Chapter 44
```Chapter 44: IT Skeleton Soldiers
"Come again!"
Hit up Yongsan Electronics Market,
and while I was at it, bought 90 laptops in one go.
Spent a lot of money.
Carrying everything back to the mansion,
"Oh...."
The garden was clearly different from when I left.
A road had appeared, stretching all the way from the entrance to the mansion.
About 10 meters on either side of the road, not a single weed could be seen.
In the distance, under Hansik's command, skeleton soldiers were swarming over the mansion, removing the ivy vines.
"Seeing it like this... it looks like some kind of apocalypse movie."
Wasn't it just skeletons attacking the mansion?
In just 4 hours, a tremendous amount had been accomplished.
"Good work."
"Yes, nothing unusual happened, right?"
"Amazing. Hyung, your skeleton soldiers really get things done!"
Of course. Whose skeletons are they?
My lips twitched like a parent hearing their child praised.
"Hyung, I'll get started right away."
"Yeah. I'm curious to see how you'll do it."
"Skeletons, assemble."
The skeletons stopped what they were doing and came running. They were tinged with a greenish hue from the plant juices they had absorbed.
"Hansik. Here are the equipment you need for digital forensics, and this is a gift. 90 laptops. Spent a lot of money."
At my words, all the skeleton soldiers raised both hands.
Hooray! Hooray! Hooray!
Three cheers, no less.
Worth every penny.
They must have envied Hansik's laptop all this time.
"Use them well. Hansik, how long do you think the digital forensics will take?"
Approximately 8 to 12 hours is expected.
I checked the clock—12 o'clock.
Already time for lunch.
So at the earliest, 8 PM,
at the latest, by midnight tonight, we'd have results.
"Then begin."
Hansik started directing the skeleton soldiers one by one. Their hand-sign language was too fast to catch everything, but from what I vaguely understood,
'Receive supplies in an orderly manner. Line up by seniority...'—something like that.
They looked free-spirited, but they were 'soldiers' after all.
There was a clear hierarchy determined by seniority.
"More than that, I think we'll need a workspace."
"Hyung, there's a perfect place."
Hyundo pointed to a building of unknown purpose.
About two stories high.
"It's an annex—Father used to train there."
"Oh, really?"
It was a gymnasium that Hyundo's father, who had been a demon swordsman, had used. The ceiling was high, so I'd thought it was a two-story building.
Full-length mirrors were installed on all sides, and there were exercise machines and several scarecrows for swordsmanship training.
There were wooden swords, and even real ones.
"Wow...."
And in one corner, there was a slide, a seesaw, and a swing that Hyundo and Hyuna had clearly played on as children.
"It's being used as storage right now. What do you think?"
"Perfect."
The skeletons rummaged through the piled-up items, finding things that could serve as desks and chairs, and soon the space was transformed into a secret base for the IT skeleton soldiers.
First, under the guidance of the senior skeleton soldiers, the newbie skeletons began inputting coding knowledge into the laptops—including AI algorithms and various other programming skills.
Meanwhile, Hansik extracted the broken memory chip from the phone, dried it with a hair dryer, and continued with very delicate work.
Soldering, scraping—I couldn't exactly tell what he was doing, but his posture was almost reverent.
Soon, Hansik held up the mere 1cm memory chip to the fluorescent light, examining it from all angles.
Apparently satisfied, he connected the memory chip terminals to a chip-off reader,
Initializing Data Recovery: NAND Chip Off Process...
Connection Established: Reading Chip Data Blocks
- Mapping sectors: 5% complete
- Detecting readable fragments...
Phase 1 Complete: Analyzing structured memory blocks
.......
White text began scrolling rapidly across the black screen.
[Error]
When it returned an Error message, Hansik gave some instruction to the 76 IT skeleton soldiers.
Clackclackclack clackclackclack clackclack.
Immediately, all 77 skeleton soldiers began writing code simultaneously to solve the problem. If they didn't know something, they helped each other; if that didn't work, someone found a solution.
While they cooperated to resolve the error, the chat window was buzzing with opinions and debugging ideas.
No. 38: I think the Read error is occurring due to the NAND structure.
No. 19: Controller bypass access needed!
No. 69: Let's try applying the Bypass protocol.
No. 58: Attempting...
No. 74: Sector-by-sector error checking complete.
No. 42: Bad block detected... continuous scanning.
No. 77: Data collection in progress, visualization needed through graph module.
.
.
.
"Wow... amazing."
Collective intelligence.
They moved like a single program.
No. 1: Resolved.
At Hansik's message, everyone neatly lifted their hands from the keyboards.
At the same time, Hansik's laptop—the main computer—began spitting out white text again.
Warning: Data integrity compromised, restoring readable packets
Recovered:
- SMS_Packet_001: [Sender: Unknown] "Meet at the designated drop point."
- SMS_Packet_002: [Sender: Confidential] "Update on shipment: Proceed with caution."
- Encrypted Packet Detected: Decoding in progress...
.......
Again,
[Error]
[1]: Reconstructing recoverable data blocks, metadata offset issue detected. Tracing and correcting.
As Hansik gave the order,
Clackclack clack clackclack.
"Hyung, I don't know what's what, but... it's working."
"What, what is it? Your skeleton soldiers..."
"I told you, right?"
He'd said the recovery rate would only be about 32%, but for some reason, I felt like I could have some expectations.
"Their weakest point is fighting."
But they're pretty good at fighting too.
* * *
After lunch,
"Mother, how were they?"
"They look scary, but they're quite affectionate, they handle ingredients well, they're so nice. They even gave me a massage. It felt great."
"Right?"
After dinner, too.
"I prepared all of tonight's dinner without getting a single drop of water on my hands, you know? Truly amazing."
It was delicious.
Meanwhile, the 77 skeleton soldiers who hadn't been excluded never left their seats once, devoting themselves to the work.
For a full 12 hours.
The clattering of their fingers on the keyboards stopped.
Silence.
They all stood up together and raised both hands.
Hooray!
We jumped up too.
"Is it done?"
Hansik gave a thumbs up.
Hansik showed us the results produced after the long wait.
- Recovery rate is 52.4%.
That was the result of giving it their all.
The memory chip had been broken and submerged in water to begin with. Just recovering even a portion of it was impressive.
"What does it say?"
"He said about half was recovered."
"Hmm... a shame, but wasn't it only thirty-something percent at first? Then we can see the text that Bae Hyeong-shin sent, right?"
'There's a text that Bae Hyeong-shin sent!'
Those were Park Won-chang's words, which were like his dying will.
Kim Tae-su remembered it clearly.
The price of that information was Park Won-chang's life.
Kim Tae-su was certain it wasn't just empty talk.
The recovered messages had some strings corrupted.
[Logistics Manager]: Meal expenses overbudget, adjust the budget.
[Logistics Manager]: If you come to work? Please submit the report.
[Supervisor]: Don't let personnel leave.
.......
Hard to read, but everyday messages.
Messages exchanged with the Logistics Manager—apparently Bae Hyeong-shin's superior—and someone who might be the supervisor, though probably not Bae Hyeong-shin.
There were also plenty of texts about delivery work, contacting recipients.
"There's nothing? A message from Bae Hyeong-shin. Did you recover even deleted messages?"
Hansik answered yes.
But that's not what we needed to check.
"Spam, we need to look at the spam messages. Park Won-chang clearly wrote down a serial number from a spam message."
"Bae Hyeong-shin sent Park Won-chang a spam text?"
"Yeah. Hansik, just filter out the spam messages. Ah, right. Spam messages from yesterday. I remember it was something like sports betting. Is it there?"
Hansik quickly filtered them.
Spam messages from yesterday—betting.
That information was enough to identify it.
[Sender] (Announcement)
This week's Sports Betting Championship Event!
# 12th, Incheon United
The outcome determines the prize pool!
Middle League COMING Event
Click for more detailed info here
http://brog(d.be/vm_wi9
Code: INCU9283121
Found it.
"This is it. Sports betting. This is it!"
"You can't even read it, though?"
A 52% recovery rate wasn't perfect.
But the information here was enough to give us certainty.
"Right here at the bottom. The code! INCU9283121—some characters are corrupted, but the rest matches!"
Three digits of the serial number were broken, but the rest matched.
The probability of it being something else was extremely low.
"Oh. Yeah, it does match. This is it! But you're saying Bae Hyeong-shin sent this? At a glance... this week's sports betting... event? Incheon United! A soccer team? Hey, this is just a betting ad."
"Hmm... the code is definitely certain, though?"
"It might not be this. Park Won-chang might have genuinely needed an illegal gambling code. Pull out all the other spam messages too."
"I'm pretty sure this is it... There's no way he'd write a bloody will just to remember a betting site code..."
I felt frustrated.
I felt like I knew it for sure, but...
Something was tickling my mind, hazy and indistinct.
"Is it this? Dooshik, look at this. It looks like they wrote down a messenger app ID. Maybe they contacted Bae Hyeong-shin through this?"
"Student... skin white and... this looks like just straight-up spam to me? You know, romance scams. No real info at all?"
"Should we try messaging through this messenger? Who knows? Maybe it's Bae Hyeong-shin?"
It felt like a waste of time.
And I was certain.
The sports betting one was definitely from Bae Hyeong-shin.
But why would Bae Hyeong-shin send spam?
What was the intention?
"Hyung. Think carefully. Why did Bae Hyeong-shin use spam to send a message to Park Won-chang?"
"I don't know."
"Spam is one-way. Park Won-chang couldn't reply to Bae Hyeong-shin. It was Bae Hyeong-shin sending one-sidedly."
"So that betting one is definitely from Bae Hyeong-shin?"
"Let's assume that for now."
A storm began to rage within the haze tickling my mind.
Brainstorming.
"Well, maybe it's because a lowlife like Park Won-chang didn't have the standing to talk to Bae Hyeong-shin directly?"
"Wait, wait, hyung. You said Park Won-chang was on parole, right? Released three months ago?"
"Yeah."
"Then is this phone one Park Won-chang had been using for a long time?"
At that, Hansik shook his head.
Hansik, who always knew everything, showed me the activation date.
The activation date was exactly three months ago.
"Right. The day Park Won-chang activated his phone is the same as his parole date."
"But how did Bae Hyeong-shin know Park Won-chang's number to send texts to that specific number?"
"Hmm...."
"Did Bae Hyeong-shin meet Park Won-chang? Taking that risk during his parole period?"
"He probably didn't. Bae Hyeong-shin is suspicious of everyone. He's also very cautious. He's a bastard who hasn't shown his face even once in over five years."
"And Park Won-chang couldn't contact Bae Hyeong-shin either?"
"Probably not."
I thought deeply.
Something... like I was about to catch it, but not quite...
What is it? What is it?
It feels like I'm almost there...
"That's it."
I pulled out my phone.
Hadn't I also received spam like this before?
```