Mercenary Black Mamba

Humans enjoyed watching from the sidelines. The core of entertainment was satisfaction for all. Regardless of race or nationality, fighting with fire and others was the best entertainment available. That was because they could satisfy their suppressed nature for destruction.

Ahmad's defeat by a single blow left the audience dissatisfied. Samedi exuded the aura of a warrior. Eyes flashed with expectation.

"Samedi, go give Dubai a good hit!"

"Dubai, dua![1] Dubai, soh![2]"

Professor Orifice and Professor Shernion cheered Samedi on. Samedi charged off the ground in a sprint.

Rumble—

The sand flew. He was just like an ox in heat.

"Arururu!"

Samedi flew. The shovel swung in the air and slammed down.

Bang—

Instead of Black Mamba, the shovel landed on the ground. The great force pushed the shovel deep into the ground, up until its handle. Samedi pulled out the shovel and kneeled.

"I lost!"

"No!"

The audience couldn't close their mouths at the unexpected outcome. What kind of pose was that? That was a pose from the middle ages when a knight swore loyalty to his master! Their disappointed faces creased into a frown instantly.

"Haha, this is unexpected. I thought you're becoming human, not a raccoon." Black Mamba also laughed.

Samedi had managed to avoid the crisis by using his intellect. Pillars of orange light shot out from the eastern horizon like spears. It was time to move.

"Wakil, I want to receive the Hanukudashu too." Nejma kneeled.

"Jamal, what is this kid saying?"

"He…he wants to get beaten up too."

Jamal looked at Nejma in disbelief. Didn't the kid witness what had happened to Ahmad? That kid wasn't normal either. He was just like the masochist lackey.

"Nejma, your bones aren't fully developed yet. The soul-returning pain administration dissolves the muscles and shakes the bones to draw out the built-up impurities inside your body. If your muscles can't tolerate this, you'll become disabled. You won't be able to handle the shock."

Nejma's face darkened after hearing Jamal's explanation. Black Mamba smiled.

"If you strengthen your bones and muscles, you might be able to receive this beating faster. Would you like to try?"

"Yes."

Nejma looked determined. He didn't want to lose his family again just because he was helpless. His father had often said that doing something was better than doing nothing.

Black Mamba taught Nejma the horse stance. A proper horse stance caused great pain. Black Mamba wasn't a kind teacher. He smacked the kid back into position with a stick if there was the slightest mistake.

"Hm, now you're doing it correctly."

Stones were placed on Nejma's wrist and knee. Within five minutes, Nejma's face creased, and sweat began to pour down his face. Ibrahim and the rest tiptoed away in case they were asked to do it too.

"Jamal, if Nejma drops the stones, increase the time frame. Once 10 minutes have passed, give him a five minutes break. Since today's the first day, just three times should do."

"Yes, sir."

Nejma, who was quick-witted, gritted his teeth upon understanding the situation. The tenacity of the unforgiving kind overwhelmed his brain.

Professor Orifice shook his head after attempting the horse stance.

"Ugh, my body's aching. Why do you do these kinds of things? I'm going to live a normal life and die peacefully. Studying was the easiest."

Black Mamba produced a bucket of sweat trying to administer the interrogative blood pacer into Ahmad. A body that received the soul-returning pain administration suffered from inflamed muscles and twisted bones. The person would become disabled without the interrogative blood pacer, which would restore the muscles and bones to their natural state.

"Damn, I need to learn the soul-returning methods of trials or steal the secrets of Higashi Hongan-ji's grand defrosting flow from my teacher. This is hard work," Black Mamba, who was covered in sweat, complained.

Aishe wiped down his naked upper body with a wet cloth. There was an underlying intention behind her extremely slow movements, which wiped every corner of his body.

"Aishe, Ahmad should be able to move in two days. You take care of him."

"Okay. Can't I receive this Hanukudashu too?"

Jamal, Ibrahim, and Mohammad flinched at Aishe's unexpected words. Black Mamba's gaze turned to the three guys. He stared at them as though insinuating that they were pathetic for not stepping up as she did.

F****** hell, we're dead!

All three of their faces creased at once.

"That sounds good. Let's do it when there's time. You'll get used to it after several hits."

Black Mamba drummed the floor with the Boss-saurus' tendon. The boulder, which was as large as a human's head, spat out flints every time it landed.

Get used to it?

The three men's faces grew pale.

"Yes. That's great." In a daze, Aishe continued talking.

She was just like a cat enjoying its master's caress.

Th-that damn brat!

Eyes filled with resentment turned to look at Aishe immediately. Jamal was 35 years old while Ibrahim and Mohammad were entering their 40s. They were distressed by the fact that they had to be beaten at their old age.

They held a small meeting after the quick breakfast. There were many obstacles with Novatopia's construction. Firstly, water. Nothing could proceed without water. Secondly, it was the greening. The dry Sahara desert's wind naturally evaporated the surface moisture. They needed plants that could block the wind and the sand.

"Last night, I found a well that the previous French government constructed five kilometers away. Shernion, why is a well made with great effort left in such a state?"

"It's the remains of France's contribution during the colonization era. The unsanitary water crisis was the same then as it is now. The French government had deployed 3,000 airborne force members to locate water veins for the caravans and region locals. According to the records, they dug at least 1,000 wells in southern Sahara."

"They did some good things too, then."

"Their intentions were good, but the wells weren't maintained. Wells need to be emptied and cleaned periodically to obtain clean water. The wells need the support of a strong inner wall so that they don't collapse. They constructed the inner walls in this region with woven Stipa Calamagrostis. The locals knew how to use the wells, not maintain them. They don't remove the insects that are inside the well. They just drink the stinky water as it is."

"No way! Ugh!"

Aishe shivered in disgust. She felt nauseous at the thought of drinking rotten rat water.

I still don't understand women.

Black Mamba glanced at Aishe, who was showing signs of nausea. Aishe was a female warrior who took the heads of people like it was nothing. It was incomprehensible how an iron-willed woman like her was terrified of rats.

"It's because they're lazy. The people in our village are like that too. No one cleans the well. They don't even clean the pile of sand in front of their houses. My father and I always cleaned the well."

Black Mamba's forehead creased at Nejma's words. That was a place where ridiculous people lived. The kind of people he despised the most was greedy and lazy people. Those people believed that someone else should do the cleaning even if it wasn't difficult to clean it themselves. In other words, they believed that if they cleaned the well, it shouldn't be shared with others.

"Probably it's because they don't have the reasonable greed you speak of, Sir Ddu-bai-buru-pa. They could have picked a date or take turns to clean."

Black Mamba nodded, agreeing with Ibrahim's words. That was common in situations where students were assigned long-term group projects. While some students tried their best to obtain good grades, some students would not cooperate and study another subject, ignoring the group task. It was because they knew they would get the same grades as those who had prepared. Free riders existed everywhere.

"Even the wells on the roads were the same. While the caravans consider water as precious as life, they're just passers-by. They don't have the time to reinforce the wells or clean them. It's not as if the caravans pass by in turns either. How can the wells be maintained when no one uses them often!"

"Although not a single b*stard in Chad cared, did the French government ignore the situation too?"

"What if they did? This place is a remote area, 1,500 kilometers away from N'Djamena. There's no way anyone from the government would come here to take care of the wells that even the locals consider insignificant. Our country can't provide manpower and money to maintain the wells on this large land either. So, the sand ended up swallowing the wells. The well you found is one of the many that have disappeared. Even now, the Bedouins still search for wells to quench their thirst. Of course, they don't try to maintain them either. They don't know when they'll return, you see. It's the representative result of burying the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs' money under the sand.

Professor Shernion, who was an urban planning expert, spoke cynically of the power of the abandoned wells in the Sahara.

"If the people change, things will proceed differently. I'm not the French government. To wet 25,000 square kilometers of land, we'll have to dig countless wells. What do you think, Shernion?"

"There's no water in the desert, but that's because it can't be seen. The Atacama Desert in Chile has five millimeters of annual rainfall. A sonic sensor device even detected a groundwater basin in that place. The Ennedi Plateau's annual rainfall ranges from 200 to 800 millimeters. For the last 1,000s of 1,000,000s of years, all that rainwater could have accumulated underground."

"Right. Nothing is to be gained from the ponds or springs that gather on the ground. The answer to your questions is an aquifer."

"This is a place where large gazelles inhabit. Of course, there's water and grass. This place is closer to a basin. Surprisingly, there's a lot of grass. Although I'm no expert, in my experience, there should be an aquifer. The well you found is most probably sourced from an aquifer where water makes its way to the surface through the cracks of fault zones."

"So what? Let's move to that place. Try to call out this Oceanus hiding deep underground."

Everyone stood up at Black Mamba's decision.

"What is he doing?" Professor Shernion asked when he saw Black Mamba in lotus form on top of the dried well.

"Shh!"

Ahmad covered Professor Shernion's mouth. Whatever his master was doing, he shouldn't be disturbed.

Black Mamba was meditating. The limit he could reach with his resonance waves was between 400 to 500 meters. Although his dimensional sight had an extensive range, it couldn't penetrate the ground. He didn't know how deep the aquifer was. He had to look as deep as possible.

Boom—

His resonance waves spread. Ground information from a radius of 500 meters rushed into his brain. Most people would have fainted from the overload of information or developed epilepsy.

Black Mamba narrowed the reach of his resonance waves as much as he could.

Voom—

The resonance waves traveled underground. 100 meters, 200 meters, 300 meters, 400 meters—It passed the bedrock, the layers of sand, and the layers of rocks. Resonance waves were a category of active brain waves. It didn't reflect information like a radar and returned the information it obtained from passing through objects instead. He carefully analyzed the changing resonance waves in his brain.

Hm!

The resonance waves that returned felt completely different from the rest before. There was definitely a different response from the 600 meters point. Water molecules clung to his resonance waves.

At 700 meters onward, the resonance waves grew considerably narrow. That meant the density was consistent. That continued until the 900 meters mark. His mind grew hazy, and the information stopped coming in. That was his limit.

"Eureka!"

Black Mamba's eyes flashed open. He had to size it down by calling the scouting team over. However, if the aquifer was more than 200 meters deep, it was quite a significant amount.

"Wakil, is there any progress?"

"Yes. Perhaps it could contest Libya…"

"Wow! Let's call the lieutenant over right now!" Mohammad and Ibrahim rushed like eager children.

"We should call him over."

Black Mamba took out the antenna and satellite-operated phone from his backpack. He punched in the code and called lieutenant Pellpeng from the scouting team.

"Lieutenant, did you find any groundwater?"

"Military advisor, how are you?" Pellpeng asked him instead.

"I finished surveying Lake Yoa and the Serir lakes. There's nothing."

"No way?"

"Lieutenant, did you find any groundwater?"

Black Mamba sounded slightly annoyed.

"Yes, sir. Sorry. We managed to narrow down two places up to 1,500 meters deep but couldn't find any fault zone."

"Lieutenant, grab all drilling and surveying equipment and immediately move to my location."

"To the base camp?"

"Yes."

"I can't track your current location, sir."

"I'll send someone."

"Yes, sir. I'll wait."

"Wait, what happened to the patient?"

"He's recovering well, sir."

"Good. Start preparing."

Black Mamba hung up and called Jamal over.

"Jamal, take Nejma with you and bring the scouting team over."

"Yes, sir."

As Nejma walked off, Black Mamba started complaining.

"Damn, I should start with a coordinate map."

"They're coming!" Jamal shouted.

A truck appeared on the horizon.

"They really rushed here."

It had been four hours since Nejma left. They arrived faster than they should have, considering that Nejma had to run back and forth. 10 trucks with pipes and digging tools arrived. Soon, another truck arrived dragging a large drill rig trailer.

"Act, I think the surveying equipment and materials will arrive late since they're transported by camels."

"We only need to dig for now. Have you eaten?"

"There was no time to eat, sir."

Lieutenant Pellpeng glanced at Jamal before answering. Black Mamba laughed internally. He must have rushed them a little bit too much.

"Get ready to drill. Meals will be consumed in turns."

Damn, rank's the boss.

Lieutenant Pellpeng swore inwardly at the cold response. They had all rushed over and couldn't even touch the C-rations because of the Arab man's incessant scolding. The master and servant were like two peas in a pod.

"What's the width of the drill?"

"The drill rig's capacity is up to 600 millimeters. We've prepared 200-millimeter pipes since this is an experimental excavation. It can dig up to 2,000 meters deep. Once we have the drills and pipes, we should be able to drill up to 3,000 meters."

[1] Dubai, out!

[2] Dubai, go get him!