The Presidents Love Me Way Too Much (1)
These days, Choi Seok-hoon didn't even feel hunger anymore when he watched his ideals taking shape in the Republic of Korea.
It was truly a stroke of astronomical luck that a gate had opened right in the middle of a drinking party full of corrupt National Assembly members.
And with hundreds of goblins pouring out of it, no less!
It was genuinely unfortunate that a Returnee had died — but his death had saved South Korea.
The day after emergency martial law was declared, the corrupt assemblymen were dead, and the ones who remained weren't exactly paragons of justice, but there was no pressing need to purge them either.
Wouldn't carving out your own flesh just because a pimple showed up make you a madman?
“Unbelievable. What is this article now?”
Right now, Kim Hyunwoo was, quite literally, the national hero of South Korea.
The man who had raised the survival rate of returning Returnees to a staggering 80% with his countless artifacts.
While every other country was stuck in the single digits!
Nations that had witnessed this were begging and pleading for him to just sell them some artifacts.
That was why, this time, the answer had been a flat refusal — South Korea's own stockpiles were still too small — with a promise to consider exports next round, and only then had the great powers reluctantly backed off.
The internet was so saturated with people worshipping Kim Hyunwoo that half of them wanted to plant a kiss on him the moment they spotted him on the street.
A being who dispensed daily dopamine to the masses.
And now, with word spreading that he intended to solve the food crisis itself using future technology, the whole nation was erupting in celebration.
It made sense, too — goblins had overrun the country's breadbasket, and in the process of retaking it, the tanks had trampled mountains of provisions into the dirt.
Other countries were short on food themselves, if anything, and in no position to share.
In the end, the poor in South Korea had been driven to the very brink of starvation.
The government, sensing the gravity of the situation, had scrambled to respond immediately — but you can't conjure nonexistent grain out of thin air.
“Mr. President! Report. This time it's a blacksmith-class Returnee.”
“Hmm. Good.”
Even those who never should have survived — anyone without a combat class — were managing to stay alive now.
Crafting-types, support-types — they'd all returned, and the government had them meet with handpicked partners right away to talk things over and form parties.
And so a virtuous cycle began, one that drove the death rate lower and lower.
On top of that, several hundred thousand Raptors — each capable of taking a goblin warlord in single combat — were roaming the entirety of South Korea.
They didn't even need fuel. Machines with literally limitless power, standing guard over the nation.
“Haah... life is good...”
“Mmmph... sho delicioush...”
“Why do you have to react like that?!”
Her raptures over the rosé tteokbokki he'd ordered this time turned his face red all on its own.
It was his own house, so it didn't really matter, and the soundproofing was airtight anyway — not that he was letting himself think about that...
“Oh, by the way, did you see the President's address?”
“I did. He's dead set on turning me into a genuine national hero.”
This time, the President had bowed his head to Kim Hyunwoo on live television to offer his thanks.
And word had reached him, too — though he hadn't expected the announcement to come this fast.
“The Republic of Korea will not commit the absurd folly of discarding a solution already in hand to devise a new scheme. Accordingly...”
The President's speech was long, but the summary was simple.
Going forward, when creatures like goblins emerged and similar crises followed, the government would adopt the standard policies familiar from fiction.
They would establish an association to match, and select its chairman once the situation stabilized.
But South Korea was in a hurry, so the first order of business was the Guild system.
And the Returnee Registration system alongside it.
“...Therefore, agreement has been finalized to offer the first guild master position to Mechanic Kim Hyunwoo, currently ranked first in the Republic of Korea. Details on this matter will follow...”
Kim Hyunwoo had decided to establish his first guild in Daegu.
Among the land he'd bought earlier, there was a plot still unused — not right next to the house, but a fair distance out.
It had been cheap, so he'd just bought it, though he figured they'd need to lay a road out there eventually.
For now, he'd dispatched his engineer drones with orders to raise the basic framework.
While they built the guild hall, he and Pitasha planned to enjoy the area.
He'd spent the past two weeks having fun with his family; the remaining week would be for Pitasha.
“Man, this car is the bomb.”
Over those same two weeks, he'd also had his maintenance drones rework a freshly built vehicle into an entirely new model.
It was the safest car in existence, so selling a few to the powers that be down the line wouldn't be a bad idea.
Just as he stepped out of the car, thinking as much and heading for the amusement park entrance, someone approached.
A foreigner in a crisp, immaculate suit.
Every foreign tourist currently in South Korea had already been sent home.
“Good day to you, Mechanic Kim Hyunwoo.”
“...And where might you be from?”
Coming from a foreign suit who spoke Korean better than he did, the greeting put him on guard at once.
Pitasha already had her gun drawn.
Seeing this, the man broke into a light sweat, then took off his outer coat to show he was carrying nothing and spoke.
“My name is Richard. I've come from the United States.”
“An alias, I take it?”
“Haha, naturally.”
The man calling himself Richard was an American agent.
He handed over a single business card — not Richard's, but the President of the United States' own.
“Our President sincerely desires a conversation with you. Please do give him a call at your convenience.”
“Ah, yes...”
With that, Hyunwoo slipped the card into his pocket.
Blue hair and yellow eyes.
On top of her striking beauty, her hands were literally machines — so she'd gone out in a hat and mask.
He'd worn a disguise too, of course.
And yet somehow they'd been found, because the spies of every nation on earth began pressing business cards into his hands.
“I represent Spain...”
“I represent Russia...”
“I represent Japan...”
“And I, France...”
“Ni hao! I am—”
“Get lost, grandpa.”
China — a country that had already swallowed North Korea whole — had come grinning from ear to ear like it had any shame to spare.
Everyone else had at least said hello, but this guy alone had to bust out his ni hao routine, so Hyunwoo shut him down on the spot.
Either way, they had become far, far too famous.
“I even had stealth on. How did they find me?”
His car had a stealth function built in, yet the dignitaries of every nation kept tracking them down regardless.
In the end, they didn't get to enjoy a single proper moment of their trip and headed home.
“I should hit the shop and buy something with coins. I'll have to borrow the power of magic.”
“You're right about that... sob...”
He comforted Pitasha, who was moping about their ruined outing, and exhausted, drifted straight off to sleep.
And as Pitasha stood gazing down at the sleeping Kim Hyunwoo for a long moment, she let out a sigh.
Shff.
In an instant, Pitasha's new-model frame vanished.
Where she reappeared was barely a stone's throw from a place bristling with layer upon layer of security measures.
Behind a man whom not one of those countless sensors had detected.
“What the—!”
“You're the reason our date got ruined... so what are you going to do about it?”
“Gahk—!”
The air cannon fired from Pitasha's hand punched clean through the man's shoulder.
The empty, invisible space warped and rippled, and the man's figure flickered into view.
“This is... the Authority of a god...”
Thud.
Watching him collapse, Pitasha smiled — a small, sharp curl of the lips.
“What can I say. I was born from a god's Authority. You merely wield a power... but I am the power itself.”
Of course, she'd murmured that last part so quietly that none of them heard a word of it.
Tap, tap.
Once she confirmed the man was dead, she spoke to the device fastened to his collar.
“Hey there. I checked which country you're from. Your DNA says China? You people are crossing the line now... do you want to die? I know you're listening to every word of this, so knock it off. Sending assassins, really?”
Crackle—
Crzzk...
Their technology was more advanced than she'd expected.
When she'd first deployed her own capabilities here, the permissible range had been wider than anticipated — so wide it had struck her as strange, in fact...
“So the fastest-growing nation is China, is it? South Korea wasn't the only one on the rise after all. Well, China never did care about its own people, did it?”
A country that rolled out no real policies, where countless Chinese died while the government simply sat waiting for magic stones to spill from their corpses — that was China.
Those people, presumably, were carrying on their experiments with the magic stones no matter how many of their own citizens perished.
“Whew... And yet our Master is so kind, you see? People like you simply don't share a single fiber of his humanity.”
With that, she slipped back into the bedroom and gently brushed the hair of the sleeping Kim Hyunwoo.
She gazed at him for a while, then murmured.
“Haah... honestly. How much longer are you going to hold back, even with all that power?”
Pitasha looked down at him with an expression just a shade dangerous.
“Uuu... you've made it to this age without a single scrap of romance experience, so what am I supposed to do? Before I became a Transcendent, I just hid away in my workshop doing nothing but developing technology... wait, does 'transcending through nothing but tech development' even make sense?”
She'd researched alone in her workshop, then abruptly transcended — and lost her physical body in the process, no less.
“Well, either way... I'm glad I got my old body back. Uuu... but seriously, how are you still asleep?”
Had Kim Hyunwoo been awake, she could never have said any of this — which meant he was sleeping so deeply that even the sound of her voice wouldn't surface in his dreams.
Tap, tap.
“I truly hated the days when I was human... but a life like this one? I like it just fine. So have a little fun for once, would you? All you ever think about is getting stronger.”
She poked at Kim Hyunwoo's cheek a few times, then drifted off to sleep as well.
And so Kim Hyunwoo woke up — because something was heavy.
“...Why is she sleeping like this?”