Chapter 263
As soon as Zeon left City Hall, he headed straight to the lodging where Aslan and Duduyan were staying.
Duduyan had already been awake for a while, but Aslan was still lost in dreamland.
“Wake up, human!”
Duduyan kicked him, but Aslan couldn’t regain his senses easily.
“I’m sorry. This human crawled in at dawn and still hasn’t come to his senses.”
“He came back in the morning?”
“Yes! He was completely wasted.”
“Did that happen often?”
“No. He likes alcohol, but never to this extent……”
Duduyan couldn’t even lift her head, as if it were her own mistake.
Her face was burning red.
It was embarrassing enough that he had stayed out drinking until morning, but the fact that her companion was still too drunk to recover made her unable to face Zeon.
Zeon shook his head.
“It’s probably not just because of the alcohol.”
“What?”
“Let me take a look.”
Zeon approached Aslan.
He looked like someone typically dead drunk. But mixed in with the smell of alcohol, Zeon detected an unfamiliar scent.
A damp, sinister fishy odor that irritated the nerves.
Zeon had smelled it before.
“Hmm!”
After searching through his memories for a moment, Zeon pulled out a small bottle from his subspace.
Inside the bottle was a red liquid.
Duduyan asked with a puzzled expression,
“What’s that?”
“Secretion extracted from the back of a Flame Toad.”
“What?”
“You’ve probably never seen one. It’s a magical beast that lives thousands of kilometers south of Neo Seoul.”
“.i-lo.”
“The secretion flowing from this magical beast’s back solidifies when it comes into contact with components from another magical beast’s body.”
When a Flame Toad encounters another magical beast, it compresses and fires the secretion from its back. If the substance penetrates the target’s body, it hardens like limestone.
As a result, any magical beast struck by the Flame Toad’s secretion dies as its blood coagulates inside its body.
Its blood hardens like stone, clogging the blood vessels.
Since the Flame Toad itself is low-ranked, this method only works on low-grade magical beasts.
Zeon had discovered the Flame Toad’s properties and collected some of its secretion.
He dabbed the secretion onto a cotton swab and brought it close to Aslan’s nose.
Unable to understand Zeon’s actions, Duduyan asked,
“No, why are you using Flame Toad secretion?”
“I told you. It solidifies when it comes into contact with another magical beast’s bodily components.”
“So that means……”
Duduyan stopped herself midsentence and tightly shut her lips.
The cotton swab touched by Aslan’s breath was gradually hardening.
“So my guess was right. Someone at City Hall mixed a drug refined from magical beast bodily components into Aslan’s alcohol.”
“No way……”
“It was probably something like a truth serum refined from magical beast byproducts.”
“My god! Then does that mean all our information ended up with City Hall?”
“Most likely.”
At Zeon’s words, Duduyan covered her mouth with her hand.
The two of them had entered Neo Seoul alone in order to protect the secrets of the Steel Fortress, but it had all become meaningless.
If Aslan had spilled everything, then Neo Seoul now knew all about the Steel Fortress.
Now that the Steel Fortress had been exposed, there would be no way to stop Neo Seoul if it became greedy and invaded.
“You idiot……”
Fury exploding, Duduyan kicked Aslan with all her strength.
Thud!
“Ghk! W-what the hell?”
The powerful impact jolted Aslan awake.
“You damn drunkard! Do you even know what you’ve done?”
“W-what are you talking about?”
“Do you know what kind of mistake you made?”
“Wait! What happened? Let’s talk this out.”
Sensing the dangerous atmosphere, Aslan’s voice dropped.
“Why are you even alive? Human! Why are you alive……!”
Thud! Bam!
Duduyan mercilessly beat Aslan down.
Aslan didn’t even dare resist. Curled up like a shrimp, he simply endured Duduyan’s assault.
Instinctively, Aslan realized that something had gone terribly wrong.
He remembered drinking at the shop, but after a certain point, his memories completely cut off.
No matter how strong the alcohol was, there was no way he would black out that suddenly.
Because he wasn’t an ordinary person—he was an Awakened.
For an Awakened like him to become completely senseless in an instant meant the alcohol he drank had been anything but ordinary.
‘Fuck! Did I cause some huge disaster?’
It wasn’t Duduyan’s beating that hurt.
The realization that someone had manipulated him without him even noticing made his heart sink.
Judging from Duduyan’s reaction, he had clearly committed a massive mistake.
That was why he couldn’t even think of resisting and simply accepted Duduyan’s fists.
“Huff! Huff!”
After beating Aslan for a long while, Duduyan finally stopped, exhausted.
Only then did Aslan cautiously ask Zeon,
“Did I…… make a huge mistake?”
“The mayor knows everything.”
“Everything?”
“The Steel Fortress, Arkelon, Moby Dick……”
“Fuck!”
Aslan slammed his head against the wall.
His forehead split open, blood flowing down.
He didn’t need to hear anything more.
The source of the information was obviously himself.
His mind still felt hazy.
As though someone had entered it and rummaged through everything.
It was obvious that City Hall had pulled some trick while he was unconscious.
If not for Zeon, he would’ve simply thought he had blacked out from strong liquor.
The more he thought about it, the more chills ran down his spine.
Once again, he realized just how terrifying Neo Seoul truly was.
More than anything, he was furious at himself for failing to control his own mouth.
“A bastard like me deserves to die.”
Smack! Smack! Smack!
Aslan violently struck his own face.
His skin split, blood bursting out.
There was genuine self-loathing behind every blow.
He could never forgive himself for falling for Neo Seoul’s trick.
Duduyan didn’t stop Aslan.
Even as his face became covered in blood, even as his cheekbones caved in, she merely watched as though it had nothing to do with her.
That was how deep her disappointment ran.
The one who stopped Aslan was Zeon.
“That’s enough.”
“Don’t stop me, Mr. Zeon! A bastard like me deserves to die. Over something as trivial as alcohol……”
“Even if you hadn’t gotten drunk, they still would’ve extracted the information they wanted. Once they set their minds on uncovering something, there’s nothing in this world they can’t find out.”
“But……”
“Now isn’t the time for self-loathing. It’s time to come up with countermeasures.”
“Countermeasures?”
Only then did Aslan stop hurting himself.
He could kill himself anytime.
What mattered now was protecting the Steel Fortress from Neo Seoul.
“Please give me any order. If you want my heart, I’ll rip it out and offer it to you.”
“I don’t need your heart, Mr. Aslan.”
“Then?”
“Find information on one person.”
“One person?”
“Her name is Claire. She’s one of the people City Hall is dispatching to recover Moby Dick’s heart.”
Jin Geumho had decided to assign exactly two people to join Zeon.
One of them was a man Zeon already knew.
Lee Jeongho.
A member of the mayor’s direct execution squad.
A man also known as one of the Numbers—the strongest swordsmen in Neo Seoul.
Sending him made sense.
He possessed that level of power and ability.
The problem was Claire.
Judging by the name, she seemed to be a woman, but there was no information about her whatsoever.
Zeon already knew Lee Jeongho’s abilities, so he could prepare for him somehow. But he knew absolutely nothing about Claire.
That made it difficult to formulate a response.
“We need information on Claire.”
“Claire? Understood. I’ll devote everything I have to uncover information about her.”
“I’m counting on you.”
“Leave it to me.”
Aslan bowed deeply.
Truthfully, there was no need to entrust information gathering about Claire to Aslan. Using Argos’s Eyes would’ve been much faster and more convenient.
But if Zeon wanted to ease Aslan’s guilt even a little, it was better to give him a task like this.
Duduyan bowed her head toward Zeon.
“I’m sorry things turned out like this because of this idiot. But he’ll still carry out the mission properly.”
“I know.”
“Thank you, Mr. Zeon! We only keep causing trouble and receiving your help.”
“That’s not true, Ms. Duduyan.”
“I’ll make sure to properly discipline this idiot.”
Normally, Aslan would’ve exploded at being called an idiot, but now he kept his mouth shut and said nothing.
That was how deeply he regretted his mistake.
Zeon spoke.
“What’s done is done. The two people dispatched by City Hall will move together with us. We need to minimize information leaks and think of ways to make the best possible use of them.”
“Yes, Mr. Zeon.”
The two answered at the same time.
Zeon walked the streets alone.
‘Too fast. Far too fast.’
It had only been yesterday that Aslan and Duduyan made contact with Zeon. Yet Jin Geumho had already learned not only about that fact, but also why they had met Zeon in the first place.
The response had been unbelievably fast.
‘That means they attached surveillance to me…….’
There was no other explanation for such speed.
Zeon frowned.
Even normally, he never neglected observing his surroundings.
It was a habit ingrained into him.
And yet he hadn’t noticed anything.
‘Which means they assigned people with special abilities to watch me…….’
For now, he had no choice but to play along with Jin Geumho.
But that didn’t mean he intended to meekly move according to the man’s wishes.
The moment someone looked down on you, they dug even deeper.
There was no such thing as “just enough.”
In this world, people dug all the way down to the bottom and devoured everything without leaving even a drop of marrow behind.
You could be fooled once.
But never twice.
You had to show that you also carried a blade, or they’d continue treating you lightly.
Zeon secretly drew in his dominion.
Whoooosh!
In an instant, a sandstorm began to rise.
Zeon had manipulated the sand and carried it on the wind.
“Fuck!”
“What the hell? A sandstorm all of a sudden……!”
People walking the streets panicked at the sudden sandstorm. But no one found it strange.
Sandstorms frequently swept through the slums.
However, unlike usual, this one was rougher and denser.
The thick cloud of sand made it impossible to even open their eyes.
People coughed violently as sand entered their noses and mouths, making it hard to breathe.
They hurriedly covered their mouths and noses with cloth wrapped around their necks, but it was useless.
Unable to even raise their heads, people crouched down and waited for the sandstorm to pass.
But several individuals reacted differently.
The moment the sandstorm started, they put on masks equipped with purification devices.
All of them were members of the Shadow Unit.
They had been monitoring Zeon from a distance.
Although they had already gathered considerable information, the surveillance on Zeon was still ongoing.
“Damn it! What’s with this sudden sandstorm……!”
“Number Five is gone.”
During the brief moment it took them to put on their masks, Zeon had disappeared.
Then it happened.
The sand in front of them suddenly began gathering together.
In an instant, the sand took human form.
A soldier made of sand—
A Sand Soldier.
The moment they saw the Sand Soldier, the watchers realized they had been discovered.
“Run!”
Without even looking back, they fled.
The sandstorm chased after them like a leech.
The watchers didn’t know.
Zeon himself was pursuing them through the sandstorm.