Galaxy Martial God Temple - Amusement Park Kidnapping Incident (4)
Siwoo bought an ion drink and headed back toward the bench where Cheon Jiwoo was resting. It had taken quite a long time just to buy a single drink. The stall was far from the bench, but she had also been forced to take several detours because of "under repair" signs blocking the paths and fire hydrants malfunctioning along the way.
When she finally returned with the drink, she found a man and a woman, who appeared to be a married couple, frantically searching the area around the bench with grim expressions.
The couple's frantic pacing was of no concern to her. The real problem was that Cheon Jiwoo, who should have been resting quietly on the bench, was nowhere to be seen.
"This is strange. The Young Master is not one to wander off without a word."
Cheon Jiwoo was not the type to roam around aimlessly. In fact, he found physical exertion so tedious that it was a miracle he even kept up with his training; he much preferred reading books or studying. Though he was only three years old, his intellectual capacity was already on par with an adult's. If he had decided to go somewhere, he was the type of person who would have at least called first.
Sensing something was wrong, Siwoo immediately called Cheon Jiwoo's phone. However, it just kept ringing without an answer.
Realizing the gravity of the situation, Siwoo tracked the location of Jiwoo's phone.
"A system error?"
The GPS signal was registered, but the map application refused to zoom in, making it impossible to pinpoint the exact coordinates. Still, it was certain that he was still inside the amusement park.
Siwoo frowned, dialing Jiwoo's phone again to trace the signal. As an android, she possessed a feature to scan nearby electronic devices. As long as the distance wasn't too great, she could detect the unique frequency of registered devices.
Following the signal, she detected a transmission coming from the bushes behind a statue near the bench.
Siwoo brushed past the anxiously pacing couple and searched through the bushes. There, she found a broken brooch and two band-type phones.
One was unfamiliar, but the other was definitely Cheon Jiwoo's.
"T-That's...! Our daughter's phone!"
The anxious couple shouted upon seeing the phone in Siwoo's hand. Looking closely, the name 'Cheon Soyeon' was written on the corner of the device.
"My Young Master's phone is broken here alongside your daughter's. Do you have any idea what might have happened?"
At Siwoo's question, the husband looked at her warily. "You are..."
"Ah! There was a young boy who taught our daughter how to use the phone! We hadn't taught her yet, so we just used it as a GPS tracker in case she got lost..."
Siwoo spoke coldly to the rambling wife. "Calm down and speak slowly."
"W-We came to the amusement park for our daughter, but she suddenly disappeared." Her hands trembled violently, but she tried to keep her composure. "W-We were looking for her, worried she might have been kidnapped, when she suddenly called us. Over the phone, a young boy's voice was telling her our location and telling her to come. And, and... our daughter didn't know how to hang up, so she kept talking to him. We were heading here while listening to their conversation, but then we suddenly heard a smashing sound..."
The couple's eyes fell on the broken phones. They were highly durable, so they weren't completely pulverized, but they had clearly lost their communication function.
Siwoo found something odd in the wife's words and asked, "Why were you worried she was kidnapped, rather than just lost?"
The couple fell silent and exchanged glances.
Seeing their hesitation, Siwoo narrowed her eyes.
"There is a high probability that my Young Master has been swept up in your daughter's kidnapping. If they have been abducted, hesitating will only make us miss the golden hour. We must lock down the amusement park before the culprits can escape. I need at least a minimal justification to force a lockdown."
It was an abuse of authority, but Siwoo intended to borrow the authority of Cheon Gyeong-ho, Jiwoo's grandfather. It wouldn't be easy to escape accountability later, but that was infinitely trivial compared to losing her precious Young Master.
Hearing about locking down the park, the wife blurted out, "O-Our daughter has the Heaven's Martial Body!"
"Honey!" the husband gasped in shock.
The Heaven's Martial Body was a treasure-like constitution. If word of it leaked, the risk of kidnapping was immense.
"Locking down the park is more urgent than keeping Soyeon's constitution a secret! Can you really lock it down?"
At her desperate plea, Siwoo nodded.
"Emergency Protocol: Code Blue! Issuing entity: Cheon Family of the Martial God! System of amusement park 'Mally World', respond!"
At Siwoo's shout, the amusement park's lights simultaneously turned red, and a hologram flickered to life in front of her.
Siwoo obtained the CCTV footage and confirmed that about five minutes ago, someone had kidnapped two children who appeared to be Cheon Jiwoo and Cheon Soyeon.
When Siwoo showed them the footage, Soyeon's parents gasped.
"Oh, Soyeon!"
"No wonder things felt strange ever since we entered the park! They were targeting Soyeon from the very start!"
Siwoo felt a sense of relief internally. If the kidnap victim was indeed a possessor of the Heaven's Martial Body, this overstepping of authority would easily be swept under the rug. In fact, considering the sheer importance of the Heaven's Martial Body, this wouldn't even be considered an abuse of power.
Even if there were estimated to be a few thousand possessors of the Heaven's Martial Body in the entire universe, that was a mere estimate. Out of a population of over 3.2 trillion, the probability of such a constitution being born and discovered through precise testing at birth was 'the probability of birth multiplied by several hundred'ths of a percent. Even if one was born with the talent, it was highly likely it would never manifest due to poor environments.
Inequalities in wealth had existed since ancient times, and even within the Orthodox faction's territories, there were plenty of lawless zones akin to the Unorthodox faction's star systems.
Above all, the probability of a Heaven's Martial Body being born as a direct descendant of the Cheon family was literally one in 3.2 trillion.
Given the gravity of the situation, if any disciplinary action were to be taken, it would at most be the confiscation of her command code.
Originally, the command code was given to her by Cheon Gyeong-ho as a political gesture—a sign of sympathy for his grandson who had lost his parents early—intended for her to contact him directly in an emergency, not to wield his authority directly like this.
But Siwoo did not regret her actions in the slightest. Even if she had contacted Cheon Gyeong-ho first, given the circumstances, the probability of missing the golden hour was overwhelmingly high.
In truth, if it weren't for Cheon Soyeon, the daughter of the couple before her, Cheon Jiwoo would never have been swept up and kidnapped in the first place. She had essentially wasted a precious emergency code.
Now that the emergency measures were in place, Siwoo used the emergency code for its original purpose.
Siwoo did not have a system directly connected to the Cheon family. Therefore, the command code existed to utilize a super-large system connected to the family for emergency communications.
She didn't like having to write the message as if Cheon Soyeon was more important than Cheon Jiwoo simply because of the Heaven's Martial Body, but since she had overstepped her bounds, she had to state the justification that allowed it first.
"I will not forgive these kidnappers."
Siwoo's voice turned ice-cold, radiating murderous intent. An android capable of combat was permitted to harm even humans if it was for the sake of protecting key personnel.
Waking up, I regained my senses and opened my status window to check the time.
I calculated the time that had passed since my second-slot avatar was created. I thought I had been unconscious for a long time, but it had only been about twenty minutes.
I suppose if you use too much sleeping gas, the target dies, so they must have used just enough to knock us out briefly.
"Mmmph, mmmph!"
Not only were my arms and legs tied, but I was also gagged. Right in front of me, Cheon Soyeon was tied up in the exact same way.
Seeing that I was awake, Cheon Soyeon suddenly dislocated her own arm.
Crack!
Frowning slightly, she slipped her arm out of the loosened bindings, then popped her dislocated arm back into place.
...What is she? I don't know, but she's terrifying.
A three-year-old casually dislocating her own arm to escape restraints was far scarier than any kidnapper.
"Shh. I'm going to untie your gag, so be quiet."
At Soyeon's whisper, I nodded. Soyeon untied my gag and freed me from my restraints.
"I'm sorry."
"Huh?"
I looked up at Soyeon, who was suddenly apologizing. Her eyes were brimming with tears.
"You were kidnapped because of me. It's because I have the Heaven's Martial Body that you got dragged into this. I'm so sorry."
At Soyeon's words, I looked around.
"Apologize later. We aren't in a car trunk. Have we already left the amusement park and reached their hideout?"
"N-No. We haven't left the amusement park yet. I woke up about half a *gak*—roughly seven minutes—after we were hit by the sleeping poison. The kidnappers were talking, and they said all the exits have been locked down."
"Locked down?"
Ah! Siwoo must have used the emergency protocol.
But that was meant for communication; locking down the park is a serious abuse of authority.
"Wait, did you say you have the Heaven's Martial Body?"
"Huh? Y-Yeah."
The Heaven's Martial Body is incredibly rare. Thank goodness.
Then she'll probably get off with just having her command code confiscated. Compared to having a Heaven's Martial Body kidnapped, overstepping her authority wouldn't even be worth mentioning.
Recalling the situation before we were taken, Soyeon's parents were on their way to us. Seeing that my phone was gone, the kidnappers must have smashed it and left it there to prevent tracking.
If Siwoo returned from the stall late, found my phone, met Soyeon's parents, and figured out the situation, it made sense that she would use the emergency protocol without hesitation.
When I smiled, Soyeon looked bewildered.
"Is this something to laugh about?"
"Should I cry instead?"
"Well, no, but..."
I pulled my sub-phone out of my inventory.
"Huh...! But the kidnappers definitely smashed it and left it behind?"
I vaguely remembered it too. Even in my half-conscious state as I blacked out, the sound of my phone shattering had been incredibly clear.
"I hid this one so they wouldn't find it, of course."
Even a master of the Transformed Realm couldn't find things in my inventory. Honestly, even if the Martial God himself came, he wouldn't find it.
This phone was a sub-phone I had bought behind Siwoo's back while training in my main body, loaded with music, movies, and dramas, and sent over to this avatar. Since I didn't have any parents' deaths to avenge, I needed to listen to music while working out. 50th-century music was actually pretty good.
Just in case my main phone broke, I had cloned my SIM card and put it in this one. I never expected my main phone to actually get destroyed like this, though.
I dialed Siwoo.
— Young Master?
"No, this is Patrick."