Chapter 360

Chapter 360
## Chapter 360

Power of Gluttony (3)

A suburban residence standing three stories tall, complete with a private courtyard, situated on the outskirts of Seoul.

It was an opulent piece of real estate, with dimensions and aesthetics that practically screamed an astronomical price tag… yet properties of this nature were never truly in high demand.

Their position placed them far from the beating heart of the city, starved of easy public transit routes and everyday commercial conveniences. More critically, they presented a glaring security risk, as the remoteness made it exceedingly difficult for Guardians and local emergency personnel to provide a rapid response.

Granted, the domestic safety indexes of Korea had seen massive strides in recent times, but the national offense statistics never quite dropped to absolute zero.

Naturally, these secluded properties were far less vulnerable to high-profile terrorist incidents, which almost exclusively targeted high-density metropolitan hubs.

On the flip side, low-level property crimes were drastically more frequent.

Isolated structures like this were the ultimate prize for residential intruders, who preferred to operate in total secrecy, far from public scrutiny.

‘Right there.’

Consequently, the residents occupying these types of estates generally fell into two distinct categories.

They were either Awakened elites possessing absolute confidence in their personal combat prowess to defend their holdings, or ultra-wealthy elites with the financial capital to contract top-tier security details.

Naturally, a minor subset existed—those who simply lacked the funds for mainstream urban housing and chose to roll the dice, praying that fortune would favor them.

After all, the market value of these estates remained heavily discounted to offset the inherent dangers.

‘I wonder which category this target falls under.’

A sprawling courtyard, hemmed in by a towering perimeter wall, with a three-story mansion anchoring the center.

The self-proclaimed ‘Master Thief’, a meteoric new figure dominating the criminal underworld, locked his gaze onto his objective through a specialized telescope, running his tongue across his lips with greedy eagerness.

It felt slightly… contradictory for a burglar, whose primary survival tool was total anonymity, to cultivate a grand reputation… but he viewed it as nothing more than a harmless personal quirk.

When all was said and done, weren’t there countless historical legends celebrating the exploits of beloved phantom thieves?

‘As long as my authentic face remains completely obscured, nothing else matters.’

Furthermore, his conviction in his own stealth parameters was absolute.

He had received personal instruction from a legendary master who discovered his latent talents during the initial phases of his translocation to an alternate realm, and he had never once suffered apprehension, eventually eclipsing the capabilities of his own mentor.

‘I need to feel that rush once more. No, I need something that completely dwarfs it…!’

Earth, a unique nexus where the arcane systems of innumerable dimensions converged, served as the ultimate playground to realize his grandest dreams.

To be fair, if he truly desired a legendary challenge, he could have set his sights on the Returnee Association or the Executive Blue House… but his current preparations hadn’t reached that threshold yet.

‘One step at a time. I’ll make a play for those high-profile strongholds once I have thoroughly mastered the defense protocols of this world… ’

He had already successfully breached dozens of elite residential estates.

When factoring in that his repatriation to Earth had occurred less than half a year ago, it stood as a remarkably stunning track record.

‘I couldn’t care less about Hahoe Mask or Phantom. They are completely oblivious to my existence. How could they possibly apprehend me? Even the Supernatural Management Bureau, the Returnee Association, and the criminal syndicate known as the Blood Alliance have only just recently caught wind of my activities.’

He was entirely cut from a different cloth compared to those amateur crooks who got caught instantly.

Even if those legendary powerhouses decided to hunt him down, he possessed unwavering confidence in his evasion tactics.

‘Let us examine what treasures this hunting ground is hiding.’

A smirk formed on his lips, his gaze flashing with intense thrill, as he channeled his personal signature ability, 「Ghostly Steps」.

A cascade of complementary skills triggered in tandem, instantly neutralizing his physical presence and erasing his tangible body from sight, rendering him completely imperceptible.

Even a hyper-perceptive Awakened operative would fail to notice his presence, even if he performed a loud dance right before their eyes.

He advanced toward the perimeter barrier, his strides remaining flawlessly fluid and soundless.

Then, he came to an abrupt halt, an unnatural sensation of deep discomfort blooming within his chest.

‘…What is this feeling?’

A freezing premonition, a deep-seated biological terror that sent a violent shiver coursing down his spine.

He hadn’t encountered this sensation since his rookie days, back when he had foolishly over-relied on his signature skill while disregarding his mentor’s strict directives, nearly resulting in his demise.

Had it not been for his mentor’s timely intervention, his life would have ended back then.

‘Tsk.’

His ego felt bruised.

He was no longer that clueless, inexperienced amateur from his past.

Though his instructor had stepped away from active duty before he could witness his absolute peak, he had long since eclipsed that old man in both operational talent and combat experience.

‘I can’t spend the rest of my days hunting down defenseless targets. It is time to transition to the big leagues. This breakthrough will be my catalyst to surpass my previous limitations.’

Naturally, he had no intention of completely brushing off the instinctual warning.

He unleashed the entirety of his sensory perceptions alongside his collection of magical artifacts to dissect the environment past the wall, his consciousness remaining cold and intensely analytical.

‘…An incredibly formidable defensive matrix. And it is flawlessly masked. Could this boundary be the origin of my sudden dread?’

The defensive array was state-of-the-art, easily rivaling the security of high-clearance government installations.

‘Deploying this caliber of protective array… for a simple residential home out in the country…?’

His investigative curiosity flared up intensely.

An individual of immense significance had to be pulling the strings here, someone armed with the wealth and systemic leverage required to deploy such an advanced defensive network.

And such a person undoubtedly possessed valuable secrets worth protecting.

‘Unregistered capital? A hidden mistress? Or potentially… something far darker. Illegal narcotics? Human trade networks? Illicit organ harvesting?’

His thoughts spun wildly, conceptualizing all sorts of high-stakes scenarios.

Concurrently, a nagging intuition whispered that this venture might prove to be… far more hazardous than the payout justified.

‘By all logical metrics, I should pull back… ’

Yet his eyelids, which had momentarily drifted shut, snapped back open, a fierce spark of raw ambition blazing within them.

He stood at a critical juncture.

He could either continue existing as a commonplace burglar, or elevate his status to a mythic phantom thief, a name whispered in awe and folklore.

The decision had already been finalized in his mind.

The defensive array might pose a lethal threat, but it still operated within known magical laws.

It would certainly push him to his limits, but it lacked the power to completely halt his advance.

‘Time to move!’

He triggered his secondary signature ability, 「Wormhole」.

An extraordinary talent that allowed him to construct a brief localized rift, bypassing any structural or magical obstructions in his path.

While its spatial distance was heavily restricted, it functioned as his ultimate insurance policy, ideal for both infiltration procedures and rapid extractions.

‘I will strip away your mysteries!’

He confidently took a stride forward, crossing the threshold into the property’s interior domain…

“………?”

…only to find himself instantly ensnared within a massive tactical formation.

‘What on earth?’

He was abruptly surrounded by a dense thicket of trees, their limbs weaving together tightly to form an impenetrable ceiling that completely obscured the sky above.

An expansive woodland environment had materialized around him, with trees stretching massively toward the sky, easily topping heights of over ten meters.

“…What kind of sorcery is this? How is this possible…?”

The words slipped from his lips involuntarily, his tone saturated with complete shock.

He had purposefully bypassed the outer defensive matrix to manifest directly inside the residential structure, completely avoiding the courtyard.

His dimensional trajectories had been absolutely flawless, and he hadn’t detected a single anomaly.

There could only be one logical conclusion.

‘A localized spatial warping strong enough to completely neutralize my “Wormhole”? Yet I failed to get even a whisper of it from the outside…!’

His survival instincts roared in absolute panic, and the reality of the situation hit him instantly.

He had merely scratched the absolute surface of this place, walking straight into a deadly snare because of his own overconfident vanity.

Crackle!

He desperately attempted to invoke 「Wormhole」 once more, but nothing manifested save for a few erratic white sparks sputtering out in the air. The skill was completely suppressed.

‘Damn it, this signature… holy energy? Was it acting as a concealment shroud for the formation?’

His primary emergency escape route was gone. He was forced to plot an alternative exit strategy.

Harnessing his specialized weightlessness technique, he vaulted up onto a nearby tree limb and rapidly scaled his way to the highest point… but his gaze met nothing but a boundless ocean of endless forestry.

A colossal barrier grid, its sheer magnitude and systemic sophistication far exceeding anything he could comprehend.

An undertaking of this scale would require a transcendent Archmage at the bare minimum to manifest.

No, when factoring in the distinct presence of holy energy, it was highly probable that this was the joint execution of multiple transcendent entities…

‘Deploying this caliber of protective array… for a simple residential home out in the country…? What kind of place is this?! A clandestine headquarters for some global domination syndicate?’

In a certain sense, that deduction wasn’t too far from reality.

It served as the primary residence for an individual locked in a shadow war against an organization bent on global domination.

Granted, the property only housed a single official occupant.

The Master Thief, as if driven by a desperate need to validate his legendary underworld title, darted through the terrain at high speeds, searching frantically for any structural vulnerability within the barrier.

No defensive snare was completely flawless.

However, there existed certain traps that were… terrifyingly close to flawless.

“Haa… Haa…”

His physical stamina and internal reserves were dissolving at an alarming rate, as though being actively siphoned away by an invisible vampire.

His physical form, which normally possessed the endurance to operate for multiple consecutive days without a single pause, was now utterly spent, rendering his limbs heavy and his reactions painfully sluggish.

“…Ha… Hahaha! This is… pure insanity. What kind of unhinged lunatic builds an artificial demonic realm of this scale right here in Korea…!”

The surrounding flora, which had initially seemed stagnant and passive, suddenly burst into violent motion, its limbs and creeping vines lashing out to ensnare his body.

Arcane traps, primed to detonate based on his positioning, kept his nerves pushed to the absolute brink.

Monsters of a deep crimson hue, radiating a suffocating, metallic odor of fresh gore, hunted him down without a single moment of pause.

Even on the rare occasions he managed to secure a fleeting pocket of safety, the ambient curses and psychological terrors permeating the atmosphere shattered his capacity to rest or even drift into a light slumber.

An exit route remained entirely non-existent, and merely keeping his heart beating required every ounce of his remaining strength.

He had crashed into his absolute physical wall.

The sheer reality that he had managed to endure for nearly twenty-four hours within this nightmare was an absolute anomaly.

“Curse it all… This can’t be…”

Thud—

As his vision began to dim and his higher cognitive functions unraveled into deep bitterness,

…the brutal truth finally crystallized in his mind.

He hadn’t stumbled into some mundane dungeon zone meant for casual training or raising his power metrics.

He had inadvertently walked straight into a highly specialized, localized purgatory, masterfully engineered by apex entities.

—

“Hmm, is it finally wrapped up? That dragged on a bit longer than my initial estimates. He possesses a decent amount of talent.”

I took a slow draw from my coffee cup and shut my eyes, tracking the fading life signature of the trespasser.

A human male, completely incapacitated and lingering on the threshold of mortality, was currently being bound by Blood Spawns—minions constructed entirely from vital fluids—deep within the heart of the barrier.

‘Hmm… What is the best course of action for this individual? He appears to possess… a highly practical skill set.’

His infiltration metrics easily eclipsed those of a run-of-the-mill burglar.

While his direct engagement capabilities remained an unverified metric, his concealment protocols were highly commendable. Armed with meticulous planning, a stroke of good fortune, and an adequately preoccupied target, he might even manage to slip past the senses of a transcendent entity.

‘Extinguishing his life permanently would be a bit of a waste.’

Similar security breaches had occurred a handful of times in the past, and his tactical response protocol had always remained uniform.

He would extract all viable intelligence from the trespasser, then proceed to completely liquidate the sponsoring organization or private entities pulling the strings, along with every associate tied to the operation.

There was zero room for innocence among those who actively traded intelligence regarding potential infiltration targets. His execution was always absolute.

‘If their ignorance was genuinely benign, I would simply… recalibrate their neural recollections.’

At that moment, his gaze locked onto the specific assortment of enchanted artifacts the captive had been carrying.

These items were currently being systematically extracted from the intruder’s localized subspace pouch, and they immediately arrested his focus.

After all…

“I was the one who put those on the market.”

…They were specialized magical instruments he had personally channeled through Hubert’s Trading Company, which were subsequently circulated down through the networks of the Blood Alliance.

It wasn’t an entirely shocking coincidence.

He had successfully engineered a highly resilient logistics pipeline for arcane hardware to capitalize on the massive market demand, and both Hubert’s Trading Company and the Blood Alliance had reaped massive windfalls from the arrangement.

The Blood Alliance, despite its structural categorization as an underworld criminal syndicate, had risen to become one of the most dominant authorities managing Korea’s nocturnal activities, largely due to their calculated, restrained operational style and their exclusive access to these enchanted tools.

Had he not deliberately lubricated the gears of their organization, they would have been aggressively dismantled and driven into obscurity by public authorities, regardless of their willingness to cooperate.

‘…Very well, I will hand him over to the custody of the Blood Alliance. They can subject him to a vampiric conversion and bind his loyalty through specialized systemic constraints.’

Initiating a vampiric turning on Earth was an intensely wasteful process, requiring an immense expenditure of foundational assets… but for an individual displaying this caliber of niche expertise, it represented a highly lucrative long-term asset acquisition.

Furthermore, it posed no logistical hurdle for Heinz the Second, who enjoyed unrestricted command over blood supplies without facing any threat of psychic corruption.

“Excellent. Moving forward…”

With the intruder’s operational destination officially finalized,

I redirected my focus back toward the statuses of my remaining avatars, a trace of deep contentment playing across my expression.

‘Every chess piece is shifting exactly as intended.’

The overarching operational theater within Ganghwange was developing completely in line with his blueprints.

The localized factions were fully cognizant of the sheer scale of the looming catastrophe, rendering any need for elaborate diplomatic manipulation entirely redundant.

‘When all is said and done, this crisis threatens every single living soul within Ganghwange.’

Initial reports had been met with a healthy degree of skepticism, but the recent structural anomaly had shattered any lingering doubts.

A massive vortex of dark clouds supercharged with corruptive demonic energy had completely blanketed the atmosphere directly above Beijing.

The phenomenon had been clearly observable across the entirety of Hebei Province, and even entities stationed in drastically more distant territories had clearly registered the terrifying, suffocating pressure.

The intelligence had rapidly leaked through an array of reporting pipelines, utilizing covert operatives, private communication channels, and actual visual recordings captured by the specialized mystics of the Golden Island Sect who had been keeping a watchful eye on Beijing.

Following that, achieving a unified strategic consensus and transitioning to the active deployment phase had been a straightforward progression.

‘Assemble the highest tier of combat elites and execute an instantaneous, overwhelming offensive to dismantle the Demonic Cult situated within Beijing.’

Even the venerable Master Wu Jin, the single-armed Abbot directing the Shaolin Temple, had officially committed his strength to the joint vanguard.

Now that the true scale of the Demonic Cult’s apocalyptic conspiracy had been laid bare to the world, no faction—regardless of whether they walked the righteous path or the unorthodox path—could justify maintaining a neutral stance.

‘Naturally, a few isolated groups will always prioritize their immediate personal gain and adopt a passive approach… ’

But their longevity would be incredibly short-lived.

They would inevitably be wiped from the board, either systematically purged by the Murim Alliance or directly liquidated by his own hand.

“The final element required is simply time.”

The machinery of war had been set into motion.

And he possessed absolute clarity regarding his immediate personal objectives.

Click— Thud—

He began arranging a diverse assortment of rare materials upon the surface of the table, placing them down in a deliberate sequence.

Every single item vibrated with an exotic, intensely potent mystical signature.

‘Let us execute this process flawlessly.’

Heavenly medicines harvested from Auterica, legendary elixirs from Ganghwange, rare specimens from Earth, and a multitude of other dimensional realms.

He had systematically amassed this entire collection, setting the stage to achieve the absolute peak of metabolic efficiency for the 「Power of Gluttony」.