Chapter 71 - 70. Ancient Memory
Teachers at school would describe the Age of Apocalypse by comparing it with the red-zone.
The once fertile earth became dried and blackened, the freshwater was marred with toxin, and the sun was barely visible through the murky cloud. So Zein didn’t really surprise when he saw the condition of the land in front of him.
If there was something different, it was the remnant of a once flourishing city in ruin. If the red-zone felt like a slum, this ancient city felt as if a huge outbreak occurred in a big city like Althrea and devastated everything. That being said, the area around him was free of the depressing destruction.
From his point of view, Zein could see people in tattered and shabby clothes, with dirty appearances that were even worse than the red-zone dwellers looking toward him from far away—or rather, looking toward the shard. Most of them carried weapons, even civilians. From the fierce-looking halberd to the crude shield made of a car’s door and kitchen knives.
Since the shard was there, it must have been the time when Towers and Temples just appeared. But since unfortunately this place didn’t receive a complete fragment, there was no basis for any celestial powers to descend. There were espers and guides, but no place to receive proper skills. It was a time when everything was chaotic, and humans had to scavenge for survival.
From what Zein gathered, the survivors had gathered in this ruined city and made a barricade around it. He recognized it as the underground city where the expedition team came to before, only it was still on the surface this time.
Due to the shard natural rejection of sentient beings, those people couldn’t get closer and only looked from afar for days. It was a weird sensation where times seemed to walk fast, and yet Zein could feel and understand everything that happened.
What he couldn’t catch, however, was the people’s conversation. They talked in a language that he didn’t know, the old language they used before the unification of the continent, and the usage of a new standardized common language was established.
Through the hyperbolic sense, Zein watched as what seemed like the leaders among the survivors surrounded the ten meters radius where they could get close. They talked among themselves while watching the shard a lot, and then, at one point after more days had passed, someone came alone during the night when nobody was watching.
Closer and closer until the person touched him—touched the shard. Zein, through the shard, stared at the hooded person, feeling a weird resonance between them. He understood then, that it was what the shard felt when Zein touched it.
Unfortunately, that person did not manage to do it secretly. Someone found out and the person was dragged away. The next time, the leaders’ council came back with that person, and everything became dark as the shard was being covered and moved.