I contacted Jeong Ilsu and called a helicopter to a nearby Han River park.
He seemed puzzled by the unexpected location, but he still sent the helicopter on time.
After taking the helicopter to the Baekdu Mountain base, I headed straight down to the underground ruins.
By now, everyone knew me, so no one blocked my way.
Inside the underground ruins, the luggage I was to take was piled up.
Among the food and various daily necessities were letters and photographs I hadn’t seen before.
They were letters and photos sent by families to the people dispatched overseas.
Seeing the letters and photos made me feel as if I had become a mailman.
As I packed the luggage, I asked the technician managing the ruins.
“Did Magreta and Catherine leave safely?”
“Yes. The two of them moved out yesterday.”
Since the two of them had left first, no one would notice even if I slipped away in the middle.
If I didn’t go right away, the departure time and arrival time would differ, but there was no one to check, and since it was another planet, there was no way to know the exact time anyway.
Besides, the magic I had used just in case had worked as expected.
The underground ruins were extremely chaotic.
Even as I carried the luggage up onto the altar, none of the technicians paid attention to me.
The soldiers guarding the ruins were the same.
Some people had even gathered off to one side, whispering among themselves.
“I heard the representative caused trouble.”
“Again? What is it this time?”
“This time, it seems serious. All the executives have risen up……”
They were speaking quietly, but I could hear every word.
It didn’t seem necessary to ask separately what had happened.
Unlike usual, one technician operated the electronic equipment and said,
“It’s fortunate we have enough black stones. Before, we would have had to wait until more people gathered.”
That was fortunate.
If I had ended up going with someone else, I wouldn’t even have been able to try.
[At this level, they won’t notice even if you slip off somewhere else.]
Sof, who had checked the altar with magic, gave me his assurance.
Then there was nothing to worry about.
A portal formed before my eyes.
Before I entered the portal, Sof asked again,
[Are you sure about this?]
As Sof worried, going to Venus was dangerous.
It wasn’t as if I was taking a proper route, and there was no guarantee that Venus would be safe.
The ruins on Venus didn’t seem to have been completely destroyed, but they were ruins that had been abandoned for hundreds of thousands of years or more.
There could be some kind of problem.
Even so, I had to go to Venus.
I asked Sof in return.
[You wanted to check it, didn’t you?]
Though he spoke like that, Sof wanted to go to Venus.
[That is true. Though a very long time has passed, as a magician, I am curious what became of the mother planet.]
That wasn’t the only reason.
[If it’s there, we might be able to find out where the people who escaped Trappist went.]
In the underground ruins of Trappist, no information remained about where the people had gone after escaping the star.
The other ruins were the same.
In the end, we had to check even older ruins.
Besides, there were more reasons I had to go to Venus.
I had to see with my own eyes the cause of Venus’s destruction, which was said to be the same as Earth’s, and I also had to check the magic and relics left behind by the ancient magicians.
[Then let’s go.]
I picked up the luggage and walked into the portal.
Whoooosh!
The world turned white.
It wasn’t difficult to find a path I had already found once.
Nor was it difficult to step onto that path.
To tell the truth, all I was doing was changing the destination.
Not Trappist, but Venus.
I headed toward the new destination.
Whoooosh!
The light vanished, and heat wrapped around my body.
I couldn’t breathe, and my body was crushed by high pressure.
If I had been an ordinary person, I would undoubtedly have burned up instantly or burst apart.
Even an energy user would have found it difficult to endure.
But Sof and I had already prepared.
[Shield.]
Sof first erected a barrier around me.
It was a dense spherical barrier that allowed neither heat nor air to pass through.
[From low place to high place. Air, move.]
Next, he opened part of the barrier and drew the air inside outward.
Chwaaaak!
The air, mostly carbon dioxide and close to one hundred atmospheres in pressure, escaped outside the barrier.
In an instant, the pressure inside the barrier dropped to one atmosphere.
Once the pressure dropped, Sof completely sealed the translucent barrier.
Now it was my turn.
I reached my hand into the air and sent out an electric current.
[Discharge.]
Pajijijik!
The air remaining inside the barrier—ninety-five percent carbon dioxide—began to be electrolyzed.
All into oxygen and carbon monoxide.
Forcibly splitting it without even a catalyst made the efficiency abysmal.
But that wasn’t a problem.
As long as there was enough oxygen for me to breathe, enough to fill this barrier, it was sufficient.
Hissss.
Sof left only the necessary amount of oxygen and nitrogen and expelled the rest of the air outside the barrier. Lastly, he cast temperature-control magic around us.
As the temperature dropped, the wavering air inside the barrier became clear and transparent, settling down.
“Phew. Now I finally feel like I can live.”
Only then was I barely able to speak.
The explanation was long, but it had all happened in an instant.
It had to.
If we had been even a little late, I would have been roasted whole or burst from the pressure.
If not that, I would have suffocated to death.
[That was more dangerous than I expected.]
“Since the spatial transfer device was still functioning and they said they had left surveillance equipment behind, I thought it would be possible for a person to stay here. But that’s not the case.”
If we hadn’t prepared in advance, I might have died just now.
[I should not have trusted Earth’s objects.]
“That just means the environment was that bad.”
[And yet the things made by magicians endured an immense amount of time even under these conditions.]
When he put it that way, I had nothing to say.
At any rate, I finally gathered myself and looked around.
The place I was in was a completely enclosed chamber with its door open.
It looked similar to the stone ruins on Earth or the ruins on Trappist, but this place was made entirely of a metal I had never seen before.
A magic circle was engraved into the metal plates of the floor, and on one side of the magic circle was a shelf like the ones I had seen in other ruins.
The material was different, but its appearance was the same as the spatial transfer ruins I had seen on Earth and Trappist.
And inside this chamber, there were objects I hadn’t seen in those ruins.
Broken metal devices.
“Are those the surveillance devices?”
[They seem to be, but they are so badly damaged that I cannot tell what they were.]
Some objects looked like cameras, while others looked like microphones or antennas.
But all of them had melted down into a mess, and there didn’t seem to be a single usable thing among them.
“They said surveillance equipment remained. Did they lie?”
[They simply did not tell us everything.]
It sounded like the same thing, but I understood what Sof meant.
“Then this actually worked out. No matter what we do, we won’t have to worry about being caught.”
[Instead, there are now many more things to pay attention to. It is the same for you, but continuously maintaining magic is quite troublesome.]
Even while I looked around, sparks continued to leap from my hand, and from one side of the barrier came the sound of leaking wind.
The sparks were the process of converting carbon dioxide into oxygen, and the sound was the sound of unnecessary air being expelled outside.
That wasn’t all.
The cool air I felt across my whole body.
The temperature-control magic was also being continuously maintained.
Sof and I were still casting magic even now.
In order to live, we could not rest for even a moment.
“It’ll be difficult to last long. We need to check quickly and return.”
[Place me on the shelf. I must check the spatial transfer device first.]
It was a pity I didn’t have time to examine everything closely, but if only the spatial transfer device worked properly, it would be a great help.
I set the spear upright on the shelf.
The black stone attached to the tip of the spear began to radiate light.
While Sof examined the spatial transfer device, I looked around.
It was an ordinary-looking chamber, but because of the heat, it was not easy to inspect properly.
With heat like this, ordinary objects would have melted long ago.
I clicked my tongue as I looked at the empty ruins with nothing left.
“What a shame. I wanted to have a base of my own on Venus too……”
It was a childish thought, but like the underground city on the ice planet, I wanted to have my own ruins in the solar system as well.
If it was Venus, no one would come looking, and it might also be connected to the other ruins in the solar system, so it would have been a great help.
In truth, perhaps the reason I had rushed to Venus was to obtain new ruins.
Just then, Sof’s voice came as he checked the device.
[Hmm…… This is very different from what I expected.]
This was another unexpected statement. I watched nervously, waiting to hear what Sof would say next.
[First of all, this control panel is not the control panel for the spatial transfer device.]
What he said was not good news.
“Don’t tell me we have to find another control panel?”
Even on the ice planet, the spatial transfer device’s control panel had been underground.
Could this place possibly be the same?
It would not be easy to go around searching for a control panel in this heat and pressure.
[There is no need for that.]
Fortunately, it didn’t seem to be the case.
“Then what is it?”
[This control panel is not the control panel for the spatial transfer device, but the control device for this facility. It is similar to the control panel of the ruins where I was left behind.]
At Sof’s words, I recalled the ruins where I had found his spear—no, his staff.
Sof’s staff, left alone at the very bottom of the ruins.
The staff had been managing the entire ruins from there.
“Then, don’t tell me……”
[Perhaps because this is a facility on the planet that served as the origin, fortunately, its structure itself was not very different. I succeeded in taking control of all of it.]
Whoooosh!
Along with those words, the black stone radiated a brilliant light.
It was so intense I had to shield my eyes.
Thud.
With the light, the open door closed.
Hissss.
The sound of air escaping rang out, and I saw the air being sucked out of the room beyond the door.
The heat was the same.
The wavering air outside also became gentle, and cooled down like the air inside the barrier.
Sof withdrew the barrier he had made with magic.
Even after the barrier disappeared, I felt no heat.
I stopped the lightning magic.
Even so, I could still breathe.
[I revived the facility with the energy of the black stone.]
Pop!
Along with Sof’s words, bright light flowed out from the walls.
Holograms appeared around us.
They were holograms filled with all kinds of formulas and scenes.
[It truly is an impressive facility. It is not technologically advanced, but it is a sturdy and intricately built facility. The walls were made with a special metal so they could withstand temperature and pressure, and in preparation for emergencies, it was designed to maintain the facility with thermal energy.]
The interior of the ruins appeared in the hologram.
Not only the interior. I could also see the surface of Venus, filled with yellow light.
[This facility is underground as well. To endure for so long, there would have been no method but to build underground.]
One hologram showed a structural diagram of the facility.
As Sof said, it was a facility built vertically deep underground.
The Americans had descended all the way here through the single entrance.
[The reason this facility endured until now is because it ran on thermal energy instead of dark energy. Of course, it could do no more than maintain the ruins, but considering it endured for close to a million years, it is more than worthy of admiration.]
The Americans had come and forcibly opened the ruins, leaving them in disarray, but it seemed not much time had passed, so the facility could be revived sufficiently.
[More importantly, you said you wanted to check the spatial transfer device, did you not?]
Along with Sof’s words, a large hologram unfolded before my eyes.
The hologram was filled with stars and space.
No, what was drawn in the hologram was not stars and space, but a space map depicting the solar system and neighboring star systems.
Several lines were drawn on the map.
Several lines drawn on a star that looked like Earth, lines connected to the other planets of the solar system, and even lines connecting beyond the solar system.
As I looked at the map in astonishment, Sof said,
[Now then, where would you like to go? We can go to other ruins on Earth, to Mars or the ruins of the solar system, and even to Paradise.]
The Venus Ruins