Chapter 55
A sigh escaped Kaiser as he looked at the enormous pile of liquor bottles.
After drinking diligently for several days, he'd managed to finish only ten bottles.
Now, just looking at liquor made him feel like retching.
It was possible to use mana to drive the alcohol out of his system.
The problem was that he couldn't distinguish the alcohol from that other component.
[You have released a fragment of a beverage brewed by a god! Your faith loses its light!]
The faith he'd gained fell.
By even more than it had risen.
It had certainly been good liquor, and it tasted delicious, but...
You can only enjoy something delicious for a day or two.
There was even the risk of acute alcohol poisoning.
Fortunately, there was a way to deal with it.
Increasing the body's water content lowered the blood alcohol concentration accordingly.
Even now, he was hooked up to an IV and blood bags.
“What the hell am I doing all this for, just to drink?”
This wasn't going to work.
So he even called in an alchemist.
He asked whether they could extract just the specific component related to faith from inside it.
The alchemist's answer was clear.
The component was definitely there, but it seemed difficult to extract. Even if they could, they'd get only a minuscule amount, and inefficiently at that.
For now, he'd sent several more bottles to the world's top alchemy research lab for analysis, asking whether the substance could be replicated or mass-produced.
All he could do was hope the results would be good.
At this rate...
His body would give out before his faith did.
**
Only after taking care of SG Group's affairs, including SG Distillery, did I finally have some time.
It really had been an unprecedentedly busy stretch, but fortunately things were a little better because Zephyros took the lead in managing traffic.
There had been a lot of friction trying to bring companies from different cultures together, but Zephyros, currently one of the top Hunters in Korea, had managed the situation well.
So now I'd picked the next place to clear.
It was none other than Saudi Arabia.
There'd been a lot of talk about this place, too.
When I first said I was going to clear it, Director Cho Hyeong-bin asked me,
“You don't happen to have a religion, do you?”
When I said I didn't, he let out a sigh of relief and said,
“The Saudis say they can somehow accommodate someone who's nonreligious, but not an infidel.”
“...I thought Islam looked more unfavorably on the irreligious?”
I remembered seeing that somewhere online.
“Are you an atheist?”
“I just don't think about religion.”
I was too busy making a living to worry about religion.
“Right. You haven't been publicly expressing atheistic views on social media or in your daily life, have you?”
“...No.”
“Then it's fine. We'll classify you as a nonreligious theist.”
Honestly, it was a little absurd that people were still arguing over religion in a world full of Awakened...
Well, those people considered Awakening a blessing from God.
I understood.
“Given the location of the Gate, I ask for your understanding.”
“Well, there's no helping it. Mecca, was it?”
“Yes.”
Mecca, the holiest site in Islam.
The dungeon I was going to would be there.
**
“They've opened the Mecca dungeon to an infidel... no, a nonreligious person now. The world sure has changed.”
Mr. Choi Kang, who was now my bodyguard, said while continuing to do squats even aboard the private jet.
What am I supposed to do with this gym-addict old man?
“Why? It wasn't open before?”
“Back in my day, they laid it down in no uncertain terms: only Muslims could clear it.”
“Huh.”
“I heard Saudi Arabia was getting desperate lately. Guess it's true.”
“I heard there are valuable Gates near Mecca that account for most of Saudi Arabia's GDP. Clearing them would have a huge economic impact.”
“Religion's nothing compared to making a living.”
Of course, they were still selling oil.
Naturally.
Oil was needed for all kinds of raw materials, like plastic.
And countries where dungeon energy hadn't advanced still used it for energy, too.
The problem was that all those uses combined could meet only about 20 percent of the demand for its former uses.
In the U.S., 66 percent of oil had been used for shipping, cars, aviation, and so on.
Now?
Among ships above a certain size, not a single one used an engine.
Most used small, commercially available fusion reactors.
Cars had mostly been replaced by electric vehicles...
At most, there were aircraft.
Though it seemed electric planes and the like were coming out these days, too.
When dungeon-derived room-temperature superconductors first began replacing the energy industry, oil sales fell by about 30 percent and then stabilized. But over the next fifteen years, related industries gradually developed without oil, and now oil was hitting new lows day after day.
Amid those record lows, Saudi Arabia had finally made its decision.
Even so, it was certainly an unusual choice.
“No matter how desperate they are, there'll be a lot of controversy.”
“...Because of that, they practically put me through ideological vetting in an interview at the Saudi Embassy. The Saudis submitted the interview to Islamic scholars for discussion, and they only allowed the operation after reaching their final decision.”
I felt a little ridiculous having to go through all this just to clear a Gate, but the rewards were on another level compared to anywhere else.
The bounty alone was three billion dollars.
On top of that, I was given priority bidding rights on various Saudi national projects.
Normally, I wouldn't have needed them, but now I was in charge of a huge company called SG Group.
Among its subsidiaries were many dungeon development companies with construction affiliates.
Bringing business to the company.
That was one of the owner's jobs, too.
In the first place, the government had created SG Group hoping for that kind of synergy.
Third-world countries that couldn't even afford to offer a bounty sometimes asked for Gates to be cleared in exchange for infrastructure development rights.
Those rights were completely useless to Kim Segyun personally, but for the company as a whole, they were a major revenue stream and a lifeline.
“Hmm, Mecca... Can only Muslims enter even now?”
“That's what I hear.”
Since it was a holy site of Islam, people who weren't Muslim were originally forbidden from entering the city itself.
They said I and my entourage would receive... some kind of temporary consecration.
It felt like a formality, but I guess it was important to religious people.
And so, we arrived at King Abdulaziz International Airport in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia.
When I got off, people dressed in white traditional clothing came to greet me.
“Welcome to Saudi Arabia, Hunter Kim Segyun! It's a pleasure to meet you!”
“Yes, it's a pleasure to meet you, Crown Prince.”
The one welcoming me was the Saudi Crown Prince.
He was called the Crown Prince, but it wouldn't be wrong to say he was effectively ruling Saudi Arabia in place of the aging king.
“I heard there was a lot of opposition, so first I'd like to thank you for entrusting me with clearing the Gate despite that.”
“Haha, that too must be Inshallah (God's will).”
Inshallah.
The Crown Prince smiled as he used the Muslim expression meaning ‘God willing.’
“From here, Fahad will guide you.”
As expected, he was a busy man; after a brief greeting, he left.
Instead, a man named Fahad, who seemed to be in charge, showed me the way.
We got into the limousine he'd prepared and headed for Mecca, about 70 kilometers away.
And, surprisingly, the road to Mecca...
“This isn't a desert, is it?”
Along the highway stretched a lush green landscape.
“It is a miracle of God, transforming even this boundless desert into greenery.”
At Fahad's proud voice, the other attendants quietly whispered, ‘Allahu Akbar.’
It meant ‘God is great.’
No matter how I looked at it, it seemed like dungeon technology.
But even if they had used dungeon technology, turning an area that big into green land must have cost an unbelievable amount.
These guys who'd made their money digging up the ground sure weren't afraid to spend it.
They'd spent that much money, so now that oil prices had collapsed, they must be short on cash and asking me to clear the Gate.
Anyway, 70 kilometers meant quite a drive.
Just as I yawned and started to close my eyes for a bit...
Something rapidly approached the window,
then—CRACK!—shattered the bulletproof glass in an instant and flew toward me.
The object struck the space between my brows, then dropped away.
Only afterward did Athena from my ring deploy around my head.
“A-a arrow?”
W-What? Was I just about to die?
I wasn't holding my staff, so I couldn't benefit from Sacrificial Offering either.
The arrow had been so fast that even Athena hadn't reacted in time, only deploying afterward.
But how had I survived?
Had it lost power when it broke through the glass?
The system message answered for me.
[All damage directed at you has been transferred to the skill user by the effect of ‘Indra's Net,’ a class-exclusive skill of ‘Choi Kang,’ the Vajra Guardian.]
[Indra's Net] (Currently bound)
Description: Indra's Net binds everything in the world, signifying that all things are one. You, too, are merely a target of its binding.
Effect: You can designate up to five targets and bind them. Damage dealt to bound targets is transferred to you. The more targets you bind, the less damage you receive from each one. (Currently bound target: Kim Segyun)
And the gym-addict old man beside me...
was rubbing his forehead as if it tickled.
I'm alive...
As expected of the strongest tank.
I sighed in relief, then immediately pulled out my staff.
I activated Sacrificial Offering, too.
Wow, an arrow had flown in from somewhere I couldn't even see.
And broken through bulletproof glass, too...
What was he, Hawkeye?
It had to be an Awakened.
And then the commotion began in front of us.
“Sniper!”
“Find the sniper!”
I didn't know who it was, but they dared try to kill me?
I got out of the car and looked in the direction the arrow had come from.
There was a sand dune in the distance.
It had probably come from behind that dune.
“Hey, that's dangerous.”
Since I was standing completely exposed, Choi Kang warned me.
“I'm fine now.”
I'd activated Sacrificial Offering.
Wait, couldn't I keep the staff's effect active all the time?
“Fine? If I hadn't used Indra's Net beforehand, you would've been in serious trouble.”
“I look forward to working with you from now on, too.”
He's dependable, to say the least.
They say a squishy mage only realizes how precious a tank is after nearly dying once.
I finally understood.
Long-range sniping was seriously terrifying.
“Don't rely on it too much. I can't keep taking transferred damage indefinitely. If it's more than I can withstand, the bond just breaks.”
“Yes, I understand.”
Of course, the problem was that looking at that incredible suit of muscle armor, it didn't seem like it would break.
“Anyway, that was a pretty skilled archer.”
“I nearly died because of that bastard. We need to catch them.”
“Weren't you listening? An archer's dead if they get caught. They're probably used to keeping their distance. With your mobility or mine, closing the gap will be impossible.”
He was probably right.
Just in case, it was a good thing I'd asked Ms. Gyuseon to prepare several kinds of bacteria.
I used Undead Rise on a dead specimen I'd taken from my inventory.
‘Move Magmophile to preset slot 2.’
I changed the fire-resistant bacteria to preset slot 2,
and in the empty slot...
(4) Magnetospirillum Magneticum (Magnetospirillum magneticum)
─Population: approximately 30 billion
─Description: An anaerobic bacterium that forms magnetic nanoparticles inside its body and reacts very sensitively to magnetic fields.
─Ability: Can detect the flow of magnetic fields with great sensitivity. Undeadification has overcome its weaknesses.
I summoned the new unit.
A bacterial legion that responded sensitively to every magnetic field in the world.
I gave them an order.
“Check the magnetic-field patterns around that sand dune.”
People nowadays would be carrying things like cell phones.
Even if they didn't have a single electronic device, it didn't matter.
The human body itself generates a tiny amount of bioelectricity, which also produces a magnetic field.
In other words...
If you're a living, breathing human being,
there's no escaping these bacteria's pursuit.