355. What Gold was hiding
“Excuse me.”
a few minutes ago.
While Kang Seung-hyeon and Lee Ji-ah were looking at the warp portal, Kim Ho-jeong was looking around the lab.
The interior of the lab, which had been neglected for over a month, was filled with dark magic, and the walls and floor were severely corroded.
If an ordinary person had entered, they would not have lasted even a minute.
‘What kind of experiment did you do, and you left it like this for a month?’
No matter how much alchemists can withstand dark magic longer than wizards, there is a limit.
Perhaps some of the alchemists who were researching under Doradel’s order were knocked out or died in this incident.
‘Isn’t it not enough to call someone right now?’
If you have to hide it from the outside world, it is better to ask for help from Kang Seung-hyun and his party, who have made it this far.
Anyway, Kang Seung-hyun and his party came because of Da-il’s order to ‘ostensibly’ seek the position of the next master, and ‘ostensibly’ they won’t do anything to harm the Golden Magic Tower.
However, even though Luten was caught, he tried to hide it until the end, saying that it was an experiment that could not be disclosed to others.
‘Should I think about it?’
Doradel joined hands with an alchemist because of the family curse, and the curse of the Lophemus family is that they die when their magic power runs out.
‘An alchemist is a job that changes objects into other objects, and Doradel needs a lot of magic. However, the first floor has become a sea of water and black magic is overflowing…’
Kim Ho-jeong shouted as if she had attained enlightenment.
“The accident happened while experimenting with turning plain water into magic potion!”
The mystery is all solved.
Alchemists accidentally created a potion of black magic while making magic potion with water drawn from a water pipe, and this mess started.
‘Of course it would be illegal to make an expensive magic potion into wild water. To compare it to Korea, they were like gas stations with no conscience who made and sold fake gasoline because real gasoline was expensive.’
If it’s something like this, it’s worth hiding desperately.
Then there was a gas leak accident, so he must have tried to hide it even more.
‘nice! I do it when I do too! I have to tell Mr. Kang quickly.’
Kim Ho-jeong, who became proud, was so excited that she ran away without looking ahead.
thud! puck! widely!
“Ouch…”
I bumped into something like a shelf or bookshelf wall.
Bad eyesight is bad, but it was because he was a human with a very narrow field of vision.
profit.
At this time, the iron door opened due to the shock of Kim Ho-jung hitting the wall and
took! puck!
Courage!
As the iron door opened, there was the sound of something falling.
“huh?”
What came to Kim Ho-jeong’s eyes as she looked inside, wondering what she was talking about,
“Wow!”
It looked like horribly broken glass cases and piles of corpses strewn about.
– “Sir Gagang! The corpse here is like a mountain…”
“Calm down. You must have died often.”
“That’s true, but you don’t see my corpse in third person.”
Kim Ho-jung was in awe, but Kang Seung-hyun, as an incumbent savage healer, looked at the corpses calmly.
“This is a corpse, but not a human corpse.”
“Aren’t you a four person?”
“It’s a homunculus corpse.”
At first glance, it is so well made that it is indistinguishable from a real person, but if you look closely, the fingers and toes are unfinished.
It looks good on the outside, but the internal organs are probably unfinished.
“It seems that an accident occurred while it was being produced for a long time, so it was abandoned without being completed.”
In other words, all the piles of corpses here are homunculus.
“I was so surprised…. Poor kids.”
Hearing that, Kim Ho-jung let out a sigh.
He seemed relieved to hear that he wasn’t human.
“By the way, the top-class homunculus is just like a real human except for not having magical powers.”
So Kang Seung-hyun added a kind explanation.
“Then it’s no different from a human corpse!”
“If you have to ask, what is the difference between farmed and wild fish?”
“I didn’t want to know…”
“Well, it’s for experimentation, so I wouldn’t have created a personality.”
In a word, the state in which the soul is not created.
It is a stage where it is not treated as a communicative creature on the Azul Continent.
“It would have taken a lot of money to make such a top-notch homunculus, but to blow it up in one accident. It seems the Mage Tower has a lot of money.”
“I know. Seeing that the Mage Tower didn’t fail even after conducting such secret experiments for decades…”
“I can squeeze as much as I want.”
‘To get some money.’
Kim Ho-jung felt chills for a moment when he saw Kang Seung-hyeon writing down something in his notebook.
“But don’t these things… look like Lophemus people?”
At that time, Lee Ji-ah, who was watching the pile of homunculus beside her, hesitated and stepped back.
“The color of the hair, the color of the eyes…”
“I heard it.”
In fact, the homunculi found inside the laboratory looked just like them to the extent that it was believed that they were members of the Rophemus family.
“The appearance of a homunculus is at the discretion of an alchemist, so it must have been intentionally made to look like it.”
“really?”
“What the hell is that old man trying to do?”
Ji-ah Lee screamed in fright.
Obviously, it was Doradel who ordered this research, and it was because of Doradel’s orders that the alchemists created the homunculi.
Why on earth do you make artificial humans that look just like people in your own family, and where are you going to use them?
“I guess that’s why you hid it from the family.”
“that’s right. Even if you are like me, if your grandfather makes dolls that look like relatives, you will be very disgusted.”
“huh?”
Just as I was feeling so bad, I saw a broken door through the pile of homunculi.
There was also a lot of stuff piled up inside it, so when I looked at it, I said
“… Ugh!”
Without fail, there was a landscape full of corpses rolling around in the room.
“It’s really bad for your mental health… These aren’t real people, but they look just like humans.”
“that’s right. If you don’t have magic, you’re just a human by Korean standards.”
Kang Seung-hyeon was examining the pile of corpses while the two muttered with puzzled faces.
Then he made a shocking statement.
“This is not a homunculus.”
“what?”
Seunghyun Kang pointed to a corner of the pile of corpses.
“Unlike the homunculus piles outside, there are old corpses mixed in between.”
Most of the outer piles looked to be in their 10s and 20s, but in this pile, bodies in their 30s as well as those in their 40s or 50s could be found.
“But don’t these guys live a long time and get old? It must have been 80 years since we experimented here…”
“Or did you make it out of old things?”
“Of course, a homunculus can age and create an old homunculus from scratch.”
However, compared to humans as well as elves, the rate of aging is very slow, and there is no need to make them age unless there is a special reason.
“When mass-producing for research purposes, it is most efficient to adjust the age of the body to those in their 20s. Aging on purpose costs money, and if you’re too young, the results of the experiment will be inconsistent.”
So Kang Seung-hyeon thought the piles in front of him were real human corpses.
“Wow, I know you very well. Did you go through an alchemist as a sub job?”
“It’s not like that, I heard it as a bonus while ‘interviewing’ the current alchemist.”
“Interview….”
Kang Seung-hyun said with a fresh face, but Lee Ji-ah heard that and thought, ‘Threat or torture.’
“Well, by the way, this is the easiest way to tell a homunculus apart.”
“What? Eyes of Observation?”
“Kim Ho-jung can do it too.”
Kang Seung-hyeon took out a magic potion and scattered it over the pile of corpses.
“If these are homunculus, they cannot accept magical power, so even if you sprinkle it on top, it will flow back.”
“Oh, there’s such a distinction…”
“But if it’s a human corpse, magic will be absorbed.”
“Because humans are human even after death.”
through.
“It disappeared….”
“It was absorbed neatly.”
just as expected.
The magic potion that Kang Seung-hyeon had sprinkled was permeated and was instantly contaminated by the surrounding dark magic.
“So it is.”
It was as expected.
The corpses piled up in this room are real humans, not homunculus.
“Uh…”
“Then this…”
Realizing the identity of the pile in front of their eyes, Kim Ho-jung and Lee Ji-ah stepped back in disgust.
“Are these the corpses of the Lophemus family?”
“I must be really crazy!”
It’s shocking that these are all real human corpses, but the most shocking thing is that they all look exactly like the Lofiarmus family.
‘It’s not bad for something that’s been neglected for a month.’
While the two screamed in astonishment, Kang Seung-hyun got down on one knee and inspected the pile of bodies of Lofi Armers members.
Examining it with the [Observing Eye] revealed that some of the dummies were still alive right before this event occurred.
‘Well, it must be because of the anti-corruption magic circle installed inside the lab.’
Most of them are probably broken due to dark magic, but one or two will be lucky enough to survive and work.
‘Otherwise, hell would have unfolded in a different way.’
If all the anti-corruption magic circles were destroyed, all the corpses here would have turned into natural undead due to the influence of black magic.
Unlike the artificial undead crafted by necromancers, the natural undead created by exposure to black magic on a rotten corpse is extremely unlikely to retain its sanity.
If all of these corpses had turned into undead and ran out, the alchemists’ manpower would have been limited and the Golden Mage Tower would have been a mess.
‘Anyway, this has made it clear.’
Secret experiments have a reason.
alchemists.
No, Doradel was conducting human experiments.
The reason he hid the experiment from not only the Mage Tower but also the family members was because the materials for the experiment were ‘family members’.
“I finally found out this far…”
Then someone’s voice came from behind.
Kim Ho-jung looked back with the mindset of ‘Please, Cheol-hyeon.’ But, like a man who always betrays expectations, Alec was of course not.
“Hey, you’re that human too.”
“What is the person who should be lying in the hospital doing here?”
The protagonist of the voice was Doradel, the current head of the Lofiarmus family, who was the master of the golden tower and led the experiments by the alchemists.
