There was something that was traveling at high speed in the far-off sky, but it wasn’t a creature. Instead, Seong-Il discovered that it was a drone conducting mapping operations[1], and it was hovering from the other side of the hill. Right when he was debating whether to destroy it or leave it alone, it disappeared from his line of sight. Therefore, he forgot about it, but it appeared that the drone had revealed the situation in the tower.

Later on, Seong-Il was pouring some piping hot water into the cup noodles as he was hungry. He pressed the lid of the container down with wooden chopsticks, then looked at the group who approached him. The leader was someone familiar to him.

He raised a hand in greeting. “Yo, long time no see. Kim Ji-Hoon!”

“Hi, how have you been?” the other man responded genially.

Kim Ji-Hoon was accompanied by mercenaries along with some other foreign Awakened. Then, they looked around. After seeing that Seong-Il was not equipped with any weapons, they relaxed perceptibly.

“Did you do that?” Seong-Il asked, glancing at the smoke rising from beyond the hill. Kim Ji-Hoon was looking at Seong-Il and the boundary around the tower behind him.

Kim Ji-Hoon nodded. “We struggled a bit. The magic trap was tricky to get rid of.”

Seong-Il grinned. “Haha. Mary is taking care of all the strong ones around here, so you only had to deal with the weak ones. You shouldn’t have had a hard time with them, buddy.”

“There are ones stronger than them?” Kim Ji-Hoon asked.

Seong-Il pointed. “Look at all these. They make things like this.”

Even from Kim Ji-Hoon’s point of view, the boundary seemed as solid as the one in Act Two, Stage One.

“Is Ms. Mary here?” he finally asked.

Seong-Il commented, “It has been a...