Chapter 76 – The opponent is

Chapter 76 – The opponent is

Mana began to condense in the middle of the Monster’s corpse, which had dyed Baengnokdam Lake red.

Shhhhhh-

When the Monster was destroyed without form due to the strong impact, the Mana Stone, which should have been similarly destroyed, would reform in this way.

During The Man process, a small amount of mana and Essence would leak out, but overall, it was negligible.

Thud-

I immediately picked up the Mana Stone before it condensed from the air and fell.

“Good.”

I grinned.

However… there was a price for overexerting myself.

A sharp pain-

I had simply smiled, but the muscles in my face cramped as if they were seizing up. It wasn’t just my face.

Every time I moved, all my muscles were screaming.

It was because I had overused mana to strengthen my body, even though my ability wasn’t a physical one.

Thanks to him, I was practically incapacitated. If you added the penalty of having to shut down the Legion for a short time, it was an ability that caused more harm than good in many ways.

In other words, it was a kind of ‘mutual destruction.’

Meanwhile, I spoke to Yoon Sanghoon, who was staring at me with a dumbfounded expression, as if shocked by this destructive power.

“Could you please heal me?”

“Ah… yes!”

As he began to heal me, I signaled the Invisible Gladiator, who had been cautiously keeping an eye on him from behind, to step back a little.

It goes without saying that my memories of the past are not complete. And there was no guarantee that he would be the same as in the previous timeline. After all, he wasn’t even my former comrade.

But I couldn’t be completely disarmed in front of him, having only just met him.

So it was an unavoidable measure.

“Now, shall I polish your shoes as promised!”

But fortunately, Yoon Sanghoon, while quite strong on his own, sometimes showed a vulnerable side…

He seemed to be just as I remembered.

Seeing him like that, I completely dismissed the Gladiator and-

“There’s no need for that.”

I grinned.

And… this time, my facial muscles didn’t hurt.

* * *

After that, I watched from a distance as Sanghoon finally brought his loyalty business to a close.

The man slowly scattered the ashes of his loyal wife from the jar he brought into the lake, sometimes laughing and sometimes crying.

It seemed like he had forgotten I was behind him, and I thought that was a good thing.

‘It’s not my place to interfere.’

I let the man focus on his loyal task and made sure that nearby monsters couldn’t approach.

Even Poppy, who always growled for no reason, seemed to quietly mourn this time.

After spending some time like that, Sanghoon soon emptied the remaining water from the jar into the lake and stood up.

“Siwoo, thank you very much.”

The man had an expression I had never seen on him before. It was an expression of… relief.

***

“Oh, you’re four years younger than me…”

Sanghoon chattered incessantly.

“Just call me big brother comfortably.”

“Huh? Oh… really?”

I was astonished. The man in my previous life always kept his distance. It seemed this time would be different.

In fact, he wasn’t a talkative type to begin with.

“But the plane exploded, so how do we go home now?”

“Ah… that.”

“Do we have to swim?”

“……”

However, his way of thinking seemed to be not much different from his previous life. I shook my head at him and pointed to the materials that the worker bugs had painstakingly gathered.

“We have to reassemble this.”

Naturally, we couldn’t collect all the Mithril or Adamantite. So, about 20% had to be patched up using nearby trees.

And to compensate for the weakened hull, we had to remove a lot of interior items like beds, but after investing another full hour, we were able to shape it into a rather plausible form.

And I summoned the armored transport plane again.

Grrrr! Clunk! Rattle!

After that, the armored transport plane started flying, making a sound like it wasn’t using fire manipulation. Fortunately, this time, this aircraft didn’t need to fly across the Korean Peninsula.

It flew for about five minutes to the resort where Gwak Sangyong’s family was staying. There, we met Minju, who was waiting for my call, and quickly returned home.

***

As soon as we returned to the 6th floor of the shopping mall, we immediately became the center of attention for the castle maidens.

First was Sua.

“Oh my! Who is this child?”

Hearing that, Minju added excitedly.

“So tiny!”

She hadn’t taken her eyes off Poppy even before the spatial teleportation. Even Seoyeon, who was very shy, came over and said something.

“…Cute.”

However… Poppy’s reaction at that moment was consistent.

Poppy, who was trembling like an aspen tree as if a vibrating motor was attached, to the point where one might wonder if it was okay, began to bark warily at them.

“Grrrrr- Woof! Woof! Woof woof!”

She began to bark, wary of them.

“Wow, even her barking is cute.”

“Can I touch her?”

“Ah, yes, please do.”

However, everyone, including Sanghoon, seemed unconcerned. Poppy, who was held by several people in turn, soon got down on the shopping mall floor and began to walk around by herself.

“Yelp yelp yelp!”

At some point, she was startled, tucked her tail, and ran back to Sanghoon.

We were all surprised and checked the cause…

“Ding!?”

It seemed she was surprised by a worker bug.

***

After that, I introduced Sanghoon to everyone.

I also explained that he was a Healer.

After that, the Man went to tour the Castle, and he seemed quite interested in the use of Monster Material more than anything else.

“Oh… so this is the organ that collects mana, like the Man?”

It seemed he was not a Veterinarian after all.

Seeing how quickly he adapted in many ways, I decided to leave the Man to his own devices and focus on my work.

First, I registered the Essence of the Monster I caught at Baengnokdam Crater Lake in the Advanced Research Facility.

“Mana Absorption Amplification Essence, huh…”

It seemed to be a Monster that absorbed more mana from the atmosphere and grew stronger and stronger.

It also seemed to be the reason Sanghoon could never surpass it in his Previous Life. It was a Monster that was gradually becoming the Castle Lord, just like the Man.

‘I’m looking forward to the synergy with the mana facility.’

It seemed it would greatly help solve my mana problems.

Thinking that I hoped the Essence analysis would finish quickly, I moved on to the next pressing issue.

“Next is the Demon Villain to the east, I suppose.”

The contract with Gwak Sangyong. It was time to move on to the next stage after the Man.

***

Meanwhile, Gwak Sangyong, who had reunited with his family, had a much brighter expression.

The Man was holding an executive meeting, and the agenda was preparation for the next battle. They were also actively accelerating the merger of forces with Siwoo.

“How are the preparations for the Water resource for the battle progressing?”

“We are planning a partnership with the Merchant Alliance.”

“Thanks to the Man’s existing relationship with the Lord, things are progressing quite favorably.”

“We have also decided to unify the currency to Worker Bug Coins and exchange them.”

Gwak Sangyong smiled brightly.

“That’s a relief, the Man.”

“How much net profit can we expect?”

“Based on current estimates, we have over 400,000 Worker Bug Coins. Besides The Man, we can also generate a little extra income.”

“With The Man, we could…”

“Yes, if things go well, we could even start a civil engineering business.”

“The Man, that’s quite exciting.”

For Siwoo, Worker Bug Coins were just scraps of iron that The Man printed, but for other factions, it was different.

Possessing Worker Bug Coins also meant having a way to restore modern civilization, such as roads and water infrastructure.

They also took on roles that provided many products of civilization, like farming and other miscellaneous tasks.

In other words, the current standing of Worker Bug Coins was akin to the ‘price of civilization.’

Conversely, the Korean Peninsula, where Worker Bug Coin transactions were active, was almost the only place in the world that was preserving and even developing civilization.

Its value as currency, in particular, was unrivaled.

Even in the United States, one of the two places in the world where civilization had not yet declined, the value of the dollar was losing its power.

In the United States, the most commonly used currency was the 5.56mm rifle bullet. They were shifting to a real economy with tangible value instead of paper scraps.

Even so, the mere existence of currency was remarkable. Other countries that had held out for a long time were slowly collapsing.

Among them, key personnel from Anglo-American countries belonging to the Five Eyes, such as Australia and the United Kingdom, were somehow evacuating to the United States, but the majority of humanity was not so lucky.

For example, Africa had long since fallen into apocalypse.

Even Russia abandoned Moscow and fled to Saint Petersburg due to the endlessly encroaching Siberian Front.

With the fall of Moscow, the vast number of monsters flowing into the continent were devastating Central Asia and Europe.

China also lost Beijing and had no choice but to move south to Shanghai. Perhaps it was fortunate that they were in the Korean Peninsula, a periphery of the Siberian Front.

Otherwise, instead of snowballing, they would have had to focus even more on immediate combat. Of course… things would change even more once the Civilization Bulldozer arrived.

***

I observed the Villain located in Namhansanseong Fortress from the Observation Ship.

The one known as ‘Reaper,’ whose real name was unknown, was an estimated Black Mage.

He summoned and commanded a small elite group of powerful demons, and also skillfully fused and used monsters.

Unlike Choi Seunghwan, who spread his influence while hidden among humanity, he was practically a Mutant.

For him, ‘contact with humans’ was…

He was simply a “combat” man.

Furthermore, unlike Choi Seunghwan, he was also excellent at strengthening his main body, but he wasn’t the type to step up and fight.

And he also showed a concept of troop macro management that didn’t just focus on direct combat.

For example, he chose Namhansanseong Fortress, which was easy to defend and sparsely populated. And now, it wasn’t just Namhansanseong Fortress anymore; it was a powerful castle that he had built himself, adding his own defenses.

So… killing him, with all these advantages, was not an easy task.

‘I couldn’t kill him in the previous life.’

There were many times I pushed his forces hard, and I even raided his main base several times. But I never managed to kill the important Reaper himself.

He would escape like a rat over and over again, set up a main base elsewhere, and continuously threaten humanity.

‘This time will be different.’

But this time, it was different.

Thanks to the experience of the last round, I knew at least four ways he would escape. I was starting with knowledge of a significant portion of his escape routes.

Naturally, this was a considerable advantage.

‘He’ll definitely try that method first.’

He had excellent learning abilities in combat and had shown increasingly meticulous behavior. But this time, I wasn’t going to give him a chance to grow stronger.

‘This time, I’ll catch him at the beginning.’

This time, I planned to catch him definitively from the first strike.

‘To do that, I’ll need to prepare a few things…’

I began to formulate a detailed plan.