Chapter 66

Chapter 66

Zeon left the house.

He had to walk down no fewer than eighteen floors, but it was no problem for Zeon.

As he had seen from his house, there were many people walking through the streets.

The city that had been asleep during the day seemed to have awakened once night came.

Streets where not even a single ant had been visible now had street stalls laid out and markets opened.

Some people sold food, while others sold meat from monsters whose identities were impossible to know.

Among them were even people selling advanced products that were hard to find in the slums. They had clearly all been smuggled out of Neo Seoul.

In the dank alleys, he could also see people trading what appeared to be drugs. Zeon took in every one of those sights.

Not a single thing had changed from how it had looked eight years ago.

It seemed the only thing that had changed was Zeon himself.

When Zeon had left the slums, he had been young and powerless. The greatest difference now was that he had the strength to protect himself.

The people of the slums glanced at Zeon.

They felt a sense of alienness from Zeon, who gave off an atmosphere completely different from theirs.

They instinctively realized that Zeon belonged to a different kind from them and grew wary.

Zeon noticed their gazes too, but he paid them no mind.

He had received such looks many times when he had gone to other colonies.

Zeon was an outsider.

Wherever he went, he was not welcomed.

It was a little regrettable that he was not welcomed even in the slums, his hometown, but it was not enough to bother him greatly.

After walking for a long while, a delicious smell came from somewhere.

It was a smell he had never once encountered in the desert or in other colonies.

Zeon walked toward the source of the smell.

The place he arrived at had people laying out street stalls and selling food.

Zeon took a seat at one of them.

The reason he had chosen that place out of all the many street stalls was simple.

The most delicious smell was coming from there.

With his back turned, an old man was grilling meat.

Perhaps noticing that a customer had come, the old man turned around.

Deep wrinkles that made it impossible to guess how old he was, a beard, and glasses cracked on one side left a strong impression.

The old man said to Zeon,

“Did you come to eat?”

“......”

Zeon did not answer and stared fixedly at the old man.

For some reason, the old man’s face felt familiar.

A moment later, Zeon remembered who the old man was.

“Are you, by any chance...... old man Clexi?”

“You know me?”

The old man looked at Zeon with a slight frown.

Even on this street, there were almost no people who knew his real name. Yet a man he was seeing for the first time today had unexpectedly called his name.

Naturally, he could not help being wary.

“Who are you, and how do you know my name?”

“I thought it was strange that I didn’t see you at the Mana Stone Mine, but you were doing business here.”

“You still haven’t told me your name.”

Old man Clexi’s eyes beyond the glasses turned sharp.

It was a gaze too sharp to belong to an old man running a shabby street food stall.

Zeon smiled and said,

“You seem the same as ever, but it looks like your memory has declined. Don’t you recognize me?”

“Now that I look, your face is familiar.”

Old man Clexi frowned deeply and searched his memory.

After struggling for a long while, Clexi finally managed to remember Zeon.

“The Mana Stone Mine, you said? Come to think of it, you’re that brat from back then.”

“So you still remember.”

“How could you not stand out? You had a Mana Stone when you were just a brat, and you disappeared a day after entering the mine. I figured you were dead, but you were alive after all. What happened?”

“What do you mean?”

“I’m asking how you’ve been all this time.”

Old man Clexi’s eyes gleamed with curiosity.

Zeon gave a faint laugh and said,

“I got by somehow.”

“So I’m asking how you got by.”

“What’s so important about that? The important thing is that I’m alive and meeting you again like this.”

“Hah! You’ve become quite slippery. You seemed innocent back then.”

“I paid an expensive tuition fee. Thanks to that, I learned a lot.”

“Fine. If you don’t want to say it, don’t. Who said I was curious?”

Old man Clexi looked sulky. But Zeon did not waver.

Zeon knew very well how sly and dangerous old man Clexi was.

The other party was an old man who had spent his whole life rolling around in the rough Mana Stone Mine.

If he looked down on an old man who had dealt with rough miners and Awakened, he would pay dearly for it.

“I’m hungry. Please give me something to eat.”

“Do you have money?”

“Enough to pay for a meal.”

“Is that so?”

Old man Clexi put the meat he had been grilling onto a plate and handed it over.

Zeon picked up his chopsticks and said,

“Thank you for the meal.”

It was the first food he had eaten after entering Neo Seoul.

Zeon put a piece of meat whose identity he could not know into his mouth.

The meat melted softly in his mouth.

He did not know how it had been seasoned, but the flavor exploded in his mouth.

Zeon thought food was the standard by which human civilization was divided.

Where civilization had developed, food developed too, but in backward places, food could not escape a primitive level.

Most of the colonies Zeon had visited until now had not escaped a medieval level of civilization.

They were too busy surviving the threat of monsters to even dare develop their civilization.

In that sense, Neo Seoul was special.

After all, he could eat delicious food even here in the slums.

Zeon savored the meat one piece at a time.

Old man Clexi watched him for a moment, then took out a bottle of liquor.

“Will you drink too?”

“No, thank you.”

“Why?”

“It just didn’t suit my taste.”

“Heh-heh! You’ve only grown taller, but your palate is still that of a child. An adult ought to be able to drink at least a cup of liquor.”

“No, thank you. If liquor is the standard, then I’ll simply choose not to be an adult.”

“You really have become slippery. Just what did you go through?”

Old man Clexi scanned Zeon’s entire body as if he were dissecting him. But he could not learn anything just by looking.

Zeon truly ate the meat with relish.

He ate so deliciously that even old man Clexi, who had made it, found himself wanting to eat some.

“When did you enter the slums?”

“I came in today at noon.”

“Do you have a place to sleep?”

“Fortunately, my old house was still there.”

“Is that so? That’s curious. It’s the nature of this place that an empty house can never exist.”

“I must be lucky.”

“Share some of that luck with me.”

“Why? Did something bad happen?”

“Luck isn’t something you need only when something bad happens. Once you reach my age, you simply start hoping for luck. So you can live longer, so you can make more money.”

“You’ve lived that long, and you still want to live longer?”

At Zeon’s words, old man Clexi smiled broadly. When he did, the few teeth he had left showed.

“My friend! The longer you live, the more you want to keep living. If possible, it’s human nature to want to make a deal with a dragon and obtain eternal life.”

“Can dragons grant eternal life too?”

“Who knows? Maybe if you drink its blood, you live forever. That may be why the bastards beyond that wall are so obsessed with it.”

Old man Clexi’s gaze turned toward the distant wall.

It was the wall that divided Neo Seoul and the slums.

That single wall divided citizens from the poor.

Those inside received every benefit of civilization, while those outside were exposed to every danger and barely survived day by day.

All of it was divided by the difference of that one wall.

That was why some called that wall the Wall of Despair.

A wall ordinary people could never climb no matter how hard they struggled their whole lives.

Only a chosen few could cross that wall, and even then, with an extremely rare chance.

Zeon asked,

“Do they covet dragon blood too?”

“Do you think it’s only them? Heh-heh!”

“Tch!”

Zeon clicked his tongue.

A dragon was a living creature too.

The very idea of believing that the blood of a mere living creature could grant eternal life was laughable.

Old man Clexi’s eyes suddenly gleamed.

“That robe looks rather good. Where did you get it?”

“I just happened to obtain it.”

“Happened to?”

“Yes!”

“You expect me to believe that?”

“Didn’t I tell you? I’m fairly lucky.”

“Hmm!”

“I should be going now. Thank you for the meal. How much is it?”

“Forget it. Since it’s been a long time since we met, I’ll give it to you for free today.”

“I’ll pass on that. This should be enough, right?”

Zeon took money from inside his clothes and placed it on the table.

At that instant, old man Clexi’s face filled with disbelief.

The amount Zeon had placed down was exactly ten sol.

It was the amount old man Clexi had received from Zeon at the Mana Stone Mine.

After putting down ten sol, Zeon rose from his seat without hesitation.

“You?”

“I paid the bill exactly, so don’t say anything different later.”

Zeon smiled and left.

Old man Clexi stared blankly at Zeon’s receding back.

It felt as if he had been struck on the head with an iron hammer.

It had truly been a long time since he had felt this way.

“So he hasn’t forgotten what happened that day? He’s more spiteful than I expected.”

A smile appeared on his lips.

Old man Clexi stepped away from the street stall and said,

“I should stop business for today. Pack up the stall.”

“Yes, sir!”

The large merchants who had been doing business right beside him came to his side.

They gathered up old man Clexi’s street stall and followed behind him. Then the people on the street scattered aside to clear a path.

Old man Clexi said quietly,

“Put someone on him.”

“Is he worth that much?”

“Worth?”

The wrinkles on old man Clexi’s face deepened even more.

He was smiling.

“He disappeared the day he entered the Mana Stone Mine. Everyone thought he was dead. But he came back alive. That alone makes him worth enough.”

The Mana Stone Mine was no different from a labyrinth.

If one took a wrong turn, one lost all sense of direction, wandered, and starved to death.

Still, even in such cases, the bodies were found.

Yet Zeon’s corpse had never been found to the very end. He had found that strange, but he had soon forgotten about it.

At the time, Zeon had been an insignificant boy, and Clexi had not been idle enough to care about the death of such a boy.

But now the situation had changed.

The boy everyone had thought dead had returned alive and well. After no less than eight years, at that.

He was madly curious about what Zeon had done during those eight years. But old man Clexi knew best that finding that out would be impossible.

Even with his power, he could not know what had happened outside Neo Seoul and the Mana Stone Mine.

There was no means of finding out what had happened in the desert. But he did have the means to learn everything that happened in the slums as clearly as the lines on his palm.

“He definitely awakened. Find out what his Skill is and why he came back to Neo Seoul. Do not leave out a single thing.”

“Understood.”

The merchant answered and disappeared.

Old man Clexi looked at his palm.

In his hand was the ten sol Zeon had left behind.

“Well, well! A curious fellow has rolled back in.”

---

Zeon murmured,

“As expected, he’s no ordinary old man.”

The covert gazes he had felt the moment he sat at old man Clexi’s street stall.

It had felt as if the entire market had been watching Zeon.

They were clearly people who followed old man Clexi.

Most were ordinary people, but among them, there were definitely some who gave off a special feeling.

Zeon knew that only Awakened gave off that feeling.

The fact that he had Awakened under his command meant old man Clexi was that much of a big shot.

Though Zeon had no idea why a big shot like that was selling food in the market.

Interesting things had been happening since his first day in Neo Seoul.

“This is fun!”