Chapter 152: Crimson Chaotic Spear (2)

Japan didn't have any S+ ranked gates, but it did have three S ranked gates. In addition, it had eleven dungeons ranked A or below. Although it was less than Korea, considering there were only about 200 Event Dungeons left scattered through Earth, Japan strangely had a lot of Event Dungeons. Right, similar to Korea, Japan had unnaturally many Event Dungeons.

Because of what happened in Korea, the media portrayed us as a lawless group. What was interesting was the reaction of the civilians when we neared an Event Dungeon.

"Whoa! Holy shit, it's Dragon Knight!"

"He came to Japan first!"

"Take good care of us!"

Most of the people that saw us were cheering us on. I was rather bewildered by their unexpected reaction, but I soon realized why.

"To them, this place is their home."

"Imagine that a dungeon appeared in your backyard, and the only weapon and defensive equipment you had was a kitchen knife and a chopping board."

"Doesn't that happen often? It's like that whenever you're cooking and suddenly forced into battle. Ah, for the record, you're better off bare-handed."

"The one holding the knife and the chopping board isn't a monster like you, but an ordinary civilian! Of course, you'd be better off with a knife than just your fists!"

To ordinary people, monsters were only targets of terror. Plus, Event Dungeons appeared wherever they wanted. They could be in the middle of desserts or heavily populated areas.

When dungeons became Field Dungeons, the government would aid the original residents, but it didn't change the fact that they would have to move away or live with monsters right in front of them. Both options were extremely stressful. Since someone volunteered to get rid of the dungeons, it made sense that they were so happy.

Just like that, we cleared our first dungeon with an unexpected welcome. After eating a late breakfast in a nearby restaurant, I went to get Lotte back, as she had gone back to the dungeon during our flight here. When I came back, Hwaya approached me with a piece of paper.

"Shin, I planned out our route. If we're lucky, we should be able to take care of all of the dungeons other than the S ranked dungeons. But, we have to ride your wyvern instead of my plane."

[I refuse!]

"Please, Lotte?"

[Mmmm...!]

When I scratched Lotte's neck and pleaded, she elongated her neck and began to contemplate. Hwaya made a dumbfounded expression, but I silenced her by giving her a thumbs up. Then, I scratched Lotte's neck more. It was a special technique of mine. If ordinary people tried, they would only have their fingers broken.

"You'll do it, right? Hwaya only says that because she knows you're much faster than a plane."

[Mmm...]

"Lotte, you're the only one I can rely on. You'll let us ride you, right?"

[F-Fine... Since it's Hero's request, I'll allow the inept humans to ride me.]

"Thanks, Lotte!"

[Mm, scratch me more, Hero.]

[Shin, you've gotten pretty used to handling women, haven't you...?]

[I didn't think you'd call Lotte a woman, Hwaya.]

Since we were in the middle of a city, we naturally caught the attentions of countless people. After they recognized Hwaya and me, it became even worse. In any case, I took the paper from Hwaya to memorize the route, when someone called me from behind.

"Oppa, here!"

A cute little girl handed a box of chocolate to me. It was similar to the chocolate mushroom snack1 from Korea. When I took it, the girl smiled and shouted.

"Eat this and defeat those monsters!"

"Ah, thanks."

To be honest, I was surprised. Not even a day passed since we caused a ruckus in Korea, but even a little girl knew us! As I thought, mass media is scary!

That aside, I patted her head to thank her for cheering us on.

"Thanks. It means a lot. I like this snack too."

"Ehehe, I like it too!"

"But I don't have anything to give you... Ah, do you like meat?"

"Hey! You're not going to dismantle a monster here, right!?"

"What are you talking about, Hwaya. Meat is a universally loved food!"

Because Hwaya jumped in and stopped me, I had to give up on giving the little girl meat. I ended up giving her the cup ramen from my inventory instead, which she happily received.

After the girl left, the others came out of the restaurant as well. It seemed they were watching the little girl from just now, as Ludia's expression was... shaking.

"Shin, you like... little girls...?"

"I knew you'd say that, but no. She must have seen me somewhere. She just gave me a snack."

Ludia still looked like she didn't believe me, but Hwaya grinned and supported me.

"It's been awhile since the world began to revolve around monsters and ability users. High-ranking ability users are global superstars. Not to mention, we displayed the flashiest performance. Since Japan's time isn't that different from Korea's, they already had morning and night time news to hear about us. It's understandable that a little girl like her recognizes Shin."

"You've gotten famous, Kang Shin. How about writing 'Ally of Justice' on a cape? You'll be able to appeal to the masses better."

"You shut up, Walker. We're just doing what we can. What justice?"

I replied to Walker's teasing bluntly. I opened the box of Japanese chocolate mushroom, grabbing a handful and throwing it in my mouth. It was delicious.

In Korea, we'd already clashed with Guardian once. It served as a show of force, not only to Guardian but also to Freedom Wing and various governments. Although it was a secret plan by the pro-gate destruction faction within Guardian, we'd still sent all of the rankers to the hospital. It was clear that we were unstoppable.

As for what happened, I presumed it went like this. Within Guardian there were those that agreed with dungeonifying gates, while there were those that disagreed. The former seemed to have the upper hand in the conflict, but when we made a commotion, the gate destruction faction took the chance to crush the other faction. Then, they showed the result to the whole world.

A conflict between a small number of people, who wanted to destroy the gates, and the Guardian, who wanted to create dungeons to reap benefits. If they could overwhelm us, they could have used us as the sacrificial lamb to calm the voices of dissent. Guardian was the world's protector. They would push the narrative that we were terrorists, and they would relate our cause to the act of terror as well.

Although it was absurd, the victors always had the stronger voice, while the losers could not say anything even if they were blamed for crimes they didn't commit.

However, Guardian lost thoroughly. It was exactly what the gate destruction faction wanted. The pro-dungeonification faction lost in physical strength and they also lost their cause through my interview. Could they stop us again in such a situation?

The reason Guardian was bigger than Freedom Wing was that it was an organization created to protect ordinary civilians from the monsters. Now that their claim that dungeonifying gates would protect humanity crumbled, they had no means to stop us.

Even so, they wouldn't be able to do a complete 180 and start destroying dungeons ranked A or below. If they did, it would be the same as bowing down to Revival, which only consisted of 8 members. In the end, the only thing they could do was to leave us alone. They would pretend not to care no matter what we did and would focus on clearing S ranked gates to show their good side. It was the best way to recover their image.

What I didn't expect was how glorified we were. I clearly told the representative from Korea's Guardian that I would cheaply sell the monster corpses ranked A or below. However, he had announced this grandly. In other words, we became Santa Claus, who got rid of various countries' gates and gave them monster remains. In a way, it wasn't wrong.

At first, I was unhappy that he made such a big deal out of it, but we didn't have much use for low-ranked monster remains anyway. Since his announcement increased our reputation, we also decided to cheaply sell monster corpses to Japan. In truth, it was possible since no one in our group was lacking money.

Perhaps for that reason, our popularity in Japan reached the heavens. Up until now, the only Asian SS ranker was China's Xin Shaomei, but Revival had 4 Asians. They especially seemed to like the fact that its leader was Asian. Of course, there were the Korean-hating Japanese who went out of their way to leave hateful comments on every news about us. However, they were only an extreme minority.

Plus, even though Sumire was hiding half of her face with a mask, people suspected that she was Japanese from her frame and facial structure. Revival's popularity in Japan was only natural. That said, Sumire was a half, and her frame and facial structure were both different from a traditional Japanese girl's... Well, since she was still Japanese, I couldn't say anything about it.

After Japan, our dungeon breaking2 continued to Britain (Brightman was nowhere to be seen), France, Switzerland, Germany, Austria, and other Western Europeans nations, all in just two days. That said, there were only 18 gates in Western Europe. Korea and Japan really did have an unnaturally large number of gates. With how big Russia and China were, they had 23 and 28 gates respectively. Even so, they were relatively few compared to Korea and Japan.

"Are we mostly done with Western Europe?"

"Other than Italy, yeah. Though, that could be considered Southern Europe."

"Italy..."

When I was young, I had visited there with father for training. Of course, back then, surviving and getting stronger were my only goals, so I didn't visit any tourist attractions. While I was reminiscing about Italy, Hwaya whispered in my ear.

"You know that there's an SS ranker in Italy, right? I heard that person is quite sexy."

"I'm not interested...? Besides, France also has an SS ranker, but we didn't see him. There's no guarantee that we'll meet all the SS rankers."

"For the record, the SS ranker is a man."

"Oh."

I became irritated. I don't know what kind of a crazy person used the word 'sexy' to compliment men, but I didn't like it! It wasn't because I was expecting a sexy female ranker! Ludia began glaring at me too!

"I wonder how handsome he is. I'm looking forward to it."

"Go ahead."

When I grumbled, Hwaya laughed.

"I'm kidding, so don't worry about it too much. I'm only focused on a single man right now. I don't have the leisure to look at other men."

"... That's a funny joke."

"Haha, sorry."

My face reddened and I turned away. Because Hwaya's hit and run came at the most unexpected timing, I couldn't get out of it well. Thankfully, if I just sat in this awkward atmosphere, someone came to take care of it. Who?

"You're too close to Shin!"

"O Earth...!"

The other girls, of course. With a sigh, Hwaya got off.

"Yeah, yeah. Don't worry, kids. I won't do any foul play. Anyways, start getting ready."

Italian ranker... I wonder what kind of a person he is. No, I'd rather prefer that I didn't meet him. Murmuring to myself, I got up. Italy had a S+ ranked Event Dungeon. To be honest, I couldn't wait to get the S+ ranked dungeon's rewards. I transformed the choker into a spear and pointed it at the direction of Italy.

"Let's go! To Italy!"

"I want to see the Leaning Tower of Pisa!"

"I want to see Rome and Firenze!"

"Venice's gondola rides! And Undines!

"We aren't going there as tourists! And no matter how hard you look, you won't find any Undines!"

"T-There aren't Undines?"

No! If you want to see them, look in Neo-Venezia!

Author's note:

When I was planning, I created the SS rankers based on countries' images. There are 4 SS rankers in Western Europe alone... (2 in Britain, 1 France, 1 Italy). Mmm... it's not because I like Western Europe! Definitely!

PS - 1. The Japanese chocolate mushroom snack is called Kinoko no Yama. It's from Meiji Dairies Corporation. There's a high chance it copied Korea's chocolate mushrooms... T.T For the record, there's a similar snack called Take no Ko no Sato by the same company. I heard there is a war between the two snacks to determine who takes the throne (kidding)

2. Undine, Neo-Venezia: It's a reference to the famous healing anime, ARIA. More specially, it refers to the city and the boatmen.

1. Note, it's not actually mushroom flavored or anything. It's just shaped like one, with the mushroom cap being the chocolate and the root being the cracker.

2. Like dojo breaking