I got into school for nothing-358
I got into school for nothing (358)
Lesson 70. No intention of giving a gap - 4
However, if one knew that countless lower-rank dimensions were currently collapsing, unable to overcome disasters epitomized by monster waves, they would realize how well Earth had endured the cataclysm.
But unfortunately, not all nations could adapt well to the changes—and yes, Iraq, where the group was headed, was a prime example of a country that had vanished, unable to defend against the waves.
In fact,
“It's just ruins.”
“We roughly expected it when there was no airport.”
In the space where all traces of civilization had crumbled, leaving behind a mere desert, the remnants of dangerous infection waves—easily described as infectious spores—were fluttering about. These were signs of how many monster waves had already occurred there, capable of transforming an ordinary human into a monster in a short period.
Stepping down from Lilyth, Ban Yuwon took out a spacious Code Core, imbued it with his Authority, and then flicked it, applying the concepts of Flight and Guidance.
“Let's follow.”
“If every house had one of those instead of an air purifier, it'd be a huge hit.......”
“Where would you find an air purifier that stops monster waves?”
“It's a decent idea, but I'd have to change the filters myself, so it's impossible.”
And indeed, it was Mira and Professor Campanella who were striving to develop a filter that could replace Ban Yuwon's, yet it was uncertain when their invention would ever be commercialized on Earth.
......No, this was hardly the time for such idle thoughts, especially with an entire S-rank dimension having been wiped out.
Ban Yuwon closed and opened his eyes, then ran after the Code Core, while Asha, Kiira, and Kang Miyeon, sensing his changed demeanor, followed behind him with notably subdued expressions.
The space was utterly devoid of life, only lingering concepts scattered thickly like mist, making its profound silence all the more horrifying.
For it easily hinted at the horrors that had transpired there in the past.
―“That's him.”
After running through the desolate wasteland for an indeterminate time, Dokgo Yeon whispered softly.
Ban Yuwon spotted an old man standing quietly atop a sand dune, peering into a book held in his hands, and felt a slight wave of relief.
“Grandfather!”
“Hmm? ......It's our Yuwon!”
Hearing Ban Yuwon's voice, his grandfather, Ban Jiwon, narrowed his eyes and smiled, greeting his grandson.
Asha, who had undergone intense training from Rucell for the past two years, also clung closely to Ban Yuwon, beaming as she subtly emphasized their relationship.
“Hello, Grandfather! I'm Asha!”
“Yes, it's good to meet you too. My grandson seems to be popular even with non-humans.”
Ban Jiwon, immediately discerning her true nature, was surprised yet readily welcomed her.
Unlike his son, Ban Juseok, who still hadn't fully accepted the fact that his boy was simultaneously loved by many women, Ban Jiwon, with a hearty laugh, embraced it with the mindset, “A man of our family ought to have such spirit!”
“Grandfather!”
“Oh, you rascal!”
Ban Yuwon, without warning, hugged his grandfather, unnecessarily spun him once in the air, and then gently set him back down.
Kiira and Kang Miyeon, arriving on the scene a little later than them, felt a peculiar pang upon realizing that Ban Yuwon hadn't offered *them* such a 'service.'
Ban Jiwon, utterly unaware that he was the object of two women's unsightly jealousy, chuckled heartily and patted his grandson's shoulder, saying,
“My grandson has such good energy! So, you've come all this way to find your old grandfather, even though it's not even vacation?”
“And you, Grandfather, why are you here? Didn't you say you'd already thoroughly investigated everything once before?”
Ban Jiwon, a former diplomat who firmly believed their family were descendants of the Tower of Babel's builders, had naturally visited Iraq several times in the past.
In the past, Ban Yuwon had casually listened to his grandfather's travelogues, especially his expedition to Babylon, dismissing them as another one of his "crazy grandpa" phases—but now, with all those wild imaginings having become reality, he couldn't just laugh it off.
“Back then, I was lacking in many ways. But it's different now, isn't it? So I came hoping to uncover the true history from thousands of years ago.......”
―“If it concerns the Tower Lord, it wouldn't be thousands of years ago, would it?”
When Dokgo Yeon quietly voiced her thoughts, not only Ban Yuwon but also Ban Jiwon reacted, for some reason.
“Huh?! Is that... a Constellation's voice? Astonishing. I thought all Constellations were unable to approach Earth after that day......?”
―“You can hear my voice? How, when you don't even know my true name?”
“I think it might be because he's my grandfather. He was a man who possessed an ability that could be called an Authority even before mana appeared on Earth.”
“What, it was far inferior to my grandson's, of course.”
Ban Yuwon, after briefly explaining to a flustered Dokgo Yeon, then similarly explained about her to Ban Jiwon.
“She's my contracted Constellation. ......I explained it to you last time, didn't I?”
Ban Yuwon hadn't been able to visit Earth frequently over the past two years, but each time he did, he made sure to tell his father and grandfather many stories.
“Ah, yes!”
Ban Jiwon, immediately recalling her, spoke with a warm smile.
“So my grandson has another daughter-in-law.”
―Death's Pupil dodges the question, stating that their relationship is not yet that deep.
“Look at her hiding because she's shy. Isn't she cute?”
At Ban Yuwon's words, Ban Jiwon chuckled heartily and nodded.
“Hahaha, I can see why my grandson likes her. She's a different type from the girls who just throw themselves at him without a second thought.”
“Hoh......?!”
“Hah......!”
The grandfather and grandson duo simultaneously ignored the two women, each making a sound of sudden realization.
If they misunderstood on their own, wouldn't things be a little less bothersome in the future? It seemed like a good thing.
Of course, Asha, well aware that Rucell, who was already implicitly treated as the 'main wife' by others, had a quite different personality from Dokgo Yeon, wasn't fooled. But since her rivals were doing the pointless work themselves, there was nothing more welcome, so she chose to remain silent.
“Anyway, yes, what my grandson's daughter-in-law said is correct. In the Bible, at best, it only covers the construction of the Tower of Babel which happened a few hundred years BCE. The most prominent candidate for it is the ziggurat, a tower symbolizing the past glory of Babylon.”
Ban Yuwon knew this story very well.
His grandfather had incessantly told young Ban Yuwon that to prove himself a successor of the Tower of Babel, he had to be able to recite its known history even if woken from sleep.
“However, it can't be entirely unrelated, can it? The Tower of Babel was, so to speak, the very symbol of humanity's ruler's ideals and desires, which sought to gather all of humankind as one. So, I suspect that the later attempts to build the Tower of Babel were perhaps second attempts. The Tower of Babel we know, that is, the construction of the Tower of Babel described in the Bible, was merely a descendant's attempt to build a second Tower of Babel.”
“If I hadn't actually seen it in Union, I would have gloriously tackled that idea.”
He couldn't retort that it was impossible since he knew the Tower of Babel truly existed.
With a frustrated thought—*why did everything his grandfather said ultimately turn out to be true?*—he urged Ban Jiwon to continue.
“So? Did you find anything?”
“Yes, it seems our bloodline was indeed the key—.”
Ban Jiwon had Ban Yuwon stand where he was, then manifested his Authority, astonishingly commanding nature itself.
“[Show me the past....... the deeds of those born of our bloodline.]”
The resulting mana phenomenon was excessively precise and perfect, with the sole exceptions that it couldn't affect reality and was merely a hallucination overlaid onto their vision, visible only to Ban Yuwon and Ban Jiwon themselves.
While Ban Yuwon watched, marveling at how far his grandfather had developed his Authority—.
A scene unfolded that was different from what he had seen inside the Tower when the Tower Lord built the Tower to contain light.
‘No, according to Grandfather, it was built by someone else entirely, so it's natural for the construction scene to be different.’
While the Tower of Babel shown in the video within the Tower was characterized by being walled off on all sides with no means of external entry, and soaring high enough to pierce the sky, the hallucination of the past now displayed a colossal altar, a ziggurat, genuinely constructed during the flourishing era of Mesopotamian civilization.
As Ban Yuwon gazed, speechless, at the construction site from millennia ago, vividly relayed to him across thousands of years, his grandfather quietly continued.
“It occurs to me that perhaps the second Tower of Babel might have functioned as a communication device.”
“......A communication device?”
Ban Yuwon narrowed his eyes at the phrase, which somehow didn't sound unfamiliar.
“It strikes me that its purpose and form seem different from the first Tower of Babel that was constructed. Originally, ziggurats built in this region served as temples to commune with the gods, did they not?”
“Could it be that the first Tower of Babel...... was trying to connect with the Tower in Union?”
“I believe there's a high possibility it succeeded. Didn't you also mention, Yuwon, that you sometimes felt traces of Earth within the Tower of Babel?”
“But before I enrolled, Earth was completely disconnected from the Union Net...... no, wait, maybe not entirely.”
If it had been completely disconnected, Ban Yuwon's family Authority wouldn't have been passed down, even faintly.
Moreover, Ban Yuwon's summoning to Union through special admissions, strictly speaking, occurred before Earth was connected to the Union Net.
If one limited the scope to Ban Yuwon's family, it could be considered an entirely natural phenomenon.
With a displeased expression, Ban Yuwon nodded, then recalled another fact.
Could the disappearance of all Earth's myths when Earth and the Union Net were connected in the past also be related to this?
“Our ancestor knew the Tower would be targeted. In fact, even though Union, where the Tower is located, is a dimension maintained solely for the purpose of protecting the Tower, invasions and destructive activities have consistently occurred there.”
What if such a Tower had been on Earth?
It was unknown, but Earth would likely have been completely annihilated, or even if it had survived, a significant portion of its population would no longer be pure Earthlings.
When Ban Yuwon saw the Tower in Union, he was furious, thinking someone had stolen their family's building, but looking back now with a calm mind—it was thanks to the Tower being in Union that Earth had remained relatively peaceful all this time.
‘But would our ancestor truly have intended to leave Earth, his birthplace, untouched?’
He wouldn't have.
Otherwise, Earth wouldn't have been reconnected to the Union Net again.
Now, this moment becomes important once more.
What if the Tower had—a purpose other than unifying all dimensions?
—What if the reason the second Tower was built was directly linked to that?
‘There's definitely a hidden purpose within the Tower. The existence of a second Tower was completely unimaginable.’
Until now, Ban Yuwon had believed the story of the Tower of Babel in the Bible was merely an allegorical description of events that occurred during the Tower Lord's construction of the Tower.
The man who gathered many by constructing a colossal tower, and the heavens that punished his hubris.
As a result, the languages of many humans involved in the construction were all divided, and humanity scattered—.
Connecting this to the ancestor who tried to unify all dimensions through the Tower of Babel, and the True Dragons who opposed him by erecting dimensional barriers, ultimately separating all dimensions, doesn't it seem quite natural?
But in reality, there was a second Tower like this, and this Tower.......
“It didn't collapse?”
“To my eyes, it appears to be concealing the Tower.”
It even formed a barrier protecting the ziggurat with an Authority no less potent than Ban Jiwon's current one.
A handsome man, likely a direct ancestor of Ban Yuwon and Ban Jiwon, oversaw all these operations, accompanied by another man who carried a beautiful sword and clearly did not appear to be from Earth.
Since Earth at that time was thoroughly hidden, and only True Dragons, who created dimensional barriers, could interfere with concealed dimensions, it naturally followed that this being was both on friendly terms with the ancestor and somehow connected to the True Dragons.
“Alright, that's enough.”
The miracle brought forth by the Codeword came to an end.
Ban Jiwon, who had, through his own deductions and verification by his ability, uncovered that the Tower of Babel and Earth were still in some form of exchange, spoke with a visibly exhausted face from overusing his power.
“But there's nothing more I can do beyond this. I've clearly learned that the construction of the second Tower took place in this area and its result was concealed, but I can't find it. If only I could find it, we might be able to uncover the secrets surrounding the Tower you're climbing even more definitively.......”
“I also feel like I've seen the sword that man in the vision was carrying somewhere before.”
“Huh...... yeah......?”
It was then.
Suddenly, Asha gasped in surprise, summoning the True Dragon Sword into her hand.
The form of a sword, not the spear she usually wielded.
Ban Yuwon, about to ask what was happening, saw the sword in her hand tremble unusually and felt his own eyebrows twitch slightly.
Only then were all his questions answered.
“That's right, a descendant of the True Dragons who would cooperate with our ancestor was right nearby all along.”
“You're not dissing me, are you, Yuwon?!”
If this was the case, bringing Asha instead of Aire might truly turn out to be a stroke of divine genius.
Ban Yuwon declared firmly, watching Asha, who was at a loss, holding the True Dragon Sword now functioning as a divining rod.
“From now on, let's find where the second Tower is, Asha. Even our ancestor truly wouldn't have known about this.”
Who could have imagined that a descendant of the True Dragons, who had betrayed other True Dragons and joined him, would, with the help of his own descendant, annihilate the traitorous True Dragon attempting to possess their body and become the master of the Dragon-Slaying Sword—no, the True Dragon Sword!
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