Chapter 39
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Translator: MadScientist
Chapter: 39
Chapter Title: Site Boss
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Jin-seong had absolutely no clue that headquarters was in the process of gutting the golden goose laying his eggs.
From a master agent's perspective, no matter how sharp their instincts, there was no way to know what was happening inside headquarters. So it was only natural that Jin-seong hadn't noticed either.
Then, Jin-seong found himself facing a new dilemma.
His line on Icos had grown so large that bringing in new members was becoming impossible.
Large master agents usually set up a sub-site or two as a precaution against settlement issues or eat-and-runs. But Jin-seong had never touched another site, always insisting on staying loyal to Icos.
In the end, Jin-seong met with the headquarters managers and laid it all out honestly.
"Look, I'll be straight with you guys."
"Our line's gotten so big now that we can't bring in any new blood. The lower levels are complaining like crazy."
"So I'm thinking of setting up a sub-site just for our line."
"I'm not going anywhere else. It's just a site we'll run ourselves, so I hope you can understand."
Jin-seong believed this was still honoring his loyalty to headquarters. But that notion was far too naive.
The Icos managers immediately called an emergency meeting. Tae-gyu, Sang-wook, and Seong-i sat in the conference room, their faces all grim.
Tae-gyu was the first to speak, fuming.
"That bastard Jin-seong thinks this is funny?"
"We've treated him like gold for three years, and this is how he stabs us in the back?"
Seong-i cautiously pushed back.
"But Tae-gyu, he's not switching to another site. He's just making one for his own line. Let's not see it in such a bad light."
Sang-wook continued calmly.
"Guys, that's not the point."
"Our revenue's definitely going to drop. We just let this slide? The moment Jin-seong pulls out, we take a huge hit."
Tae-gyu said firmly again.
"Exactly. It hurts us no matter what."
"We need to start figuring out how to slowly cut ties with him."
In truth, Icos had been quietly preparing to part ways with Jin-seong bit by bit.
But Jin-seong was still doing everything he could to look out for Icos to the end.
He had no intention of ever going to another site.
In this high-stakes game where big money was on the line, Jin-seong's thinking was far too innocent.
And he couldn't even imagine the massive problems this decision would bring down the road.
Blissfully unaware, Jin-seong began preparing in earnest to launch his own site.
He tasked Young-jin, who had been his reliable right-hand man all this time, with building it.
"Young-jin, let's get serious about prepping our site launch."
"You've studied up a ton on this, right? I'm counting on you."
Young-jin had already secretly mastered all the tech and systems needed for site setup without Jin-seong knowing.
Everything from headquarters' solutions to the full site operations system was locked in his head. He'd even reached out to trustworthy contacts who could help launch it.
The moment Jin-seong gave the order, Young-jin sprang into action.
Launching a site actually cost a lot more than expected. Securing burner accounts, renting overseas servers, setting up equipment to safely route lines—there were mountains of details to handle from start to finish.
Most illegal sites placed their headquarters abroad to dodge tracking, but Jin-seong's was different.
The site he was building wasn't for indiscriminately pulling in random members. It was a completely secret site exclusively for the existing members who'd been verified through long-term work with him.
No other lines could join—just pure Jin-seong line users.
Plus, since Jin-seong himself was the site boss, commissions to lower-level master agents were set much more generously than before.
Of course, the lower master agents were thrilled.
Jin-seong also picked three smaller master agents from his sub-offices to rotate headquarters center duties. He even gave them steady salaries.
The lower master agents started smoothly migrating overlapping members from the old site to the sub-site, naturally splitting the user base.
As time passed and the site stabilized, Jin-seong had unknowingly scaled up from a mere master agent to the level of a major headquarters with his own site.
He hadn't anticipated growing this big, but the reality unfolding before him was incomparable to when he'd first jumped into gambling.
Icos headquarters now began moving quietly under the surface.
Their first target: Jin-seong's lower master agents.
Tae-gyu and the managers secretly met with them one by one, slipping in subtle offers.
"Sticking with Jin-seong forever won't grow your code anyway."
"How about working directly with us?"
For headquarters, this was easy pickings.
Someone like Jin-seong with his massive size could hold leverage over a site, but small lower master agents without a base were utterly at headquarters' mercy.
If headquarters wanted, they could wipe out settlements or swallow members anytime, making it impossible for small agents to defy them.
To those who refused, they issued cold threats.
"You breathe a word of this anywhere, your whole code vanishes. You get me?"
Terrified of getting blacklisted, the small agents stayed silent.
Surprisingly, many accepted headquarters' offers without much fuss.
They'd conveniently forgotten how Jin-seong had protected and nurtured them all this time, deluding themselves that they'd grown on their own merits.
They had no idea they couldn't have scaled up like this without Jin-seong shielding them and negotiating favorably with headquarters.
Most sold out for a measly 5% commission bump.
But headquarters wasn't stupid.
They knew Jin-seong's true core members would never betray him, no matter what.
So they agreed internally to leave the key players alone, fully sever Jin-seong first, then negotiate with them later.
Jin-seong still knew nothing, but Icos headquarters was steadily isolating him.
Jin-seong finally amassed 10 billion in cash.
It had been three and a half years since he'd jumped into the gambling game.
Icos settlements had strangely started lagging, but his sub-site exploded beyond expectations, letting him hit his 10 billion goal.
Of course, Jin-seong didn't keep all that cash in one spot.
He always planned for the worst-case scenario.
His ultimate goal was to launder it properly into clean funds he could use freely one day.
He'd installed a large safe at his parents' house, storing key contracts, member data USBs, and about 100 million in emergency cash there.
He never left cash or documents at the office.
The bulk of the cash was stashed separately.
His late grandmother had left him some rural land in Cheongsong before passing.
It was an abandoned countryside house no one had touched in ages, and Jin-seong turned it into a ultra-secret vault.
He dug deep into the backyard, building a small bunker-style hidden storage.
He hired contractors under the pretense of a "kimchi storage shed," dodging suspicion while constructing a perfect safe room.
The entrance opened only with a password and his fingerprint. Inside were double large safes hiding the cash—roughly 8 billion.
Jin-seong planned to retire by running multiple restaurants at once to launder it all cleanly.
He habitually told his staff:
"Man, I spend so much on you guys that I barely have anything saved up."
He flashed cash freely around everyone, always acting like he was short on big sums.
His employees, lower agents, even Icos headquarters bought it, thinking he was a big spender.
Icos especially believed he'd poured a fortune into his new sub-site, judging his funds weakened.
They began solidifying plans to block his code.
Jin-seong had no idea, but an invisible war had now ignited between him and Icos headquarters.
Icos headquarters had already compiled data on all of Jin-seong's major members below him.
Once Jin-seong was out of the picture, it would all fall into their hands. They were puffed up with expectations of wielding the master agents as they pleased to maximize profits.
About 70% of Jin-seong's master agents had already flipped to headquarters.
The remaining 30% loyal ones? Just wipe their codes and have headquarters handle sales directly.
They'd even planned to systematically crash his Family Room.
Excluding the core team Jin-seong personally managed, nearly all independent master agents had defected to headquarters.
If Jin-seong learned this, he'd clutch his neck and collapse.
He'd taught and raised them from nothing, only to get stabbed in the back.
Truth was, without Jin-seong, Icos would've shuttered long ago.
Forgetting how he'd built their scale, they delusionally thought they'd thrive even better without him.
But this was headquarters' fatal miscalculation.
Jin-seong's solid reputation in the master agent world had kept other lines from attacking or badmouthing the site.
Without that shield, assaults and smears would pour in endlessly.
But headquarters, blind to this, chased short-term greed.
Jin-seong still knew nothing, just running his sub-site and dreaming of a peaceful post-retirement life.
Yet behind his back, Icos headquarters was quietly, methodically sharpening the blade of betrayal.