The Dark King

by Steffen Schmidt

  As if it was their privilege to do so!

  This situation made him feel a chilling fear, but he also felt a surge of strong anger!

  This anger was caused by his life being threatened and the rules of this world which could be bent according to powerful's will!

  Since the law is unreliable, I have to develop my own rules!

  Aristocratic privilege? Hunter privilege?

  Someday, I will tear all these into pieces!

  Dudian's small hands tightly clenched into fists. The two officers did not pay attention to him. Perhaps after they determined that Dudian didn't have the "light physique", they lost interest in communicating or even observing him.

  All of a sudden, coldness emerged from deep within Dudian's eyes. His mind became more mature, more ruthless, and he secretly decided in his heart that he would change his situation and get ahold of an indirect life insurance as soon as possible. Otherwise, if he were to encounter another such scenario, it wasn't certain that he could survive. If he died in such a manner, how was he going to face his parents who granted him a "second life"?

  "I'm not able to use guns, but gunpowder seems to be... " Certain thoughts flashed in his heart.

  "Hey!" Fernando said with regret: "Go, little guy." His attitude was not as warm and friendly as before.

  "By the way, if you are found leaking information about us to anyone, including your parents, then you can't blame anyone but yourself! "

  Chapter 11: Back to slums

  Fernando drove the carriage. They did not stop at the castle for "scavengers" that Dudian saw. Instead, they continued to the residential district. The carriage, however, halted before the wall that separated the commercial and the residential districts. Dudian would have to get off the carriage and go back on his own.

  "Did I fail to become a "scavenger" as well?" Dudian asked directly because he had doubts.

  Fernando scrambled back to the carriage, and then impatiently answered, "We already received your results so there is no point in returning to re-check it anymore. You should wait for another few more days and somebody will come over to report. He lashed the whip and the black carriage sped away.

  Dudian frowned a little, then turned and began walking down the street towards the Jura couple's house. Fortunately for him, before he once followed the House of Avril's carriage before, so he recognized his way back or else he would get lost at this point.

  Dudian became very tired by the time he arrived at 108 Lin Kang Street*. His breathing became heavy, his body drenched full of sweat, and his legs sore. Dudian's body had not recovered properly due to being frozen for so long, so even though the Jura couple's house was only approximately seven to eight miles away from the wall, it taxed him. As of now, his physical strength was far weaker than what an average child would.

  Jura was looking out of the window when she saw Dudian around the street corner. Immediately her eyes lit up, and she quickly went outside with Gray in tow.

  "How come that there was nobody to send you off? Why did you return here alone?"

  Gray noticed Dudian's unnaturally fatigued condition. He immediately scooped up Dudian's worn out, weak little body and hastily re-entered the house. After closing the doors shut, Jura found a cotton towel to wipe Dudian and then asked with a concerned tone, "Are you alright? Did they not like you?"

  From Jura and Gray's reaction, Dudian realized Jura and Gray knew that he was taken from the law school. "How did you know?"

  "Earlier, and official came over to inform us that you qualified to join the Guard." Gray's face became red as he asked with suspicion, "Did you failed the test?"

  Dudian remembered that he had to kept the statuses "Scavengers" and "Hunters" a secret, so he replied, "I passed. In a few days' time, somebody would be present to report. However, I do not wish to go there, can I refuse?"

  If he could make a choice, he preferred to study the law. Dudian had no idea about the current world so he wanted to comprehend few more things before heading outside of the giant wall.

  Gray felt relieved. He laughed and said, "Did you not know that many people covet for such positions? Oh, my! Yet, you want to refuse? If you joined to be a Guard, you would not have to worry about eating and drinking for your entire lifetime. The pay is wonderful, and moreover nobody would dare to bully you!"

  Jura looked at Dudian softly and asked, "Do you still wish to study the Law?"

  Dudian earnestly nodded.

  Jura smiled and then said, "If you go over to train, you will also learn the Law. You would not be limited to studying the law, but in fact medicine, geology, sewing, and so forth. It is a comprehensive school."

  "SCHOOL?" Dudian was confused.

  There were many people who could not differentiate between colleges and schools! In summary, colleges were specialized, such as Law School, Sewing College, where schools are comprised of multiple colleges, and learn things in-depth.

  "There is nothing to worry for! You would learn the Law when you have joined the Guards". Gray patted on Dudian's shoulder. He had a wide smile as he continued to encourage Dudian. "I heard that there would be a training camp with elimination. So just concentrate on the camp!"

  "Auntie." Dudian seized the opportunity to speak with Jura, "I would like to borrow some pocket money!"

  Jura became surprised momentarily, then smiled and asked, "how much would want to have? I would give it to you! Do not ever talk about borrowing and repaying, for we are family!"

  Dudian had prepared beforehand a reasonable answer: "I want to purchase food and return to the slums to visit the children in Meishan Orphanage. I had already intended to borrow from you, visit the orphanage and then later return."

  Jura smiled, and said, "alright". She took out a wad of green paper notes from her wallet before counting them. She gave Dudian notes equivalent to 100 coins.

  Ever since the invention of printing technology ten years ago, Bank of Silva's management issued huge sums of banknotes. In just few short years, these notes replaced physical coins and have circulated widely to various households in both residential and commercial districts. Everyone gradually grew accustomed to utilizing paper notes for trading purposes. Despite that, people still addressed the amount with the term "coin" even when transactions were done with paper notes.

  __________________________________________________________________________________

  "Thank you!" Dudian received the notes immediately and put them into his pocket.

  Gray observed this and did not mention anything. He told Jura to prepare dinner.

  The next morning.

  Dudian woke up early, washed himself and ate breakfast before leaving the house. Even though he did not know when the "Scavengers" would send personnel to pick him up, he knew that he did not have to go to law schools for a few days time.

  "Sulfur... ..." Dudian vaguely recollected the composition of gunpowder. Back then, it was during festive season when his sister informed him on how to make firecrackers at home. He was not interested in gunpowder, so he could not recall the exact formula other than sulfur.

  Dudian did not go to purchase sulfur. He hired a carriage and instead went to the slums.

  In the slums, Dudian headed directly to Meishan Orphanage. He passed by the orphanage and then went over four more streets to enter a secluded street. Along the way, he smelled the stench of feces. He also saw rotten carcases of insects. Not long after, he arrived a huge garbage dump. The garbage dump of Silva (city) located precisely in the slums.

  There was nothing of value here for anyone.

  Because of that, even impoverished individuals would avoid this garbage dump, because all the items that were disposed here have long rotten.

  Dudian, despite standing far away could still smell the rancid fetor of feces mixed with the malador of urine. Silva's excretion problems was solved by directing everything to over here. ?There were seven to eight garbage heaps that stood like colossal mountains. He could not see what was even behind. He
scoured around to confirm that nobody else was around. Dudian approached near to a garbage filled area. He then removed a large piece of debris from the area. Afterwards, he bent down, took out a piece of cloth and began cleaning around a small, black hole. It was large enough to accommodate his small, thin frame. ?For him to arrive to this place was not of coincidence.

  *The address of the Jura couple

  Chapter 12: Super-chip

  Durian removed his coat. At the very next moment he discovered a slightly dry spot on the ground. He used his bare arms and began crawling into the cave. Fortunately, there were no steel nor glass in the garbage dumps. After all, steel is a recyclable material so no poor people would feel extravagant enough to discard it away. As for glass, the poor could not even afford it.

  The pungent stench suffocated Durian constantly. It became to a point where he almost threw up everything from inside his stomach. From time to time, he also touched wet and soft objects. In darkness, he could not see anything but in his mind, he had guessed such as lumps of feces, or a rotting body of a rat. Even the poorest of the poor would have avoided places such as this.

  Dudian gritted his teeth, crawled for another seven or eight meters and finally touched a hard object. It was his frozen storage device!

  He touched further along the edge of the shell, and soon later found a button to press.

  "Fingerprint verification in process..." A mechanical voice echoed in the darkness.

  "Click!", the frozen storage opened. The door of the storage arched the mountain of garbage slightly upwards. However, more thrash fell into the storage compartment, filling up much most of the free space inside.

  Dudian glanced at the door, where a number in red was present.

  This was the very year.

  It was this that allowed Dudian to know that he regained consciousness after 300 years. ?The other reason for him to comprehend that a full 300 years have passed by is since the energy tube in the cold storage capsule could only supply energy for a maximum of three hundred years. That time length was the limit.

  Dudian went inside and soon clicked a raised button. The click sound echoed once more. A built-in palm-sized screen popped up.

  "Eye scanning initiated..."

  The previous mechanical voice spoke again as a beam shot unto Dudian's eyes from the palm-sized screen.

  "Verification... authorized". The mechanical voice resounded. The screen turned into a three-dimensional hologram. There were two options, to start and to exit.??Dudian said "Start".

  During the outbreak of the original disaster, Dudian was not only cytogenetically frozen. Furthermore, the cold storage capsule had also a super-computer in it. It can be said that this super-computer was the zenith of the old civilization. It stored information regarding to fields of science, technology as well as social history. These are only information and do not consume much memory. Nevertheless, the super-computer also included information regarding social, scientific and technological development data from every country, which would have required at least petabytes or even exabytes of storage.

  Dudian recalled his father's last words, "Remember, you must rebuild the human civilization... ..."

  It was obvious that the frozen storage capsule was built in such a way meant to be used to survive the disaster, but his father also considered the survival of humanity post-disaster. The fallout of the global nuclear bomb would have dealt a devastating blow to human civilization. This super-computer contained the entire wisdom of the old world!

  The basic principles of manufacturing gunpowder as well as firearms, were naturally also included within the data kept.

  The world does not have 'electricity'. Fortunately, the remaining energy in the frozen storage capsule was sufficient to operate the super-computer even though human body could no longer be cryogenically frozen any longer. At the very least, it was enough to maintain the basic operations of the frozen storage capsule. It was enough to study for few months. Dudian did not know what was the exact power consumption, but he estimated that the super-computer only consumed energy far less than what a laptop would consume normally.

  However, Dudian did not have much time remaining to stay any longer. There was no time to come here to study, as it would raise suspicions from the Jura couple.

  "I have enough time to learn how to make gunpowder, generators and to check out the tools of the steam engine era", Dudian said as he lied down on the edge of the cold storage capsule to study.

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  Dudian resisted the foul stench of feces and rotten animals. His body gradually adapted. His mind was completely focused on the contents that the super-computer displayed.

  "Sulfur decomposition..."

  "Electricity augmented steam engine..."

  In this small and full of garbage cave, Dudian tried concentrated on learning. Haphazardly, Dudian studied but was not fully absorbed into it. His concept of time was brutal. At dusk, he rubbed his sore eyes and stopped the super-computer lessons. He felt his stomach burn due to not eating and drinking for an entire day.

  "I don't know when in the future would I come again the next time. If an earthquake occurred and the capsule is uncovered, somebody may take notice and excavate it." Dudian then made the decision that it was too dangerous for the super-computer to be here. Previously, he did not bring it into the Meishan Orphanage. This is because in the orphanage, there was a high possibility that it would have been discovered by the children.

  However, the present situation was different. He now lived in a residential area where normally, for residents to have small pieces of metal, people wouldn't care. Even in "Scavengers" training camp, it would not draw unnecessary attention.

  With a crack sound, Dudian opened the cover. He used his small nail to eject a tiny, chip. The energy tube was connected to the circuits of the capsule so it was very difficult to dismantle it.

  Dudian looked at the tiny chip and sighed. Thousands of years' worth of human history and technological inventions were compressed into this tiny object. If the current powers of this world came to realize the value of this chip, he could not predict how crazy the situation would have developed into.

  Dudian carefully put away the chip. He closed the storage's door, and hoped in the future that he would get to access it in the future. He began crawling all the way back to the surface. As soon as he left the colossal garbage heap, he felt as if he baptized from hell and entered heaven. Compared to the air inside, even though everywhere surrounding him was filled with feces and urine, he felt fresh after he climbed out.

  He took a few deep breaths and then looked around. He noticed that nobody was around and the coat was still on the ground. He picked up the coat and quickly left the garbage dump.

  Not far away from the garbage dump, the earlier continuous downpour from rain water had accumulated into a small lake. Dudian did not bother to regulate for radiation. He put away his coat, and then cleaned his arm and chest. If he could produce a stable supply of power, he would naturally be able to learn from the super-computer methods to purge radiation from the human body.

  Previously, he found an iota of information in the supercomputer. There existed information that documented the methods to purge radiation. However, time was constricted so he did not read about it. After all, even if he did, it would still be practically useless to learn about it.

  Soon his body was slightly cleaner. He wiped the sticky stuffs out, especially his left hand that was stained with feces. He had bouts of nausea.

  Dudian knew that his hair still exuded a strong foul stench. He had to return home to wash properly, for he would get sick if he continued to use rainwater.

  Chapter 13: Gathering

  Dudian returned to the neighbourhood. He spent five copper coins, near the wall to hail a carriage so that he could directly return to the Lin Kang street. Today, time advanced too far, so he did not have enough time to go to purchase sulf
ur and saltpeter. Moreover, in a few days' time Dudian would have to report for duty at the Scavengers training camp. To maintain secrecy as demanded by the organization, everything that was brought to the camp would be closely inspected so he purposefully avoided the purchase of those materials.

  Currently in this world, people only utilised sulfur to make dyes and use it as pesticides. So, it also belonged to the low-risk dangerous goods.

  The Jura couple anxiously waited for Dudian to return. The moment he came back, they were relieved. However, because of the strong stench that emanated from Dudian's body, Gray frowned and distanced himself, "What is this foul stink coming off from your body?"

  Dudian coughed and said, "the usual smell of slums."

  Jura pinched her nose and said "You should wash yourself. Wait a moment, I'm going to bring hot water for you" and then directly went into the kitchen.

  Dudian went into the bathroom. He hid the tiny chip in a crack on the corner connecting the floor to the wall. Soon Jura brought in hot water and asked, "You got to wash properly. Do you want me to help you?"?"No," Dudian quickly refused.

  "OK. Slowly wash up and clean properly." Jura placed the water basin on the ground, then turned to leave.

  Dudian looked at the small basin of water. He had a slight smile on his face. He missed the showers of the old era. Unfortunately, in this world, currently even radiation in water could not be filtered out. At least this held true in residential district, which made Dudian even more fired up in his desire to migrate to the commercial district as soon as possible.

  ...

  ...

  Three days later.

  A tall carriage sprang in front of the Jura couple's house. A strong black horse pulled the carriage. It was two meters high, and was covered with exquisite looking armor.