody would see one even if they were standing right in front of it. You told me that yourself.” 𝒇𝒓𝙚𝒆𝔀𝓮𝓫𝒏𝓸𝙫𝓮𝓵.𝓬𝙤𝙢

The Apostle of Paradise could say nothing in response.

Yuri was right. The Terrariums, or the “gardens” in which the Elvenwoods grew, were shrouded in blue mist. Not even satellite imaging would reveal their location.

Even if someone got close, the anti-recognition magic mixed into the mist would prevent them from seeing the Elvenwood tree inside. It would be invisible, even immediately in front of them. They would unknowingly be rerouted around the area, their path subtly altered by the spatial distortion.

None of these measures, however, were without flaws.

The Apostle of Paradise nodded, muttering quietly, “You have a point. The anti-detection magic and spatial distortion only apply at ground level. One could approach a Terrarium from the sky, on a plane, for instance. It is not entirely impossible.”

Still, such a thing would never happen. A Terrarium was always surrounded by rampaging spirits, ceaselessly soaring through the air. Flying a plane or a chopper over one was tantamount to suicide. Even the strongest hunter would fare better fighting on the ground, unless they somehow strapped on wings.

As a result, hunters could only reach a Terrarium by land. There were no exceptions.

“North Korea, you said?” Yuri picked up a tablet PC from the table, his fingers gliding across the screen as he muttered, “Let’s see now. North Korea...”

He continued scrolling until he stopped at a recent South Korean news article.

—Breaking News: Sung Suho Headed to North Korea!

—Hot News: Cha Haein Appears on Her Black Dragon!

“Black... dragon?” Yuri muttered.

He tapped on the article, and a photograph expanded across the screen. A massive black dragon, its wings stretched wide, was soaring toward North Korea. Atop its back, Suho and his companions could be seen.

Yuri’s expression stiffened.

Sung Suho, the hero of India!

Despite the young hunter’s growing reputation, not much was publicly known about his abilities. For some reason, the South Korean Hunters Association had tightly restricted all information about him.

However, the image of Suho riding a black dragon confirmed Yuri’s suspicions.

“So he’s a summoner after all. Then those black magic beasts around him weren’t from a dungeon break... They were all his summons?”

The realization was absurd, but his expression grew grave.

He had seen the photos of Suho from India. The black creatures that had swarmed around him—too many to count—had all belonged to that hunter?

That meant the nagging concern he had after first seeing those articles about Suho was right all along. Now it appeared the hunter could even summon a dragon.

“But even an S-rank hunter would need to draw from an external mana source to maintain that many summons, the same way I do. One person couldn’t possibly amass enough mana crystals to pull this off... unless his association was training him in secret...”

Yuri knew about mana crystals, having used plenty himself. Considering just how many summons Suho had brought forth in India, he could roughly estimate the number of mana crystals he must have burned through.

But that wasn’t the most troubling part.

“South Korea is a democratic country. Legally, there’s no way they’d funnel that many resources into a single hunter. Not even Woo Jinchul would be able to do something so drastic. Or... is it possible this ‘Suho’ is like me...?”

Yuri knew something others did not. His eyes flashed as he glared at Suho’s face in the photo, as though he had just uncovered a hidden secret about South Korea.

“This hunter might be like me. He’s taken control of his country in the background.”

The more he considered it, the more certain he became. He himself had proven that a hunter with enough power and influence could dominate an entire nation from the shadows.

“Or perhaps Jinchul had control of South Korea from the start. Suho might be their secret weapon, or someone controlled by Jinchul for some reason.”

A dozen theories raced through Yuri’s mind, but at this moment, none of them mattered. The only thing that did matter was that Suho had flown into North Korea on his massive dragon and that the Terrariums which Yuri had personally placed barriers over were directly in his path.

Now that he had figured out the situation, a cruel smile appeared on his lips.

“Heh. No wonder I had a bad feeling about him.”

It was bad premonitions that tended to be right.

Yuri handed the tablet to the Apostle of Paradise and said mockingly, “See? Turns out the problem wasn’t me. It was you.”

He grabbed a half-empty bottle of wine and took a long, slow sip, smirking at his guest.

“You Apostles are all the same, always acting high-and-mighty until something goes wrong. Then you come running to whine about it.”

Having delivered a proper blow to the arrogant follower of the Outer Gods, Yuri snickered to himself.

Despite the blatant mockery, the Apostle of Paradise didn’t respond. His sharp gaze remained locked on the photo of Suho, or more specifically, on the shadow wyvern Kaisel.

“This... doesn’t make sense.”

Having spotted the mass of shadow soldiers surrounding the hunter in the next photo, the Apostle seemed shaken.

“How can a shadow army exist on Earth?” he murmured.

“A shadow army?” Yuri repeated, cocking his head.

But the Apostle wasn’t listening. His mind was racing, the worst-case scenario already lodged in his head.

“It can’t be... No. That’s not possible.”

The worst possible scenario was if the Monarch of Shadows, who should have been in the Outer Universes, had returned.

“That clearly can’t be.”

No matter how much he thought about it, it did not make any sense. But what were the odds that the Monarch had sent only his army instead of coming himself? That was just as unbelievable.

“It is much too far for his mana to reach. If mana could travel so far, we followers wouldn’t have needed to go through so much trouble.”

If the great power of the Outer Gods couldn’t fully reach Earth, then the power of the Shadow Monarch definitely wouldn’t come close. The distance between Earth’s dimension and the Outer Universes was too great.

The Apostle looked back at Yuri.

“So who is this human, then?”

“Do you have to ask? His name is Sung Suho, and he’s currently the most popular hunter in South Korea. Ah, right. You noble Apostles don’t care about the names of petty humans, do you?”

“Not so. I am interested now. I need all the information I can get on this human. Anything.”

“Haha! You’re asking for something difficult. Information about him is classified, even in South Korea. If I can get it for you, what will you do for me?”

“What do you need?”

Yuri grinned, a knowing expression on his face as he watched the Apostle of Paradise. “I like how ready you are to strike a bargain. See, this is why I can’t hate you people.”

“Wait,” said the Apostle as his expression changed to one of distress. “Another garden was just destroyed.”

Yuri’s face twisted as well. “What? Where?”

“It is the closest to the last.”

“Son of a b*tch!”

It seemed clear that Suho really was responsible for this.

It was just too much. So much effort had gone into making the Terrariums, and the young hunter had ruined two in a single day. Considering the value of the fruits produced there, Yuri’s losses were on an astronomical scale.

“This is not good. If we let this continue, the other gardens will also be in danger,” Yuri growled.

However, they were dealing with an S-rank hunter. He couldn’t just send men over there immediately.

The location being North Korea only made things more complicated. It could end up turning into a political nightmare. That was precisely why anti-detection magic had been used to conceal the Terrariums in the first place—since Russia was Yuri’s domain, no such magic was necessary to conceal anything here.

“I’ll go. In the meantime, you must find out everything about this Sung Suho,” said the Apostle of Paradise.

The next instant, he disappeared as though erased from existence.

“He’s like a damn ghost. Who is he to order me around?”

Yuri flung his empty wine bottle at the spot where the Apostle had stood. He then summoned his secretaries immediately, instructing them to launch a full investigation into Sung Suho.

There was one detail he still could not understand, however.

“How did that kid get through my barriers, anyway?”

Even if Suho had an army of summons and even a dragon to ride on, the barriers Yuri had carefully crafted weren’t so flimsy that they could be knocked down with brute force.

“I know I’m the one who suggested it, but the Elvenwoods couldn’t have opened the way willingly...” he muttered, looking doubtful.

But as per usual, uneasy feelings were rarely wrong.

***

“You, young elf, have lost your way.”

“Allow us to show you our beautiful city of Elvenwood.”

The city’s great doors opened wide. The young ice elf, Sirka, walked ahead, leading Suho and his party into the village without trouble. The Elvenwood tree itself parted the barrier willingly at her presence, allowing them all safe passage.

The high elves who came out to greet them flashed hypocritical, deceptive smiles. Suho met their gazes and said a single word.

“Three.”

“What...?” asked one of the elves.

“This is the third tree. The third keel we need.”

[Skill: “Breath of Destruction” has activated.]

The flames of destruction flew at the shocked high elves.

“Wh-what is this—?!”

Suho grinned. “There is no need for conversation, is there?”