Chapter 84 (1/2)

“A tour around the Royal Palace huh… should I take it as an honour to my family?”

The hallway Isaac walked through was a sight to behold. It was wide enough to let a bus through, with many sculptures placed in between the windows. The ceiling was also decorated from beginning to the end, and Isaac wasn’t sure if they were paintings or if the ceiling itself was sculpted.

How long did Isaac leisurely walk through this art gallery of a hallway? At the end was a giant, rectangular steel door barring the way, its crude and brutish figure mismatching the elegance and flamboyance of the path they just pa.s.sed through. The two Arc Royales leading the way walked to the door and began their struggle of pus.h.i.+ng the ma.s.sive door open.

“What. It was a sliding door?”

Isaac was surprised at the strength of the knights, who managed to push the giant steel door at first, but what surprised him even more was the door’s breadth, which was as thick as a grown man’s arm. While Isaac blankly looked in awe at this mighty and barbarous steel door, Mazelan stepped in and called Isaac.

“Aren’t you coming in?”

There was faint light illuminating beyond the steel door, but it was like a dim lamp when compared to the brightness of the hallway. Isaac stepped in to follow Mazelan, and the knights began closing the steel door behind them. Isaac questioned Mazelan when it was just the two of them with all of the knights left behind.

“Why aren’t they coming in?”

“This is an area restricted to only those who have received approval from the Empire, no matter how high their t.i.tle is.”

“Wow! What an honour. But aren’t you worried that it’s just the two of us here?”

Mazelan quickly caught up to what Isaac was implying with those words. He smirked like a master who was challenged by a foolish child.

“What, you want to attack and subdue me? When it was me who monitored you the longest time in Campus? The weapons of your world have devastating effects, but the users of those weapons were… Hm, how shall I describe it? Boxing? Martial arts? Fighting? Whatever. They were surprisingly incompetent when it came to hand-to-hand combat. But you can give it a go if you’re confident.”

Isaac glared at Mazelan, finding his belittling smirk so irritating. But Mazelan was right. Joon-young’s specialty was guerrilla tactics in the form of ambushes and terrorism. His close-quarter combat capability was at most mediocre. He would be quickly subdued if he were to ask to fight against someone from the College.

As the two began walking down the corridor, Mazelan began his explanation.

“Where should I start… Do you know about the 7 Days of Calamity?”

“7 Days of Calamity? I’ve read about it a few times in history books.”

Mazelan looked at Isaac with great surprise when he heard that answer.

“Since when did you read history books?”

“…”

While Isaac was faced with the depressing reality that he could never hit Mazelan for saying that, Mazelan touched the left wall of the corridor, and a giant map appeared on the dark wall.

“This is…”

“The map of the Empire. As you can see, humans occupy just north of the continent’s centre. Further north are the non-human reservations that surround the residential area of humans.”

Mazelan pointed to the upper half of the map, where cities and castles were marked to indicate that they were human territory. Above it were the territories of non-humans indicated by blue dotted lines, showing the lands of elves, dwarves, beastmen, North Bears and even the dragon’s sanctuary. It formed a semi-circle above the human territory, blocking the path to the north completely.

“How come there’s nothing north of it? I a.s.sume you guys have knowledge of the terrain beyond it, seeing the seas and beaches are marked on the map?”

Isaac pointed even further above the non–human territory, where it was just a blank white area.

“The maps released to the public show it as a giant desert where nothing exists. But in truth, it’s the Forbidden Lands.”

“Forbidden Lands?”

“It is a nightmarish place where the first signs of the 7 Days of Calamity appeared and is still ongoing even to this day. It’s too dangerous of a place to walk around carefree. It’s also a humbling reminder that the 7 Days of Calamity isn’t just a legend and keeps us alert to the fact that it may happen again. That is why other than the few expeditionary groups or scouting parties as part of training for Central’s agents, we do not approach the place. However, everything changed when one of our scouting parties found an object we’d never seen before 50 years after the founding of the Empire.”

“An object?”

Mazelan didn’t reply to Isaac’s question, only waving his hand as he walked forward and touching another wall.

“It’s something we’ve never seen before, but you know full well what it is.”

Lights s.p.a.ced out evenly from each other began to s.h.i.+ne, which lit up the area. Isaac could now see all of the objects that had been arranged as if this place were a museum.

“… It certainly is familiar to me.”

What laid in front of Isaac was equipment very similar to what he’d seen in the TV series “Stargate,” that he watched frequently. Unmanned surveillance equipment, camera lens, antenna. Isaac didn’t know what their official names were, but seeing the stars and stripes drawn in the middle of them made it obvious which nation they came from.

“I did have some suspicion, but the Americans really did come here before.”

Unable to hide the troubling emotions that welled in his heart, Isaac took out a cigarette to calm his beating heart. Just as he did, he felt Mazelan’s gaze, so Isaac asked Mazelan for permission before lighting the cigarette.

“Ah. I can smoke right?”

Mazelan shook his head with a big frown.

“One of the many things we cannot understand the more we learn about your world is why you guys love to smoke that poisonous plant eating away at your life. Once, there were scholars who studied on those ‘cigarettes’ and why you smoke them.”

“So? What was the conclusion?”

Isaac dashed his lips with disappointment and asked while he placed the pack of cigarettes back into his pocket.

“Some hypothesised that it increases combat capabilities or strengthens one’s mind, but after translating the words written on those packs, we found out that cigarettes were in fact poison. The conclusion we came up with was that all other-worlders were insane; who’d smoke something that is warned to be harmful?”

“I can’t argue against that.”

Everything Mazelan said was true. The cigarette was indeed harmful, and Isaac, who smoked this, was also very insane.

Mazelan didn’t seem pleased when Isaac placed the cigarettes back into his pocket. He glared at the pocket for some time before giving up with a shake of his head and continuing onwards.

“Anyhow, after finding these materials, metals, languages, and machines that don’t exist in our continent, Central came to the conclusion that another world existed.”

“You guys believed that another world existed so easily, despite seeing those objects for the first time.”

“We could have easily dismissed it as a myth or legend due to the amount of time that’s pa.s.sed if our world only consisted of humans just like yours. But there are many beings who live much longer than a human would in this world. The testimonies and doc.u.ments provided by them that show they traded with those from heaven and h.e.l.l before the 7 Days of Calamity was undeniable evidence.”

“Wait. Wait. Heaven? h.e.l.l? They really did exist?”

“Yes. I will tell you more about it later, since you’ll need to know about it eventually. Anyhow, seeing these objects never seen before, the Empire sent an expedition of a ma.s.sive scale into the Forbidden Lands. But the first expedition betrayed our expectations and withdrew after taking ma.s.sive casualties without any achievements. The Empire regularly sent expeditions into the lands again and again, but they never found a gate connecting to another world. In the end, the expedition’s goal changed from finding the gate to research and developing a safe and stable pa.s.sage through the Forbidden Lands. We sent a total of 17 expeditions. But compared to the incredible human and material resources spent on this project, all we managed to achieve was finding a safe path and a few advancements regarding the abnormalities that occurred during the 7 Days of Calamity. With that, Central became very skeptical and decided an expedition into the centre of the Forbidden Lands where the 7 Days of Calamity first began was going to be the last expedition and forgo any further attempts. But it was this 17th expedition that found a gate which travelled to your world, although it was a highly unstable one.

“What do you mean by that?”

“Each time the gate to your world opened, the era of your world changed. The world we saw through the very first gate was that of the Stone Ages. But each time the gate opened, your world developed little by little, through the repet.i.tion of rise and fall of many civilizations. During this time, one of the Empire’s scholars came up with an ingenious idea.”

“What was that?”

“The thought that perhaps we could monitor and apply some of the more useful ideas which are invented in that world where only humans existed.”

“…”

Basically, these people watched the previous worlds’ history as one long doc.u.mentary and stole everything they believed was useful to them.

“So we created surveillance equipment to travel across your world and gather information.”

“You guys had the technology to develop such a thing?”

Mazelan seemed excited by Isaac’s question, as if looking forward to Isaac’s reaction. Reaching the end of the corridor which was blocked by a steel gate, Mazelan looked back at Isaac as he opened it.

“It seems your world calls our surveillance equipment UFOs.”

“… Huh?”

Isaac couldn’t hide his surprise, looking as if he’d been hit on the back of his head. Mazelan seemed satisfied at Isaac’s reaction and pointed at the exhibits that were arranged on both sides.

“Wow! They really are UFOs!”

Countless different types of UFOs were exhibited on the sides behind gla.s.s like a museum. Mazelan’s voice held a grain of pride as he spoke to Isaac, who was busy looking inside with sparkles in his eyes.

“These surveillance tools are the pinnacle of the Empire’s study of magic. They have given us much information, and their contribution was paramount to allow our Empire to grow to where it is now. Most of the Empire’s systems referenced what we saw from your world.”

“Then how come your weapons are so pathetic?”

It was true this world was very convenient to live in, but their armies were still stuck in the medieval era. If they knew about guns, they should also know about the power of gunpowder, and developing materials similar to it should have made it possible to develop their own guns. Yet they still swung swords and shot arrows at each other.

Mazelan looked down on Isaac as if the question was pathetic.

“And where are we supposed to use those highly developed weapons? The greatest flaw of your world is that your weapons are too advanced. Those who use a sword will reconsider in killing their opponent if they don’t have any intention to kill. But the gun finishes everything without giving any time for such reconsideration. It is too simple to use and much too powerful. That is why those who act before they think thrive without fear in your world with weapons like that in their hands.”