The Stakes Are Your Life (1)
"Ugh, what is this! My life, please, just spare my life!"
The VIP room of the hotel, the meeting place between Ji Se-hwa and the mid-level executives of the financial world. I, Lee Ru-a, and the subordinate villains had successfully raided the location in secret.
"You damn bastards! Do you have any idea who I am!"
Ji Se-hwa, her rage boiling over, lunged toward Lee Ru-a. I stepped in front of her. There was no need to transform. I easily subdued her with basic martial arts. Since I was the one who taught Se-hwa how to fight, predicting her moves was something I could do with my eyes closed.
"Ugh! You son of a bitch! I'll kill you!"
I gagged the noisy Ji Se-hwa with duct tape and cuffed her hands and feet with specialized restraints. The situation was under control. The guards were all knocked out, and the guests were bound. Their communication devices had been confiscated. Because it was a VIP room, the soundproofing was perfect. Even the sound of a suppressed gunshot wouldn't leak outside.
There were seven guests. Five middle-aged men and two women. All of them were greedy pigs.
"Ugh... Ve, Vengeance. Da, Dark Matter."
One of the guests recognized us.
"If it's Dark Matter, aren't they the villain organization that raided Silver Mirrored...?"
"Do you have business with Blue Saber?"
"Why, why us too? Please, just let us go."
Lee Ru-a stood in front of them.
"Let's see. Kim Young-heon. 62 years old. Director of Angellan Securities. You're the bastard who designed the trench structure during the subprime crisis 12 years ago, right?"
"U, ugh?"
"Back then, a chain reaction of loan defaults happened, and so many people lost their homes and committed suicide. Was it 120,000 unemployed and 4,000 suicides?"
"I, isn't that a closed matter! The person responsible is currently serving time..."
"You cut off the tail, didn't you? And you're still living well, eating well?"
"I, I only did legal work!"
"It's illegal now, and it was illegal overseas back then, too!"
"Laws aren't made until a problem arises!"
"Ahaha. So you're innocent? How much did you suck out of people using that method? Did it taste good, sucking the life out of hardworking citizens until they became corpses? Were you trying to do the same thing with Blue just now?"
"Ugh..."
"The seven people gathered here. You're all the same. Do you just hang out with your own kind? Ugh, it stinks. Hey, you pieces of trash. Even if I ate pig feed for the rest of my life, it would smell better than you lot."
The guests shut their mouths. Lee Ru-a mocked them.
"Do, do you think you'll be safe after doing something like this? If they notice something is wrong outside, my bodyguards will storm in immediately."
One of the guests said in a terrified voice. Lee Ru-a chuckled.
"Will they notice? Are they blind? Right, Illusion?"
"Mmm~ If you can tell this sister's clones apart, I'll reward you in bed all night long."
The villain with the alluring figure, licking her lips with a sultry voice, was 'Illusion.' She was an A-rank villain and my subordinate.
"Hahaha! What a great party!"
"It's very enjoyable! Hahaha!"
There were guests clinking wine glasses on the balcony.
"Th, that's..."
That was Illusion's ability. She could create illusions and clones. Although they were like holograms without substance, they were so precise that you couldn't tell the difference unless you looked very closely.
"Th, this is a hotel! There must be a record on the CCTV from when you entered, so someone must have seen it!"
"Hehe. Don't worry. I hacked all of that a long time ago."
Lee Ru-a smiled brightly. It was just as she said. The villain manipulating the data in real-time was an S-rank, 'Deep Dive.' She had the ability to materialize information from the internet and treat it like a physical object. In short, she was a genius hacker. She was a villain I had originally intended to recruit because she had a useful ability. It turned out well because she was impressed after seeing Vengeance's raid on Silver. She was currently assisting with this operation from our hideout. Even when we infiltrated Lee Ru-a into Choi Min-seo's party, we had this girl's help. It wasn't that the infiltration was difficult, but I had struggled in the process of finding Deep Dive.
"No one besides you and us knows we're in this space. There's no one coming to help you. Understand?"
"Th, that can't be..."
The guests' complexions turned ashen.
"Is money your goal? How much do you want?"
"Money? Ahaha! We don't need things like that."
Lee Ru-a laughed melodiously.
"And we certainly don't need your stinking corpses. I came here to play a game with the Blue Saber here. You just need to help the game proceed smoothly. Then, you might just walk out of here alive?"
"A, a game?"
Hearing that, Ji Se-hwa squirmed. I set up Ji Se-hwa with my subordinates. We had tied her body to a cross-shaped frame the size of a person that we had prepared in advance. When we covered it with a lid, a perfect coffin was completed. Only Ji Se-hwa's face and hands were peeking out. I ripped off the duct tape from her mouth.
"You fucking bitch! I'll gouge out your eyeballs and shove them into your crotch!"
"You really are lacking in class. Blue, if you don't play a game with me, I'll really kill you?"
"Don't talk shit, you bitch!"
"Oh my, really. I keep my promises. I kept my promise with Silver and only killed the crew members and let them go, didn't I? I'll make one promise to you, too. I will strictly follow the rules of the game and won't use any violence other than that! When the game is over, we'll leave. How about that?"
"You insane bastards. Are you having fun? Is it that fun to play with people?"
"Yes."
Lee Ru-a brought her face close to Ji Se-hwa's.
"It's fun. It's so, so fun I'm going crazy. I enjoy playing with heroes more than anything in the world. You know, Blue. Yellow and Green want to play too, could you introduce them to me?"
"You bitch. You pleasure-addict bitch. Your brain is fried. I hope your blood vessels burst and you die."
"Hehe. Then I'll explain the rules of the game."
My subordinates and I brought another identical-looking coffin across from Ji Se-hwa. A cross-shaped coffin facing Ji Se-hwa.
"We need Ji Se-hwa and six guests. But there are seven of you? Let's see. You."
"Ye, yes?"
Lee Ru-a pointed at one of the women.
"You, we don't need you, so get out."
"Ye...?"
"I said get out. Go home."
"Re, really?"
"Get lost quickly. But you know what will happen if you leak anything about what happened here until it's all over, right?"
"Ye, yes!"
The woman hurriedly left the room. She had committed relatively fewer crimes. That's why I had told Lee Ru-a in advance to let her go first. Of course, she couldn't actually go home. This VIP room had a dual structure, so she would be waiting in the lobby. She wouldn't know that here, though. Seeing the woman actually leave the VIP room, the remaining six guests were envious.
"I told you, didn't I? I keep my promises. If you help with the game well, you'll be able to leave one by one like that."
"Th, that's true, right?"
"Of course."
Lee Ru-a turned her head to Ji Se-hwa.
"Do you see that coffin? The shape of the two coffins is the same. Do you see the holes?"
"Holes?"
"Yes. There are six holes, right? Both arms, both legs, stomach, chest. Now, I'm going to stab something into these one by one."
"You crazy bitch. You're just planning to kill me!"
"Think carefully. Why would there be two coffins?"
Ji Se-hwa bared her teeth. It seemed she had realized something.
"Six people...?"
"Yes. You won't be the one getting stabbed for everything. Depending on the game's content, you might be the one stabbed. The game has six rounds. The guests will enter that coffin one by one. At the start of each round, the 'body part' and the 'means' of stabbing will be revealed. Then, you just need to 'negotiate' with the guest."
"Negotiate?"
Lee Ru-a giggled.
"Yes. About who will get stabbed."
The guests also became restless.
"Negotiation won't work! Where would you find someone who says they'll get stabbed themselves!"
Ji Se-hwa shouted. Her words were a hundred percent correct.
"That's right. So you have to negotiate using your specialty."
"What?"
"Money."
Lee Ru-a snapped her fingers. I brought a small box in front of her.
"Guests, listen well. Inside here is the entire amount of 'cash' that Blue Saber had on her."
"Ca, cash?"
"Yes. All the bills, coins, and 'chips' in her wallet."
Here, chips are like memory cards that store cash as data. Since carrying large amounts of cash is inconvenient, they are the storage medium in this world. Because of this, black market trading and money laundering by villains are much more active.
"You petty thieves. How much could that be, stealing it already...!"
"Shh. It's better if you don't talk about how much it is. This is the negotiation material."
"What?"
"One round is 5 minutes. If you finish the negotiation within that time, the guest and Blue must write down an amount in a notebook. The one with the larger amount wins. The one with the smaller amount will get stabbed."
"Then we can just write down a huge amount!"
"Didn't you understand? Blue. You actually have to pay us from the cash you have. You can't write down an amount larger than what you have. Conversely, if the guest also writes down an amount larger than Blue's holdings, they lose."
"That means."
"If Blue Saber writes 1 won, and we write 10 billion won, even if we wrote a larger amount, we exceeded the holdings, so we lose?"
"And getting your arms or legs stabbed with something like a skewer... ugh."
The guests seemed to understand immediately.
"We don't know how much Blue Saber has, so how can we win!"
"Hey, you guys, wait a minute! Why are you already thinking about winning!"
Ji Se-hwa screamed.
"I'm the Dragon Squadron! I'm someone who was discharged from the hospital yesterday! I have to fight the Galactic Empire, and you're planning to injure me again? It's just arms and legs! You won't die even if you get stabbed! If I've protected you this much, shouldn't you sacrifice at least this much!"
"Th, that makes sense, but..."
"First, we have to find out the total amount. Let the person who goes first write down from 1 million won. If that exceeds the total, we can guess the range..."
"What if we get stabbed after doing that!"
"Are the written amounts revealed to each other when the round ends?"
The guests began to rack their brains desperately. Lee Ru-a smiled and nodded.
"Yes. You wouldn't believe us if we said we manipulated the results, right? We'll reveal the papers with both of your handwriting exactly as they are."
It's flowing as expected. By making them enemies of each other, they aren't recognizing us, the actual enemies who created this situation, and are only thinking about beating each other. The temptation of survival is that intense.
"You fucking bastards! You ungrateful pieces of shit!!"
Ji Se-hwa screamed. Se-hwa, I understand your feelings, but isn't that something you shouldn't be saying?
"Then, shall we start?"
Lee Ru-a declared leisurely. In her hand, she held a vicious-looking electric drill with a 3-centimeter diameter.