Shepherd Wizard (Novel) - Chapter 245

Chapter 245

After the empire’s founding, Turan never ceased his watchful gaze toward Earth even while cultivating humanity in the Cradle World.

This was to prevent the owners of this powerful yet fragile civilization from burning themselves to death in the great flames of nuclear fire.

In truth, if he had wanted to, becoming the unified Emperor of Earth wouldn’t have been particularly difficult.

Major powers like the United States and Russia — transforming into the Golden Eagle and stamping out a few key major cities would have been enough to extract a simple surrender.

Unless they were a completely incomprehensible calamity with no means of communication, Earth’s people were not the sort to defy gods who could trigger natural disasters with a few gestures and destroy nations.

But the reasons he had not taken this approach were, first, that it gave him no pleasure to oppress innocent sheep, and also that such actions would have had an adverse long-term impact on the supply of presence he drew from Earth.

As it is, people feel the freshest stimulus from something encountered for the first time. If mages came to rule humanity outright, people would no longer feel much of a thrill from the power they wielded.

Even within the Cradle World, despite the Emperor’s faith spreading widely and faith steadily flowing to Turan, it was still hard to match the sheer presence he had gained at the time of the demonstration at Sacramento.

For that reason, Turan had strictly limited the qualifications for mages who could cross over to Earth.

Only supreme mages who had obtained four ability types and gained access to Essence, or rank one mages on the verge of completing their Quests to reach that point.

Even when visiting occasionally, unless it was for the purpose of gathering presence, they had to conceal their identity and wander about pretending to be Earth people.

Thanks to this, even after quite a long time had passed, Earth’s people were still thirsty for mages and the miracles they displayed.

Since Solif had paid a visit and made one round of healing, no mage capable of miracles of a similar scale had appeared.

What they could know was only that somewhere beyond, in another world, there was a powerful magic empire that was unilaterally extending goodwill toward them.

Earth’s people therefore considered themselves essentially the same as stray cats getting fed — they were barely half-willing participants.

The decision to visit and extend goodwill was entirely decided by the other side’s will, and they couldn’t even know how these decisions were made or how long they would continue.

Simply receiving what was given and enduring it, only to find themselves unable to resist if one day they were suddenly decided to be done away with — in that sense they were less than even pets.

Thanks to this, Earth’s people tried their hardest to uncover the truth of the magical world, and among them, America and South Korea analyzed their conversations with Kim Su-ho, who could be considered the first point of contact.

What they focused on was one of the things Turan had asked Su-ho about: ‘Tadal Star.’

“Song of the Sun, Moon, and Stars?”

“What does it mean?”

“First, find out about the development company and key personnel behind this game.”

When various nations of Earth applied their combined forces — or competed against each other in their investigation — the results came out instantly.

Since the game had already shut down, most of the development staff had moved to other companies or changed careers.

The government rounded them all up under all manner of pretexts and persistently confirmed whether there was any secret within the game.

As a result, they learned one rather surprising fact.

“This face……”

“Given that it’s 3D graphics the feel is a bit different, but it does seem to match.”

The surprising fact: the appearances of several characters set as defaults when creating characters in Tadal Star bore quite a resemblance to the mages who had revealed themselves up to now.

Funnily enough, this fact had already spread through various internet communities before the government even figured it out.

Naturally, those who had experience playing Tadal Star were mostly the kind of people frequenting such places rather than government higher-ups.

In fact, there had been some among officials who were aware of this, but had been too afraid of what would come back if they said ‘the mages kind of look like game characters?’ and had not dared to speak up.

In any case, the government officials, believing they had found some kind of clue, dug into it persistently.

That there was clearly some connection between this game and that magical world was now confirmed.

Hoping to somehow obtain the power of magic.

Wishing to obtain the power to defend themselves from surrounding nations, or from the alien mages.

The special investigation unit committed all its efforts to investigation from every angle.

And……

“Damn it, I’m done with this.”

“Right.”

“Let’s wrap it up here. Just wasted money.”

As was entirely natural, over nearly a decade of investigation ended without a single result.

Because there was no way for them to know that the Cradle World periodically absorbed information flying in from other worlds, and that among it the players of ‘Tadal Star’ and the game’s information had been pulled in and changed the world.

Instead, they came up with their own theories.

That the world where those people live had existed from the beginning, and the creators of ‘Tadal Star’ had unconsciously absorbed images of that world and shaped them into a similar form.

After all, since the mages who had appeared looked at least over twenty years old, surely they were born before the game was made.

In a way, starting from complete ignorance, reaching the conclusion that information unconsciously flows between worlds — discovering the secret of a kind of collective unconscious — could be praised as remarkable in its own right.

But the trouble was that the state of the world was not particularly good for bragging about such accomplishments.

* * *

[Starting at 4 AM, the bombardment from the border–]

“Another war?”

“Insufferable……”

September 27, 2058 — the outbreak of war between Azerbaijan and Armenia.

People’s reaction to the news was one of weariness.

Starting from Ukraine and Russia, India and Pakistan, China and Taiwan, Zambia and Congo, various nations of the Balkan Peninsula……

In an era when the entire world was swept up in all manner of conflicts, one more war was hardly surprising.

People actually found it more remarkable that nuclear war hadn’t broken out even in this situation.

A considerable number of the conflict nations were nuclear-armed, and even those who had effectively lost a war had concluded humiliating treaties rather than setting the world ablaze with nuclear weapons.

They thought that was because humans were more rational than expected, or because setting off a nuclear weapon required persuading too many people involved.

Of course, Turan’s shadow lay over this as well.

“Whatever nation fires nuclear weapons first, I will destroy that nation’s capacity to wage war.”

“Consider nuclear weapons something in your possession but impossible to use, since a mage is always watching over Earth. If the maintenance costs are a burden, feel free to get rid of them.”

Turan’s declaration, made around the time the world was trembling at the nuclear threat, drew reactions of all kinds.

First, the leaders of smaller nations without nuclear weapons were naturally pleased, and nuclear-armed nations including the United States were flustered or showed signs of indignation at what they called a violation of sovereignty.

China even responded in a provocative manner, using the pretext of testing a newly developed nuclear weapon by detonating it near Taiwan, which ended up providing a rather good example to make.

“Is this where China’s army is gathered?”

“Could you be……?”

“Stand back! Or else–”

“Or else?”

When Meisa’s eyes, asking back, glowed cold blue, the People’s Liberation Army officers ground their teeth but could protest no further.

Because their bodies were already paralyzed, unable to move at all.

Meisa didn’t punish China by openly striking them down in front of everyone.

She simply came during the dark of night, designated gunpowder as a tracking target, located multiple military units in the Beijing Military Region, and scrapped their tanks, artillery, and fighter jets.

When several military units thus lost their combat capability, the Chinese government made an enormous gamble.

They had secretly stashed multiple hydrogen bombs in one military unit, and when Meisa came to scrap them, they detonated them.

A cruel method that sacrificed at least tens of thousands of their own soldiers and more.

China’s leaders watched this scene from within underground bunkers, through screens.

“Is she dead?”

“She probably is. Even that Golden Eagle monster dealt with nuclear weapons by intercepting them from afar and didn’t take a direct hit. So much less a human form with them detonating right underfoot……”

“I’d really like to research that and figure something out.”

The reason they had poked the lion’s nose with such a gamble was precisely to uncover the secret of immortality.

Over the past several decades of visits, the mages hadn’t aged, and from their words and actions it was possible to tell that they had no lifespan.

A good number of them were scheduled to die of old age before long, so rather than dying like this they were trying to find even a sliver of a possibility by somehow capturing a few individuals and studying them.

Absolute power unchecked was capable of enabling even this level of irrational behavior.

However, before long, their hopes were revealed to be hollow.

Because Meisa walked out unharmed from beneath the ruins of the military unit, where not even rubble remained.

“These… outrageous people……”

Meisa was quite tempted to transform into a storm giant and flatten Beijing right then and there, but since Turan had given advice beforehand, she carried out the retaliation ‘unofficially.’

By tracking uranium to locate and scrap all nuclear missiles stored across China.

Afterward, Meisa had a video call with the General Secretary and the high-ranking Communist Party leadership who were hiding in underground bunkers.

Since tracking them down one by one when they weren’t appearing at official venues at all was not impossible but overly difficult and troublesome, she concluded the matter with a threat.

‘Since this is the first time, I’ll let it go as a warning. I don’t want to hurt innocent people unnecessarily. But from the second time onward, I’ll erase Beijing for real. And Shanghai if that’s not enough. Understand?’

‘……Understood.’

‘And make sure you properly convey what happened this time to other countries too. Cleaning up after a stupid act is enough for one time.’

After thus receiving China’s unofficial surrender, every nation had to accept that nuclear missiles had in practice become an unusable weapon.

If they were losing and fired nuclear weapons — what then?

Mages would come and smash everything.

And fire nuclear weapons at mages, after seeing that it doesn’t work?

At least thankfully, the mages didn’t interfere in wars fought with conventional weapons.

This was because Turan, spending little time on Earth, could not define the right and wrong of every war they waged.

Not every war was always the fault of the aggressor.

Even looking at the First World War — didn’t it start with Serbia assassinating the Austrian Crown Prince and then getting confrontational until they were beaten?

Managing even the pretext of aggression one by one would make him nothing short of a babysitter, so the idea was that children could beat each other up within limits but weapons of mass destruction were prohibited.

In any case, after that, the world continued to burn with all manner of conflicts, only without using nuclear missiles.

Religious and cultural conflicts due to immigrants, resource depletion, economic collapse, and more.

Even after the AI revolution, science and technology hadn’t advanced as quickly as expected, and the oil depletion hypothesis that had once been dismissed as nonsense was being seriously discussed again.

The demographic collapse due to low birthrates in various developed nations went without saying.

Even at that, if the Cradle’s mages hadn’t processed serious environmental problems like air pollution several times, the situation would clearly have been even worse than now.

As all those living on Earth were thus screaming at a dark future, truly stunning news struck the world.

A door to another world had opened.

* * *

While running the empire and concentrating on matters within the world, Turan did not forget to investigate the world beyond either.

Having scouted the worlds beyond the twelve branches extending from the Cradle, he had confirmed that all of them were closed worlds.

Having closed two worlds near Akasha and two worlds in the Cycle World’s invasion path among them, eight remained.

Since they were closed worlds, he couldn’t directly descend into them, but looking in from outside, their environments were much closer to Earth than to the Cradle.

This was because human souls were composed of something more fundamental and complex than information separated from Essence.

Here, inserting the corridor-closing tools received from Akasha and copies of the jade mirror, Turan became able to create limited dimensional gates and hit upon the idea of sending pioneering expeditions there.

There were still many unexplored areas within the Cradle World itself, but those worlds had many resources that simply didn’t exist here, such as oil, and the intent was to supplement them from the outside.

Unfortunately, however, the Cradle World’s residents couldn’t endure alien environments for long.

Just as on Earth — their spirit forms, composed of processed information, couldn’t withstand a fully materialized world without a separate barrier.

In contrast, Earth’s people, who were not composed on the basis of Essence and could therefore comfortably cross to those closed worlds, were exactly what was needed.

Earth, which had until now only been regarded as a source of presence supply, had found a new use.

“You’re going to send Earth’s people to other worlds?”

“But that contradicts the policy until now. It would mean they’d no longer view us as mysterious beings.”

Asiz frowned and said this at Turan’s proposal.

That had been the reason for minimizing the Cradle’s mages interfering on Earth all this time.

To this, Turan nodded and expressed his thoughts.

“That’s been the case until now. But lately that’s been losing meaning more and more.”

“So Earth’s people no longer view us as mysterious?”

Ruska, who had turned twenty and was now formally attending imperial council meetings, asked in a composed tone.

Turan smiled at his son’s question and nodded.

“There’s that too, but it’s also that their situation has gotten bad enough that they can’t afford to pay attention to us. I’m not sure Earth’s technology and culture can simply be considered superior to ours anymore. When you think about that they would have essentially self-destructed without our intervention.”

Earth’s people were effectively self-destructing, fighting among themselves over various problems.

Here, Turan thought that opening a dimensional gate to relieve that pressure would be a breakthrough for them.

As a bonus, there would be considerable gains for his side as well.

It didn’t matter even if they gained magic from other worlds or various mystical powers there and their forces grew.

If there had been power enough for beings that could threaten the Cradle to be produced there, it wouldn’t have been a closed world.

Before long, Solif was dispatched to Earth and gathered ambassadors from each nation to disclose this fact.

“When you say another world — could it be the Cradle World where you live?”

“Unfortunately, that’s not the case. It’s always been a dream of mine to invite Earth’s people — but unfortunately it seems your environment doesn’t suit you there. Perhaps most worlds might be that way.”

Solif shook his head to deny an ambassador’s question.

Earth’s people and the Cradle’s humans looked identical at first glance but were magically completely different life forms.

If anything, primitive organisms like planaria or amoebas would be closer.

At least the Cradle’s humans could endure on Earth to some degree by erecting a spirit barrier, but Earth’s people couldn’t withstand the Cradle World’s magic-saturated environment even slightly.

That was a fact confirmed by receiving and bringing over some of Earth’s most notorious criminals to test it.

It was possible using a method like the ancient Freya divine race — processing their memory information into spirit form and possessing new bodies — but then they could never return to Earth for the rest of their lives.

It would be no different from permanent emigration.

The ambassadors nodded in understanding at the explanation that followed.

“So in other words, you want us to do alien pioneering on your behalf.”

“That’s right. In exchange, you won’t gain little from it either. I’ve heard that one of those places has an enormous amount of oil–”

Before the words were even finished, the conference hall that had gathered ambassadors from various nations descended into chaos in an instant.

With the noise of each claiming their country would participate.

Watching the scene, Solif scratched at his short silver hair and grumbled.

‘As I thought, this kind of thing is a pain.’

After several rounds of coordination, the nations of Earth agreed to send pioneering expeditions through the gates to eight worlds, guided by the Cradle World.

The conditions the Cradle required were surprisingly few.

First, spreading Turan’s name to the various intelligent beings living on the other side.

There was no need to actively proselytize — simply letting it be known that such a being existed was enough.

Second, a kind of transit tax was also levied, whereby some portion of the massive resources brought back by the pioneering expeditions would be set aside as the Cradle’s share.

For example, things like oil that didn’t exist in the Cradle at all — it was an opportunity to secure such things legitimately rather than by seizing them.

After a considerable length of discussion on matters like transportation methods, the locations where dimensional gates would be opened, and what to do if an enemy too powerful to confront on the other side came attacking, the first dimensional gate was finally opened.

“Move out!”

“I really hope we can come back alive.”

The first survey team, armed in protective suits modified from spacesuits, broke into a cold sweat as they threw themselves into another world.

Fortunately, most of them succeeded in returning with minimal damage.

“It’s an unbelievable place. You just dig in the ground and oil comes out.”

“An incredibly high temperature and high pressure environment, with volcanic eruptions going off without stop……”

“We ran into a crazy monster. Bullets didn’t work on it.”

Evaluations of the surveyed areas ranged to extremes.

Some places were abundantly rich beyond measure, while others were so harsh survival itself was difficult.

However, it was found that across the board, the atmospheric environment was similar to Earth’s, so there was no need to wear separate breathing equipment.

And unlike the Cradle’s mages, there was also no overwhelmingly powerful existence that couldn’t be opposed at all.

Blessed by iron and gunpowder, the pioneering expeditions defeated the other worlds’ monsters, made contact with local peoples, and transmitted vast resources back to Earth — to that increasingly desolate world that looked about to destroy itself fighting among itself.

The Age of Exploration had arrived again, in the 21st century.