The Busan Supply Scandal Ignites
A few days before the incident exploded.
It all began with a woman walking through the villa district of Sinchon in Seoul, her face hidden behind a mask.
“……”
The woman paused for a moment to check the route displayed on her map app, then continued walking. This area was populated more by university students than office workers. Perhaps that was why the woman in her black suit stood out so starkly among the vibrant, youthful crowd—like a splash of monochrome dropped into a world of full color.
She turned into an alley. The walls rising on both sides created deep shadows. This was an urban blind spot, the backside of society. But the colorless woman was originally a shadow herself. Darkness was her camouflage, and places like this were her natural domain.
The black suit that had once looked so out of place had now become perfect protective coloring, wrapping her gently. She melted into the gloom.
“Already found him? Wow~ Amazing, sis! Now that I think about it, you’ve never used any vacation days, have you? Hold on. Here’s a bonus. You worked hard, so go to Seoul, see your family, and take a week off to relax. In return……”
“Deliver this for me.”
Having reached her destination, the woman scanned her surroundings.
It was an old four-story villa without the now-mandatory shared entrance security. She habitually checked for cameras. She didn’t forget to note the dashcams in the parking lot either.
She pulled black latex gloves up to her wrists and rummaged through the mailbox labeled ‘404.’
Choi Bul-gul. Confirmed.
After gathering a few pieces of information, the woman climbed the stairs and stood in front of the door. She pressed the doorbell. After a moment, the characteristically unpleasant sound of an old-fashioned bell rang out.
“Who is it?”
The door opened, accompanied by a voice heavy with exhaustion.
She compared the man’s face with the photo in her memory. After completing her final verification, the woman silently handed Choi Bul-gul an envelope containing a USB drive and turned away.
“Uh… hey? What is this?”
Choi Bul-gul, still half-asleep, stared blankly at the spot where the woman had vanished. It took him a moment to realize there was a USB inside the envelope.
And when he checked the files on the USB a short while later…
He was stunned.
“……Th-this is!”
It was the full story of the massive supply gate scandal that would soon turn Busan into a wasteland.
A few days before the incident exploded.
* * *
The rooftop of a three-story building located a short distance from the Yeongdeok Potion Factory in Busan.
The factory owner could only watch like a rat in hiding as the so-called “people’s batons” demolished the world he knew.
“We have a search warrant. Step aside.”
The factory owner looked up at the sky with not a single shred of shame.
Because he truly hadn’t done anything wrong.
Six years ago when he inherited the factory from his father, he had done a bit of tax evasion, but wasn’t that something everyone did?
As an executive in the small golf club where factory owners gathered, he had discussed protecting their interests. It was constructive dialogue meant to avoid excessive competition. Talking wasn’t a crime, was it?
That in the process a few guilds showed some minor “appreciation” was perfectly normal in a local community where everyone knew everyone else. There was no problem at all.
Of course, slightly “omitting” some ingredients from the potion labels was wrong. But business had gotten tough! Potions just needed to heal, right? There was no issue with their effectiveness. Probably….
Besides that, countless other things had happened, but…
The factory owner’s sense of injustice remained unchanged.
Because this was how things had been done since his father’s time.
He hadn’t done anything wrong. This was what he had learned, and he had simply worked according to what he was taught. No matter how he thought about it, he could look up at the sky without a single ounce of shame.
Then why? If he was so confident, why was the factory owner hiding right now? Did he lack a conscience but still possess some intelligence?
Anyway, what did it matter? The law was saying this:
You are screwed.
As the blue boxes filled with documents—things he’d only ever seen on the news—were stacked neatly into the van, the factory owner’s fingernails grew shorter and shorter from biting them. His mouth went dry. The cold sweat pouring down his neck and shoulders made it feel like he’d been caught in the rain.
“How… how……”
What am I supposed to do?
The factory owner repeated “how” like a broken doll while looking around the factory, until his gaze stopped on the employees standing idly in the empty lot, watching the spectacle.
Betrayal burned at the back of his head. He had treated them like family…!
However, if the people in question had heard that thought, they would have said this:
Family? More like family my ass?
“I knew this would happen someday. Should’ve kept it moderate. Ptooey!”
“Thank goodness they came after payday.”
“Where are you going, Hyo-seong?”
“I’m thinking of joining the Mir Guild. I heard they’re recruiting new hires lately.”
Minimum wage and yearly salary negotiations that were always dragged out.
They didn’t ask for much. They had simply wanted some motivation—something that improved even a little each year. Yet it was always a mystery why the company suddenly claimed to be struggling at exactly this time every year.
Whenever it seemed like their measly salaries might increase even a tiny bit, nearby colleagues would disappear.
They’d create a situation where one person had to do the work of two and then say, “We gave you a raise, didn’t we?” Their faces were truly thick as bricks.
And recently the factory owner’s ridiculously young son had started throwing his weight around as “director,” so the employees had long been searching for their own escape routes, concluding that survival was a matter of intelligence.
Now the only thing they could trust was themselves. The factory owner leaned against the wall and picked up his phone. It was the numbers of his golf club friends.
“Pick up the phone.”
To get straight to the point, it was a meaningless act.
Because their situation was even worse.
“D-do you know who I am?! I’m telling you, your police chief and I—!! Let go!!”
“Prosecutor, I’m truly innocent. If you could just speak with me privately for a moment, you’ll understand my grievance. Aaaagh! The handcuffs!”
The factory owner, who had relatively quick wits, had managed to preserve his physical freedom this way. His golf club friends were all being transported to the prosecutor’s office.
Isolated and without help.
Lost in a fog.
Clinging to his last hope, the factory owner dialed a number with trembling fingers.
Scavenger. The master of that famous information guild in Seoul.
The factory owner clutched the phone with both hands and wept silently as if in prayer. Please. Please. Save me.
And finally, it seemed as though God had answered his desperate plea—
“Hello?”
“H-hello, Director Jung! This is the owner of the Yeongdeok Potion Factory in Busan. Right now our factory is under investigation……”
“What the hell are you saying? So annoying.”
Beep… beep….
—He had just been abandoned by God.
Instead, someone else had been summoned.
Tap. Tap.
Someone tapped his head. Tapped his head…?
This was the rooftop, and he was clearly leaning against the wall. How could someone tap his head?
The startled factory owner looked up and met eyes with an investigator floating in the sky using Fly magic.
“Mr. Yong Dae-ho, let’s have a talk.”
The factory owner instinctively sensed his future.
What filled the investigator’s gaze as he looked down from the air was…
Contempt.
* * *
We promise a new experience every season.
The phrase that appeared on the GM’s loading screen.
New users would think, “The devs must really care,” and pass over it without much thought. But they soon learned the word missing from that sentence.
In plain terms: “Frustrating.”
In cruder terms: “Fucking.”
In a foreign language: “Fucking God” or “Holy shit!”
The GM nerds (developers) fulfilled their declaration by plunging users into shock and horror with new methods every season.
Information guilds conducting dirty schemes beneath the surface, monster waves where monsters flowed back into reality, villain attacks that sent players straight to a total annihilation ending.
GM collectively referred to all these infuriating experiences as 'unexpected events.'
This 'Busan Supply Gate' was one such unexpected event.
[Bribery, Rebates, Collusion—They Did Everything They Could!]
[SBC Current Affairs Exposé Program Achieves 19.5% Rating — Its True Power Revealed]
[M Guild Representative in Busan: “What was bound to explode has exploded. Self-purification is necessary.”]
[Central Awakener Management Headquarters Demands Strong Investigation for the Safety of Busan Hunters.]
A unprecedented incident in which local suppliers banded together to control potions, scrolls, throwing weapons, combat rations, and all other raid supplies, then manipulated the guilds at will.
The key point of this incident lay in the reversal of “giver and receiver.”
The developers likely wanted to show through this event just how powerful suppliers—the traditional “weak” side—could become when they united, and how troublesome the power of regional cartels could be.
Of course, the ending involved crossing the line into outright villainy—operating an illegal gambling den like some information guild’s “cleaner”—leading to arrest and an iron bracelet ending. Still, for the seventeen-year-old Lee Shin, who had been deeply cynical about society, it was a highly memorable event in many ways.
‘And this Busan supply corruption event was originally supposed to happen two years from now.’
That’s right.
The “Busan Supply Gate” was an incident that was supposed to fully ignite two years later.
And the interesting part was that this event was also connected to the Mir Guild.
After all, it was this very supply gate that had delivered the death sentence to the stubbornly enduring Mir Guild.
As a side note, starting from this incident, the Busan guild scene entered a complete recession, so the Mir Guild could be seen as the signal flare.
‘Well, this is only the beginning, though…….’
Regardless, Lee Shin had dragged out this still-immature unexpected event and set it off early.
A kind of real-world cheat key, one might say?
In the game, unexpected events activated based on playstyle, timeline, and various conditions. But in reality, there were signs and stages.
‘Logically, an incident of this scale couldn’t just pop out of nowhere.’
Back when he used to commute to Guro-gu, Lee Shin had visited various companies through outsourcing contracts due to the nature of his job. From just a few cigarettes, he had heard quite a bit about how all kinds of dirty dealings were conducted.
Based on that information, when he inferred the final evolved form of this “Busan Supply Gate”…
It made no sense for it not to have started by now!
“Hehehehe……”
“……What are you doing? Why are you twisting your hands like that and covering your face?”
“Playing the shadowy mastermind.”
“……”
Chae Dong-ha simply turned around, closed the door, and left.
Hehehe. Lee Shin once again immersed himself in his shadowy mastermind role.
The moment he seized the key to the incident, this event became a weapon in Lee Shin’s hands.
He could prevent it in advance to gain fame, cover up the incident to match an inconvenient issue, or process it to extract benefits.
For example, he could slip a few arrogant business partners who had notified him of contract termination without so much as an apology into the corruption list, and there would be no problem at all.
‘Do you really think no dust would come out if I shook them? These are provincial companies deeply rooted in the mindset that good things are good things.’
It had always been like this.
Whether it was a victim complex from growing up without parents or a complex stemming from a poor environment, Lee Shin could never stand being taken advantage of.
Seeing how his older brother, who grew up in the same environment, was known for being kind and having a good character, perhaps Lee Shin himself was simply twisted.
But so what? This was how he was born.
He returned exactly what was done to him.
If they took one, he took two. If they took two, he took four.
If he couldn’t take it, then they would die together. At the very least, he made sure to clearly show them that if they wanted to torment him, they had better be prepared to suffer just as much.
Yes, he was that person.
The one who destroyed an entire country and shut the mouths of those who mocked him as the son of a eunuch!
His number one respected figure from childhood.
“……I shall become Cao Cao.”
Lord Cao Cao had said: Even if I abandon the world, I will not let the world abandon me.
Lee Shin once again armed his mind with that person’s teachings.
Even if I abandon you, I will not let you abandon me.
But if you still abandon me?
‘I swear on my grandfather’s honor, I will make you utterly screwed.’
Kk-kk-kk-kk-kk-hahahahahaha— I am Cao Cao! *cough* *cough*!— Puhahahahaha…….
“What is that sound… Vice Leader?”
“Please just walk on by.”
And not long after.
Ominous signs began to appear.