The Factory Makes a Man
The factory made a man.
The day before I headed down to Busan, I went to the factory early in the morning.
A normal day at the factory had begun.
The conveyor belts rolled, and the robotic arms moved in a frenzy.
The workers gripped electric drills and grinders, sparks flying as they threw themselves into their tasks.
At one end, quality tests were being run; presses slammed down; cutting machines screamed and whined without pause.
The place was full of noise, but it was the kind of noise I knew well, and that familiarity put my mind at ease.
I shut myself in the office, went through the backlog of paperwork, and made decisions on the important matters that had piled up while I was gone.
By the time I’d worked myself half to death, quitting time was almost here.
“Good work. Let’s wrap it up,” the foreman called.
At his words, the foreign workers shouted back.
“Good work, sseumnida!”
“Good job, yo!”
They finished what they were doing and began taking off their gloves one by one.
Their faces were smeared with sweat and grime.
It had been another brutal day.
The foreman went on.
“Listen up, boys. The boss won’t be coming in for a while. You all heard that, right?”
I was only going to be away for a short time, but the foreman had gone ahead and planned a send-off for me.
“We were thinking of just grabbing a simple meal, but if you want to—”
The foreman lowered his voice.
“If your mom’s waiting for you at home, or if you miss your mom and need to head back early, raise your hand. I’ll send you off first.”
Snickers rippled through the crowd.
He was just joking around.
There wasn’t a single guy here who would sprint home because his mother was waiting for him.
More than half the workers in the industrial complex were foreigners.
They were already far away from their families to begin with.
Which meant—
“Then we’ll assume everyone’s staying! Let’s have a company dinner. Menu’s pork belly! Our boss is paying!”
Cheers exploded, and everyone clapped along, one after another.
The foreman grinned at me.
“Thank you, Foreman.”
“Ah, it’s me who should be thanking you. Without you, Yongki, there’d be more than a few people feeling left out. Especially that one.”
The foreman pointed at Karki’s back.
Karki had stepped forward and was rallying everyone with the ease of a born organizer.
“Too cramped here. We do it outside. Everybody, out!”
Together, we opened the factory doors and headed for the vacant lot.
From Factory 1 to Factory 4, the workers poured out in a flood.
“This is the whole-company dinner?”
“Damn, our boss has deep pockets.”
Lately, I had bought up three more factories.
At one of them, Factory 2, the workers’ wages had been delayed for months because the owner had treated them like dirt.
Once the representative changed and the management eased up, the original employees became fiercely loyal to me.
By now, there were more than two hundred workers in total.
Karki came up beside me.
“Boss. Want me to set it up again after so long?”
“Yeah. Sounds good.”
“Okay! Everybody, build the slab!”
At Karki’s single command, the foreign workers moved like a well-drilled unit.
“Yes, sir!”
One team brought out a huge rectangular frame from Factory 1.
Another from Factory 2 packed the soil down fine and flat with shovels.
From Factory 3, they hauled over Aurora Liquid from the factory’s furnace.
Aurora Liquid was a metal found in dungeons, born from the power of spirits.
Once melted, it became highly malleable; once it solidified, it turned into something light but astonishingly hard.
They poured the molten, rainbow-sheened liquid into the mold.
“Careful. Don’t spill it.”
“Move over there!”
Everyone looked deadly serious, attending to the work with meticulous care.
And what were they doing now that the day’s work was done?
They were making a grill on the spot.
They melted the metal, poured it into the mold, and let it harden into a slab for grilling meat.
It was the preparatory work for cooking on a cast piece of metal.
The people who worked in manufacturing were showing off the very best of what they did.
Before long, a flat rainbow-colored slab had been completed.
Karki warned the workers.
“If dis break, you are screwed. You hear me? If it break, I break your feet too. Got it?”
The foreign workers snickered.
They knew that however harsh Karki sounded, he always took care of them.
Someone came over with a spray bottle and poured water over the slab.
With a hiss, steam billowed up into the sky.
The cast piece fresh from the furnace was at a temperature beyond imagination.
In the end, the foreman inspected it himself.
“Good enough.”
The workers each lifted the finished slab with iron rods.
“One, two!”
Meanwhile, the other team had already finished setting up the tables.
There was no way they were skipping the vegetables and greens, and neither soju nor beer could be left out.
“Set it down gently on top.”
The cast slab was placed on the table.
There was no need for a burner to grill meat.
That was the beauty of Aurora Liquid.
Even if you put it in a freezer, its extreme heat held for more than half a day.
Karki clapped his hands.
“All right, let’s get in there!!!”
He dumped on a mountain of sliced pork belly.
The meat began cooking the instant it hit the Aurora Liquid slab.
Because the plate was so hot, one side was done in less than three seconds.
Sizzle!
The savory aroma punched straight into my nose and set my appetite ablaze.
Fatty juices gleamed over the slab in a glossy sheen.
The Aurora Liquid used as a grill could be melted down and reused afterward.
“Eat up, everybody!!!”
The workers grabbed chopsticks and lunged for the meat with gleeful desperation.
One after another, they stuffed their mouths and chewed with pure happiness written all over their faces.
“Mm! This is the life!”
“Damn, this tastes incredible!”
As the saying went, when the granary is full, the people are cheerful.
Everyone’s expressions softened into easy smiles.
“Hey, bastard. That stuff isn’t even cooked yet! You’re already on your fifth piece!”
“Yeah! Slow down and eat properly! We’re not stealing it from you!”
Laughing and shouting, they enjoyed the little pleasures that could only be found at the Ildan Hunter Industrial Complex.
“Boss, you should eat too. Here, ahh.”
Karki held out a lettuce wrap he’d made for me.
Seeing everyone else eating with such relish had made my mouth water too.
I took Karki’s lettuce wrap and bit into it.
“How is it, Boss?”
The salty ssamjang and the chewy meat blended together perfectly.
And to crown it all, there was the sharp bite of garlic.
I shot Karki a thumbs-up.
“Hehe. Boss, eat a lot.”
On a day like this, there was no way alcohol could be left out.
Like a band playing in perfect rhythm, glasses clinked merrily as they were drained.
Karki was talking to one of the foreign workers.
“Huh? Mahomed, you’re Muslim, so you’re not supposed to eat pork, right?”
“Me Shin Changsu now. I changed my name. And pork belly is approved by Allah too. It’s fine.”
“What the hell are you talking about?”
A wave of laughter rolled through the lot.
This was a strange foreign land.
Here, nationality, age, and family background didn’t matter.
The foreign workers leaned on one another and lived like family.
“I, Shin Changsu, make the best soju-beer mix you’ll ever taste! Everybody, drink up!”
One by one, we raised the soju-and-beer cocktails that Mahomed—no, Shin Changsu—had mixed for us.
“Okay, okay, all eyes here!”
At that point, Karki took the floor.
“If you slack off because the boss is away, you’re dead. Got it?”
As the factory grew, so did the burden along with it.
I had Hunter work as a side job.
And then there was Purple Devil, my real main job.
I only had one body, but the work kept piling up, and there was never enough time.
A person’s will was fragile by nature.
So it was better not to trust willpower, but to trust the system instead.
Just when I needed someone I could trust to run things on the ground—
Karki’s here, so I’m covered.
When I came back to myself, everyone had gone quiet.
Karki had stuck a spoon into a soju bottle and held it out to me.
“Boss. Please say a few words.”
All eyes were on me.
I let out a small breath.
Now that I stood in the position of leader, I understood.
A leader wasn’t just someone who ordered people around and got the work done.
Depending on the situation, he had to encourage those who followed him and lift their spirits.
I took the soju bottle in my hand.
“Everyone, it’s been hard, hasn’t it?”
It was repetitive physical labor.
A harsh kind of work that ran against the human instinct to seek comfort.
“I know that well. It’s dirty, it’s hard, and it’s dangerous. Most of the work we do is the kind other people avoid. As you can see, most of you came here from overseas.”
In my past life, I had spent my whole life in a factory.
How many things had happened in all that time?
Mocking words like “factory rat.”
Disdainful stares.
Even being pointed at and called stupid.
Of course, there were some who had ended up in factories because they simply hadn’t lived their lives right.
But there were others who were stripped of even the chance to choose the moment they were born.
Because they were poor.
Because they had to feed their families.
There were certainly people who spent their lives sacrificing themselves, burning their own bodies like candles for the sake of others.
“I sincerely respect all of you for quietly staying at your posts and doing what you’ve been given. Whatever anyone says, it doesn’t matter. You’re living lives more valuable than anyone else’s.”
We made weapons. We supplied equipment.
“Hunters fight monsters at the front line. We support them from the rear.”
It was strange.
The eyes watching me were growing red around the rims, and some of them looked hot with emotion.
“You are valuable. If you’re hurt, rest long enough. Don’t ever get hurt. Always be careful, and always watch your safety. All of you should carry pride and dignity in your hearts.”
The mood kept rising.
I let the feeling build in my own chest and raised my voice.
“Eat well, and let’s work hard again starting tomorrow!!!”
A cheer so loud it seemed to shake the ground erupted in answer.
Beyond the ridgeline, a single meteor fell from the sky.
It was a night of especially beautiful starlight.
* * *
After the company dinner ended, I stood in front of the full-length mirror installed in Karki’s private workshop.
Excluding the purple mask, the new suit was a deep ocean blue that wrapped my whole body.
Whenever I moved, its surface shimmered like fine scales.
Oh.
A sense of admiration rose in me before I could stop it.
“So? Boss. You like it?”
The protective gear on my wrists and ankles resembled webbing.
“It’s killer.”
Karki explained.
“It was originally supposed to be P5, but because dis one is for underwater use, I named it W1.”
So the W stood for Water.
From now on, when I was deployed to rivers and seas, this would be the model I used.
“If you wear this, even the deep sea won’t be a problem. It can withstand extreme cold and most pressure too!”
As expected.
Sea dragon hide, Blue Knight, had been combined with Karki’s ever-advancing skill.
And at last, W1, a masterpiece, had been born.
“I’ll make good use of it. Thanks.”
Still wearing the suit, I pulled up the hood over it.
We were deploying tomorrow.
I had to hurry home and pack.
“I’m heading out.”
“Mm. Boss, don’t get hurt.”
Just as I worried about the factory workers, Karki worried about me.
The goal of this operation wasn’t to wipe out evil or make money.
It was to advance from D-class to the next tier.
And by doing that, to obtain military exemption.
Not illegally.
In a clean, lawful way.
To qualify for special promotion, I had to achieve a feat as significant as the Gangnam Station Multi-Gate incident.
I needed to make my name ring out again.
I planned to build my reputation as a Hunter in the loudest, most unavoidable way possible.
I lightly tapped Karki’s chest.
“I’ll come back a hero.”
“Boss is already the hero in my heart.”
Karki grinned.
After saying goodbye to Karki, I left the factory.
Pale yellow moonlight spread across the sandy ground.
I stopped walking in the darkness.
Now, I decided, it was time to do what I’d been putting off for too long.
I waved a hand through the air and summoned the system window.
The day I would head for the battlefield was almost here.
I’d even gotten a new suit.
All that’s left now is...
Hero Selection Ticket
1 use
It was time to use the reward I’d earned.
[ Hero Skill Shop ]
......
......
......
A total of 999.
Among the long line of heroes, who should I choose?
Since this was, quite literally, a selection ticket, it didn’t cost anything.
As I scrolled downward, my hand stopped at one name.
The one I absolutely needed this time was...
The son of the land.
And the king of the sea.
The guardian of the deep sea!
Poseidon has been purchased.