Chapter 5

Chapter 5

Zeon looked at the hourglass in his hand.

“What is this?”

The fact that he had chosen the hourglass had not been due to anger or coincidence.

From the moment he entered the room filled with junk, he had felt a strange pull.

The source of that pull had been this very hourglass.

It was smaller than his palm and covered with delicate patterns.

If the world had not fallen into such ruin, it would have been an item that attracted the interest of collectors.

Zeon turned the hourglass over. Then fine sand slipped down.

“About ten minutes?”

That was the time it took for all the sand to fall.

It meant that once turned over, the sand would fall for ten minutes.

Zeon felt vitality strangely rising through his entire body.

“What is this, really? Is it an item related to my awakening?”

Zeon turned the hourglass over once more.

The grains of sand began falling again.

Come to think of it, the grains of sand were unusually fine.

They were finer and redder than the sand of the red desert that filled the world.

He had never seen sand like this even once.

Just in case, Zeon tried using his ability on the hourglass.

If it truly was an item related to him, he thought it might show some sort of reaction.

‘Move.’

He gave a command to the red sand inside the hourglass. However, the red sand merely fell without concern.

Zeon focused once more and tried to move the red sand. But the result was the same.

“Damn it! Was I mistaken?”

Zeon irritably put the hourglass into his pocket.

In any case, it was an item he had received in exchange for his precious Mana Stone.

He could not throw it away just because it did not move as he wanted.

Zeon thought the start of his day had been truly unlucky. But for him, the real worst was only beginning now.

When he returned to the dormitory, some man was waiting for him.

He was large and had a rough appearance.

As if proving that he had lived no easy life, his face and the upper body exposed by his missing shirt were covered in scars.

When his eyes met Zeon’s, the man opened his mouth.

“Are you the greenhorn who came yesterday?”

“Yes! But who are you?”

“You fucking bastard! Why didn’t you come to the mine this morning?”

“What do you mean?”

“If you came here to work, you should have run straight to the mine. Did I, Park Man-ho, have to come all the way here looking for you? You son of a bitch!”

The man’s name was Park Man-ho.

He was a Grade E Awakened and the overseer of the mine.

The Mana Stone mining city was largely operated under two systems.

The mine, which was the core facility, and the guard force, which managed and defended the city where the mine was located.

Park Man-ho was in charge of operating the mine among them.

He sent miners into the shafts and exclusively managed the Mana Stones they mined.

Park Man-ho was one of the five most powerful people in the mining city.

Zeon made an excuse.

“It’s just that no one called me......”

“This bastard’s funny. Who the hell are you for someone to come call you? If you came here to work, you should come on your own.”

“No, but still......”

“Enough. Just follow me, bastard! Do not try to scheme......”

Park Man-ho had long experience in the mining city.

That meant he had met many people, and he knew well how to work someone efficiently.

Handling a greenhorn like Zeon was nothing to him.

No, it was not only him.

Everyone in the Mana Stone Mine was like that.

They were a swarm of piranhas targeting prey that had fallen into the water.

When easy prey fell in, they rushed in all at once and tried to gnaw it down to the bone.

To people like them, a greenhorn like Zeon was easy prey.

Zeon realized that fact too.

From Old Man Kleksi to Park Man-ho, all of them were soaked in greed.

The problem was that right now, there was no way to escape from their hands.

He could not publicly reveal the fact that he had awakened, and he could not disobey Park Man-ho’s orders either.

Above all, he was not given any time to think.

Everyone was driving him into a corner without even giving him room to use his head.

Zeon thought he had truly gotten caught in the worst possible way.

In his heart, he wanted to hold out without entering the mine, but Zeon knew well that it was impossible.

Now that he had entered the mining city, he could not defy Park Man-ho.

Moreover, Park Man-ho was a Grade E Awakened.

The Rank Insignia on his wrist showed that Park Man-ho was an Awakened.

A martial type, at that.

It was the most common type, but it was not something one could treat lightly.

The martial type was the category that most efficiently used the strength they possessed against their opponents.

He was not an opponent the current Zeon could handle.

‘Damn it! The mine overseer came looking for me in person.’

If only the bus had arrived safely yesterday, this would never have happened.

There had been many miner applicants, so even if Zeon alone had been missing, it would not have stood out. Unfortunately, however, everyone else had died to the sandworm, and only Zeon had arrived.

It would have been stranger for him not to stand out.

Even so, when Zeon hesitated instead of following, Park Man-ho’s gaze changed.

“You little bastard, seriously!”

THUD!

Park Man-ho struck Zeon.

“Ghk!”

With a cry, Zeon was sent flying.

Park Man-ho thoroughly trampled Zeon.

“You son of a bitch! I told you not to scheme, didn’t I? Huh?”

THUD! THUD!

Zeon was beaten without even being able to scream.

Perhaps because he had awakened, it did not hurt as much as he had expected.

He felt as though he could counterattack if he wanted to.

Even so, Zeon endured it.

Now was not the time to resist.

It was the time to endure and build his strength.

It would not be too late to take revenge after that.

Curled up like a shrimp, Zeon endured all of Park Man-ho’s violence.

Once his anger had eased somewhat, Park Man-ho stopped beating Zeon.

“If you scheme one more time, or talk back to me, then you really will die. Do you understand?”

“Yes!”

“If you understand, follow me.”

Park Man-ho walked away without even listening to Zeon’s answer.

Zeon rose with difficulty and silently followed Park Man-ho.

GRIND!

Zeon ground his teeth.

His face was a complete mess, and bruises had bloomed all over his body.

He was only holding up because he had awakened. If it had been before, he might have been bedridden for days.

Staring at Park Man-ho’s back, Zeon thought,

‘I don’t know about the others, but I’ll definitely kill you.’

Park Man-ho did not care about Zeon’s injuries at all.

In this place, miners were nothing more than expendables.

Expendables that could be used as much as one wanted, then thrown away whenever they wore out or broke.

There was no reason to care about the safety of expendables.

Park Man-ho took Zeon and arrived at the entrance to the shaft.

One miner was waiting at the entrance.

Park Man-ho said to him,

“Give this bastard his equipment.”

“Understood.”

The miner hurriedly handed Zeon a pickaxe, a safety helmet with a lamp attached, and a backpack containing several days’ worth of food.

Park Man-ho said,

“The cost of the pickaxe and food will be deducted from your daily wages. If you mine Mana Stones, put them in that backpack and come out.”

“Is that all? Aren’t you going to teach me how to mine Mana Stones?”

“Fuck! Do you need to learn how to swing a pickaxe? You just strike down with it.”

Park Man-ho’s voice rose again.

The miner who had handed Zeon the pickaxe and backpack grew frightened in advance and backed away.

Park Man-ho’s nickname was the Tyrant of the Shaft.

He used violence whenever even the slightest thing went wrong.

Because of that, all the miners feared him.

Zeon was dumbfounded.

It was already absurd that they were shoving him into the shaft blindly, but they were not even teaching him the most basic knowledge.

This was no different from shoving him in and telling him to die.

Park Man-ho said to the miner,

“Hey! Throw this bastard into Shaft 972.”

“Shaft 972 is that......”

“Stop talking back and put him in.”

“Yes, sir! Understood.”

When Park Man-ho’s voice rose again, the miner hurriedly answered.

He grabbed Zeon by the hand and pulled him along.

“Hey, let’s go.”

“What? Yes!”

Just like that, Zeon entered the shaft without any preparation.

Park Man-ho shouted from behind him.

“You bastard! Do not even think about coming out before you mine a Mana Stone. Remember what I said.”

Zeon felt something surge up in his chest.

‘That son of a bitch really......’

He vowed that once he gained strength, he would definitely take revenge on Park Man-ho.

Zeon had now clearly grasped the nature of the Mana Stone Mine.

There was no one on his side here.

If he seemed weak or easy, he would be eaten.

He had to consider everyone an enemy and stay on guard.

Zeon blamed himself for the brief slackening of his mindset after arriving at the Mana Stone Mine.

Steeling his resolve, Zeon walked through the shaft.

Even though they were still near the entrance, the shaft was extremely narrow.

Since the shaft had been dug by human strength without the help of machines, it could not help being narrow.

Then the miner spoke to him.

“Think of it as bad luck. You happened to get caught when the captain was in a bad mood.”

“What do you mean?”

“The captain lost all his money at the gambling den.”

“There’s a gambling den here too?”

“Do you think there’s only a gambling den? Prostitutes, liquor, drugs, there’s nothing this place does not have. I am saying this out of concern, but it would be better not to get hooked on any of that. You would only work yourself to death to make someone else rich.”

The miner had been here for five years.

The companions who had come here with him had all either been ruined or lost their lives, every single one of them.

No matter how firm one’s will was, once swept up in the atmosphere, collapsing happened in an instant.

“If you still want to save money and leave, keep your wits about you.”

“What kind of place is Shaft 972?”

“I’ll tell you when we get there.”

The miner blurred his words.

Zeon instinctively realized that the shaft he had been assigned to was no ordinary place.

‘Damn it!’

For a moment, he thought about running away even now, but he soon gave up.

An endless desert stretched around the mining city.

If he tried to flee rashly, he would surely dry out and die under the sun.

‘For now, raising my ability comes first.’

Things had happened so suddenly that he had not yet checked how much his ability could do.

Once he was alone, he had to check his ability first. Only then could he come up with a plan.

Countless forks appeared before Zeon.

The miner taught Zeon how to distinguish the forks.

“If you look carefully, arrows will be carved into the forks. A red arrow points down underground, and a blue arrow tells you the direction back up to the surface. So when you come out, follow the blue arrows no matter what. Do you understand?”

“Yes!”

By feel, it seemed they had come down at least several hundred meters underground.

Only then did the miner guiding Zeon stop.

“This is Shaft 972.”

Zeon looked at the shaft the miner pointed to.

The thick darkness inside the shaft rippled as though beckoning him to enter.

“You can go in there and work.”

“I have a bad feeling about this.”

“Four people have already met their end inside. Be careful.”

“By met their end, you mean?”

“I mean they died.”

“What?”

“No one knows why they died. Everyone assigned here has come out dead, so no one wants to enter Shaft 972. That is why the captain put you, a newcomer, inside.”

“Fuck!”

At the miner’s explanation, Zeon looked utterly dumbfounded. The miner looked at Zeon with an expression that said he understood everything.

He too felt guilty about putting Zeon, still young, into this place. But there was nothing he could do for him.

He was merely a single miner who had to do as he was told.

“I pray you come out alive.”

With those words, the miner headed to his own shaft.

Left alone, Zeon looked at Shaft 972.

“So everyone died after entering, is that right? And he deliberately put me in a place like this? Just because he was in a bad mood. Park Man-ho, you will definitely die by my hand.”