The Public Disclosure Bureau Is Coming [5]
Anomalies. Psychics.
The government of South Korea had just made the world's first official announcement about the very beings that government agencies across the globe had joined hands to keep hidden.
The fallout was, naturally, massive...ly underwhelming.
The KOSPI didn't so much as twitch, and not a single foreign news outlet ran a story about how the South Korean government had lost its mind. That was thanks to Cosmos's meticulous groundwork.
Of course, that only held true for official diplomatic channels and the mainstream press. On the internet, it was chaos of an entirely different breed.
The most common reaction, though, was flat-out disbelief—people concluding that the South Korean government had simply gone insane. Then again, when the government officially declares, 'Psychics, ghosts, yokai, and demons are real!' a certain amount of hysteria is only to be expected.
On the flip side, the police officers and firefighters who confronted this parade of nightmares on the front lines threw their weight behind the government's announcement. What they had seen and suffered with their own eyes made denial impossible.
Then one user dug up a document the government had distributed alongside the announcement and brought it to light.
Annihilation Grade: Capable of paralyzing an entire nation through uncontrollable, wide-ranging physical phenomena and mental disturbances.
Calamity Grade: Capable of causing severe physical phenomena and mental disturbances that cripple the functions of a city.
Hazard Grade: Capable of producing strong physical phenomena and mental disturbances, and of directly killing or wounding people.
Peril Grade: Capable of producing weak physical phenomena or mental disturbances.
Special Grade: Capable of exorcising a typical Calamity Grade anomaly and holding their own against an Annihilation Grade anomaly.
First Grade: Capable of exorcising a typical Hazard Grade anomaly and holding their own against a Calamity Grade anomaly.
Second Grade: Capable of exorcising a typical Peril Grade anomaly and holding their own against a Hazard Grade anomaly.
Third Grade: Capable of holding their own against a typical Peril Grade anomaly.
Fourth Grade: Capable of exorcising common lesser spirits.
The state had just handed the internet perfect ammunition for vs-debating, so people tearing each other apart over power rankings was the inevitable result.
And the name that came up most often was, of course, Kim the Exorcist—currently the most famous psychic in South Korea.
And so Kim the Exorcist found himself the star of a hundred-person vs-debate.
So what was Kim the Exorcist doing at this very moment...?
"HYAAAAAAA! Money! Money! It just keeps rolling in!!!"
Frantically sweeping up the cash gushing in, I had no room in my head for the South Korean government's announcement or anything else.
The cut-price, high-volume Inner Space sales I'd launched to win over Deva's rank and file. But where I'd started it all on a whim, the takings blew far past anything I had imagined. More than a hundred people had already bought in, and the money that flowed in on its own came to billions of won. Better yet, the raw materials for [Inner Space] were nothing but name recognition and the [AZOTH] Paracelsus had crafted—meaning every last bit of it was pure profit.
Even Bong-i Kim Seon-dal, the legendary trickster who once swindled the entire capital by 'selling' the Han River, couldn't have printed money faster than I was now.
The business was running so hot that I couldn't carve out new Inner Spaces and configure entry methods fast enough, forcing me to slash the daily sales quota to twenty people. And even after I capped each purchase at fifty pyeong—roughly 1,800 square feet—per person to stop hoarders, buyers still lined up in the hundreds. Insane demand, plain and simple!
"Master! Revenue has broken the ten-billion-won mark!"
"Ten billion..."
Ten billion won! Before I'd awakened to psychic power, I used to tremble over a single thousand-won bill—about a dollar—so this was a unit of currency that threatened to melt my brain outright.
Granted, I'd been riding a decent streak lately. The streams were doing well, and the exorcism work had paid quite handsomely. But stack every last won of it together and it still didn't come to half of what this one venture had earned.
Paracelsus, my man, I love you! So this is why they say you go into business if you want to get rich!
Hell, should I just toss everything aside and go all-in on this!?
Slap!
"M-Master? Wh-why did you just slap your own cheek...?"
"Nothing. It's nothing."
Phew. For a second there, I'd nearly succumbed to temptation. This was exactly why money was so terrifying. The world was falling apart as we spoke—did money really matter?
No, wait. Money does matter.
Yes, fine, it mattered. But I couldn't afford to chase it and nothing else.
I steeled my resolve once more and snorted a quiet laugh. Blood will out, I suppose?
For the first time in my life, I understood why my father had clung so obsessively to business. Not that I was forgiving him for it, mind you.
Anyway.
"Let's put this round of sales on hold here for a bit."
"What? But sales were only just gathering steam... Oh—don't tell me you've run out of Inner Space to make?"
"No. My goal has already been accomplished."
Deva's sentiment had tilted my way. Because just as an Inner Space collapses the instant the anomaly that authored it is exorcised, the Inner Space I had made would collapse the instant I died.
In other words, everyone who bought my Inner Space would protect me—and beyond that, they would build a current of public opinion that defended me of their own accord.
"Then wouldn't it be better to keep selling more Inner Space?"
"People are losing their minds over it right now—but how long do you figure that'll last?"
Such is human psychology. People price a product not by its true worth but by its scarcity. In other words, the more commonplace something becomes, the more worthless they consider it.
"So you cut it off at exactly the right moment, before it comes to that."
With that, the people who had bought would soon feel relief at having purchased in time, and gratitude toward me for selling it to them. The ones who hadn't would nurse their regret and let their anticipation for the next sale swell.
"I see... a limited-release strategy, then?"
"Exactly."
"As expected of you, Master! You're a genius at business as well!"
At Ha-ram's lavish praise, I forcibly crushed down the shoulders that had begun creeping upward. Keeping myself from puffing up with hot air was proving surprisingly difficult.
"Now then, let's head back in."
Once my head was clear again, I called out to the members of the Anomaly Strike Squad sprawled across one side of the hideout.
"Uweeeeh?"
"Already?"
"Y-yes!"
"Haa... i-it's only been about ten minutes since break even started..."
"That's plenty of rest."
Choi Eun-ha voiced her complaint with a face drained white, while Kim Han-su shook from head to toe. Even Momo, who under normal circumstances would have agreed with whatever I said without question, let her words trail off looking thoroughly wrung out. Min-seo at least answered gamely, but there wasn't a scrap of strength left in that voice.
Lately, I'd been putting more work into training these four than into training myself. Because for the first time since entering the world of sorcery, I could feel my growth stalling.
Just one more step—half a step further, and it felt like something enormous would finally change...
Beyond that half-step, in all likelihood, lay the realm of Special Grade. And the method I'd chosen to smash through that ceiling was teaching the four of them.
Come on, doesn't it show up in every martial-arts novel? The timeless cliché where a master, walled in, raises disciples and crosses that very wall in the process?
Granted, I'd been coaching the Anomaly Strike Squad in my spare time all along. But if the training up to now had been the level of online lectures for second-year middle schoolers, what we were doing now was a Sparta-style cram school for college entrance exam retakers—the sheer intensity belonged to a different category altogether.
Besides, teaching is its own pleasure.
Min-seo, Solomon's pick; Momo, heir to a famed psychic lineage; Choi Eun-ha, descendant of Paracelsus and the living Philosopher's Stone; and Kim Han-su, scion of an old shamanic family, chosen by the Mountain God. Every one of them was an extraordinary talent, and the speed at which they learned was extraordinary to match.
Momo and Eun-ha—and Han-su too, at this point—should rank in the upper tier of Second Grade.
But the one whose growth shone brightest was Min-seo. Upper tier of First Grade, at the very least. Probably on par with Lee Jin-seol, who had fought in Yeoindo—or perhaps even beyond. That was how remarkable Min-seo's progress had been.
That was when Ha-ram spoke up.
"Master! This time, I want to enter the training ground too!"
The training ground was a space I'd partitioned off separately within the Inner Space for the squad's practice. Ha-ram had been overseeing the Inner Space sales and had barely managed to take part in any training until now. It must have been gnawing away, watching everyone else grow while remaining the only one standing still.
But the reason I'd kept Ha-ram out of the training wasn't merely the workload—there was a bigger one.
"Hmm. The training we're doing right now is centered on live combat. You still sure about this?"
"Yes, sir!"
The answer came back bright and valiant, but it wasn't exactly reassuring. Ha-ram was versatile—hacking, information gathering, you name it—but the talent for psychic power lagged far behind the other four. Case in point: even Kim Han-su, the latest arrival of anyone here to enter the world of psychic power, handled spirit-enhanced body reinforcement with practiced ease—the Mountain God's help notwithstanding—while Ha-ram still fumbled through it.
But well, with that much drive, holding Ha-ram back would have been a failure of my duty as a teacher.
"Fine. Then this time, Ha-ram comes along too."
"Yes! Ah—before that, let me post the sales-closure notice."
"Go ahead."
The wailing from everyone who hadn't yet leased an Inner Space of their own was loud and continuous—but that uproar was precisely the proof that this was the right moment to cut it off.
I want you all to go insane over me. Making that much of a racket meant that much desperation—and desperation meant anticipation for what came next.
"Let's go, then."
Just as I was about to lead the entire Anomaly Strike Squad into the Inner Space—
Ding— A text message had arrived on my phone.
"Looks like they didn't read the notice."
More to the point—how the hell did they get my number? I'd made a point of telling everyone to post purchase inquiries on the board...
"Between those midnight calls from bratty schoolkids and now this, my phone number has become public property."
Now I understood why celebrities carried multiple phones. With a sigh, I opened the message and read it through.
"...Well, look at this."
Because this text was no mere clueless backpedal from someone who'd missed the notice.
Apparently, my campaign to win over the hearts of Deva's people had succeeded even better than I'd planned.