The Cake Is Not a Lie (3)
The South Korean government had certainly posted stern guards at every site where nuclear material was held in a state of slumber.
It stood to reason that no guard dog could possibly be anything but fierce when it came to protecting plutonium.
The strict security measures were, of course, calibrated for ordinary human personnel rather than mages. But to me, standing here as an outsider, it was impossible not to keep an eye on the magical forces stationed at each outpost.
A military-grade defense? I could shatter that single-handedly. And if the Charm was on my side, as I had calculated before, the outcome would be even sweeter.
Still, even the weakest magical force had to be treated with respect.
Especially if a mage slipped in right in the middle of a minor disruption to my footwork.
To minimize that risk as much as possible, the plan I had chosen was to use the Japanese princess who had been on the phone with me just moments ago and enjoying herself immensely.
More precisely, to lure the Japanese communist party members across the Sea of Japan and leave them loose for a short while at Busan Port.
Through Ham Cheon-ho, I had learned that the Gori Nuclear Power Plant was among the locations where the completed plutonium was stored.
The site was only thirty kilometers from Busan Port.
I had decided to turn the South Korean government’s attention away by borrowing a Japanese communist party member from my subordinates and Secretary-General Chiyoko for a short time.
The method was simple. Fabricate a conflict between the Soviet mafia that had arrived from Sakhalin and the Japanese yakuza.
Busan Port was precisely the kind of place where violent organizations—meaning, from the perspective of South Korea, foreign-affiliated groups—fought each other quite often.
There was no reason not to use the ones that dealt in narcotics and women.
The very day I learned from Ham Cheon-ho that Gori Nuclear Power Plant also held plutonium, Delis and I sat down together and began reviewing whether this method could divert the South Korean government’s gaze.
The conclusion was that it was possible.
It was enough for my subordinates and the borrowed communist party members to say a few words in Russian and Japanese containing the words “plutonium” and “nuclear power plant.”
Everyone involved in the operation returned safely without injury. My subordinates scattered to their respective branches within South Korea, while the communist party members headed back to Tokyo by crossing the Sea of Japan once more.
The funds used in the scheme had all been covered by the organization, and the expenditure was completely worthwhile.
Especially in light of Delis’s report from just a few hours earlier, which confirmed that some personnel reassignment had already taken place at the nuclear power plant security forces.
It appeared that the script I had woven as a WWE had worked beautifully.
The series of events that had unfolded at Busan Port were being reported to the president of the country or the officials below him, and the outcome had manifested as these personnel shifts.
I once again scanned the internal intranet of the organization to double-check exactly how much manpower had been moved.
“Hmm, some people have gone south even from Pyeongsan?”
“As you wished, it is moving in the direction you desire.”
Pavel’s reply, standing firmly beside me.
As he said, a small number of personnel had even shifted slightly southward from the uranium mine at Pyeongsan in North Hwanghae Province, the first target I had aimed for.
The proportion was not large overall, yet what mattered most was that the gaze of those related to Korea had briefly shifted toward the southern half of the peninsula.
The eyes watching Pyeongsan could easily be assumed to have dropped to half or fewer of their usual number.
By the time I had casually taken what I needed and acquired the plutonium, the Koreans would simply think, “What’s this? Nothing happened,” and relax as they pleased.
Without realizing that the most important ingredient had been completely removed from their soup.
On April 26th, I began my actions under the dark moonless night.
As I had told Pavel before, I would do it alone. Of course, I had taken the vehicle driven by the head of the security detail all the way to Pyeongsan.
“Then I’ll be back.”
“Please return safely, miss.”
“Do not worry. Who do you think I am?”
Only after I was certain that all possible surveillance had been cleared did I begin my actions from the shadowy mountain foothills, holding a GPS receiver in my hand.
Handheld flashlights, compasses, maps—thanks to having everything necessary stored inside the Shattenmädchen, I had no need to carry any extra items.
It was truly fortunate that I had prepared local collaborators within South Korea while crossing the inland mountains of North Hwanghae Province.
“True… I see. Because it’s a nuclear facility, civilian maps have been completely useless.”
No matter how much the outside world criticized South Korea as a backward country, the government was not foolish.
It was a divided nation with a vast gap in national power, yet still officially at war.
For such a country to have its sense of security ground into the dust was no easy task.
Even in my own time, the South Korean government was known for refusing to allow global tech giants to export map data.
Whether that was for national security or to protect the lifeline of their own companies, which had no competitiveness whatsoever in the global market, remained a topic of debate.
In any case, the government’s policy had been quite effective for me, who had entered this time only by means of civilian maps.
Nuclear facilities were the highest-security category among military installations.
The mine locations might be somewhat known, but the underground uranium enrichment facilities and plutonium stockpiles linked to them were entirely different.
Having received a classified map from Ham Cheon-ho, I had successfully approached the nuclear facilities at Pyeongsan without any confusion.
Our puppet had warned that discovery would mean death, but I had insisted on obtaining the data no matter what.
The result was exactly what I had here. Seeing the double barbed-wire fence suddenly surrounding the mountain foothills, I inwardly rejoiced.
“I’ve come in the right way.”
CCTV… not visible. It was not even hidden.
Whether due to carelessness or something else, it was good for me. I drew out the Shattenmädchen and brushed the shadows lightly against the double barbed wire.
The pitch-black hand, embodying nothing but shadow without any physical force, swept through the fence as if it were nonexistent air.
As expected, high-voltage current flowed through it. Creating a physical force to cut the fence would be simple, but doing so would immediately send a signal somewhere.
It seemed I had to regard this not as carelessness but as self-confidence born of thorough thinking.
But before me, it meant nothing. Especially for me, who had gained an additional insight after directly observing the Shadow War at Kowloon Walled City in Hong Kong.
After the clash in Kowloon Walled City, I had begun to consider ways to utilize the Shattenmädchen in more varied manners.
I had been particularly impressed by the method used by that human with the Dragon Head and Snake Tail, who had employed the sub-dimensional space as a launching pad for shadows.
Of course, at my current level, implementing such a sub-dimensional space condensed from the souls of tens of thousands of human beings was nearly impossible.
However, if it was simply tens of thousands of human souls, there was no shortage of ways to obtain them.
I could head to a former African colony nation that was still a dependency of the United Kingdom, kill all the local natives, and take only the souls.
The mainstream media, still filled with white supremacy from the imperial era, would not highlight this fact at all. After all, I would manipulate the media from behind so that I myself would not be illuminated.
The reason one could not implement such authority merely with the number of souls was that it still required nearly a century to elevate the ability to manipulate the sub-dimensional space to a high level.
Hong Xiuquan was a mage who had honed his own magic path since the late Qing dynasty. It was impossible to catch up with a human mage’s path in a single step unless one had something like a “room for time and spirit.”
Instead, I could reinterpret that path as I saw fit.
I expanded the Shattenmädchen to its maximum density and inserted it between the fences.
Height roughly two meters, thickness and width about fifty centimeters each. Because the shadows still lacked physical force, the high-voltage current flowing through the fences had no effect whatsoever.
From the outside, it might appear that part of the fence was completely blocked by the shadow and had been severed. Of course, in reality, the fence still remained inside the Shattenmädchen.
I slowly began to spread the center of the shadow in that state. I restrained the flickering magic traces so that they would not leak out to the outside as much as possible.
What appeared was—
“This… works…?”
—a landscape that had become completely transparent, with a hole opened through the center, revealing the opposite side in full view.
The original fence at the location had vanished without a trace, replaced there by complete nothingness.
A slight whistling sound of air being sucked toward the vacuum echoed around it. The affected area and volume were so small that balance was restored in no time.
Yet what I had done now was an advanced application of the sub-dimensional space.
I had substituted a portion of the overlapping shadow space in the real world with the sub-dimensional space inside the Shattenmädchen, covering it in its place.
It was different from the method of applying physical force to crumple the fence.
The middle part of the fence that had been sliced as if by a knife now floated alone inside the shadow pocket of the Shattenmädchen.
It was not broken; it had simply been displaced.
If I severed the magic I was applying, the shadow would immediately vanish, and the original reality would be restored.
I finely tuned the sensory perception as a mage and tested how far the limit of my authority extended.
It was possible to substitute additional existing shadow parts, and I could also return them when I wished.
It was within the category of repeatedly substituting between reality and the sub-dimensional space on a regular basis.
If I stored thick concrete plates inside the sub-dimensional space in advance, they could become protective walls that I could install at any desired location and time.
There was a limit. I could still only store one item at a time.
Here, “one” meant it was impossible to substitute another item into the sub-dimensional space while something was already pre-stored.
“In the inventory, only one item can be stored at a time, right?”
It was clearly a matter of proficiency. Although the shadow space inside the Shattenmädchen was not vast, I could divide its interior and assign one “inventory” space to each part.
It would improve gradually.
I slipped through the gap while substituting the double electric fence into empty air.
The outermost nuclear facility defenses of a nuclear-armed nation had let me in as if nothing at all had been done.
From there on, it was a breeze. I had only encountered regular patrols of South Korean soldiers for a brief moment.
The first thought that came to mind was whether I could apply the sub-dimensional space substitution authority of the Shattenmädchen I had just tested to a human target.
This destructive instinct could barely be suppressed.
Breaking in would be fine, but the top priority was to quietly infiltrate, take only the radioactive cake, and return without causing any commotion.
So I sent the unaware South Korean soldiers on their way and, shortly afterward, discovered an entrance leading underground.
It felt good. The thing I would carry out into the underground world was an element named after the King of the Underworld.
Displacement