Chapter 158

Chapter 158

Jin Geum-ho stood with his arms crossed, looking out the window.

The smile he had worn when greeting Zeon had long since vanished as if it had never existed.

Seo Tae-ran stood with both hands respectfully folded, watching Jin Geum-ho’s back.

It was only after a long while that Jin Geum-ho opened his mouth.

“It is truly interesting.”

“Pardon?”

“The way of the world. For a Sandmancer to appear out of nowhere.”

“Ah, yes!”

Jin Geum-ho turned and looked at Seo Tae-ran.

“How did he seem to you?”

“He did not seem easy to deal with.”

“Did he look that way to you as well?”

“Yes! If we treat him carelessly, I believe we will suffer a major setback.”

“That is exactly what I thought.”

Jin Geum-ho nodded.

The Zeon he saw had the typical nature of someone strong against the strong and gentle toward the weak.

He was strong before the powerful and considerate toward the vulnerable.

It was not because he was reckless or had a strange personality.

He could behave that way because he had confidence in his own ability.

“My Heavenly Eye did not work on him.”

“Is that...... true?”

Seo Tae-ran raised her head in surprise.

Heavenly Eye.

It was one of Jin Geum-ho’s main Skills.

Unlike Xiao Lun’s Petrifying Eye, it was not a Skill that harmed others. But in some ways, it was even more dangerous.

The most terrifying aspect of Heavenly Eye was that it could read causality, even if only roughly.

In other words, if he looked at someone while using this Skill, he could roughly grasp how the future flow would unfold.

That meant he could predict, to some extent, the future of the person on whom he used Heavenly Eye.

The problem was himself.

If he interfered with the other person, he could not know what variables would arise.

That was why Jin Geum-ho avoided directly interfering with others whenever possible. He merely guided them so they would make their own choices.

Obtaining the desired result with minimal interference was Jin Geum-ho’s method.

“The only person my Heavenly Eye did not work on was Deioden. Now Zeon has been added to that list.”

“Then are you saying Zeon is a powerhouse on Deioden’s level?”

“We should assume there is a high possibility of that.”

“Mm!”

“Even the class of Sandmancer alone makes him someone we must be wary of, and it seems his grade is high as well.”

“Would it not be better to eliminate him even now? If we move the entire execution unit, we should be able to remove him easily.”

“If we did that, the causality I barely managed to adjust would shake. It is a little burdensome, but the current flow will be more helpful to my plan.”

“Please tell me anytime your thoughts change.”

“I will.”

At Seo Tae-ran’s words, Jin Geum-ho smiled.

It was then.

Whooom!

Suddenly, a faint vibration could be felt.

At that instant, the expressions of Jin Geum-ho and Seo Tae-ran changed.

It was a vibration that could only be felt in the Mayor’s office.

All of Neo Seoul’s magic circles and barriers were managed by City Hall. If even a slight numerical value changed, the information was immediately delivered to the Mayor’s office.

Seo Tae-ran spoke carefully.

“It is a notification that Neo Seoul’s anti-monster force value has dropped again.”

“Let us go underground.”

“Will you look personally?”

“I must see it with my own eyes.”

“I will escort you.”

The two entered the elevator.

Wooong!

The elevator descended at terrifying speed.

It reached the first floor in an instant, yet showed no sign of stopping.

Basement twentieth floor.

The people of Neo Seoul knew City Hall as a building with twenty underground floors and fifty aboveground floors, for a total of seventy floors.

Even those who worked inside City Hall believed that.

But beneath City Hall, there was a space they did not know about.

A secret space that existed far below the twentieth basement floor.

Among those who knew of it, it was called the Excavation Wing.

The elevator passed the twentieth basement floor and continued descending for a long while.

It felt as if it took longer than going up the fifty floors aboveground, and in truth, it did.

Ding!

At last, the elevator reached the Excavation Wing, and its doors opened.

At that moment, a vast underground space revealed itself before the two of them.

The underground space was so enormous that the entire City Hall building could have fit inside it with room to spare.

It was hard to believe that such a space existed beneath Neo Seoul. But even more astonishing was the gigantic object lying in the middle of that underground space.

A colossal monster, seemingly more than one hundred and fifty meters from head to tail, lay on its belly.

A pair of drooping wings, eyes closed without strength, a pair of enormous horns rising from its head, and scales as white as the sands of the Salt Desert.

The monster was a dragon.

A pure-white White Dragon.

A colossal lifeform with such overwhelming majesty that simply looking at it seemed to choke the breath out of one’s throat existed within Neo Seoul’s underground cavity.

No sign of life could be felt from the White Dragon. In truth, its breath had already been cut off.

Jin Geum-ho looked up at the White Dragon and muttered,

“Tamulas, one of the eight dragons that crossed over after Earth turned into a desert.”

Long ago, Jin Geum-ho had seen it clearly with his own eyes.

He had seen the enormous dimensional gate to Kurayan open and eight dragons cross over.

For some reason, the dragons that crossed over to Earth scattered in every direction and flew away separately.

One of them flew to Bukhansan and made its nest there.

That dragon was White Dragon Tamulas, now before Jin Geum-ho’s eyes.

Tamulas had been a young dragon.

Naturally, it had no choice but to be weaker than the other dragons.

Because it had used up almost all of its strength crossing through the dimensional gate, it had been unable to fly far and had settled beneath the slopes of Bukhansan.

“Back then, Deioden and I joined forces and hunted it down.”

Deioden had lost his wife and children to a dragon and had been blinded by rage, while Jin Geum-ho had known through Heavenly Eye that only by hunting Tamulas would a future open for humanity.

There had been no choice.

They had to kill Tamulas.

Under the leadership of the two men, countless Awakened set out to hunt Tamulas.

It was the period when Awakened had only just begun appearing due to the side effects of Terraforming.

Naturally, the Awakened were still inexperienced in battle.

The one fortunate thing was that Tamulas was a young dragon.

Tamulas too had little experience and could not fully wield its own power.

That was why it made the mistake of nesting near Old Seoul, where relatively many humans still survived.

Perhaps it had simply looked down on humans that much.

In any case, the human Awakened led by Deioden and Jin Geum-ho fought a fierce battle against Tamulas.

In the brutal battle that continued for three days, almost all of the human Awakened lost their lives.

Only a small number of Awakened survived, including Deioden and Jin Geum-ho.

But in the end, they were able to bring Tamulas down.

It was the first victory granted to humanity.

Jin Geum-ho knew that they had to make use of that opportunity.

He built a gigantic structure over Tamulas’s corpse.

He hid Tamulas’s corpse beneath the City Hall building, then began putting up buildings one after another.

That was the beginning of Neo Seoul.

Tamulas was a dragon.

It was a noble existence that stood at the peak of all monsters that had crossed over from Kurayan.

Even though its breath had been cut off, its presence remained unchanged.

Monsters feared even approaching the place where Tamulas lay. Even if it was only a corpse.

Thanks to that, Neo Seoul was safe from monster attacks.

Once it became known as an area monsters did not approach, survivors gathered from everywhere.

As people gathered that way, the city gradually grew, and they were able to restore the civilization that had fallen back to the medieval age.

It was a secret history known only to a very small number of people.

Around Tamulas’s corpse, worktables had been installed.

Many people were working on those worktables.

“Put in just a little more effort.”

“We are almost there.”

The workers were removing Tamulas’s scales.

Tamulas’s scales were lighter than aluminum of the same size, yet possessed hardness far greater than diamond.

Removing them from the dragon’s body itself was no ordinary task.

To remove a single scale, mages, alchemists, technicians, and miners had to work together for well over a month.

Because of that, by the time one dragon scale was removed, everyone was exhausted.

It was not only the scales.

Work was being done everywhere to harvest the dragon’s flesh, blood, bones, and marrow.

Tamulas’s corpse was truly a treasure.

Not a single part of it could be wasted.

The scales were used as materials for armor and weapons, and the blood was processed into medicinal ingredients.

The marrow, harvested little by little, became material for exploring eternal youth and immortality.

The reason Neo Seoul had been able to develop so quickly was precisely because of the materials harvested from the dragon’s corpse.

The alchemists and mages working in City Hall studied the dragon’s corpse, and based on the data they obtained this way, Neo Seoul developed.

That was the true secret behind how Neo Seoul had been able to develop at such speed, unlike other Colonies.

“The problem is that the more materials we mine from the dragon’s corpse, the faster the anti-monster force is depleted......”

The instant materials harvested from Tamulas’s corpse were processed, the anti-monster force disappeared.

The reason Neo Seoul’s anti-monster force had recently weakened was precisely this.

For over a hundred years, humans had steadily mined Tamulas’s corpse, and as a result, only about one-third remained intact.

Once the remaining third was fully mined as well, all of Neo Seoul’s anti-monster force would vanish.

When that time came, Neo Seoul too would suffer from monster attacks.

“How long will it take?”

“According to our predictions, everything will be exhausted in about thirty years.”

“Faster than I expected.”

“That is also how rapidly our technology is advancing.”

The more they excavated the dragon’s corpse, the more their technology advanced, but that also exposed Neo Seoul to the threat of monsters. It was a dilemma.

Seo Tae-ran spoke carefully.

“What if we slowed the excavation speed instead?”

“It is too late.”

“......”

“Now that the flow has already begun, we must continue as we are. If we stop carelessly, it will only cause even greater problems.”

“Will Zeon be able to obtain Moby Dick’s heart? Without it, Heavenly Punishment will not be completed.”

“Heavenly Punishment will be completed. Whether Zeon wants it or not, he will have no choice but to ride the flow I created.”

Jin Geum-ho’s confident voice spread through the vast underground space.

---

“Jin Geum-ho!”

Zeon suddenly stopped walking and looked back.

Far away, the gigantic City Hall building stood in view.

He could no longer feel Jin Geum-ho’s gaze. Even so, it was not easy to escape his lingering presence.

That was how strong an impression Jin Geum-ho had left on him.

Something did not have to be armed in heavy armor and equipped with spear and sword to be frightening.

There were beings who pressured others with nothing but their innate strength, even without such things.

Jin Geum-ho was such a being.

All of Neo Seoul was under his control.

There was no reason for him to arm himself within his own territory.

The moment he snapped his fingers, every Awakened in Neo Seoul would move.

“To ask me to obtain Moby Dick’s heart. Just what kind of plan is he scheming?”

Moby Dick reached one hundred and twenty meters in length.

It was a super-giant monster as large as a dragon or Leviathan.

Naturally, a monster with a gigantic body had no choice but to contain immense mana.

To maintain such a massive body, an enormous amount of mana was necessary.

A monster’s heart was no different from a mana reservoir.

Naturally, the larger the monster, the more tremendous the amount of mana contained within its heart.

Asking him to obtain Moby Dick’s heart meant that Jin Geum-ho needed that much enormous mana.

Zeon had not rejected Jin Geum-ho’s request.

It was not because of the benefits Jin Geum-ho had offered.

It was because of something Deioden had once said in passing.

—If you ever meet Jin Geum-ho, helping him once would not be a bad thing. His methods may be extreme, but everything he does is for the surviving humans.

It was not someone else who had said that, but Deioden.

The person who had the greatest influence on Zeon’s life was Deioden.

He could not ignore Deioden’s words.

That was the greatest reason Zeon had accepted Jin Geum-ho’s proposal.

“Though I have no idea when I’ll ever meet Moby Dick in this vast desert.”