Ch.217217. Yamato Alliance (3)

Leaving Seorabeol, where they had been living well, to head to Kyushu where dangers still lurked required determination from the Seorabeol Mage Association.

While Seorabeol had the protection of the Dragon God, preventing monsters and undead from invading the city, in other countries without such protection, undead and monster attacks on cities were common occurrences.

As always, the undead attacked to turn the living into beings like themselves, while monsters, having established their own primitive stone or wooden civilizations with some intelligence, invaded cities for survival through plunder or as a form of hunting.

Fukuoka, at least, had maintained exchanges with Seorabeol and was the headquarters of Shiro, the leader of the Yamato Alliance. Though not as safe as Seorabeol, it still maintained a level of security.

However, areas outside Fukuoka were truly dangerous zones where one could be attacked by monsters or undead while traveling, essentially lawless territories beyond the reach of government authority.

No wonder the teaching assistants were screaming that they wanted to stay in Seorabeol.

“This is commanded by the Dragon God!”

“It’s time for our school to step up!”

“I see. So the POSCO Purification Project was a precursor to this purification! The Dragon God’s profound strategy… To think he anticipated this situation!”

These magic-obsessed hanbok-wearing eccentrics couldn’t care less about the dangers.

All they could see was evidence of the Dragon God Bahamut’s wisdom and why this project was necessary. Their only remaining desire was to pass this project and gain the Dragon God’s favor.

Yes, they wanted recognition from the Dragon God, known as the God of Magic! They wanted to receive his teachings!

They wanted to witness the limits of magic and obtain the achievements possible through this project!

And Kyushu was the land of opportunity to properly demonstrate the results of this project, an Eldorado where countless research materials and resources lay dormant.

“Let’s head to Kyushu! We shall establish the Kyushu branch of the Seorabeol Mage Association!”

“Mage Awakened of the Yamato Alliance! Interested in our school? Join our school now, and we’ll cover all scholarship expenses!”

The more proactive schools had already settled in Fukuoka, advertising their strengths to recruit local residents as teaching assistants.

Before long, these schools would come together to establish the Kyushu branch of the Seorabeol Mage Association, with some smaller schools even attempting to set up their headquarters in Kyushu.

“Those magic-crazed lunatics! Won’t they cause accidents?”

“My friend was kidnapped as a disciple by that guy! Kidnapped!”

“If you’re in danger, quickly wave a carrot!”

In response to these frenzied actions, Awakened and mages belonging to the Yamato Alliance began to view the Seorabeol Mage Association’s behavior as increasingly oppressive and arrogant.

The claim that this was essentially a Seorabeol invasion stirred fear among them, and it was difficult to argue against this assertion since all mages belonging to the schools were indeed powerful.

“Yamato Alliance, manage your mages properly! Are you just leaving these dangerous bombs unattended?”

“That’s right! The Yamato Alliance should immediately implement policies to regulate mages!”

While the Awakened belonging to the Yamato Alliance were powerful, few among them were called mages, whereas all Awakened belonging to these schools were mages.

In an era where the value of mages was steadily increasing, the claim that a powerful mage organization was invading the Yamato Alliance seemed plausible.

“We are scholars who have come for academic exchange! We will pass on the great wisdom our school received from the Dragon God to you as well!”

“Ah, well, that’s acceptable then!”

“You’re saying we can learn the teachings of the Dragon God? Welcome to the Yamato Alliance!”

But the schools belonging to the Seorabeol Mage Association, though obsessed with the Dragon God’s magic, were not so tactless as to be unaware of how they were perceived externally.

If they had truly been that tactless, they wouldn’t have established a cooperative structure with the Seorabeol cabinet, nor would they have shown interest in the Dragon Priestess’s opinion, focusing solely on research.

These weren’t reckless scholars; they were true mentors fulfilling their scholarly duties by accepting disciples and teaching them the knowledge they had received from the Dragon God.

“We will share our school’s research findings with the Alliance! Please provide us with space to stay in the Yamato Alliance!”

“The Yamato Alliance sincerely welcomes the visit of the Seorabeol Mage Association! The Yamato Alliance will directly support you all!”

As the gaze of the Awakened belonging to the Yamato Alliance grew sharper, the schools generously shared the Dragon God’s magic they were researching and their findings with their disciples and the Yamato Alliance. The Yamato Alliance gained a key to solving a long-postponed task.

Though somewhat late, the Yamato Alliance began entering the magical engineering civilization that combined magic and modern engineering technology, just like Seorabeol and other foreign powers. The reconstruction speed of the Yamato Alliance also began to accelerate rapidly under the influence of magical engineering.

In particular, lands contaminated by the Cult of Immortality were able to receive significant benefits from the Seorabeol Mage Association thanks to Seorabeol’s foreign policy.

“I heard you’ve suffered greatly from land contamination! Our Bahishta School has come to help our friend, the Yamato Alliance!”

“You’re visitors from Seorabeol. We are…”

“More importantly, quickly show us the land contamination! We will demonstrate the wisdom that the great Dragon God taught our Bahishta School here in Kyushu!”

The Seorabeol cabinet was implementing a national policy of sharing the purification project with the Yamato Alliance and exporting related schools to the Yamato Alliance.

In return, they were receiving substantial foreign currency from the Yamato Alliance—a win-win situation for both parties!

“Haha. You seem eager to get to work quickly. Then I’ll guide you.”

The southern part of Kyushu, which remained a task for the Yamato Alliance, was filled with the stench of rotten blood and contaminated land gases, with an unknown whitish fog covering the entire region.

The ground was scorched black, buildings remained in ominous forms half-melted, and the decomposing bodies of undead that had not yet been processed were tangled together.

All villages outside the cities were in this state, offering a glimpse into the horrors of the war between the Yamato Alliance and the Cult of Immortality.

“Filthy Cult of Immortality! Their curse is contaminating the land itself! Ah, how Master Bahamut would lament if he saw this!”

Seeing this scene, the head of the Bahishta School shed tears, hurled hateful words at the Cult of Immortality, and wailed that Bahamut would lament if he saw this.

The Bahishta School was dedicated to researching and exploring all of Bahamut’s magic, praising the magic and tools developed by Bahamut, and focusing on advancing civilization.

From such a school’s perspective, what the Cult of Immortality had done to this land was not advancing civilization but regressing it, and even if this land became the Cult’s, it would be meaningless.

The Bahishta School expressed great anger and hatred toward the Cult of Immortality for actions directly opposite to the great achievements of the Dragon God Bahamut.

“Can you solve this?”

“For a project of this scale, unfortunately, the Bahishta School alone is not enough! This project requires the full force of the Seorabeol Mage Association, including the Amurdad School, which researches plants and life, and the Armaita School, which magically researches land!”

However, due to the thorough regression of civilization, the Bahishta School swallowed its pride and honestly admitted that it needed help from other schools that received the Dragon God’s teachings but walked different paths.

Basically, schools different from one’s own were competitors, and it would be advantageous to solve problems independently to catch Bahamut’s attention. However, if the Cult of Immortality was involved in this situation, it required a bipartisan mindset where everyone worked together rather than engaging in power struggles and merit competitions between schools.

The head of the Bahishta School ordered his disciples to send requests for aid to other schools, while he remained on this contaminated land to inspect the soil.

“Is the situation that serious?”

“Indeed! If people live in such conditions, they will receive terrible curses from the land’s magical power, and corpses buried there could immediately turn into undead—it’s dangerous land! Frankly, it has become a land of death where no living being can survive!”

It was no place for people to live.

From Kyushu’s perspective, where a considerable population had lived not only in cities but also in villages, people had suddenly become concentrated in cities.

The apocalypse had somewhat solved the urban population problem as people died or became undead and perished.

“Then, farming too…”

“It can’t be used as farmland either. Even if external fertilizer is brought in, this contaminated soil will pollute the fertilizer and infect growing plants with contaminated magical power! Such infected plants could cause unknown epidemics and potentially transform into major man-made disasters!”

Conversely, they couldn’t rely on agricultural products from such farms.

Cities needed hinterlands to sustain themselves, and these hinterlands were villages with farmland.

With all these villages essentially destroyed, they needed to somehow revive them to maintain the cities.

“Ordinary people must never set foot here! If you’ve rescued ordinary people from here, they must be quarantined immediately! Terrible poison is spreading through the air!”

“Then I’ll appoint the Bahishta School as a consultant for the Yamato Alliance Purification Project. We’ll also provide funding.”

“We appreciate that!”

Thus, the Yamato Alliance began taking emergency measures under the guidance of the Bahishta School, and before long, schools that had received the Bahishta School’s call for aid began arriving in the Yamato Alliance one after another.

And these arriving schools:

“We have come here to purify the contaminated land! The Armaita School will take charge of researching Kyushu’s soil! If anyone in the Yamato Alliance works in soil-related industries or is an earth-attribute mage, please support our school! Or you may join the school to exchange knowledge!”

“Our Amurdad School will check if healthy plants can be grown on this defiled soil! Surely there must be at least a few plants that can grow even in the roughest and most contaminated soil!”

They began attempting to divide the project according to their specialties.

The Armaita School focused on soil research, while the Amurdad School attempted to research plants that could be grown in contaminated soil.

Finally, the Bahishta School:

“Our Bahishta School will burn the poison spreading through the land and purify the contamination! We shall purify through fire!”

“Isn’t that what the overseas Phoenix Cult says?”

“Oops!”

They stepped forward claiming they would purify everything with fire, but were criticized for sounding similar to the Phoenix Cult.

However, since it wasn’t exactly wrong, the Bahishta School began burning contaminated soil, objects, and remaining undead with magical flames, and the poison covering the black earth gradually disappeared.

Even the contamination left by rotting undead corpses evaporated in the flames created by the Bahishta School.

“Burn all the poison in the atmosphere too! After all, except for research samples, the rest are evil things created by the Cult of Immortality!”

“Control the wind to create paths for the flames to advance. Adjust the flames precisely to avoid causing forest fires or burning innocent areas!”

Thus, the Seorabeol Mage Association began a large-scale Kyushu Purification Project with support from the Yamato government.

“Finally back to Seorabeol.”

Accordingly, the Hwarang dispatched to Kyushu began returning to Seorabeol one by one.

In this busy post-war situation, searching for survivors relying on the powerful mobility and protection of the Hwarang’s dragon armor could have been a great help to the purification project. However, the Seorabeol Mage Association was replacing such Hwarang, and the Hwarang, as the direct guard of the Dragon Priestess, had more important matters to attend to.

Yes… the return of the Hwarang to Seorabeol meant:

“Well then. Now that the Yamato Alliance’s war is over, shall we start our war?”

Because signs of war were slowly beginning to appear in Seorabeol as well.