The Smith's Worth
"Yeah."
"Good grief... talk about a once-in-a-lifetime thing. And it just had to die on you right at the very end, huh?"
"Is that thing really that good?"
"You haven't seen our Dulla in action?"
"Isn't that just because you've leveled it up?"
"Probably."
"Far as I know, a capsule monster's supposed to be controlled by its owner, and I've got zero talent for that kind of thing."
"Then sell it."
"For how much?"
"You first."
At that, Fresh narrowed his eyes and shot a sideways glance at Won-goo — then quickly tucked the capsule he'd been holding out back into his coat.
"Watching you pull that 'Director Tteng' act, I can tell I absolutely should not sell it."
"Good, you learn fast. Do not sell it."
"So what would it take to make one move like your Dulla? What kind of options are we talking about?"
"Capsule monsters have grades too. Wabulgwi is a high-grade monster. And you know what that means? It comes with basic intelligence built in. It'll follow your orders just fine."
"Oh... really now?"
"Look into it later. Cleanup first. Hyun-sung!"
The moment Won-goo called, Lee Hyun-sung handed over a tablet loaded with the fugitives' profiles. The captives glared back with venomous eyes, bound tight.
"Let's see... seems we've got plenty to talk about, don't we? Where should we start? How about from the point you split off from Poke?"
It was a gentle, courteous tone of voice — but to the fugitives, it couldn't have sounded less friendly.
"Robbery, murder, theft, fraud, assault... what the shit, are you lot competing in some kind of crime Olympics?"
Won-goo spoke with the worst of the offenders arrayed before him. There was no need to look any further. Evil. They were survivors who fit that single word to a tee.
"Hyun-sung."
"Yes, Hyeong-nim!"
"These two are too vicious. Knead them over just enough and load them up. We don't handle trash."
"Yes, Hyeong-nim. The bindings...?"
"Leave them on. Makes cutting a deal with the Company that much easier."
Hearing that, the fugitives strained against their ropes, trying to fight back — but they were put down in under a second. What followed was a long, satisfying beating. Won-goo's people had seen plenty in their time; they knew exactly how to hit a man so the pain burrowed deep and the poison drained out of him.
"Next up, you're my problem. Gombang. That isn't short for gomboppang, is it? Construction-site slang, right?"
Gombang gave a curt nod.
Won-goo cracked him across the head at the speed of light.
Thwack!
Gombang took it without so much as a flinch. Blood ran down from his scalp, and still he didn't waver an inch. His eyes were brimming with killing intent. If it had been Il-chul, he'd have been rolling across the floor wailing by now — Gombang, by contrast, had real spine.
Watching him, a smile crept onto Won-goo's lips.
"When your elder asks a question, you answer it. What's with all the head-bobbing?"
"......."
Gombang simply glared back, eyes still full of murder.
"Feisty. Real feisty."
"I've told you everything I know. Enough with the games."
"Call it curiosity. Not saying what you did was right or anything, but from where I'm standing, your charges don't look bad enough to be lumped in wholesale with those bastards. I want to hear your story, that's all."
"Would telling it save my life?"
"If necessary."
"...?"
"If you prove useful, I could keep you breathing. What did I say? Your charges feel different. I think I trusted the Sugar Company too much all this time — I did some checking, and you're not that much of a lowlife. And... you lied about your Gift, didn't you?"
Won-goo spoke as he scrolled through the profile, and Gombang's eyes went round as saucers.
It wasn't that Won-goo had spotted on the spot that Gombang's registered Gift didn't match the records. He'd had Jeon Hye-ji's tip-off, plus his own read from the heat of battle. The profile listed Gombang as an enhancement type that boosted raw strength — but Won-goo was certain that wasn't it. Gombang's power was merely coin-reinforced, and no matter how widely individual Gifts varied in potency, an enhancement type of that caliber could never have gone this unnoticed. What was more, replaying that frantic fight in his head, what Won-goo had caught was Gombang's positioning. It didn't match how enhancement types fought; he'd consistently chosen spots closer to a support's. It was a chaotic ambush, so there'd have been nothing strange about such positioning on its own. But combined with Hye-ji's warning and the oddities of the battle, the profile began not adding up. For one, the record had him down as an enhancement type who'd swallowed thirty-plus coins — and that didn't fit either.
"Even the crimes listed here don't quite add up if you're supposed to be the ringleader... Gombang. I'm the kind of man who has to poke at whatever smells off, so consider this your chance. Think it over, and talk. Prove you're useful, and I might just carve out a way for you to live."
"My Gift is touching weapons."
"Touching weapons? Enhancement?"
"That's right."
"Seriously?"
Even Won-goo was a little stunned. In this trade, a handful of Gifts kept a man fed on reputation alone. Appraisal types like Poke's, broker types like Sanghae's — and then the craftsman types who could touch, repair, or reinforce equipment. Demand for those never dried up; at the very least, nobody went hungry. If Gombang had come clean about such a Gift, Baek Seol's company would have treated him very differently. Then again — as noted, his recorded charges were hardly enough to classify him as a violent felon in the first place.
"So it's the real thing?"
"Why would I bother with a lie that gets found out in a minute?"
"Then why'd you hide it all this time?"
"I didn't want to work with dealers."
"Your record says you've got no grudges. A Gift like that would've gotten you decent treatment, no?"
"That was my plan when they dragged me in. But they were manufacturing the drug using children. So I refused to cooperate. That's all."
"Why? You think they're grinding the kids up into the drug?"
"How is anyone supposed to stomach the way they use and discard those children?"
"God, you're a frustrating bastard. Hey — for those kids, that's a job. In a world like this one, that much is practically charity work."
"Do you know how those children are treated inside?"
"I do. I know very well. Does food grow out of the ground? What about the cost of running and defending that facility?"
"......."
"If you've got no alternative, then shut up and build your strength quietly."
With that, Won-goo called Montage over and laid out the situation.
"Joce! Get over here, boy!"
"What'd you call me for?"
"You've got that new weapon you picked up, don't ya. Go on and take a look at that thing."
Clang.
A massive monkey wrench dropped to the ground in front of Gombang.
"Can you fix it?"
"......."
"You're a hard man to deal with. Nothing left to live for? Just want to check out early, is that it?"
"I want to live. But...."
Gombang's gaze drifted past Won-goo, to Jeon Hye-ji and Rafael busily cleaning up in the background.
"You idiot — they're both adults. Adults. This guy's got some seriously warped ideas rattling around in his head."
"......."
"Well, I suppose it takes something like that to hold onto your sanity in a mad world. You smoke?"
Gombang nodded.
Lee Hyun-sung, who'd been watching from the side, moved before Won-goo could — set a cigarette between Gombang's lips and lit it for him.
"Any chance of a canned coffee too?"
Won-goo and Montage both laughed in sheer exasperation. Hyun-sung stared hard at Won-goo; Won-goo gave a slight nod; Hyun-sung hurried off at once.
"Hyun-sung! Grab him one of those Let's Ring coffees. On a construction site, that's the national rule. Right?"
Another nod from Gombang.
"Damn it, I told you to quit bobbing your head like that..."
"I've eaten my fill, is what I'm saying."
"You're dancing on the banks of the river of the dead, pal. You — I'm shipping you off to the Company with those bastards, and once that happens, you go into the actual grinder. For real."
"......."
"Hyun-sung. Untie him. Let's see what he can do."
Hyun-sung returned with the coffee and cut Gombang loose. Without anyone giving the order, the survivors ringed themselves around him.
Click.
Gombang took a long drag on his cigarette, cracked open a can of coffee, and poured it down his throat. Then he got straight to work.
"Is that actually gonna work?"
"He's got a craftsman-type Gift, so it should."
"Shouldn't somebody fetch him equipment, then? Man can't work bare-handed, now can he?"
As if to laugh at the very notion, translucent tools of a ghostly pale hue sprang from Gombang's hands — conjured out of thin air, like something materialized by magic.
Szzzzz!
Gombang welded the cleanly snapped monkey wrench back together. The hiss of heating metal, the smell — all of it was real. The corner of Won-goo's mouth curled upward.
"So it was the genuine article."
Rejoining the thick steel of the monkey wrench took less than a minute. But Gombang's work didn't stop there. This time, he began grinding down the head of the wrench.
"Hey. Why are you sharpening it? It's fixed — that should be plenty."
Gombang silently held up a finger.
"Don't talk to me while I'm working."
"Unbelievable...."
And then, the way a man hones a blade, Gombang ground the monkey wrench down — and simply turned it into a sword.
"Is this boy out of his damn mind... why's he going and turning a perfectly good weapon into a knife?"
"That's the condition for using the Gift."
"Come again?"
"In other words, that's the penalty. So does the class have to change? Or just the shape?"
"The class has to change."
"Tch... that's a bit of a shame, honestly."
"Turnin' a blunt weapon clean into a blade — that's a different tool altogether, ain't it?"
At that, Gombang let out a dry snort of laughter. Having used his ability, he was sweating like rain — and he'd barely used it at all.
"That thing'll be harder now than it ever was as a wrench."
"Oh... so it doesn't just repair — it upgrades too? By how much?"
"Varies case by case. This one was child's play. I'm rusty, and there was no material to work with."
"Hyun-sung. Bring out the Chinese cleaver."
"Yes, Hyeong-nim!"
Wrench-sword in hand, Won-goo swung at Hyun-sung. Hyun-sung caught it with the Chinese cleaver.
Chaang! Chaang! Chaang!
Sparks flew as the two weapons clashed again and again. And when they checked afterward — not a single scratch on the monkey-wrench sword.
"Oh... that's a pass, alright. Hyeong-nim. It's actually better than before, isn't it? At this rate I ought to be bowing in gratitude, shouldn't I?"
"Does it, now?"
"Not a mark on it. That's proof enough. You couldn't buy a blade with this kind of durability anywhere."
With that, Won-goo handed the sword over to Joce.
"Gombang. Work with me."
"......."
"Spare me the pointless questions. I'll make sure you never want for food or shelter."
"You sayin' you'll take me in as one of your own?"
"Our outfit's got no open slots, you see."
"Then what?"
"We make you a spot at the shelter. Skill like that, the customers will be lining up out the door. Gombang. Are you coming? You can see it for yourself — we don't treat anyone like a kid. And the benefits aren't bad either."
Won-goo grinned and held out his hand.
The whole affair was cleaned up fast. What had promised to be a tangled mess of a settlement turned out, surprisingly, to resolve with ease — and by easy, the meaning was that Won-goo had been offered terms good enough that he couldn't find a single thing left to gripe about.
The conditions Baek Seol put on the table were downright extraordinary.
"So you're saying your Company and my outfit should form a partnership. Baek Seol, do you even know what you're saying?"
"I do. But this proposal is just the formality. What matters is the dividend. You'd know better than anyone, Director — the Company doesn't have just one owner."
"I know that much. If there'd been a single head at the top, it wouldn't be acting like such a jackass all the time."
"Exactly. And those clashing interests breed plenty of complications. This incident... I genuinely had no idea. It was Managing Director Ma's doing."
"Managing Director? You people really do run it like an actual corporation, huh?"
"We do have the structure. The structure itself is an absolute mess, though."
"Either way, it's not a bad deal. You'll keep the dividends coming, you say."
"The contract explicitly bars the Company from pulling anything else, too. The Company cannot do harm to the Director..."
"And the same goes for us, presumably. Who doesn't know that? And you only brought this proposal because you had no choice, right? A whole factory burned to the ground — rebuilding it on a short timeline would cost a mountain of coins. So paying us what you owe outright is out of the question, therefore you'll pay in installments. Isn't that what this is?"
Baek Seol nodded readily.
"That's part of it, yes."
"Then forget this contract and bring me something else."
"...?"
"Make me a director or something. I've never once carried a title in my life. Director Gong, Managing Director Gong — doesn't that have a nice ring to it?"
Baek Seol's eyes went wide.
"Are you in your right mind?"
"Why, is this one thing off the table?"
"No, it's...."
"Baek Seol. I know exactly what you're afraid of. My mouth. The moment I start blabbing all over the place that your Company doesn't honor its contracts, holes start getting punched in your deals. There's no business in this world as sensitive to credit as this one. But sealing my mouth — how about it? A colossal pain in the ass, no? Offer to quietly book me a ticket to the afterlife... I'd probably have to walk the whole way. Leave me be, and it feels dirty. And stuffing a fistful of coins in my mouth to shut me up — who knows how many it would even take."
"......."
"And besides, we're not exactly flush with coins right now as it is. Am I wrong?"
Won-goo wore a smile stretched wide across his face.