“Everyone, stay close to me!”

Tuner’s declaration of war made Se-Hoon instantly move. He had yet to figure out anything about how Tuner had altered the world, but escaping the encirclement that had been built up over centuries with his companions came first.

So, once the three girls gathered around him, Se-Hoon wasted no time in using the power of Space to travel as far away as possibl—

Woong!

He failed to pass through the barrier? Having seemingly bounced off something, Se-Hoon was unable to escape as the scenery changed into the skyline seen from the rooftop of some building.

He even blocked spatial movement?

Se-Hoon couldn’t hide his surprise, genuinely not expecting even the power of Space to be suppressed. And because of that momentary pause, thousands of gun barrels had finished reloading and taken aim once more.

They were now surrounded by glowing blue lights, ready to rain down compressed mana from their muzzles.

“Looks like we’ll have to break through head-on.”

Slash-

Moving before the barrels could fire, Aria had already swung Dawnlight toward the front and left a golden line sliced across the air, severing the mana shield spread over the barrier.

Crack-

The outer wall of the barrier was unable to resist, splitting into thousands of branches that streaked in every direction. Of course, the gun barrels in its path weren’t spared as each exploded in a chain reaction once engulfed by sword aura.

Boom! Boom! Boom!

With a single strike, Aria had opened the way out of a barrier that had taken centuries to build.

“Now!”

Without missing a beat, Se-Hoon scooped Terra into his arms and leapt through the broken section of the barrier, followed close behind by Eun-Ha and Aria like escorts.

However, the instant they burst through the dust-choked remains of the shield and saw the view.... A second barrier awaited them, stretching across the horizon to block the world itself.

He really ground his teeth preparing this...

The world of centuries ago had vanished without a trace. All that remained in its place were traps built solely to imprison Se-Hoon.

“Tsk.”

With just a look, it was clear how difficult their breakthrough would be. Turning, Se-Hoon opened his mouth—

Rumble~

The ground around them split open, and gigantic spider-like machines emerged.

[Designated entity ‘Golden’ confirmed. Commencing interception.]

The single-lens eyes of the armored spiders glowed red as four of their eight legs split apart to reveal chainsaw-like weapons. Dozens then lunged at them, prompting Aria to swing Dawnlight once more and scattered sword aura in all directions.

Clang!

The meeting of the armored spiders’ four chainsaw-like weapons and the incoming sword aura, blade against blade, was golden sparks....?

“What?!”

Aria was astonished. She had expected the strike to slice through the weapon and body alike. And what was even more astonishing was that the spiders’ saw blades spun faster, bursting with golden light.

Crack-

More than half of the spiders surrounding them failed to block the sword aura completely and were torn apart. Still, the rest barely neutralized the attack and survived.

In terms of numbers, it was a miserable result, with more than half being destroyed by a casual probing strike. However, the surviving were far from miserable.

[Unable to measure mana concentration. Altering interception pattern.]

[Analyzing sword aura waves. Activating sword aura fission device.]

Woong!

A strange vibration rippled through the spiders’ saw blades, resonating with one another. In response, dozens of pillars rose from the ground in the distance. From them, a faint golden veil spread out.

Watching it, Aria narrowed her eyes at the bizarre reaction—

Bzzt-

She looked down, feeling a change occurring in her sword aura that was gathered along Dawnlight. Once perfectly straight and unwavering, the sword aura was now distorted as though interference had corrupted it. The strands of energy clinging to the blade collided with one another, resulting in multiple bursts of sparks.

In an instant, her sword aura now looked as if a single stream had split into hundreds of pieces and begun crashing against itself.

“How...”

Aria frowned. She had never once witnessed that since picking up Dawnlight.

Whoosh- Clang!

Unfortunately, she didn’t have time to figure it out since the armored spiders completed their adaptation and were charging forth again.

Aria retaliated with another spray of sword aura—which was shattered without difficulty by every single spider without impeding their rush. They were seemingly completely different enemies from before. Anyone could see that those armored spiders were now specifically meant to deal with Aria.

Thus, Eun-Ha stepped in on her behalf.

Fwoosh-

Her Soul Furnace ignited, turning her hair and eyes a blazing crimson. The engravings flaring across both arms burned with fire as her fists swung forward.

BOOM!

Shooting forward like a meteor, her punch pulverized and incinerated the armored spiders in her path to the second barrier in the distance.

During her charge, the cannons mounted on the barrier unleashed a torrent of mana shells at her. Yet, each one was swallowed up and melted away the moment they contacted the flames wrapped around her body.

“Hmph...!”

Reaching the barrier in the blink of an eye, Eun-Ha drew back her clenched fist that blazed brilliantly. In the meantime, the mana shield covering the barrier compressed into a single point before her.

Woosh-

Eun-Ha’s charged crimson meteor swung toward the condensed shield... and shattered it with ease to slam straight into the barrier.

BOOM!

With a deafening crash, the second barrier was now also destroyed. Like before, Se-Hoon’s group rushed to cross through before new reinforcements could arrive.

[Designated entity ‘Meteor’ confirmed. Commencing interception.]

Jellyfish-like mechanical constructs appeared high in the sky, all extending their tentacles toward the flames that had burned through the wall to “greet” them.

[Detected Synesthetic Mindscape energy. Activating neutralization system.]

With the sacrifice of half of the armored jellyfish that melted away trying to devour Eun-Ha’s flames, the remaining ones glowed crimson from successfully consuming them.

That sight, along with the third barrier stretching in the distance, made Se-Hoon frown.

Tuner, you bastard... what exactly did you do?

With the previous armored spiders and the jellyfish, it was obvious Tuner was specifically analyzing Aria’s sword aura and Eun-Ha’s flames to produce specialized troops in response. That was nothing unusual.

However, Tuner’s specialized troops turned out to be too perfect, making them especially unsettling. Aria’s sword aura and Eun-Ha’s flames both surpassed S-rank, and in some sense, even touched the threshold of the Perfect Ones. Se-Hoon knew that he himself wouldn’t find it easy to counter them.

Yet Tuner’s mechanized army was doing it with such absurd ease?

Did he steal their abilities?

Thinking back to how Tuner had once stolen the power of Boundaries using Wurgen’s bones, Se-Hoon wondered if he possessed some ability specialized in analyzing and dismantling the abilities of others.

If that were the case, then breaking through this siege wouldn’t be so. He stepped forward—

“No. You shouldn’t step in.”

Aria moved in front of him, blocking his path.

“You can’t recover your mana, so if you fight already, who do we have to rely on later? Leave this to us for now and prepare more spatial magic instead.”

“But if I fight while absorbing mana from those things—”

“I don’t think that would be wise. Crunch.”

Looking over, they saw Eun-Ha biting into a fragment of one of the armored spiders. However, after chewing it a few times, she spat it onto the ground.

“There’s an alien force mixed into both the metal and the mana. It seems they refined the Abyss’ power and infused it inside.”

“Looks like he really prepared thoroughly.”

That was the source of Tuner’s confidence in casting planetary magic. He was prepared for the current situation from the very beginning.

Do I need to take out the Aeon Sphere?

The original plan had been to use the Void sealed inside the Aeon Sphere to punch a hole through Tuner’s world, then have Terra destroy it completely.

After all, unlike the Demon King’s world, Tuner’s was still incomplete and part of it had already been eroded by the Towers of Heroes; interference definitely seemed possible.

...No. Not yet.

Se-Hoon discarded the idea after more thought. Considering that Tuner’s interference was preventing the power of Space from functioning properly, if he carelessly released the Void, there was every chance he would lose control and trigger a resonance.

That left only Aria’s option as the correct one. It was better to leave the battle to the two of them and look for an opening together with Terra.

“Alright. Then tell me immediately if it gets dangerous.”

“Don’t worry about us and just keep up. We’re going to move even faster from here on.”

“Yes. We’ll block every attack aimed at the two of you; don’t worry about anything else and focus.”

Nodding at Aria and Eun-Ha’s urging, Se-Hoon tightened his hold on Terra and started running once more toward the mechanized troops and the third barrier standing in their way.

Rumble-

The opening skirmish had seemingly ended. From both the sky and underground, Tuner’s mechanized weapons now endlessly appeared. On top of those, new devices continually appeared across the battlefield in support against them.

[Designated entity ‘Witch’ confirmed. Commencing interception.]

[Synesthetic Mindscape erosion detected. Activating blocking protocol.]

One of those devices included circular spheres, which cut off Terra’s attempts to use magic to survey their surroundings.

With all odds against them, Se-Hoon’s party continued forcing their way through the resistance. The third, fourth, fifth, and then the sixth barriers were all broken through.

Yet, to their dismay, more barriers kept appearing no matter how many they smashed. Even though it felt like they had already run hundreds of kilometers, more kept appearing.

Did he cover the entire continent in barriers...?

Still, they never stopped. If they kept forcing their way forward, they would eventually reach wherever Tuner was.

After all, they were not in a full-scale war. It was a race against time.

Woong!

Part of an enormous magic array suddenly appeared in the sky, and all the power of the planet began converging somewhere beyond the horizon. Tuner’s planetary magic had seemingly finally begun full operation.

That meant, at their current rate, they would never stop Tuner’s spell. Thus Se-Hoon’s decision was quick.

Terra. Activate the Tower of Heroes.

While he was still clueless as to the trap Tuner had prepared, there was just no way he could allow some suspicious spell meant to turn him into a god forcibly reach completion

“Give me a moment to focus!”

Terra closed her eyes in concentration, sending the seven powers dwelling within her body stretching up toward their origin.

Woong!

A pillar of light blending seven colors shot into the sky from Terra, piercing beyond Tuner’s world and reaching the Golden Ring. Then, the moment Terra exercised her authority as the Towers’ Administrator, gold flashed in the heavens.

BOOM!

A pure-white tower crashed into the earth before them, blowing away the forces surrounding the four of them in an instant. In its wake, even the part of the planetary spell spread across the sky had been left destroyed.

Thanks to that, the invisible pressure suppressing Se-Hoon and Terra disappeared. With it gone, the power of Space returned, and through the Tower of Heroes, all the information in the world came flooding in.

“Administrator!”

“Got it!”

Taking the coordinates of what appeared to be the center of the planetary spell Terra sent him, Se-Hoon immediately wrapped everyone in the power of Space. He wasted no time, not allowing the magic array in the sky to fully restore itself, and brought everyone above an artificial island in the middle of the sea.

That’s... Babel?

On second look, it was smaller than the real Babel, despite the coordinates being identical and the tower in the center of the island. The only notable difference was one: unlike Babel’s pure-white Tower of Pristine, the tower on the artificial island was pitch-black. It was so menacing it looked as if it had been made from the Abyss itself.

“To the Black Tower!”

Se-Hoon didn’t know why Tuner had created a false Babel either, but regardless, deporting it—which seemed to be the core of the planetary spell—came first.

Dropping, they successfully weaved through the artillery bombarding them from below—only to have a hawk scattering golden feathers and a whale spewing flames block their way.

“You go first!”

“We’ll catch up soon!”

Aria stopped the flaming whale with a swing of Dawnlight; Eun-Ha blocked the golden hawk with a punch.

Protected by the two, Se-Hoon reached the top of the black tower. Hovering above, he held Terra tightly against him and pulled out the Aeon Sphere. It was time to unseal it and release the Void—

Snap.

The black tower and the island disappeared.

Instead, Se-Hoon found himself and Terra now in a bizarre world where a white sky and black earth stretched on forever. And there, standing before them, was Tuner himself in the bird-beak mask.

“Welcome. You’re not too la—”

Before the easy, relaxed words of the strange creature spreading its arms out could finish, Se-Hoon exploded with all the mana he had been conserving and charged.

WOONG!

With Stellar Radiance, a sword aura created with the Celestial Infinity Blade, he severed Tuner’s limbs and decimated his entire body. It took but the blink of an eye for Tuner’s whole body to be removed without a trace and for Stellar Radiance to pierce straight through that bird-beak mask.

Fwoosh-

Transparent flames and golden light simultaneously bloomed from Tuner’s head where the sword aura had pierced it, flaring as it started burning.

Seeing that, Se-Hoon focused. He had severed the Tuner’s connection to the outside with the power of Space and the power of Boundaries, seized a guaranteed instant-kill opening with the power of Perception and the power of Premotion, then incinerated the remnants with the power of Grace and the power of Anatta.

He had specifically prepared that killing blow which linked six Perfect One powers to kill Tuner. Surely even Tuner, who had always survived by moving his body elsewhere, would not survive the blow that landed perfectly.

“...”

And until now, even when he killed Tuner the first time, there had always remained a nagging sense that Tuner was still alive somehow. But not now. Se-Hoon was certain: he had truly severed Tuner’s life.

And yet, he did not lower his guard. After all, the strange world remained even after Tuner’s death.

“A sure-kill technique using six powers, huh? At that level, you could probably wipe out a Perfect One or a Harbinger in one hit.”

The voice echoing around them made it clear. Once again, against all odds, Tuner had survived yet again by some unknown means.

Terra! Use the Tower of Heroes to bring this place down!

Without showing it on her face, Terra began activating the Tower of Heroes at Se-Hoon’s command.

“Lee Se-Hoon. Do you know how much of a difference there really is between a hero and a demon?”

“...”

“People usually talk about mana and demonic aura or the physical changes in organs and body structure. But the truth is a little different. Those are only secondary effects—things that happen during the transformation.”

Se-Hoon gave no answer to Tuner’s sudden rambling. Whether Tuner was trying to stall for time or preach another twisted ideology, it didn’t matter. Regardless, Se-Hoon had no intention of dancing to his tune any longer.

“Surprisingly, heroes and demons are not all that different. Only about thirteen percent of the body. Once that percentage is corrupted by demonic aura, the synesthetic mindscape simply affects the flesh. Mutation naturally follows, which then turns them into demons.”

Tuner didn’t seem to mind Se-Hoon’s lack of response. As if leaving behind his final words, he was spilling the grotesque knowledge he had uncovered over a lifetime of research in a monologue.

“Conversely, if you can identify and perfectly remove that initial thirteen percent contamination site, you can return a demon to being a hero. That was the case with Apostate.”

“...”

“See? That’s just how little difference there really is between a hero and a demon. The gap can be bridged by carving away a little flesh. Now then. Answer this: what about a Perfect One~?”

Se-Hoon’s body froze at those words.

“What... did you say?” Se-Hoon replied without even realizing it.

“The body of a Perfect One is itself a fragment of their own power. So I became just a biiiiit curious. Even if you dismantled the entire body and chopped it into pieces, would the power remain inside it? How long could it go on being treated as a Perfect One~?”

Knowledge, which the only demon in the world to dissect a Perfect One knew, was being shared.

“Even after I cut off all four limbs, the body was still a Perfect One. Even after removing more than half of the internal organs, it was still a Perfect One. Even when I separated the eyes, the heart, and the tongue—the identification was a little weaker—it was still recognized as a Perfect One. ”

Tuner detailing every bit of the horrific process of experimentation inflicted on the Seeker to the last detail. Then, at last, he stopped and chuckled.

“And finally, when only a meager two percent of the body remained... that was when it finally stopped being a Perfect One. That was the point where it could become a demon.”

Se-Hoon was speechless, flabbergasted by the incomprehensible revelation. What was Tuner even saying, exactly? Exactly how far back had he been preparing for the current moment?

Left with only more questions, Se-Hoon instinctively turned toward where Terra was—

“Time for me to take it back. My body.”

Thud.

Terra’s hand pierced straight through Se-Hoon’s head.