Chapter 67
For several days, Jeon had done nothing but hole up at home.
Aside from occasionally getting up to eat, he simply lay in bed and slept.
It was fatigue accumulated over a whopping eight years.
No matter how much of an Awakened he was, Jeon could not simply ignore the fatigue built up from wandering the world for eight years.
Jeon lay in bed without moving an inch.
Fortunately, the bed made of blood-sucking tree wood and sand ghoul leather was extremely comfortable, so there was no problem in lying there at all.
He spent about ten days like that.
Around this point, Jeon gradually grew tired of his reclusive life.
Jeon got up and went into the bathroom.
When he turned the valve, water trickled out weaker than a child’s stream of urine.
With this much water, showering was a distant dream; it was barely enough for a cat’s wash. Still, Jeon was satisfied.
Because out in the desert, even this much water was impossible to obtain.
At least because he was adjacent to Neo Seoul, water was supplied to this extent. In other colonies, simply securing water was a war in itself.
After briefly washing his face, Jeon came outside.
It had been a while since he had come out, and the sandstorm greeted him.
No matter how high the walls were built, they could not completely block the sandstorms blowing in from the desert.
Because of that, sand always rolled through the streets of the slums.
It was said that a powerful magic barrier was spread over Neo Seoul, blocking even the sandstorms. So it was said that inside Neo Seoul, sand was hard to find.
To Jeon, it was the worst environment.
That was exactly why he had deliberately set up residence in the slums.
Entering Neo Seoul would be comfortable for his body, but there was the restriction of being unable to exert his full power.
With Eksion, it wouldn’t be much of a problem, but even so, he wanted to live in an environment optimal for himself if possible.
That place was precisely the slums.
Darkness had already fallen over the slums.
Lights flickered on one by one in cheap electric signs, and people who had been holed up at home during the day came out.
Markets set up in the streets, and people’s voices rang out in a noisy clamor.
The place Jeon headed was precisely the street where Elder Klexi did business.
Street stalls selling food had already set up, and Elder Klexi could be seen busily preparing for business.
Jeon approached Elder Klexi’s stall and sat down.
“You came?”
Elder Klexi greeted him gruffly.
Jeon snickered and ordered food.
“Give me what I had before.”
“You disappeared for a few days.”
“I just rested.”
“So a young punk like you had nothing better to do than loaf around?”
“I’ve worked plenty hard for eight years, so I intend to just relax for a while.”
“What exactly did you do for eight years?”
“Well, I lived diligently in my own way.”
“Tch! A sly old snake.”
Watching Jeon refuse to take the bait even under leading questions, Elder Klexi clicked his tongue.
He was well aware that Jeon had been holed up for several days.
Because the subordinate he had placed to watch Jeon had reported it.
He had been dumbfounded upon receiving the report.
He had not imagined Jeon would simply hole up at home doing absolutely nothing to that extent.
He had suspected that perhaps Jeon had shaken off the subordinate’s surveillance and slipped out secretly, but the possibility was nearly zero.
Because there were no hidden passages or the like in the building where Jeon lived.
In the end, he had not discovered a single thing about Jeon.
Because of that, Elder Klexi was in quite an irritable state.
Elder Klexi said as he served the food on a plate.
“You have enough money?”
“I have enough. If I run short, I’ll sell some items.”
“Items? Hah, sounds like you’ve got something good hidden away.”
“I’ve collected a bit of this and that.”
“Where are you planning to sell them?”
“Who knows.”
“Looking at your eyes, it seems there’s no way you’d sell them to me….”
“….”
“Tch! A young punk, tight-lipped as they come…. Fine. If you want to quietly dispose of items, go to the black building behind Yeonnam-ro. Show them this and tell them I sent you, and they should let you in.”
What Elder Klexi gave Jeon was a small card.
It was completely black, with no special patterns or markings. Even so, it gave off a chilling sensation.
Jeon slipped the card inside his robe and spoke.
“I’ll put it to good use.”
“I don’t know what you have, but you’d best keep it well. You know, don’t you? That in these streets, private property doesn’t exist.”
“Of course.”
Jeon answered with a smile.
Elder Klexi didn’t speak to him anymore, and Jeon focused on his meal.
In the meantime, other customers arrived one by one.
Jeon finished his meal and got up from his seat.
After paying, Jeon came out onto the street and immediately headed for Yeonnam-ro.
In this place, Sinchon often used place names from a hundred years ago as they were.
Yeonnam-ro was one of them.
The scenery had completely changed from that time, but the name remained exactly the same.
Contrary to its name, Yeonnam-ro had an extremely dark atmosphere.
Not even cheap electric signs were visible here, nor could one see prostitutes or drug dealers touting for customers.
It meant it was a place so dangerous that even those with ruined lives hesitated to approach.
Jeon walked down such a Yeonnam-ro without hesitation.
After walking for some time, the black building Elder Klexi had mentioned appeared.
“Interesting!”
Jeon put on an intrigued expression.
It wasn’t simply because the building was black.
It was because he couldn’t sense any signs of life from inside the building.
Clearly, the interior and exterior had been completely blocked off by magic circles or barriers.
Such a high-level barrier was absolutely not something an individual could deploy. It required enormous manpower and funds to barely establish.
Jeon walked toward the front of the black building. Suddenly, heavily armed men appeared.
Among them, the one who stood out most was a large man with a massive machine gun attached to one arm.
He was an Awakened who had abandoned human arms and fused with machinery.
From him emanated a murderous aura that was apparent at a glance.
He aimed his gun barrel at Jeon.
“This is a restricted area, brat! No one may enter without permission.”
“I’ve come on Elder Klexi’s introduction.”
Without flustering, Jeon handed the black card to the large man.
When the man infused mana, an eye symbol finally surfaced on the black card.
Instantly, the man’s attitude changed to a deferential one.
He returned the black card to Jeon and spoke.
“So you were a VIP. You may enter.”
“A VIP?”
“Please, go in.”
The man gestured with his chin toward the building’s interior.
Jeon gave up on receiving an answer and stepped inside.
As he approached the door, he felt a dense net of mana.
Just as Jeon had guessed, a barrier was deployed.
When he arrived, the net of mana disappeared.
Other areas remained as they were; only enough space for Jeon to enter had vanished.
As soon as Jeon entered, the barrier restored itself as if nothing had happened.
Passing through the barrier and entering the building, a different world unfolded.
Countless shops on a different dimension from the outside filled the building. The corridors were packed with people who had come to buy goods.
At a glance, they looked far removed from ordinary people.
They were all either Awakened or armed individuals.
With cautious expressions, they were trading with merchants or browsing goods.
Only then did Jeon realize the true nature of this place.
“The Dokkaebi Market.”
There was a rumor floating around the slums.
It spoke of the existence of an underground market called the Dokkaebi Market, where Awakened operating in the slums bought and sold goods.
Jeon had heard the rumors too but had never been interested.
Because he had been too busy trying to survive each day.
It was a place that those without permission could absolutely not enter.
The Dokkaebi Market was a kind of neutral zone.
Even those who waged fierce wars to seize interests in the slums had to follow the laws of the Dokkaebi Market.
Breaking the laws of the Dokkaebi Market made one an enemy of every organization in the slums.
Who managed the Dokkaebi Market was unknown. But it was clear that they were an enormous power.
Although a stranger named Jeon had entered, no one paid him any mind. Thanks to that, Jeon could leisurely wander the Dokkaebi Market.
The first thing that caught Jeon’s eye was a weapons shop.
Items ranging from cold weapons like swords and spears to guns and cannons were lined up on display stands.
While guns and the like didn’t work well against demon beasts, they were extremely efficient against fellow humans.
Therefore, members of groups like the Red Skull mainly purchased them.
Since Awakened were not that common, ordinary people were armed with firearms.
Awakened mainly preferred cold weapons.
There were also Awakened who fused with machinery and used it like their own bodies, but their numbers were not great.
Jeon simply passed by the weapons shop.
Because to him, who used sand as his weapon, they were mostly unnecessary.
Past the weapons shop, a store selling demon beast corpses appeared.
There were those who sold demon beast corpses outside as well, but what was sold here was incomparable.
Jeon put on an intrigued expression.
‘A Steel-Armored Rhino corpse. They obtained that here?’
The massive demon beast lying atop the workbench was unmistakably a Steel-Armored Rhino, a D-rank demon beast.
It possessed tremendous defensive and offensive power.
If it charged with that massive body and those horns, even an armored bus would be torn apart like tissue paper.
It was difficult for an individual to catch alone, so it was mainly hunted in parties.
What surprised Jeon was that the Steel-Armored Rhino’s habitat was not near here.
It was a Steel-Armored Rhino that could only be seen in the southern desert far from Neo Seoul.
Moreover, it wasn’t a demon beast whose value was particularly high relative to its size.
There was no reason to go all the way to the distant southern desert to hunt such a demon beast.
It was more correct to assume it had been encountered by chance during a hunt.
‘Does this mean Steel-Armored Rhinos have advanced near Neo Seoul? So the changes in the demon beasts’ habitats have reached even here.’
The pack of Flame Wolves he had encountered just before entering Neo Seoul were also demon beasts not normally seen around here.
It was clear that, through chain migration of habitats, demon beasts had expanded their territory to near Neo Seoul.
That was definitely not a good sign.
It happened to coincide with the time he entered Neo Seoul, so he was not feeling very pleased.
‘Please, let nothing happen.’
Jeon passed the shop selling demon beast corpses and went deeper inside.
The further inside he went, the more diverse the goods sold at the shops became.
Even though the world had turned completely into a desert, it was bewildering where they had obtained such a variety of goods.
Jeon looked at each and every one of them.
There were many items, but nothing particularly caught his desire.
His subspace was packed with items far more precious than those here.
Revealing even one of them would flip the Dokkaebi Market upside down.
Then.
One item especially caught Jeon’s eye.
It was a metal device about the size of an adult.
It was shaped like a miniature pyramid, and it gave off a strange mana field.
As Jeon approached out of curiosity, someone who appeared to be the shop owner came up.
“It’s a fine item. If you buy one, you’ll never regret it.”
“What is this?”
“It’s a compact mana generator. It converts the mana from a magic stone into electricity.”
“There’s such a thing?”
“Have you been living in another colony? Isn’t Neo Seoul maintained by mana generators too? It’s exactly the same thing. Only the size and efficiency differ slightly.”
In truth, mana generators were already commercially available items.
All devices in Neo Seoul ran on electricity extracted from magic stone generators.
However, they were not very efficient and were extremely expensive, so not many sought out mana generators.
To properly run a mana generator, one had to dump magic stones mined from magic stone quarries in bulk, or use high-quality magic stones obtained from demon beasts. But there was no way those living in the slums possessed such magic stones.
To the merchant as well, the mana generator was like a burdensome white elephant.
He had smuggled it out of Neo Seoul with difficulty, but there were no buyers.
Yet it was also an item too burdensome to keep carrying around.
Therefore, he wanted to catch a sucker and get rid of it quickly.
“If you buy it, I’ll hand it over for thirty thousand sol. That’s practically a steal. What do you say?”
Thirty thousand sol was an amount that could buy a whopping thirty kilograms of magic stones.
It sounded nice as thirty kilograms of magic stones, but there weren’t many in the slums who could pay such an amount.
One would need to lead an organization to have the means to buy a mana generator.
The merchant knew this fact too but decided to throw out a price to Jeon first.
Jeon, who had been looking at the mana generator for a moment, opened his mouth.
“If you give it for ten thousand sol, I’ll consider it.”
“What? Are you crazy? How could I sell something this precious for a measly ten thousand sol?”
“Then I won’t buy it either.”
Without hesitation, Jeon began to walk away. The merchant spoke urgently.
“Twenty-five thousand sol!”
“Fifteen thousand sol.”
“No way! At that price, I can’t even recoup the labor costs of transporting it. Twenty-three thousand sol.”
“Seventeen thousand sol. I can’t pay more than that.”
“I’m going mad. Do you even have the money?”
At the merchant’s words, Jeon smiled and pulled out a magic stone.
It was a magic stone he had obtained by killing a nameless demon beast long ago.
Its brilliant light was on a different level from those mined from magic stone quarries. The amount and quality of mana it contained were overwhelming.
The merchant recognized the magic stone’s value at a glance.
‘It’s an item worth at least twenty thousand sol.’
At this level, it wouldn’t be a loss.
Because he could sell it at a markup.
“Fine! I’ll trade it for the magic stone.”
“Now, now! Why would someone who knows the deal do this? For an item of this value, you should receive at least twenty thousand sol. Please throw in another item.”
“You, you’re really something. A viper, a viper!”
The merchant shook his head with an exasperated expression.
Jeon smiled as he looked at the merchant.
“How about it…… deal?”
“Deal!”