In the Name of God - vanish into fiction

<You have removed all fragments of the 99th Holy Land.>

In the end, it was I who handled all thirty-five of the beasts.

Although I had informed the others about the central axes, finding a tiny hole the size of a 500-won coin in the massive bodies of beasts where mana flowed endlessly was no easy task.

Furthermore, they didn’t have smooth bodies; they were rampaging about with blue fragments stuck to them here and there, so it would have been difficult even for someone with remarkably good eyesight.

I caught my breath, which had grown ragged in the meantime, and looked down at the hand holding the revolver. A small tremor was occurring in the finger that had pulled the trigger repeatedly.

‘It’s good that my lifespan increased by 35 days, but there were too many to face all at once.’

The headcount was thirty-five, but if I included the shots fired to obstruct the monsters’ movements or deal with fragments, I had used nearly double that amount of bullets. It’s truly absurd how this fragile hand struggles to endure even that much.

My fingers are thin, and my grip strength is pathetic.

Even though I am using a revolver manufactured to be the lightest among Awakener-exclusive firearms capable of holding mana, my entire arm felt numb and stiff after using it in such quick succession.

‘What a weak body, through and through.’

With that thought, I put the revolver back into its holster, but even that minor motion made my body stagger. Only then did I realize that the hand I used to fire the gun wasn’t the only problem.

My head spun, and my vision flickered momentarily. Strength wouldn’t properly enter my legs.

It wasn’t quite mana exhaustion, but it was the aftermath of using too much mana in a short period.

I had been reading the flow of mana until my eyes felt like they would fall out, and I had imbued every single attack with mana.

With a body that was already frail and had only recently learned mana manipulation, I had overexerted myself; it wouldn’t be strange if I collapsed at any moment. I believe the only reason I could stay conscious until now was purely thanks to my mental fortitude.

The person who caught my stumbling body was Lee Sunho.

“Good work.”

Lee Sunho, who supported me easily with one arm, personally fastened the button of the holster containing the revolver. It felt like a signal that everything was over now, and I didn’t have to push myself any further.

I was leaning comfortably against him while offering my thanks when—

<In accordance with the contract, the Guardian Deity’s authority is recovered from the removed fragments of the Holy Land.>

<The recovered power is stored in the previously designated object.>

A message I had never seen before appeared.

I couldn’t help but furrow my brow while looking at that message.

‘Removal wasn’t the end?’

Recovering authority from the fragments I smashed and storing it in some entity—what on earth does that mean?

‘What is this entity it’s being stored in, and what do they plan to do with my authority?’

What made up the Holy Land was the authority I had bestowed and the power of the mana wrapping around it to maintain it.

Since I had personally smashed the flow of mana, it was obvious that the only thing remaining as a remnant was the authority.

Why, and for what purpose, was the system storing that authority?

No, in the first place—

‘Was this the goal from the start?’

If the Holy Land turning into monsters and us smashing them was all so the system could gather “pure authority”?

‘This wasn’t designed by the system.’

I had an intuition.

This wasn’t the system’s design, but the work of someone who had “contracted” with it.

Thinking that way, an unerasable sense of anxiety washed over me.

‘Could it be…’

No. Surely not.

I tried to picture the blurry image of my apostle, whom I couldn’t even properly remember, before quickly erasing it.

Why would my apostle do something like this?

They are the child who knows best how important the Holy Land is.

‘I’ll find out who the contractor is and what the contract is as I investigate the Holy Land.’

I was thinking up to that point when I suddenly snapped my head up at the faint earthquake felt from the ground. I wasn’t the only one who felt it.

“Wh-what is this?”

“What’s happening this time?!”

“We haven’t even filed the report regarding the Holy Land yet…!”

I bit my lip hard as I listened to the voices of the panicked people.

I pushed away Lee Sunho, who was supporting me, and stood up straight. Unfastening the button of my revolver with hands that were still trembling, I let out a long breath.

“Get ready, Lee Sunho.”

Instead of asking back, Lee Sunho silently drew his longsword. The leader of our investigation team and the first-string members seemed to have noticed the anomaly as well, as they too entered a combat stance.

The Holy Land had vanished.

Which meant that Daejeon, where we were currently standing, had become a place no longer protected by any authority.

-Master! I’m transmitting new scan information for a 10km radius!

A bit of nervousness was tinged in Echo’s voice.

After checking the scan information that rushed into my head, I could see the reason why.

Countless monsters were rushing out from every dungeon in Daejeon. The dungeons that the Holy Land had been suppressing were now activated to the extreme as if they had been waiting for this moment, discharging a vast number of monsters.

Daejeon had truly become a new Disaster Zone.