outer space several light years away from Earth.
cool-
There was an unusual aura in the dark vacuum.
But there was no form.
In the universe, there are things that have energy even though they have no form, such as light, heat, and electromagnetic waves.
However, this bizarre aura was a different dimension from those things.
Being intangible but possessing an ego,
It was a demon from another universe, the demon king Laves.
hmm-
Laves was motionless, deep in contemplation.
‘How to get out of here.’
The Demon King considered this place to be inside the barrier created by Alan’s magic.
It was because he was caught in Alan’s spell and moved here.
Also, there was no mana at all in the surrounding space.
The demon lord’s mana absorption power was incomparably stronger than that of human wizards.
However, there was no mana around, so the mana did not recover at all.
Laves had exhausted most of his strength in the fight against Alan and had only a small amount of mana left.
‘I could fall asleep forever if I’m fussy.’
The devil never dies
However, if you use up all your mana, you will fall into a long hibernation.
Laves has been put into hibernation several times by powerful warriors who are born every few thousand years.
At that time, humans cheered and said that the demon king had died.
Then, when Laves woke up from hibernation, he made a fuss about the resurrection of the demon king.
From Labeth’s point of view, hibernation wasn’t such a bad thing.
After sleeping for thousands of years, when he woke up, his mana was restored from all abnormal conditions.
And worm-like humans were building a new civilization by moving around.
Then, the demon king destroyed human civilization again like destroying an ant nest.
However, if you fall into hibernation in this place where there is no mana, you may not be able to wake up forever because you will not be able to recover your mana.
‘Alan, did you present the true end to me?’
It was then.
[Demon King.]
He heard someone calling for him.
It was not sound transmitted through air as a medium.
It was a sound that came through Laveth’s inner world.
‘Who is calling me?’
However, there was no existence other than himself within Alan’s barrier.
‘Is there a way out?’
I thought it might be the sound coming through the exit.
If so, you might be able to get out of here.
hiss-
Laves started moving towards the sound.
The demon king’s movement speed gradually increased.
Since Laves had no form, it also had no mass.
Without mass, a very small amount of mana could be used to move at the fastest speed allowed in the realm.
hiss-
Laves flew at the speed of light toward the being that called her.
***
spooky-
While talking to the manager, I suddenly got goosebumps.
It felt like something bad was coming.
“Why are you like that, boss?”
“No, just say what you said. How are you going to find the elixir extraction facility?”
Just as Koreans eat rice as their staple food,
I have to live my life absorbing gold.
So if you live an infinite life, you also need an infinite amount of gold.
I will forever pursue gold.
‘But now I need the Elixir more urgently.’
The premonition that Laves would suddenly attack the Earth continued to circulate in my head.
From noble mtl dot com
If you fight him, the gold itself won’t help you at all.
He needed an elixir to use as fuel for magic.
Extracting the elixir from gold takes a long time.
So, I had to obtain a large amount of the elixir that had already been extracted.
If you find another elixir extraction facility on Earth, you can get both the elixir and gold.
“It’s hard to explain here, so I’ll go to ‘Factory 2’ and tell you.”
I closed the shop and left work with the golems.
When I got home, I went into the basement and pulled out the gate.
Then, along with the golems, he passed through the gate and entered the underground space of Mongolia.
There was a strong scent of grass that could only be smelled in the forest.
With the grass and trees growing densely, it was natural.
We decided to call this place ‘Factory 2’.
The Elixir extraction factory in the inner world is the first factory, and this is the second factory.
It was very dark around.
Day and night were set similarly to Seoul, so it was also night here.
“Would you like to brighten up the lights a bit?”
“Yes, boss.”
The manager reached for the ceiling.
Chow ah-
Then, a round light source appeared like a full moon.
The soft white light was like the real moon.
The manager placed small light sources tightly around a large light source.
Then they twinkled like stars.
Originally, in reality, when the moon is bright, the surrounding stars are difficult to see.
But everything looks fine here.
It created a more beautiful atmosphere than the real night sky.
I gave the manager the highest authority to control the system here, so I can control the environment and functions here through her at any time.
In short, the manager is not only the manager of the 1st factory, but also the factory manager of the 2nd factory.
Shuung-
The golems led and flew towards the building in the center.
Then we went inside the building.
The elixir in the center caught my eye.
It was divided into 100 spheres, but since one has already been absorbed, there are now 99 left.
The manager started explaining how to find another elixir extraction facility.
“The answer lies in the elixir’s storage capacity. Unlike Factory 1, this facility cannot store infinite amounts of Elixir.”
Storehouses in the inner world can hold an infinite amount of gold and elixir.
If the purity is only 99.99, I can absorb 100 million tons or 1 trillion tons of gold and store it in storage.
Elixir was the same.
Any quantity can be stored in a warehouse.
But this building is different.
Elixir storage is limited.
“Since we only extracted the elixir and didn’t use it, it reached saturation a long time ago. But the extraction did not stop and continued. There is no function to automatically stop brewing.”
The washing machine automatically stops when the water is full.
I knew that the artificial intelligence of the system here was inferior to that of home appliances, but it was worse than I thought.
“I don’t think whoever designed this place had in mind that the elixir could be saturated. I guess I didn’t think that I would probably be leaving the building for 800 years.”
The purpose of this facility is to extract the elixir and supply it to the desired location.
However, the builder only operated this facility and never used the elixir.
“If the saturation of the Elixir continues, the building will not be able to withstand the internal pressure and will collapse. Calculation from saturation amount and extraction rate has already reached saturation 200 years ago.”
“But is the building still intact?”
“The buildings here contain magic that defends itself independently of the system. The magic continued to consume the elixir as much as it exceeded its saturation.”
If there is an overabundance of something, the easiest way to solve the problem is to relieve it.
The building itself stopped collapsing by consuming the elixir.
“So that’s what happened to Lake Baikal?”
The manager nodded.
This means that there is a high probability that some or all of the strange phenomena that have occurred on Lake Baikal have been caused by magic.
In order to prevent the building from collapsing, magic was activated at regular intervals to consume the elixir.
“That means.”
“We need to investigate other anomalies on Earth.”
If there is another elixir extraction facility somewhere and the elixir is saturated, that too will consume the elixir to prevent collapse.
Then, of course, strange phenomena are occurring nearby.
So if you explore such a place, you can find another elixir extraction facility.
***
humming-
I drove to Hongcheon.
I had Kim Seo-yeon collect information floating around the Internet and infer the area where the elixir extraction facility might be hidden.
Too many anomalies happen in the world.
Some of them are real anomalies that cannot be explained by science, and many are faked by someone who wants to draw people’s attention.
While she was trying to figure out the truth of the anomaly and selecting the exploration sites, I had other very important things to do.
It’s just manipulating my past photos.
These days, magazines here and there often contact me to ask for an interview.
As ＜Alchemy＞ went up and down in people’s mouths, I, the president, also became the subject of people’s attention.
It wasn’t that it garnered a lot of attention.
Most of the places that offer interviews are non-mainstream magazines.
For now, I’m rejecting all of them, but it’s not something that can only be avoided by continuing to avoid them.
In fact, even if Alchemy becomes the world’s top jewelry brand, I will never become as famous as a celebrity.
Because the jewelry business itself is not a field that receives a lot of attention.
Unless I promote myself through social media, the chances of becoming a celebrity are extremely low.
But when my past photos are released, the story changes.
A little fame plus plastic surgery controversy will have a booster effect.
Maybe my name will be ranked #1 in real-time search terms.
Because the public’s attention is more easily focused on the downfall and shame of someone than on someone’s success.
‘I just need to be careful with the pictures.’
Having no friends since childhood helped me at times like this.
If you gather all your alumni from elementary school to university and ask ‘Do you know Minhyuk Choi?’, almost 100% will answer ‘Who is that?’
Throughout my school days, I walked the path of a true outsider.
If I had been bullied by the Iljins, I might have been in their memory.
However, whether it was because I was lucky or because my presence was really zero, I wasn’t even allowed to have memories of being bullied.
So there is no need to manipulate someone’s memory to distort the past me.
I just had to fix the picture.
Fortunately, since I was little, I had an inferiority complex in appearance, so I didn’t take pictures well.
Even when we went on a picnic and took a group photo, we deliberately hid behind a tall kid.
But I couldn’t help it as much as the graduation picture.
I didn’t take any college graduation photos at all, but my old face remained in my elementary, middle and high school yearbooks.
Kim Seo-yeon had finished organizing all the graduation albums on the Internet.
Kim Seo-yeon modified my original face in the yearbook to be similar to my current appearance.
Then, I found all the album files stored on the websites of the schools I graduated from, alumni cafes, and personal web hard drives, and replaced them with the files she had edited.
So what I’m going to do is replace the offline picture.
‘It’s been a while here.’
humming-
I got off the highway and entered Hongcheon-eup.
I pulled into a public parking lot and headed to the neighborhood where I lived as a kid.
As I walked across the town, familiar scenery came in and old memories shimmered.
It was then.
Something completely unexpected and impossible happened.
“Hey, Minhyuk! Choi Minhyuk!”
Someone came calling my name.