Organization (5)
Several days later, at lunchtime.
Ever since Han Hyeon-cheol, the chairman of the Changcheon Clan, had made his remarks, public interest in Ghost had burned hot day after day.
Not only in Korea, but abroad as well, the praise for Ghost had been unrelenting.
And then...
The Hunter Bureau cafeteria was no exception.
People’s eyes were fixed less on their meals than on the giant holographic news display projected against the wall.
Inside the hologram, an old woman clutched a worn military dog tag in both hands and wept uncontrollably.
She was the daughter of a search-and-rescue hunter who had gone missing in the earliest days of the Abyss.
Back then she had been a little girl; now she had grown old, and at last she was receiving the trace of the father she had missed for so long.
Beside her, a middle-aged man stared at his grandfather’s keepsake with reddened eyes.
The Hunter Bureau employees watching the hologram each added their own comment.
Fwoosh.
Du-ho scooped up a spoonful of seaweed soup from his tray.
The broth should have gone down smoothly, but for some reason it caught in his throat.
A saint? What kind of nonsense is that...
He had only brought the stuff back and left it there.
Yet the world’s interpretation kept growing grander and more noble, completely unlike what he had intended.
At the table beside him, the employees were talking about another topic.
“Did you buy the GHOST OF ABYSS T-shirt, Manager Kim?”
“Don’t even get me started. I barely managed to snag one.”
“Wow—so you actually got it?”
“Of course. It’s already reselling for 200,000 coins.”
Du-ho’s hand stopped.
Two hundred thousand?
The Abyss Ghost T-shirt?
He slowly turned his head.
Printed on the employee’s shirt was a ghost wearing a mask.
...Huh?
The shape of the mask looked oddly familiar.
No, more precisely, it reminded him of how he usually covered his face with nano-bots.
No way.
It’s just my imagination.
That was when it happened.
- Not at all!
Isto’s excited voice rang inside his head.
- I provided it!
Cough, cough, cough.
Du-ho choked on his soup.
You did what?
- I registered the design rights and wrapped up a royalty contract with a fashion company in one smooth go!
???
- At last! I’ve taken one step closer to building the brand for world conquest! Heehee~
When had that thing found the time to do something like this...?
Ah.
The lost-and-found center.
- Oh! Correct, hamda.
So that’s why it had been dragging its feet even when he told it to bring over the burlap sack.
Du-ho pressed a hand to his forehead.
So you were planning this from the beginning.
Even so...
How exactly did you get a contract signed?
- The internet is vast and deep, hamda! And in a capitalist world, what can’t be done?
My head hurts...
Du-ho looked forward again with a dumbfounded expression.
Manager Park jolted.
“D-Did I do something wrong?”
“...No.”
Manager Park sighed in relief and resumed eating.
Isto went on.
- One shirt for 100 coins! The company first put out 20,000 units, and they sold out in five minutes!
So...?
Ta-da~~
- There are 2 million coins in my personal account now!
Two million...?!
Du-ho stared down at his soup bowl.
A dry laugh escaped him.
That was an amount not far off from the monthly salary he used to receive not long ago.
Was making money really that easy?
- If an opportunity comes, you row while the water’s high, hamda! Ehem~
Du-ho pinched the bridge of his nose.
He glanced at the T-shirt of the employee beside him again.
Why would anyone want to buy something like that?
Following his gaze, Manager Park asked, “I’m going to buy one when the second batch comes in. Want me to get you one too?”
“...The second batch?”
Manager Park projected a hologram from his smart watch.
For a moment Du-ho nearly blurted out, Why would you buy that! but after drawing in a breath, he waved the thought away.
“I’m not really into Ghost.”
“Hey, don’t go saying things like that lightly. You’ll get pelted with stones.”
“...Pardon?”
“Foreign media and even some hunters worship Ghost. If you trash him for no reason, you could be in serious trouble.”
Du-ho’s lips twisted crookedly.
Why are they all making such a fuss over me!
Then—
- Du-ho nim, I’m also considering making Ghost figures next hamda! This is how we build a brand universe and lay the foundation for world conquest...
Shut uuup!!
Du-ho forced himself to keep eating.
Skipping meals just because he was upset would only hurt himself!
Then Manager Park asked, “By the way, have you decided on a mentor for the global functional competition?”
Du-ho shook his head.
“What? Not yet?”
“I’m choosing now.”
As he said that, Du-ho sorted through his criteria in his head.
Someone who would interfere the least of the three.
Then...
Dr. Yu So-yeong might be the best.
She had praised the support device, and her personality seemed pretty cool-headed too.
Du-ho’s choice was already leaning in one direction.
* * *
Yeouido Sector 1, which held the Abyss within it.
A heavy single-story building standing on a patch of prime land.
Changcheon Workshop
Founded with joint investment from the five great hunter families, this place was the pride of the Changcheon Clan and a symbol envied by every other guild.
It gave priority to repairing equipment for clan members, and only took outside commissions in whatever time was left. Even so, the workshop’s yearly earnings reached into the hundreds of billions. It was, quite literally, money raked in with a hook.
At the center of the workshop, two artisans stood facing each other across the workbench.
The two pillars supporting Changcheon Workshop.
Master Kang and Master Cheon.
Around them, several apprentices held their breath as they watched the movements of the masters’ hands.
“That Chief of Staff Go really got his ego inflated because the chairman backs him up, didn’t he? Don’t you think?” Master Kang said, clicking his tongue as he set a clumsy-looking suit of armor on the bench.
“Exactly,” Master Cheon replied, clearly displeased. “The appraisal barely puts it at high grade, and yet he bought it at the price of a rare-grade item.”
To their eyes, the items in question were nothing more than high-grade equipment. On top of that, they were dissatisfied at having to buy such things at rare-grade prices, and then hear that they’d be sent to the Hunter Bureau for repairs as well.
Even so, a stubborn edge had crept into both masters’ eyes.
This was their chance to make sure nobody ever brought up the Hunter Bureau again.
“We’ll make sure to knock their nose down a peg this time.”
“Ha ha. Indeed.”
Then Master Cheon placed a frost-attribute sword and shield on the bench.
“I’ll refine the blade, so heat it up again. Replace the hilt too, and get it ready in advance.”
The apprentices moved at once.
When mana stones were tossed into the forge, blue-tinged flames roared up fiercely.
The sword was placed in the fire, left to heat through, and then laid on the anvil.
Master Cheon rested a hand over the blade.
A faint light shimmered over his body.
The skill inherent to production-type awakeners, Item Restoration, activated.
At that moment—
“Hmm?”
The faint pattern etched into the blade began to blur.
“Well, well. Someone carved an unnecessary pattern into the blade.”
Master Cheon stroked the sword and murmured with complete confidence, “I’ll smooth it out nicely.”
Clang! Clang! Clang—!
The hammer blows continued.
They kept coming, and before long the pattern on the blade had vanished cleanly.
Hoo...
“Now that’s the proper shape again.”
The work proceeded smoothly.
Every item brought in by commission was restored to its “original state.”
The two masters gazed at the gleaming equipment with satisfied expressions.
“It’s been a while since I worked up such a sweat.”
“Ha ha. That Go Gyeong-taek will have nothing more to say now.”
“Exactly. Naturally.”
Looking at the items revived by their hands, they smiled in contentment.
.
.
.
And then, two days later.
Changcheon Clan executives and Go Gyeong-taek appeared at the workshop.
“You’ve worked hard.”
“Ha ha, you’ve arrived!”
When the artisans greeted them with bright smiles, the executives assumed the work had gone smoothly.
One of them asked, “There weren’t any problems?”
“It’s nothing we don’t do every day. Why would there be?”
Wahahaha!
When Master Cheon answered with his chest thrust out, the executive laughed heartily.
See?
“We could have fixed them ourselves. What a waste of money, sending them off to pointless places.”
He glanced at Go Gyeong-taek and sneered.
“All right, let’s take a look.”
“Here they are.”
The items were lined up neatly on the marble table.
The executives smiled with satisfaction as they looked over the cleanly refined equipment.
Several of the blades had even had their original hilts replaced with better ones.
One executive looked at Go Gyeong-taek and said, “Just look at this craftsmanship. You think the Hunter Bureau could do something like this?”
Then he gathered mana and poured his energy into the sword...
“W-What the hell? Why isn’t the cold just pouring out of it?”
The executive beside him tried channeling power into the shield too, but—
Huh?
Huh?
“Mine’s the same!”
The workshop grew noisy.
The problem was that, unlike before, the cold attribute had noticeably weakened in every item.
The artisans, who had never actually used such gear themselves, only looked confused by the executives’ reactions.
At last the executives glared and bellowed at the craftsmen.
“What did you do to these things?”
“We repaired them, as you can see.”
“Then why are they like this!”
“Enough! We stayed up all night for this, got it? We actually put our skills to use after all this time, and this is the thanks we get?”
“I’m not doing it! I can’t! Take it up with somebody else!”
As the two masters flew into a rage and started arguing back, the executives turned ashen.
They had just downgraded items worth hundreds of millions, even billions.
Go Gyeong-taek, who had been watching quietly, finally stepped forward.
He looked down at the newly repaired armor. The first thing he checked was, unsurprisingly—
There’s no pattern.
He inspected the rest of the items too, and they were the same.
At that moment, a faint smile passed over Go Gyeong-taek’s lips.
Hmm.
Just as I expected. The vanished pattern was the trigger for the skill.
Truthfully, he had been the only one who knew the items carried the same pattern when they were purchased.
The other executives had only divided them up, so they had no idea at all.
If luck held, I figured the executives would stumble right into the trap on their own.
Still...
Tsk—
He clicked his tongue as his eyes swept over the artisans.
How could they lack even that much observation?
If it had been Master Jang Mun-seo, he would have tested the item himself before repairing it and noticed the problem...
Go Gyeong-taek lifted his head and looked at them calmly.
“If you’d listened to me from the beginning, none of us would be red in the face right now.”
At Go Gyeong-taek’s coolly restrained words, one of the executives hurriedly waved his hands.
“No, that’s not—”
“I’ll report this to the chairman.”
The executives’ expressions turned incredulous.
Just because they’d broken a few items?
Was this guy insane?
But—
Would Go Gyeong-taek really make such a scene over only that?
“You people have been skimming off a portion of Changcheon Workshop’s profits like stealing persimmons from the tree for years, haven’t you?”
“Wh-What?”
“This guy’s going to get us all killed!”
The executives and the two artisans leapt up in panic.
“I’ve already found the double ledgers and tucked them away safely.”
With a flick of his wrist, a hologram sprang up from his smart watch.
As a portion of the evidence from the double ledger enlarged on display, the faces of the executives and artisans viewing it stiffened.
“I’ll be taking my leave now.”
As Go Gyeong-taek took a step away—
Wait, wait!
“Come now, can’t we just settle this between ourselves?”
Go Gyeong-taek lifted one eyebrow.
“You want me to look the other way?”
“We’ll return the money as quickly as we can.”
Go Gyeong-taek seemed to consider it.
“Then who’s going to handle the item repairs?”
“Why, of course, our Go... Chief Go...”
A dry laugh slipped from Go Gyeong-taek’s mouth.
“You want me to clean up after this myself? You’re the ones who caused the accident.”
“Th-that’s... we’re sorry, but...”
He swept his gaze around the room.
The executives and artisans all looked utterly lost.
“Very well.”
“Oh, o-okay... thank you.”
“We’re truly sorry.”
“We’ve no face to show.”
The pleas came pouring out one after another.
Go Gyeong-taek narrowed his squinting eyes even further.
“Then there’s the matter on today’s agenda—the guilds to bring into the clan and the ones to expel...”
He let the sentence trail off, and every executive’s gaze snapped to his mouth.
“I’d appreciate it if you reflected my opinion.”
Silence.
“I doubt I’d be acting out of line here.”
“......”
The executives still said nothing.
Go Gyeong-taek turned away coldly.
As he walked toward the workshop door, one of the executives finally called after him.
“A-All right.”
At those words, a smile spread across Go Gyeong-taek’s lips.
Like this...
he could slowly fill the clan with his own people, one by one.
Next is the Hunter Bureau, maybe?
* * *
Hunter Bureau, first floor, reception desk.
Go Gyeong-taek sat in the waiting area as his subordinate headed to the counter.
Across from him, he looked toward the automatic doors.
His eyes settled on the entrance beneath the sign.
Reboot Center
Authorized Personnel Only
That newly established department must be in there.
Whoooosh.
The automatic doors parted to both sides, and two men walked out from inside the Reboot Center.
They were dressed plainly.
Im Du-ho and Manager Park.
Go Gyeong-taek’s squinting eyes examined them carefully.
Hmm.
Is one of them the one who knows the secret of the pattern?
I need to get my hands on that person.