The Scorched Desert's Sand Mage (Novel) - Chapter 158
Chapter 158
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Translated by Pratt
Read it only at Novelbyu.com & Utoon.net
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Jin Geum-ho stood with his arms crossed, looking out the window. The smile he had shown when welcoming Zeon had long since vanished as though it had never existed. Seo Tae-ran stood with both hands politely folded, watching his back. It was only after a long while that Jin Geum-ho finally opened his mouth.
“The world really is amusing.”
“Pardon?”
“The affairs of this world, I mean. To think a sand mage would appear out of nowhere.”
“Ah, yes.”
Jin Geum-ho turned his body and looked at Seo Tae-ran.
“How did he seem to you?”
“He did not seem easy to deal with.”
“So your eyes saw it that way as well?”
“Yes. I think if we dealt with him carelessly, we would suffer a great setback.”
“Your thoughts are exactly the same as mine.”
Jin Geum-ho nodded slowly. The Zeon he had seen possessed the typical tendency of being strong toward the strong and gentle toward the weak. He was not reckless, nor was his personality strange. He could behave that way because he was confident in his own ability.
“My Heavenly Eye doesn’t work on him.”
“Is that… truly so?”
Seo Tae-ran raised her head in shock. Heavenly Eye. It was one of Jin Geum-ho’s primary skills. Unlike Shao Lun’s Petrifying Eyes, it was not a skill that directly harmed others.
And yet, in some ways, it was even more dangerous.
What made Heavenly Eye most terrifying was that it could read causality, at least in rough outlines.
In other words, when he looked at someone with Heavenly Eye active, he could roughly grasp how the future flow of that person’s life would unfold.
It meant he could predict, to a certain extent, the future of the target at whom he used Heavenly Eye.
The problem was himself.
Once he personally intervened in the other person’s life, he could no longer know what kinds of variables would arise.
That was why Jin Geum-ho avoided direct intervention whenever possible.
He merely guided others so that they would make their own choices.
His principle was to achieve the result he wanted with the minimum amount of interference.
“Until now, the only person against whom my Heavenly Eye did not work was Dayeoden. Now Zeon has been added to that list.”
“Then does that mean Zeon is a strong person on Dayeoden’s level?”
“We have to assume the possibility is high.”
“Mm.”
“Being a sand mage alone makes him someone we must be wary of. Let alone if his rank is high on top of that.”
“Then would it not be better to eliminate him now? If we mobilize the execution unit in full, we could remove him easily enough.”
“If we did that, the carefully tuned causality would be disturbed. It is a little burdensome, but the current flow is more helpful to my plans.”
“If you ever change your mind, please say so.”
“I will.”
Jin Geum-ho smiled at Seo Tae-ran’s words.
It was then.
Woooong.
Suddenly, a faint vibration could be felt.
At once, the expressions of both Jin Geum-ho and Seo Tae-ran changed.
It was a vibration that could only be felt inside the mayor’s office.
All the magic circles and barriers of Neo Seoul were managed through City Hall.
If even the slightest numerical change occurred, the information was transmitted directly to the mayor’s office at once.
Seo Tae-ran said cautiously, “We’ve received notice that Neo Seoul’s anti-demonic force has weakened again.”
“Let’s go below.”
“You intend to check it yourself?”
“I need to see it with my own eyes.”
“I’ll guide you.”
The two of them stepped into the elevator.
Woooong.
The elevator descended at terrifying speed.
In an instant it reached the first floor, yet showed no sign of stopping.
Basement level twenty.
The people of Neo Seoul believed that City Hall had fifty floors above ground and twenty floors below it, seventy floors in total.
Even those who worked within City Hall believed that.
But there was a hidden area beneath the twentieth basement floor that none of them knew about.
A secret space existing far below basement level twenty.
Among those who knew of it, it was called the Excavation Wing.
The elevator passed basement level twenty and continued much farther down.
Subjectively, it felt like it took longer than going all the way up fifty floors above ground, and in truth, it did.
Ding.
At last, they arrived at the Excavation Wing, and the elevator doors opened.
The moment they did, an enormous underground chamber revealed itself before the two of them.
The underground space was so vast that the entirety of City Hall could have fit inside it with room to spare.
It was hard to believe that such a place existed beneath Neo Seoul.
But even more astonishing than the space itself was the massive object lying in the middle of it.
A gigantic monster, easily over one hundred and fifty meters from head to tail, was lying there on its belly.
A pair of limp wings, eyes closed lifelessly, a pair of huge horns rising from its head, and scales as white as the sand of a salt desert.
The demonic beast was a dragon.
And not just any dragon, but a pure white White Dragon.
Such an immense life-form, radiating a majesty so overwhelming it seemed to choke the breath from one’s chest, existed inside Neo Seoul’s underground cavern.
No sign of life could be felt from the White Dragon.
And indeed, the creature was already dead.
Jin Geum-ho looked up at the White Dragon and muttered, “Tamulas. One of the eight dragons that crossed over after Earth became a desert.”
Long ago, Jin Geum-ho had seen it with his own eyes.
He had seen the giant dimensional gate leading to Kurayan open, and eight dragons cross over through it.
For some reason, the dragons that came to Earth scattered and flew away in different directions.
One of them flew to Bukhansan and made its nest there.
That was the very White Dragon now before Jin Geum-ho’s eyes, Tamulas.
Tamulas had been a young dragon.
Naturally, that meant it had to be weaker than the other dragons.
Because it had spent nearly all its power crossing through the dimensional gate, it could not fly far and settled at the foot of Bukhansan instead.
“At that time, Dayeoden and I joined forces to bring it down.”
Dayeoden had been maddened by the loss of his wife and children to a dragon.
And Jin Geum-ho, through Heavenly Eye, had seen that only by bringing Tamulas down would the future of humanity open.
There had been no other option.
Tamulas had to be slain at all costs.
Under the leadership of the two men, countless human Awakened set out to hunt Tamulas.
This had been the era when Awakened had only just begun appearing because of the side effects of terraforming.
Naturally, the Awakened of that era had little experience in battle.
The one piece of fortune they did have was that Tamulas was a young dragon.
Tamulas, too, lacked experience and could not handle its own power perfectly.
That was why it made the mistake of nesting near old Seoul, where relatively many humans had still survived.
Or perhaps it simply looked down on humans that much.
In any case, under Dayeoden and Jin Geum-ho, the human Awakened fought a fierce battle against Tamulas.
Over the three-day battle, nearly all of humanity’s Awakened lost their lives.
The only survivors were a handful of Awakened including Dayeoden and Jin Geum-ho.
But in the end, they were able to bring Tamulas down.
It was humanity’s first victory.
Jin Geum-ho knew he had to seize that opportunity.
He raised a massive building over Tamulas’s corpse.
He concealed Tamulas beneath the City Hall building, then raised one structure after another around it.
That had been the beginning of Neo Seoul.
Tamulas was a dragon.
A noble being that had stood at the summit of all the demonic beasts that crossed over from Kurayan.
Though its breath had long ceased, that presence remained unchanged.
The demonic beasts feared approaching the place where Tamulas lay.
Even if it was only a corpse.
Because of that, Neo Seoul was safe from attacks by demonic beasts.
Once word spread that this was a territory the demonic beasts would not approach, survivors began gathering there from all over.
As more and more people came, the city gradually grew, and the civilization that had fallen back to the medieval age began to recover.
It was a hidden history known only to a very small number of people.
Yet around Tamulas’s corpse, worktables had been set up.
Many people were working atop those tables.
“Just a little more.”
“We’re almost there.”
The workers were stripping away Tamulas’s scales.
Tamulas’s scales were lighter than aluminum of the same size and yet stronger than diamond.
Removing them from a dragon’s body was no easy feat.
To strip away even a single scale required mages, alchemists, engineers, and miners all working on it for well over a month.
That was why, every time they managed to remove a single scale, everyone ended up utterly exhausted.
And it wasn’t only the scales.
In various areas, work was underway to extract dragon flesh, blood, bones, and marrow.
Tamulas’s corpse was, in the most literal sense, a treasure.
There was not a single part of it that could be wasted.
Its scales were used as materials for armor and weapons, its blood was processed into ingredients for medicine, and the little-by-little harvested marrow became material for the study of immortality.
The reason Neo Seoul had been able to develop so rapidly was precisely because of the materials extracted from the dragon’s corpse.
The alchemists and mages working in City Hall studied the corpse, and based on the data they obtained, they advanced Neo Seoul.
That was the real secret behind why Neo Seoul had developed at a speed no other colony could match.
“The problem is that the more materials we excavate from the dragon’s corpse, the faster the anti-demonic force is consumed…”
The moment a material extracted from Tamulas’s corpse was processed, the anti-demonic force disappeared.
That was why Neo Seoul’s anti-demonic force had weakened so much in recent years.
Over a century, humans had continuously mined Tamulas’s corpse, and as a result, only about one-third of it remained intact.
Once even that remaining third had all been harvested, Neo Seoul’s anti-demonic force would vanish completely.
When that time came, Neo Seoul too would begin suffering attacks from demonic beasts.
“How long do we have?”
“Based on current projections, it should all be exhausted in about thirty years.”
“That’s faster than I expected.”
“Technology is advancing just as quickly.”
Every time they excavated the dragon’s corpse, technology advanced, but Neo Seoul was exposed further to the threat of demonic beasts.
It was a dilemma.
Seo Tae-ran spoke carefully.
“Would it not be better to slow the pace of excavation?”
“It’s too late.”
“…”
“Now that we’ve already entered this current, we have no choice but to continue. If we stop clumsily now, we will only create an even greater problem.”
“Do you think Zeon can truly bring back Moby Dick’s heart? Without it, Heavenly Punishment cannot be completed.”
“Heavenly Punishment will be completed. Whether Zeon wants it or not, he has no choice but to ride the flow I have created.”
Jin Geum-ho’s confident voice spread through the enormous underground chamber.
* * *
“Jin Geum-ho.”
Zeon suddenly stopped walking and turned around.
The huge City Hall building could be seen far away.
He could no longer feel Jin Geum-ho’s gaze.
And yet it was not easy to shake off the lingering trace of it.
That was how strong the impression Jin Geum-ho had left on him was.
One did not need to wear heavy armor and brandish spear and sword to be terrifying.
There were beings who could pressure others through nothing but the strength of their own existence.
Jin Geum-ho was such a being.
The entirety of Neo Seoul was under his dominion.
Within his own territory, there was no need for him to arm himself.
At the snap of his fingers, every Awakened in Neo Seoul would move for him.
“So he wants me to bring back Moby Dick’s heart. Just what sort of plan is he plotting?”
Moby Dick measured one hundred and twenty meters in length.
It was a colossal demonic beast, as large as a dragon or Leviathan.
A beast of such size naturally had to contain immense mana.
It required a huge amount of mana simply to sustain that enormous body.
A demonic beast’s heart was, essentially, a storehouse of mana.
Naturally, the larger the demonic beast, the more tremendous the amount of mana contained in its heart.
Jin Geum-ho’s request for Moby Dick’s heart meant that he required a vast amount of mana.
Zeon had not refused Jin Geum-ho’s proposal.
It was not because of the benefits Jin Geum-ho had offered.
It was because of something Dayeoden had once said in passing.
“If you ever end up meeting Jin Geum-ho, it wouldn’t be a bad thing to help him at least once. His methods are rough, but everything he does is for the sake of the surviving humans.”
Those words had not come from just anyone.
They had come from Dayeoden.
Dayeoden was the person who had had the greatest influence on Zeon’s life.
There was no way Zeon could simply ignore what he had said.
That was the greatest reason Zeon had accepted Jin Geum-ho’s proposal.
“Still, in a desert this vast, who knows when I’ll ever come across Moby Dick.”