Chapter 207
Chapter 207
Sungyoon’s party did not go down any further as they were satisfied with their progress in the labyrinth this run .
They had initially assumed they would be stuck on the 2nd floor for a while . However, the unexpected windfall that Sungyoon's Evolution Gem brought allowed the party to reach the 9th floor in one go . They were done with the initial stage of the Great Labyrinth .
The party returned to Armstrong city in a good mood . As they walked along, familiar sights flashed before their eyes . The streets were filled with numerous people, and the delicious food smelled as good as ever . The bright neon signs shone brighter, and the people wearing skimpy clothes tried to tempt the Connectors .
Beyond the partition, the broken wall was being fixed . Due to the existence of a rival city, Armstrong still wasn't what it had been before the Golems attacked the city, but it came close .
“Since the shop is on the way, let’s go buy some beer . ”
As always, Tim wanted to drink after finishing work . The party complied and entered a nearby mart .
The marts here were similar to the large convenience stores on Earth, but with astronomical prices and zero discounts . However, the party didn’t even look at the price tags and grabbed whatever they wanted .
Jimin had proposed paying their daily expenses through the company account, but Sungyoon’s party was way past the point of caring about their expenses . They didn't mind if the money came out of their own accounts .
It was the same for all the Connectors capable of entering the Great Labyrinth . With the amount of money they could make, why would they worry about the prices of goods .
“Koo-ha!”
Tim couldn’t wait until he got home, so he immediately opened a can of beer and downed it . Emily wanted to tell him that he had no manners, but she decided to let it go this time .
After instantly emptying the can, Tim picked up another one .
“What’s wrong?”
Emily asked when she saw that Tim just held the beer in his hand .
“Nothing . It just seems we’ve come so far . It feels like we were afraid to drink even one can of beer just yesterday . ”
“Just yesterday? Maybe it’s because it really wasn’t that long ago . ”
It was a testament to how fast they were clearing the labyrinths .
Sungyoon also remembered it . After raiding the Beginner’s Labyrinth, the three of them would go to a store with no servers and drink beer . That store had been the cheapest place to drink beer on the Moon .
‘It hasn’t even been two years . ’
It put everything into perspective .
The party continued walking forward . However, their destination wasn't Jungbum's building, but the large mansion Sungyoon had received as a reward .
“This place looks extravagant every time I see it . ”
“You keep saying that whenever we come here . ”
Although Emily criticized Tim, she was also impressed by the size of the house every time .
The siblings owned a house in Canada that was as luxurious as but bigger than this one . However, this house was located on the Moon, which made it impossible to make a comparison between the two houses .
Sungyoon opened the door, and everyone entered alongside him .
When he had received this house, without any hesitation, he had immediately offered his party members to live here .
The Ross siblings used to live together with Sungyoon in the Jungbum's building, so they decided to reside here . Grace, who resided in a different part of Armstrong, decided to accept the offer too .
After they had placed all the food and beer in the house, Sungyoon said .
“Well, let’s wash up . Then we can meet up in two hours for dinner . ”
Emily and Grace took showers that lasted an hour at most, but Sungyoon knew he had to also give them time to get ready . As expected, Emily and Grace looked very satisfied by the timeframe Sungyoon proposed, while Tim had no idea what was going on . It was the stark difference between being a man and a woman .
Sungyoon entered his room . Since he was the owner of this house, he had the biggest one .
It seemed that the previous owner had an expensive taste as the room was decorated in a fancy manner .
Sungyoon took off his clothes and haphazardly tossed them on the bed . His muscular body was on full show .
He took out a new pair of underwear and went toward the shower . However, the communicator caught his sight, and he stopped . Someone had sent him a message .
‘It's from Ms . Chelsea . ’
Sungyoon thought about the researcher with strawberry-blonde hair and pressed a button .
[I have something to tell you . Please contact me as soon as you get this message . ]
Sungyoon had a lot of time, so he didn't wait, and just picked up the receiver .
***
“Poo-haht!”
Chelsea downed half of the beer before putting down the can . She let out a sound that dissolved her exhaustion and annoyance in one go .
“Wow . You really made it, Mr . Sungyoon . You have a house of this caliber on the Moon . It makes my head spin to see it for myself . ”
“Right?”
Emily reacted before Sungyoon could say anything and puffed up her chest as if it was her business . Tim looked baffled as he gazed at his sister .
However, Emily was reacting in such a way because someone she liked had been complimented . It was a cute and harmless behavior, so no one called her out on it .
“If you want, you can live here too . As you can see, this place is huge . ”
“Really?”
A twinkle appeared in Chelsea's eyes, but a conflicted expression appeared on her face .
“Mmm . I’m tempted . But if I stay here, I can’t sleep, wake up, and go to the lab… However, I don’t want to give up such a nice place . . . ”
“You can use this place as a spare room . ”
The mansion had so many rooms that if Sungyoon tried to clean the whole mansion, his muscles would probably scream in protest .
Sungyoon was indebted to Chelsea in many ways, so he didn’t mind giving her a room .
“Ah . I’ll take you up on that offer . ”
Chelse spoke .
“Still, I won’t be using it much because of the research I'm working on . I have to sleep in the research facility if we have to speed up our research project . ”
‘It feels like we are a married couple . ’
Many researchers lived outside of the research facility, but none of them could afford to rent a house on the Moon with their salary . So most of these researchers were married to Connectors .
“Ms . Chelsea?”
“Y . . . yes?”
For some reason, Chelsea's mind had compared her situation with Sungyoon to a marital relationship . She was embarrassed by her thoughts, so when Sungyoon said her name, she was at a loss for words .
Chelsea's face had turned red, but Sungyoon was indifferent as he asked .
“You had something to tell me?”
“Ah! That’s right! I do! I do have something to tell you!”
Chelsea took a deep breath, then spoke .
“I heard Mr . Sungyoon received rights to the ores we found in the Beginner’s Labyrinth . Is that correct?”
“Yes . ”
“May I ask what the terms of the contract are?”
“It isn’t anything extraordinary . First, I received ownership of the Beginner’s Labyrinth under the condition that I maintain the current system of letting beginner Connectors enter it . I’m the only one who has the excavation rights, and half the ores I excavate have to be given to Armstrong city . Of course, I will bear the entire cost of the excavation . ”
“… That's beyond extraordinary . What are you talking about?”
The terms were much better than what she had expected .
‘It seems the Mayor thought the real estate was worth more than the ores, and he considered that the possibility of turning a profit on the ores was low . ’
Most people with knowledge of the city knew that the Mayor was conservative with his business . And now, because of this very conservative nature, the Mayor was probably kicking himself .
“Why did you ask about that?”
Sungyoon and his party members drank their beers as they paid attention to Chelsea’s next words .
“Didn’t you see the TV recently?”
“We wanted to clear the initial stages of the Great Labyrinth, so we’ve been in the Great Labyrinth for a couple of months . And after we arrived here, we went straight to doing other things . ”
“Our research facility found a way to excavate the ores from the Beginner’s Labyrinth . ”
Chelsea told them the breakthrough her facility has achieved .
“Really? I thought the ores were too hard . ”
Sungyoon was quite surprised . He had been involved in both missions where they had eliminated the Golems, so he knew how sturdy the labyrinth walls and the ores were .
“Yes . We devised a new method . ”
Sungyoon must have imagined it, but it looked as if Chelsea puffed up a bit in pride .
“As we had surmised, the ore was similar to the metal that made up the Jewel rank weapons . The Golems are made up of a similar metal . However, the metal making up the Super Golem was clearly higher in rank higher than the one we found . ”
It explained why the Super Golems were so sturdy .
“We tried to create several types of excavators using the ore and the substance making up the Super Golem’s body . Finally, we created one that pulverized the sample ore . We just have to test it further inside the labyrinth, and when we asked the higher-ups of Armstrong, they said we need permission from Mr . Sungyoon to proceed . ”
The Beginner’s Labyrinth was free of Golems now, and samples of the ores could be taken by the Connectors who were tasked with cleaning the Beginner’s Labyrinth . However, to move to the next stages of the experiment, the researchers needed to go further than small samples, and for that, they needed Sungyoon's permission .
“Understood . I’ll give you permission . What else do you need from me?”
“Can you sign this?”
Chelsea rustled the paper as she brought it out . It was a written permission form .
Sungyoon put down his beer and carefully read it . He had previously been burned due to carelessness when reading a contract, so he had developed the habit of reading every single word on the paper .
The contract looked okay, so Sungyoon signed it .
“Is the ore useful for anything?”
Grace, who had been quietly drinking her beer all this while, became curious .
“The magical energy it contains is more than that in most of the moonstones found in the Great Labyrinth . ”
Chelsea put away the written permission in her bag and replied .
“Really? Doesn’t that mean it's something amazing?”
“It really is . At the very least, it's on par with the moonstones as a source of energy and might even exceed them . With the right tools, even regular humans can excavate these ores . You're probably unaware of this too, but when this information got out, the stocks of the moonstone refining companies tanked . ”
Everyone in his party turned to stare at Sungyoon . In the near future, he would be the only one that could excavate this amazing ore .
“Of course, we don't know how to refine and actually extract energy from it yet . We can just excavate it . Because of that, the stocks of the refinery companies rebounded pretty quickly . However, if we do find a way to commercialize this ore, the value of moonstones will decrease . Of course, the decrease would be small, and the moonstones will still be expensive . ”
Chelsea laughed as she looked at Sungyoon .
“Congratulations, Mr . Sungyoon . You won another lottery ticket . ”
“If that's true, why hasn’t Armstrong city contacted me?”
“They're busy investigating all the labyrinths near Armstrong city right now . The rights to the Beginner’s Labyrinth lies with you, so they thought it would be more profitable if they found other labyrinths with ores . ”
In other words, Armstrong wouldn’t help Sungyoon excavate the ores .
‘What should I do?’
Sungyoon's head hurt a bit as he thought about how to excavate the ores .
In the past, he would have been motivated by greed to expand his company . However, he had completely settled in his life as a Connector and felt no desire to lead a company again .
‘I’ll have to discuss this with the President . ’
Letting Jimin deal with it was the easiest way out .
“Are you planning on heading down to Earth?”
“Yes . It's a bit early, but I was thinking about going on a vacation with everyone . ”
“Where?”
“I haven’t made a decision yet . Maybe a visit to the ocean with everyone including the President . ”
“I’m jealous . ”
The images of the blue ocean and the white waves of the warm beaches in Southeast Asia ran through Chelsea’s mind .
Every day, she had to wake up and see a gray city in space . It was depressing . So she was really jealous of the four Connectors in front of her .
“Would you like to come with us?”
“What? I can?”
Chelsea perked up at Emily’s suggestion .
Seeing that Grace and Tim nodded, Chelsea looked toward Sungyoon . It appeared as if she were a puppy begging for a treat .
“… If you have time, you can accompany us, Ms . Chelsea . ”
“Thank you! I had received some vacation time due to the progress I made in my research, and I was wondering how to spend it!”
Chelsea didn't wonder anymore .
***
The blue ocean and the skyline stretched into the distance . The sight looked beautiful .
When the sun sunk into the horizon, the beautiful surroundings turned dark . However, the countless stars and the Moon floating in the clear sky shone their light on the surface of the water and created a beautiful image . Next to this fantastic view of the ocean, an awe-inspiring mountain stood tall . The bugs on the mountain cried out in an amazing symphony .
However, the cries suddenly came to a stop .
Boom!
Something fell from the sky, and the peaceful atmosphere turned tense .
The being that had fallen slowly got up .
Its batlike wings were covered in membranes, and black spikes protruded from its body . The most striking part of its appearance was its horns .
In the heart of the Great Labyrinth, this monster was called Kevil .
Its terrifying eyes looked at its surrounding . It smiled when it sensed the fragrant and familiar energy that wasn’t polluted .
[I found it . ]
Its red eyes flashed .