The Magus Era Chapter 111 - Loan (edited)

Chapter 111: Loan
Tens of thousands feet underground, was a gigantic cavern, and tens of miles-wide lava-rivers that had been rapidly flowing across the cavern.
Over tens of thousands tall and strong men, who had slave-marks branded between their eyebrows, were standing beside those lava-rivers with their bodies bared, and scooping out scorching hot metal liquid from those lava-rivers with special, huge ladles.
The metal liquid, which was s.h.i.+ning with eye-piercing lights, were ceaselessly flowing into a few gigantic smelting furnaces that were located tens of miles away, along with some special metal channels. The odd-shaped furnaces were floating in the air. On the ground below the furnaces, were fire-holes with a radius of a few feet, from which, cyan flame-pillars that had been transformed from the earth-flame, were coming from the deepest area of the earth’s core, and were spurting out of the ground. Those solid-like flame-pillars had been steadily holding those furnaces up in the air.
From time to time, spheres of alloy liquid that were mixed with a few different types of metal liquids according to a certain percentage, would fly out from the furnaces, heavily drop on forge tables far from the furnaces, while bringing up large amounts of fire sparks. Tens of thousands of forging tables were placed orderly in lines, and a few short yet especially strong and muscular men were standing beside each forging table.
All of these strong men were waving different-sized metal hammers and quickly striking those alloy liquids on the forging tables alone with loud clangs, slowly forging the alloy liquid into the rough shapes of all kinds of weapons. Machetes, swords, arrows, crossbows, armours and s.h.i.+elds...all kinds of large-scale tools and roughly shaped weapons would consequently be carried into the deeper area of the cavern and placed orderly in a series of small, honeycombs-like caves of groups of creatures that had short and small figures, and had been running around in the cavern.
This underground cavern was a gigantic a.r.s.enal. The flame and the furnaces, the great heat was ruling everything in this cavern.
Large groups of heavily armed Jia Clan warriors were walking around the cavern; once those hard-working slaves showed any slag or made any forbidden move, a horrible beating would be given to them, even worse, they would be thrown straight into the lava-rivers and burned alive.
Di Sha had changed into some casual clothes, and was guided by a short and small shaped creature, while frowningly walking into this huge cavern.
After walking along a spiral path on the cavern wall, under the constantly changing, weird light in the cavern, for quite a while, Di Sha and the guiding creature finally walked up to a square-shaped door in front of a small cave, which was located on top of the cavern. Two beautiful and elegant young girls smilingly pushed the door open for him, right after which, a gust of cold air puffed out of the door, making Di Sha, who was feeling extremely hot and dry, instantly quiver from the chill.
A weird chuckling sound came from inside the small cave, followed by which, a small and sharp voice slowly said, “My honoured guest, come in please, just come in quickly, do not let the horribly hot air get inside here. Those d.a.m.n slaves, the stinking smell of their bodies is killing me.”
Di Sha walked into the small cave quickly. After a hundreds of zhangs long corridors, a broad and bright s.p.a.ce showed up.
This was a well-designed room, which had a radius of hundreds of zhangs; all the decorations in the room were extremely exquisite and luxurious. The floor of the room was paved in thick furs of rare animals, beautiful and luxurious tapestry were hung on all four walls; there were no lights in the room, instead, thousands of different-sized luminous pearls had been inlaid in the ceiling; the snow-white light that emitted from those luminous pearls had been enlightening the room brightly.
In the middle of the room, a fat, elderly man was standing behind an exquisitely crafted table that was made from red coral, with his legs crossed; the elderly man seemingly was quickly writing something in a thick account book.
Seeing Di Sha come, the elderly man put the pen down and closed the account book, smilingly thrust his hand out towards Di Sha; in the meanwhile, he started talking.
“Di Sha, Di Sha, ah, I remember the last time I saw you was over five-hundred and thirty years ago, at your grandfather’s birthday ceremony. Hm, I’ve heard that you have done pretty well during all these years, you kid, have earned a lot of money from me...look at those slaves down there, half of them were purchased from your Blood Fang, costing me quite a fortune!”
When the elderly man said the few words ‘quite a fortune’, a greedy green light quickly flashed across his pupils; on his round and chubby face, five eyes wildly opened altogether.
Yu Clan’s clansmen had three eyes, Jia Clan’s clansmen had four eyes, and on the face of this elderly man were five eyes.
Apart from the pair of eyes that was similar positioned as those on ordinary people, and another pair of eyes was located under his eyebrows, and on the area below the middle of his eyebrows and above his nose, an erect eye that was over a time bigger than the other four eyes was s.h.i.+ning brightly.
Inside the elderly man’s erect eye, countless loomingly visible spell symbols were flas.h.i.+ng and moving fast, forming into different spell symbol formations. From time to time, innumerable complicated lines would appear in his erect eye, and form all kinds of odd-shaped weapons or tools alone with those spell-symbols.
“Master, I need some money,” Di Sha stood in front of the elderly man and came straightly to the point, “I need a great sum of money that will be enough for me to rebuild an even stronger Blood Fang, and hire a batch of elite Shadow Devil’s killers.
“Rebuild the Blood Fang?” said the elderly man while all his five pupils were flas.h.i.+ng fast, then he laughed out aloud and continued, “a while ago, your brother was sent to the Blood Fang, wasn’t he? I have to say that Di Luo was very talented with women, but in other aspects, he was just too young.”
“You said you want to rebuild the Blood Fang, does it mean the Blood Fang has been wiped out? Well, this kind of things are not rare in those wastelands, happens every year to those small families with bad luck, who are mainly doing the slave trading business,” said the elderly man while smilingly looking at Di Sha, who had a badly darkened face, “but, I never thought that this would happen to the Blood Fang, which belonged to the Di family, the most powerful branch family of the Di s.h.i.+ family.”
Di Sha suddenly opened the erect between his eyebrows, within that eye, a gust of black smoke seemingly had been slowly rotating inside his pupils.
The light that emitted from the luminous pearls quickly dimmed down as if all of the light had been absorbed by Di Sha’s erect eye, even the air inside the room had become much cooler than before.
Along with a sizzling sounds, eight transparent silhouettes abruptly showed up beside the elderly man; following a series of small sounds that were made by powers clas.h.i.+ng against each other, eight fully armed Yu Clan’s warriors quickly emerged from the air, and s.h.i.+elded the elderly man behind.
Pausing for a second, Di Sha slowly closed the erect eye between his eyebrows.
The elderly man then smilingly waved his hand and said peacefully, “Don’t be nervous, I have always been getting along so well with the Di s.h.i.+ family, therefore, I believe that General Di Sha won’t make me, an old man, feel embarra.s.sed. Well, unless from now on, the entire Di Sha family is willing to never get a single piece of top-quality weapon from my Xiu Clan, I think General Di Sha will definitely be nice to me.”
Di Sha slightly bowed to the elderly man, showed apology for his impulsive movement to him, then said calmly, “I will make a pledge with the force that is now under my command, and all of our income within the next one hundred years, to borrow the money I need from you.”
The elderly man stood up in excitement. His ten white, tender and delicate fingers, which were even finer and smoother than the fingers of a sixteen-year-old girl, started flickering rapidly; at the same time, he said with an excited tone, “All of the income of the main force of the Blood Moon, for one hundred years? That is a huge amount of money, so, no matter how much you need, I’ll lend to you.”
Pausing for a second, the elderly man then took a vigilant glance at Di Sha and continued, “Although I have a pretty good relations.h.i.+p with the Di Sha family, after all, relations.h.i.+ps and business are completely different; if you take nine from me, you’ll have to give back fifteen, plus compound interest. These are the rules, we can never change the rules. Oh, and, from now on, all of the weapons and armours that your force need, you will have to buy from me, this is also a rule, I believe you will understand.”
Remaining silent for a while, Di Sha nodded and said in a cold voice, “Deal! And master, I know that you’re pretty close to the Shadow Devil, please contact their leader for me.”
The elderly man smiled and slightly puffed his chest out.
“Hm, the leader of the Shadow Devil, is me. My dear General Di Sha, what kind of mission do you have for us?”
“Kill for me!” Di Sha stared at the elderly man in shock for quite a long while, then said in a voice that filled with hatred.
“A Southern Wasteland little b.a.s.t.a.r.d, I want him to die in an incomparably miserable way.”