Ch.248248. The Peculiar Daily Life of Seorabeol

# Bahamut’s Discontent

Despite Bahamut’s complaints, no one could deny that this structure greatly helped Ulsan’s revival.

After the Ulsan disaster, the gloomy atmosphere that had pervaded the city began to change when the Dragon God’s Training Ground opened. Reconstruction projects started to take shape.

Thanks to Bahamut’s power, the magical storms that had lingered in South Ulsan disappeared. High-rise buildings began to appear one after another as investments poured in from the Serabeol Three Major Guild branch where the training ground was located, the Ulsan government office, and numerous foreign investors.

“As people start flooding in, we need to deploy police to maintain public order!”

“We’ll need military forces to protect the city too. Things are going to get busy.”

After the disaster, Ulsan’s population, which had dwindled to a tiny fraction, began to rise rapidly following the opening of the Dragon God’s Training Ground.

While it was still impossible to recover the pre-apocalypse population, the fact that Ulsan was returning to a livable city was certainly good news from Ulsan’s perspective. The city, which had been essentially abandoned due to its perceived worthlessness, was now becoming an important city for Serabeol, with police forces and military being deployed to protect it.

Above all, now that Ulsan had become an important stronghold rather than just a buffer zone, they could no longer postpone the final battle with the Cult of Immortality based in Busan.

“The problem is managing criminals inside the dungeon. What should we do about that? Overseas, dungeons are essentially considered extraterritorial.”

“Ah, that’s not a problem.”

The Dragon God’s Training Ground was, after all, a dungeon. Looking at overseas examples, dungeons were essentially lawless zones beyond the reach of legal authority.

In such situations, there would inevitably be Awakened who would try to commit crimes by exploiting the dungeon’s unique nature, and villains who would try to sneak in with fake IDs to hide their identities.

Jin A-yeon was worried about how to manage security in the Dragon God’s Training Ground, but Han Seong-geun’s answer was that there was no need to worry.

“Huh?”

“Well, that dungeon is directly managed by Lord Bahamut, right? From the moment you enter, magical precepts are applied. The moment you commit a crime…”

“The moment you commit a crime?”

“Various curses are applied, apparently. The most terrifying curse causes baldness, regardless of gender.”

“What?!”

Jin A-yeon was horrified at the mention of a curse that causes baldness.

Baldness was an incurable disease that couldn’t be restored even with magic, and many people were suffering from it. And now there was a curse in the dungeon that could cause baldness.

Of course, some people might be immune to baldness, but most people would choose to quietly train or collect magic stones and leave rather than risk starting conflicts and suffering from curse-induced baldness.

It seemed that a single warning that the Dragon God’s curse would be applied the moment someone caused conflict or committed a crime was enough to prevent crime, and Serabeol was cleverly using the Dragon God’s name to their advantage.

“Give me back my magic stone!”

“How is this your magic stone? I hunted and got this magic stone myself!”

“This is my spot! Don’t you know what a spot is? A spot!”

“Hunting grounds belong to everyone! How dare you try to make hunting grounds your private property?!”

Of course, since Bahamut wasn’t a particularly evil dragon, he tended to overlook minor disputes and petty crimes.

Because of this, there were still emotional conflicts and disputes between people inside the dungeon, but it had done enough to prevent serious crimes like murder, robbery, and kidnapping.

“Mr. Kim is at it again today.”

Kang Hoon, a graduate of the Serabeol Awakened Project, had also visited the Dragon God’s Training Ground to develop his abilities as an Awakened. He had just cleared the tutorial area, Zone 1, and was entering Zone 2.

Morning dew at his feet, trembling vines, and growling sounds coming from somewhere in the Dragon God’s Training Ground—these were chilling sounds of danger for Kang Hoon, who had entered the training ground alone. Nevertheless, he could proceed confidently without fear.

Here, even if you suffered a fatal wound, you would recover immediately, and if a life-threatening crisis was detected, you would be emergency teleported to the entrance of the training ground.

It was a preferred method for Awakened who wanted to graduate quickly, as they could take certain risks in dungeon exploration without the threat of death.

“Phew. I need to collect today’s quota of magic stones.”

Unfortunately, Kang Hoon wasn’t an Awakened who desired strength, but merely an ordinary citizen who wanted to gain as much benefit as possible from the Dragon God’s Training Ground.

His main job was to mine magic stones in the Dragon God’s Training Ground all day and sell the mined magic stones to interest groups outside the dungeon.

The reason he could enter the highly popular Dragon God’s Training Ground despite being an ordinary citizen was that he was an Awakened who had participated in the Awakened Project and was originally from Ulsan.

Dragon God Bahamut had given priority access to the training ground to Awakened from Ulsan to help people resettle there, and this benefit had been extended to Kang Hoon, an ordinary citizen with no connections.

“Just a little more and I’ll be able to afford the surgery costs!”

Thanks to this, he could overcome a common tragedy of the apocalypse.

In this apocalypse, being hospitalized for serious injuries was a surprisingly common occurrence even in one’s neighborhood, and losing an arm or becoming disabled was so common that people just moved on.

Before the apocalypse, it would have been a tragedy, but now, in the apocalypse, even such disasters were dismissed as just another part of life under the name of the apocalypse. Everyone in the world had witnessed many tragedies due to the apocalypse.

“Meeting with the Dragon Priestess… to treat my mother! That’s what I need strength for.”

Fortunately, with the emergence of magic, even if you accidentally lost an arm in a disaster, it could be restored with regeneration magic. Even if all four limbs were lost, if you had enough money, you could meet with the Dragon Priestess and recover normally.

Even diseases born from the apocalypse could be treated without side effects if you borrowed the power of magic, which was reason enough for Kang Hoon, who had experienced the tragedy of the apocalypse, to want to meet with the Dragon Priestess.

However, to do so, one had to either pay a lot of money to formally request a meeting, or if one couldn’t afford it, one needed the coincidence of meeting the Dragon Priestess on the street. Kang Hoon had chosen the former.

Realistically, meeting the Dragon Priestess on the street was like trying to catch a star from the sky, and there were surprisingly many people who thought like Kang Hoon.

The Hwarang, the Dragon Priestess’s direct guard, had begun to exclude people like Kang Hoon who wanted such coincidences for the safety of the Priestess, proving that the latter option was virtually impossible.

“Good. Today’s not bad either.”

He hunts monsters that appear in the training ground.

He always hunted monsters 2 levels lower than himself, and although the experience gained from hunting low-level monsters was small, the magic stones they dropped were valuable enough.

After precisely stabbing the target with his dagger, Kang Hoon watched as the monster’s body disappeared like an illusion, and a small glowing crystal fell to the ground with a thud.

It looked like a small stone, but if sold well to a merchant outside the dungeon, it was worth 2,000 won.

In apocalypse terms, one might ask why he would go to the training ground for just 2,000 won, but this 2,000 won referred to Bahamut currency, and considering that the value of the won had completely changed through currency reform, it was worth about 200,000 won in pre-apocalypse Korean currency.

“Not bad. That’s the sixth one today.”

“Hey, Kang Hoon! This is my designated spot, you know? Go hunt somewhere else!”

Kang Hoon picked up the dropped magic stone with a happy expression, but his face hardened at the voice behind him. He turned to see a woman.

Whether it was because she had awakened magic or dyed it herself, she had clean blonde hair that was unusual for native Koreans. The girl was looking at Kang Hoon confidently, shouting that this was her spot.

“Yu Se-hwa?”

Kang Hoon spoke the girl’s name as if he knew her, and when he responded, the girl called Yu Se-hwa began to lecture him as if she had been waiting for this.

“By the way, do you come here every day just to hunt weak monsters and mine magic stones? What about experience points? When are you going to level up?”

“Unlike you who aims to be a Hwarang, I’m a realist. I want to earn moderately, buy a house, and retire.”

She was aiming to become a Hwarang. After awakening by participating in the Awakened Project, she had enrolled in the newly established Yonghwa Academy, a specialized military academy for Hwarang, and was using the priority access given to Hwarang candidates during vacation to level up in the Dragon God’s Training Ground.

In other words, she was an elite, and when such an elite criticized Kang Hoon for not leveling up, Kang Hoon firmly drew a line, saying he was a realist unlike her.

“Hey, we’re from the same class, and I’m saying this because I’m worried about you. You’re just earning money and not developing the important abilities for an Awakened! If you grow like that, you won’t be able to become a superhuman beyond level 20!”

But her words themselves couldn’t be called bad.

She was giving advice to Kang Hoon out of a sense of camaraderie as someone from the same class.

As she said, this behavior would likely lead to him spending his entire life mining magic stones in the Dragon God’s Training Ground like a grinder rather than advancing in his career.

Wasn’t that too cruel for a young Awakened who hadn’t yet shown his potential?

“I need to earn money. There are more urgent things than leveling up.”

“Money? Don’t you receive support funds for novice Awakened?”

“Not everyone does. Even if I can receive support, my family can’t.”

At those words, Yu Se-hwa closed her mouth.

While Serabeol’s policies for Awakened were specialized for supporting one person, they were woefully inadequate for someone like Kang Hoon who was responsible for supporting a family as the head of household.

Not that Kang Hoon resented Serabeol for it.

Serabeol’s resources were limited, and rather, Kang Hoon had benefited from Serabeol’s policies by being selected for the Awakened Project and becoming an Awakened, and he could mine magic stones like this.

“If you want to meet the Dragon Priestess that badly, why not just enroll in Yonghwa Academy?”

“Unlike you, I don’t have the noble ideal of serving the Dragon Priestess respectfully. Rather, I’m a commoner who would use the Priestess for my base emotions.”

Yu Se-hwa suggested that he enroll in Yonghwa Academy, but Kang Hoon self-deprecatingly said that he wasn’t noble enough to follow the cause of the Hwarang.

Did he truly believe that a commoner like himself could serve the Dragon Priestess, the hero of the Korean Peninsula and a saint who serves a god?

Of course not. It had been established that an Awakened’s talent was determined from birth, and Kang Hoon didn’t think he had the innate talent to be chosen as a Hwarang.

“You’re smart too, aren’t you?”

“There are plenty of people smarter than me. Yonghwa Academy is becoming an academy where people study abroad not only from Serabeol but from overseas as well.”

He thought that people more talented than him would already be at Yonghwa Academy, and above all, considering that he would have to compete not only with Awakened from within Serabeol but also with foreign Awakened studying abroad, Yonghwa Academy wasn’t an attractive option unless one was seriously aiming to become a Hwarang.

Moreover, as someone from Ulsan, he had been given priority access to use the Dragon God’s Training Ground, and as long as he had that priority, there was no reason for him to enroll in Yonghwa Academy.

“Hmm, I can’t deny that. It hasn’t even been half a year, but our class is full of kids with various nationalities! Thinking of all of them as rivals, it’s quite overwhelming.”

When Kang Hoon coldly stated the reality, the girl named Yu Se-hwa scratched her head and nodded in agreement.

She was working hard to be selected as a Hwarang, leveling up voluntarily, but now that she was competing not only with Awakened from within Serabeol but also with foreign Awakened, even she, who seemed talented, was feeling overwhelmed.

“Isn’t the language a problem?”

“Lord Bahamut enchanted a translation spell throughout Yonghwa Academy, and there are even kids who are voluntarily learning Korean, so not really?”

And if there were foreign Awakened, there would naturally be communication issues.

Each country uses different languages, and there was no way all foreign Awakened would be unified under one language.

They could have had communication problems due to using different languages, but Dragon God Bahamut had solved this communication issue, and in gratitude for the Dragon God’s grace, all foreign Awakened enrolled in Yonghwa Academy were focusing on learning Korean.

“See! You praise Lord Bahamut too, don’t you? I hear you regularly attend the Balhut Cult’s weekend services. If you join the Hwarang, you’ll have the opportunity to meet Lord Bahamut directly, right?”

“It’s true that I have faith in Lord Bahamut, and I praise the grace of Lord Bahamut who has made it possible for someone like me to make a living. But I don’t think I have the talent to serve the Dragon God. Above all, I don’t think there’s only one way to follow the Dragon God.”

“Isn’t becoming a Hwarang the fastest way?”

After starting with small talk, Yu Se-hwa mentioned the regular service to Kang Hoon, but his response was close to self-deprecation.

Kang Hoon did indeed have faith in Bahamut, the benefactor of his family, but wasn’t it too much responsibility for an Awakened without talent to follow the Dragon God?

That’s why Kang Hoon was convinced that there wasn’t just one way to follow the Dragon God.

“Where are you going?”

“I’m heading back. I don’t want to risk danger by going deeper. The downside of this dungeon is that if you die, you lose all the magic stones you’re carrying.”

Before expressing his ugly jealousy to Yu Se-hwa in front of him, Kang Hoon got up and left the dungeon, and there was only one place for him to go after leaving.

“Hey, you brought magic stones again today.”

It was his regular shop where he would sell the magic stones he had mined today.

“Brother Kim Tae-hyun.”

“Yes, as always, I’ll buy them at a fair price.”

The owner of the regular shop Kang Hoon visited was none other than Kim Tae-hyun, the CEO of Kim Tae-hyun Company, and for Kim Tae-hyun, who was trying to do business in the Dragon God’s Training Ground, Kang Hoon was a good business partner.

The same was true for Kang Hoon.

As the pie had grown, the number of unscrupulous merchants had also increased, and in Ulsan, where many would ruthlessly cut the original price, Kim Tae-hyun was someone who conducted honest transactions.

After naturally checking the number of magic stones, Kim Tae-hyun silently handed over the large sum of 12,000 won to Kang Hoon, and after checking the money received from Kim Tae-hyun…

“Are you hiring part-timers today too?”

“Of course, there’s always a part-time job available. How about it? Want to suck the marrow out of an Awakened’s bones?”

“Yes, I can’t miss out on your business, brother. It would be even better if you hired me as a formal employee.”

“Having an Awakened help my business is worth a thousand troops!”

Even for an Awakened, it’s not necessarily true that hunting monsters is the only right path.

Believing that there must be Awakened who, like Kim Tae-hyun, would succeed greatly through commerce, Kang Hoon bowed his head to this influential figure who exerted tremendous influence even in politics.