Nakyuan Spaland (1)
"Guh—!"
"W-what's wrong!?"
Lee Kyung-min sat on the operating table, injected a drug into his own arm, then went rigid—eyes flying wide as his whole body began to tremble.
"Director!"
I grabbed his shoulders and shook him, but his unfocused eyes just stared blankly into empty air.
"Hah!"
"You okay?"
"Ah… yes!"
About thirty seconds later he seemed to come back to himself, looking around the room.
"Feel any different?"
Lee Kyung-min opened his hand and stared down at his palm, murmuring,
"I've never felt this full of strength in my entire life…"
We all went outside the hospital, and I handed him a scrap of lumber lying nearby.
Crunch.
"…"
With nothing but the grip of one hand, Lee Kyung-min crushed the wood to splinters.
"Effect's solid."
"Thank you!"
Lee Kyung-min dropped to his knees and bowed his gratitude to me.
"I've still got one more thing for you."
I took him to the Enhancement Chamber and measured his awakening rate. It came back at 7%. After I fed him an Enhancement Melon, the rate climbed all the way to 41%.
His control still looked rough, so I ordered him to spend the next stretch of time learning to rein in his strength. I also told him that if anyone ever caused a disturbance at the hospital, he had full authority to take preemptive action and report to me afterward. By "action," I meant he could kill a rampaging patient in the process of subduing them and I would not hold him responsible.
"Everyone's here. Good. I'm planning to craft gear from the Tetra's corpse and award it—and I've already decided who gets it."
Every officer had gathered in the Workshop. When I'd first brought up Workshop equipment, the entire staff had waved me off and refused. They still seemed to carry guilt over the Tetra campaign, insisting they deserved punishment, not rewards. Handing top-tier Workshop gear to outsiders was out of the question, and punishing soldiers who had won a victory—however costly—was equally absurd. They refused to the end, but I forced the issue and decided to award the equipment anyway.
Objectively, the officers who had earned the greatest merit in that battle were Im Jui and Han Seol. Jui had risked her life crawling under the Tetra's belly, splitting it open and dealing the first real damage—planting the belief that we can win in every Awakener who joined the fight. I still couldn't forget the sight of her staggering out of the smoke, drenched in the Tetra's toxic guts and blood. Han Seol had risked her life leaping onto the Tetra's head and driving her sword into its skull. She had been one breath from death—struck in the abdomen, coughing blood, collapsing unconscious—yet with superhuman will she rose again and finished the thrust.
But both of them already owned top-tier gear, so a duplicate award was pointless. Their ruined equipment had gone back into the Workshop and come out fully repaired two days later. So this set would go to one of the three: Han Byeol, Jeong Su-hwan, or Han Eun-ji.
"Jeong Su-hwan."
"Yes, sir!"
Jeong Su-hwan stepped forward and knelt before me.
"The courage you showed in that battle left a deep impression. For that merit, I'm awarding you this gear. Step into the chamber."
"Thank you!"
Han Byeol and Han Eun-ji had fought bravely and risked their lives as well, but their contributions fell short of Jeong Su-hwan's. In the instant the Tetra tried to leap skyward again, he had severed one of its legs—throwing it off balance and slamming it back to earth. If he had missed that one-second window, the Tetra would have soared high into the air, and no one could have predicted how the battle would have ended.
Jeong Su-hwan finished the measurement inside the chamber and walked out through the smoke. A box dropped from the ejection port.
"Try it on. Ladies, step outside for a moment… no. I'll step out too. Call me when you're dressed."
"Marshal… this is a grace I can never repay even with my life."
Jeong Su-hwan took my hand and wept hot tears.
"Yeah…"
I had thought I'd gotten used to this kind of reaction. Apparently not. It still made me a little uncomfortable.
Once he had changed, we went back into the Workshop.
"Whoa…"
It was a strikingly refined military-style outfit. Jeong Su-hwan's gear consisted of a black overcoat, black cargo pants, and black boots. All three pieces looked simple and sleek—but up close, darker black patterns were etched into the coat and pants.
"Spiderwebs."
Black spiderweb motifs were worked into the fabric all over.
"There are jewels set in it, too."
Several red gems were embedded along both sleeves of the coat.
"Those don't look like jewels to me…"
No matter how I looked at them, they weren't gems. They were the Tetra's eyeballs.
"How is it?"
"Incredible… An attack that would kill me in one hit without the gear—I feel like I could tank it while wearing this. My strength feels greater, too."
"Good. It came out properly."
If Han Seol's and Jui's gear had a slight "veteran gamer's custom loadout" vibe, Jeong Su-hwan's clothes looked like a real soldier's uniform. The Workshop clearly reflected the wearer's nature as well.
"It's the weekend. What are you doing today?"
"O-oh, today I'm doing o-origami with Jui unnie!"
"Hmm… sounds fun. Is Jui good with her hands? Last time I checked, her woodworking was pretty rough…"
Seo I-rang answered in a voice full of confidence.
"I-I'm the one teaching her!"
"That's sweet of you…"
"O-oppa, what are you doing today?"
Outside of wartime, I was the freest person in this place.
"Me? Probably read some reports…"
The aftershocks of the Tetra campaign had settled, and peaceful days had returned. I woke early and ate breakfast with everyone I lived with. The Alliance was recovering smoothly from the damage the Tetra had inflicted. Naturally, the ones handling reconstruction were me and the Gangnam government. I kept selling them liquor and poured every payment straight into postwar recovery funds. I planned to take in about five hundred more residents soon, and reports were coming up from Namsan every day. Everything was going smoothly.
The one thing that nagged at me was that ever since the day Han Seol woke up in the hospital after her injuries, things between us had grown a little awkward.
"Have you finished eating?"
"Yeah."
"I'll clear the dishes."
"No, I'll—"
"Ah."
We both reached for the empty plate at the same time, and our hands brushed. We looked at each other in silence for a few seconds. Then Han Seol bowed her head deeply and carried the plate away.
For the three days she had been unconscious, I had stayed at her side. And when she woke, I had pulled her into my arms without thinking.
Why did I do that…
I still didn't understand my own actions. The one mercy was that she hadn't pushed me away—she had held me back. We clung to each other in silence for more than thirty minutes, then sprang apart at light speed the moment her attending physician, Lee Kyung-min, knocked. He walked into the VIP room, startled to find her awake—and then stared at the two of us, faces flushed, looking in opposite directions and coughing awkwardly, with a very strange expression.
After that I thought about it alone for a long time, and the conclusion I reached was that I had feelings for Han Seol. Whether she felt the same about me was another question. Did she see me only as the benefactor who had saved her and her sister's lives, a superior to whom she owed loyalty—or did she harbor romantic feelings for me as a man?
The only people who had ever given me love were my parents, who died when I was young, so I had no idea how to tell. And the blunt truth was that if I wanted a woman right now, I could have as many as I liked. When the world collapsed, law, morality, ethics, and common sense had collapsed with it. I didn't even need to look as far as the Korean government—some of the Alliance's warlord leaders already kept multiple women. I'd even heard rumors of a female Awakener who kept a dozen male concubines. This was a world that barely condemned such things. Hell, even Park Tae-woo was free to take his pick of his followers. A man with my level of power could have a line of women stretching from Paradise to Namsan if he wanted one.
I hadn't done any of that because I had zero interest in purely physical relationships with women I had no human connection to, and I felt no need for them. Honestly, managing the territory had been so entertaining that I never even had room to notice these feelings. When I first met the Han sisters, yes, I had been excited to see actual human women after so long—but nothing beyond that.
"Haa…"
A guy who had gone middle school for boys → high school for boys → total shut-in was feeling this for the first time in his life, and it was confusing as hell. If I wanted Han Seol, she would not refuse me. But whether that was because she liked me as a man, or simply because she was obeying the orders of someone she had sworn her life to—there was no way to know. I had considered asking Jeong Su-hwan for advice, since he was a married man, but every man here had long since become a yes-man who only ever answered me with "yes." I doubted it would help.
Once I became aware of these feelings, things I had never noticed before started to stand out. I hadn't realized it, but the residents saw Jui as Seo Do-hyun's enforcer, right hand, fang, and the Alliance regime's undisputed number two. The other officers were number three; I-rang was Seo Do-hyun's adopted daughter; and Han Seol, Han Byeol, and Na Hye-won—who lived with me—were regarded as a kind of first ladies…
"I really don't know…"
"Alright. I've decided."
After the Tetra campaign I had suspended point farming through I-rang's ability for a while because of the postwar recovery work. Only recently had I started it up again.
Available Points: 78P
The Tetra campaign had yielded an enormous haul of points, but after reconstructing the hospital, spending 120P on Namsan, and farming a little more through I-rang's ability, I was left with 78P. I had already restored the new farm in the Third Northeast Sector, and rationally speaking I should have been pouring 30P at a time into production buildings. Instead, I decided to invest 50P into reconstructing the bathhouse.
As a leisure facility, it had always been shoved to the bottom of the reconstruction priority list. At this rate I would never rebuild the bathhouse in my lifetime, so I figured I might as well do it now.
"Reconstruction."
The bathhouse building glowed with light—then the light faded almost at once.
"Huh?"
Nothing had changed. It looked exactly the same.
Obstacle Removal Required
"Ah."
I had built a small tool shed next to the bathhouse for storage, and the system was treating the shed as an obstacle.
"Call some residents and have them move that shed somewhere else."
"Yes, sir!"
I was already excited. This message I had never seen before meant that when the bathhouse was reconstructed, it wouldn't just grow taller—it would expand in floor area as well. When I reconstructed the hospital there had been no obstacles nearby, so no message had appeared.
Once the shed was dismantled, I ran the bathhouse reconstruction again.
"Reconstruction."
Whoooom—
"Oh."
"It's gotten a lot bigger…"
The bathhouse had swollen until it nearly filled an entire block. It now stood a full six stories tall.
"Must be because it's a convenience facility. The reconstruction cost-performance is great…"
The moment the officers and I opened the first-floor door, everyone gasped in admiration. The first floor had become a lobby. Like a proper spa, there was a reception counter, vending machines for drinks, and sofas where people could sit and rest. It looked thoroughly high-end. Behind the counter, a door led into a room packed with sauna robes, numbered key bracelets, and stacks of towels. I clapped once, wordlessly, then said,
"Looks like we'll need to hire bathhouse staff, too."