The Scorched Desert's Sand Mage (Novel) - Chapter 1

Chapter 1

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Translated by Pratt

Read it only at Novelbyu.com & Utoon.net

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Tick!

In the dead of night, while everyone was asleep, the faint sound of a thread snapping traveled through the air.

At that moment, the boy opened his eyes.

Like a cat, he silently raised his body and looked at the iron door.

A tiny room that would be full if two adults lay down in it.

In that tiny room without even a window, the only exit was a small iron door.

Holding his breath, the boy stared at the doorknob.

Click! Click!

The sound of someone turning the handle rang out.

Whoever it was had tried their best to stay quiet, but to the boy, already wide awake, it sounded as loud as thunder.

Clunk!

At last, the lock released and the door opened. Then someone stuck his head through the gap in the iron door.

In the hand of the man peeking in was a dagger as thick as an adult’s forearm.

The man, his eyes apparently not yet adjusted to the darkness, groped around and cautiously stepped into the room.

The boy held his breath and watched the whole scene.

Unaware, the intruder stepped a little farther inside.

That was when it happened.

Tick!

Something snapped beneath the man’s foot.

It was a trap the boy had set in advance.

Thunk!

“Urk!”

At the same time, a heavy impact and the intruder’s scream echoed out.

A small dagger was stuck in the man’s side.

The boy had rigged it so that when the string snapped, the dagger would fire out.

Without knowing it, the man who had broken into the room had paid a brutal price.

“Grrgh! What the hell?”

The man rolled around the room, screaming.

At that moment, the boy who had been crouched there without making a sound moved.

Tap!

The boy kicked off the floor and climbed onto the man’s chest. Then he snatched away the man’s dagger and aimed it at his throat.

The man looked at the boy in disbelief.

“Ugh! You little bastard…”

“I wondered who was sneaking in like a thief cat. Turns out it was the mister next door.”

He really was the mister next door.

The man lived in the room right beside the boy’s.

They had brushed past each other just last night.

The man’s impression had been so bad, and the way he had looked at him so vicious, that the boy could not help but remember him.

The boy lightly smacked the man’s cheek with his hand.

“Hey, mister! No matter what, we’re still neighbors. Isn’t robbery going a bit too far?”

“What kind of bullshit is that in the Ant Tunnel? Brat! You’d better let me go. Do you know who my older brother is?”

“How would I know that, mister?”

The boy made a dumbfounded face. Then the man pinned beneath him shouted furiously.

“He’s an Awakened. And one who uses magic.”

“You can’t expect me to believe a lie unless you make it believable. Seriously, this is absurd. The little brother of an Awakened is living in a dump like this Ant Tunnel?”

“It’s true. I just had my reasons for staying here for a while.”

“Then you should’ve lain low and left. Instead you sneaked in to rob a kid of his pocket change?”

“Ha! Fuck, then what, was I supposed to just leave a magic stone right in front of my eyes alone?”

“So you did see it?”

The boy clicked his tongue.

By chance, he had obtained a small magic stone.

It was the first time he had ever had one, so out of curiosity he had touched it a few times. It seemed the man next door had seen him doing that.

The boy blamed himself for his mistake.

The slum known as the Ant Tunnel, or the Demon Tunnel.

This place, where the poor who could not enter Neo Seoul Colony gathered to live, had no such thing as rules or manners.

It was a place where the strong trampled the weak and stole everything they had.

Being weak was a crime, and being strong was an absolution.

The boy, Zeon, knew the laws of that slum better than anyone.

Because he had been born and raised in the Demon Tunnel.

His earliest memory was of a beggars’ den in the slums. The moment he learned to walk, he had been used for begging.

He did not have a single good memory of that beggars’ den.

He got beaten for bringing in too little, and beaten for eating too much.

So when he got old enough, he had kicked his way out of that beggars’ den.

He had not simply walked away from it.

He had slipped a knife into the head of the beggars’ den while the man slept, and then left.

That was why the head of the beggars’ den was still looking for Zeon.

The name Zeon was also one he had given himself.

Even so, he needed a name that could prove his identity.

There was no particular meaning to it.

He had simply chosen it because it sounded cool.

He was very satisfied with his own name.

There was nothing he had not done to survive.

From pickpocketing to theft, he had done everything except kill people.

Knowing that letting down his guard in the slums meant death, he had set traps even in his dwelling. That meticulousness had kept Zeon alive.

For a moment, Zeon deliberated over what to do with the man beneath him.

If the man’s older brother really was an Awakened, it was dangerous.

Then the man’s eyes flashed cunningly.

Sliiide!

A dagger slipped out from the man’s sleeve.

It was a dagger he had hidden for emergencies.

“Die, you little brat!”

The man shouted and swung the dagger.

Zeon hurriedly stepped back.

The man came after him. His eyes were full of venom.

With the single-minded determination to kill Zeon and steal the magic stone, he swung his dagger.

“Ghk!”

Zeon grabbed onto the man and struggled with him for a long moment.

Stab!

A little later, the sound of a blade sinking into flesh rang out.

“Kuhk!”

Then the man screamed and dropped to his knees. A dagger was stuck in his chest.

The man stared at Zeon with an expression of disbelief, his body trembling, and then his breath stopped.

“Goddammit!”

Zeon collapsed onto the floor.

He had done all kinds of things before, but this was the first time he had killed someone.

The chilling sensation of the dagger driving into the man’s chest was still vivid.

“Fuck! Why did you have to sneak in like that…”

Zeon looked at the dead man’s corpse.

He had always known that someday he would kill someone. To survive in the Ant Tunnel without getting trampled, it was unavoidable.

But he had truly never imagined that day would be today.

Zeon pulled himself together.

If the dead man’s older brother really was an Awakened, then this was dangerous.

There was no way to hide the corpse completely anyway. Beggars were sprawled out all over the streets. Moving the body without attracting their notice was impossible.

It was better to leave the corpse here and hide himself quickly.

The moment he made up his mind, Zeon moved at once.

He tightly locked the room with the man’s corpse inside and came outside.

A street appeared that called to mind the Kowloon Walled City of old Hong Kong.

Shabby buildings packed with rooms barely big enough for one person to lie down in were lined up like chicken coops.

Because of the buildings thrown up haphazardly with no order whatsoever, the streets were so complicated they resembled a maze.

Zeon hid himself within that maze.

***

“Fuck! He really was an Awakened. How can my luck be this rotten?”

Zeon muttered inside an armored bus covered all over with steel plates.

The older brother of the man Zeon had killed truly was an Awakened.

And not just any Awakened, but a B-rank one.

Even if it had been an F-rank chasing him, his life would have been hanging by a thread, and this opponent was a B-rank.

Even among the many Awakened in Neo Seoul, there were only around a hundred B-ranks.

If Zeon was a commoner, then a B-rank Awakened was nobility.

If he got caught, it would not end with him simply being killed.

Enraged by his younger brother’s death, the man had begun hunting Zeon.

The fact that his younger brother had tried to rob Zeon first did not matter to him.

No matter how much he had been in the wrong, he was still his younger brother.

The fact that his younger brother had been killed by a runt like Zeon filled him with fury.

“I may be fleeing pathetically today, but I will definitely take revenge on you, Lee Ji-ryeong.”

The name of the Awakened tracking him was Lee Ji-ryeong.

He was a lightning magic Awakened.

Even among magic types, lightning magic was famous for its destructive power.

He was one of the strongest among B-rank Awakened.

Just like Zeon, Lee Ji-ryeong knew the slums well. Though he now lived in Neo Seoul, he too had come from the slums.

He knew perfectly where Zeon would hide and where he would run.

In the end, Zeon had been cornered, and that was why he had boarded the bus.

A bus bound for the magic stone mine outside Neo Seoul Colony.

Once he got outside Neo Seoul Colony, even Lee Ji-ryeong would not find it easy to keep chasing him.

‘To think I’d end up boarding this bus of my own accord.’

Zeon bit his lip hard.

Outside Neo Seoul Colony was the desert.

Endless red sand stretched out, with not a single blade of grass growing.

That blazing red desert was full of dangers.

Beneath the sand lurked subterranean demonic beasts like sandworms and ironclad sandfish, while above the desert roamed every sort of demonic beast, like flame wolves and great-horned hyenas.

On top of that, there were scavenger bands lying in wait to attack caravans trading between colonies.

Nowhere was safe.

That was why, even while living lives worse than beasts, the poor still stayed outside Neo Seoul Colony.

For some reason, demonic beasts avoided coming close to Neo Seoul Colony.

At the very least, if they remained near Neo Seoul Colony, they would not be killed by demonic beasts. That was why Zeon had stubbornly clung to the slums. But once Lee Ji-ryeong had marked him, there was no longer any place for him there.

“Goddammit! If only I’d Awakened too…”

A hundred years ago, Earth turned into a desert.

More than ninety percent of humanity died, and those who survived could barely continue living by building colonies atop ruins turned to sand.

The ones who made the greatest contribution then were the Awakened.

As if they had been waiting for it, some of the survivors awakened mysterious powers.

Some had their bodies strengthened, while some became able to use magic.

They were called the Awakened.

The Awakened became the rulers of the new world.

Even low-ranking Awakened were treated as valuable in Neo Seoul.

Compared to them, someone like Zeon was no different from a lowborn.

Even if Zeon died, not a single person would care.

In the end, what Zeon chose was the bus heading for the magic stone mine.

The magic stone mine was located in a rocky mountain seventy kilometers from Neo Seoul.

All the magic stones extracted there went into Neo Seoul.

The gigantic city of Neo Seoul was maintained by the energy extracted from magic stones.

However, mining magic stones required a lot of manpower.

The tunnels were deep and narrow, so miners had no choice but to wield pickaxes themselves.

Because the environment was so harsh, miners died in droves.

That was why there was always a labor shortage.

Because things were like that, Neo Seoul did not ask about the identity or background of those headed to the magic stone mine before putting them on the bus.

Thanks to that, Zeon too had been able to board the armored bus heading for the magic stone mine.

‘No matter what, I’ll survive in the magic stone mine. And then I’ll take revenge on Lee Ji-ryeong.’

As Zeon stared out the window, burning with resolve, the bus filled with people.

All the miners had boarded.

“Hey, kid! You heading to the mine too?”

The man sitting next to Zeon spoke to him.

Like someone who had volunteered for the mine, he looked big and strong.

Zeon answered listlessly.

“What about it?”

“A little punk like you’s got some bite. Still, you should be careful once you get to the mine.”

“About what?”

“The place is crawling with bastards who’ll be after the ass of a pale little thing like you. Heh heh!”

The man slowly scanned Zeon’s body with a lewd gaze.

‘You fucking bastard.’

Zeon knew all too well what that look meant.

The slums were full of bastards who lusted after men, and quite a few of them had targeted Zeon.

Zeon had a slender build, and his face was good-looking as well.

If not for the viciousness in his face, it would not have been an exaggeration to call him a handsome boy.

If not for his unique wariness and ferocity, he would have been taken dozens of times over.

Fingering the dagger hidden in his sleeve, Zeon wondered when he should put down the man beside him.

Even if he did not take his life, he would at least have to cut a tendon and cripple him so the others would not look down on him.

That was one of the ways to survive at the bottom.

But his deliberation did not last long.

The armored bus started moving.

In no time, the bus left Neo Seoul Colony and entered the desert.

The endless waves of red desert visible through the window overwhelmed the people on the armored bus.

Even the man who had been eyeing Zeon lewdly could not close his gaping mouth at the sight of the vast desert.

On that endless sea of red sand, the armored bus was no more than a speck of dust.

Zeon muttered.

“We’ll make it safely to the mine, right?”

He soon regretted his own words.

He had jinxed it.

Rumble, rumble, rumble!

Behind the bus racing ahead, red sand was surging up violently.

A gigantic sandworm was chasing the bus.

“What the hell? There aren’t supposed to be sandworms around here.”

At that moment, as if directly denying Zeon’s words, the sandworm’s massive body burst out of the sand. Then it came crashing down onto the armored bus like a meteor.

Kuuuuh!

The entire scene came vividly into Zeon’s eyes as if in slow motion.

‘Fuck! Since when can sandworms fly?’

Bang!

A tremendous impact slammed into the armored bus.