No Land? Then We'll Make It!
Click! Click!
Flash after flash after flash—
The site of the groundbreaking ceremony buzzed with activity.
Camera flashes rained down like a storm. The cameramen’s hands moved in a frantic blur.
Strangely, every single lens was locked onto one man.
Today’s undisputed star: Lee Shin.
Damn, what a shot.
Lee Shin being Lee Shin. This is what makes photography worth it.
Yeah, he’s been slacking on his looks lately. Should keep it up like this all the time.
Cameramen were, by nature, artists (or perhaps perverts) who felt genuine ecstasy when capturing true beauty.
In that sense, Lee Shin in a perfectly tailored full suit was enough to make their hearts explode even through the viewfinder.
Just look at him now—holding the non-alcoholic champagne, gazing up at the plaque with eyes as clear as a mountain lake. The emotion flickering across those eyes was unmistakably being moved.
“Wow… it’s really happening.”
Lee Shin kept his gaze fixed on the plaque as he took a sip.
An international airport.
One of the final tech tree achievements possible in GM was finally being realized in reality.
Overwhelmed with emotion, his vision blurred. Lee Shin pinched the bridge of his nose, squeezing out tears that hadn’t even formed yet.
“Ugh… it was so damn hard…!”
He rarely admitted anything was difficult, but this time it really had been. The countless obstacles he’d overcome to reach this moment flashed through his mind.
Want to count them? Fine.
First and foremost:
1. Resources. In other words, an absolutely obscene amount of money.
Building an international airport from scratch is way more expensive than a stadium. At least with a stadium you can negotiate with the Bureau. For an airport, you need collateral, loans, and to basically sell your soul.
It was the kind of capital that normal guild operations could never generate.
The scale far exceeded what could be earned through guild trading. And that wasn’t even the end of it. Once built, the maintenance costs for shopping districts, duty-free stores, parking lots, and more were astronomical.
In GM, you’d need to max out the business tree and hit jackpot after jackpot just to barely meet the requirements.
That was why many players resorted to exploits—buying existing airports and remodeling them, or turning it into a national project to build close ties with the government.
But as with all things in life, shortcuts came with side effects.
Both methods inevitably created noise in governance and operations.
Yet Lee Shin had somehow fulfilled all of this in reality.
With the money of his desert brother, Muhammad, who had more cash than he knew what to do with!
Brother Muhammad, are you watching? It’s warm here.
Lee Shin waved toward the benevolent smile of Muhammad he imagined floating in the distant sky.
If that was the first condition, the second was this:
2. Fame worthy of the world stage.
What’s the point of building something amazing if no one comes?
It had to succeed without question.
A facility of this colossal scale couldn’t even be allowed the possibility of failure. If it failed, it wouldn’t just sink on its own—the entire guild and city could go down with it.
So if a guild was building an airport, the world had to pay attention.
They needed close cooperation, or attractive products, or at the very least to be known as a scream hotspot!
The important thing is making the world need our guild.
Fortunately, the Mir Guild already met all these advantages.
There was Woongjindan, the elixir said to be a divine gift. There were the potions and reagents that the Choi Family Pharmacy had poured their heart and soul into. The Bress Forge was operating smoothly, and they had just entered the trending War Machine business through Mr. Mal-sook.
And that wasn’t all.
Foreigners interested in the academy were already arriving in droves. They’d even had a group tour yesterday.
The training camp was gaining fame, and next season’s camp would be even larger.
Therefore…
Even if I abandon the world, the world won’t be allowed to abandon me…! Teacher Cao Cao, are you watching? The child who read your story has grown up so splendidly!
Beside the imagined Muhammad in the sky, a stern-looking Cao Cao now smiled approvingly.
That left only one final condition.
3. An extremely, ridiculously demanding location requirement.
This was the real headache.
Who knew building an airport would be this complicated?
It was called a national project for a reason. The difficulty was beyond what any individual could handle. Trying to lead it as a guild was enough to make one’s head explode.
Still, Lee Shin and the Mir Guild had done it.
He had many capable people at his side, a full wallet, and most of all, countless allies supporting him from behind.
But after somehow overcoming all of that, the biggest problem remained unsolved…
Physical location.
There’s no land.
There was no suitable plot in Yeongdo where the guild was based to build an airport!
As a last resort, they looked at nearby areas.
They thought anywhere close would be fine, but the nearby spots were all commercial districts or residential zones with no suitable locations.
By the time they found an adequate site, it was quite far from the guild itself.
It was a crisis. His grand dream was on the verge of being scratched.
If this were GM, I would’ve given up right there.
In GM, as long as the first two conditions were met, this part was relatively simple. Construction would proceed as long as there was space on the 2D map.
Conversely, if that simple condition wasn’t met, construction was impossible no matter what tricks you used.
But the word “impossible” did not exist in Lee Shin’s dictionary.
This was, after all, reality. Sometimes reality was more magical than a game bound by logic and settings…
“Representative? Representative?”
“Ah, yeah. What’s up, Dong-ha?”
“What are you thinking about?”
“Just spacing out for a second. Why?”
“You need to turn the first shovelful of dirt. Everyone’s waiting for you.”
Chae Dong-ha gestured behind him with his chin. Sure enough, a huge crowd was watching him.
Jeong Sun-dong the guild leader, Yun Cho-a the strategic planning director, and old man Jong-pil were all there. They must have been busy with training, yet they’d shown up to grace the occasion.
He also spotted Choi Yeosim of the Choi Family Pharmacy, whom he hadn’t seen in a while, Ji Jung-chul and Ma Geum-do who ran the forge, and representatives from the four major groups.
There was Noh Hyeong-sim, the district head, smiling so widely his thick jaw looked like it might snap, along with politicians from nearby districts.
The Busan mayor stood among them with a sour expression, but that was a trivial matter not worth worrying about.
Lee Shin took in the sight of them all and finally burst out laughing.
“Hahaha.”
Looking at the results he had achieved, the word “impossible” felt utterly insignificant.
To him, these people were already miracles. What was a little magic on top of that?
His gaze found a certain group standing off to one side.
Among them, he met eyes with a welcome face he hadn’t seen in a while.
Ready? At his silent question, the person wearing the brand-new hiking outfit Lee Shin had gifted him nodded vigorously as if to say, Of course.
Preparation complete. Let’s go.
He strode forward.
Crossing the flat ground to the edge of the dirt mound, Lee Shin stood at the shoreline where water splashed against the coast and took the shovel handed to him.
“Just dig here?”
“Yes.”
He nodded, then drove the shovel into the earth with force and flung the dirt forward.
Shhhk—
The moment a mound of earth scattered into the sea.
Mana surged violently behind him.
Hundreds, thousands of magic circles bloomed in the air. The electrifying mana field made his skin tingle.
And then they poured out.
Ruuuuumble———!!
Earth and sand, gravel and stone.
The majestic sight of minerals cascading down like waterfalls from every direction made Lee Shin close his eyes and raise his hand.
Then he shouted.
“No land?!”
Then we’ll just make some!
By filling in the sea!!
Lee Shin’s eyes met those of Gale Potter.
Olympus Magic Tower had joined the project.
The largest land reclamation project in Asia had officially begun.
The Busan mayor fled the ceremony site as if running from a ghost, his face deathly pale.
“Crazy… that crazy son of a bitch…!”
He actually did it! He really went and did it!
He was seriously reclaiming land from the sea to build an airport!!
And he was doing it with mages from the Olympus Magic Tower, the very group that had once rivaled the Bureau itself!!
The mayor recalled the waterfall of sand and gravel that had filled the entire area moments ago. His body trembled with fear. The scene had been so far beyond common sense that it was terrifying in itself.
With shaking legs, he hurried into his car. The driver, who had been reclining in the driver’s seat watching YouTube, hastily sat up.
“Mr. Mayor? The event isn’t over ye—”
“Shut up and drive. Get us out of here right now!”
“…!!”
Vrrrrrr—!
The wheels spun uselessly on the construction site before catching. The elegant sedan accelerated away in a most inelegant fashion.
The car sped off much more smoothly than expected. It seemed the twisted roads had been straightened out again.
Was he simply refusing to even look at the reports now?
As the Busan mayor ground his teeth in humiliation, the car had already left Yeongdo behind.
Once they were off the island, the pressure on his chest eased slightly. As the panic subsided, his mind cooled and began working again.
Lee Shin, are you really going to charge ahead like this? A guild and reality are completely different realms. Is this really okay?
From the mayor’s perspective, the outstanding guild representative Lee Shin had been a welcome sight—so welcome he’d wanted to embrace him.
He had single-handedly turned the dying Mir Guild into Busan’s symbol, gifted them championship trophies, and restored pride to the city.
He had revived a forgotten culture and brought vibrant, full-color energy to a once drab and colorless city.
It had been good. As mayor, he couldn’t have been more pleased.
After all, Lee Shin’s success was his own achievement, wasn’t it? His approval ratings had skyrocketed whenever the Mir Guild wrote new legends.
Perhaps that was why.
Until today, the mayor had thought Lee Shin was on his side.
But…
After witnessing that shocking scene today, he understood clearly.
Lee Shin was not on his side.
He crossed the line. If he’s a guild representative, he should have stopped at guild matters. Only at guild matters…!
To be honest, the mayor hadn’t expected Lee Shin to go this far.
And what he was talking about wasn’t Lee Shin’s ability.
Of course he knew Lee Shin was incredible.
He knew the man called a genius representative had risen to become a central figure in Korea’s guild scene.
He was praised as a once-in-a-century great leader.
Nor did he have the insane idea of looking down on Lee Shin’s background.
In Korea, the Lee Do Group was invincible. If anything, that side frightened the mayor more.
Even so.
The mayor had assumed Lee Shin would maintain some boundaries.
That was why he thought the man would understand when he applied political pressure and made certain gestures.
…I was never even in his sights. Someone like me was never even worth considering.
It had been a misjudgment.
Reclaiming land from the sea to build an airport?
The moment Lee Shin carried out such an insane act as if to show off, the mayor realized it completely.
To Lee Shin, the mayor wasn’t even an object of cooperation or consideration.
It was clear disregard. He might even consider the mayor less valuable than a local district head.
Or perhaps…
He’s trying to push me out and install the district head as the new Busan mayor!
People who rose to positions had reasons for doing so. He hadn’t won the mayor’s seat by playing Go-Stop.
This man had his own experience in politics and possessed cold insight.
Seeing one thing let him understand ten. He now realized it clearly.
Lee Shin would not stop.
To raise his hunters and his guild, he would swallow up everything around him without hesitation.
There would be no compromise in the process. He would try to control everything with his own hands. Everything would be done exactly to his taste!
The Busan mayor’s body trembled.
In Lee Shin’s actions, he saw someone else.
It’s a mini Lee Sang-byuk.
Yes.
The iron-willed Lee Sang-byuk.
The mayor was seeing Lee Sang-byuk in Lee Shin’s face.
A capable man who was utterly convinced he was the most capable in the world.
No childish self-doubt. Instead of hesitating, he took another step forward.
The problem was…
In the process, anyone who falls short of the standard will be cast aside. Just like Lee Sang-byuk—without mercy.
The Busan mayor’s body shook again.
He needed a plan. If he kept being ignored like this, he would end up worse than a mere district head.
He had to prove his value. Somehow, he needed to make his presence known and have his usefulness acknowledged.
Once back at city hall, the mayor shouted as if in a frenzy.
“Contact all the district heads and council members! Tell them I want to have a meal together! Why aren’t you calling them right now?!”
Whether to consolidate power or share risk, his idea was to increase his own mass.
But in the end, it meant nothing.
Lee Shin’s version of SimCity had already begun.