Chapter 46
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Translator: Silver Dragon
Chapter: 47
Chapter Title: Turning Off the Tap
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Around the time the wreckage of Ares was slowly rusting away at the foot of the Crimson Mountains.
"Extra! Extra!"
The news of the armored train Ares's destruction reached Meridian, the continent's largest city and the beating heart of the Trade Federation.
Atop the towering spire in the center of the city.
The air in the large conference room adjoining the president's office was frozen solid like a block of ice.
Along both sides of the long ebony table sat executives representing each department.
Their faces were smeared with fear, anger, and the stench of trying to shift blame.
The ordnance officer was the first to leap from his seat, shouting.
"Ares? Impossible! You're saying a bunch of bandits took down a fortress on rails?"
The intelligence officer across from him snorted derisively.
"I guess you didn't get the report about those bandits being armed with arcane magitech rifles. The weapons under your watch are the ones shooting you in the back of the head right now."
"What did you say?!"
"This wouldn't have happened if Ares's route hadn't leaked in the first place. Isn't this the intelligence department's screw-up?"
"Why are you pinning the transport division's incompetence on us?!"
The conference room quickly turned into a den of beasts ripping at each other's throats.
Voices and the pounding of fists on the table echoed off the walls, blending into noise.
But even that clamor fizzled out into nothing before the man at the head of the table.
President Valerius.
He hadn't uttered a single word.
His fingers interlaced, eyes closed.
Yet that silence weighed heavier than any outburst, slowly chilling the room.
As the executives' voices trailed off like coughs, Valerius opened his eyes.
Cold, emotionless eyes gleaming like winter steel.
"So."
He asked in a low, heavy voice.
"Have you found the culprit?"
That one sentence froze the room solid.
The intelligence officer wiped cold sweat from his brow, stammering.
"We haven't identified them yet, President. But with riots surging across the continent these past few months, our informants are working overtime. The total wipeout of our unit in Blackwater, the halted crystal shipment from Twin Lax, and now the lizardmen tribes in the southern jungles turning uncooperative out of nowhere..."
"Speaking of which, have you heard about that suspicious gunslinger wielding some strange rifle lately?"
Valerius cut him off.
The moment the name slipped out, the air in the room cooled again.
A mysterious man who appeared like a ghost in the wasteland's darkness, flipping the board upside down.
"That guy? He's just some gunslinger. Most of it's exaggerated rumor..."
"I'll be the judge of that."
Valerius rose slowly from his seat.
The scrape of the chair cut through the room like a blade being drawn.
His gaze swept the table like lightning.
"The Eldorado wasteland has always been crawling with riffraff. But these recent disturbances aren't mere banditry."
His eyes flashed, piercing the executives.
"Especially the movements around the Atlas ruins. They're anything but ordinary."
He turned his gaze to the group standing silently in the shadows at one side of the room.
"Edgar."
"Yes, President."
They were men in tailored suits and fedoras pressed low.
Shadows of the city gleaming out of place amid the dusty wilds of Eldorado.
Their eyes were cold, their waist revolvers taut as if ready to spit fire at any moment.
A small eye-shaped pin adorned their lapels.
Edgar Detective Agency.
Those who enforced order in their own way in zones beyond the Federation's reach.
"Find the information."
Valerius's voice rumbled low.
"Starting with that gunslinger wielding weapons from the Atlas ruins. Pull the threads on every recent incident, including Ares. Uncover it all. Find the root of this chaos."
He was certain.
This was the scheme of some massive organization targeting the Federation's heart.
"Understood."
Edgar and his men bowed briefly and melted soundlessly into the shadows.
As the door closed, Valerius walked to the window.
Below stretched the vast panorama of Meridian.
The president muttered low.
"One little rat... making quite the racket."
At that very moment, as the heart of the Trade Federation seethed with unseen shadows of conspiracy.
'Tired...'
The man at the center of that conspiracy was now strolling leisurely through the desert, caked in sand and dust.
It was Jinwoo.
Two full weeks since crossing the wasteland after the Ares incident.
He'd arrived at a small frontier village not far from his next target, Blackstone Base.
Oasis Sanctuary.
The name sounded grand, but the village looked ready to be swallowed by the next sandstorm.
Houses of cracked mud walls twisted like spines.
Residents slumped in the streets were motionless as dust-covered mannequins.
Even the air hung heavy with exhaustion instead of wind.
'The situation's worse than I thought.'
Jinwoo muttered to himself as he headed to the village well in the center, its bottom nearly exposed.
There, the village elder and a few residents had gathered.
Their eyes hardened at the stranger's arrival.
"Who are you, traveler?"
Jinwoo pulled back his hood and drew a worn bounty poster from his pocket.
Traces of the minor bounties he'd claimed over the past two weeks.
"Just a bounty hunter passing through. Was hoping to wet my whistle, but looks like your well's in rough shape."
At his words, deeper wrinkles etched the elder's face.
"As you see... the well started drying up a month ago."
"Can't even draw a single bucket a day now."
"We'll all die of thirst at this rate."
Jinwoo smirked faintly at that.
"If I find the cause, you'll pay me handsomely, right?"
One resident scoffed and cut in.
"Hunter, if we had money, we'd have hired someone already. All we've got left is dust."
"Don't need money."
Jinwoo peered into the well, speaking slowly.
He could already see the problem laid out like a blueprint in his mind.
"Just let me crash here while I look into it. Room and board, and I'll take a peek."
The elder, figuring there was nothing to lose, finally nodded.
All this was just part of the bigger picture.
'This subquest isn't tied to assaulting the main Federation base.'
But Jinwoo knew.
This minor incident would become the butterfly's wingbeat that topples a massive fortress later.
The aquifer feeding this well connected directly to Blackstone Base's underground pipes.
Why was the water drying up?
The Federation had monopolized the upstream source during their base expansion.
Jinwoo's real goal wasn't fixing the village well.
It was exploiting the water flow in reverse—cracking their lifeline just a little.
After a decent meal, Jinwoo stood.
"Alright. Time to investigate the cause."
Jinwoo said.
"I hear this aquifer starts in that Whispering Cave over there? That right?"
"Y-Yes, but..."
Jinwoo led the elder and a few young villagers out into the scorching desert sun.
The water source lay inside the cave.
Whoooosh!
A gloomy place that moaned like a dying man each time the wind gusted through.
Narrow, twisting passages tangled like a maze, but Jinwoo navigated to the deepest chamber with the ease of strolling his own bedroom.
"Hey, young man! How do you know the way so well?"
The elder panted from behind.
Jinwoo shrugged nonchalantly.
"Got lost around here once before."
Moments later, they reached the cave's heart—a small chamber where the underground spring bubbled up.
The cause was obvious.
A massive boulder had collapsed, blocking most of the aquifer.
Only a trickle seeped through a narrow gap.
"No way! That's why the well..."
Despair spread across the villagers' faces.
No human strength could budge that rock.
But Jinwoo, as if he'd planned it, pulled several sticks of dynamite from his pack.
"Don't worry. This is what it's for."
He expertly placed the charges, quickly eyeing the rock's cracks and the ground's angle.
He wired the fuses to the most efficient demolition point.
Of course, even this was part of the plan.
'Let's see, this spot, right?'
Pretending to set charges around the boulder, Jinwoo moved to the opposite wall.
This wall faced the water path leading to Blackstone Base.
He slyly hid one stick of dynamite here.
In a crevice so deep no eye could spot it.
'The shock will propagate this way, cracking the wall just a bit.'
Once water started leaking, the Federation's drinking supply would dwindle fast.
With preparations complete, he evacuated the villagers outside.
He lit the long fuse, and a tiny spark shivered into the darkness.
Moments later, a dull roar shook the earth.
Booom!
When the tremors stopped and they reentered.
The massive boulder was shattered to pieces.
And between the fragments, cool water gushed like a waterfall.
"Water! It's flowing!"
Cheers erupted.
People hugged and wept.
They hailed Jinwoo as the hero who saved the village.
"Thank you! Young man! How can we ever repay this..."
But Jinwoo let their gratitude flow in one ear and out the other.
His eyes were fixed on a tiny fissure in the opposite wall.
Clear water was seeping out like a thread.
No one noticed, but it was already a crack linked to the Federation's lifeline.
'That fissure will collapse in less than a day. Water to them will divert here.'
In just a few days, their water source would run dry.
The thirsty always made clouded judgments.
'If I wrap this up before the next main quest...'
The Federation base's combat strength would weaken dramatically.
One small wingbeat would seed the typhoon to shake the Trade Federation's mighty fortress.
That night, Jinwoo slipped away from the village, leaving behind a few gold coins and thanks.