Reset Life with Infinite Talents - Chapter 101

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This chapter was translated by Lunox Team. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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Infinite Talent Reset Life Episode 101

 

 

29. America’s Emperor and His Subjects

 

 

Bubble bubble!

White coral and red sea anemones sway.

If you relax your body and stay still, you sway along with them.

Two fish swimming around the anemones, sharing their love.

A lobster that sneaks out and quickly hides.

The beautiful, clear blue underwater world.

A sharp-edged stone spear flies powerfully toward a school of fish passing beneath his belly.

Splash!

The school of fish scatters in surprise.

The large fish pierced by the spear bleeds.

The owner of the stone spear shoots up to the surface.

“Puhaaa!”

As he exhales the breath he’d been holding and lifts the spear with the fish on it, his friends on the shore burst into cheers.

“Johann! Johann! Johann!”

Grinning, Johann threads the rope he found in front of the cave through the still-struggling fish’s gills, wraps it around his waist, and goes back into the ocean.

‘Should I try catching a lobster this time?’

The lobster he saw earlier was about the size of a forearm.

Opening his eyes underwater doesn’t hurt.

Even holding his breath feels as peaceful as on land.

His body also moves toward his target, going against and riding the ocean currents.

Even without fins, Johann’s body glides smoothly forward.

As if he’s become one with the sea.

As if he’s become a merman from a movie.

‘Sama Bajau.’

The sea nomads, the Bajau people.

Maximum diving depth about 78 yards (70m), maximum diving time 13 minutes.

Also known as the last sea people.

But this is only by modern standards.

Their ancestors from much more distant times dove deeper into the sea for longer periods to feed their families and tribes.

The person Johann is absorbing now is one such person.

The First Bajau.

The ancestor who made the Bajau people be called the Bajau people.

There were people before him who led the Bajau people to the sea, but it was the First Bajau that Johann is now absorbing who made the Bajau people be called the Bajau people.

‘Found them!’

Even two of them.

Johann flexed his waist and began diving down below the surface.

 

A small beach in front of the coastal cave where sunlight pours down.

“Boys! Go collect wood!”

“Paper, plastic! Bring anything that can burn!”

The girls command the boys who tried to catch fish like Johann but only ended up swallowing seawater.

The boys who eventually gave up after failing dozens of times despite Johann’s careful teaching.

“Bring stones too! So the fire doesn’t spread around!”

And they need to bring flat, large stones to use as frying pans.

“What about fire? Wait for Johann?”

“No. We have a lighter, don’t we?”

“…Why do you have a lighter?”

The boys narrow their eyes as cigarettes come to mind, but the girls stick out their chests.

“All women naturally carry them!”

“Seriously, men just don’t understand women at all.”

‘Is, is that so?’

Maybe women carry lighters even when they’re young.

‘I don’t think that’s right…’

But they’re so confident that arguing would probably earn him a lecture.

The men, outmatched in verbal sparring, grumble but run outside. Soon, Emily, who had to take basic scouting classes at Edward Sherman’s insistence, arranges the stones the men collected in a donut shape and builds a campfire with the combustible materials piled in the center.

Fire blazing beneath the flat stone.

“Ooh, female warrior.”

“Amazon!”

“This is killing me, seriously!”

Splash! Splash!

“Who are you trying to kill? Flash?”

“Johann!”

“Whoa!”

On the rope Johann holds out, eight fish larger than a forearm are strung up. And in his other hand, he’s holding four lobsters.

“Johann! Wait, wait! Hold that up!”

As Flash picks up the camera Johann brought, Johann quickly holds up the fish and lobsters next to his face.

Click!

“Got it!”

It didn’t come out great because of the backlighting, but everything that should show up did.

“Us too! Us too!”

After taking everyone’s photos in front of the sunlight, Johann looks curiously at the campfire spewing black smoke.

“You made a fire?”

How did these kids manage to make a fire?

Did Emily, who takes basic scouting classes, make it?

Flash approaches the puzzled Johann.

“Johann, they all say they have lighters.”

“…Ah, right. Almost all women would have them.”

“Really? Why?”

“There must be something among makeup tools that needs a lighter?”

That’s how he remembers it.

“…They put something heated by fire on their faces?”

Johann glances at the bewildered Flash and tosses the lobsters right next to the campfire.

And places the fish on the flat stone.

The fish barely all fit on the stone plate.

“Now we just need to wait about 30 minutes.”

“That’s long!”

“If we swim, it’ll pass quickly, right?”

“Oh?!”

The boys who had just exerted themselves immediately jumped into the seawater, and Johann looked at the girls and Mason who were staying put.

“Swimming in the ocean is a bit…”

“Let’s just eat everything first. That way we can go straight back to camp and wash up.”

“Then let’s do that.”

“Hm? Where are you going?”

Instead of answering, Johann points toward the interior of the coastal cave.

I had looked around earlier, but there was nothing special about the coastal cave.

However, there’s something different from earlier.

The sun has tilted more than before, so sunlight is shining all the way to the end of the cave.

“Anyone want to take photos?”

“…Me!”

“Me too!”

Friends who quickly got up ran into the cave.

 

“It really looks like it collapsed.”

Unlike the sides, the end of the cave where large rocks are piled up as if a landslide had occurred.

“How did this place collapse?”

“California is part of the Ring of Fire.”

“Ring of Fire?”

“The original name is the Circum-Pacific Belt…”

It refers to a region around the Pacific Ocean where earthquakes and volcanic activity are frequent at plate boundaries. The Pacific Plate collides or overlaps with other plates, creating subduction zones, collision zones, and fault zones where crustal activity is active.

Lucy shows off the geography knowledge she learned through tutoring.

“To put it simply, think of it as a region where earthquakes and volcanic eruptions happen frequently, Johann.”

“I see.”

This is new knowledge.

“But it’s strange. Only this exact spot collapsed.”

There isn’t even a crack on the cave’s side walls, but only the inner end of the cave has collapsed.

“In movies, there’s always treasure hidden beyond places like this…”

And they collapsed the wall to hide that treasure.

Johann looks at Mason, who’s getting excited with sparkling eyes.

“Treasure?”

“Yeah! Haven’t you seen movies like Pirates of the Caribbean or Indiana Jones?”

I haven’t.

“Oh, I have seen Indiana Jones.”

A movie series about the adventures of archaeologist Henry Walton Jones Jr., who searches for ancient treasures hidden around the world.

‘I found treasure because of that movie…’

Johann had once accessed someone who was a huge fan of Indiana Jones.

80 percent of the locations recorded in the leather map he had hidden again were written after watching that movie.

“Definitely…”

“R-right?”

Hearing Mason’s words suddenly creates a sense of unease.

‘Treasure…’

Johann looks at the collapsed wall again with interested eyes.

“Ugh, boys really.”

“Let’s go. We’ll get sunburned.”

The girls turned around, but Johann and Mason are absorbed in examining the wall.

“You take that side, I’ll take this side.”

“Okay!”

Johann, separated from Mason, approaches the wall and closes his eyes.

‘Entry.’

“Search. People who came to the hidden coastal cave on the north side of Santa Catalina Island.”

Whooom!

‘Wow.’

Thousands, no, hundreds of thousands of orbs come flying.

That means there are many people who found the coastal cave.

“Search. Between 1492 and 1950.”

From 1492, when the great navigator Christopher Columbus discovered the North American Continent, to when America began to truly become the world’s hegemonic power.

It’s not that Indians didn’t sail, but I can’t think they would have hidden treasure.

Whoong!

Hundreds of thousands of orbs return to their original places.

Only thousands of orbs remain.

“Then is there only one search keyword now?”

Among these, people who hid treasure.

It was the moment Johann was about to speak.

Rumble!

The universe suddenly shakes.

It meant someone was touching him.

Johann clicked his tongue and exited the library.

“Johann! Johann!”

“What?”

“Look at this!”

Mason, who came running, lifts up a fist-sized stone.

“Doesn’t it look just like a gem?”

A black gem that shines brilliantly in the sunlight.

“It’s obsidian.”

“Ooh, this gem is called obsidian?”

“It’s not a gem, it’s glass.”

It’s so common that it’s cheaper than crystal. And its durability is weak, so if you carry around something that sharp and broken, you’ll get hurt.

“If you’re not careful, it could cut to the bone?”

“Eek!”

Startled Mason throws the obsidian back to where he picked it up.

Clack!

“Huh?”

Johann’s head turns.

“That sound just now…”

It echoed inward.

A sound he could notice because he had lived in caves.

Something strange catches his eye.

Johann strides toward the wall where the sound came from.

“J-Johann?”

“…What is this?”

What could this be.

Johann touches the collapsed stones and wonders.

Dust has accumulated, hiding its true appearance, but it can’t escape Johann’s eyes.

“This is all… obsidian?”

The entire collapsed wall isn’t all obsidian.

Only where Johann is looking is piled with obsidian. About the width for two people to stand side by side and about one and a half adults in height.

Only that much area is piled with obsidian.

Johann’s eyes shake as he almost instinctively grabs and pulls at a large chunk of obsidian embedded at chest height.

Swoosh!

The stone comes out easily, making all his effort seem pointless.

That was the moment.

Rumble!

“J-Johann!”

Johann quickly steps back and sees the pile of obsidian collapsing.

Strangely, the stones above don’t think to collapse, and only the pile of obsidian comes tumbling down.

And….

Whoooosh!

‘A smell.’

The smell of rotting wood and metal.

It was a smell that shouldn’t exist in a place like this.

“Could it be?”

Johann stepped over the collapsed pile of obsidian and urgently poked his head into the revealed empty space, his mouth falling wide open.

“…Good Lord.”

An unbelievable sight was spread out inside.

 

* * *

 

Mid-19th century, the Gold Rush era.

There was one emperor in California.

The mad Emperor Norton I, who called himself Emperor of the United States of America and Protector of the Republic of Mexico.

His real name was Joshua Abraham Norton.

He wasn’t a real emperor.

He just went around demanding people call him that.

Norton I lived calling himself emperor and displaying eccentric behavior befitting that title, but there was a certain dignity to these eccentricities that earned him the love of the San Francisco citizens where he resided, making him famous, and later even the city government and council recognized this, making him San Francisco’s mascot.

He wasn’t originally a madman.

Born in London, England, when the Gold Rush era began, he moved to San Francisco, California and invested not in gold but in real estate and general stores, achieving great success.

He actually made more money than the miners.

However, when rice prices skyrocketed due to the Taiping Rebellion in China at the time, he liquidated his assets to invest in rice, but completely went bankrupt due to rice imported from Peru and disappeared.

After several years passed, on September 17, 1859, Norton returned to San Francisco wearing a shabby United States Army military uniform he received from some soldier, in a mentally unstable state, and began proclaiming himself emperor.

This earned him the nicknames mad emperor and fake emperor.

Although he suffered from mental illness, his character itself was very admirable.

Moreover, neighbors and business partners who had known him from before all said the same thing: he was originally a normal person, but went mad due to business failure.

People who heard these circumstances deeply sympathized with him, and this played a part in making him San Francisco’s mascot.

Thus he spent his life wandering the streets until his death.

This is the history known to people.

But….

“No.”

The memories of ‘The Only Emperor, Joshua Abraham Norton’ are somewhat different.

Norton, who left San Francisco due to investment failure and wandered here and there before accidentally discovering a hidden gold mine.

It was a foundation for recovery, but also a threat.

Treasure beyond one’s station calls for blood.

He secretly gathered people to mine.

During this, he read a certain current.

The current of the great war later called the Civil War.

So he prepared.

For war.

“But there was no one who would believe that at the time.”

How many people would trust a loser who fled after investment failure?

It was too sensitive a time to purchase weapons.

So he decided to become a clown.

He approached among the people calling himself emperor.

So that everyone could believe he was emperor, even if mad.

“When the flames of the great war swept even to San Francisco, his capital in his heart, when it brought invasion by foreign powers, he could fight back at any time.”

This is the evidence of that.

Johann and his friends look around the space inside the collapsed wall.

About a hundred chests reaching thigh height, and furnace facilities built further inside.

Right beside them, an opened chest is filled with gold coins bearing Norton I’s portrait.

Gulp!

The saying that words don’t come out when too shocked was really true.

The children, barely swallowing dry saliva, look at the old diary in Johann’s hands.

 

I, Norton I, warn the ruthless plunderers.

This gold shall become military funds to stop foreign powers targeting my territory, the United States of America, so let no one touch it.

 

The testament of America’s first and last emperor.

Johann called the CIA agent he had met at The One Who Became a Star’s safe house.

“Yes, Agent Lynch. Could you please come here?”

Johann’s expression was rigidly hardened.

 

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This chapter was translated by Lunox Team. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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