The Lord Who Levels Up by Devouring - Chapter 370

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

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Chapter 370. Priorities (3)
A caravan of wagons laden with rune iron ore.
They moved quietly along a gentle slope.
Clatter, clatter.
The wheels groaned under the weight distributed across each axle.
Yet the reinforced axles, designed with this burden in mind, advanced without wavering.
Transport as smooth as it could possibly be.
Marzen quietly lifted his gaze.
Across from him sat Kim Fujiwara Bloodhound.
Her beauty defied all logic, no matter how many times I witnessed it.
Yet Marzen found himself astounded not by her appearance, but by something entirely different.
It concerned what had transpired when the rune iron ore was extracted from Frecce.
There had been no difficulty ascending into the sky via the aerial transport equipment.
The problem lay in the landing.
Dispersing the weight of 150,000 tons of rune iron ore was a formidable task.
Multi-stage deceleration systems and such.
Impact-absorbing suspension plates and whatnot.
Landing matrices and the like.
Precision prediction calculations and so forth.
All of it should have been necessary.
By conventional understanding, at least.
But Kim Fujiwara was different.
From the sky, she released magic akin to a Dragon’s Breath.
She adjusted the atmospheric density.
Thereby amplifying air resistance abnormally at the descent point, transforming the entire convection layer into a shock-absorption membrane.
All while laden with rune iron ore that nullified mana itself.
…Impossible.
Even Arcanis Rilsein, the first Magician, could not accomplish that.
So long as one manipulated mana.
And so long as one remained human.
…It was absolutely impossible.
As far as Marzen knew, only one thing could make this possible.
After deliberation, Marzen opened his mouth.
“I ask merely out of curiosity.”
“Please, go ahead.”
“Are you perhaps a Dragon?”
At that, Kim Fujiwara’s expression became peculiar.
As though he were spouting nonsense.
With a vacant, bewildered face and tone, she replied.
“Am I a horse, sir?”
“Yes.”
Marzen grew serious.
“A dragon concealing its identity for amusement… something like that.”
“I was under the impression that the Dragon was hunted.”
Ah, that’s right.
It was.
Everyone across The Continent knew that Adrian Whitewolf had hunted the Dragon…but.
“There could be another dragon, couldn’t there?”
Marzen couldn’t conceive of any other possibility.
* * *
Marzen’s sudden question.
Asking me out of nowhere if I was a dragon.
‘I don’t lack dragon genetic information.’
Still, I’m not a dragon.
Above all.
“There are likely no dragons remaining on this Continent.”
Dragons had effectively gone extinct.
Fafnir, of course.
Even the first dragon, T-Rex, had been hunted down.
Even if any remained, perhaps only winged-dragon variants like Phoenix.
And Phoenix was, how to put it.
An individual whose dragon characteristics had been greatly diluted.
Through death and resurrection.
More precisely, by purifying its own body, it had shed much of the dragon’s genetic traits.
‘Dragon genetics aren’t a favorable trait for survival.’
They only consume excessive energy.
The mind becomes unnecessarily sharp, bringing only fatigue.
So Phoenix became simpler.
In the end, following the law of survival of the fittest, dragons went extinct while Phoenix endured—such was the outcome.
“Is that truly so?”
Marzen simply didn’t know this fact.
“It is. So let’s abandon these baseless suspicions.”
“Hmm.”
Marzen swallowed hard.
Yet the suspicious gleam in his eyes toward me never faded.
I offered no further response and gazed out the window instead.
Clatter, clatter.
The caravan laden with Rune Iron Ore proceeded without hindrance.
A transaction of 150,000 tons of Rune Iron Ore.
On the surface, it was a transaction meant to earn profit.
But his true purpose lay elsewhere.
First, to meet The Emperor face-to-face at the Imperial Palace.
To discern The Emperor’s objectives and intentions, rendering him a predictable entity.
In other words, to drag The Emperor—a being akin to a God—down into the realm of comprehensible existence.
This was the core purpose of the transaction.
Second, to reunite with Ian.
To accelerate the formation of the Allied Forces and prepare for the impending war with The Empire.
But should Ian’s reunion prove impossible.
‘At minimum, I resolve my doubts.’
Whether Blake was The Darkness Lord.
Why he had wielded Ian’s swordsmanship, and so forth.
I had planned to hear the answers directly from Ian and discuss our path forward.
“We’ll be entering the Empire Border soon.”
This Runesteel transaction had to succeed at any cost.
* * *
District 6 – Boundary of The Empire.
The Borderlands.
Located at the outermost edge of The Empire, this region was also known as the Frontier.
Marzen reviewed the transaction details once more.
“This time, we won’t stop at the Distribution Bureau. We’re heading straight to the Imperial Palace.”
None other than Kim Fujiwara’s mad scheme.
Or rather, it stemmed from the contract conditions Kim Fujiwara had imposed.
All costs—purification fees, transportation fees, everything—borne by The Empire.
The transaction goods to be delivered directly to the Imperial Palace.
And Kim Fujiwara must be included in the transport process without fail.
The Empire had accepted these terms outright.
And there was one more thing.
“The remaining 11 trillion in transaction fees will be paid at the Imperial Palace.”
“All in physical currency, I presume?”
“…That should be the case.”
Marzen swallowed hard.
11 trillion. And in physical form at that.
Was such a sum even conceivable?
With that money, one wouldn’t merely live comfortably for life.
One could acquire roughly 20% of The Continent’s land.
Establish armies.
And easily found a dozen or more nascent nations.
Marzen gazed at Kim Fujiwara with envious eyes.
Profoundly, genuinely, utterly, and overwhelmingly envious eyes.
“You appear quite envious, sir.”
“Is there anyone on The Continent who wouldn’t envy such a position?”
“Having money doesn’t make everything good.”
What kind of novel argument was that?
“Only people with money say things like that.”
“If money were everything, the world would have no troubles.”
Kim Fujiwara spoke with a light laugh.
“Money doesn’t hold the most important value in this world. There are far more things in this world more important than money than you’d think.”
“Well, I suppose that’s possible.”
Marzen agreed with that sentiment.
Money never held the highest value.
It was merely a means necessary for living.
Never the purpose itself.
“Money influences every value I consider important.”
With money, one could save time.
With money, one could maintain health more effectively.
Education, love—
With money, one learned better and wavered less.
“Money may not be the top priority of everything, but it becomes the second priority of everything.”
“Mm.”
Kim Fujiwara exhaled softly.
He seemed to agree as well.
“Then what would you like to do with money, Marzen?”
“I…”
Marzen hesitated for a moment before answering.
“I want to handle all the information on The Continent.”
“Information?”
“Yes. Or perhaps more accurately, I want to touch the truth.”
Marzen’s gaze grew distant, as if peering into the past.
“As you know, my hometown was a city that lived off information. Information was power and survival itself.”
The information city, Inforen.
Marzen’s hometown.
Yet a city that vanished as the price for uncovering information about The Empire—information that should never have been touched.
“No one knew what we had touched, or how far it reached.”
“….”
“Everyone died without even knowing what they had uncovered.”
The boy who delivered newspapers every day.
The fruit vendor at the street corner.
The peddler distributing information sheets on the streets.
“Some information becomes truth, while other information becomes catastrophe.”
A moment of silence.
Marzen opened his mouth quietly.
“But I could never determine what that difference truly was.”
“….”
“So I threw myself into the Empire’s information networks. If I couldn’t discern the boundary between calamity and truth, then I thought I might as well become that boundary myself.”
Marzen let out a self-deprecating laugh.
Kim Fujiwara tilted his head and asked back.
“Then why did you enter the Distribution Bureau instead of the Information Bureau?”
“Because the Information Bureau doesn’t seek truth—it conceals it.”
“….”
“The Distribution Bureau, on the other hand, releases things into the world.”
Marzen continued.
“Even if manipulated and distorted, what circulates eventually flows outward. Resources always move in cycles.”
“…”
“By observing that flow, you can discern it. Who conceals what, what they remain silent about, and what they deliberately broadcast.”
Kim Fujiwara’s eyes narrowed.
A moment of silence.
Kim Fujiwara slowly opened his mouth.
“You’re certainly a Magician, Marzen.”
“What do you mean?”
Kim Fujiwara answered.
“Truth is not always the right answer, so sometimes wisdom lies in knowing how to turn away from it.”
In that sense, no one is more foolish than Magicians.
Even if truth were poison, Magicians would still—
“Inevitably dig into it.”
Marzen narrowed his eyes and countered.
“I didn’t pursue it for the sake of truth—I wanted to survive.”
“Then you should have chosen to turn away from truth instead. Not to approach it.”
Kim Fujiwara added.
“Ordinary people, when they know something is dangerous, simply avert their eyes and avoid it.”
“….”
“But Magicians are different.”
Knowledge is power.
You must know in order to respond.
“Yet even as they say such things, they always peer deeper.”
“….”
“Just like you, Marzen.”
Marzen neither laughed nor refuted.
Marzen’s gaze drifted into empty space as he fell into thought.
In his mind, Kim Fujiwara’s words echoed endlessly.
Truth is not always the right answer.
Sometimes wisdom lies in knowing when to turn a blind eye to the truth.
“…I feel like I’ve heard that somewhere before.”
“Probably at the Langritd Magic Tower.”
“Ah, yes. That place.”
Marzen fell into a moment of recollection.
Then, suddenly—
“Wait! Now that I think about it, what exactly happened at the Langritd Magic Tower?”
Marzen’s eyes sharpened.
The matter he couldn’t ask about last time because Kim Fujiwara had vanished so abruptly.
But now things were different.
“Recently, the Langritd Magic Tower entered an indefinite lockdown.”
“That was purely coincidental—”
“Right after you got involved, no less.”
“….”
“You’re not going to call that a coincidence, are you?”
Then came Kim Fujiwara’s response.
“Truth is not always the right answer, so sometimes one must turn a blind eye to—”
“I’m a stubborn fool.”
“….”
Kim Fujiwara clamped his mouth shut.
He hadn’t expected Marzen to be this obstinate.
Finally, Kim Fujiwara smacked his lips.
“You already know to some extent, don’t you?”
“I know that the highest-ranking elders of the tower disappeared.”
“That’s all there is to it.”
“So you’re saying you eliminated the highest-ranking elders?”
“Truth is not always the—”
“Say that wordplay one more time, and I’ll cut your tongue out.”
He couldn’t quite bring himself to say it so directly.
Because he’d lose if they actually fought.
Kim Fujiwara opened his mouth again.
“Why are you so curious about this?”
“As a result, the connection between the tower and our Distribution Bureau was severed. In other words, the Langritd Magic Tower has slipped beyond the Empire’s influence.”
“But why does that become your concern, Marzen?”
“Because His Majesty took direct action.”
Kim Fujiwara’s eyes widened.
“The Emperor himself?”
“Yes. He harbored considerable doubts about my pushing you into the Langritd Magic Tower. For now, at least.”
“For now? What do you mean by that…?”
Marzen answered immediately.
“It’s highly likely to shift into direct interest.”
“Direct interest?”
“His Majesty has begun personally approving all reports.”
“That… what does that mean?”
“Exactly as it sounds. All reports now reach His Majesty directly without any intermediaries.”
“Is that so?”
“That’s why the recent reporting formats and systems have all changed. Every decision and judgment requires His Majesty’s approval to be considered valid.”
“Does he have the leisure for that? The Emperor must be drowning in problems with Invictus.”
“…Hm? Ah, I forgot to mention that.”
Marzen spoke with a furrowed brow.
In that instant.
Whoosh!
Kim Fujiwara suddenly seized Marzen.
He grabbed his collar in a flash and yanked him forward with all his might.
“Wha—!”
Marzen’s words never finished.
Kim Fujiwara threw himself along with Marzen.
Almost simultaneously.
Boom!!
A massive explosion erupted from where they had just been standing.
* * *
An explosion that came without warning.
Light and shockwave tangled together, turning my vision white.
Boom—!!
The blast wave swept across everything.
Debris scattered.
My ears rang with a dull throb.
My body was suddenly thrust backward.
…It was a matter of inches.
Had I been half a beat slower, my entire body would have been torn to shreds.
In other words.
‘My hypersensory perception was delayed.’
As I crouched among the fragments of the overturned carriage, Marzen stirred within my embrace.
“Ugh…! What is this…!”
Fortunately, Marzen was unharmed.
Wounds were visible here and there, but none were fatal.
I expanded my hypersensory perception broadly and quickly surveyed the surroundings.
‘An ambush or additional explosions….’
There didn’t seem to be any.
But that didn’t mean there were no other threats.
I slowly lifted my head.
Beyond the swirling veil of dust.
‘…Someone is there.’
The form was not clearly visible.
Only a silhouette could be barely made out.
But the presence was unmistakable.
Activating my predator’s instinct, information materialized before my eyes.
==【Character Information】==
Name : ???
Classification : ??? ??? ??? ???
Gender : ???
Age : ???
Characteristics : ??????????????
…In that instant, a searing pain tore through my mind.

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

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