Chapter 225

Pinning down the location didn’t mean they could launch an attack right away. If they wanted to land a proper blow, they still had a mountain of preparations ahead of them. To pull off a strike that actually mattered, they needed time, resources, and positioning. As part of that preparation, Do-Jin was now infiltrating deep into the interior of the Rumanus Republic.

“Are paths like this really scattered all over the place?”

Do-Jin asked while walking through a waterway that looked completely dried out, as if it hadn’t been used for years. The walls were cracked, the floor was coated in dust, and the air smelled stale. The one guiding him was Denik, who had volunteered to act as their pathfinder.

“It’s the result of uncontrolled expansion,” he replied. “They kept building without any real planning. Whenever something got in the way, or the existing structure was inconvenient for whatever they wanted to do underground, they just sealed it off and abandoned it. They did that over and over, and this is what it turned into.”

Do-Jin looked along the walls of the canal. The stone was so dry it looked fossilized, and thick layers of dust had piled up on top of each other. It really did look like the place had been left alone for decades.

“This way.”

Denik called out when Do-Jin let his attention drift. Turning his head back, he saw that the path ahead was completely blocked. Someone had collapsed part of the waterway, then poured lime, sand, and water over it, letting it harden into a solid barrier.

Denik gestured toward a narrow gap in the wall where the collapse had left a crack. “If you go through here, there’s a passage. They blocked the canal, but they left the maintenance tunnel that was built for managing the waterway.”

When they squeezed through the narrow gap, a hidden passage opened up. They used the tunnel to bypass the blocked section, and when it ended, they returned to the canal. When that was blocked again, they went back into yet another tunnel.

After repeating that process several times and finally reaching the surface, they were greeted by a mountain of trash. What had started as a slum dumping area had piled up until it became a full-blown landfill, completely abandoned and left to rot. They’d opted to move in during the dead of night, so there weren’t any people around.

Do-Jin and Denik blended into the darkness and moved quietly. There were still police patrols, and guard posts had been set up at regular intervals. However, the guards had grown used to nights where not even a single rat showed up, so their vigilance had dulled. Slipping past lazy soldiers and police officers was absurdly easy for Do-Jin, who was barely affected by darkness at all.

Even getting through the wasteland was easy. No matter how obsessed with surveillance the dictator was, he clearly hadn’t ordered full monitoring over the entire endless desert.

However, the military base was different. Powerful floodlights bathed the area in harsh white light, and watchful eyes covered every approach. Keeping their distance meant they wouldn’t be detected, but closing in on the base itself was an entirely different problem.

“How are we even supposed to attack a place like that?” Denik asked.

“Yeah, I don’t know. That’s exactly the problem.”

Even though it was night, Do-Jin could clearly see thick clouds of mana rising from the base. Mana mist drifted upward like exhaust, and he could tell the facility was actively producing something inside.

Shit, their strength keeps growing every single day, he thought.

Meanwhile, their side’s progress was stagnant. Even if they handed out the stolen weapons and trained people to fight, the resistance fighters were still limited. At best, they were quest-scaled background combatants. They were never going to match a real military force in a straight fight.

Either way, we need to end this fast.

Handing them guns and telling them to charge a fortified base would just recreate a slaughter. It would turn into the kind of trench-style meat grinder that chewed up soldiers and spat out corpses.

Do-Jin stayed silent for a moment, then pulled his gaze away from the base and turned to Denik. “We need to get a better read on the surrounding terrain.”

Instead of trying to scope out a fortress he couldn’t properly analyze from a distance, Do-Jin shifted his focus to the land around it.

After some scouting, he returned and brought more resistance members with him. Together, they infiltrated near the base again. Under the cover of deep night, and using magic to silently dig through the ground, Do-Jin carved out hidden spaces in the wasteland for them to use as concealment.

He moved the resistance fighters into those hiding places, where they blended into the wasteland. They only emerged at night to carry out the tasks Do-Jin assigned them. That was how the desperate struggle of those who longed for freedom began.

***

The day of the attack finally arrived. After finishing their preparations down to the last miserable detail, the commander moved to deploy a separate strike team for the operation. Do-Jin shut that down immediately.

“I’ll take point and draw their attention.”

They had spent days setting up ambush points and creating the conditions for surprise attacks around the base. The entire plan was built around pulling the enemy out and hitting them from multiple angles. Now Do-Jin was saying he would handle the bait himself.

“You can’t seriously—”

The commander tried to object on instinct, but Do-Jin didn’t give him the chance to finish.

“I’m not running into a meat grinder with people who are halfway to signing up for a suicide mission.”

“And charging in there alone isn’t suicide?”

“Who said I’m alone?”

The commander froze and stared at him like Do-Jin had just grown a second head. He had literally just said he would go in by himself, and now he was saying he wasn’t alone.

Do-Jin saw the look on his face and cracked a crooked smile. “Just focus on your prep. Try not to get too many people killed.”

The timing was just before dawn. The sky was starting to lighten with that ugly blue-gray color that came right before full daylight. It was the kind of hour where everything felt suspended between night and morning.

Do-Jin started walking toward the enemy base at a steady, unhurried pace. All of a sudden, the ground shook. Something heavy pounded from below, and a deep thudding echoed underfoot. With a violent crack, the earth split open and the ground collapsed inward.

“Holy shit, I thought I was going to suffocate down there!”

Theresa burst up from underground. Right behind her, Soso climbed out as well with her usual attitude, her face twisting into a full scowl. Both of them glared at Do-Jin.

“Who the hell leaves people buried underground for two days?” Theresa snapped.

Some things were too much for one person to deal with, and Do-Jin was no longer the loner from his previous life who had to shoulder everything by himself.

“You said it felt like shooting a spy movie at first,” Do-Jin said.

When the situation started to feel impossible, the first people Do-Jin thought of were his teammates.

Two days earlier, three of them had arrived after Do-Jin called for help. Without even telling the resistance, Do-Jin had secretly smuggled Theresa, Soso, and Tanto inside and hidden them underground until now.

“I’ll make you pay for this some day,” Soso said quietly.

Theresa’s complaints could be brushed off with a laugh, but Soso’s sounded like a real threat.

“Either way, let’s deal with what’s in front of us first,” Do-Jin said, avoiding their stares.

Right on cue, the enemy base started reacting. The floodlights shifted and focused toward Do-Jin’s position. Someone had spotted movement through binoculars or some other surveillance.

Theresa brushed dirt off her hammer and tilted her head. “So, walking straight in through the front gate is what you’re calling a surprise attack now?”

Do-Jin started walking again at a steady pace. “If I don’t give them a warning, it’s still a surprise.”

Right as he said it, the alarm blared from the base.

“Soso, stick right behind me!” Theresa shouted.

The enemy opened fire immediately, without issuing any warning. After mana-powered weapons locked onto all three of them, shells began screaming through the air. A direct hit from one would have hurt even Do-Jin.

Naturally, blocking them was Theresa’s job. She swung her shield arm and smacked a shell out of the air. The shell deflected with a violent bang and slammed into the ground to her left. Dirt and debris exploded upward in a violent spray. Another shell followed immediately, but walls of stone raised by Theresa’s Rock Shield rose one after another, stacking into a barrier that stopped the next wave cold.

As explosions hammered against the stone, the three of them rushed the base with Theresa leading like a walking tank.

Seeing the invaders charge in this fast, troops came pouring out in a rush. The moment Do-Jin’s group entered effective range, muzzles flared. Blue mana smoke, unique to mana firearms, burst into the air all at once.

“You really think this is enough to stop me?!”

At best, the ones firing were nothing more than trash mobs. Their shots couldn’t break through Theresa. Half of them missed outright, and most of the rest slammed into her shield. The few that got through were stopped cold by her thick armor.

With Theresa acting like a charging tank, the group stuck tight behind her and reached the barbed-wire perimeter in an instant.

Through Silent Night, Do-Jin saw blue sparks jumping along the wire. They had definitely rigged something. He slammed his palm against the ground while still running, causing three stone pillars to shoot up at the same time, lifting a section of the wire.

“Go through the gap!”

The barbed-wire line was torn open like it was nothing. Seeing that, the soldiers started shouting in panic.

“Move! Get backup out here now! I don’t know who the hell they are, but this is way above our pay grade!”

They were waiting for the magitech armored unit assigned to defend this base.

“What kind of shitheads are causing this mess at this goddamn hour!” said a rough, irritated voice.

At the heavy sound of metal that accompanied the voice, those soldiers’ faces began to brighten. The magitech armored unit had arrived with an appearance resembling iron golems, only human-shaped.

“Three intruders approaching! One appears to be a mage!” a soldier reported.

Someone from inside the hunk of metal replied, “Roger that. We’ll handle them.”

Five magitech armored units deployed immediately. They vaulted over the high wall and landed outside the base in one smooth motion.

“That’s them.”

The moment they spotted Do-Jin’s group crossing the wire, they all went into combat stance. Integrated blades extended from the backs of their hands as the armored unit launched themselves forward. Their movement was somewhere between leaping and sprinting, driven by power they barely seemed to be controlling.

“Ha! You fearless idiots. I don’t know who the hell you are, but I’m gonna turn you into fucking paste—”

The man who had been shouting cut off mid-sentence. A wet, choking sound followed as blood poured from his slashed throat. The massive three-meter-long armored body lost balance and slammed headfirst into the ground.

The others, who had been charging straight ahead, spun around in shock when their teammate suddenly went down. However, none of them could see what had gone wrong.

“What the hell just happened?!”

Another one went down.

“Ku—”

“Shit... there’s something there!”

One of them swung wildly at the air, slashing around in panic. Through the opening in his swing, something flashed into view.

“AAAGH!”

It was Tanto. He appeared right in front of the screaming trooper and buried an axe into him. No matter how fully armored someone was, joints and gaps had to exist for mobility, and those spots were always weaker.

Tanto targeted nothing but those weak points, ripping apart the human inside the armor.

“You dumbass pieces of shit!” the last trooper yelled in frustration.

After watching the others get dropped like nothing, he decided to wait for Tanto to come into view before countering.

Those idiots who got ambushed are one thing, but if you saw him coming, you should’ve used this!

Magitech armored units came with built-in spell activation systems that, upon triggering, could release a powerful electrical shock into everything nearby.

“Guh!”

While he was focused on the axe-wielding killer, he let the mage get too close, and that mistake cost him his life. A jagged spike of stone caved in his head, and his body collapsed to the ground, blood bursting out in heavy spurts.

As Tanto watched Do-Jin’s raw, brutal magic at work, a thought naturally surfaced.

Did I really need to spend days sneaking around and setting up ambushes?