Chapter. 19. Game of Tag (4)
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What came out of Hyde’s pocket was not something big enough to be taken out in front of countless guns, but
“This is….”
“Do you want to know what it is?”
It was enough to make the man in front of me stop for a moment.
“….The unique purple brilliance is a characteristic of the magic stone mined in the Tobrun Mine. “It’s something from my hometown that I haven’t seen in a long time.”
The purple piece about half a span in size was a magic stone, an essential material for magic engineering equipment. What’s unique is that it is not a magic stone mined here in Teldrat, but an item that can be obtained from the Tobrun Mine in the old Rodrik Territory, which is a long way away from here.
In the past, Tobruun was an area that grew into a city of wizards based on high-quality magicite mines, but it was directly affected by the Dragonvein explosion and is now an area whose nature has completely changed.
The enormous amount of mana contained in the dragon vein evaporated with the explosion, and all the mana in the magicite vein was also swept away.
Thanks to this, Tobrun, the city of wizards that withstood the Mute Race War and the East-West Empire War, was devastated, and at the same time, the magicite mine that turned Tobruun into a city of wizards was transformed into a magicite mine – a
local item with its own story.
In any case, for that reason, the naturally occurring Tobrun magic stone has a slight difference in appearance from the artificial magic stone made by stacking empty magic stones that have used up all mana. The Tobrun magic stone has a dark purple body, while the artificial magic stone has a light purple ore body. .
Unfortunately, there is only a cosmetic difference and there are almost no other differences, so it is only distributed in small quantities for jewelry making and is not worth exporting to other regions at high transportation costs.
“…are you from Donghyang? I’m sorry, but I can’t save an outsider like that. “If the location of this place is revealed to the outside world, the death penalty cannot be avoided.”
“Oh, I know. I’m not from the Rodrik region in the first place, and even if I were, I wouldn’t be able to solve a life-or-death problem just by coming from the same direction. “The reason I brought this up is to prove something.”
“….proof?”
“Yes, this is proof that I can travel back and forth between the Roderick area and here.”
Of course it’s a lie. The magic stone from the Tobrun Mine that I am holding now was an item that an alchemist who lost a lot while gambling with cards with passengers on a train long ago gave in exchange for money.
I thought it was a really expensive item like he said, so I took it in exchange for the money, but it turned out to be no different from an ordinary magic stone. It was an item that was carried around without selling because it was a waste of money, and is now carried around to hide the magical power emitted by some powerful items among the magic engineering equipment piled up in the cloak.
“The teacher in front of you?”
“…Mojo.”
“Yes, Mr. Mojo. Isn’t life really hard? I ran away from my hometown because I wanted to live, but living here every day is a pain. “Isn’t there something ambiguous?”
The reason he took out the magic stone was because, like anyone who came here for the first time, Hyde felt the poverty of the people here at a glance.
They are not proper citizens of the city, but people hiding in the complicated back alleys of the city.
We live in a world where water is distributed at such a high price that the daily wage is only three cups of water.
The houses where other citizens live can at least catch and store rainwater when it rains, but those who live in such deep corners cannot do even that, so they have to earn several times more money than other citizens to avoid dying of dehydration. Since I can’t move around the city properly, there’s no way I can do anything decent.
In order to get drinking water each day, the adults commit robbery or work in poor mushroom caves for lower wages than others, and the children pretend to be orphans and work at a newspaper office, wandering around the city until their feet get calloused, all to earn a small amount of money.
“Aren’t you willing to take the ‘chance’ for a better life?”
“….opportunity?”
“Yes, an opportunity that comes only a few times in our lives. Mr. Mojo? Are you not interested in ‘smuggling’?”
“Smuggling…? “You and us?”
“In other words, we are asking you to become a collaborator with us at the top! “This is a lot of money!”
Hyde saw clearly. Mojo’s eyes were noticeably shaken by the words ‘smuggling’ and ‘money’.
It was an eye tangled up in a more fundamental desire that preceded financial greed.
“I recently had some money, so I wanted to expand my business! A magic train happened to arrive just in time, so I tried to broker trade with cities far away on Roderick’s side, but since I didn’t know the situation there… I was completely fooled and ended up buying a bunch of Tobrun magic stones. “The damage was extensive.”
“hmm. There is a guy who often robs idiots like that. Distribution is active there and it is actually used a lot. “You got beat up in a good way?”
“Yeah! So, on my way back and forth, I ended up paying a lot for the price of the train sign and renting the cargo space! So this time, we are going to bring in a collaborator from Roderick who knows the region very well. “Is this enough of an explanation?”
“…How do we calculate the price of cooperation?”
‘good! It came over!’
It means that the other person is thinking about it until after the matter is accomplished. It was as if the intention to work together had already been established in our heads.
Mojo looked back and forth at the village and the Tobrun Stone in Hyde’s hand, then slowly began to lower the muzzle of his gun.
“I have one last question. From what I heard, it seems like he knew where we were and came to visit us. How did know?”
“I went to the newspaper office and found a boy who was familiar with Roderick’s news. And, as you know, children’s mouths tend to be lighter than those of adults.”
“I told those guys to be careful with their mouths, but…”
And with the last doubt disappearing, Mojo’s muzzle was pointed completely towards the ground.
As he waved his hand, guns sticking out from all over the refugee camp went inside, and people, half curious and half hostile, began to come out the door one by one. As Mojo walked away to explain to the villagers, Pablo, who was preparing to run away from a distance, was slowly approaching.
“Wow….”
“Look. “I said I could, right?”
“oh my god. “This is it.”
Pablo, who knew how wary the people living in hiding were of outsiders, looked up at Hyde in wonder as he watched the hostility magically disappear before his eyes.
“A merchant? Smuggling?”
“Shhh. Lower your voice. Oh, let’s assume you are the newsboy I hired to find this place.”
“Okay, so how on earth were you sure it would work!”
“You said that. “The location of this place is a matter of life and death for the people here, so no matter what they do, they will give priority to killing us and silencing us.”
“Uh… right.”
“Then, similarly, we need to tackle life-and-death issues and solve them. “There is nothing in the world that touches us more deeply than the problem of making a living.”
Not only the other people who appeared here and there, but even the man named Mojo, who seemed to be the leader of this place, had dry lips and dry ringlets on his skin. Common early signs of dehydration. The first thing that strikes poor people is dehydration. The poor of the fragmented continent die of starvation before they die.
There were children’s clothes on clotheslines hung between the rocks and the houses, but there were no children in the village.
It could be assumed that all the children had gone to work.
Brown fluffy things bloomed all over the clothes of a man named Mojo. These are mushroom spores from an edible mushroom farm that Hyde knows well because he has worked there. Since these mushroom spores can even grow on human skin, city laws force workers to provide airtight work clothes, so you can tell that these people who wear spores on their regular clothes are illegally hired workers.
In this way, we have confirmed that there are signs of reaching the end of poverty all over the village, so we can only be sure that they will be interested in ‘smuggling’, which can make a lot of money.
Lower your extreme alertness with familiar items from your hometown.
Inducing conversation with the other person with an inevitably tempting offer.
Convince the rightness of this side with reasonable lies and credible evidence to strangers.
“Wow…a fraudster.”
“I told you earlier, right? The more you get to know each other, the closer you become. Look at this. You’ve already become close enough to the people here to be invited to the refugee camp, right? This is the process of finding out everything. Now that we have convinced them that we are middlemen, we can ask them questions about the old Lord Rodrik. “I said from the beginning that I was cooperating with them with the intention of obtaining information that way.”
“People here will actively inform you. Because we know that what we know about the current situation in the Rodrik region is connected to the benefits they will gain in the future!”
“If you kill, the number of informants decreases, and if you threaten, the credibility of the information decreases. “There is a reason for taking risks and moving forward.”
“I’m suddenly afraid of becoming close to Mr. Hyde.”
“Hehehe. “I’m sorry, but you already know me too much to back out.”
Hyde pressed the wooden board in Pablo’s arms and followed Mojo into the refugee camp.
Reading and delving into the other person’s mind.
It was something that Hyde was exceptionally good at from a young age, and it was only natural for a wanderer who liked people and making friends to develop that talent as he lived with people on a fragmented continent whose only thoughts were backstabbing.
This was the biggest reason why Hyde, who was somewhat haphazard and spontaneous, was able to survive wandering through the soft land so far.
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“Did you say information?”
“yes. If a big event is involved, market fluctuations will increase accordingly. I plan to get to know it properly this time so as not to fail like last time. “I hope there is someone who knows about big events or widespread rumors of unusual events that have occurred in the old Rodrik area in recent years.”
“I don’t know much about commercial activities, so do whatever you want. Everyone here is in favor of smuggling, so everyone will answer truthfully. However, even though they all live here now, we cannot guarantee particularly consistent information as the cities they originally lived in when they fled to Wigen are different.”
“Ha ha ha ha ha. It’s my job to listen to those things. “Anyway, your work will start when you leave for Roderick, so for now, let’s figure it out among ourselves.”
As can be seen from the change in Mojo’s tone of voice, the refugees here were very cooperative with Hyde, who was known as a smuggler.
People who are impatient because they cannot provide information that was asked about as well as information that was not asked.
It wasn’t that difficult to sneak the keyword ‘Warlord’ into conversations with them, and considering I only talked to about 20 people, excluding those who were out for work, I was able to make quite a bit of money.
“I don’t know if he’s the Warlord or something, but there’s a rumor that he was the man who came to our city.”
“It’s a rumor…”
“Yes. The fortress city this guy lived in had only one city connected by a railroad, and there were three Mute Lord dungeons nearby, so it was a very difficult place to live! It was a town where mutes invaded all the time and the gunfire on the castle walls was constantly firing… One day, a very strange Shard Knight came to visit.”
“Was that the Warlord?”
“Hmm… I’m not really sure. People who met him at the time said he was a strange outsider who carried a gun larger than his body and had a particularly bulging shoulder covered by a cloak. What’s unusual is that he didn’t take the train, but came in a small handcar. Do you know what a hand car is? “It’s like a small seesaw that moves on a track when someone pushes it.”
“A man riding a handcar….”
.
.
.
.
.
Woo-sin!
….!!
“Sir merchant?”
“Lord Hyde! “Why are you doing this all of a sudden?”
“Oh, it’s nothing. “It looks like you were a little… tired today.”
I said it was okay, but in reality it wasn’t okay at all.
A sudden chill running down my spine. My heart is pounding
so hard that it hurts my throat, and
the back of someone appears blurry as if there is fog.
‘What is this? my memory? Or… no way?’
Squeak – Squeak –
Drurrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr
The handle of the old handcart was moving on the track.
A man who drove a handcar, which is used within the city or for transporting luggage, to a track far away from the city. The man stopped the handcar at a place far enough
to
vaguely see the city.
A place where broken tracks and fallen signs indicate an area occupied by Mute.
The man sat down in his small handcart as if taking a break, and then calmly began unloading the items he had loaded into the car one by one.
There are several boxes of magic stones that appear to be of high purity at a glance. What appears to be an oil can, wrapped in cloth, is clearly magic engineering equipment.
“By any chance… did that man buy anything in the city?”
“How did you know? That’s why the rumor about that man spread in the city. He was such a big deal that he bought so many things that he built a tower on that small handcar! “Magic stones, oil, magic cartridges… there was a lot of stockpiled in the city, and the city’s nobles, who were already trying to expand their defense facilities, readily sold that much.”
Even while the village man was talking, the man in the blurry video was moving.
After unloading the mountain of supplies, the man picked up the large gun he had on his back and began cleaning it thoroughly.
and. As the sun set, I got up.
Tzuyu – Chizzik!
The unknown memory was cut off as if cut with a knife the moment the man stepped across the broken track.
“From that night on, for three days, there was a loud bang that felt like the world was splitting apart! I still remember it clearly. People went into an uproar, thinking that Mute, who had been quiet for a while, was about to see the end this time, and the nobleman scolded the wizard to request reinforcements from a nearby city. “I stayed up all night for three days to prepare for Mercury…”
“Nothing happened.”
“Yes. The magic train sent from another city also arrived in the city and suddenly became quiet. The knights, tired of waiting, headed out of the city, and those who returned soon after said this. ‘The dungeon has disappeared. ‘All three.’ “It’s strange, isn’t it?”
“….yes. “It’s very… strange.”
Hyde barely responded, his body trembling slightly from uncontrollable excitement.
‘found.’
It was a man. He carries a gun so large that it covers his entire body, covers his body with a cloak, and wanders the soft land with a somewhat unbalanced appearance.
‘Something’ I’ve been looking for my whole life.
All of Hyde’s senses were telling him that he had finally succeeded in finding a shocking phenomenon that he had never felt before in his life.
“Eh… Anyway, that’s it for now. Unless he was an idiot, he would have known that the man who bought so much combat supplies and went out there was the mastermind behind the incident. Noble Nauri desperately searched for him, but he had already disappeared. Rumors heard here and there say that a man named ‘Warlord’ single-handedly conquered the dungeon and completely emptied it, so we can only assume that the man who came that day was Warlord. The dungeons that the knights who came at that time checked were all empty. “Without leaving behind a single cheap shred.”
“All right. “This was really, really helpful information.”
“Merchant, can you get up now? I guess the reason why your body is shaking and you are out of breath is-”
“I will talk about the case later. thank you!”
Jump up!
Hyde could not contain his excitement and stormed out of the man’s house. His body was shaking so much that I couldn’t tell if he was walking, running, or crawling on his knees.
‘Three dungeons alone in three days. It was a not-so-famous Lord’s dungeon tucked away in a corner of Roderick, but it would be impossible for even the famous Master Knight of the Knights of the Silver Lion to destroy one dungeon in one day.’
‘It’s special. Very unique. Even though he completed the dungeon clearing alone, which was the city’s long-awaited project, he did not ask for any compensation. Even though he has money to buy so many supplies that he needs to go all the way to the lord, he drives a handcar instead of riding the magic train. Are there any circumstances that prevent you from taking the train? Or to not leave any travel information? What do you do if another train is running on the only track? Are you holding it and avoiding it?’
“Lord Hyde, Lord Hyde!”
What broke his endless thoughts was Pablo’s hand grabbing his collar.
“Are you really okay? “Your face is red and your breathing suddenly becomes rough. It doesn’t look good.”
“No, it’s the opposite. “I think I’ve finally found the clue to what I was desperately looking for.”
It can not be better than this.
After 15 years of groping the world as if wandering through a fog, I have finally reached a clear milestone.
Seup- Phew. Seup- Phew!
Hyde had to hold his breath for a long time to suppress his heart that felt like it was about to burst.
There was no time to get excited. Isn’t it possible that there are still people in this town who have other clues?
As Mojo said, the people here only seem to be from the old Rodrik Territory, but they are people who took refuge here from another city at a different time.
‘A wanderer similar to me. man.’
‘Are they still wandering around the old Roderick Territory? ‘Traveling alone in a soft land in an old handcar?’
‘A good… person?’
Even while I was talking with the refugees here, paying more attention than I did the first time, not a single word was missing, the image of the back of the man in the video I had seen earlier did not leave my mind.
Strangely familiar. I’ve never seen it before, but it feels strangely familiar.
“Warlord. I never thought that name would follow me this far…”
The second person to say that name was an old man with obvious signs of age.
Cloudy eyes and curled beard. On the other hand, his muscular arms and shoulders still look solid.
“Do you know?”
“I know. “I can never forget it until the moment I die.”
Hyde caught a glimpse of the emotions swirling in the old man’s cloudy eyes.
Memories and regrets. Eyes filled with regret, anger, and sadness mixed together.
At the end, most people’s eyes are filled with anger.
“Don’t get involved with that guy.”
“May I ask why?”
“The Warlord… is a devil. A terrible monster that is scarier because it has no malice. “It is evil without evil.”
evil. Ira is evil.
That man vanquished the dungeon without paying anything?
“That can’t be possible.”
Those words came out of my mouth without me even realizing it.
That can’t be possible. Along with the inexplicable certainty that Warlord could not possibly be that kind of person, his anger at the old man who spoke ill of him rose.
“I understand. When I first met him, I also swore that I would never forget my gratitude to him for the rest of my life.”
Tsuzu:
With the old man’s sigh, another headache invaded Hyde’s mind.
Similar to before, but somehow different, soft land.
Squeak-squeak-
The creaking sound of a handcar that looks a little older than the one I saw before.
And –
‘Don’t back down!!’
‘The battle here will decide the fate of the city!!’
A battlefield full of only people visible in the distance.
“I met him twice.”
“Once, he saved the lives of me, my family and those close to me.”
Squeak-squeak-
An old handcart and a man standing on it were heading towards the train facing each other and the fierce battlefield.
“Another time… he took away all the lives he had saved with his own hands.”
“Everyone except me, in front of my eyes. In one moment.”
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