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HELIO SCANS
[Translator - Hestia]
[Proofreader - Kaya]
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Chapter 47
As Dojun stepped into the Rift, he began hunting monsters that had grown stronger due to the influence of dark mana, just as he’d expected.
’About the same level as the previous Rift.’
He thought.
It felt to him as if a fixed concentration of dark mana had been sprinkled across the entire area.
Although he had received an internal map of the Rift from Jeong Injoo, he hadn’t bothered to look at it.
Closing the Rift could wait until later—his priority now was finding out where this dark mana was coming from. So he roamed the Rift freely, letting his feet guide him.
Without Hyun Jooyeon and the other members of the Silken Lily Guild slowing him down, he moved incredibly fast.
Every time, monsters appeared before him without pause.
Dojun struck them all down without leaving a single one alive.
In the middle of that, the strongest monster yet blocked his path.
KROOOOOAR!
A two-headed ogre, with one red and one blue head.
Twin-Headed Ogre—although technically classified as a sub-boss monster, its strength was easily comparable to a full boss.
Even among S-Rank heroes, not many could hunt one of these alone.
And now, this one had absorbed dark mana?
You could assume it had grown even more powerful than most boss monsters.
“It’s one of the targets on my shopping list.”
Dojun muttered, staring at the Twin-Headed Ogre as it roared ferociously at him.
In his mind, he was already thinking only of its spine.
Clenching his fist, then drawing the sword strapped to his back, he took a ready stance.
Vandeiyan House Swordsmanship
Form Two – Grami Grimora Poera!
– Magic Unfolded by Lines –
As Dojun’s mana-infused sword sliced through the air, bright red lines appeared in its wake.
Those lines flew toward the Twin-Headed Ogre, cutting through space itself.
They were fast, then slow, then fast again—completely unpredictable in their movement.
The Twin-Headed Ogre could not ignore these approaching lines.
Its instincts screamed a clear warning:
If those touch me, something terrible will happen.
In a desperate attempt to defend itself, the ogre tore giant trees from the ground and hurled them, and even threw huge boulders at Dojun.
But the red lines silently sliced through the trees and stones, cutting them cleanly and effortlessly.
That terrifyingly sharp cutting force convinced the ogre it could no longer avoid them—it's only choice was to leap over the lines and crush Dojun directly.
Just as it prepared to jump—
SWISH!
A single one of the crimson lines, which had been moving slowly, suddenly exploded in speed, slicing clean through the lower half of the Twin-Headed Ogre.
Gwaaaargh!
A roar of pain and terror burst from the monster, echoing throughout the Rift.
Its arms, flailing helplessly on the ground, were severed by the red lines as well.
Both of its heads were cleanly cut off too.
The strangest part was that, despite having its heads and limbs sliced away, not a single drop of blood leaked from the wounds.
This Twin-Headed Ogre, strengthened by the dark mana, was still just another pitiful monster before Dojun.
After securing its mana stone, Dojun extracted the ogre’s spine from the stump of its neck.
That spine alone was nearly 1.8 meters long, and held immense value as a crafting material.
“This thing alone was worth ₩5 Billion, right?”
If it was in this close-to-perfect condition, the price would only climb higher.
Since carrying a bloody spine around was hardly practical, he roughly cut a piece of the ogre’s hide, wrapped the spine in it, and shoved the bundle into his backpack.
Then, without hesitation, he started moving again.
All sorts of creatures, oblivious to their place, rushed him only to be wiped out in an instant.
He took down three Blue Crocos and hunted over a hundred other monsters, until his backpack was so stuffed there was no more room left.
Of course, monster hunting was just a bonus.
His true priority was tracking down the source of the dark mana that was saturating the Rift.
And as he moved, he reached a conclusion.
“It’s not coming from inside the Rift.”
Dojun’s expression turned grave.
If the source had been internal—meaning a specific place or object within the Rift leaking dark mana—it would be relatively easy to identify and deal with.
Even if he couldn’t neutralize it, they could just seal the place off, cutting off the risk at its root.
But if the source was external?
“Someone’s actually pumping dark mana ’into’ the Rift from outside?”
Given the current level of Earth’s heroes, that was absurd.
They barely understood how to use mana properly at all.
Expecting them to not only comprehend dark mana but to actively wield it was…
Like asking a crawling toddler to run an Olympic sprint.
In other words, a total impossibility.
He also weighed the possibility that some powerful monster might be behind it.
It wasn’t entirely out of the question.
“If it were an Undead Lord or an Imperial Lich, maybe.”
Dojun snorted at that thought.
If an Undead Lord or Imperial Lich were freely moving around outside the Rift, half of all living creatures on Earth would have been turned into undead by now.
Who among Earth’s heroes right now could stop something like that?
No one—so that possibility was out too.
Which left only one explanation.
“Maybe it’s some environmental or situational phenomenon?”
Even as he said it, Dojun knew how incredibly unlikely that was.
Especially given the current state of Earth, the odds were vanishingly slim.
And yet, if he had to choose the most plausible theory, that was it.
The most concerning thing was that if the source lay outside the Rift, it would be far harder to locate—and far more dangerous to leave unchecked.
Dojun’s instincts told him one thing clearly:
This was no trivial situation.
Maybe that was why he decided to thoroughly sweep the Rift once again, just in case he’d missed something.
Like a raging storm, Dojun tore through every corner of the Rift for hours, but in the end, he found nothing.
“So it really is an external change…”
Trailing off, Dojun slammed his fist into the Rift’s core, shattering it completely.
Crack!
With that, another Rift was closed.
＊ ＊ ＊
BEEP-BEEP-BEEP-BEEP!
“One of the Rifts was just closed!”
On the massive monitoring screen, another flickering red dot turned blue. That made a total of five Rifts closed so far.
“Which one this time?”
At the question from Team Leader Mauro, one of his subordinates quickly answered.
“It’s the BA013 Rift, sir.”
“BA013?”
Team Leader Mauro frowned as if he couldn’t believe it.
“Which team went in there?”
“I… I’m not sure about that part, sir.”
“I’m asking you, who claimed that Rift?”
Startled by Mauro’s sharp voice, the subordinate double-checked.
“It was claimed by S-Rank Hero Hyun Jooyeon, Hero Seo Dojun, and the Silken Lily Guild.”
Mauro didn’t even pause to think. He immediately picked up the phone.
After a brief ringing tone, the other side answered.
“Where is Hero Hyun Jooyeon’s team right now?”
As he listened, Mauro’s face stiffened.
“You’re certain? They really returned to the Belém hotel fourteen hours ago?”
Once the person on the other end confirmed, Mauro hung up without another word.
“What the hell is going on…?”
The team that had claimed the Rift had already returned to their hotel—yet the Rift had been closed?
Mauro couldn’t even begin to guess what was happening.
“This won’t do.”
He decided this was not something to just report and forget, so he headed straight for the Strategic Planning Team in person.
The Strategic Planning Team office was in total disarray.
“What’s with all the chaos here? Something wrong?”
One of the planners, who was on friendly terms with Mauro, quickly explained.
“A Code Red situation just came up.”
“Code Red?”
In this operation, they had classified unforeseen incidents by severity as Red, Blue, or White—with Red being the most critical.
“Where’s Team Leader Edvaldo?”
“He went to see the Association Chairman just a moment ago.”
Mauro nodded and headed straight for Daniel Lopez’s office, the chairman of the Brazilian Hero Association.
Inside, Daniel Lopez and Edvaldo, the Strategic Planning Team Leader, sat facing each other with grim expressions.
“What brings you here, Team Leader Mauro?”
Since Mauro hadn’t been told about the Code Red yet, Edvaldo was puzzled by his sudden appearance.
“Something strange happened, so I went to check with Strategic Planning… but you said Code Red?”
“Sigh… well, have a seat first.”
Edvaldo let out a heavy sigh and gestured to an empty chair.
“What happened that it triggered a Code Red?”
Edvaldo looked toward Daniel Lopez, who nodded to let him explain.
“Well…”
Edvaldo began carefully laying out the reason for the Code Red.
“That— that’s true? How could something like that…?”
Mauro’s face twisted in shock as he heard the reason.
Five S-Rank heroes had been killed.
Brazil’s S-Rank hero Arbaldo, France’s S-Rank hero David, Germany’s S-Rank hero Bern, Sweden’s S-Rank hero Andrean, and India’s S-Rank hero Farhan.
Not just one or two, but five of them—wiped out.
And it had happened in Rifts that had already been deemed relatively easy to close, which made the blow even worse and forced them to declare a Code Red.
“The survivors… they said what they saw wasn’t like any monster we’ve known so far.”
“What do you mean by that?”
“I don’t really know, either. We’ll have to investigate in detail from now on.”
They had to dig into the situation, thoroughly and precisely.
After all, these were no ordinary people—they were pillars of their countries, S-Rank heroes. If Brazil’s Hero Association were proven to have mishandled anything, they’d face not just global condemnation, but fury from the countries whose heroes had died.
“At this point… I’m even wondering if we should suspend the entire operation.”
Daniel Lopez’s voice was drained and weak, and both team leaders looked more worried than ever.
“But what was this other strange thing you mentioned?”
Daniel Lopez couldn’t imagine what could possibly be stranger than a Code Red.
“It’s not necessarily serious, but it is odd.”
Mauro replied.
“Before I came here, a Rift was closed.”
Daniel Lopez’s expression brightened at that.
“A closed Rift? What’s odd about that?”
“The Rift in question was BA013.”
“BA013?”
“That’s the one near Santarém. Like BA016, it was supposed to be the very last one closed after all other rifts had been dealt with.”
Edvaldo spoke up before Daniel could.
“That’s the one the Korean heroes claimed, right?”
“Yes, sir.”
“So they closed another rift?”
“No. I checked before coming here… Hero Hyun Jooyeon’s team returned to their hotel in Belém fourteen hours ago, and they’ve been resting ever since.”
“The hotel?”
Edvaldo shot Mauro a bewildered look as if asking what nonsense he was spouting.
“Then who closed the rift?”
When Daniel Lopez asked that, the two team leaders could only stare at each other in stunned silence.
“We’d better talk to Hyun Jooyeon’s team first.”
At that very moment, where was Dojun?
He had already arrived at another Rift.
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HELIO SCANS
[Translator - Hestia]
[Proofreader - Kaya]
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