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Mason Brown was once a mercenary on a contract with the military company Whitewater. Prior to that, he specialized in intelligence during the Baghdad war. Then, he caught a board member’s attention and was recruited to join a secret organization. In his previous job, he had spent time infiltrating under disguise into places such as the Shia paramilitary, but this group required him to keep even more secrets. Groups like Men in Black, a mysterious fictional organization that kept aliens and UFOs out of the eyes of the public, were a myth, but this nameless group was real.
In the group, those with superpowers were codenamed ‘cats,’ and the objects only available to them were called ‘cat food.’ Monsters were referred to as ‘rats,’ and the secret spots underground where these creatures clustered were called ‘rat holes.’
At first, the organization was small. However, it grew bigger and was reborn as a hundred percent legal institution in 2008, when the world was acting as if it would collapse soon. They claimed that they were not the government’s shadow agency, and there were even instructions to avoid conflict with the government’s intelligence services.
Of course, it was impossible for an institution that managed supernatural phenomena to stay private, and one particular case stood out in his mind. At that time, Mason had become the administrator of the department that kept the agency hidden and secret, similar to the fictional organization, Men in Black. Unfortunately, the CIA and FBI had mistaken the agency’s activities as a terrorist group and dropped in one of the team’s residences without warning. The place was full of equipment that wiretapped most of the telecommunications networks, including Gold Online, so it was likely that all the parties related to the institution would be imprisoned for the rest of their life if the truth was revealed to society. The fact that the government’s agents, who were considered incompetent, had tracked them down meant that they had been working to catch them for a long time. The government’s operation was successful, and the team members in the residence were captured.
However, they were released less than a day later because the members who had been imprisoned stated that they had been able to intercept all kinds of communication networks from the very beginning as the telecommunication companies had cooperated with them.
The prosecution couldn’t believe that a private organization had received illegal cooperation from all telecommunication industries, and they were amazed by the power of the institution. They ended up taking their agents out even without going through courts or hearings even though Mason’s group had violated dozens of laws. Although the incident was caused by a misunderstanding due to a lack of connections between each institution, it was impossible to make a public issue seem like it never happened. Nevertheless, the world stayed quiet. Even the Democratic Party, the opposition party of the government, had resisted any attempts to make it public.
That was when Mason was demoted to the operation department of the Cat Food Warehouse. The work there wasn’t intense. All he did was store the cat food deep in the underground bunker and protect them. No external forces that aimed for the cat food ever appeared.
The place was disguised as a hazardous substances treatment station, and his weekdays were boring since he only watched the surveillance camera and received new cat food. On weekends, he attended his son’s baseball games with Cheney, who was now the mayor of the city Charlie.
He thought it was a tedious task, but looking back now, it was frightening work. Only after entering the Stage of Advent did he realize that all the cat food with code number A were A-class items that came from master boxes!
‘Oh my gosh.’
That was why the institution was desperately protecting the bunker.
Anyway, Mason finally got an opportunity to move to a different department after working in the warehouse for years without any issues. Thanks to the contributions he obtained previously before being demoted, he was able to choose which department. It was a time when the scale of the institution had been further expanded. He could return to his old management team, or he could spend time protecting the rat holes sealed under the vast land owned by the institution.
However, when he heard that he could join the support team of the two, Ethan and Mary, there was nothing more to think about. In particular, Ethan was a cat known as an influential figure in the organization. There were rumors that he was in a higher position than the secret boss of the agency, and that all the cat food was being sent by him. Ethan was an actual person, but he somehow felt like an imaginary being.
Therefore, he didn’t hesitate to join Ethan’s support team and get involved in another private organization called Tomorrow. It was only afterward that he learned the truth: that all the rumors that secretly circulated within the institution were true. Basically, this giant organization wasn’t under the government, but under Ethan instead.
He started to like the truth at one point. Ethan and Mary were spending all their time in the rat hole, risking their lives. In some ways, Mason thought that their actions were sublime. The two seemed to be struggling as they repeatedly fought in those fierce hellholes, but they didn’t change. When they destroyed one rat hole and came out with blood all over their bodies, they immediately left to find the next rat hole. The same routine repeated every day.
For nearly ten years, they had desperately fought like that. Mason knew because they had been like that even before he was assigned to the support team. He now knew that cats were pre-Awakened, cat food were items, rats were monsters, and rat holes were like the spires in Act One, Stage Two.
However, there was one thing he had already noticed before. It was that the two were heroes of mankind. Ethan and Mary had long fought against the monsters, giving up their time to live normal lives.
***
Ethan and Mary were Koreans, so they had always warned Dorothy and key figures not to be arrogant and avoid conflicts if they encountered any Korean forces. This was also the overall guild’s doctrine. If Dorothy went against Ethan by not following his rule, things would have been different. Mason still thought of Ethan as a hero, but he was a cold-hearted man, unlike Mary who was always kind even when she was fatigued.
“D…do… you remember… me?” he stuttered.
It was then.
Someone screamed outside, “Coming! The Franks are coming in!”
Mason bowed to ask Ethan for his understanding, then rushed outside and gave an order to his subordinates to defend as they did during the night raids. The term ‘flooded’ was the perfect description of the scene. Looking from the top of the wall, the Awakened from the Frank Guild were marching in a long line that stretched to the side, forming an army of nearly ten thousand people. However, there were more coming from the back.
This occurred too quickly for this to be a mere reprisal of their defeat in the first battle. The Frank Guild knew that no one was expecting to invade en masse this early, so they made a surprise attack. With them were large flags with lightning patterns that appeared to have been improvised recently.
His subordinate blurted out, “There was an ambush. The road to the main city is blocked. We couldn’t figure out their scale and the types of traps they installed. I’m sorry.”
Sending an attack squad to that side meant increasing the number of victims.
Mason called Dorothy over.
“The more we hold on to them, the more advantages we have for our guild as a whole.”
“The question is when the main city will figure this out.”
“We should just hope that they will realize it soon.”
[Would you like to upgrade the Flame Tower (LV. 4)? (Consumed points: 2200)]
The red energy that came out of the air began to condense into the flame power.
[The Flame Tower (LV.5) has been completed.]
[Total points: 20]
[The city’s defense level has increased.]
[Defence level: 33]
Mason put all the points he had saved until the end into the flame tower, but he became anxious when he saw the enemy camp continually grow in size. The opponent had also gone through the night attacks, and they would have known that their defenses were weak due to a small number of people being present.
“I’ll replenish the flame tower!”
The Frank Guild would crush the tower first, and Mason would have done the same thing if he was their leader.
“Are you sure he is the Ethan you’ve always talked about?” Dorothy suddenly asked.
Mason looked in the same direction that she was and gazed at Ethan, who had gone up to the outer wall. Dorothy looked at him as if she couldn’t believe it. Mason didn’t feel the need to answer.
How could I ever forget that face?
In fact, the reason why his heart was pounding intensely wasn’t due to the Frank Guild’s massive raid. He had been preparing to see Ethan someday as the stage progressed, and now was the moment he had been waiting for. Just because he was not equipped with items didn’t mean that his strength was gone. He had been killing monsters with all his might even before the Stage of Advent, so he would have been stronger now. He didn’t even dare to guess Ethan’s current level.
Moreover, his institution outside had unbelievable power. His authority not only influenced the small world here, but also the outside world. Joshua von Karjan was the one who spoke on behalf of the World Awakened Association, but Mason knew that the association and Tomorrow were under Ethan’s feet. The World Awakened Association and Tomorrow would be merged when the Stage of Advent was over. Mason gazed at Ethan with obvious awe in his eyes.
“You are Mason, right?” Ethan suddenly said.
“Thank… you… You do remember me.”
Seong-Il’s eyes had widened when Mason tried to reply in Korean even though the latter wasn’t fluent. The pronunciation was hard to understand, but he was using the high formal Korean to address Ethan. Dorothy, who had brought Ethan and Seong-Il here, was also surprised. She was more appalled that Mason was speaking the language of a small country in Asia than the fact that she had seen how the Frank Guild was marching toward them with a large-scale military. She had never heard Korean before, so she was confused as Mason was speaking neither Chinese nor Japanese.
Ethan responded in his usual cold manner, “There is no need to use Korean. Who’s the guild leader?”
“Idema.”
Mason glanced at Kwon Seong-Il after responding to Ethan. There was a middle-aged man who looked completely opposite from Mary in her position.
Mason continued, “You might not know, but I was the general manager of the Cat Food Warehouse at the agency. Oh, Cheney, a member of our organization, is also here as a commander. We have all been looking forward to joining your team, Ethan. Our guild, the Cat Food Warehouse, is all yours.”
Even then, Mason couldn’t believe he was having an actual conversation with Ethan. Mary was sweet to everyone, but Ethan was never like that. However, Ethan was talking to him at the moment. Fighting in the same stage with Ethan as an Awakened was a chance that would never come again! Mason was thrilled that he reported to Ethan about the Cat Food Warehouse’s situation.
“Have you heard about Mick?” Ethan asked.
Mason shook his head. “No, I don’t know him.”
“What about Jonathan Hunter?”
“Jonathan Hunter is…”
Ethan clarified, “Jonathan Hunter of Jonathan Investment Finance Group.”
“No, he is not here.”
Mason realized that Ethan wasn’t paying attention to the number of Frank Guild’s soldiers that were invading. He went quiet after mentioning an ordinary name and the name of the richest man in the world who had so much money that no one could estimate it.
Meanwhile, the Frank Guild was clearly not trying to stall. It was obvious that their purpose was to capture the place before the main city sent support troops. Their attack line began to fluctuate, and lights started to flash.
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Right at the moment when Mason was about to step into the war, he noticed that Ethan was now wearing armor that he had clearly not seen a few seconds ago. Then, a mysterious energy sprang from his entire body and soared into the sky.
Hwaaaak-!
The energy suddenly spread in all directions and formed a huge semicircular membrane. When it wrapped all over the place…
[Odin has entered the Absolute Warzone.]
[Warning: You cannot leave the area.]
An urgent and intimidating message flashed in front of Mason’s eyes.