“What do you mean?” Siegfried asked.

“We found an unusual hailstorm occurring over the Marchioni Empire’s eastern provinces,” Cheon Woo-Jin replied with a shrug.

“Oh? Really? How bad is it?”

“The smallest chunk of hail is the size of a baseball.”

“What?!” Siegfried jumped in shock.

“The biggest recorded so far was about as large as an elephant. At least that’s what the satellite imagery shows. And the hailstorm isn’t letting up at all. It’s pouring like torrential rain during the monsoon, and it's drifting westward as we speak.”

A hailstorm was one of the most devastating natural disasters known to man. Even getting hit by an ice cube from a freezer hurts. Imagine getting struck by a solid boulder of ice falling from the sky.

Ordinary people would be crushed immediately, crops would be destroyed, and even sturdy buildings would be smashed to pieces.

It was the very definition of a calamity.

“It’s been going on for about two days now,” Cheon Woo-Jin added.

“Seriously? For two days now?” Siegfried asked, doubting his ears.

“Yeah,” Cheon Woo-Jin replied with a shrug.

Siegfried grimaced and lashed out, “Why the hell didn’t you tell me earlier?!”

Cheon Woo-Jin blinked a few times before retorting, “What did you just say? Hey, why should I report every disaster occurring in the Marchionio Empire to you? Huh? Since when was that my job? Ha! The nerve of this guy!”

“Haven’t you heard of telepathy? Your heart is my heart, my heart is your heart! You should’ve just read my mind and told me!”

“What the hell are you talking about?”

“I’m saying you should be more attentive to me!”

“...Fuck off.”

“Kids these days don’t have any sense of initiative. Tsk, tsk...”

“Wow... Are you okay?”

Cheon Woo-Jin could only gape, completely dumbfounded by Siegfried’s brazen nonsense.

Even the most brazen of conmen would probably shy away from him.

“Think about it. The longer these things go on, the stronger they get. That means suppressing them early on is crucial, isn’t it?” Siegfried reasoned.

“Yeah,” Cheon Woo-Jin grimaced but still agreed.

“Then you should’ve told me immediately, no?”

“Well, yeah, but—”

Cheon Woo-Jin was about to explain his side of the story, but Siegfried immediately cut him off.

“So whose fault is it?”

“Wait, what?”

“Who didn’t tell me in time? You, right? That means it’s your mistake.”

“That’s not wrong, but...”

“Tsk, tsk... You go around telling everybody you’re working for world peace, but this is the best you can do? I’d be embarrassed if I were you,” Siegfried said, clicking his tongue and shooting a disappointed glare.

“...”

“Do better next time, you slacker!”

For a brief moment, Cheon Woo-Jin actually doubted himself and felt ashamed.

‘Did I really screw up? Did I neglect my duty as the leader of the Guardians?’

Siegfried’s gaslighting seemed to have worked on him, as the seeds of doubt started budding in his heart.

Meanwhile...

“Let’s go, Hamchi.”

“Kyuuu! Let’s go!”

Siegfried slipped out of the office with Hamchi, leaving Cheon Woo-Jin, who was still dazed, behind.

“Hold on a damn second,” Cheon Woo-Jin growled, snapping back to his senses. Then, he grumbled, “Why the hell am I the bad guy here?! I didn’t even know about the calamities until just now, and it’s not like I deliberately ignored them! You just want an excuse to—”

It was then.

“Huh? Where did he go?!”

Cheon Woo-Jin glanced around the empty office, realizing belatedly that Siegfried and Hamchi had already left.

“T-That bastard! You damn asshole, Han Tae-Sung!” Cheon Woo-Jin screamed, his whole body trembling with rage.

Without question, Siegfried was the single greatest source of Cheon Woo-Jin’s stress.

He was the origin of every head, the root of all his mental anguish.

***

Siegfried headed straight for the eastern region of the Marchioni Empire.

‘I have to end this quickly.’

The Ten Calamities possessed a terrifying trait. The more destruction they brought upon using their powers, the stronger they would become. In other words, rushing to the scene and defeating them before they could cause widespread destruction and grow stronger was absolutely critical.

This one, the Destructive Hailstorm, had already been active for two days. It devastated the entire eastern region, so it was bound to be a formidable enemy.

The three Calamities Siegfried had faced so far had barely crawled out of their dungeons, and they had just awakened as well. They were still weak, making them relatively manageable to deal with.

However, this one was problematic.

‘I can’t depend too much on Seven Steps to Invincibility.’

The battle with the Lord of the Pond: Frog Lord Tuareg had taught him an invaluable lesson. Even after being struck by Seven Steps to Invincibility, the monster survived by shedding its main body and attempting to escape as a tiny frog.

These creatures were growing stronger with extra lives, to boot. This was not a surprise, as some rare monsters had resurrection mechanisms or were born with multiple lives from the start.

If he depended heavily on Seven Steps to Invincibility, then he could end up in real danger sooner or later.

‘I have to make full use of every single skill I have and use them wisely. Never forget the basics.’

Siegfried reminded himself that he was the Invincible Emperor, a master of debuffs who would crush his enemies by weakening them.

One-hitting enemies with just Seven Steps to Invincibility was not his only weapon.

Holding onto that resolve, Siegfried finally arrived at the Marchioni Empire’s eastern province.

“It’s beautifully wrecked...” he muttered under his breath the moment he reached a major city of the region.

The sight before him embodied the meaning of the word "ruin."

A metropolis of five million people was reduced to rubble under the relentless hailstorm. Buildings, both large and small, were riddled with holes as though gunned down by a machine gun shooting large caliber bullets.

The roads were cratered and destroyed, rendered completely unusable.

However, the worst thing was the streets themselves.

Countless people were killed by the hailstorm, as an almost endless number of corpses were strewn on the ground, sprawled out next to ice boulders embedded in the ground.

The Marchioni Empire’s soldiers dragged the corpses away without saying a single word.

“...”

“...”

“...”

No words could be spoken in such horror.

Even calling it a hailstorm felt insulting, as these were not mere pellets of ice but solid rocks dropped from the heavens.

The mangled corpses were a testament to how horrifying the hailstorm had been, as some were outright killed after having a large boulder of ice fall on them, embedding both itself and its victim into the ground.

In one street, a chunk of ice the size of a house sat in the pavement, and this, too, had a human limb sticking out from beneath it.

The city had turned into a literal hell.

Not every massacre was carried out by marauders or monsters. Sometimes, the most lethal thing in the world was the ruthless wrath of nature.

‘I want to help them but...’

Siegfried’s heartstrings were tugged hard by the sight before him.

These people were innocent. It was not their fault that an Ancient Dungeon had spawned right beside the city, that it rampaged, that a demonic monster emerged from it, and that it destroyed the entire city.

However, that was as far as his emotions went.

‘I can’t afford to get involved here.’

The Marcioni Empire and the Proatine Empire were already locked in a cold war.

While these civilians were pitiful, they were still his enemies.

A nation’s power always stemmed from its people, and these very citizens were the backbone of the Marchioni Empire’s might. For the sake of the Proatine Empire’s survival, it was better that the Marchioni Empire be weakened by these calamities.

While Siegfried was by no means a cruel person, being soft here could eventually put his own people in danger. Thus, he had to harden his heart and turn a blind eye to these people, as that was what it meant to be the ruler of a nation.

“Let’s go, Hamchi...”

“Kyu... Got it.”

Siegfried turned away from the ruined city and stepped onto the warp gate, continuing his hunt for the next Calamity.

***

Afterward, Siegfried tracked the Calamity across three villages and two cities.

Unfortunately, he was a step too late every time he arrived.

The Calamity had already moved westward, pelting everything on the ground with hail and leaving utter devastation in its wake.

‘I’ll have to get ahead of it.’

Siegfried calculated its trajectory and warped far ahead to a city still untouched by the Calamity.

There, he waited for the Calamity to arrive.

Flash!

Krwaaaang!

As time went on, thunder and lightning eventually ripped across the skies as a huge blanket of storm clouds gathered over the city.

Shwooong... Bam! Bam! Bam!

Five minutes later, boulders of ice, at least the size of basketballs, began slamming into the city, smashing buildings apart and causing widespread destruction.

‘The hail has gotten bigger now.’

Siegfried recalled how the hailstones had only been the size of baseballs in the earlier cities, but now, it was the size of basketballs.

The Calamity had grown even stronger, but that was not the end of it.

Shwooooong... Krwaaaaang!

A colossal boulder of ice, one as large as a high-rise tower, dropped from the heavens above and crushed the city hall beneath it like it was made of twigs.

“Y-You’ve got to be kidding me...” Siegfried murmured, shocked by the sight.

The secondary destruction caused by the hail shocked him even more.

Kaboom!

Whenever a hailstone exploded, it would shatter into hundreds of fragments that sprayed outward like shrapnel.

This was no longer a mere hailstorm; it was an artillery strike.

“Aaaack!”

“H-Help! Somebody help me!”

“S-Save me—ah!”

People were being killed by the massive hailstones and the shrapnel slicing through the streets.

‘Where is it?’

Siegfried activated Inzaghi’s Clairvoyance and scanned the city, but he couldn’t find the Calamity anywhere on the ground.

‘Then it must be in the sky.’

Siegfried spread his wings, flung Hamchi over his back, and shot upward into the dark storm clouds.

And his instincts proved to be correct.

“Kyuuu! Look over there, owner punk!” Hamchi exclaimed urgently, pointing in the distance.

Soldiers gripping ice-blue spears charged out from the storm clouds. They had glowing eyes and wings of frost that extended from their backs, just like the wings of the Fallen Angels.

In an instant, the flying soldiers swooped down at him and surrounded him.

Siegfried gripped his +10 Sky Piercer tightly and thought, ‘I’ll have to get rid of the trash mobs first.’

He was about to strike when—

Sssshhhh...!

—A crippling cold washed over him. It was colder than the Arctic Pangea, the frozen wasteland infamous for being the coldest place in the entire world.

The chill pierced straight through Siegfried’s elemental resistance and froze him.

[Alert: Status Ailment!]

[Alert: Your character has been Slowed!]

As a Grandmaster, Siegfried was almost immune to heat and cold thanks to his high elemental resistance. However, even he was slowed down by the crippling cold, and his teeth chattered from the chill penetrating deep into his bones.

While he was taken aback by the fact that this cold had gotten past the elemental resistance of a Grandmaster, he soon realized that he would be frozen solid on the spot if he were a mere Master.

‘Damn it... So this guy has already grown this powerful?’

Siegfried clenched his jaw and unleashed both Karma Flare and Embrace of Despair. He placed them down simultaneously, pushing back against the crippling cold that dared to debuff him.

Just then, the flying soldiers came charging at him.

Krwaaaang!

A flash of lightning erupted in the sky as he clashed with the legion of flying ice soldiers.

The battle was on.