The world did not just witness a dungeon raid; it witnessed a paradigm shift.
The media networks that had broadcasted the live feed from Jeju Island found themselves inundated with an unprecedented surge of traffic that systematically crashed servers across four continents. It was a catastrophic collapse of conventional understanding. The only historical event that even remotely mirrored the atmospheric terror of that morning was the Kamish dragon incident, a tragedy that had permanently altered the geopolitical landscape of hunting.
But Kamish had been a disaster of survival. This was a spectacle of absolute, uncontested dominance.
First, there was the matter of the Korean S-ranker. Sung Jinwoo's sudden entry into the fray and his subsequent execution of the talking Ant King had sent shockwaves through the global hunter community. His power, his speed, and the chilling ease with which he handled a creature that had paralyzed Japan's finest were entirely beyond the baseline possibilities of an S-rank class. The fight had left the southern remnants of the island looking like a fractured wasteland, yet it filled the Korean populace with an immense, intoxicating energy. For years, Korea had been viewed as a minor player on the global stage, plagued by the looming shadow of the Jeju reclamation failures. Now, Jinwoo's display marked the definitive beginning of a new era of possibilities for the nation.
Yet, as monumental as Jinwoo's victory was, it paled in comparison to the existential dread inspired by the two Japanese brothers.
Geopolitically, Japan had always maintained a position of strength. They possessed the largest concentration of S-rank hunters in Asia and boasted one of the highest dungeon-clearing rates on the planet. They were the undisputed top dogs of the region, held back from global hegemony only by a singular, frustrating metric: they lacked a registered National Level Hunter. They had no equivalent to the American heavyweights or China's Liu Zhigang.
With the conclusion of the Jeju raid, that deficit was erased in a matter of seconds. The world had officially received a statement, written in blue, black and emerald fire, that Japan now possessed two entities that did not merely border National Level status but they redefined it.
The global reaction was immediate and chaotic. Because the brothers' combined Reiatsu had reverberated across the whole world, every major intelligence organization on earth initiated an immediate, aggressive dive into the archives. From the Federal Bureau of Hunters in Washington to the specialized ministries in Beijing, the directive was uniform: discover the origins of Ulquiorra and Grimmjow.
The phones within the Japan Hunter Association headquarters were ringing off the hooks before the transport ships had even finished docking at the mainland. High-ranking officials from various foreign governments were already drafting diplomatic communiqués, while elite international guilds began calculating astronomical offers. The strategy was obvious, contact them, offer them sovereign immunity, offer them entire territories, and convince them to defect.
However, beneath the desperate political maneuvering, a deeper, more unsettling question gripped the global think tanks. It wasn't just the magnitude of the destruction that had caught their attention; it was the specific, terrifying nature of the forms they had taken.
The recorded footage showed the blue-haired brother transforming into a half-beast hybrid with white armor and a predatory tail, while the pale brother had manifested immense, tragic wings that literally altered the color of the sky. It did not look like an awakening. It did not look like a hunter using a high-tier skill or a transformation magic type.
It looked like monster transformation in its truest form.
————-
The solemnity of the official memorial service in Seoul did little to quiet the feverish atmosphere gripping the rest of the planet. Thanks to the overwhelming support of the consultants and the sudden intervention of the jinwoo, the final casualty count for the dead soldiers had thankfully remained below twenty, a statistical miracle compared to the total annihilation of the previous three expeditions.
But once the funeral fires were extinguished, the world immediately returned its collective focus to the two brothers.
On television screens spanning from Tokyo to Paris, the images and video fragments of the brief, cataclysmic transformation were played on a continuous loop. The footage was terrifyingly clear. Analysts continuously pointed to the contrast between the two: one brother on land, exhibiting sleek, animalistic features that heavily resembled an advanced, flawless beast-transformation type like Baek Yoonho, and the other brother hovering in the sky, a winged silhouette that had caused a catastrophic weather change, bathing fifty miles of the strait in a literal downpour of dark spiritual energy.
The most disturbing detail for the global military think tanks was the timeline. The entire sequence, from the simultaneous release of their power to the absolute vaporization of the transformed Kraken, had taken less than two minutes. They had fundamentally erased a calamity in the span of a casual breath.
The Scavenger Guild Headquarters: New York City
Thousands of miles away, inside a palatial, glass-walled office overlooking the Manhattan skyline, the recorded images of the transformed brothers were frozen on a massive wall monitor.
Sitting in a heavily reinforced leather chair was a man of gargantuan proportions. Thick, golden hair framed a rugged face, and his yellow eyes glowed with a faint, predatory light behind a pair of dark sunglasses. A premium cigar rested between his fingers, a thin trail of smoke drifting toward the ceiling.
This was the Goliath. Thomas Andre, the world's strongest National Level Hunter.
Standing near the massive desk was his chief assistant, holding a tablet displaying the real-time geopolitical shifts occurring since the Jeju raid.
"The Federal Bureau of Hunters has already classified them as individual tactical entities, Mr. Andre," she stated, her voice crisp but tight with underlying tension. "The initial energy readings from the Atlantic seismic sensors indicate that their output briefly exceeded the baseline of any known S-Rank dungeon boss recorded in the West."
Thomas Andre stared at the frozen monitor for a silent moment, then threw his head back and laughed out loud. The booming sound vibrated the thick glass windows of the skyscraper.
"Exceeded the baseline? That's an understatement," Andre chuckled, taking a deep drag from his cigar. "Those two are worth every bit of praise they're getting. For an energy signature to travel across the entire Atlantic and make my skin crawl while I'm sitting in New York? That's not just power. That's a declaration."
As the laughter faded, Andre's smile slowly vanished, his yellow eyes narrowing as he stared at the pitch-black wings of Ulquiorra on the screen. Deep within his chest, the remnant of the absolute dread he had felt when the energy hit the continent still lingered. It was a cold, heavy weight that his pride didn't want to acknowledge.
'It's not just that they're strong. The nature of that pressure... it didn't feel human. It didn't even feel like an awakening. They felt more like monsters that somehow figured out how to wear clothes and talk.'
"Mr. Andre," the assistant continued, shifting her posture as she brought up an encrypted document. "Director David Wright of the Bureau has already issued a formal directive. He wants to secure those two brothers for the United States at any cost. The government is apparently willing to trade several top-tier magical artifacts from the Kamish vault and offer a tax-exempt sovereign payment that surpasses the standard national-level retainer."
Thomas Andre let out a sharp, mocking scoff, a cloud of gray smoke escaping his lips.
"David is an idiot if he thinks that's going to work," Andre said, shaking his head. "Men who can delete half an island in a hundred seconds don't give a damn about shiny trinkets or American dollars. If they wanted wealth, they could take a country by force before the Bureau could even clear the paperwork."
He leaned forward, stubbing out his cigar in a crystal ashtray. "Be that as it may, tell the Bureau to keep a continuous, absolute watch on those two. Don't engage, don't provoke them, just watch. We need to know what their next move is."
"Understood, sir," the assistant replied, bowing slightly before turning and exiting the quiet office.
Once the heavy doors clicked shut, Thomas Andre turned his chair back toward the massive monitors. He looked at Grimmjow's jagged, white-armored smile, then at Ulquiorra's cold, hollow gaze. A slow, dangerous chuckle rumbled in his throat as his own magical pressure began to subtly ripple through the room.
"Well, then," Andre murmured to the empty room, his eyes flashing in the dim light. "Things are finally getting interesting."
————-
Back in Japan, inside the executive offices of the Japan Hunter Association, the atmosphere was entirely rotten.
Matsumoto's fingers twitched against his cane. His day had started with a surge of intoxicating joy. Watching the global broadcast of the Jeju Island raid had initially felt like the realization of his life's ultimate ambition. The absolute dominance displayed by the two brothers meant that Japan now ranked in the top two, if not the absolute first, in the world. They had finally achieved superpower status in all its absolute glory, leaving their regional rivals completely in the dust.
But that glory had an immediate, suffocating caveat.
The brothers were not under his control. They were under Goto Ryuji.
With those two entities practically acting as Goto's personal vanguard, the balance of internal power within Japan had completely shifted. Goto now wielded more influence, prestige, and raw political leverage than the Association itself. Yet, it wasn't just the shifting political tides that had completely soured Matsumoto's mood.
It was the fact that his time had officially run out.
Earlier that day, the doors to his office were bypassed entirely as a squad of specialized Association security sorcerers marched inside, their heavy boots echoing on the polished floor. Walking directly behind them was Goto Ryuji, his expression cold, calculating, and entirely devoid of his usual corporate deference. Behind Goto stood the remaining S-Rank hunters of the Japanese raid team.
FLASHBACK
"What is the meaning of this intrusion, Goto?" Matsumoto demanded, his voice dropping into a harsh, authoritarian register. "You have just returned from a military operation. You report to me, not the other way around."
"The old hierarchy ended the moment we left the strait, Chairman," Goto said, his voice entirely flat as he gestured to the security detail. "Or should I say, former Chairman."
Before Matsumoto could even raise his cane to signal his private guards, a thick folder of encrypted digital documents was slammed onto his desk.
"The moment we landed, the data caches regarding the Jeju Island deployment were fully unsealed," Goto explained, leaning forward against the desk. "We have the complete, unedited logs of your private communications. The tracking of the communications interference, the tactical delays, and the explicit evidence of your directive to allow the Korean S-Rank hunters to be systematically dismantled by the ant colony."
Matsumoto's face turned an asymmetric shade of pale, his throat tightening.
The entire coup was handled with a terrifying, quiet efficiency. There would be no public trial, no grand debate within the Japanese diet. The evidence was too volatile. If the blackmail had leaked to the Korean government or the international media, it would have caused an absolute geopolitical catastrophe for Japan, entirely ruining the goodwill earned by the raid. Because of the sheer gravity of his treason, not a single faction within the Japanese government or the hunter guilds stepped forward to defend Matsumoto. He was a political liability, and he was removed like one.
By noon, Matsumoto had been quietly apprehended and stripped of his post, his keys to the Association treasury and administration handed directly to the new regime.
Goto Ryuji officially took control as the acting head of the Japan Hunter Association. His transition was absolute, and he did not waste a single second of his new authority.
The first order of business on his desk was the formal, global registration of Japan's two new tactical assets. A directive was sent out to the International Hunter Bureau, officially establishing Grimmjow Jaegerjaquez and Ulquiorra Cifer as National Level Hunters, backed by the full sovereign immunity of the state.
The second order of business was far more ruthless.
Goto sat in the newly acquired chairman's chair, his eyes scanning the hidden ledger of Matsumoto's private accounts. "Cancel the contracts," Goto ordered his secretary, his pen signing off on a series of immediate asset freezes. "Every private deal Matsumoto made with foreign intelligence agencies, the ones who paid millions behind the scenes to ensure the Koreans lost their hunting infrastructure… dismantle them completely. Burn the records and seize the collateral."
He closed the ledger with a heavy thud, looking out over the Tokyo skyline. The corrupt shadow that had governed the Association for a decade was gone, replaced by a cold, military efficiency. Japan had its power, it had its status, and under his direction, it would finally keep it.
FLASHBACK END