Chapter 31. A Time-limited Life, Part I
Translator: Khan
Editor: RED
1.
In the empty plain, where only huge stones were gathered, there was a sudden influx of uninvited people.
“Boss!” They were noisy, like most uninvited guests.
“I’ll definitely secure the Mayan Calendar.”
At that moment, the stones began to emit turquoise light, high up in the sky! The light really soared to the sky, even to the moon above the sky, and disappeared intensely after a moment. At the same time, the men in the light were gone.
A man, now a lonely uninvited visitor, looked at the scene with mixed eyes.
“Goddamn it, they’ve already moved!” He could hear a voice, and the voice came far from.
“Quick! Go after them! We must reach there before midnight!”
The voice came close at a startling pace. When the voice came, the man hid under the shadow of the giant stone, between the darkness and the darkness.
Then a new crowd of uninvited guests appeared. There was no sense of unity among the people who appeared. There were various colors, various races, various nationalities, and various cultures.
Someone was wearing steel armor that would have been worn in medieval Europe, and someone was wearing armor that would have been worn in Japan during the Sengoku period.
The most noticeable of them was the man with the brown skin, dressed in a suit that the ancient Egyptian pharaohs would wear.
“Secure Stonehenge!” the man with the brown skin shouted.
At the sound, the disparate crowd, who had to be called all different, began to run over the Salisbury Plain, in Wiltshire, London. They were men, but there seemed to be nothing rough in their rush, reminiscent of a huge beast.
It was a Sword that moved through the darkness to block such a run.
Rustling! Everyone who was heading toward Stonehenge stopped at the appearance of the Sword, which left only the sound of the wind, and turned one into a headless corpse at once. It wasn’t because one of them died.
“Oh, my God.”
“No way!”
“The Dragon Slayer was left!”
His presence, and killing that person, stopped everyone from racing. The eyes of the unruly were filled with anxiety and fear.
“Is the Dragon Slayer left?”
The only man who did not lose his composure in front of the fear was the man in a pharaoh costume. The man shook the golden cane in his hand. A small light came up over the dark night sky, a light that reminded them of the sun.
The identity of the man in the shadows of the giant Stonehenge was revealed. He was Kim Tae-hoon. He was carrying two sheaths on his back, and he overwhelmed them in many ways.
“I didn’t know you were left.”
In addition, Kim’s skin, the skin that reminded them of the scales of dragons, gave them a sense of fear beyond the pressure.
“… the rumor was true, the rumor that you had been cursed by the dragon.”
He looked a monster that could no longer be called a person, and it gave them a sense of fear that only such a monster could give.
“The rumor is that there’s not much time left before we die.”
But the man in the Pharaoh’s dress was not afraid of the fear, and he said, his chest straight. “My name is Amoon, the Savior who will save this age.”
At the words, Kim’s dry face made a slight smile. He smiled slightly at his words. “Messiah?”
“Yes.”
“I like it.” At that moment, Kim hit the stone of Stonehenge, a giant stone which was close to him with his black fist.
Boom! The giant stone was shattered with the loud noise.
“Crazy!” “My God!” The sight frightened the people. It was worth it.
Who wouldn’t be surprised to see a historical legacy of mankind, which had endured for thousands of years, now become an irrevocable pile of rubble?
The fact was amazing, and the sight of the stone being smashed into pieces at one blow was amazing, too. But the surprise was not the end there.
“What?” “Oh, damn!” The broken stones began to float and immediately flew toward people. “Get out of here!”
Thump! The world’s most expensive stone-throwing had begun.
Amid the stone-throwing, Amoon was angry. “You!”
It was none other than the huge golden coffin on his back that reacted to the anger.
The Coffin of Pharaoh!
It began to react to the fury of the Amoon. A mummy appeared from the open door. The appearance of the mummy changed the air quality around it.
Kim’s eyes also changed. His black-skinned pupil began to split in half like the eyes of a dragon. He took out the Hahoetal, which was hung on his waist.
2.
When Kim opened his eyes, the first thing he welcomed was the darkness. Inside the room, where there was not a single light on. He watched the darkness for a moment in a daze.
After a while, he turned on the light on the desk in front of the chair where he was sitting. The battery-powered lamp began to emit small lights in the dark.
“Come in.”
Jang Sung-hoon came into the tiny lighted room. “How did you die this time?”
Kim answered the question quietly. “Mummy.”
“Yes?”
“I died from a mummy.”
“Mummy? An Egyptian mummy?” Jang, who did not understand exactly and looked surprised, took out the coffee he had prepared and set it on Kim’s desk.
Kim immediately drank some coffee. The smell of cold-brewed coffee cooled his mind.
“Was there a pharaoh?”
The answer did not come out immediately. Kim drank his coffee more slowly, organized things in his mind, and then spoke, “His costume was a pharaoh. His name was Amoon.”
“Didn’t you just have a silly dream?”
“I hope so.”
Kim then enjoyed the coffee and slowly told him what he saw and heard: starting with the fact that the stage of the battle was Stonehenge in England, the fact of Jang Sung-hoon’s disappearance through the Stonehenge, and the fact that various Awakeners had gathered and he fought with an Egyptian man who claimed to be Amoon.
“The Mayan Calendar…”
In addition, Kim also said that Jang had mentioned the Mayan Calendar before he disappeared through Stonehenge.
“Do you know anything about the Mayan calendar?”
“There won’t be much difference between what I know and what the boss knows.”
“Then it’s not a good thing.”
“At least it won’t say the anniversary date that humans can celebrate. Maybe the date of the End is written in it.”
Jang trembled at the eerie word ‘the End’. They were already facing an end-to-end situation, and the real End was coming? It was something he didn’t want to think about.
“Where are the ruins of the Mayan Civilization?” But Kim had to think. He could not pass on the clues he had obtained in exchange for death.
“It’s in Mexico.”
“Are there any other historical sites of the ancient civilization?”
“Let’s see… some of them had built the Aztec Civilization in central Mexico after the Mayan Civilization collapsed… the Inca civilization was on the Chilean side. I don’t know the details because I did not major in them. For reference, the Lines and Geoglyphs of Nazca were there. I wonder what it looks like now.”
Jang Sung-hoon sighed deeply. “What would I do if I told you? All of them must have been taken by the U.S.” Kim had coffee at the words, ‘the United States’. Jang also began to worry after biting his lips.
“There’s nothing left to the boss this time,” Jang grumbled in worry.
“You have been clear about what you should do before you die, but this time you just left a clue, like when you first died.”
After recognizing the Golden Glass of Napoleon, Kim had always delivered a message to himself to see before he died. He left a wish list, a bucket list, but this death didn’t.
Kim fought against the enemy until his death. He didn’t tell himself what he needed to do or what he did wrong in the process. Of course, he might have talked, but it might not have been delivered.
Kim could not fix the moment of death that he had seen by the Golden Glass of Napoleon.
Therefore, there was no answer for Jang to give at this moment. This was the reason for the grumbling.
“What are you going to do, boss?”
“I’ll move on as it is.”
“If you move on as it is…”
“The fact that we were in England is clear that we have worked very hard outside of Korea. In other words, we can get there if we go as it is.”
“I suppose so.”
“Then, once we have settled down Korea as planned, we will attack Taiwan. Of course, what we need to do right now is to stop the assassination of Colonel Lim Hyun-joon.”
At the words, Jang nodded. “Well, we’d better deal with it first and think about the next move.” He also put his mind in order.
‘It’s good to think about our future. It’s not meaningful to live without worries. However, we should not swallow the worries and forget the reality facing us right now.’
For the Mac Guild and Kim Tae-hoon, it was not easy to survive in Korea, let alone the world.
“So, will Colonel Lim Hyun-joon really visit the boss?”
The dice was already thrown. Kim delivered a very direct message to Colonel Lim Hyun-joon, Come to me if you don’t want to die.
“If he wants to live, he’ll come.” Kim threw the ball straight to the head of Lim Hyun-joon.
“To be honest, I thought it was too strong. Colonel Lim Hyun-joon might ignore the boss, right?” That was why Jang was concerned that there might be an adverse effect at this part.
“More than anything, the Ottuki Unit, where Colonel Lim Hyun-joon is currently stationed, has enough power for the Capital Defense Command to keep an eye on. They won’t feel threatened at all…”
Most of all, from the point of view of Jang, Colonel Lim did have few factors to feel threatened.
Wasn’t it the warlord with the power which the Capital Defense Command feared?
“The biggest problem with the frontline Units is that self-sufficiency is virtually impossible.” Of course, Kim’s perspective was different. “Now, half a year after the appearance of the monsters, the stockpiles of food and fuel are almost at their bottom.”
“Ah.”
Kim never threw a ball without any purpose. When he threw a ball, he always had a purpose and a reason.
“That’s why the Capital Defense Command is not moving quickly over to the 8th Division, which is almost like an eyesore. From the standpoint of the Capital Defense Command, if they keep the 8th Mechanized Infantry Division on the front line and the Gangwon region, they will be completely starved. Above all, in summer, food decreases faster.”
“In summer?”
“It freezes in winter, but it melts in summer. The frozen and preserved food will start to decay.”
Kim Tae-hoon saw that the situation of the 8th Division was not so good.
The front line was the way it was. The moment supply was not made, hell began. It was not any different from Colonel Lim Hyun-joon’s 8th Division.
From their point of view, they could not easily come down to the south because of the existence of the Capital Defense Command.
“So, the winter of war is harsh, but summer is terrible, and if it gets worse, they’ll get deserters, because the Capital Defense Command is a government force, anyway.”
Jang nodded. “Boss, you’re great.”
At the appearance of Jang, Kim had coffee without words. A message he sent to himself in his dream, and a scene that he did not tell Jang, came to mind.
‘The curse of dragons…’ It was not the mummy that killed him.
‘I was sentenced to a time-limited life.’ The curse of the dragon, which was achieved with the power of the dragon, was the cause of his death.
‘Yes, power comes with a price.’ At the same time, it was also a price for the mighty power that was gained by eating the monster stone of the dragon.
So, Kim did not feel the sadness at the fact, but he did not have a big question or deny it. He did not turn away from it.
‘I need that power.’ If it was not for that power, Kim would have died earlier.
Kim swallowed his coffee after the worry.
Three days later, Colonel Lim Hyun-joon came to him.
