Legacy

Holy Kingdom, Michelle, Black Cave Plains.

Relic Cave.

It was said to be the birthplace of the first dynasty, Ash, which had brought the Wasteland to an end five hundred years ago.

Among the countless caverns beneath the plains, besides the descendants of the mutant monsters infected by the Corrupt Calamity back then—the kobolds—there was also said to be a relic of the Ash Emperor.

Anything with even the slightest connection to the Ash Emperor drove people to madness and drew them like moths to a flame.

After all, if not for the Ash Emperor's feat five hundred years ago—uniting the Wasteland, rallying the strength of the entire continent, leading an allied army of all races into the deepest reaches of the Abyss of Corrupt Calamity, and completely purifying and destroying the source of the pollution—

the world would likely still be shrouded in fear of the Corrupt Calamity, devastated and scarred, with all living beings trembling in the shadow of its monsters and natural disasters, struggling to survive.

Even now, five hundred years after the Ash Emperor's "disappearance," no one had ever reached his heights. No—not even half of them. That only made the emperor's legend shine all the brighter.

So rumors of the emperor's "legacy" on the Black Cave Plains drew countless people, who flocked there in droves.

Unfortunately, so much time had passed that no one knew whether the "legacy" had already been secretly snatched up by some major power, whether the rumors had been false to begin with, or whether the kobolds had moved it deeper underground.

In any case, no official announcement had ever been made that anyone had actually found the supposed "legacy."

As time went by, people finally lost their enthusiasm for the Black Cave Plains. Even so, every year, plenty of archaeologists, adventurers, and people from the settlements that had sprung up around the plains still tried their luck in the caverns. The local powers and scavengers who made up those settlements were a motley crowd.

At that moment, a small team was making its way through a winding cavern beneath the plains.

Most of them looked rough and carried firearms. The matching Sand Rose insignia on the backs of their jackets or their sleeves marked them as gang members.

The scar-faced man leading them was growing impatient. He shouted at the woman at the very front of the group, who was dressed like a typical scavenger.

"Hey, how much longer? We've been in this godforsaken place for almost two hours. You said you knew this area well. Can you actually do the job or not?"

The scavenger woman didn't back down when the scar-faced man snarled at her. She had plenty of fire of her own, and shot right back.

"And you've got the nerve to complain!? It's because of your lousy treasure map! It's so shoddy and blurry, and several parts are **—wrong!"

The scar-faced man had been chewed out instead, and his expression darkened. The men behind him grew angry too, but in the end, he just gave them a look, and they swallowed their irritation for the time being. She was the best local guide they could find, after all. If they wanted to find the legendary "legacy," they had to rely on these "rats" who knew the caves.

But after this...

Jason looked at the scavenger woman up ahead, torch in hand as she studied the map. He sneered to himself. Rats were better off staying in the gutter forever.

Another few dozen minutes passed.

Jason's patience was nearly gone.

Suddenly—

"We're here." The scavenger woman leading the way stopped.

Jason and the others following her were delighted at first. But after looking around at the rock walls, Jason was about to demand to know how this place looked anything like the site of a "legacy" when—

"According to the markings on the map, we just need to touch some sort of mechanism over here..." The scavenger woman held her torch up to the cavern wall and began feeling around.

There was a click.

Before the scavenger woman or Jason's group could react, the ground beneath their feet suddenly gave way.

"F**—!"

The sensation of falling hit them at once. The scavenger woman's cursing was swallowed up by a rumbling crash as everyone plunged downward.

A little while later, the clouds of dust began to clear.

Coughing and covered in grime, the group waved the dust away and slowly climbed to their feet, one by one.

Fortunately, the drop hadn't been very deep, and most of them had suffered only minor injuries. But that was still enough to send Jason over the edge. He had barely managed to make a sound when he abruptly fell silent.

Because—

Once his vision cleared, Jason realized that the place they'd fallen into was... different.

The walls around them were no longer ordinary rock. They looked more like those of a constructed chamber.

The brick walls were covered in intricate murals and patterns he couldn't understand.

Looking around the space, he saw objects piled everywhere. Most of them had rotted away, and a thick layer of dust covered them. Cobwebs were everywhere.

But even that couldn't hide their former refinement and splendor. On some of the objects and reliefs, Jason could even see faint streaks of dark-red light. They were weak, but the detector hidden in his sleeve had already responded clearly.

Jason understood at once.

Corrupt Calamity artifacts!

Corrupt Calamity artifacts that were fought over on the black market and worth a fortune!

Just these artifacts alone were enough to send Jason into a frenzy of delight.

But it seemed...

They were only appetizers.

Before long, everyone in the chamber turned their attention to the same spot: the center of the far end, where something stood in the darkness, radiating a reddish-brown glow.

A stone coffin.

At first glance, the stone coffin seemed very plain, without much decoration or carving. There were only a few patterns on its sides, and the reddish-brown glow they had seen earlier shone through the cracks in those patterns.

But after looking at it for a few more moments, they were overwhelmed by the powerful sense of age emanating from it. A faint shiver rose deep within them. Compared to the stone coffin, they felt so small and insignificant, like ants.

The stone coffin remained motionless.

Yet it had already made one thing clear to everyone: nothing else in the chamber, even all the other objects taken together, could possibly be as important as this "stone coffin."

Or rather—

What was inside it.

Jason panted with excitement. His pupils widened, and his hands trembled. The Corrupt Calamity detector in his arms showed that the concentration around the coffin was off the charts, its needle swinging to the limit.

That meant the Corrupt Calamity contamination from the stone coffin alone was at least A-grade.

And an A-grade Corrupt Calamity artifact was already beyond the realm of money. Every one of them possessed terrifying powers and had to be carefully contained in the most heavily secured isolation chambers.

There was no doubt.

The legacy.

This was the Ash Emperor's "legacy" they'd been searching for!

He forced down the surging urge to rush over and open it immediately.

Because before that—

Jason had one more thing to do.

The scar-faced man drew a pistol from his waist and pointed its dark barrel at the scavenger woman who had led them there.

"What do you think you're doing?" Irin stared at the gun barrel and took half a step back.

"Exactly what it looks like. Thanks for helping us find the 'legacy,' but I'm sorry. To keep this secret, we'll have to leave you here forever."

Jason finally dropped the act, revealing his vicious side to the scavenger woman.

He looked at Irin's stunned expression and sneered.

"Did you think we wouldn't do anything to you until we were back outside? How naive! Once I get the legacy and absorb the Corrupt Calamity to become a Corrupted, why would I need you to guide us?"

The first half of the scar-faced man's words made Irin go pale. He'd hit the mark.

But when Jason said the second half, her expression changed to one of shock.

"W-what!? Absorb the Corrupt Calamity? Become a Corrupted? You're insane! You're going to kill yourself!"

The scavenger woman had good reason to call Jason insane.

After all—

The Corrupted.

In the old era, that term had represented hope for the people of the Wasteland. But in the new era, the Corrupted had become the source of nightmares feared by everyone in the great cities and nations.

It all came down to one reason.

Ever since the emperor's disappearance five hundred years ago, no one had been able to control the power of the Corrupt Calamity perfectly, the way the emperor once had.

The Corrupted were hybrids of humans and the Corrupt Calamity. They gained powerful abilities, but their minds and spirits were also eroded. The slightest mistake could make them lose control and turn into Corrupt Calamity monsters.

The higher a Corrupted's rank, the easier it was for them to lose themselves, and the greater the destruction they could cause. In the worst cases, their rampages could even bring back the terrifying "natural disasters" that had plagued the Wasteland in the old era.

In the end, the nations, independent cities, and alliances of the post-Wasteland era all reached the same conclusion: they could no longer cultivate Corrupted as stable as the Ash Emperor had—not to mention ones free of any side effects.

Instead, frequent Corrupted rampages, combined with the fact that the Corrupt Calamity left behind after the Abyss of Corrupt Calamity was purified had already dwindled, made it even more dangerous for Corrupted to advance.

Taken together, these factors led every nation to place the Corrupted on its wanted list. Anyone discovered was to be captured and placed under strict control immediately.

The "Corrupt Calamity artifacts" mentioned earlier were also classified as seriously prohibited items.

Yet Jason had just said he wanted to absorb the Corrupt Calamity and become a Corrupted.

No.

He wasn't insane.

Irin's gaze finally fell on the reddish-brown stone coffin.

If this really was the legendary emperor's "legacy," then maybe... it really was possible.

Damn it!

The scavenger woman quietly put one hand behind her back and raised the other.

Irin made one last attempt to resist. "I promise I won't tell anyone about this place! I don't even want the rest of my pay. Please, just let me go."

The only answer she got was Jason's index finger beginning to squeeze the trigger.

Then he sneered at her in a tone full of contempt.

"Dead men don't talk."

Bang!

It wasn't a gunshot.

Before Jason could pull the trigger, another abrupt sound rang out in the chamber, beating him to it.

At that moment, everyone present instinctively looked toward its source.

It came from—

The reddish-brown stone coffin at the far end of the chamber!

Bang. Bang!

The impacts continued to sound from within the coffin, as if something inside was trying to get out.

The reddish-brown patterns on the coffin walls flickered wildly as the lid trembled. Red light spread out, as if it were about to dye the entire chamber blood-red.

As the reddish-brown waves enveloped them, everyone clutched their heads in pain. Their faces twisted, their expressions contorted.

Because in their ears—

Crying. Roaring. Screaming. Laughing.

All kinds of chaotic sounds blended into a babble of mad whispers. Even though they did their best to cover their ears, the maddening sounds continued to echo in their minds, ravaging their spirits.

The needle on the Corrupt Calamity detector in Jason's hand swung wildly along with the people. Cracks appeared in the glass over the display. That meant the concentration of Corrupt Calamity here had gone from "off the charts" to so high that the instrument had failed completely.

Fortunately—

The next second—

Bang!

Clang!

This impact was louder than all the ones before it.

After that, everything stopped.

The chaotic sounds in their minds, the needle swinging wildly across the detector's dial, and the reddish-brown patterns glowing on the stone coffin and bathing the chamber in red.

Jason felt like someone who had just been pulled from the water and dragged to shore. Everything that had happened might have lasted only a few seconds, but to him, it had felt like an entire century of torment.

He could say with absolute certainty that this was the thing everyone feared—the pollution of the Corrupt Calamity.

And now, the stone coffin that had been the source of that intense Corrupt Calamity—

Its patterns had dimmed. The reddish-brown light no longer shone from them, and even the mysterious, ancient aura it had exuded at first had vanished. It seemed to have become nothing more than an ordinary coffin.

Of course, that wasn't the point.

The point was—

The most important thing was missing too.

The coffin's... lid.

Everyone held their breath.

Cold sweat beaded on every forehead. A chill ran down their backs as a creeping sense of dread swept over them.

Under the stunned, vacant, shocked, and terrified gazes of Jason, the scavenger woman, and all the gang members—

A young man's silhouette slowly rose from the shadows of the coffin at the far end.

The black-haired young man who had climbed out of the coffin seemed confused at first. Then he looked around, and especially at the layout of the chamber, as if he'd suddenly realized something.

The young man's expression changed to inexplicable fury.

Then he followed it up with a few strange words they couldn't understand at all.

"Fuck!"

"This is the Second Playthrough!?"