Chapter 66

Expensive and Useless (4)

"Does it mean that we can control that dragon, too?" Hibiki's gaze shook slightly. Of course, what else would it be?

"Then, let's get to it."

I handed a Mana potion to Nate, and he found his stance after he chugged it. There was no instance that a dragon was made a subordinate in the previous life, so we were stepping into new territory here.

In a few years from now, humanity's workforce would strengthen much more than now, and dragon hunts, which are classified as a natural disaster to mess with them, would become active. The Mana core of a Dragon was called the 'Dragon Heart,' and it had much Mana, incomparable to any other out there, which was technically much more valuable than connecting thousands of small cores to create similar outputs.

This was the reason why humankind became obsessed with hunting Dragons.

Young Dragons were rare. By the time that Nate began to be active, they were almost extinct. On the other hand, those strong Dragons that did not get hunted were impossible to make a subordinate.'

In other words, this was the only chance.

Woong!

Sweat fell like a waterfall from Nate's body. The most violent reaction of Mana that I'd ever seen. The red energy emanated from him and wrapped the Dragon corpse.

Rumble!

The mountain began to shake.

Slither!

The huge Dragon slowly moved.

"Ah!" I exclaimed.

The Dragon that once lost its life, and crossed the border between life and death, moved its body. The scene was more like a geological re-enactment, mimicking the formation of a mountain range but in time lapse.

Rumble!

The long neck rose as if it were to pierce the sky.

"Undead Dragon!"

It was not the kind of small Dragon that we saw in the Siheung 8 Dungeon. Nate had made a real dragon into an undead. A concept that existed only in theory. It was my first time seeing it in person.

"Phew."

Nate's sweat poured out as he spent his Mana to the limit. I hurriedly handed him a potion.

"Take only half of it. The shock might kick in."

"Okay."

He took the potion, chugging at the powerful elixir. His eyes were fixed on the Dragon; its shiny black scales, covering its entire body, shimmered slightly, but it was clear the creature was alive, in a fashion. The two black horns placed on its forehead, and the sharp wings were the same as when it was alive.

'The rate of decay will be delayed from now on.'

Even if its tissues disappeared as it decayed, it was of little concern. Like the other monsters that I saw in the past life, it would pledge its loyalty, as a subordinate, even if it was only left with bones.

I asked Nate, "How is it? Can you handle this?"

He did not respond but nodded, focusing on the task at hand. Afterward, he experimented by moving the Dragon around.

A few minutes after.

Swish!

Seeing the Dragon open its wings and fly, Nate spoke, "It's done!" He proudly placed his hands on his hips.

"How's the Mana consumption?"

"I think it does require more than when controlling smaller monsters."

That was understandable. I would encourage him to keep experimenting on how much of its original power could be reanimated, and how much Mana would be consumed from doing so. In the case of humans or Orcs, after they were made subordinates, they became stronger than when they were alive, in exchange for Nate's Mana.

How about the Dragon? How strong would Nate's Mana capacity allow it to be?

"But I think it's manageable... Huh?"

Then, as he looked up at the Dragon, Nate's expression changed.

"What's wrong?"

He frowned and put his hand on his forehead. His brows furrowed as if his head was throbbing. There was still Mana that remained, so he was not exhausted.

Something came into my mind.

'Oh, already?'

Nate spoke, "Jin-Wook, that thing.... I think it did something awfully bad to the people who came here before us. I just.... see it. Those kinds of scenes."

His face froze when he saw the undead dragon on a test flight from far away.

'There was already another sub-skill that opened.'

Through the sub-skill, [Memory of the Dead], some of the Dragon's living memories flowed into him.

'It's much faster than the period in a previous life.'

No matter how young the Dragon was, at that size, it would have the largest collection of memories compared to creatures previously subordinated. It seemed to be the aftershock of having successfully made that Dragon his subordinate. Nate shook his head and muttered, looking at the memory of the Dragon.

"Perhaps... they're all dead. If it was that bad."

That judgment was correct. There would be no survivors.

"Let's go to the lair that it used."

*

There was a lair entrance disguised with a barrier spell, by the Dragon, at the top of the mountain, but it didn't fool me. The rock wall swayed and split, creating an entrance. Analyzing the internal structure through [Penetration], I first headed to the place where it was used as a prison.

"Ah!"

The scene in front of me was devastating.

"Euup!"

Hibiki couldn't stand it and ran outside and I could hear her vomiting outside the door. On the other hand, Nate was quietly watching the scene in front of him; silently taking everything in. He didn't shout, and he didn't run wild, being unable to control his emotions, but his breathing indicated he was the most upset now from ever since he was rescued.

I murmured, "That's cruel."

Inside the prison, made of transparent glass, the gruesomely twisted and reassembled human bodies hung on hooks like butcher's meat. From the traces left on their corpses, I could concur that they lost their lives after being disturbingly tortured. One corpse had more than 30 suture marks on the abdomen, all of which have different levels of scarring. It meant it had been tortured for a very long time.

"That son of a bitch."

This was where the Hunters that entered this dungeon, and climbed the mountains before us, had found themselves after facing the Dragon. Nate's eyes remained long on the incisions that remained throughout the corpses. I could guess what he was thinking. They would remind him of his past, when he'd suffered from biological experiments.

Swish!

I broke all the magic barriers that protected the display case by blasting with sword energy.

"Are you going to move them outside?"

I shook my head, "All the Orcs held up by the Dragon ran away. This mountain is empty now, so I think it is better to leave it to the government to take care of the rest. Let's report the situation here after the Clear. Instead, let's destroy all the barriers for those who come here after us."

Nate and I began to break down the artifacts that protected the display cases, one by one. Hibiki, who came after calming herself, helped us.

*

After taking preliminary measures to ensure that the government's follow-up team could move freely, we moved to the Dragon's treasury. There were no artifacts that humans could use, but instead, there were various jewels. Some of them were elemental crystals that did not exist on Earth. In addition to jewelry, we saw artworks, such as sculptures, showing traces of civilization.

Habitually, the Dragon must have gathered these things from all over the middle dimensions and piled them up in its lair. They would act as a magnet to any would-be hunter, and so encourage them to enter. We swept it all up. Some were fed to the five snakes; some were kept in Nate's shadow.

In the middle of doing so, Nate asked suddenly, "Jin-Wook?"

"Yes?"

"If a dungeon break occurs... and if this dungeon were to collapse."

"Yes."

"The Dragon here could've come out to the Earth, right?" The scene he just saw must have remained heavy on his heart.

I answered, "Yeah. These dungeons will evolve to SS-Class and then collapse. Since there was a monster that did not fit the S-Class dungeon, which was the Dragon."

Nate thought of something and said, "The reason why we do all these... is to prevent that from happening, right?"

"Of course." I had fully explained the purpose of why we did what we did.

Nate, who was thinking about something, said in a determined voice, "I'll work harder from now on."

I grinned, "You just have to keep it up as you're doing now."

*

After obtaining the items to be sold through the Senator, there was the last assignment left for the dungeon to be dealt with.

Dungeon Clear.

I wandered through the field with Penetration and telepathically told Nate and Hibiki the location of the pieces of text to be collected using the [Battlefield Command]. We scattered to gather the text, but this process didn't take long because I gathered the pieces while flying with the [Stardust Wing].

The reason why the dungeon has not been Cleared so far was because of the Dragon as well, but the contents of the prophecy periodically changed, and all existing pieces disappeared every time. In other words, if the treasure hunt process were too slow, you would have to do it again from the beginning.

"I found another one! You said this was the last one, right?

"Yes."

Nate handed me the last piece. It was a metal cube embossed with otherworldly characters.

We immediately moved to the altar. Then we stopped in front of a rectangular metal plate located at the center of the altar.

"That's the prophecy."

At the top of the long plate, there was a row of grooves. After placing all the cubical pieces in the air by psychokinesis, I found the ones that matched the symbols on the grooves and inserted them. In that instant...

Whoo!

Below the first line of the text, new lines of lettering began to appear until the entire metal plate was filled with letters.

At that moment, the system message rang.

You've met the clear conditions of the dungeon!

- Clear condition: Combining characters to complete the prophecy

- The boundaries of the dungeon are weakened.

Then a message popped up that only I could see.

- The user's contribution to the Clear is number one (Contribution Rate: 95%).

- Additional rewards are available according to your contribution. Do you wish to accept it?

Nate asked, "Are we going back to Earth now?"

"We first need to take the prophecy and rewards." I pointed to a metal plate with completed sentences.

Hibiki, who was looking at it carefully, said, "The inscription here doesn't belong to Earth, does it?"

I nodded my head. This was called the Archid script, written in the prophecy. I didn't know what dimension it existed in the past, but I knew for sure that it has a very deep connection to the system. For example, like this prophecy, this text was often observed with means by which the system, such as this, explicitly intervenes with hunters.

"Well, should we use an Evaluation scroll to read?"

Human beings of this period had yet to decipher the Archid script fully. They needed help with skills or items.

"That's usually the case."

But I didn't have to tear a scroll or to use [Analysis] magic. Of course, it couldn't normally be interpreted until the characters were read using [The Successor's Eyes]. Then how did I read it? It was simple. I already knew this text.

"The top three lines are simple information explanations. In 191 days, about six months from now, an S-Class dungeon will open, and there will be about three months left until the dungeon break takes in. Everything written under it is a kind of number. Those translate to values that refer to the latitude and longitude of the Earth."

"Wow, you know how to read those? Jin-Wook is really amazing," Nate said with a truly admiring expression.

On the other hand, Hibiki still had an expression that indicated it was hard to figure out what she was thinking.

Beep!

I took out the terminal and converted the values of the prophecy into Earthly values, "The place is in London." I clicked my tongue, "The prophecy is unpredictable like this. Time and place... don't come out in the nearest order."

Swoosh!

I took out a dagger and wrapped Mana around it, and then I started to carve the metal plate.

Swish!

"Huh?!"

Blue sword energy made numerous string-like lines and crosses across the prophecy. As Nate couldn't understand what I was doing all of a sudden, his eyes widened, "Jin-Wook, why...?"

After some time had passed, the surface of the prophecy had completely changed. In the place where the Archid Scripts were grooved in, the original symbols disappeared, and only the newly engraved letters that I grooved remained.

Hibiki spoke, guessing my intentions, "Did you write a different prophecy from the original content?"

"Yes."

What would happen to the S-Class dungeon due to opening in London, I knew from the future experience. It appeared as 'very unstable' from the moment it opened, so they hurriedly gathered high ranking hunters, and they succeeded in Clearing right before the break took place.

There were no prophecies, and it was before the period that Angelica appeared, but they defended the catastrophe with humanity's potential power.

But...

"I wrote down something more urgent and much more dangerous, so people would know right now."

I could read it since I'd written it myself, but I experimented to see if the contents could be clearly delivered to others as well.

[Analysis]

I activated a spell. It showed what kind of explanation it would give if other people would use [Analysis] spell on this prophecy.

'That's done right.'

The exact contents that I had carved appeared. It said that a month from now, a gate would be opened in a rural city in Korea that connected to an A-Class dungeon. That gate, which would appear in a 'very unstable' state, unlike the one that will appear in London, will give enough time of three months, it will turn right away to the break state.

Those dungeons were called this by humanity: 'Immediate Break type Dungeon.'

Now, it was time to choose a reward, "I'll be right back, so don't panic if I disappear."

Shortly after that, I disappeared, leaving Nate and Hibiki with blank expressions. My view changed, and instead of the altar that I was standing on, I could only see thick-textured darkness.

- Please select a reward.

White stars were scattered in the dark space. I looked around calmly at the fragments of light. 'That's too bad. There are no SSS-Class ones.'

It was disappointing considering that the compensation could be offered at a higher level from the dungeon's difficulty.

'Is there was a mechanism that I didn't know about yet? Why was it offered, even with a lower contribution rate in the Siheung 8 Dungeon, but not offered here? Perhaps, simply luck?'

Thinking in that manner, my gaze stopped at one of the starlight's clusters as I looked around.

'SS-Class skill.'

I was able to predict the identity by observing it closely.

[Teleport (Rank: SS)]

It was a skill that the Dragon used to escape before it died. Some magic skill cards are given in the form of mastery, while others come in the form of single unit spells. For the former, if one takes up the [Fire Mastery] skill of a particular rank, it allows multiple spells such as [Fireball] and [Flame Field] to be used as a package, so it was preferred, but the power of the spells did not go over certain standards.

On the other hand, the latter spell, which did not belong as a mastery card, was magic with a powerful or unique effect, beyond the standards mentioned earlier.

As precious as it was...

'I'll pass on this.'

I'd seen this skill even before I met today's Dragon. It was the same I had learned since I saw the scenes of it being used by alien races in my previous life. However, it was inefficient for other colleagues besides me to learn.

'Is there anything else?'

In the meantime, my eyes fixated on another place.

'Yeah, that would be better.'

"I'll choose this."

A mechanical system message answered me:

- Granting user-specified rewards. Thank you for your hard work.

A white star came up to me out of the black sky, and it circled and seeped in me by sprinkling powder of light. After the white glow had been completely soaked in, what remained was a small marble that glowed in amber.

I held it in my hand.