Chapter 38: The Assassin
When I told them I would accept the government's proposal, Director Lee Jin-seok sent his heartfelt thanks my way almost immediately.
Naturally, President Choi Seok-hoon followed up with a phone call of gratitude of his own.
According to the plan, Choi Seok-hoon would announce to the world that in roughly two weeks, he would kill the North Korean Chairman and unify the peninsula.
The moment that declaration dropped, I would have to sprint to North Korea, plant myself along the China–North Korea border, and wipe out every threat stationed there.
Every monster we happened to discover on the way there, too.
And by displaying overwhelming force, I would make it absolutely clear that the Chinese military was not welcome to set foot in that place.
"Then we'll need to make contact with the coup faction. Belzer. Pitasha."
"Yes."
"Yes~!"
"Belzer, you handle the contact with the coup plotters. Pitasha, those cloaking drones you mentioned last time — can we use them now?"
Grin.
"But of course, Master."
"Get them ready. Work together with Belzer on this."
"You got iiit!"
Before long, a report came in: Belzer had made contact with the coup faction.
The man he reached was one of the ten who had organized this coup in the first place.
Moreover, he was a man who held a fairly high position within the group.
He hungered for freedom, and he harbored a deep grudge against the government that had harvested his younger sister's organs.
"Is this... really true?"
"There'd be no point in lying. We want China to fall too. To put it precisely — we want democracy to take root there."
"I see... Then I'll take your offer. Having already made a pact with an evil god, what reason would I have not to deal with a devil as well?"
For now, he said he would verify whether the information was genuine before cutting the line.
Of course, the information I'd handed over amounted to less than a speck of dust compared to the whole.
Bit by bit, I would parcel it out, one piece at a time, and pull their strings from behind the curtain.
And overseeing all of it would be Belzer's jurisdiction.
"Belzer. When we return, I'm leaving you here. That should suit you just fine, no?"
"Yes. Whatever headquarters you prefer, Master."
"Don't do anything beyond what I order. A little improvisation is fine. But don't go becoming a loose cannon. Understood?"
"Haha, Master, you worry far too much."
It's unwise to judge people by appearances, but he was most likely a Transcendent.
Which meant this uneasy feeling I had about him wasn't just ordinary intuition.
How a man could achieve transcendence through information gathering and hacking of all things, I couldn't begin to guess — but I shouldn't hand over everything to him without reservation.
After all, there really are lunatics out there who will genuinely insist that groping someone was just "warming them up, because their lower body looked cold."
Not long after, the man made contact again.
"How is this even possible... the Chairman's hidden daughter."
"They're close enough that the two of them went on a drive together just recently. Well, in any case — do you believe us now?"
"Damn it. Obviously I do. I saw it with my own eyes — the Chairman wiping ice cream off her mouth during the drive!"
His eyes brimmed with hatred.
Where, I wondered, did his little sister's organs end up...
The odds were slim, but in his mind, they were already sitting inside the Chairman's hidden daughter's body.
And his hatred would serve us well.
"Before we hand over any more information — when the coup happens is for us to decide. When we give the signal, you start immediately. How about it? We'll throw in numbers and material support as well."
"Fine. The moment we agreed to take your intelligence, we'd already decided to trust you. At least for this coup."
As expected, he was the one holding the loudest voice in the room.
With the information I'd be feeding him, he'd persuade the other coup members, and odds were he'd end up as the operation's overall commander.
Every one of them would be able to see just how deep his hatred for the Chinese government ran.
"Then give me the next piece of intel."
"Gladly. Here is what comes next."
The information I passed to him concerned a powerful figure who currently nursed an enormous grudge against the Chairman himself.
This man had had the purity of the daughter he cherished and loved stolen away by the Chairman.
"Filthy bastard."
"Isn't it, though."
His love for her was nothing ordinary, paternal affection — he had been treating his own daughter as a lover.
And naturally, once her usefulness ran dry, he'd kill her.
With a word of thanks, the man set off to make contact with that power-holder.
Having watched over Belzer's conversation, I returned to the arms of my family and enjoyed a comfortable, easy life for a while.
South Korea was now home to a great many Returnees.
Even though the raw numbers were smaller than overseas, our survival count was roughly on par.
The reason was simple: abroad, countless people died, whereas here they rarely did.
The basic systems had been established, and the mortality rate had plummeted.
"Summon."
Fwoom...
Rune was in the middle of a quiet meditation, and Pitasha and I had been chatting, when Sun Wukong spoke up.
We were currently stationed near the peak of the mountain close to our home, conversation flowing beneath an invisibility veil and a soundproofing barrier.
The instant the Somersault Cloud materialized, Rune's eyes snapped open.
And then—
Swish...
CRACKLE-BOOM!
"GRAAAAAAGH!"
The roof of the pavilion where Pitasha and I sat was blasted clean off its frame.
Rune vaulted skyward, wedging herself between me and Pitasha, while the Somersault Cloud intercepted the strike that had come screaming at me — and slapped it right back.
The bastard had spotted us and charged in within a heartbeat, even with a veil drawn that made us impossible to see.
"#*&$*@&#."
"Translate."
"Gghk... h-how... how did the information leak? It can't be... ughk..."
His body scorched black by the Somersault Cloud's electric counter the moment his attack landed, the man muttered through the pain.
"A Russian. He's speaking French."
"Yes. DNA analysis confirms he's Russian, Master."
I handed the writhing, agony-wracked man over to Rune.
Gulp.
Gulp.
Rune forced a recovery potion down the man's throat.
Naturally, the assassin's body was already fitted with restraints — custom machines Pitasha had built specially for the purpose.
Rune stepped in front of the bound man.
She stood before him in the form of a hulking, enormous man, and the Russian shook like a leaf at the sight.
"Don't let the looks fool you — I have quite the talent for torture."
Shhk!
The moment Rune touched something, a curtain of pure black descended in an instant.
A veil that permitted no one inside to be seen — or heard.
Any sufficiently advanced science, as we so often said, was indistinguishable from magic.
I was living proof of that saying with my own eyes.
With every wave we cleared, the power of the restraints that bound Pitasha and Rune was wearing thinner and thinner.
If this was how things already were, I could scarcely imagine what would happen if they regained the strength they'd held in the days when they were full Transcendents.
Pitasha and I, for our part, raised a second-layer barrier.
Just in case, we patrolled the surroundings together as well.
"By the way, the Somersault Cloud is seriously strong, huh?"
"That assassin looked like an early Returnee who'd cleared at least thirty waves, you know."
"Right? It parried his attack outright, and stacked an electric counterattack on top of that."
Perhaps aware that we were talking about it, the Somersault Cloud sidled up beside us, inch by inch.
Fwomp.
"Whooooa! It's SO fluffy! Master! Waaah... this feels amazing~!"
"Ohh... you're right. Genuinely top-tier plush."
It wasn't even all that small, either — the two of us could lie down on it comfortably.
And it wasn't just fluffy and soft; lying on it, I could feel it — this was genuine, premium-grade satisfaction.
"Hey, can't we sleep on top of this from now on? Huh?"
"Why is it 'we' all of a sudden?"
"Ehehe, let's just let that one slide... hehe..."
Anyway, while the two of us were horsing around, Rune dropped the black veil and came back out.
Pat... pat-pat...
Behind the Rune who stepped outside lay the burned, ash-covered corpse of the assassin.
"Did you get anything?"
"The restraints did hold, but I simply released them. The backer, however, was a surprise."
"Who?"
"The Russian Crafters' Association."
An association that had begun making a name for itself in Russia.
By all accounts, it was an organization founded by production-type Returnees in Russia and China — a group that refused to export artifacts anywhere near those two countries.
The problem was this: these were people surviving off smuggled versions of my artifacts, and now, to corner the artifact export business I'd been running for myself, they'd put out a hit on me.
"So the assassin's cousin is an executive at that association?"
"That's correct."
"Belzer. There's no sign of a coup brewing in Russia, right?"
"No, Master. There is nothing of the sort in Russia."
"Russia's already stretched thin fighting its war with Ukraine... hmm."
Russia had been short on supplies from the start thanks to the war in Ukraine.
And in the middle of all that, mana stones had been discovered — stones that could substitute for electricity with nothing more than a power cord pressed against them.
What's more, the country was vast, and with only women left within its borders, countless gates had opened across it.
Even so, the women who survived in Russia were survivors for a reason — they died at fairly high waves, which meant Russia's mana stone reserves were actually quite plentiful.
And in that very situation, they were exporting mana stones while buying up conventional weaponry all over again.
"Well, I suppose it can't be helped. Russia's entire young generation died to the war and the Abyss... hmm."
Russia didn't have China's population, and yet it kept grinding its young people into the meat grinder all the same.
Men were fed into the war to die, and women were denied survival in the Abyss so their deaths could be harvested for mana stones.
Worse still, international flights were restricted in the current climate, so even emigration was a distant dream.
"Let's set that aside for now. How did he get through the barriers we had laid down?"
"His unique trait appears to be Guaranteed Hit. Since the Somersault Cloud counts as an extension of your ability, Master, it seems the strike was simply redirected onto the cloud instead of you."
Had the Somersault Cloud been registered as an artifact, the blow would have bypassed it entirely and struck me instead — or so I was told.
"Guaranteed Hit... now that's a tempting ability."
If I ever got my hands on it, the Superior Combat Units could simply unload their plasma breath the instant it finished charging — no aiming required.
Guns especially, come to think of it.
"There is, however, one problem."
"What is it?"
Rune spoke as we made our way down the mountain.
"The evil god currently spreading through China — I don't believe there's only one."