The Upside-Down World (3)

Hong Kong and Philadelphia were fortunate because there were no casualties. I listened to the TV news while checking the situation around the world with my cell phone. News of casualties came from many cities around the world. It was naive to expect that all the races that came out of the Channels would be peace enthusiasts who boasted a high degree of civilization as in the above two cases.

Either the existence of the alien world that has passed to the country hadn’t been civilized, had little interest in the humane right of survival, or didn’t know how to communicate magically. If any of these three were met, a non-trivial problem undoubtedly occurred. In most cases, human casualties were involved. However, there were few battlefields in which humankind with modern science didn’t triumph. In many countries, the army won and annihilated or defeated the violent creatures and sent them back inside the Channel. Countries that had yet to clear up the situation were already quarantining areas around the Channel to control any further civilian damage.

However, there were cases in which it was impossible to cope with different races’ disasters with human strength. This was the case for the cities that suffered the most damage on the planet—Caracas, Cairo, and Munich.

***

Caracas, the capital of Venezuela, was the first city to suffer total destruction due to the Channel. It was now hard to find a building that remained intact. As soon as the Channel was opened, odorous seawater poured out under enormous pressure, ignoring the laws of physics, and drove around the city as if it had an ego, crushing buildings and sweeping away people. Those who were swallowed by the sea died from drowning or being crushed under the sinking debris. The sight of a tall skyscraper falling apart on impact with the wave was like an unbelievable nightmare, only seen before in films. The waves continually poured out of the Channel. They were now spreading all over Venezuela, bringing the nation’s functionality to a standstill.

***

Meanwhile, images of Cairo had surfaced. They were aerial shots that only showed a similar scene as far as the eye could see. Death and enormous flames engulfed the city. This scene was filmed three hours ago, and it was said that even aerial filming was now becoming impossible. What came out of Cairo’s Channel was an enormous snake with horns on its head. As soon as the snake emerged from the Channel, it twisted in great pain and began to attack the whole city in a colossal frenzy. The problem was that the snake was huge.

Its body was over 500 meters in length. Hence, as it bent and traversed downtown Cairo, the city was destroyed, and countless citizens were sacrificed. Besides, when a liquid of unknown composition was sprayed from its horns, the buildings and the grounds covered with it were burned. Jet Fighters were immediately dispatched, and air raids were prepared to sacrifice the citizens still stuck in the epicenter. After the explosion and dust settled, the snake appeared unscathed. The fighter jets were coated with liquid from the snake, leading to a massive explosion.

The city was destroyed at a rapid pace, and the number of casualties was impossible to count. The capital of North Africa, which had endured the outbreak of the Black Death and the invasion of European countries for over a thousand years, had come to an end, being trampled by colossal animals from another dimension.

***

“Parvache, I don’t think it’s time for me to relax and continue my training in Dimensional leap magic.. is there any way to complete it as soon as possible? What if those strange sea waters or crazy snakes cross over here? It doesn’t seem like I’m in a situation where I’ll be hiding alone anymore. I’m gonna have to run away with my mom and sister.”

Indeed, those two kinds were things that I had never seen before, and I couldn’t even ponder winning a fight against them. However, there was already a record in Akashic Records, and Parvache explained to me as if it was a dimensional disaster that could be read.

[The sea waters..hmm. That’s not water. It’s a demon’s body. Those indefinite demons will go back to their own dimension after a little taste of humans who don’t have a handful of mana. And it’s probably never going to cross over to this way. The buildings are tall and strong, so it takes all the power to destroy them. Still, the humans hiding in them don’t really have a single iota of magical power.]

“Really?”

[What it’s doing now is like chewing some plastic that it can’t swallow and spit it out.]

“Then what about that crazy snake?”

[The Flame Horned Snake that fell in Cairo..it will become weak and hibernate if you leave it. Originally, they are gentle guys because they resemble their master’s personality. Still, it must have been quite surprised to enter such an unknown dimension.]

“..What are those big guys doing? Isn’t it too big to even appear from the Channel?”

[No, even if they didn’t cut its body to pieces or compress the body, crossing the Channel itself isn’t a big issue for the Female Demon of the Inflammation Blood anyway.]

Parvache turned the subject.

[Of all the things you’ve seen so far, the real thing to be careful about is that in Germany.] historical

I nodded. The details of the Channel that occurred in Munich, Germany, weren’t delivered in detail on Korean broadcasts. Instead, the internet’s reaction was explosive, and netizens worldwide were divided between the ideas that they had to rescue the citizens of Munich right away, or they had to sacrifice everyone and blow up the entire city by air raids before the creatures left Munich. Munich neither burned nor collapsed in the process of the city’s destruction. A cloud of black smoke from the Channel gradually spread throughout the city, and eventually, it became a huge translucent black dome that covered the whole city.

As a result of the military, police, and rescuers’ attempts, it was possible to enter the dome from outside, but the opposite was impossible. It was as if they would never let go of their prey once they had a grip on it. And as time passed, videos shot by people trapped inside the dome began to appear on the internet and broadcast. Running out of the Channel was a two-legged walking creature whose body was covered with red keratin and had a long tail about half its height.

Depending on the witnesses, some say that their number was in the thousands, and some said tens of thousands. As if they communicated with each other in a high and sharp voice, they exchanged incomprehensible sounds as they scattered around the city. According to testimonies from citizens who posted requests for help on the internet while hiding, it was systematic and swift as if they were looking at an army.

They moved at an unimaginable speed for normal creatures and began capturing citizens at random. Parvache spoke when he saw a video of their movement.