Back to School
Back to school.
One day earlier again.
While Bada was fretting over the goblins' future food supply, Alex had come out into the bustling streets of Gangnam in Seoul to carry out the mission his carrier-mother had given him.
Budong Guild.
A guild in a cooperative relationship with Budong Pharmaceuticals.
A thriving outfit that had deliberately planted its headquarters in the heart of Gangnam just to flaunt its wealth.
Among the guilds worth trusting, this one was said to pay the highest price for red potions.
At the reception desk, the staff member asked tensely,
"Welcome. What brings you here today?"
Alex was, first of all, extraordinarily handsome.
It wasn't only his face — the muscles completed a beauty like a living statue.
On top of that, he somehow radiated the aura of a hardened veteran.
That he was a baby who hadn't even been alive a month, let alone a year, was something the employee could never have imagined.
So she mistook him for a heavyweight, tensed up wondering whether he might have an appointment with the guild master, and asked as if he were a prized guest.
"I've come to sell red potions."
Thud.
An invisible tension seemed to drain straight out of the receptionist's body.
All that nerves for someone peddling junk items.
Of course, red potions themselves were still over-technology humanity had yet to reach.
Budong Pharmaceuticals researched their principles day and night and bought up red potions whenever they could, but…
Their source was, at best, goblin hunting — items you found by ransacking goblin villages.
The receptionist felt awkward for having elevated him on looks alone and gotten so worked up.
"Please proceed to the exchange on the first basement floor."
In Budong Guild's building, the higher you went, the more important things became, which made B1 the most trivial place of all.
Among the various tower byproducts, the so-called "junk items."
That was what got traded underground.
"You're here to sell red potions?"
A middle-aged man with a less-than-tidy look — he clearly hadn't put much effort into shaving — came out.
Alex set the red potions he had brought onto the exchange table.
"I was told you buy them at 1.2 million won a bottle."
"Hold on! No, that won't do!"
The middle-aged man's face crumpled the moment he saw the potions.
"What do you think you're doing, transferring them into other bottles? We told you to bring red potions in their original form!"
The glass bottles goblins used were crude compared to glass refined by modern technology.
So red potions usually came in yellowish, impurity-flecked bottles — yet the ones Alex had brought sat in glass so clean that anyone could tell they had been transferred.
They were made in the carrier's production room.
It was Bada's mistake. He had learned the red potion recipe but had never actually seen a goblin-made red potion.
Missing the difference in bottle detail…
"I hate to even suggest it, but you're not trying to scam Budong Guild, are you? If you are, you won't find it easy to keep living on Korean soil."
In the old days, a conglomerate employee saying something like that would have been instantly buried in abuse-of-power controversy.
But what the man said now was simply true.
Anyone who fell out of favor with a mega-guild did not find life easy in that country.
"They are definitely red potions. The quality is probably good as well."
"You're not telling me that while transferring the containers you stretched nine bottles into ten! Or watered them down! Nothing like that, right?"
"I played no such games."
The middle-aged man stared into Alex's eyes, then said,
"What the guild requires is unopened, intact red potions! For transferred red potions like these, I can't give you full price! At nine hundred thousand won a bottle, I'll make a special purchase!"
The middle-aged man was gambling.
Assuming these potions were genuine, buying them this cheap would all count as his performance.
Conversely, Alex might be a swindler.
In that case, performance would become a blunder.
Alex shook his head firmly.
"That won't do. It would mean I failed to carry out my mission properly."
"Mission?"
"Then I'll be going. Good work."
"Go somewhere else and you'll hear the exact same thing! Nobody buys transferred potions!"
Alex rose from his seat without hesitation, and the exchange clerk believed he had made the wise choice.
Red potions in clean glass bottles? Had to be a scam!
And so Alex went next to Hanseon Guild nearby, which was likewise partnered with a pharmaceutical company.
The exchange clerk there was just as troubled.
Except.
"This gentleman came to sell red potions? And the look of them is highly suspicious?"
By chance, Alex ran into a researcher from the pharmaceutical company.
And the researcher happened to need one more new sample bottle right then.
"You're really confident in the quality? Then would you leave the goods with me first? I'm in the middle of experiments, so results will be out within three hours. We'll pay according to the quality then."
Alex thought it over.
Surely a pharmaceutical company with a building in the middle of Gangnam wouldn't pull a scam.
And if they did, he could always recover the money through physical communication.
"Very well."
Thus the suspiciously high-quality glass-bottled red potions Alex had brought went to the laboratory.
And the researcher studying them shouted,
"This isn't an ordinary red potion! This is!!! An Enhanced Red Potion!"
Potions made by goblin alchemists were inconsistent in quality.
By contrast, the potions produced in Kim Bada's production room followed the process perfectly and turned out only prime goods.
The researcher burst out of the lab, rushed excitedly up to Alex, and asked,
"Where did you get this potion?"
"I happened to find it in a goblin village warehouse."
"Khhh. So you just stumbled on it by chance? What a shame. No — having nine more bottles is lucky enough."
The researcher cried out,
"I'll buy them all at four million won a bottle!"
An Enhanced Red Potion was not four times as efficient as a regular red potion.
At best the healing amount was 1.5 times.
Red potions weren't even the strongest potions; orange potions sat above them.
Even so, this steep price came from rarity.
And from the hope that studying the difference between red potions and Enhanced Red Potions might unlock the secret of potions themselves.
"I'm Yang Se-hui, director of Hanseon Pharmaceuticals' Seoul Research Institute. A pleasure."
"Alex. Next time I obtain something rare, I'll bring it here."
"I love that!"
And so Alex cleared ten bottles of Enhanced Red Potion for forty million won — about four times more than expected.
Next came the task of persuading Kim Bada's younger sister, Kim Haneul, and sending her back to university.
Bankbook in hand, Alex marched straight into the convenience store where Kim Haneul was working her part-time job.
"Hello, may I help you?"
Without much fluster, she greeted him in English — high-caliber talent, Kim Haneul.
Until she earned her diploma, though, she was still only a high-school graduate.
And Alex, despite his looks and his name, could not speak English.
"I'm a friend of Kim Bada's."
At her older brother's name, Haneul's eyebrows twitched.
An older brother who, without even being a parent, had ground away his own youth to put his little sister through university.
Hating the sight of that brother so much, Kim Haneul had lied that she had a chance to make big money and left home.
Working part-time at a convenience store wasn't a bad job, but anyone could tell it wasn't a job that made big money.
"I've come on that friend's request to send you back to university."
Kh.
Kim Haneul bit her lip.
She had deliberately dodged every contact, yet somehow he had found out about her leave of absence and come to scold her.
But why?
"Why did Oppa's friend come instead of Oppa?"
Where had he even gotten friendly with a good-looking blond foreigner like this in the first place.
"He went out on a deep-sea fishing boat to catch tuna."
"What?"
"He said if you're still on leave when he gets back, he'll thrash you with frozen tuna."
"Why? He's not even Dad."
"Because that's family. Isn't it?"
Kim Haneul looked at Alex.
Alex looked at Kim Haneul.
Alex's expression was thoroughly serious; there was no hint of a joke.
"This should be enough for you to attend university for the time being."
Alex handed over a bankbook in his own name.
The balance was twenty million won.
He had originally meant to give about twelve million, but an unexpected windfall had swollen the sum.
"I'll make up whatever's short later."
Handing over the full forty million at once could create tax problems, so he was giving tuition and living expenses for now and would deliver the rest later.
"Did you come off a deep-sea boat too?"
Alex had nothing particular to say, so he decided to let her think so.
"That's unexpected. You look like you'd suit being a movie actor."
That was a common impression Bada had felt as well.
Alex was roughly the Hollywood leading-man type.
"That guy Kim Bada was already navy, and now it's tuna fishing. Maybe he just loves ships too much."
Neither of them was even from a port city.
It was just that the older brother was Bada — "ocean" — and the younger sister Haneul — "sky" — a painfully ordinary pair of names.
Navy, and now a deep-sea fishing boat.
Wasn't he living far too harsh a life.
Pity for her older brother welled up, and Haneul shed tears.
"I'll pay it all back with interest, every last bit."
She clenched her fist and swore it.
For reference, at this very hour, Kim Bada was out with the goblins raiding a cabbage field.