Sand Mage of the Burnt Desert-Chapter 539

Chapter 539

Neo Seoul has two large industrial zones.

The East District and the South District, and the Central District where City Hall is located. At the point where these three districts overlap, there is the first large industrial zone.

Likewise, at the intersection of the West District, the North District, and the Central District, there is the second industrial zone.

These two industrial zones each have different characteristics.

In the first industrial zone, they mainly produce supplies needed for war.

The workshops that make weapons and gear for Awakeners are also concentrated in this first industrial zone.

You can think of most of the weapons that protect Neo Seoul as being produced here.

In the second industrial zone, they produce goods needed for daily life. Mana generators, automobiles, and all kinds of items combined with magic are made here.

Each district also operates various factories of its own, but in terms of scale and quality, they couldn’t compare to these two industrial zones.

These two industrial zones are basically managed by City Hall. That’s how important the facilities are.

That doesn’t mean each district just leaves everything to them.

They also invest in these industrial zones and own a certain amount of shares.

Since all districts of Neo Seoul hold shares, they are managed with special care.

Each factory is basically protected by magic circles and barriers, and anyone without a pass can’t even approach.

Even if you have a pass, you have to go through at least three levels of authentication. It’s a structure where unauthorized people can’t enter at all.

Red Forest in this industrial zone was one such factory.

The walls and ceiling of the factory were painted entirely red, which is why it was called the Red Forest.

Red Forest was a resource recycling plant.

Among the goods produced in Neo Seoul, not a single item was thrown away meaninglessly.

All items that had reached the end of their lifespan were sent to Red Forest.

Metal, plastic, concrete, and countless other things were reborn here.

Because it was such an important facility, the security was also tight.

Not only all kinds of protective barriers and magic circles, but walls made of special metals surrounded Red Forest like a fortress.

In front of that Red Forest, three men appeared.

A middle-aged man wearing a tactical vest and various weapons.

A blond man in a well-fitted suit, and an old man leaning on a cane.

Seong Ho-yeon, Grain, and Old Man Go,

They were the execution unit, Numbers.

Seong Ho-yeon, the captain of Numbers, looked at Old Man Go and said,

“Take down the barrier.”

“Gladly!”

Old Man Go answered and stretched out his hand to touch the barrier protecting Red Forest.

In an instant, he grasped the structure of the barrier formula and intervened.

Pazzt!

The barrier protecting Red Forest was instantly broken and vanished.

The next to move was Grain.

Kwa-ddeuk!

When he waved his hand, the wall made of special alloy crumpled like a sheet of paper.

Wheeeeeeeng!

As the barrier and wall disappeared, an emergency alarm rang out from inside Red Forest.

“Shit! What is it?”

“Intruders!”

Awakeners poured out from inside Red Forest.

Seong Ho-yeon said to Grain,

“Take care of all of them.”

“Yes, Captain.”

Grain answered and stretched out his hand as if pressing down.

Kwaaaa!

In an instant, dozens of times the gravity crushed the Awakeners.

“Kraaagh!”

“Kuh!”

With screams, the Awakeners were flattened like crushed aluminum cans.

Among them, there were even those who burst apart like mosquitoes or flies.

This wasn’t a battle, it was a massacre.

Grain was not someone who usually used his hands this ruthlessly against humans. That was how terrifying the power of his skill was.

But right now, he was swinging gravity like a mace without mercy.

That was how angry he was.

At the time of the ceremony, it had been his job to protect Jin Geum-ho.

No matter what the threat, it had been his mission that day to keep Jin Geum-ho safe.

But he failed his mission, and in the end, he put Jin Geum-ho at death’s door.

He was saved thanks to Remura, but that didn’t change the fact that he had failed his mission.

For Numbers, failure of a mission was something that could not exist.

Especially for Grain, who had been the second-in-command of Numbers, it was even more unacceptable.

No one said anything to Grain.

Seong Ho-yeon, who came with him, and Old Man Go as well. But Grain couldn’t forgive himself.

Kwaaaa!

Boom!

The mace of gravity brutally crushed the Awakeners until their forms were unrecognizable.

Seong Ho-yeon and Old Man Go watched the scene without even blinking.

Among those in Red Forest today, there would be no one who could survive.

“Tsk! I don’t know which bastard planned this, but they really underestimated us.”

Old Man Go clicked his tongue and followed behind Seong Ho-yeon.

It took three days to disassemble the sniper rifle the assassin had been holding, trace the origin of each part, and analyze the metal components of the melted golem to find out that it had been made here in Red Forest.

As soon as they obtained that information, three of the Numbers moved.

The other Numbers were also gathering evidence related to the mayor assassination incident from other directions.

Seong Ho-yeon, who was examining the bodies that Grain had slaughtered, slightly frowned.

“These are scavengers.”

“Scavengers? You mean all the Awakeners in this factory are scavengers?”

Old Man Go’s eyes widened.

It was an unbelievable story.

Of course, scavengers also lurked inside Neo Seoul.

They acted while thoroughly hiding their identities among more than ten million people.

For scavengers to gather in such large numbers and even take over such a major factory facility without City Hall and Numbers knowing was a serious problem.

“Are you sure, Captain?”

At Old Man Go’s question, Seong Ho-yeon lifted up someone’s crushed arm.

“Do you see the blue scorpion tattoo here? It’s the mark of the Blue Scorpion Gang, a scavenger group that mainly operates in the desert.”

“Hmm!”

“And the red orc carved on this one’s leg is also a scavenger mark, and that bone necklace around that one’s neck, the bone dagger you see over there—those are scavenger symbols.”

“Then?”

“Someone gathered all these scavengers into one place. I don’t know how it was possible… but it’s clear that a hole has formed in Neo Seoul’s entry system.”

“That’s a serious problem.”

Old Man Go’s gaze sank deeply.

For whatever reason, the fact that there was a gap in Neo Seoul’s defense and entry system was something that could never be overlooked.

Seong Ho-yeon said to Grain,

“Ah! Leave one of them alive. I have something to ask.”

That spared one scavenger.

He had also been about to be crushed like a fly by Grain’s terrifying skill.

Grain glanced at Seong Ho-yeon, then released his skill.

“Kuh!”

Freed from the dreadful gravity that had been crushing his lungs and heart, the scavenger gasped for breath. But what awaited him was Seong Ho-yeon’s cruel hand.

Stab!

Seong Ho-yeon took out a syringe, stuck it into the scavenger’s neck, and injected the liquid inside.

In an instant, the scavenger’s face turned pitch black.

“I injected you with the Blue Scorpion venom you guys love so much. If you don’t take the antidote within one minute, your muscles will all melt and you’ll die.”

“Ugh… please…”

“How did different scavenger groups gather in one place?”

“We… we were contacted along with entry passes.”

“By who?”

“I don’t know. We were contacted through a route only we know.”

“What was your purpose for infiltrating this place?”

“To rearrange the machines in the factory and change the process.”

“Why?”

“That much… please, the antidote…”

Blackened blood was flowing from the scavenger’s nose and mouth. Now even his tongue had stiffened, and he couldn’t even speak properly.

Seong Ho-yeon looked at the scavenger in silence.

They had already gotten all the information they could from him.

A mere scavenger wouldn’t have any more than this.

The scavenger collapsed to the floor and lost his life.

Only then did Seong Ho-yeon straighten up and say,

“Someone issued entry passes so scavengers could enter Neo Seoul, and used them to change this factory’s process.”

“A deed by someone who knows Neo Seoul’s entry system well and can manipulate it easily.”

“The question is why they targeted this factory… It was to make golems.”

Seong Ho-yeon frowned as he looked at the factory.

Grain, who had killed all the scavengers, smashed the factory wall with his mace of gravity. Beyond the broken wall, golems that were getting up could be seen.

Perhaps because they were still in the early stages of production, there were only seven golems.

The shape of the golems was similar to the one that had sniped Jin Geum-ho.

However, from the golem that sniped Jin Geum-ho, a strong magical aura had been felt, but there was no such feeling from the golems that appeared now.

It seemed that the golem used in Jin Geum-ho’s assassination was specially made to the point it could use Blink, while these were mass-produced models without such abilities.

“Ha! They made golems inside Neo Seoul and used them to assassinate the Mayor?”

Seong Ho-yeon’s voice was filled with anger.

The unarmed golems rushed at Grain in the front line with their bare bodies.

Seong Ho-yeon said to Grain,

“Like the one that assassinated the Mayor, they’ll probably self-destruct the moment they’re subdued. We must secure at least one in intact condition.”

“Leave that to me. I’ll just remove the magic circle that handles the self-destruction.”

Old Man Go joined Grain.

Grain neutralized the golems in an instant, and Old Man Go captured one of them and erased the magic circle related to self-destruction.

Kwaaaang!

A chain explosion occurred inside the factory.

Seong Ho-yeon made a dumbfounded expression.

“Look at this. They’re destroying the entire factory itself to erase the evidence?”

Before his eyes, the factory was going up in flames.

＊＊＊

Even to Zeon’s eyes, the sight of Red Forest engulfed in flames could be seen.

The place Zeon was at now was the sewage channel behind Red Forest.

He had secretly followed Numbers all the way here.

To run a factory, you need a lot of water. A considerable amount of water is used in the manufacturing process.

That used water is purified and reused, but a large portion is discarded through the sewage channel.

From the sewage channel, a dreadful stench was flowing out.

Not just water, but all kinds of contaminated substances were mixed in.

Zeon took out a glass bottle, filled it with the water coming out of the factory, and then came back out.

Hicks had made a special reagent for Zeon.

It was a special reagent that reacted to the mechanized Awakener-exclusive oil he had analyzed.

Zeon dropped a single drop of the reagent Hicks made into the glass bottle of sewage water. Then the sewage water turned red.

“That’s it!”

It was certain that the sewage flowing out from here had seeped underground and made the people of the underground city sick.

Now that he had found the source of the contamination, he had to find the one who had turned this place into a scavenger den.

“Someone who has the knowledge to change the process of existing machines and create golems that never existed before, and who can forge the identities of countless scavengers and bring them safely into Neo Seoul—how many people like that could there be?”

Letting scavengers in was something any district ruler could do if they wanted.

The problem was the golems.

The golem that assassinated Jin Geum-ho was a new type that had never existed before. There was no way something like that could just be made without any knowledge.

Only with the necessary knowledge and technical power could you make something like a golem.

As far as Zeon knew, there was only one place that had that level of technology and capability.

The mechanized Awakener-exclusive oil collected here also supported Zeon’s suspicion.

“As expected, everything started in the West District.”