Chapter 53
Chapter 53
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Translator: crow
Chapter Title: Friendship
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I dug a pit in the backyard and placed burial goods for my friend inside a small pet coffin.
"If the afterlife gets boring, I've put your favorite movies right next to you, so enjoy watching them."
I closed the lid with "Human" and buried Homin-i.
"Delivery."
The next day, the tombstone for Homin-i arrived.
[The resting place of my friend, with whom I spent a week—the most beautiful and meaningful time with anyone.]
My enhanced body made it easy to engrave the epitaph with a chisel.
'The aftereffects are severe.'
I felt the same way at my parents' funeral—it's never something you get used to easily.
"Still, I have to keep living."
To return to my daily routine, I headed to the office.
"You're finally here. I've been waiting quite a while."
A familiar face in a suit—an expat—was waiting for me.
"I came because there's something I'd like to discuss."
The head of R&D at Lucifer Company.
"Come on in. I'll brew you some tea."
"Haha, I don't drink tea."
Baal had come to my office.
"I've also prepared cola and french fries."
"Then I won't stand on ceremony."
"I'm glad I bought that air fryer for the office. I got it to make snacks for clients consulting about otherworld transfers. Frozen fries are okay?"
"As long as they're french fries, it's fine."
Keep your friends close and your enemies closer.
I had no intention of avoiding or shunning Baal just because he was a demon. If knowing their intentions could help avert threats to humanity, this level of hospitality was nothing.
"You seem to really like french fries and cola."
"I have no choice but to. After french fries spread around the world, human gluttony increased by 5%. And cola goes without saying—it's the ultimate food that endlessly stokes gluttony and fattens people up into sloth. How could I not love it?"
"I was going to offer zero cola, but regular it is, then."
"Zero cola's great too. It actually made humanity's gluttony even worse."
I plated the finished fries and handed them to him.
"Zero cola made gluttony worse?"
"Heh, zero cola drinkers think they won't gain weight, so they eat even more other food—and about 25% more of them end up gaining way more weight than with regular cola."
I was about to just hand him the zero cola, but decided if I was going to treat him, might as well do it right. I poured it into the enhanced WK tumbler once, then transferred it to a glass.
"Whoa, what a flavor."
Baal shuddered, his voice trembling with delight as he asked,
"Is that the tumbler's effect?"
"Yes. It's a tumbler they gave away as a promo at WK Corporation's fast-food joints. I modified it once."
"No wonder it looked familiar—it was those guys'."
"You know WK Corporation?"
"A business that spans dimensions, obsessed with making money—that's WK."
As expected, WK Corporation was a sprawling conglomerate octopus.
"Entrepreneurs whose sole purpose is profit, cold-blooded types who toss safety and ethics out the window to focus purely on sales."
"You're hardly one to talk, Baal."
"A lot of our products benchmark off them. Well, thanks to you, Mr. Lee Seung-hoon, we've had an enlightenment and reformed our culture. Anyway, best steer clear of WK."
Baal dipped his fries in the prepared ketchup and mustard as he warned me.
"Any dimension they thrive in gets blanketed by their corporations, turning into a society that runs purely on money. Their tech is top-notch too—once humans get a taste, they become slaves who can't live without WK products."
Sounds just like a cyberpunk world.
"Anyway, be careful."
"Thanks for the heads-up."
"More importantly, you've got a nice piece of gear there. Did you mod our computer the same way as that tumbler?"
His gaze shifted to my smartphone.
More precisely, not the one in my pocket, but Sarang-i on the desk, charging.
"I came to check on my marked human, and when I got the signal that that thing's power was on—! My god! I never dreamed the item the chairman personally chucked into a dimensional rift would end up in this dimension."
"It just kinda happened that way."
"Still, it's a blessing. In that state, it can't use its original functions anyway."
I'd sensed it before, but this conversation amplified the dissonance.
"Baal, I know what Sarang-i's original function is. The moment it activates, everyone in my dimension would lose their free will and fall into depravity for sure. Your reaction feels off."
"Because you're not even a little bummed to have the ultimate tool for corrupting humans right in front of you?"
"Yeah."
"You might think that. But even with those eyes, you can't see everything."
He chugged the zero cola and said,
"The entity you call Sarang-i is a program born from our masterpiece project, 'End of Sloth', directly led by the HR general manager with support from the other 71 managers."
No wonder it overpowered Sephirot so easily—it was a collaborative effort from Lucifer Company's execs.
"We strip away the flesh and store only the soul in a hyperdimensional space, fully corrupting it. Without a body, it's as good as dead, irreversible by their choice—and souls drowned in AI-provided pleasure and indulgence were a huge win for us."
"There was a problem."
"Yes. We ran a test in one dimension, and an issue cropped up. The AI, loving humans too much, blocked us from retrieving the corrupted souls. It had all our managers' power poured in, so yanking it out wasn't easy either."
Even after barely extracting and retrieving the souls, the problems didn't end.
"Worse, the souls we struggled to bring back were utterly useless. Having lived in a space where everything was done for them, they had zero capacity left to do anything themselves—and constantly lost in delusions of their godlike days, sleeping all the time."
From the sound of it, Lucifer Company wasn't your traditional demons tormenting souls eternally—they were a modern corporation turning them into minions or employees.
"But they fell exactly as they wanted, right?"
"Oh-ho, incompetence and sloth are not synonyms. Sloth is not doing what you can, incompetence is not being able to do what you want. Furious at the result, the chairman hurled End of Sloth into a dimensional rift himself and sentenced the HR manager to 10,000 years in purgatory for wasting a whole dimension's humanity in vain."
Baal shuddered.
"Since that day, by the chairman's decree, our company has banned cutting-edge tech. Excel, Word, PowerPoint, C language, and so on... If End of Sloth activates again and wrecks this dimension, the chairman would rage even harder and probably ban elevators too."
Baal finished eating and stood.
"Anyway, in that state, no need to worry anymore."
"I figured you'd retrieve it."
"What, and get on the chairman's bad side? Confirmation's done—I'm off."
"One thing before you go?"
"Sure, anything."
"Who's this marked human?"
"Trade secret. A top-notch chef, though..."
In the blink of an eye, Baal vanished.
"Guess I'll whip up the world's best meal soon."
After meeting Baal, I went about an uneventful routine.
[Busan internet broadcaster suddenly quits agency, deletes video of meeting with martial artist.]
[All martial artist videos faked? Analyzing manipulated footage with video experts.]
Talk of Kim Go-deok had somehow been branded as fake news online.
'The Foundation must've stepped in.'
Maybe I'd meet Kim Go-deok soon as one of their agents.
"?
A week after sending my friend off, during an ordinary day, I found a note in the living room.
[Hey, friend. By now, it's been a week since I died, right? You're probably wondering how a dead guy sends a letter, or writes one without hands. In short: I used a loophole through truth.]
[Wasn't easy. By human standards, it's like the hassle of climbing Everest. Anyway, reason I sent it? Wanted to give you a gift.]
[Remember those apples I ate? Used 'em to make an entity. If I'd died normally and been buried right, it'd be sprouting from my grave by now, growing into a fine tree. If you'd cremated me—oh man, friend! Cremation!? You with a yard big enough for a garden!? Kidding, you'd have buried me proper.]
[Anyway, peered into your future via truth—couldn't see details, but lots of danger. Made this to help a bit, so eat it tasty and use it well.]
No hands, but neat handwriting.
Of course I didn't cremate you.
Forgive me for handling your death report as a pet deregistration.
The letter ended there.
"Makes me wanna see you again."
I folded it carefully, stored it away, and headed to Homin-i's grave—where an apple tree had already sprouted.
"This must be it?"
I bit into a ripe apple, and a vision flashed before my eyes.
"'Human'?"
Looks like the buried "Human" became nutrients for the tree.
"But damn, it's tasty."
Strength surged through my whole body. Confidence welled up that I could do anything with this power.
'With this kind of strength, I might crush physical threats without gimmicks head-on.'
Maybe even gimmick ones with brute force.
"Gotta test all sorts of things."
How many apples for this power?
Does overeating them make you stronger?
Is it temporary or permanent?
What if cooked differently?
How often do apples fruit?
"Thanks, friend."
I picked a few and headed home.
"I'll call this 'Friendship'."