The Anti-Communist Anglo-American Alliance (5)
I decided to grant the request of the North Korean assassin mage.
He hadn't exactly pleaded with me, but I was the one person who could succeed at the mission he had so desperately wanted to complete.
"Th-that's… what's that mean…?"
The North Korean red bastard asked as if he had no idea what was going on.
He had every reason to be confused. The man who had done everything in his power — well, not exactly everything — to thwart his own mission was suddenly changing his attitude. What the hell was happening?
'Hmm, maybe it's not just that…'
Perhaps it was more that I'd tortured him so relentlessly that he was simply terrified.
Whatever the reason, it didn't matter. I was strong, after all.
I answered with a calm smile.
"It's simple. I'll create another opportunity soon for you to succeed at the mission you received from the Party."
"But this time, you'll do it for me, not for the Party. You may have received the mission from them, but since you've completed it, you'll receive your reward from me."
As I spoke, I withdrew a sealed glass vial from my coat.
It was the last one I'd saved from the final battle against the Flood of the Dragon's Head at Kowloon Walled City — the one I hadn't used up during the fight with the Second Coming Jesus.
Of course, my subordinates would bring back a few more from London by tomorrow, but for the moment, this was the last one I had on hand.
Being the last, I handled it with extra care. I extracted the brain fragment preserved in formalin from the vial and slowly pushed it into the North Korean red bastard's mouth.
"Ugh… ughhh…!"
Ryu Geum-cheol, barely aware of the brain fragment floating toward his mouth carried by my telekinesis, desperately clamped his jaws shut, trying to prevent the unknown entity from invading his body.
But it was impossible. If I will it, how can you refuse?
"Open your mouth."
In sync with my command, the North Korean red bastard's mouth opened of its own accord. My words, spoken while maintaining eye contact, were in some sense akin to a verbal command derived from Charm.
'…Damn.'
What I hadn't anticipated was the degree of intensity. The Charm had taken hold so overwhelmingly that Ryu Geum-cheol gaped his mouth wide and swallowed the brain fragment whole.
His jaw had even dislocated in the process.
It would have been a bother to manually set the bone back in place, so I used telekinesis to physically shatter the jawbone and then activated regeneration magic instead.
I left the North Korean red bastard writhing in pain from the second round of regeneration. Instead, I took a moment to consider how this had happened.
The answer came quickly.
Because I had been literally grinding away at this man's soul all this time, Ryu Geum-cheol's soul — already far weaker than mine to begin with — was now as fragile as a candle in the wind.
Therefore, what was keeping this man's soul tethered to the mortal plane after such brutal torture was not his own natural homeostasis, but my magical attraction.
'This is a man who would die at any moment if I weren't holding him here with magic, isn't he?'
That was actually for the better. It meant he would become a puppet that moved exactly as I intended, without any further effort on my part.
This was different from the South Korean businessman who had become a puppet before.
In Ham Cheon-ho's case, I had placed more weight on his free will, and he wasn't actually magically connected to me.
I had simply layered the feeling of awe and reverence I'd instilled in him during our first meeting with my subordinates stationed in Korea continuously tracking and observing Ham Cheon-ho, guiding him along the rails I had laid down.
But Ryu Geum-cheol's situation was somewhat different. He had directly consumed the cultured slime infused with my magic, so now even that feeble soul was entirely contained within my grasp.
If I helped him recover some of his soul's rank, he would have no choice but to writhе in pain as if burning alive if he didn't follow my commands.
I could already see the cultured slime fusing with Ryu Geum-cheol's nearly extinguished soul.
There was virtually no resistance from his soul to serve as a minimal barrier against mixing with the outside.
I whispered to the dying North Korean red bastard as I gave him new life.
"How about we do this? You'll still work for the Party and the motherland, but while you're at it, you'll help me out a little too."
"——!?"
Ryu Geum-cheol opened his eyes from a strange nightmare.
A nightmare in which his soul was being torn to shreds, and the last fragment of his self was being utterly ravaged by someone else.
"Hah… hahhh…"
Cold sweat broke out on his skin. To dream of a catastrophe that a mage would never want to face — it was worse than dreaming of reenlisting in the People's Army before he had become a mage. For reference, the service period for the People's Army defending the strong and prosperous nation of Korea was twelve years.
Ryu Geum-cheol's spirit, bearing the heavy mission of protecting the Party, the motherland, and the revolution even from the distant land of the ten-thousand-li foreign soil, quickly returned to its original state.
'…This is not the time for this.'
Ryu Geum-cheol immediately recalled the 'special' mission given to him. First and foremost, the priority mission of infiltrating South Korean society and living under the guise of an ordinary person to shake their society from within.
And not just being ordinary. The second life commanded by the Party largely involved staying always close to one of South Korea's most powerful figures.
This allowed Ryu Geum-cheol to also take on the role of periodically passing all sorts of information about the ugly South Korean society — which was democratic only in appearance — back to the North.
He had been carrying out his mission without major problems until now. The only minor issue was that the South Korean power figure he had been assigned to was experiencing tremendous success recently.
The man was Ham Cheon-ho, who operated a trading company called Cheonma Sangsa, and especially since last autumn, the company had begun growing at an enormous rate.
Last year, all of South Korea had gone through an economic crisis and whatnot, making it the worst year economically.
Of course, according to the stories he'd heard, things weren't much better in Ryu Geum-cheol's own motherland either — there were rumors that food rations weren't being distributed smoothly.
Regardless, considering the macroeconomic trends of South Korea as a whole, the growth trajectory of Cheonma Sangsa that Ryu Geum-cheol observed from right beside it was highly unusual.
So Ryu Geum-cheol had submitted a report to the Party expressing these suspicions, and the Party had suspected that South Korean power circles were involved in this growth.
'South Korea is nothing but a puppet state where corrupt power brokers pretend to develop the country by holding hands with corrupt businessmen.'
'Think about it, Comrade Ryu. Those large corporations of the South Korean puppets that are being hyped up as the rising stars of Asia's Four Dragons.'
'In truth, aren't all of them illegitimate pyramids of wealth built by exploiting the blood and sweat of the South Korean people under the tacit approval of puppet leader Park Byung-hwi?'
Ryu Geum-cheol considered this reasoning to be quite plausible. Financial statements that defied all logic.
If things were this bad just from what was visible on the surface, how much more illicit profit was being generated beneath the water?
If there was indeed the backing of power figures behind this growth, the Party could gain some benefit simply by severing those connections.
The upper echelons of the Party, having reached the same conclusion, issued this order to Ryu Geum-cheol.
'The businessman that Comrade Ryu is assigned to is reportedly heading to Hong Kong to meet with the Hong Kong Governor, isn't he?'
'So what if Comrade Ryu takes this opportunity to draw his blade? Kill that businessman and expose all the injustices of South Korean society behind him.'
'Then the South Korean people will have no choice but to rise up. Even if they don't, it would still be a beneficial act in that it could deliver a major shock to South Korean society and the entire Western world.'
Ryu Geum-cheol accepted this heavy mission given to him.
Yes, only he, who was utterly loyal to the Party and the motherland, could do this. If it meant making a mark in the history of the Republic, what couldn't he accomplish?
And so Ryu Geum-cheol arrived in Hong Kong and slowly prepared for the great deed.
During the meeting between Ham Cheon-ho and the Hong Kong Governor that had happened the day before, he had calmly waited for the right moment. Acting rashly would ruin everything, and the more urgent the situation, the more one should take their time.
He had even heard that the representative of Cheonma Sangsa and the Hong Kong Governor would meet at least one more time.
He couldn't quite remember who he'd heard it from — this point was somewhat bothersome, but it would probably be fine — but in any case, it was a clear fact that a more certain opportunity remained.
He would succeed in the great deed and convey the Republic's firm will not only to the South Korean economy but also to the complacent Western imperialist nations filled with a lax security mindset.
'The Republic will never submit to your nations, which are like packs of wolves and jackals!'
With this single thought, Ryu Geum-cheol forgot about the nightmare he had just experienced and threw himself back into the mission given to him.
A long-unheard, welcome voice came through the receiver.
"Long time no see, Matthew Wyatt Lewis. How have you Americans been doing lately?"
"…Irene Varez. How on earth did you get this number?"
"Ah, did you really think our organization's magic department friends wouldn't figure out that your people were floundering? It wasn't that difficult to slip our own people in during that time."
"…"
I had thought of him as a fairly pleasant associate, but apparently the American on the other end of the receiver didn't feel the same way. Were we not friends with benefits, after all?
I chuckled and delivered a message with a hint of warning.
"By the way, I'll mention it in advance — it would be best not to dig through the Magic Defense Bureau's database to find out who recently joined the Bureau or anything like that."
"That's… why is that?"
"Simple. No matter how much we're allies, the British aren't stupid enough to tolerate that kind of 'surveillance.' I'd rather you trust me — the one entrusted with full negotiation authority from the organization — than go poking around and creating problems where there were none."
The subordinate of the American Magic Defense Bureau, whom I had reconnected with, still had no idea that I was the leader of the Northern Covenant Syndicate.
And that was not all. The fact that the organization had effectively swallowed the entire Magic Defense Bureau was apparently beyond the reach of this man's meager imagination.
With the receiver pressed against my shoulder, I tapped away at my laptop and checked the internal network email that had arrived from Delis.
A reasonable analysis. The less time I spent in Hong Kong at the same time as Ryu Geum-cheol, the higher the possibility that I or the organization would be excluded from the list of suspects.
As soon as I understood the text Delis had sent, I whispered in a husky voice.
I wasn't actually talking to the American on the other end, but I crossed my legs in a different direction anyway.
"W. I have something to talk about. How about we meet up sometime?"