Chapter 163 – The Meaning of Strength (3)
“Are you really going to use every trick in the book? How pathetic.”
I couldn’t help but chuckle as I looked up at the sky. The missile was set to arrive here in about a minute and explode.
Even if this was a remote military facility, launching a nuclear missile on one’s own territory indicated the kind of determination they had.
“Sel… you’re not angry, are you?”
“Isn’t that a strange question? It’s not just any ordinary weapon; it’s a nuclear missile! Shouldn’t we be worried about surviving rather than getting angry?”
At that moment, Aria cautiously asked me, and I couldn’t help but scoff in disbelief.
“It’s not a problem. Even if it’s a nuke.”
However, Aria shook her head unfazed. That wiped away any intention I had of teasing her. She knows me too well.
“No matter how great I am, I can’t nullify a nuclear explosion with the power I have right now.”
I shrugged. The explosion power of an average nuclear bomb would be a significant attack even in the Demon Realm. With the strength of an SSS-ranked Magical Girl, I could escape or survive, but completely ignoring it wouldn’t be easy.
“Is that nuclear thing really that impressive?”
“The shockwave is stronger than all the powers I’ve ever used combined. But… I cannot allow myself to retreat and run away from here.”
I delicately brushed past Shia’s question, who didn’t even know what a nuke was, and began thinking.
In fact, to me, a nuclear bomb was no different from a cute little rebellion. I just wanted to firmly engrain the fact that they couldn’t stop me with something like this in their minds.
I hoped they’d remember that no matter how hard they tried, they couldn’t stop me.
“No matter how much you shoot, it won’t work.”
I grinned, resolved, and soared into the sky in an instant.
Releasing my magical energy, I shattered thick concrete ceilings in succession and burst through the ground of what felt like dozens of meters underground like a cannonball.
“W-what are you doing?!”
“In the end, the problem is the explosion, right? So all I need to do is not let it explode here.”
As I kicked up thick clouds of dust, I pulled a startled Ren along and continued to rise. The nuclear warhead was slowly descending, aligning perfectly above the facility.
“Open up.”
I faced the warhead, casting magic at the same time.
It wasn’t just any normal magic. It was the Dimension Gate, a spell that allows for dimensional travel. Since learning it from fairies, I had been using it quite effectively, and it unfolded precisely in the path of the warhead.
“The warhead will fall into the barren wasteland filled with monsters in the Demon Realm, and nothing will happen!”
A laugh escaped me. Hole-in-one! The warhead plopped right into the van-sized dimension gate. Then, right after that, the gate closed, and that was that.
The bright moonlight reflected on the sky where I floated, unmoved, while the scorched surroundings remained intact.
They were undoubtedly watching. What kind of expressions would they have? Their last resort, the nuclear weapon, vanished without even showing off its power.
“Takilas!”
“The warhead has been dealt with, and they probably can’t fire again. Now we have no bait to hold us back.”
Aria, who had caught up late, seemed quite shocked. Her eyes were wide and her face pale.
“But it’s not over yet. I already told you, the true mastermind is still hiding well.”
“Shall we finish this today? At least we should contact the headquarters…”
“It’s not like I’m struggling. If it’s not today, I really don’t want to have to do this again.”
“Ah, fine.”
When I frowned, Aria quickly shook her head. As she said, once I started, I wanted to see this through today. This Razak guy didn’t seem too significant anyway.
The legion soldiers created by his power were merely inferior copies of high-ranked Magical Girls. His main body, specializing in research and analysis, didn’t seem strong either.
“Let’s go. After we deal with him, we’ll decide whether to attack the others.”
With Aria and Shia, I began to soar across the sky again.
If I could just bring all this to an end today, I felt like I could sever the long, tangled fate we had been stuck in since opening the Dimension Gate.
*
“Target warhead reaction lost. It’s gone. There was no explosion!”
“What kind of nonsense is that? Are you saying it malfunctioned?!”
“No, it just disappeared in an instant!”
While everyone anxiously watched the warhead, they truly panicked, showing the reaction that Takilas wanted.
I had calculated some probability of surviving a nuclear explosion. But nobody predicted that the warhead would simply vanish in the blink of an eye.
This was a nuclear warhead, not just any missile. They had no clue it had flown off to another world, and they were losing their minds.
“W-where is Takilas?!”
His face was flushed with anger as he trembled.
He had lost everything he had painstakingly built up overnight, including the revolutionary committee he had ambitious plans for in order to gain control of the world. This was a truth he couldn’t accept.
His aides barely managed to dissuade him from launching a nuclear missile against countries like the United States and Korea in his fit of madness.
“Calm down! We must draw the line to cut off human trafficking and body experiments stemming from the revolutionary committee’s abuse of power!”
“That’s right. And not all hope is lost yet.”
The aides argued to frame all this as the fault of the obliterated revolutionary committee and Zhao Zhirin. They aimed to prevent further escalation. In the midst of that, there were still those who proclaimed that it wasn’t over yet.
“Razak! That monster is still in our hands. Let’s finish this here and take our time to proceed.”
“That monster has to be confronted directly!”
He stood up, gritting his teeth, as he listened to his aide’s words.
Even if he wrapped things up here, the damage had already been severe. His pride wouldn’t allow it.
He had no intention of leaving things to those beneath him anymore and resolved to take the lead himself.
“Razak! The chairman has arrived in person. You know things are very much tangled up, right?”
“…I know. Takilas. The world’s strongest power. A true abyss beyond imagination.”
“I admit I was hasty. But you know our goal, right? It’s to possess power greater than Takilas.”
The vice chairman, in a panic, rushed to Razak’s Nest upon hearing that the chairman had arrived secretly.
As always, Razak simply blinked his many eyes, listening to him.
“Power greater than Takilas? That’s impossible.”
“…What?”
But at that moment, Razak smiled, his eyes twisting. It was a clear mockery. The flustered vice-chairman stumbled as he looked up at Razak.
“Do you not see her realm? Ah… it is literally a realm. A plateau that not just anyone can ascend to. Even if you shoved in magic, it won’t happen. The true evolution I seek… is surely similar to that realm.”
“What… nonsense! The chairman is on his way here; if you keep saying that…”
“I won’t be watching your childish power games anymore. You want power greater than Takilas? Then you have to pay the price. Perhaps, if you pour in tens of millions or hundreds of millions, it might be possible.”
A tentacle sprouting from Razak’s body slithered toward him and smacked him across the face! The vice chairman blinked in confusion, unable to comprehend reality.
“Regardless, I’ll grant you the chance. I’ll help you gain the power to surpass Takilas. However… you must also become part of ‘us.'”
“What… argh!”
A tentacle burst from Razak’s mouth and pierced the vice chairman’s heart. His screaming body shriveled into a dry mummy, and Razak, having drained all his bodily fluids, grinned wickedly.
“The legion is coming. This world is ours now.”
Simultaneously, the ground of the Nest crumbled, revealing the secret space they had been secretly crafting.
Inside were countless eggs. Without using living humans as vessels, these were purely created beings.
More than thousands of Razak’s legion began to ruthlessly sweep through the entire facility that had until then used him.
The ones coming here were no exception. Those who hurried here, unlike the country’s highest-ranking powers, were brutally slaughtered and used as sustenance.
“We multiply, evolve, and prey. What do you think? Do you truly think we can dominate this world?”
[…Perhaps.]
“It would be wise for you to work hard now that I’ve spared your life; otherwise, I won’t be able to provide you with a new body.”
Razak watched all this unfold with a satisfied smile, then turned around. Behind him floated a large brain connected to many tentacles.
The only hint that it had once been a human lay in a buried female form underneath. And next to it, on a tattered research uniform, the name O Insun was written.
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