Straws in Every House
He couldn't keep the smile on his face forever.
The raid meant there were plenty of victims now. Won-goo's own crew had come out unscathed, but others hadn't been so lucky, and putting things right would take action of a certain kind. Fortunately, Won-goo was a man skilled at turning situations like this into productive energy.
Anger at Ganjeol Point, the bastards who'd orchestrated the whole thing. The action required wasn't anything complicated. All he had to do was show the scene being brought under control quickly, with a look of barely contained fury plastered across his face.
"How's it looking, Jo Mu-sa?"
"A few of the wounds are deep, but I think they'll be fine."
Jo Mu-sa said.
"Pacific. You holding up?"
"Nothing fatal."
"No, not that—you stood up. You're not losing consciousness?"
"I'm not fine. In a little while it's going to be hell. Before that happens, find me somewhere quiet where I can be alone. I'm not about to put on a show for anyone."
"Well, you're still talking clearly, so I guess you're okay for now."
"No, I'm NOT fine. In a few minutes it's going to be genuinely hell. That's the most fucked-up part of this curse."
"......?"
"My mind stays perfectly fine. No—actually it gets clearer, and that's when the pain comes."
"Damn. You got stuck with one nasty, vindictive curse."
"That's what I'm saying, Director Gong. Got anything strong?"
The moment Pacific finished speaking, his body was trembling faintly. Not just shaking—it was a rapid vibration, as if his whole body were ringing. The kind that came from a mix of the curse's backlash and fear of the memory of it.
"Meaning the meds you have won't cut it?"
"Grade 1 would help."
"One-tenth as strong?"
"No. One-hundredth."
"Ugh...... fine. Jo Mu-sa."
"Should I take out what you mentioned before?"
"Yeah. Take it out and put it on him. Painkiller's all he needs. It's not like he's injured somewhere."
"Which one should I use?"
"The one that starts with C."
Unlocking his third Milestone Trait had brought a lot of new Trailer-related abilities along with it. Won-goo's Gift, the Blessing of Machine Civilization, expanded its available functions the more he invested in it. The drawback, as he'd noted before, was that every single one of those functions cost coins.
It was the same this time. He could deploy painkillers far too potent to be available on the current market—and naturally, coins had been drained for it.
Here lay the true potential of Won-goo's Gift. If he had unlimited coins, it could replace pretty much any field of ability. With further investment on top of the painkiller line, he could access medicines even more cheat-like than painkillers.
He could stock plenty of the kind that regenerated a severed limb with a single dab—if he was willing to sink an enormous amount of coins into it. In a sense, the Blessing of Machine Civilization let him borrow abilities from the future and use them early.
The treatment branch, if it kept growing, would eventually reach technology that could regenerate the body outright. Though that was still a story from the far, far distant future.
"So where does this thing go?"
"Just slap it on anywhere."
A square, band-shaped patch. Jo Mu-sa was struggling to peel it apart, apparently mistaking it for one of those pain-relief plasters or adhesive bandages. Watching him, Won-goo paused mid-swig of his nutritional supplement to chime in.
"Jo Mu-sa. Just stick it on."
"Sorry, I'm not familiar with these......"
"Didn't I tell you before?"
"You didn't tell......"
"I'll send you the manual later, when we visit the Shelter......"
"Ugh, we can go over that later—just stick it on already! I'm about to hurt myself to death over here!"
Pacific's body was now rattling like a tiller engine. And that was even after he'd already injected every painkiller he had on him.
The Curse of the Crippled Witch.
A curse that barred its victim from ever standing on two legs.
Pacific had been stricken with it, and the price of standing and moving was excruciating agony. Pain so severe that even a coin-enhanced survivor couldn't endure five seconds of it.
This was exactly why survivors were extremely careful about anything involving curses. Curses weren't easily overcome through ordinary coin enhancement. No matter how much you raised your toughness, no matter how much you reinforced your willpower, no one ever beat a curse.
They might endure it, at most.
Some survivors carried weaker curses passively, like a permanent tag, but the curse Pacific bore was classified among the strongest of them. It was not something that could be overcome.
Tap.
Jo Mu-sa pressed the painkiller patch onto Pacific's forehead.
A painkiller fused with the technology of machine civilization. It was so potent that the moment it went on, Pacific's expression eased, and the violent trembling stopped.
A patch born of the most advanced civilization in the universe. It was absorbed into the skin the instant it touched and vanished.
And Won-goo realized he'd forgotten one crucial fact.
Right. I remember hearing that thing works best on the head.
That was it. The patch existed to maximize its pain-soothing effect. It acted on the nervous system, but virtually all of its potency was directed at the brain. In short, one patch reduced every pain-related process in the brain—simple pain, sure, but also all sorts of side effects carved into the body. It even calmed a curse for as long as the painkiller's effect lasted. That was why the instructions said to apply it to the head for the fastest results.
He figured it out and put it on the forehead. Good.
"What is this thing? Why does it work so well?"
Thanks to it, Pacific's shivering body had gone still at once.
"It works because it's expensive. Anyway—which one of Ganjeol's men came? What kind of bastard was it that you actually stood up and fought him?"
Won-goo ground his heel into one of the abandoned Ganjeol masks lying on the ground. The raiders had fled without leaving a single man behind, and yet the mask had been left behind. They'd struck clean and slipped away without a trace, and the only thing left was a single mask.
It was mockery—and a warning. A mark meant to say: we came, and we left.
"We need to update our list of Ganjeol executives."
"......?"
"He wasn't on it."
"We grabbed All Kind, grabbed Sonjabi, and finished the cross-check. The intel shouldn't be wrong."
"Then he must've been recruited recently."
"Could be."
"Couldn't he be one of Ganjeol's Royal Guard?"
Mu Beob-sa asked. Both Pacific and Won-goo nodded. That meant the possibility was real.
"That much tracks. So what was he like?"
"Enhancement type. No special ability, but his movements were vicious. And his weapon was unusual. A saw—he carried a saw around. And his eyes. He was definitely smiling with his eyes."
Pacific explained it all very calmly.
But the faces of the crew who'd heard the description darkened. Won-goo in particular was kneading his brow, his whole body broadcasting how much of a headache this was.
It felt as though a man they never wanted to meet and a group they never wanted to meet might have crossed paths. An enhancement type who grins while he kills people. Combined with a saw, the list of suspects was nearly empty.
Except for exactly one man.
"Di, Director. S-Sde, r-right?"
After a long while, Su-won opened his mouth.
"Seems right."
"Sde?"
"Sde. An extremely annoying bastard."
"Annoying type, yeah. But we nearly had him."
"Oh?"
"Yeah, except some fog rolled in out of nowhere and he was gone. Can't tell if that's his Gift or an item."
Won-goo turned his head toward Mu Beob-sa.
"That matches."
"It matches? What matches?"
"Our mage here has crossed blades with that bastard before. Back then too, he used some strange technique and escaped."
"The mage did? I thought the mage wasn't even a fighter?"
"There's a story there. Anyway, mage. That's him, right?"
"It matches. Fog rolled in when I nearly had him too."
"The saw, the eyes that scream bad luck on sight, and the escape technique on top. It's Sde, all right."
"You're sure?"
"Sure. It's not like there's a pile of coincidences here. So Pacific's still alive, huh. Sde's no joke, you know. He's a serious one. Did you square off with him?"
"What do you take me for? If my legs had been working, that bastard would've been done in thirty seconds."
"Oh please. I've seen Sde too, you brat. Thirty seconds, my ass."
"A minute?"
"Well, you're baring your teeth again, so looks like you've recovered. What about the rest? We've vented our anger, but...... it still leaves a bad taste."
The damage had been far from light. Plenty of wounded, and quite a few dead as well.
"What else can we do? Be honest about it. They came in right after they watched us leave. That means they were keeping watch on us."
"Surveillance? I doubt it."
"......?"
Won-goo accepted the canned coffee Hyun-sung handed him. It had been heated straight over the campfire, so it was less warm than scalding, but both Hyun-sung and Won-goo could drink it without much trouble. Won-goo gave Hyun-sung's shoulder a thump and took a sip of coffee.
"It wasn't surveillance?"
"No. I'm certain of it."
While everyone tilted their heads, Won-goo's eyes turned sharp.
In the meantime, Ah-bal had commandeered a few people from the camp and gone off chasing the raiders. Judging by her expression, she wasn't going to listen to anyone, so they decided to just leave her be.
"Um, Director? Ah-bal, she......"
Jeon Hye-ji started.
"You're asking if we should stop her?"
Jeon Hye-ji said. Jo Mu-sa was too busy tending to the wounded to pay attention.
"Nope. She won't misjudge the situation over something like this. She'll cool off eventually and come back. Hey! Mole!"
Won-goo, mid-answer, barked at a man passing by. The man came scurrying over at a quick trot. He looked remarkably like a mole, and he was short—around 160 centimeters.
"Yes, Director. You called?"
The mole-faced man greeted him respectfully.
"This one's one of Sapiens' people. He's got a special talent. Mole, what's your specialty? Recite it."
"Yes, sir! My specialty is planting traces and detecting suspicious movement within that radius."
"You heard him? I specifically requested this man from Sapiens for this very matter. Go on now. You've already contacted Sapiens, right?"
"I sent someone."
"Good. Go."
The mole scurried off again.
"See that?"
"What about it?"
"They charged in while we were off hunting the Ogre. That's practically surveillance done in the open."
"Exactly."
"But the Mole's traces caught nothing. Which means they hung back farther out and moved in fast. And the timing doesn't work for that. To hit and withdraw this cleanly, everything has to line up perfectly. Down to the second."
"You're saying there's a mole. A traitor."
Hye-ji lowered her voice.
Won-goo nodded without a word.
"A reaction this precise doesn't make sense any other way."
"Wouldn't be surprised. Ganjeol Point is famous for planting straws in every pot."
Pacific, surprisingly, was already sold on the idea.
"So we have to find them?"
"Won't be easy."
"Can't we just squeeze the bastards who took the least damage first?"
Pacific suggested.
"Pacific. Sde ran the field command here, didn't he?"
"That's the feel I got."
"Then he didn't do anything stupid. He'll have planted at least one fall guy. Just enough not to die."
"Ah......"
"Honestly, the ones WITH wounds are more reliable leads than the ones without."
"......"
"The simplest method would be to take them in one by one for treatment and work them over—but that doesn't fit the situation. We're short-handed. And they're not even our people."
"So we just leave it?"
"Can't do that. Something like this gets handled within each household. And the flushing out gets done with the head's authority. Hyun-sung."
"Yes, hyung-nim."
"Get in touch with Montage hyung-nim."
"Yes, hyung-nim! I'll make the call and be right back."
"Good. And Pacific."
"Hm?"
"Who took the gun? Sde?"
"No. I had that bastard marked the whole time."
"Then who?"
"It got dropped in the fighting, and...... some bastard scooped it up."
"Figures. What a waste. It would've been perfect if Sde had taken it."
"Could one of Sde's underlings have grabbed it?"
"Sde isn't the kind of great man who keeps underlings. Probably one of the Ganjeol lot. Anyway—the only executive who showed up here was Sde, right?"
"That's all I saw. But Sde said he was freshly recruited, remember? So there could've been more."
"Hmm...... and we've squeezed all the straws dry at this point......"
Gong Won-goo stroked his chin.
"W-wasn't there one planted in Poke's place too? We haven't used that one yet, have we?"
"That bastard's straw got discarded a while back. Completely useless trash, that guy. He's......"
Won-goo frowned.
"More importantly, is that really okay?"
"What do you mean, okay?"
"I mean the traitor part. Is it right to throw someone else's whole household into chaos with a single word?"
"So what you're saying is, what happens if your judgment turns out to be wrong—that 'part,' right? Mage?"
"That is the part, yes."
"Dr. Woo, Sapiens, Sanghae. None of them will take it badly."
"......?"
"Think about what a great opportunity it gives them to crack the whip. If there's a traitor, they catch him—great. If there isn't, they tighten discipline anyway—also great. But listen. This is a situation where a traitor can hardly not exist. And on top of that......"
"On top of that?"
"......?"
Won-goo leaned forward slightly and dropped his voice.
"Every household already had someone they suspected. Let's just say this time, we confirmed it for them."