Bet With Care (2)
Back home, Lee Jun pulled the cube fragments out of his Pocket, where he'd carefully stashed them.
The pieces he'd retrieved three days ago from the Association building.
He'd been too busy in the meantime to give them a proper look, so only now did he finally get around to examining them.
…Liberation.
Those bastards had started moving again.
They weren't openly putting their name forward just yet — but that was coming soon, too.
Which brought up the real question: what the hell was he supposed to do about them?
"Gives me a headache, that's what."
There were plenty of reasons he couldn't simply pull them out by the roots.
First of all, they operated as a fully cellular organization.
Most of their members had no idea who their own boss even was.
Lee Jun knew who the head was, thanks to his knowledge of the previous timeline — but knowing who he was didn't mean knowing where he was.
No headquarters, no way to cut the weed off at the stem.
And second.
Their strength.
That was on a level entirely beyond what Lee Jun could handle.
Because they're far stronger than me.
And it wasn't just about him, either.
The members of Liberation — the so-called Liberators — wielded power that dwarfed the average Initial Awakener.
Their executive ranks were positively crawling with Initial Awakeners as it was.
"Recruiting a few of them, though… that might be a stretch."
He did have a few offers that might tempt some of them.
They hadn't committed any real crimes yet this time around, so there'd be no problem letting them simmer for now.
The ones with any hope are Aulos and Hecate… and Corob.
Liberation had its share of human trash like Cognum and Kaufman, but it also had a handful of people with something resembling common sense.
People who had tried, to some degree, to hold back the runaway train that Liberation was becoming.
Of course, they'd all failed, and the whole thing had degenerated into a circus — but that was a story from at least three years down the line.
For now… maybe there was still hope.
"…So do I actually have to go pay them a visit."
One of the executives did keep a base in Korea.
But the man was so slippery and elusive that there was no telling when he'd actually be there.
Lee Jun was already run off his feet, and he was supposed to chase down the guy's schedule just to have a meeting?
Yeah, that made total sense.
The Liberators… go to the back burner for now.
Priority one was the gate conquest coming in four days.
And priority two was…
Click.
"Oh, now what is it this time… you bastard."
The Artificial Space Kyle had left behind.
Inside it… he hoped, at least a little, there was some hint about this tangled mess of a situation.
Why had the man died so anticlimactically?
Why were the keepsakes of all his old comrades inside the Ant Nest?
And why… had Lee Jun regressed?
"There's just… too much I want to ask you, you bastard."
Lee Jun stared at the lock his friend had left him, then ran a hand over his aching head.
He slipped the lock back into the Pocket.
If wracking his brain wasn't going to produce an answer, there was no point agonizing over it now.
So — set aside the unsolvable riddles.
"Which leaves this."
Lee Jun turned his attention to the cube fragments before him.
The black Logic Cube had been smashed to pieces by Freya's Hammer of Vanity.
It was in such a sorry state that it was hard to believe it had ever been a proper cube.
Honestly, the only saving grace was that it hadn't been pulverized into powder.
Click.
Lee Jun took out his appraisal loupe and brought it up to his eye.
Ordinary as it looked, this too was an artifact.
Without a status window he couldn't see appraisal results directly, but it at least let him trace the flow of hidden energies within an object.
Even that was faint — but faint traces could still yield something meaningful.
"The base material is faturalium… and something's been layered on top of it through a mana coating… what is this?"
It felt vaguely familiar.
A thin film of mana applied over metal to lock something in place, with channels carved through it to guide the mana's flow.
This method of crafting.
He'd definitely seen it somewhere before…
"Damn it… why can't I remember?"
He couldn't even tell if it was from the previous timeline or from his own past.
When on earth had he seen it?
The three years before?
Or the ten years after?
Where exactly had he run into this?
"Whew… I guess nobody can actually remember everything."
Lee Jun liked to think he had an exceptional memory — but even so, he couldn't recall over thirteen years of life in fine, granular detail.
If he could, that wouldn't be a talent. That would be a curse.
This technique, glimpsed in passing, stirred nothing but a nagging sense of déjà vu — no thread to pull, no purchase to grab.
"If I could just remember whether it was the Craftsmen's Union or not… tch."
Looked like he'd have to let the memory resurface slowly.
That, too… would have to wait until after the gate conquest.
"Right. The gate."
The last problem, after everything else had been stripped away.
The warning Liberation had sent.
The voice had clearly been modulated… but Lee Jun knew the man's cadence.
The way he forcibly crushed his natural lilt and stress to fake a sober gravity, and still couldn't hide the sneer threaded through the tone.
Jeff Kaufman.
Even among the Liberation executives, he was a special kind of madman.
Because Kaufman was a hedonist.
There was no real reasoning behind anything he did — he simply chased the pleasure of the moment.
A man who wouldn't hesitate at mass murder if it bought him a few minutes of enjoyment… a lunatic who ranked among the Liberators' highest-risk category.
And this gate's hidden piece will end up in Kaufman's hands, just like before.
If Kaufman's innate ability combined with the hidden piece's effects, the synergy would be nothing short of monstrous.
So even if it meant eliminating the hidden piece entirely, he had to keep it out of that man's hands.
The problem was… could he actually stop Kaufman if the man decided to get involved right now?
Seo Yoon and I together absolutely can't. Add Yoon Seol, and… even then, the theme leaves me with no certainty.
He didn't even know how strong the current Kaufman was.
He'd never seen the man before he acquired that skill.
And then—
The moment the thought reached that point, something snagged.
"How… did he steal the skill?"
This gate's hidden piece was 'The Shadow, Finally Awakened' — an S-Class passive-type skill.
In the previous timeline, it had gone to a national hunter.
And that man had died in barely five days… after which Kaufman had stolen it from him. But—
"…Don't tell me it was an artifact?"
No.
Then the rest of it wouldn't add up…
So did Kaufman — or Liberation — possess some technique for extracting or stealing skills?
But that made no sense either.
If they'd had such a technique, they'd have used it like mad.
They were the kind of people who hoarded anything useful, whatever the risk.
"…Shit, this is going to crack my skull open."
Lee Jun let out a thick stream of curses.
His head hurt.
What was he missing?
No — did those people actually know something?
Out of all the gates in the world, why target this one? Why?
Why, exactly?
"…Why."
Lee Jun leaned back in his chair.
The front legs lifted off the floor, and he felt the strange weightlessness of his body suspended in air.
He closed his eyes like that.
What had he overlooked?
What did Liberation know?
Why had Kaufman sent the warning to Lee Jun through the Craftsmen's Union?
Was The Shadow, Finally Awakened not a skill?
If it was a skill, how did he steal it?
What did Liberation actually want, in the first place?
Was the hidden piece really what they were after?
Taesan's Gangwon gate was…
The Gangwon gate was…
Ah.
"What if… they don't know the hidden piece exists at all?"
Flinch.
Lee Jun muttered it out loud out of habit, then startled himself and turned his head.
His gaze landed on a corner of the ceiling.
The spot where the Technical Bureau chief had installed a CCTV camera and a listening device.
"Shh."
He raised a finger to his lips at the camera.
The man would take the hint, surely.
"Hah… I really need to have all that stuff ripped out."
Somehow, one way or another, he'd renegotiate the contract terms and end this surveillance arrangement once and for all.
Anyway.
Lee Jun quickly pulled a map from the drawer.
In this digital age, a paper map? But this was no ordinary map.
It was a map Lee Jun had been quietly annotating… with information from before his regression.
The invincible analog — impossible to hack, period.
Better still, it was written with a special compound Freya had made for him, so without Lee Jun himself, the contents were illegible.
Whatever voyeur might be watching through that CCTV couldn't make heads or tails of it either.
"The location of this Taesan gate is…"
Here.
Bogwang-ri, Seongsan-myeon, Gangneung, in the Gangwon Special Self-Governing Province.
"And the next."
Sansan-ri, Yeongok-myeon, Gangneung.
"Next."
Imgok-ri, Gangdong-myeon, Gangneung.
"Next."
Nodong-ri, Sacheon-myeon, Gangneung.
"…Next."
……
……
"……"
Yeah.
They're all in Gangneung.
The hidden piece was never the point.
Here.
Seven gates in this region had been targeted by the Liberators, all told.
Every single one of them located in Gangneung.
From the initial S-Class Taesan gate to the final one — the A-Class gate in Sinwang-ri, Yeongok-myeon — the raids spanned a period of a year and a half.
Within that window… something was going to happen in Gangneung.
"Whew…"
The sudden storm of information left Lee Jun's head throbbing.
And yet, paradoxically, he felt lighter.
It was as if something long jammed had finally broken free.
So all that's left is whether Kaufman shows up in person for the raid or not.
And the answer to that was simple.
This time, he wouldn't move personally.
The gate itself wasn't what mattered — there was no reason for him to shoulder a massive risk charging in for just this one.
The previous timeline proved as much.
Back then, he'd left untouched not only Taesan's first strike team and Samhwa's second, but even the third strike team formed by a coalition of assorted organizations.
Most likely they'd had their eye on the region as a whole, and the hidden piece — something worth coveting — had simply happened to pop out at the right time.
"Yeah. That's it."
At last, everything fit together.
With that, most of his questions were resolved, leaving exactly two.
Weeding out the moles burrowed into the Craftsmen's Union — and figuring out precisely what was going to happen in Gangneung.
Clear those two hurdles, and he could finally breathe a little easier.
"At the very least… it won't be until after this, in October."
That didn't mean he could afford to get complacent, of course.
Lee Jun himself had turned a hundred and eighty degrees — what guarantee was there that the history of the previous timeline wouldn't change with him?
The small details within the grand current always had room to shift, and he'd have to keep doubting and fortifying against them, without pause.
This time around… he refused to be the one getting played.
But this particular case was slightly different.
Not complacency. Certainty.
"The real activity starts in October. Even if it moves up for one reason or another… absolutely nothing can happen in September."
Because in September, that person would be entering Korea.
The Magician.
An old comrade was coming.
And one the Liberators would hate more than anyone.
"Maybe when that time comes… I'll step out of Korea for a little while."
Then again, it would be awkward for Lee Jun, too.
Because watching his old comrades was still hard.
"Hah…"
Without quite meaning to, Lee Jun turned his gaze toward the Technical Bureau chief's CCTV.
The man who had been Lee Jun's comrade was, by the same token, that man's comrade too.
"……"
A sudden bitterness had crept over him.
Lee Jun quietly turned off the light and lay down on the bed.
"…Damn it."
Not so long ago, he'd strutted around talking big to Yoon Seol about their bet.
But if the man could see him now, he'd probably be laughing.
Lee Jun was weak.
Not just his body — his heart, too.
It wasn't only his fragile frame that had been shattered and stitched back together dozens of times over.
The difference was that now, it didn't even stitch back together anymore.
That had been the last ten years of his life, and now, two months into his regression, it was starting all over again.
"……"
And yet, somehow.
Why wouldn't it stop feeling unfamiliar?
"The idiot who can't even read probabilities properly… that's me."
He had believed there was no such thing as 0% or 100%.
But that had been a fool's notion — the world overflowed with extremes that blew right past those odds.
And the price of losing that wager… was the broken image of himself he saw now.
"…Tch."
Clicking his tongue lightly, Lee Jun rolled over onto his side.
And then—
Amid the countless screams that always rang in his ears, he forced himself toward sleep.