, Meikal Garnad. The only man who is capable of processing a garnak’s horn, and Gorgon’s greatest blacksmith.‘Someone like that is making this kind of expression.’
A young soul like Renius still remembered the name of the expression on the old man’s face. It was hope.
-Life improved.
Those who lived in Chaos for more than 100 years did not use the term ‘life’ easily, as that word was a contradiction. But Meikal was using it.
Renius leafed through his memo, and found the headline he had written when he first got this topic.
[Lord of Gorgon; the savior of Chaos? Or the calamity?]
He became suddenly self-conscious, and silently erased the headline. When he lifted his head again, he looked outside, at the streets, and at the smiling residents. He continued to look at them, before he felt a sudden indescribable tingling at the tip of his hand.
Something that is neither a miracle, nor a calamity. Something that was both. Something that they did not know where it would head to, but rather it defined their potential to move towards something.
And Renius wrote. He wrote his enlightenment on his notepad.
[The people of Gorgon started to ‘live’.]
Despite being the author of that sentence, Renius did not completely comprehend what it meant. But he nevertheless felt the importance of it, and pocketed it carefully.
Perhaps this might become big.
-Booom!
What made Renius jump as he was contemplating his newfound journalism power was an explosion from the palace. Smoke was billowing out.
“What happened?” He asked Meikal.
Meikal shrugged,
“It happened often these days.”
Explosions of that size should have been made by a higher order adapter. Renius’s mind went through various scenarios in a fraction of a second.
‘Wait, there are now six bases of the sects.’
He had forgotten because it had been unusually quiet. Up to three sects in a single Fort without a battle for power every day would have been a wonder. And Gorgon had six of the ten sects.
“Is a war going on between the sects?”
“War?”
Meikal chuckled.
“I guess you could call that a war.”
He laughed as he watched the five distant figures soaring the air.
“Five today, eh.”
*
Inside Gorgon palace’s training hall.
The Arks with mangled faces were arranged neatly, kneeling, in front of Jae Hwan.
“Weak.”
They s.h.i.+vered from the disgrace. They had never been spoken to like that.
“Were you playing around the past centuries?”
They wanted to retort, but they had no excuses. Except for s.h.i.+n, the second Ark, the rest of the five had just been utterly defeated as a group.
Yun Yong, the weakest among the five, trembled recalling Jae Hwan’s thrust.
Jae Hwan opened his mouth with a cold face.
“Yun Yong. All you"re good at is running away.”
Yun Yong hung his head.
Jae Hwan continued.
“Kang Hw.a.n.g you"re too slow.”
Kang Hw.a.n.g twitched his lips.
“Ja Guk Lyung is fast but her stamina is abysmal.”
She bit her lips.
“Jae Gal Myong, you take too long to think.”
Jae Gal Myong scratched his cheeks.
“Kaiman you’re okay. You don’t have any particular weakness. You don"t have any fortes too.”
After Kaiman nodded in acceptance, Jae Hwan looked at all of them and said,
“And all of you have the one single glaring problem. Do you know what it is?”
The Arks tensed and waited.
“You’re all weak as s.h.i.+t but your filthy pride is uselessly high.”
The Ark’s faces twisted pitifully.
And there were two old men watching this slander from the corner. It was s.h.i.+n and Chung Heo.
“How accurate.”
“Thanks to him, I feel all fresh and fluffy.”
Chung Heo snickered. He had always wanted to say something like that to their faces.
“Those gramps are also weak for living a thousand years.”
Chung Heo froze.
“..... s.h.i.+t.”
But Jae Hwan was right. To his standards, and even to Chung Heo’s standards, the current expedition was way too weak.
‘They are way lacking than 900 years ago.’
The ten sects 900 years ago were all of at least 7th order adapters. The top five were 8th order, and the first seat was a 9th order adapter. The leader of the past expedition, Myullock, had even surpa.s.sed the 9th order, but it had been a difficult expedition regardless. That was just how the strong the monsters in Chaos are.
“You remember that trip we had recently?”
“Yes.”
Yun Yong replied. Jae Hwan was talking about the trip to the north branch of Forbidden Heavens four days ago.
“Half of you got critically injured and some of you almost died.”
Four days ago, confronting the Forbidden Heavens, the Arks were shocked by their strength. Yun Yong, a 6th order adapter, almost died, and Jae Gal Myong was wounded badly. They did not attack Forbidden Heaven’s main base at Manticore, but a small office branch in the north, and had taken such casualties.
Neglected Phantom.
A killing machine possessing the power of a deceased and the sentience of a human. The Arks could understand how Forbidden Heavens managed to overthrow a Fort by themselves.Each phantom was at least as strong as a 6th order adapter. With dozens of hundreds of them, seizing a fort would not have been hard. There was a rumor the west Fort Garuda was currently fighting an army of these weapons.
“You can’t even fight a single sect properly. How could we go on an ‘expedition’?”
Jae Hwan’s reproach made the Ark’s stare at the floor.
“From today on for a week, I will implement a special training program for you guys.”
Special program?
They understood that they had to get stronger, but doubted the timeframe of the training. How would they get stronger in a week?
Jae Gal Myong raised his hand.
“Lord, can I ask you a question?”
He was ashamed of raising his hand like a child when he was over 400 years old.
“Go ahead.”
“Everyone in this room is an adapter.”
“I know.”
“Do you know that the order of an adapter is not something you can climb in so short a time?”
Order of an adapter went from 1 to 15.
“It depends on each person’s talent, but normally, a non-adapter takes about 10 years to transform into a first order adapter. It takes first orders 20 years to become second order, 40 years to become 3rd order, and 80 years for them to become 4th order. Majority of humans die before living that long.”
It takes double the time to develop into the next stage. That was why 4th order adapters were called ‘high order adapters’. There are not many who can survive as an ‘adapter’ for 150 years.
“But humans are said to face their limits at the 7th order. That’s where the phrase ‘the boundary of humans is the 7’ comes from.”
The ten Arks are considered the representation of humans of Chaos, because they could reach the 6th or 7th order faster than most. But the Arks knew that this was their peak.
Jae Hwan asked,
“So?”
“I have heard that you are an awakened.”
“I don’t know for sure, but this world calls me that.”
“There is not much that I know about awakeneds. Actually there is not much anyone knows about awakeneds.”
Unlike their knowledge of adapters which are plenty, their knowledge of awakeneds are short. No one knew how one could ‘awaken’, nor what awakeneds truly were.
“What I know of them are from rumors only. I heard that they do not ‘awaken’ through continuous practice, but a sudden enlightenment.”
Jae Hwan recalled the first time he had obtained [Selflessness]. It was true that he had faced some kind of enlightenment, when he threw away the system and became a ‘self’. At the end, what brought his [Selflessness] was an explosion of emotions. A burst of energy that emptied him and filled him up again.
“What do you want to tell me?”
“The lord knows we cannot get stronger like that.”
“Yes.”
Jae Gal Myong’s eyes shone.
“Then do you intend to make us into an awakened?”