There Is No World For ■■

The inside of the club, led by the man called “Thumb,” was ordinary.

Ordinary—by club standards, anyway.

Blaring music that pounded against your eardrums, lights that flashed in every possible color to the point of hurting your eyes, and the thick stench of alcohol and drugs hanging in the air.

It was Saint’s first time in a place like this, and she looked around, dazed and stunned. Even Seti frowned slightly, as if her ears hurt.

Of course, to Yeomyeong, who used to clean back alleys for a living, this was a familiar sight.

He made sure the two girls didn’t get swept away by the crowd as he followed behind the Thumb.

They walked for a while—

Eventually, the Thumb passed through the crowded lounge and stopped in front of a door deep inside, where the music had faded into the background.

Creak—

Beyond the door, a luxurious interior was revealed, one that looked more like a hotel suite than anything else.

It was clearly a space meant for VIPs.

Top-of-the-line sofas, extravagant décor, a bar loaded with every kind of liquor, and...

The foul stench of twisted mana, like a rotting corpse.

Everyone felt it—but no one said a word. They were all just as ready to draw their weapons, after all.

Anyway—

As the group looked around the room, the Thumb sank into the sofa and asked,

“Would you like any alcohol or drugs?”

“No.”

“...We also have cola and juice.”

Before the Saint could say, “I’ll take a cola,” Yeomyeong beat her to it.

“Sorry, but I don’t have the stomach for something handed to me by a necromancer.”

“....”

The Thumb’s eyes narrowed.

He stared at Yeomyeong with an expression impossible to read—whether it was a grin or a glare—then pulled out a cigarette.

“Seeing how Dilla’s trembling, you’re clearly not some nobody...

But you’re way too bold to be a CIA agent.”

The moment the cigarette touched his lips, his polite tone vanished.

He lit it with a spark of mana from his right index finger.

Smoke drifted slowly upward. His violet eyes grew heavy and still.

“Unlike those women, you reek of our side... Did a rival group send you?”

Yeomyeong sat down across from him without a word.

Their eyes locked.

A chill crept into the room.

A suffocating silence.

Then, the Thumb suddenly drew a deep drag from his cigarette and blew smoke toward Yeomyeong’s face as he spoke.

“...So what the hell are you?”

Yeomyeong answered without blinking.

“The one who killed Bujum.”

Bujum—

The necromancer who traded corpses with the Korean government to raid Lord Howe Academy.

The one killed in Incheon by Seti and the dung beetle.

As that name left Yeomyeong’s lips, a slick smile crept across the Thumb’s face.

“Well now... Dilla’s brought us a very special guest.”

He flicked the cigarette butt aside with a snap of his fingers and continued.

“So? What brings you here? Business? A job offer? Or... a fight?”

“Information.”

“...Information? What kind?”

“Everything you know about Korea.”

That was the signal.

Seti and the Saint moved without a word, casually shifting to positions that blocked off the exits.

The Thumb let out a soft, disbelieving laugh.

“Anything tied to governments comes with a high price tag. You bring cash?”

Yeomyeong didn’t reply.

Instead, he pulled a sword from his Inventory.

Actions speak louder than words.

“Oh, I see. Not customers—robbers.

But do the three of you think that’s enough? The necromancers in this place...”

“...Nineteen. I can handle them on my own.”

Yeomyeong spoke as mana surged into his blade.

The force of it blew away the lingering smoke.

A fully matured Wave Severance Form—Pahyanggyeol.

The Thumb stared at Yeomyeong intently... then suddenly turned his head toward Dilla.

“You dumb bitch. What the hell did you bring in here?”

“J-Zorbak, I... I...”

Her words never finished.

Seti snapped her fingers—and Dilla’s mouth shut tight.

Seeing that, the Thumb—Zorbak—narrowed his eyes again.

“Body control... So it wasn’t the CIA that snatched Dilla off the train—it was you people.”

Seti neither confirmed nor denied it.

But the way Dilla trembled in silence said it all.

“Tch. This is just... Well? What about you, then? What’d you bring?”

Zorbak shifted his gaze to the Saint.

She, flustered, drew out Uragan’s Hilt.

The horn of a unicorn—deadly to black magic and necromancy.

At the sight of it, Zorbak’s face twisted in disgust.

Like he was staring at something revolting.

“You really walk around with a unicorn horn at your age? Don’t you have any shame?”

“....”

Whether or not the Saint pulled out her revolver in response to the sneer, Zorbak’s gaze drifted back to Yeomyeong.

“I’ll tell you everything I know about Korea.

In exchange, swear you won’t harm this establishment.”

“That depends on your answer.”

“....”

When Yeomyeong refused to swear, Zorbak pulled out another cigarette.

He mulled something over in silence—then lit it and finally spoke.

“This is going to be a boring story.”

We’ll see about that.

Yeomyeong stared at him, feeling the writhing, twisted mana gathering around him.

The rising smoke, the eyes staring off into the past—

“Just like the other natives fooled by the Earthlings, we... were victims.”

And so, with that ridiculous opener, he began telling a story from long ago.

****

Decades ago.

After being betrayed by the United States, the necromancers wandered without a home.

Some swore vengeance against America. Others wanted to return to their homeland.

But the majority rejected both paths.

Because the reason they came to Earth in the first place was to fulfill a forbidden wish they’d pursued for centuries.

So we sailed off from America, blindly, and the first place we reached was the Soviet Union.

Partly because it was America’s enemy—

But mostly because a few necromancers were obsessed with the Communist Manifesto.

Like dogs finding a new master, they ran to Stalin with wagging tails.

And in the heart of the Kremlin, they raised undead from American corpses and proudly declared:

“We have created undead from the bodies of capitalists! At last, the exploiters who worked without ◆ Nоvеlіgһt ◆ (Only on Nоvеlіgһt) lifting a finger will repay their debt to the people!”

Undead proletarians who, fueled by mana, could farm forever and run factories without rest.

The necromancers truly believed that their undead workers would become the cornerstone of communism—willingly shackled in service to the people.

...That’s what they thought.

But they were wrong.

Undead, capable only of simple labor, weren’t all that appealing to the communists.

They could work forever without rest? So what?

Mana wasn’t infinite, and neither were the necromancers.

And more than anything, the communist people... were far cheaper than the necromancers imagined.

Who would’ve thought we’d lose in cost-effectiveness?

They were devastated.

Some tried to win Stalin over by offering secret knowledge—but the result?

Well, you already know how that ended.

We fled the Soviet Union with our tails between our legs.

If not for Stalin’s unexpected mercy, we’d have been hunted down and killed.

To this day, we don’t know why he spared us.

Maybe he liked the tech we gave him about stars and gods.

Maybe it was just a whim...

Either way, we were grateful to be alive, and we moved on.

Most headed south into Asia. A few went west into Europe.

But Christian nations were just as hostile to undead as the Five’s church back home.

Some Romanian guy named Ceaușescu did call for us—

But no necromancer had the balls to join a lunatic who picked a fight with Stalin because he was obsessed with vampires.

Anyway...

The dictators we approached in Asia weren’t much different from Stalin.

China had shown some interest—but it was clear they didn’t particularly need us.

They were too busy chasing their vision of a true Sino-centered world to waste resources on jiangshi techniques, apparently.

Looking back at the tragedy that followed... maybe that was a blessing for us. History is strange that way.

Ahem. That intro dragged on longer than I meant it to.

Let’s move on to Korea.

If I had to describe the situation at the time, the Korean Peninsula was, to us, no different from the land of Canaan where Moses arrived after escaping Egypt.

A promised land flowing with milk and honey.

Yes. It was destiny.

A government desperate to produce superhumans by any means necessary—

And necromancers who desperately needed secret support.

Back then, we were a perfect match.

We filled in each other’s gaps seamlessly.

We offered the government awakening potions, all kinds of knowledge about mana, and real combat experience through undead.

And in return, the government gave us whatever we wanted.

Yes, everything.

Maybe it was because they were caught between the pressure of the U.S. and the Soviet Union, but the Korean dictators were far more flexible than the communists.

They didn’t care about Marx or human rights—they only cared about results.

If they hadn’t been Earthlings, we might have shared our noble wish with them...

But sadly, their minds were too small to accept anything beyond patriotism.

For whatever reason, they couldn’t be satisfied with the power we gave them.

And so they chose to fall deeper—into the hands of those madmen.

The Cult of Apocalypse.

The Korean government didn’t stop at borrowing our power.

The President personally attended sacrificial rites with the cult’s “Ayatollahs.”

The moment we witnessed that insanity, we fled the peninsula.

The Korean government called it betrayal, but what a joke.

Betrayal?

The moment they entrusted the nation’s fate to the cult, there was no going back.

They might’ve thought the cult was just some fringe religion—but we, who already had our feet in the filth, knew better than anyone:

They didn’t care whether it was god or man.

They were lunatics who prayed for the destruction of the world—

“...Enough.”

****

“That's far enough.”

Yeomyeong cut off Zorbak’s rambling.

Zorbak, throat parched, poured himself a drink and asked,

“So? Is that everything you wanted to know?”

Trickle.

As the amber-colored sweet wine filled the glass, Yeomyeong shook his head.

“Cut the crap. Talk about what actually matters.”

“...What matters?”

“The Fallen Star.”

The hand pouring the drink stopped midair.

Zorbak’s eyes turned cold as he looked between Dilla and Yeomyeong.

“So your seal’s stronger than ours? That’s... unexpected.”

Yeomyeong didn’t respond.

Faced with the heavy silence, Zorbak licked his lips.

“The Fallen Star and the Korean government, huh...

Tch. You should’ve asked that first. Would’ve saved us both some time.

So—how much do you know?”

“...Only that Korea made a star fall.”

“You know quite a bit.”

Zorbak downed the glass in one gulp.

Gulp, gulp. Clack! The glass hit the table hard.

“Unfortunately, we don’t know all that much either.

All we gave the Koreans was the concept and theory behind bringing a star down.”

“...”

“The materials needed to actually pull it off were on a national scale anyway—impossible to gather on our own.”

“Skip the fluff.”

A blatant threat.

Zorbak refilled his glass and answered calmly.

“If you’re fine with theory, I’ve got plenty.”

As Seti’s faint breathing came from behind, Zorbak began to speak again.

“The foundation of the Fallen Star theory is a reversal of necromancy.

A ritual that reaches not downward to the underworld, but upward—to the heavens.

And instead of summoning a dead soul, you bring down a living god.”

“...”

“But theory and practice are two different things.

Even if you figure out where the star is and gather every reagent needed for the summoning...

There’s still one final issue:

You have no way to contain the star once it falls to Earth.”

“...Don’t tell me—”

Yeomyeong felt Seti’s mana waver as she looked toward the room.

Rage. Disgust.

“Yeah, you probably guessed right.

We took inspiration from Earth’s traditional religious practices and decided to give the stars physical vessels to walk this world.”

Traditional religious practices?

What a fancy way of saying human sacrifice.

Yeomyeong gripped his sword’s hilt tighter.

“But ordinary adult minds wouldn’t be able to handle the stars.

Even powerful priests struggle with divine blessings—so to accept the real thing?

Obviously—boom.”

Zorbak flicked his finger against his temple, mimicking an explosion.

“...So you used children?”

“To be exact—newborns.

Human minds start getting filled with junk thoughts by age two.”

“....”

It was revolting. So revolting, Yeomyeong could barely keep listening.

He took a breath, pushing down the blood rushing to his head, and asked his final question.

“...Do you know how to find the true name of a fallen star?”

The moment a star falls, its name is erased from the world.

It might not seem important—

But considering the strange names of the Seti sisters, it was a question that couldn’t be ignored.

If he could figure out which mythological god Korea had summoned, it could be a crucial step in confronting the government.

But Zorbak only smirked and shook his head.

“We were trying to kidnap a CIA agent to figure that out...

Didn’t your side stop us?”

“...”

“Well, you could always try asking another god.”

That was the end of the conversation.

As Zorbak sipped his drink, Yeomyeong glanced at Dilla.

She gave a small nod.

A signal: Everything Zorbak said was true.

Tch. Yeomyeong clicked his tongue.

So all we got is confirmation that the Korean government sided with the cult.

The necromancer history lesson had been interesting, sure. But that was it.

If they wanted the fallen star’s true name, they’d have to ask another god—

Maybe even Mignium...

With that, Yeomyeong finished sorting his thoughts—

And swung the sword he’d been holding.

Sssht—

The blade left a long streak through the air—

Cleaving both Zorbak’s wine glass and his spine clean in two.

Blood splashed over the sofa, following the slow tumble of his head.

“Zorbak!”

Dilla gasped at the sudden strike, horrified.

As Zorbak’s head rolled across the floor, his expression twisted.

Rigor mortis?

No—it wasn’t that.

His face still moved. Still vivid. Still... alive.

“Was that really necessary?

Couldn’t we have just talked it out like civilized people?”

He even spoke.

Yeomyeong replied flatly,

“Then maybe you shouldn’t have laid all those traps while talking.”

Twisted mana saturated the room.

Faint, translucent magic circles glowed on the walls.

Yeomyeong raised a finger and pointed them out—

And Zorbak, now just a head, gave a dry chuckle.

“Your sensitivity is way higher than I expected.

You’d make a fine Death Knight.”

Rumble...!

As he finished speaking, the whole room began to shake.

No—the entire club building was trembling.

But Yeomyeong had expected something like this.

Without a word, he placed a foot on Zorbak’s head.

“Do all necromancers have this weird tradition of talking about turning people into Death Knights?

Everyone I’ve met so far says the same shit.”

“You think beating Dilla and Bujum makes you hot shit, kid?

Let me show you what a real necromancer is—”

“Don’t think a half-demon like you is stronger than Kahal Magdhu.”

“The skeletal dragon?! Why do you—”

Before he could finish, Yeomyeong pressed down.

Crack—!

Blood and silence splattered across the VIP room floor.

Yeomyeong wiped his boot clean.

And just as the entire party tensed, ready for battle—

Uragan’s Hilt began to shine brightly.

And from beyond the door, countless footsteps echoed their way.