Chapter 67

Chapter 67

Zeon spent several days shut up inside his house, doing nothing.

Aside from occasionally getting up to eat, he truly only lay in bed and slept.

It was fatigue that had built up over no less than eight years.

No matter how much of an Awakened Zeon was, he could not simply ignore the exhaustion accumulated from wandering the world for eight years.

Zeon lay in bed without moving.

Fortunately, the bed made from Bloodsucking Tree and Sand Angler hide was extremely comfortable, so there was no problem spending his time lying down.

It seemed he had lived that way for about ten days.

By this point, even Zeon was starting to grow bored of his secluded life.

Zeon rose from his spot and entered the bathroom.

When he opened the valve, water flowed out weaker than a child’s stream of urine.

With this amount of water, he could not even dream of taking a shower and could barely wash his face like a cat. Even so, Zeon was satisfied.

That was because once one went out into the desert, even water like this could not be found.

It was only because this place was attached to Neo Seoul that water was supplied, even in this form. In other colonies, simply obtaining water was a war.

Zeon washed his face briefly, then went outside.

When he came outside after so long, a sand-laden wind greeted him.

No matter how high the walls were raised, they could not completely block the sand-laden wind blowing in from the desert.

Because of that, sand was always rolling through the streets of the slums.

He had heard that Neo Seoul had a powerful magical barrier spread over it, blocking even the sand-laden wind. That was why it was said to be difficult to find sand inside Neo Seoul.

For Zeon, it was the worst possible environment.

That was also why he had deliberately chosen to settle in the slums.

If he entered Neo Seoul, his body would certainly be comfortable, but there was a restriction that he could not display his full power.

Since he had Exion, there would be no great problem, but if possible, he wanted to live in the environment most suited to him.

That place was the slums.

Before he knew it, darkness had fallen over the slums.

Cheap electronic billboards lit up one by one, and people who had been shut up inside their homes during the day came out.

Markets were set up on the streets, and people’s voices rang out noisily.

The place Zeon headed for was the street where old man Clexi was doing business.

Street stalls selling food had already been set up along the street, and he could also see old man Clexi busily preparing for business.

Zeon approached old man Clexi’s street stall and sat down.

“You came?”

Old man Clexi greeted him bluntly.

Zeon smiled faintly and ordered food.

“Give me the same thing I ate last time.”

“I haven’t seen you for a few days.”

“I was just resting.”

“You’re a young man with nothing to do, so you’re just playing around?”

“I worked to my heart’s content for eight years, so I’m thinking of simply doing nothing for a while.”

“What did you do so much of for eight years?”

“Well, I lived quite diligently in my own way.”

“Tch! You’re like a sly old serpent.”

Old man Clexi clicked his tongue as he watched Zeon, who did not fall for his leading questions at all.

He knew very well that Zeon had not gone outside for several days.

That was because the subordinate he had attached to Zeon had reported it.

When he had received the report, he had been dumbfounded.

He had never expected Zeon to remain shut up inside his house without doing anything to that extent.

He had suspected that Zeon might have shaken off his subordinate’s surveillance and slipped away secretly, but there was almost no possibility of that.

That was because there was no such thing as a hidden passage in the building where Zeon lived.

In the end, he had not learned a single thing about Zeon.

Because of that, old man Clexi was in a rather irritable state.

Old man Clexi put food onto a plate and said,

“Do you have enough money?”

“I have enough. If I run short, I can sell some things I have.”

“Things? Looks like you’ve hidden something good.”

“I gathered a few miscellaneous things here and there.”

“Where are you planning to sell them?”

“Well.”

“Judging by your eyes, you absolutely won’t sell them to me......”

“......”

“Tch! You’re young, but you hold grudges. Fine. If you want to dispose of your goods quietly, go to the black building behind Yeonnam-ro. Go there, show them this, and say I sent you. They should let you in.”

What old man Clexi gave Zeon was a small card.

It was pitch-black all over, without any special design or mark. Even so, it gave off a chilly feeling.

Zeon put the card inside his robe and said,

“I’ll make good use of it.”

“I don’t know what you have, but you’d better keep it safe. You know, don’t you? There’s no such thing as private property on this street.”

“Of course.”

Zeon answered with a smile.

Old man Clexi no longer spoke to him, and Zeon focused on his meal.

In the meantime, other customers came in one by one.

Zeon finished his meal and rose from his seat.

After paying the bill and leaving the street, Zeon headed straight for Yeonnam-ro.

This place, Shinchon, often used the place names from a hundred years ago as they were.

Yeonnam-ro was one of them.

Although the scenery had completely changed from back then, the name was still being used.

Contrary to its name, Yeonnam-ro had an extremely dark atmosphere.

There were no cheap electronic billboards here, and not even prostitutes soliciting customers or drug addicts could be seen.

It meant this place was dangerous enough that even people living at rock bottom were reluctant to approach.

Zeon walked through such a Yeonnam-ro without hesitation.

After walking for a long while, the black building old man Clexi had mentioned appeared.

“This is fun.”

Zeon’s expression filled with interest.

It was not simply because the building was black.

It was because he could not feel any presence from inside the building at all.

It was clear that the inside and outside were perfectly cut off by a magic circle or barrier.

A high-level barrier like this could never be cast by an individual.

It could only barely be constructed by investing an enormous amount of manpower and funds.

Zeon walked toward the front of the black building. Then heavily armed men suddenly appeared.

The one who stood out the most among them was a large man with a huge machine gun attached to one arm.

He was an Awakened who had abandoned a human arm and fused with machinery.

Just looking at him, a brutal atmosphere flowed from him.

He aimed the muzzle at Zeon.

“This is a restricted area. Kid! No one can enter without permission.”

“I came with old man Clexi’s introduction.”

Without panic, Zeon handed the black card to the large man.

When the man infused it with mana, an eye pattern finally appeared on the black card.

At that instant, the man’s attitude turned polite.

He returned the black card to Zeon and said,

“So you were an honored guest. You may enter.”

“Honored guest?”

“Please go inside.”

The man gestured toward the inside of the building with his chin.

Zeon gave up on hearing an answer and moved inside.

The closer he approached the door, the more he felt a dense net of mana.

Just as Zeon had guessed, a barrier had been spread there.

When he arrived, the net of mana vanished.

The rest remained the same, and only a space just large enough for Zeon to enter disappeared.

Once Zeon went in, the barrier restored itself as if nothing had happened.

When he crossed the barrier and entered the building, another world unfolded.

Countless shops of a completely different level from the outside packed the building. The passages were crowded with people who had come to buy goods.

At a glance, they looked far from ordinary people.

All of them were either Awakened or people carrying weapons.

With careful expressions, they were trading with merchants or looking through goods.

Only then did Zeon realize the true identity of this place.

“So this is the Goblin Market.”

There had been a rumor circulating in the slums.

That a black market called the Goblin Market existed, and that Awakened active in the slums bought and sold goods there.

Zeon had also heard the rumor, but he had never taken an interest in it.

That was because he had been too busy simply surviving each day.

A place where no one unauthorized could ever enter.

The Goblin Market was a kind of neutral zone.

Even those who fought fierce wars to seize the interests of the slums had to follow the laws of the Goblin Market.

If one broke the laws of the Goblin Market, one became the enemy of every organization in the slums.

It was not known who managed the Goblin Market. But it was certain that person held tremendous power.

A stranger named Zeon had entered, but no one paid him any attention. Thanks to that, Zeon could stroll around inside the Goblin Market at ease.

The first thing that caught Zeon’s eye was a weapon shop.

From cold weapons such as swords and spears to items like guns and cannons, they were lined up on the display shelves.

Weapons like guns did not work well against monsters, but they were extremely efficient against other humans.

Because of that, members of organizations like the Red Skull Gang mainly purchased them.

Since Awakened were not so common, ordinary people were armed with firearms.

Awakened mainly preferred cold weapons.

There were also Awakened who fused with machines and used them as if they were part of their own bodies, but their number was not that large.

Zeon simply passed by the weapon shop.

After all, to him, who used sand as a weapon, those things were not particularly necessary.

After passing the weapon shop, a store selling monster corpses appeared.

There were people selling monster corpses outside too, but what was sold here could not be compared to those.

Zeon looked interested.

‘An Ironclad Rhino corpse. They obtained that here?’

The enormous monster lying on the worktable was clearly an Ironclad Rhino, a Grade D monster.

It possessed tremendous defense and attack power.

If it charged with that huge body and horn, even an armored bus would be torn apart like a sheet of paper.

Since it was difficult for an individual to hunt alone, people mainly formed parties to hunt it.

What surprised Zeon was that the Ironclad Rhino’s habitat was nowhere near this area.

It was an Ironclad Rhino that could only be seen in the southern desert, far from Neo Seoul.

Furthermore, compared to its size, it was not a monster with particularly high value.

There was no reason to go all the way to the distant southern desert to hunt such a monster deliberately.

It was right to assume they had encountered it by chance while hunting.

‘That means Ironclad Rhinos have advanced all the way near Neo Seoul. The change in monster habitats is affecting even this place.’

The Flame Wolf pack he had encountered just before entering Neo Seoul was also a monster group that normally could not be seen around here.

It was clear that the monsters had expanded their territories near Neo Seoul because of the chain migration of habitats.

That was certainly not a good sign.

Since such a thing had happened right when he entered Neo Seoul, he did not feel very good about it.

‘I hope nothing happens.’

Zeon passed the shop selling monster corpses and went deeper inside.

The deeper he went, the more varied the goods sold in the shops became.

The whole world had turned into desert, so he wondered where they had obtained such a wide variety of goods.

Zeon looked through every one of them.

There were many goods, but nothing in particular tempted him.

His subspace was filled with objects far more precious than the things here.

If he took out even one of them, the Goblin Market would be turned upside down.

That was when it happened.

One object in particular caught Zeon’s eye.

It was a metal device as tall as an adult.

It looked like a miniature pyramid, and he could feel a strange mana field from it.

When Zeon approached out of curiosity, someone who seemed to be the shopkeeper came over.

“It’s a good item. If you buy one, you’ll never regret it.”

“What is this?”

“It’s a small magic power generator. It converts the mana of Mana Stones into electricity.”

“Something like that exists?”

“Did you come from another colony? Isn’t Neo Seoul maintained by magic power generators too? This is the same kind of item. There’s only a slight difference in size and efficiency.”

In truth, magic power generators had already been commercialized.

Every device in Neo Seoul ran on electricity extracted from Mana Stone generators.

However, they were not very efficient and were also extremely expensive, so there were not many people looking for magic power generators.

To run a magic power generator properly, one had to pour in piles of Mana Stones mined from the Mana Stone Mine or use high-quality Mana Stones obtained from monsters.

But there was no way people living in the slums would possess that many Mana Stones.

Even to the merchant, the magic power generator was a white elephant.

He had gone through great trouble to smuggle it out of Neo Seoul, but there was no one willing to buy it.

At the same time, it was a burden to keep carrying it around.

Because of that, he wanted to catch one sucker and get rid of it quickly.

“If you buy it, I’ll hand it over for thirty thousand sol. That much can be called a bargain. What do you think?”

Thirty thousand sol was enough money to buy no less than thirty kilograms of Mana Stones.

It was easy enough to say thirty kilograms of Mana Stones, but there were not many people in the slums who could pay such a sum.

At the very least, one would have to lead an organization to have the financial room to buy a magic power generator.

The merchant knew that fact too, but for now, he had thrown the offer at Zeon.

Zeon looked at the magic power generator for a moment, then opened his mouth.

“I’ll consider it if you give it to me for ten thousand sol.”

“What? Are you mad? Do you know how precious this item is? You want me to sell it for only ten thousand sol?”

“Then I won’t buy it either.”

Zeon turned away without hesitation. At that, the merchant spoke urgently.

“Twenty-five thousand sol!”

“Fifteen thousand sol.”

“No! At that price, I can’t even recover the labor cost of transporting it. Twenty-three thousand sol.”

“Seventeen thousand sol. I can’t give any more than that either.”

“You’re driving me mad. Do you even have the money?”

At the merchant’s words, Zeon smiled and took out a Mana Stone.

It was a Mana Stone he had obtained someday after killing an unknown monster.

Its brilliant light was on a completely different level from those mined at the Mana Stone Mine. The quantity and quality of mana it contained were overwhelming.

The merchant recognized the value of the Mana Stone at once.

‘It’s worth at least twenty thousand sol.’

At this level, it was not a loss.

That was because he could sell it with a premium if he handled it.

“Fine! I’ll trade it for the Mana Stone.”

“Come on! Why are you acting like this when you know better? This item should fetch at least twenty thousand sol. Throw in one more thing.”

“You are really something else. A viper, a viper!”

The merchant shook his head with a fed-up expression.

Zeon smiled at the merchant.

“So...... deal?”

“Deal!”