Rabbits and chickens ran through the empty city, its flowerbeds filled with blooming wizard’s flowers. Ice golems chased after them.
Watching the scene from the city’s central park, Catherine shook her head.
“If someone had told me about this before, I would have called it nonsense.”
That was how unreal the sight was.
And yet, in this underground city, it was actually happening.
The place we were in was an enormous subterranean cavern whose walls lay tens of kilometers away in every direction.
The entire cavern was brightly illuminated by a sun relic embedded in the ceiling.
At the center of the underground cavern stood a large city, and around it spread forests, wheat fields, and farms.
Unlike the cultivated fields, where grains and crops were growing in abundance, the farms were still only overgrown with grass. But soon enough, the livestock running through the city would be grazing there as well.
Since we had brought livestock from Earth, it was only a matter of time before this city became self-sufficient.
Now, all that remained was to fill the city with people.
I said to Catherine,
“Please let me know what kinds of people will be needed to maintain this city going forward.”
It was a rather abrupt remark, but she understood me right away.
“You mean the people we’ll bring from Earth, don’t you?”
“Yes.”
As for energy users, we could select and bring them in as Catherine had said before, but we couldn’t fill this city with energy users alone.
We needed to bring in technicians from Earth who could maintain and develop the city.
“I’m planning to bring the exploration team members’ families first, but if there’s room left, we’ll bring in the people we need.”
When we brought the livestock this time, we had been able to bring several animals at once while they were in cages.
That meant that when using spatial movement, bringing one person in each hand might not necessarily be the limit.
People wouldn’t be exactly the same as livestock, but with a little more research, we should be able to bring more people over.
“You really could build a nation here.”
“Originally, I was only planning to make it a place for the team members and their families to live…”
But since the other shelters could no longer fulfill their roles, the matter had grown far bigger.
“…Truly, this is something I never imagined. I worked so hard to live in Paradise, and to think it was all useless.”
It seemed the news that Paradise had an expiration date had been a shock to Catherine as well.
Before she took my side, she had become the adopted daughter of someone powerful and done her utmost for them.
She had done so partly out of a desire to rise to a higher position, but also so she could live in Paradise.
“Still, because of that, I met you, Hyeon, and now I’m in an even better situation. So I suppose all that effort wasn’t useless after all.”
Catherine was not the sort of person who regretted the past or lingered over what might have been.
She was the sort who found something to do instead.
“Now that the city ruins have been cleared, I’ll send people beyond the mountain range.”
“…That will be dangerous.”
Thanks to the exploration team members’ surveillance, the monsters in the city ruins could be hunted before they left the city.
Because of that, we had obtained a large number of Akzar black stones, but we could no longer do that now.
With the city ruins as the last of them, there were now almost no monsters to be seen east of the mountain range—not only Akzar monsters, but native monsters as well.
In the end, if we wanted black stones, we had to go west of the mountains.
Fortunately, there was a wizard’s tower I had found west of the mountain range, and as long as Sop made the adjustments, other people could travel to that tower as well.
The problem was that doing so would inevitably be dangerous.
The reason the energy users had been able to hunt Akzar monsters without any casualties until now was because the city ruins had served as a safe hunting ground.
They dug tunnels underground, lured monsters in, and then ganged up on them one at a time.
The expeditionary force had been obtaining black stones through that kind of safe hunting all this time.
If they went west across the continent, such hunting would be impossible.
The hunting teams would have to face Akzar monsters out on open plains with no obstacles at all.
If that happened, we might see a repeat of the time when half an elite hunting team died just to take down a single scout.
“We were hunting far too comfortably while obtaining black stones that held ten times as much energy. Now everyone needs to understand reality.”
She wasn’t wrong.
If we were to continue hunting in the future, they needed to experience proper hunts.
However, what she said next sounded truly frightening.
“And to properly distinguish jade from stone, sacrifices are necessary.”
I had turned a blind eye because she was on my side, but Catherine really was a terrifying woman who did not mind sacrifices.
When I shook my head, she immediately changed the subject.
“More importantly, are you really planning to leave so soon? The people who arrived this time haven’t even seen you, Hyeon.”
With Akzar black stones flowing into Earth and other countries joining in, more and more user candidates were continuing to come over from Earth.
Even when I briefly stopped by the terraforming ruins to fill the black stones with energy, there had been several people I had never seen before.
If I set out on another exploration now, the number of people who had never seen me would only increase.
That seemed to be what Catherine was worried about.
“It’s fine. You’re here, Catherine.”
That was why I had left Catherine in the commander’s position.
“…Understood. I’ll do my best.”
After thinking for a moment at my words, Catherine nodded.
She didn’t need to do her best; continuing as she had been until now would be more than enough…
At her earnest words, I scratched my head.
As Catherine had said, I was in the middle of saying goodbye to her before setting out on an exploration.
I had already said my farewells to the others inside the building.
I would be seeing the team members again before long, so there was no need to say a separate goodbye to them the way I was doing with Catherine.
This was only a short exploration to secure a spatial movement device.
I planned to find the tower near the place where the Demon King was sealed, activate the spatial movement device there, and meet up with the team members again.
I was lucky.
Near the sealing site that Sop had recalled, there was another wizard’s tower.
Since it was a tower that was still operational, its spatial movement device should work as well.
“That being the case, I should be able to go alone…”
At my mutter, Catherine’s expression turned serious.
“Absolutely not! You came back with wounds like that, and now you’re going alone again? Do you not realize how important you are? Going alone is out of the question!”
As expected, it seemed going alone was not allowed.
The other team members were the same in not letting me go by myself.
Even when I said traveling with someone else would inevitably slow me down, they wouldn’t listen.
“You should be able to fly while carrying one person, shouldn’t you?”
At the words of the person who would be going with me, I had no choice but to raise both hands in surrender.
That very person was now running toward us with a spirit.
“I’m sorry. Am I very late?”
Having run over as fast as she could, Hanna bowed her head deeply in front of me.
At Hanna’s apology, the spirit made a great fuss and offered an excuse in her place.
—Hanna is incredibly smart. I only meant to teach her one thing, but she learned several in no time! That’s why she’s late!
After it had been decided that Hanna would go with me, she had chosen to learn magic from the spirit until our departure.
I had heard she would learn a few simple spells she could use while wielding the relic bow, but it seemed she had learned more than expected.
[Though she has not yet awakened, Hanna is the Guardian of the Star, a saint. Magic of that level should be easy for her to learn.]
But she had learned several spells in that short amount of time?
Even the archmage had given up on teaching me…
Maybe I was the stupidest one among the exploration team members.
When I said I would go find the tower after rejoining the team, every one of the members wanted to come with me.
Even when I said it would be a short exploration to find a spatial movement device, it didn’t work.
In the end, I decided to go with one person.
As Hanna had said, the limit of who I could carry while flying through the sky was one person.
For that reason, the two men had no choice but to be eliminated.
Not because their bodies were heavy, but because I did not want to fly while holding a man.
The remaining candidates were Magreta and Hanna.
The person accompanying me was decided by what Hanna said next.
“I have to go. The light is telling me that I must.”
When Hanna brought up the light, there was no way to stop her.
I didn’t know if the light now told her even things like that, but Magreta immediately raised both hands in surrender, and the person who would go with me was decided to be Hanna.
Now that Hanna had arrived, it was time to depart.
Hanna and I climbed onto the lift, and Catherine remained in the park, waving at us.
“I’ll manage the expeditionary force well, so please return safely.”
“Don’t worry. I’ll protect Oppa properly.”
There seemed to be something sharp hidden in their smiling farewells, but that was surely just my imagination.
After seeing the two women off, I also said goodbye to the spirit.
“Please take care of the awakening medicine.”
“Don’t worry. I’ll prepare everything, including the flowers you brought this time.”
At my farewell, the spirit replied with a confident expression.
If she made awakening medicine using everything we had brought from the wizard’s tower, we should be able to produce several times more than before.
After receiving the spirit’s firm answer, we rode the lift up to the surface, then used spatial movement to travel to the wizard’s tower where the golems were.
The ground around the tower where the golems moved was full of sprouts.
They were all sprouts that would become wizard’s flowers.
On the way back, we had harvested every single wizard’s flower, and yet in just a few days, they had sprouted again.
After watching the diligently working golems for a moment, I said to Hanna,
“Let’s go.”
At my words, Hanna approached with a smile.
“I just need to be held by you, right?”
There was a strange nuance in her words.
I corrected her immediately.
“I’ll hold your waist, so wrap both arms tightly around my neck. If you hold on loosely, you’ll fall.”
At my words, Hanna narrowed her eyes.
“In superhero movies, they fly just fine even when they’re only holding hands.”
She wasn’t this kind of girl before…
It seemed Magreta had rubbed off on her in the wrong way.
“That’s a movie… Even if I cancel out gravity with magic, you’ll have to withstand the acceleration yourself.”
“I was joking.”
Hanna laughed and wrapped both arms around my neck.
“A few days ago, you were all bones, but now your chest is firm.”
This was probably a joke too, but I couldn’t say anything.
The reason the team members and Catherine had tried to stop me from going alone wasn’t only because of the wounds on my body.
I had recovered as much as I could on the way back, but when I reunited with the group, my body had still been considerably wasted away.
Just as Hanna said, I had been nothing but skin and bones then.
The reason I hadn’t stayed long at the terraforming ruins was so I could recover.
Aside from briefly stopping by to fill the black stones with energy, I had spent the entire time recovering in the underground city of the ice star.
Several days had passed like that, and I had finally regained my original body.
Instead of responding to that joke, I wrapped an arm around Hanna’s waist and cast gravity magic.
Wooooong.
Hanna and I shot up into the sky.
Hanna’s eyes went wide as she looked down at the ground.
The surface receded in an instant.
With my other hand, I burst the air.
Bang! Baaang!
“Whoa!”
As the air exploded and our bodies were flung in the opposite direction, Hanna screamed for the first time.
Along with her scream, we raced swiftly across the sky.
Our destination this time was the wizard’s tower near the place where the Demon King was sealed.
It was the place where Sop and his companions had last gathered before sealing the Demon King away.
Guardians of the Star (1)