Chapter 489 – [A Guide for Transcendentalists Traveling in the Post-Apocalypse]

When I stopped by Shion’s room for a while, Shion sneakily asked me.

“What did you talk about with him?”

“They tried to recruit them even though they were using their own body. He said that his mindset was completely different from Baek Hee’s.”

The nobles before the fall and the nobles after the fall are different. Both of them are greedy for the same thing, but at least there is a difference in their attitude.

Perhaps the simplest part is the line he can give. The era that values ​​face and honor and the era that values ​​life and power each have their own strengths and weaknesses.

One is a pretender and the other is honest, or one is wise and the other is savage. Well, it kind of feels like that.

In the end, it is similar to how capitalists and communists call each other capitalist pigs and communists. There might be some differences.

“Have you passed?”

“I’m crazy?”

“I knew it. He is my husband after all.”

“You know I look at the heart first before looking at my appearance or personality.”

“So, aren’t you weak against people who sincerely push forward?”

“I have nothing to say if you openly poke me at my weakness…”

It’s not that hard to reject a woman who comes to you to take advantage of, or for some other benefit. Sometimes it’s okay to kill some people, so just break their necks.

I’m a man who doesn’t mind killing a woman or a child if need be. No, gender discrimination kills men, but isn’t it discrimination to save women? Kill both equally for gender equality!

However, on the contrary, it is weak against feelings that are sincerely pushed. It’s a pity to reject it firmly… It’s a bit like rejecting someone who likes me in the first place.

“Anyway, let’s eat dinner tonight and leave immediately. We’ll have to leave at night so we won’t interfere anymore.”

“The rice here is pretty good, but it’s worse than what you make.”

“I don’t think cooking skills have just developed. Isn’t this the end if you can eat?

Cooking is, after all, information. It’s something like a recipe that is created through exchanges and countless trials and errors, but it’s impossible for such a thing to exist in a ruined world.

Even if the level is raised by repeated mastery to a certain point, if information and materials are limited, the limit is clear.

For reference, the story that materials are limited is not the number of materials, but the story of their types. There is a limit to the crops that can be grown in a city like this, and even if there are merchants, how much can you share in exchange?

The variety of dishes that can be made with one ingredient may increase, but in the end the line is drawn. Ah, the talk of cooking has gotten longer.

Anyway, the kids here don’t cook very well. It’s not that I can’t eat it, but even this noble level chef isn’t very satisfying. If it’s rice soup sold at an inn, it’s okay because the expectations are low, but in places like this…

“By the way, did you get any information?”

“Why are you asking that?”

“I don’t think you would leave such a good facility with this kind of technology.

“The answer is Alchemist!”

“I’d rather call you a shaman here!”

Zion also has a desire. Among the three major human needs, there is no desire for sleep, but sexual desire and appetite are inexhaustibly strong, and there is also an abundant desire for knowledge as Hanon.

Originally, her technology possessed by her mother-in-law was her knowledge, but she herself acquired it over thousands of years.

Any civilization has its own characteristics. The Earth we came from is not an ordinary Earth, but as Gaia Force had this ability, Zion’s desire for knowledge is comparable to sexual desire and appetite.

“I was originally reluctant to use this technology due to the nature of my race, so I couldn’t really listen to it…”

“Ah, originally, Hanon and Youngja are opposites. I guess the better match is the fragment.”

The compatibility between Yeongja, who responds to emotions, and Hanon, who lacks emotions, is terribly bad. Horizon’s main power source, Solid Reactor, is a technique that uses spirits, but it’s not a technique that only uses spirits, so it’s used. In general, Hanon’s physical law is better.

No matter how destroyed this technology is, it’s based on spirit elements… As for Shion, even if she tries to find something, there will be limits.

“But with a little wiretapping, we got some information.”

“What?”

“First of all, the mad dogs that brought us here are the ones that settled near the destination we were supposed to go to.”

“Ah, there must be trouble.

“And that they’ve grown relatively recently.”

“Hmm……”

“And lastly, although the mad dogs are quite large and dominate the water source, they are surprisingly quiet, so they are being controlled in their own way.”

“That’s kind of weird.”

“Perhaps the raid on the black market was an attempt to increase the number of troops with reinforcement serum.”

“There’s no way those guys would be like that for nothing. Who’s the head?”

I know the ugly side of humans really, really, really well.

I saw a bastard trying to kill and kidnap the parents of 10-year-old twin sisters in front of my eyes and eat them on the same bed. The way humans fall is even uglier than beasts.

What these guys have in common is that they are out of control. The important thing is that one’s own pleasure, even one’s own life, is important because one can enjoy pleasure only when one is alive.

But you’re controlling those guys?

Although the cover-up was gone at the time the rumors spread, the fact that the city is restrained enough to not issue a subjugation order is proof that it is quite under control. I wouldn’t be able to do something like that….

Who the hell is in control? Quite questionable.

“With the current route, the probability of meeting is much higher than the probability of not meeting, so you can think about meeting later anyway.”

“It’s good to be able to solve it by force.”

I’m pretty excited about what’s going to happen.

*        *    *

The last time in the city, Giyeong, was dinner with the speaker Kiyeong. I wanted to cook, but I decided to just get some ingredients or several before going.

I’ve had enough interest so far, but if rumors spread that I’m good at cooking, I think I’ll try to catch it even if it’s naked. My hunch is that it will be so, so there is a possibility.

“Are you planning to continue down south? It looks like it will be quite a long journey. If necessary, you are always welcome to return.”

No, you’re not coming back?

Dinner went off without a hitch. With the favor of the other side, I found a lot of things, and bought the by-products of sand dragons that we put out on the black market at a price higher than the market price. Ruri only looks at the city bills with a satisfied expression.

Fortunately, it seems that they don’t want to make any more recruiting attempts. He showed that attitude because he knew that the time we stayed here was only about a day at the most, and that Shion and I were not in a simple master-servant relationship.

But that’s how it is on the surface. There was a high possibility that they would continue to pursue us from behind.

“It’s only been one day, but I’ve been treated like a nobleman. Great, even when I was a hunting dog, I never dreamed of entering a nobleman’s mansion, but it was luxurious.”

“I’ve filled the Drum Lake battery with full land, and I can go straight for a while. I’ll be able to reach my destination in a month at the longest.”

“It’s too far”

“It can’t be done. The cradle is a place made by finding a terrain that can last as long as possible. However, there is a big guarantee that there will be something left, so there is hope.”

“It’s just hope”

There is still only hope. It remains to be seen whether that will really be hope or hope torture.

We continued heading south. I don’t know if it’s like taking the South Pole, but it looks like there will be facilities in the Antarctic as it has achieved a unified government during the Ling Empire.

“Come to think of it, how far did the Anima Empire develop at that time? Did you do some space development?”

“Space development. You’re talking quite intellectually for a person here.”

“So how far have you been?”

“Umm, exactly right before that. I figured out the concept of the dimension around the time we started building the lunar abode in earnest. Thanks to that, even the scholars were divided here and there, and it was in a state of moderate heat.”

“……Isn’t your TV one step ahead?”

“Tiv?”

“No, there are guys like that”

It is said that right before space development, he was contemplating whether to discover the concept of dimension and develop dimension or space development.

In fact, both have their advantages. In spite of being able to use warp navigation technology in Tiv Civilization, the reason why they used dimension gate technology is because no matter how fast you can go, if you go farther than that, it will eventually take time.

Even if you go beyond the dimension, you need a warp technology if you can’t specify the coordinates in the end, and even if the warp technology develops, you need a dimension gate technology that can interfere with the dimension in real time to pioneer a star beyond that hundreds of millions of light years.

In fact, it’s not strange which one develops first. Tiv civilization only developed both to some extent.

“What would you do if you found a planet inhabited by intelligent beings other than you?”

“Well… That would depend on the situation. Their level of civilization? Is it the level of uncivilized savages?”

“If that’s enough?”

“If you’re checking to see if there’s room for reformation, you should accept it as a subject of the Empire.”

“If not?”

“What if it’s developed enough to send a spacecraft to the moon?”

“At that level, they will try to interact with each other. The difference between the Lyeong Empire and the Empire is quite large, but isn’t the fact that they have built their own civilization?”

“Hmm…”

I’ve thought about it before, but Baekhee is a ruler I like quite a bit. Wouldn’t she have been a pretty good civilization if she had inherited the Anima Empire properly?

Out of all the rulers in the world, how many do you think are nice but firm and flexible? Even if it’s just one handful, you’d think it’s a lot.

“I wish I could see the civilization you rule.”

“Maybe if you find a cradle. You can build a new one based on the facilities and resources there.”

“Hey, Ruri. Is that okay?”

“As long as I make a paradise, that’s enough. If I can live in a world where I don’t have to worry about water and food, I’m welcome in an empire or something.”

“It’s nice to be cool”

The facility of the cradle, and Baek-hee, a direct descendant of the Lyeong Empire.

It is a situation that has taken care of both practicality and justification. If we only reach the cradle and find it, we can finish this journey.

………But one question remains.

“Why did the Anima Empire fall?”

“………”

When I poked Baek-hee in the sore spot, she fell silent. She seems sad, but on the other hand, she also wants to know why.

There is one thing I can be sure of right now. The Anima Empire perished when it polluted the environment through abuse of ectoplasmic manufacturing technology. Regardless of whether it is a direct or indirect reason.

“Come to think of it, before you went into the cryopreservation system, did you say that the people panicked and threatened you?”

“Yes, and my maternal grandfather is to protect me…”

“There’s something blank. No matter how urgent you are, you don’t know the reason for the panic?”

“……..Uh?”

“The panic didn’t happen in a short time, and there must have been a reason for it, but isn’t it a bit strange that you, and no one else, knows about it?”

People fall into panic only when they feel fear or fear and cross that line. People won’t go crazy just because they watched a horror movie.

And for good reason, at least it takes time. At least, it took a certain amount of time before the society started to laugh at shocking announcements such as ‘Tomorrow a meteorite will fall and the earth will be destroyed!’.

“Come to think of it, something is strange, ugh…”

“Are you okay?”

“I have a little headache. Like I have to remember something but I can’t…”

“I think it’s your memories that have gaps.”

I don’t know if the shock at the time was so great that I lost my memory, or I wanted to lose it myself, but at least there seemed to be room to go deeper.

It would be difficult to do it right now, so I turned the fire on.

“Then tell me one more thing. Ectoplasm… No, how big was the contamination from the manufacturing process of spirit matter?”

“That……”

“What about post-processing? How did you deal with the contaminants generated there?”

“…I understand that it was basically disposed of in an airtight container.”

“When I see you say ‘I know’, it feels similar to the politician’s characteristic avoidance of responsibility, but I’m not mistaken, right?”

“You did the same last time, so surprisingly you know this well.”

“I see so many people like that.

Baekhee sighed and then reluctantly nodded his head. It’s easy and fun to commit any person, but cleaning up after work is difficult and I don’t want to do it.

Even if nuclear power is used for power generation, it is difficult to dispose of the waste. It’s better to keep it in a container and put it in a facility, but sometimes it’s secretly thrown away.

No matter how developed the Anima Empire is and how many rulers there are, it is impossible to keep an eye on each and every one of them. Maybe even if there were regulations, there would have been enough to throw away, or rather, there is a possibility that there were much more to just throw away than to dispose of properly.

“You can make things that can last for a long time, like the cryopreservation device you were using, but on the contrary, the by-products last a long time. Contaminants won’t be purified after hundreds of years.”

“………”

“It’s your responsibility to think”

There is nothing to do with a country that has already been destroyed, but it is different for those who want to rebuild it. I reminded Baekhee of that.

But one question remains.

Radioactive waste has a long half-life of tens of thousands of years, but where did the pollutants from the ectoplasm manufacturing process go?