Chapter 15
Draker Family’s Academy is a knight training school that all aspiring knights across the continent aspire to attend.
The reason for its fame is that it was established by Terakan Draker, the Dragon Slayer hero of the Liberation War.
Terakan, who slayed the evil dragon Bahamut, is considered a great figure who opened a new era for humanity.
The hundred years following Bahamut’s death were called the Golden Age by people.
This was due to the dragon’s corpse killed by the Dragon Slayer, the treasures they had collected, and the artifacts that poured out from ancient ruins hidden beneath their lairs.
Among these, what particularly interested the magicians were the ancient artifacts.
Among the artifacts from the Hero King era, a civilization predating the Golden Age, there were artifacts that surpassed current magical technology.
The high-compression mana stone that Feinan mentioned was one of these artifacts.
Zeke headed to the least frequented place in the academy to obtain this high-compression mana stone.
‘The library, of course.’
About ten years from now, news would break about the discovery of a Golden Age underground ruin in the academy’s library.
‘The high-compression mana stone was definitely excavated here.’
In his previous life, Zeke frequently used this library during his academy days.
The library was the perfect place to spend time when he wanted to avoid bullying.
Zeke felt nostalgic seeing the library’s main entrance after so long.
The academy’s library was larger than most national libraries.
Even though it had low usage, it was continuously maintained as the founder Terakan personally participated in its construction and paid special attention to it.
Zeke slowly entered the library.
Like in the past, the library was very quiet.
Only librarians moved about, organizing new books and helping occasional visitors find books.
‘Was it this way?’
Coming to the library after so long made him confused about directions.
Zeke slowly recalled his past memories.
‘Let’s see. That was definitely the central building’s underground archives.’
The entrance to the underground ruins was discovered by chance during expansion work to reorganize the underground archives’ materials.
Upon investigation, it turned out to be quite a large ruin, requiring both the Magic Tower and Nirvana’s mages to be mobilized for excavation work.
Surprisingly, it was confirmed to be a Golden Age ruin, and precious artifacts poured out.
Future Zeke had read about this in the news, and recalled that the high-compression mana stone was among those artifacts.
Since the ruins wouldn’t be discovered for another ten years, currently no one knew about them.
‘I’ll secretly go down, take just the high-compression mana stone, and slowly smuggle out the rest.’
Zeke went down to the central building’s basement.
Since the library was rarely visited, no one paid attention to Zeke moving around.
He went down to the underground archives without any interference.
“Is this it?”
The smell of old paper wafted over.
Zeke looked at the records densely packed on the shelves while recalling the photo of the ruins’ entrance he had seen in the news.
“It’s been so long, I can’t remember well.”
He frowned as he couldn’t recall clearly.
Yet he couldn’t dig up the entire archives either.
Then something occurred to Zeke.
‘Perhaps the Dragon Eye could…?’
He immediately activated the skill.
[Skill Dragon Eye activated.]
His vision changed as soon as he used the skill.
Not only could he see dark areas clearly, but various information appeared.
While examining the archives this way, Zeke discovered a section of floor marked in red in one corner.
‘That place…?’
Zeke approached and knocked on the floor.
THUMP! THUMP!
A hollow sound came from inside.
Zeke quietly looked around.
There was no sign of anyone.
‘Good.’
He spread his palm wide and drew power from his middle Diantan.
WOONG!
A faint vibration rang out as mana energy enveloped his palm.
He invoked the ‘Soul Technique’ learned from his master in his previous life.
‘Cut.’
As Zeke’s will to cut focused, the mana energy became sharp.
SWISH! SWISH! SWISH! SWISH!
The floor split cleanly as if cut by a sharp sword.
‘Still quite disorienting. I should avoid using it until my central energy point fully recovers.’
The Soul Technique had side effects, as it was a technique humans originally couldn’t use.
This was why Zeke was desperately trying to create the Sun Sword Gram.
He lifted the cut floor section like a door.
Dust rose up as the empty space below the floor was revealed.
“Now, let’s see.”
Zeke brushed off the dust and checked the dark passage inside with his Dragon Eye.
He could see a path leading down.
Without hesitation, Zeke launched himself into the passage.
Whoosh!
Falling downward, Zeke landed nimbly on the floor.
Soon after the Dragon Eye skill effect ended, the surroundings became dark again.
Since Zeke had experienced firsthand what happens when skills are overused, he took out a fire starter from his pocket.
Using it to make a torch, Zeke looked around the passage.
‘It looks just like a dungeon.’
After being expelled from the academy, Zeke spent some time living as a porter for adventurers in dungeons.
And while following adventurers in and out of dungeons, he learned how to live in the world.
When party luck was bad, he almost died from monsters, but he somehow managed to survive tenaciously.
While working as a porter and living rough in dungeons, he was deceived by a con artist and sold as a slave to the southern continent.
After enduring all sorts of dirty work in the southern continent ruled by cartel organizations, Zeke barely escaped and met his master in the forbidden Forest of the Forgotten.
‘I’m not sure if meeting Master was good luck or bad luck.’
Momentarily lost in memories of the past, Zeke came back to his senses and examined the path leading to the ruins.
‘The entrance seems deeper than expected. This information wasn’t in the newsletter back then.’
Zeke maintained his vigilance and went further inside.
That’s when it happened.
A faint movement was felt ahead.
‘Could someone have already discovered this place?’
Zeke tensely extinguished his torch and activated the Dragon Eye skill.
As his vision turned green, friend and foe identification became clear.
He carefully approached forward.
And observed the movement closely.
‘Huh? Is that…?’
It was none other than a skeleton.
Zeke tensely looked around the surroundings.
The presence of skeletons meant there was a high possibility of higher-rank magical beasts nearby.
So he looked around with Dragon Eye but couldn’t see any other magical beasts.
This time he examined the skeleton’s condition.
Instead of holding a sword or shield, it was holding a pickaxe or shovel.
In such cases, rather than being created by a higher magical beast, there was a high possibility that corpses had transformed into magical beasts on their own due to the influence of the old dungeon.
Zeke slowly rose to his feet.
“It’s been a while since hunting magical beasts.”
Hunting magical beasts had occupied a large portion of the missions he handled before regression.
He clenched his fist and approached the skeleton.
Creak!
The skeletons reacted upon seeing Zeke.
Though naturally spawned, they showed hostility towards living things by magical beast instinct.
“Keeeek―”
The skeleton charged at Zeke wielding a pickaxe.
Zeke calmly took his stance and drew out a claymore from his inventory.
BANG!
[Skill Fatal Strike has been activated.]
The skeleton shattered in one hit.
Zeke turned around and struck another skeleton with his sword.
BANG!
It shattered in one hit as well.
DING!
[You have killed a skeleton. You gain 1 Karma Point.]
[You have killed a skeleton. You gain 1 Karma Point.]
“Oh?”
Opening his status window, 2 Karma Points had increased.
Zeke nodded while looking at the shattered skeleton.
“Come to think of it… undead are magical beasts with magical power.”
Zeke grinned looking at the shattered skeleton.
“I can handle naturally spawned skeletons well enough even now.”
His eyes sparkled as he realized this was an opportunity to gain Karma Points.
He had thought he needed to become at least a purple knight to hunt magical beasts, but found an unexpected solution.
Zeke went around looking for traces of other skeletons.
“Grrrr!”
Perhaps because it was an old ruin, there were quite a few naturally spawned skeletons.
Zeke excitedly swung his sword at the skeletons.
DING!
[You have killed a skeleton. You gain 1 Karma Point.]
The pleasant alarm kept ringing.
Zeke ran around every corner with the momentum to catch all the skeletons in the ruins.
Before he knew it, he got sidetracked and focused on catching skeletons rather than finding the entrance to the ruins.
After several hours, no more skeletons could be seen.
“Wait a moment. How many did I catch?”
Suddenly text appeared.
[Skeletons Killed: 30]
“Oh ho, caught quite a few. Let’s see. Status window open”
[Junior Administrator Status Window]
Name: Zeke Draker
Class: Immortal (Unique Grade)
Title: One Blessed by the Great Dragon
System Functions: Inventory(25 slots) / Mini-map(Locked) / Beginner Quest Book(Locked)
Passive Skills: Healing Factor / Sturdy Mental Defense / Infinite Stamina / Combat Sense
Active Skills: Vital Strike[E-rank (Expert)] / Consecutive Cut[D-rank (Beginner)] / Fatal Strike[D-rank (Skilled)] / High speed movement[C-rank (Beginner)] / Magic Reflection[A-rank (Beginner)] / Area Buff[A-rank (Beginner)]
Dragon Race Skills(Stage 1 unlocked): Dragon Eye (Beginner) / Dragon’s Dignity (Beginner)
Karma Points: 40
Zeke looked for items he could activate with Karma Points.
“Mini-map is 20 points, Beginner Quest Book is 45 points, Gluttony is 50 points, Dragon Race Skills Stage 2 Release is 50 points.”
With his current 40 points, only the mini-map could be unlocked.
After some contemplation, Zeke decided to activate the mini-map.
“Not sure what it is… but since it’s called a map, it should help with finding the way.”
He pressed mini-map activation.
[Mini-map function will be activated.]
Suddenly a small map unfolded before Zeke’s eyes.
“Oh?”
On one side of the map, there was a compass shape floating, and the terrain features were shown like a picture.
In the middle of it, a red dot was blinking.
“Good heavens. Is this a map right now? One that shows my location and surrounding terrain features?”
Zeke had learned how to read maps directly from the Northern Rangers.
For Rangers, maps were as precious as life itself, but obtaining maps with accurate scale and terrain features was as difficult as catching stars from the sky.
Even then, maps made by mages were the most accurate, but such maps were so expensive that he couldn’t even think of buying them.
And now he had obtained an extremely accurate map.
Zeke marveled while touching and examining the minimap in various ways.
“It adjusts the scale, automatically shows direction. With this alone, I won’t die from getting lost.”
Zeke muttered while adjusting the scale to grasp the overall terrain of the ruins.
While looking at the minimap, Zeke discovered an area marked with different colors from the normal terrain features.
“What’s this?”
When Zeke pressed the marked location, text appeared.
[Would you like to display route guidance to the designated location?]
“Route guidance?”
When Zeke chose to receive route guidance, the shortest distance to the destination was marked with a dotted line of a different color on the minimap.
Zeke’s jaw dropped.
“Wow, this is no joke. Why didn’t I activate this earlier?”
He walked towards where the minimap was pointing while marveling.
After walking all the way along the determined path, text appeared again.
[You have arrived at your destination.]
Zeke turned his head to examine his surroundings.
A massive door appeared in front of him.
He slowly approached it.
“Is this it? The ruins?”
Zeke, who had approached very close, pushed the door.
Whether it was magically locked or something, the door didn’t budge at all.
Zeke wore a troubled expression.
“Damn… Come to think of it, they said they brought loads of mages when they did the ruins excavation work.”
The high-compression mana stones and other artifacts were certainly behind that door.
Zeke pulled at his hair in frustration after hitting this obstacle right at the end.
“Ugh… Can’t anything be easy?”
Ding!
Just then, a system notification sound rang.
Zeke read the text that appeared.
[Would you like to enter the Dragon Slayer’s Tomb?]
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