The Aymara
The Aymara tribe began carving out roads for their expedition north.
"How on earth did those guys even make it down here?"
"Is there really no way through?"
They were searching for a route to advance into the land their ancestors once called home, but it was far from easy.
No wasteland on earth could compare to this barren plateau.
The weather wasn't scorching, but the dryness and the utter absence of water were the greatest problems of all.
"I'm worried we simply can't forge an advance route."
"Hmm..."
"Isn't there some technology to find water in the ground, or create it?"
Amaru, who by now treated Daehan as something of a box of infinite wonders, asked Usam on the off chance he might know.
"Ha, we don't have anything like that either."
Conjuring water out of thin air was beyond even Daehan's abilities—unless Haneul herself came along, stuffed her subspace full of water, and handed it out.
And she was busy in Japan; getting her to come all the way here was a stretch.
"Hmm..."
"Think of something. Even following the Inca's trail, I can't see any way to advance."
Amaru was so frustrated he half-wished he could resurrect the Inca and interrogate them about how they'd crossed this wasteland.
"Why don't you try looking for gold instead?"
"Hm? We need to build an advance route—what's gold got to do with it?"
"See those friends over there?"
Usam pointed at the Daehan Company employees unloading cargo at the harbor.
"Yeah. Aren't they the wonderful folks who bring us weapons and food?"
"Those friends have an absolutely staggering number of ships."
"Hm? I suppose so?"
If a ship arrived once every day or two even to this far-flung corner of the world, it meant there were already thirty to sixty vessels plying this route alone.
"Wouldn't it be easy to ask them to find a spot along the coast where there's a river, then have them ferry us there?"
"Oh!"
Follow the coastline with a little care and they'd find a river eventually—and then the Aymara could disembark there and build a port.
And wouldn't that naturally solve the supply problem as well?
"That's it! This was never meant to be a walking expedition!"
"Don't we just need to prepare the gold for passage fare?"
"Incredible... So gold solves everything."
There was a slight misunderstanding here, but a worship of gold was quietly being born among the Aymara.
Honestly, hadn't they been paying for everything—their resistance movement, their food, their daily necessities—with gold and silver all along?
In Amaru's mind, this barren wasteland was beginning to look like solid gold.
Because there really was a tremendous amount of gold here.
"From this moment on, we change our approach!"
"What is it?"
"We find gold and silver first!"
Amaru gathered his people and revealed a far easier path north: amass gold, hire the Daehan Company, and sail up the coast.
"Would that really be easier?"
"Do you have the confidence to build a road through that wasteland and haul supplies across it?"
"Ah..."
This wasn't a matter of favoring the Daehan way. Genuinely considered, hauling an enormous quantity of supplies across that wasteland was almost unimaginable.
On top of that, they'd need to carry armor, weapons, ammunition, food—and water too.
"Isn't shipping the supplies by sea much easier?"
"Ah! So we'd have them drop us right where we need to be?"
"Exactly!"
Seeing that his people understood, Amaru's mood lifted.
Because no matter how he turned it over in his mind, going by ship was the easiest way.
"Anyone with a different idea, speak up."
"..."
"Hmm..."
However hard they racked their brains, Amaru's plan still seemed the most sensible. Finding gold would be difficult, but once they did, the Daehan Company's explosives would help them mine it faster than expected.
And even a modest amount of gold bought an enormous quantity of goods.
Mining gold was far easier than scraping by on farming.
"Good, it seems no one has objections. We find the gold first, and buy our road with money!"
"Yes!"
"I think that's the best plan too!"
Amaru succeeded in persuading the chieftains. Some seemed to hesitate, but with no better alternative on the table, they gave in.
And so the entire Aymara tribe took up pickaxes and began burrowing into the mountains.
Many people died and were injured developing the mines, but the Aymara worked tirelessly.
Beyond gold and silver, they discovered countless other mines—recording their locations for the future and moving on—while relentlessly developing mine after mine and extracting staggering amounts of gold.
"You'd give this much away?"
"Shall we give you more if it isn't enough?"
"Whoa..."
A young Aymaran was utterly dumbfounded. He'd barely mined out a gold nugget the size of a finger, and they were handing over cloth and food in amounts he couldn't even carry?
All those years of living on the edge of starvation, farming—what a colossal waste of effort it had all been?
"Is this really so valuable?"
"Yellow is worth ten times what white is."
"Whoa..."
He resolved to gather gold even more diligently. At this rate, wouldn't wealth come in the blink of an eye?
Meanwhile, trade between Amaru and Usam was in full swing.
"How's this?"
Amaru held out a box brimming with gold and silver. Small as it was, it was tremendously heavy.
An amount like this seemed sufficient to buy anything and everything needed for the assault on the Inca.
"Remarkable... But you're living so well already. Must you really go to war?"
Usam felt the Aymara were doing better than he'd expected, and asked half out of concern that his friend might get hurt.
"What? How could that be. That's exactly what we're mining for. We will reclaim the lake, no matter what."
"I see..."
From what he'd heard, there was a vast lake up on the plateau, and it sounded like a wonderful place to live.
Usam felt a small pang of regret—if his friend reclaimed that land, he'd probably become much harder to see.
"I'll do my utmost to help you succeed."
"Thank you."
Amaru surely understood Usam's worries. But he was now aiming to build something greater than a tribal confederation—a true nation.
For the sake of the people who believed in him and followed, he had to steel his heart.
And the following spring, the Aymara built a port on a northern river and secured their advance route.
"The mountains really are tall..."
"Doesn't matter. We go."
"Everyone, advance!"
Many of the tribes had originally lived at high altitudes, so the mountains themselves posed no great difficulty. The problem was the Inca, who somehow knew they were coming and kept harrying them.
"They're rolling stones down the mountain! Everyone, watch out!"
With so many mountains, they couldn't check them all. Rocks would come hurtling down and the ambushers would flee, again and again.
Many were injured and the advance dragged on endlessly, but the people never let go of hope, pushing forward relentlessly until they reached an Inca city.
"So that's the place..."
Arriving at the enemy city, the Aymara put their armored warriors at the front and began lobbing fist potatoes from their slingshots.
KRA-KOOM! BOOM! CRACK-BOOM!
The walls of the Inca—a city built to birth an empire that would last a thousand years—were blasted into dust and scattered on the wind in a single strike.
The city of wood and stone fared no better. In that instant, enemies who had seemed so terrifying looked utterly insignificant.
"Whoa... It's this simple?"
As the walls crumbled, the armored warriors charged in at the head of the column.
BANG! RATATAT! BANG! BANG!
A storm of arrows and sling stones rained down, but they couldn't so much as wound the armored warriors.
The Inca soldiers fell helplessly, one after another.
Once the armored vanguard punched through the front lines, the tribal confederation poured in behind them to finish the job.
The war with the Inca ended without much difficulty.
"So this is our lake at last..."
"I've never been here before..."
"Neither have I."
They'd heard the stories of their roots from their ancestors, but truly, very few had ever set eyes on the place.
Still, the middle-aged elders who had left as children stood at the lakeshore weeping, while others touched the water with reverent hands.
"To make sure we never forget the Daehan who helped us, I intend to name this lake Daehan. What do you all think?"
"Good."
"Not bad at all."
The first thing Amaru did after toppling the Inca city was name the lake.
"And I will gather our Aymara together with all the many tribes and found a nation."
"A nation?"
"What's that?"
There was still a long road ahead to make the concept of a nation understood and to unite them—but Amaru would manage it just fine.
Because he had a friend called Daehan.
"I'll explain all in good time. For now, let's get this place in order."
"Yes. This is where we live now."
The people set about cleaning up the city and mopping up the Inca remnants.
They intended to build a city that would stand for a thousand years.
And so the Kingdom of Aymara was being born.
While Amaru was leading his people to war with the Inca and laying the foundations of a nation, war broke out in Wonnam as well.
"So it was you?"
"..."
Lee Yung knelt before Rari's house.
"Dad..."
And beside him, Rari...
Her belly was showing quite a lot.
"H-how... dare you..."
"I'm sorry! I will take full responsibility!"
"Of course you will!"
Rari's father rose to his feet, club in hand, looking ready to beat Lee Yung to a pulp on the spot.
"Dad!"
"You keep quiet!"
"Why are you like this!"
Rari jumped up and began holding her father back. He was more than capable of actually going through with it.
"You! How could you!"
"What about you!"
"Why are you taking his side!"
Rari's father hated this. The daughter he treasured more than his own eyes kept siding with some outsider.
"Then whose side am I supposed to take!"
"You weren't like this when you were little! You always said you loved your father the most!"
Back then she'd go on about marrying her dad someday, about finding a man just like him.
"Keep it down! What are you saying in front of him!"
Saying such things in front of Lee Yung—Rari was mortified, and her flaring temper burst out.
"Hah! So now you're yelling at me?"
"And what are you planning to do, Father? What about the baby?"
Honestly, the baby was already on the way—what would opposing it accomplish? And the tribesmen who might have taken her away were nothing but old men past their prime anyway.
"I'll kill him and raise the child myself!"
"Are you insane? What are you even saying!"
Lee Yung was in just as much of a bind. He'd never imagined Rari would blow up like this. He'd hoped her father might take a single blow, ease his mind, and give his blessing—but things kept getting more complicated.
"Rari. Come sit here."
"Yungie!"
The moment Lee Yung called her, she glued herself to his side and sat down.
"Guhk..."
Watching this, her father's heart was being torn ten thousand ways.
"Father."
"I'm not your father!"
"I will care for Rari well."
"Then care for her properly!"
"And I'll treat you well too, Father."
"Of course you'd better!"
"Pardon?"
Somehow, as they talked, things were smoothing along nicely.
"Huh?"
The father, for his part, had no real intention of stopping them. Such a fine, handsome young man—and he adored his daughter that much.
This hadn't been his plan. He'd meant to show the young man he had a fearsome father and make him treat his daughter well, but somehow his rage had been derailed—by his own daughter, of all things.
"Ahem."
"I truly will treat her well."
"How many wives do you plan to take?"
"Pardon?"
Unfamiliar with Daehan's culture, he worried that if his daughter aged and some concubine were brought in, she'd be cast aside.
Most nations and tribes still practiced polygamy.
"Um... In Daehan, it's one wife for one husband?"
"What!"
For a moment, he thought he'd misheard. Because that meant Rari would live her whole life loved by this one young man alone.
"There'll be no woman other than Rari, I assure you."
"Well, why didn't you say so, son! Where have you been all this time!"
"Pardon?"
Her father abruptly changed his attitude, wrapped the young man in a sudden embrace, and burst into tears.
Neither Rari nor Lee Yung had any idea what was happening anymore.
"You've come at last! Then! A man like you—I can give you my daughter!"
"Thank you!"
Having secured his permission, Lee Yung offered his thanks.
"Father!"
"Yes! My son!"
"Wouldn't you like to come to Daehan with us?"
"What? Have you ever heard of such audacity?"
"Pardon?"
Another whiplash change of attitude...
"You want me to go live in a foreign land at my age?"
"Life in Daehan is truly comfortable. Come with us."
"Don't mind me. You two just live well."
He didn't want to live apart from his daughter either, but she had someone she loved that much—he had no wish to wedge himself in and be a burden.
"Dad? If you go there, you could eat the meat you love every single day? And they say it's fresh."
"Huh?"
"And they have that much liquor too?"
"Wh-what?"
Rari's father was, after all, a very simple man.
Lee Yung's journey back to Daehan was not going to be a lonely one.